A startling new United Nations Population Fund report projects that in 2050 there will be more people over the age of 60 than those under 15. Put another way, there will be more pensioners than children by 2050. In just 10 years from today, there will be 1 billion people in this age group. These numbers suggest that the elderly will soon become a major burden on society. The challenge, however, is finding ways that turn the elderly into an asset by seeing them as sources of innovation.

  Historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012), who passed away this week, will be remembered by many for his lasting commitment to what may appear as outmoded Marxism. Hobsbawm was faulted by many for his humanism that continued to guide his thinking throughout his life. As Yale University’s Timothy Snyder points out: “There is something to be said, after all, for defending the weak, even today, especially today.” One of his least acknowledged legacies was his insightful understanding of the role of invention in history.

Experts disagree whether an upcoming meeting of the International Telecommunications Union in Dubai will determine the future of global Internet governance.  On Thursday, May 31, 2012, in the Rayburn Office Building of the House of Representatives, a panel comprising some of America’s leading Internet industry and policy experts offered an ominous warning to U.S. lawmakers about future of the Internet. “The open Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now,” testified Vint Cerf, one of the ‘fathers of the Internet’ and Google’s self-described “Chief Internet Evangelist.

It is no surprise to those following consumer or enterprise computing that we are moving inexorably towards the cloud.  The availability of increased – and of increasingly mobile – connectivity to the Internet has allowed for the development, and widespread usage, of cloud-based services.  At the same time, mobile devices have undergone a rapid evolution, expanding both in capability as well as market penetration.  Devices such as the iPhone and iPad have revolutionized the marketplace in less than five years since their release.

We all know the United States has a jobs crisis. President Obama further acknowledged it when he made manufacturing a top priority in this year’s State of the Union address.  He has his eye set on fixing the tax code to keep jobs onshore; training young people to fill them; reforming immigration to retain workers once trained; and setting new standards to drive innovation and create more jobs. That’s all good news for the nation; it’s practically an industrial policy. In all this, though, there’s a worrisome undercurrent.

Last month the Council on Foreign Relations published a report co-authored by Joel I. Klein and Condoleezza Rice, titled, “U.S. Education Reform and National Security.” Giving voice to the work of its task force of 25 scholars and practitioners, the report sounded a call to arms from its opening sentence. “It will come as no surprise to most readers,” Klein and Rice wrote, “that America’s primary and secondary schools are widely seen as failing.” With that swift assertion the authors traveled quickly to their destination: we must test, have standards, and audit.

Via Dave Burstein comes the news that China is adding 2-3 million people to online connections a month. I’ve heard elsewhere that China plans to have 300 million of its citizens connected to fiber (FTTH, or fiber to the home) by 2015. As one of my colleagues quipped via email, “They must have the special access problem solved.” (Jim Crowe of Level 3 has a good piece re control of backhaul/special access by AT&T and VZ, and the cable cos are also in this business.)  One way the country is doing this is by bringing major antitrust actions against its dominant communications providers.

The world is awash with reports that rank the competitiveness of nations in the global economy. These reports are compiled by purveyors based on the myth that nation states have unique technological capabilities that help them to compete globally. Contrary to this techno-nationalism, it is regions that possess specialized competencies embedded in enterprises that compete on the global scenes. Nation states are an important statistical indicator of regional capabilities, but they do not in themselves determine how such place-based capabilities are deployed.

Late in the day on February 23, 2012, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the preliminary rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use.  For those not deep in the weeds of Health Information Technology policy jargon, “Meaningful Use” is the federal standard for eligible physicians and hospitals to receive incentives through Medicare and Medicaid for adopting and using an Electronic Health Record. So why is this important?  Well, first, a little bit of background.  Just about three years ago, Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and set aside nearly $30 billion for direct incentives for providers to start using EHRs.

Inequality between men and women remains one of the most critical sources of low economic productivity in Africa. Many of the efforts seek to address the challenge by creating new training institutions. A complementary strategy is to identify and upgrade promising local initiatives. In her preface to the new Gender Equality and Female Empowerment, of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton states that achieving US global development objectives “will demand accelerated efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.