About me
Co-founder and CTO of Quid, part time physicist and sometimes decathlete. I'm based in San Francisco where I spend most of my time working at Quid building the next generation global intelligence platform. Not an easy task, but luckily I have a great team of quants and e ... More »
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Location:
United States, San Francisco, CA -
Current organization
Quid -
Current role:
Co-Founder and CTO -
Past organizations:
Oxford University, NASA -
Gender:
Male -
Areas of expertise:
Quantative Analysis, Network theory, Online news, Decathlon, Mathematics of War, Physics, Nanotechnology, OSINT
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I am:
Activist, Athlete, Consultant, Idea generator, Policy maker, Scientist, Startup -
My website links:
The mathematics of war, my twitter page, Quid -
Universities:
Oxford University, University of Canterbury, New Zealand -
TED Conferences Attended:
TED2011, TED2009






Comments
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A reply on Conversation: LIVE CHAT With Sean Gourley: What are some of the lessons from war we can apply to other human endeavors? June 17, 2PM EDT
A reply on Conversation: LIVE CHAT With Sean Gourley: What are some of the lessons from war we can apply to other human endeavors? June 17, 2PM EDT
A reply on Conversation: LIVE CHAT With Sean Gourley: What are some of the lessons from war we can apply to other human endeavors? June 17, 2PM EDT
A reply on Conversation: LIVE CHAT With Sean Gourley: What are some of the lessons from war we can apply to other human endeavors? June 17, 2PM EDT
There are of course obvious technological gains that are made with all the military spending that is done. von Braun leveraged both the Nazi and the US military might to pursue his dreams of human space flight. As a result of Iraq and Afghanistan we have improved critical medical care and built very effective translation devices.
War today though has perhaps contributed the most to the rise of two things. Robots and prosthetic limbs. The prosthetic limbs coming as a direct result of the increases in critical medical care on the battlefield. More soldiers that lose limbs are now surviving - so we generate new technologies to help them to walk again.
Whilst technologies are developed as a result of war - it is pretty hard to make the case that all the money spent on war couldn't have been spent on developing these technologies without the need to kill people along the way.
*note space pen not actually developed by NASA but makes for a nice story point :)
A reply on Conversation: LIVE CHAT With Sean Gourley: What are some of the lessons from war we can apply to other human endeavors? June 17, 2PM EDT
The media in a place like Iraq allows all the insurgent groups to maintain a high degree of situational awareness. They can know what is going on today - and with social media they can even see things like the Bin Landen navy SEAL attack unfold in real time. This is a huge information advantage.
As this news is transmitted it can be used to see what strategies are effective, what works and what doesn't. In short the media is a great learning platform.