Big Things

C IR ISAIAH BERLIN, in his essay on J Tolstoy and de Maistre, quotes a saying of an ancient Greek poet: fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. This distinction serves Sir Isaiah as a guide to an intellectual typology, a distinction between those minds who seek and sniff out many little things and those whose intellectual ears pick up out of the multifarious sounds of the world surrounding them one big recurring thing the melody not yet audible to the ears of the foxes. Ideally the security analyst should be both a fox knowing many little things and a hedgehog knowing one big thing: he should combine the knowledge and experience of all the little everyday things that establish the criss-cross pattern of economic and financial affairs with the sensitivity of a mind listening to the rhythm of a distant drum. Like most other professionals, security analysts do not usually possess such an ideal cast of mind, able to combine the clear-sightedness of the microscopic eye with the distant sweep of telescopic vision. The knowledge of the fox is as essential as that of the hedgehog. Concentrating on one and losing sight of the other will lead to a crazy-quilt picture of reality. This occurs particularly when an intoxication with numbers and the many little things that may be dredged up in their nets causes the practitioners to overlook the imprecision of the seemingly precise. The hedgehog with his knowledge of one big thing telescopes terrestrial time into tiny little dots on an epochal scale and, so, frequently loses his knowledge in a cloudland casting only a fleeting shadow on the world of economic affairs. The risks and difficulties arising from their self-appointed tasks have never yet deterred either the fox or the hedgehog. Other professions have met with similar obstacles and have not allowed themselves to be inhibited by the difficulties. The inherent imprecision of economics has taught the economist to be satisfied with broad statements and to claim the right, by the knowledge of the fox, to make short-term forecasts, aware that change takes time and that there is a momentum in human affairs arising out of the finite nature of the mind of man. Because of this, to modify men's beliefs and motives for action is a complex and multi-faceted matter-even to convey an understanding of the significance of current news events at times raises nearly insuperable obstacles. It becomes difficult to determine the intersection between the things seen by the fox and the foreknowledge of the hedgehog. To combine the active pursuit of the many little things with the perspective of the one big and essential thing is the never-ending task of security analysis as a profession. At times the active pursuit of the many little things appears as the all-absorbing task; at others the wide sweep of new horizons opening attracts attention. It seems to me that, at the current juncture, the hedgehog deserves to be accorded a greater authority by the profession than in the past. The widening and deepening of science and technology in their application to more areas and broader segments of economic and financial life tends to lower the significance of the old guideposts so carefully described and numbered by the analyst and to lead into territory the geography of which can be charted in outline only. It has become trite to say that we have entered a period of accelerated technological change and that such change will necessarily affect all areas of everyday life and their interrelationships. As the recent report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress put it: Past trends and current prospects suggest that the present is, and the near future will be a time of rapid technological progress.... It is beyond our knowledge to know whether the computer, nuclear power and molecular bilogy are quantitatively or qualitatively more 'revolutionary' than the telephone, electric power and bacteriology. . . . Our broad conclusion

This paper highlights the US Department of Energy’s commercial building technology impact framework, the High Impact Technology (HIT) Catalyst, which enables building owners and operators to readily find and take advantage of energy and cost savings available by using emerging or underutilised efficiency solutions – ie the ‘next big thing’. Currently, existing buildings are being upgraded at a rate of 2.2 per cent per year, while upgrades in newly constructed buildings are on average 17 per cent greater.7 The HIT Catalyst prioritises technologies with the highest potential impact while creating pathways for two-way transfer of information, continuous improvement and flexible ‘on and off ramps’ for new, or emerging, scientific advances and evolving market conditions. The HIT approach focuses on the development of the most effective and valuable efficiency information and the dissemination of that information through proven deployment pathways. Core requirements-based activities create access points to technical expertise, ensure year-to-year consistency and address targeted audiences and sectors. Most importantly, the HIT Catalyst collects important data on market conditions and produces measurable results that show the value of the ‘next big thing’ as it propagates into adoption. Key to this data collection are adoption campaigns, which support and recognise early adopters in growing exemplary practices, from small pilots to large procurements that drive down costs and provide the foundation for participation by others. The HIT Catalyst is meant to be a one-stop shop for the information, resources and access to expertise necessary to support organisational energy savings and sustainability goals.

Describes issues emerging from research conducted on e-learning in higher education in Oman. E-learning at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU); Positive points regarding e-learning instruction; Research on information technology in teaching at SQU.

The Internet of Things (IoT) may represent the 'next big thing' in terms of tech revolutions but it still remains a divisive topic, with commentators offering wildly differing opinions on what it actually is, why it's important, and if it has the significant consumer support needed to take off. The Internet of Things (IOT) may represent the 'next big thing' in terms of tech revolutions but it still remains a divisive topic. Without one set of standards uniting the 'connected everything' industry, devices will be developed with differing and potentially incompatible levels of security. This has some very significant implications. Allen Storey of Intercede looks at the security challenges the IoT presents and how service providers are in a strong position to take a lead in providing solutions.

In a famous essay, Isaiah Berlin contrasted two intellectual styles, that of the fox, who knows many small things, and that of the hedgehog, who ‘knows one big thing’ – who has one big idea or works within one theoretical tradition. Stanley Hoffmann's work reflects both styles. In his descriptive work he is a fox, who knows many things. In his discussions of ethics, he is a hedgehog who knows one big thing: that an ethical dimension is inherent in cogent interpretation. As a critic of American foreign policy, Hoffmann has combined these styles, arguing that the United States is too prone to lecture others rather than to engage in the give-and-take of bargaining. And he has always emphasized the layered and complex nature of world politics.

While machine learning (ML) has existed for a long time, the business world's focus on it may seem like an overnight development. The technology has been steadily growing since the early days of big data. However, the ability to give machines access to big data and allow them to apply complex mathematical calculations repetitively, while learning for themselves, is a new development. The key objective of this article is to propose a conceptual model for successful implementation of ML in organisations. This article also covers some of the potential benefits of ML, and provides a guide to some of the opportunities that are available for using ML in various businesses. Furthermore, this study reviews key attributes of successful ML platforms and illustrates how to overcome some of the key implementation challenges. Finally, this study highlights some of the successful implementations of ML solutions used in the manufacturing and service industry.

While machine learning (ML) has existed for a long time, the business world's focus on it may seem like an overnight development. The technology has been steadily growing since the early days of big data. However, the ability to give machines access to big data and allow them to apply complex mathematical calculations repetitively, while learning for themselves, is a new development. The key objective of this article is to propose a conceptual model for successful implementation of ML in organisations. This article also covers some of the potential benefits of ML, and provides a guide to some of the opportunities that are available for using ML in various businesses. Furthermore, this study reviews key attributes of successful ML platforms and illustrates how to overcome some of the key implementation challenges. Finally, this study highlights some of the successful implementations of ML solutions used in the manufacturing and service industry.

<i>HIV in South Africa: talking about the big thing</i> ‐ by Squire, C.

Alexander Wlodawer is a structural biologist who has made seminal contributions to our understanding of protein structure-function relationships. He obtained his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has spent the majority of his career at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, where he currently holds a Senior Investigator position at the NCI's Center for Structural Biology. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of The FEBS Journal since 2007. In this interview, Alex talks about carving his own scientific path, the era of 'big things' in structural biology, and the most challenging editorial task.

Steamy Jeffrey T. Nealon (bio) Let me begin with a blurb written by Rita Felski, author of The Limits of Critique, for Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter, arguably post-critique's most successful venture: "This manifesto for a new materialism is an invigorating breath of fresh air. Jane Bennett's eloquent tribute to the vitality and volatility of things is just what we need to revive the humanities and to redraw the boundaries of political thought."1 If we survey what's happened in and around the humanities since 2010, when Bennett's book was published and new materialist post-critique debuted as the Terry Gross-style "fresh air" destined "to revive the humanities," we'd have to admit the obvious: rather than post-critique being the god that could save us now, the new paradigm that would sweep to dominance and make us relevant again, we've instead been vexed to nightmare by budget and tenure-line job cuts, disappearing students, and a number of self-inflicted Twitter wounds too numerous to elaborate. But I'm more interested here in the nomenclature of critical "steam"—insofar as, from its inception in Bruno Latour all the way to this journal issue, the steam metaphor is based on very recognizable marketing logic, or "next big thing" thinking: in short, the "Steam or No Steam?" gameshow format (as in, "affect studies—steam or no steam?") reinforces the sense that Kuhnian paradigm shifts (or less generously, neoliberal innovations in the product line) are the fuel for the engine of disciplinary progress, and more specifically that the entire academic enterprise is driven by steamy new scholarly publication protocols and their concomitant acronyms: ANT, OOO, various other OMGs, WTFs, and shiny innovative modes of adjectival reading (as in post-critical, distant, reparative, descriptive, surface, distracted, hyper, and so on). All this emphasis on critical "steam" (as newness or hotness) reinforces the sense that such heavyweight paradigm bouts are the central powering mechanisms of a discipline. So just let me say right out of the gate: from my point of view, it's not this or that theoretical paradigm that has run out of steam, but rather it's the very act of chasing the "next big thing" within critical paradigms that has run out of steam. Or it may be that, when it comes to thinking about theory and what makes it tick, chasing the next big idea was never anything other than a big ole Cleveland Steamer. [End Page 537] In any case, it seems clear that new materialism or post-critical realism is fashionable in theory today largely because its arch-nemesis social constructionism has run aground; there are just no new articles, books or dissertations to be written about the social construction of x or y. And to many jaundiced post-critical eyes, it looks like those social-construction years were tragically hubristic as well, with the tenets of the linguistic turn harboring a secret investment in what turns out to be an earth-destroying humanism. As Jane Bennett writes in "Systems and Things: On Vital Materialism and Object-Oriented Philosophy," almost all of these recent post-critical models "share a critique of linguistic and social constructivism" and thereby "see the nonhuman turn as a response to an overconfidence about human power that was embedded in the postmodernism of the 1980s and 1990s" (Bennett 2015, 227). As an aside here, one might note that critique in the modern, Kantian sense is grounded in a severely austere humility concerning the power of human logos, not a celebration of its unbounded powers to know everything—the one point of agreement that made postmodernism and Kant such unlikely bedfellows. As Theodor Adorno insists, "The crucial feature of the Kantian work…is that it is guided by the conviction that reason is denied the right to stray into the realm of the Absolute. … The power of the Critique of Pure Reason resides not so much in responses to the so-called metaphysical questions as in its highly heroic and stoical refusal to respond to these questions in the first place" (Adorno 2001, 6-7). In fact, it completely escapes me how turning back toward realist metaphysical...

ABSTRACTThe concept of the ‘building event’ has been central within recent geographies of architecture, marshalled against the assumption that buildings are stable or textual. Buildings, in these studies, emerge out of contingent relations among various configurations of human and non-human actors. Yet it is possible, other studies suggest, that this focus on the ‘building’ as the centre of the ‘building event’ has overlooked long-standing historical processes that are only visible if we consider aspects of contemporary construction industries. This study examines the relation between building events and construction industries from the point of view of one ‘big thing’ that has received little explicit attention from geographers: the procurement route and its associated selection procedures for architects and contractors. ‘Big things’ that circulate throughout the construction industry, procurement routes are organised around an understanding of building as a process that is nevertheless static and object-like. I examine engagements between procurement routes and architects through interviews, document analysis and participant observation. I suggest that procurement routes are additional actors within ‘building events’, resembling the actor-network theoretical notion of the ‘script’ while, unlike the script, anticipating their own de-scription. I conclude by pointing to opportunities for geographies of architectural scripts.

Change, even rapid change, is nothing new. What did seem worrying was the way an apparent technology shift had turned the established wisdom of business growth and value on its head. Suddenly the brash new 'dot.coms', none of whom were making money or even looking like making money, enjoyed a market capitalisation way ahead of established businesses with huge turnover and solid profits. How could they defy economic gravity in this way? Analysis justified their numbers by pointing at the Internet. The technology changed the rules. The new game was about critical mass, defined largely in terms of customer reach in the virtual world. You had to have new business structures, lean and infinitely flexible, and new business models that helped you extract value at unexpected (and ever changing) places. Traditional measures did not apply. This is not business as usual! Technology after all is only a means to an end and not an end in itself [mdash ] we need to think about the next 'big thing', whatever that may turn out to be.

Wireless location positioning can occur using a variety of technologies satellite, cellular and infrared technologies to name just a few common approaches. Location-Based Service (LBS) has been often considered the next 'revolution' in the wireless market, the next 'big thing'. They have a wide field of promising applications across all aspects of the wireless market from consumer to business-to-business solutions. Unfortunately, the same location-aware technologies that bring all the benefits also raise a lot of privacy and data protection issues due to their capability to collect, store, use and disclose a lot of personal information.

This article analyses three recent shifts in what called the geography of ‘Big Things’, meaning the contemporary functions and adaptability of modern city centre architecture. We periodise the three styles conventionally into the fashionable ‘Starchitecture’ of the 1990s, the repurposed ‘Agritecture’ of the 2000s and the parodising ‘Parkitecture’ of the 2010s. Starchitecture was the form of new architecture coinciding with the rise of neo-liberalism in its brief era of global urban competitiveness prevalent in the 1990s. After the Great Financial Crash of 2007–2008, the market for high-rise emblems of iconic, thrusting, skyscrapers and giant downtown and suburban shopping malls waned and online shopping and working from home destroyed the main rental values of the CBD. In some illustrious cases, ‘Agritecture’ caused re-purposed office blocks and other CBD accompaniments to be re-purposed as settings for high-rise urban farming, especially aquaponics and hydroponic horticulture. Now, COVID-19 has further undermined traditional CBD property markets, causing some administrations to decide to bulldoze their ‘deadmalls’ and replace them with urban prairie landscapes, inviting the designation ‘Parkitecture’ for the bucolic results. This paper presents an account of these transitions with reference to questions raised by urban cultural scholars such as Jane M. Jacobs and Jean Gottmann to figure out answers in time and space to questions their work poses.