Alec Ross: The world’s last trillion dollar industry was created out of computer code. The world’s next trillion dollar industry is going to be created out of a genetic code. Our bodies are made up of about 25,000 genes and the first human genome was mapped about 15 years ago. It was done so over a period of about a decade and at a cost of 2.7 billion dollars. Just five years ago Steve Jobs was one of ten people who had the privilege of paying $100,000 to get his genome mapped. Today the same thing that cost 2.7 billion dollars 15 years ago or $100,000 five years ago costs a couple thousand dollars. And that cost is going to continue to go down. What does this mean? It means two things. It means we are going to be able to diagnose illnesses far, far, far, far earlier. And it means we’re going to be able to develop precision medicines. First on precision medicines. Right now if you get an illness you go to your doctor and depending on what you have they’ll prescribe you one or two medicines. If you’re fat you’ll get a big dosage. If you’re skinny you’ll get a lower dosage. That’s the personalization. In the future as what I think will be as soon as four or five years when we get medicines they will be personalized to account for our personal genetic makeup as well as the specific genetic makeup of the illness that we have. And what I think this will do is it quite likely will add a couple years of expected life expectancy to all of us. It’s kind of a big deal.
The second thing – early diagnosis of illnesses. I play racquetball every now and then with this guy named Bert Vogelstein. And when I first met Bert Vogelstein I thought he was a gym rat. He’s sort of this scraggly old guy in his 60s, gray beard, wears a knee brace over his 1970 style gray sweatpants, carts his racquetball gear to the court in a dingy old Samsonite suitcase. It turns out Bert is the world’s most cited living scientist. He’s Dr. Bert Vogelstein from Johns Hopkins University. And some 30 years ago he and his team of researchers determined how mutations in proteins cause cancer. Kind of a big deal. So now Bert and his team of researchers at Johns Hopkins have developed something called a liquid biopsy. And what a liquid biopsy does is it takes a blood sample, you know, just like we get at our annual checkup now testing for things like cholesterol levels and whether you’ve got an STD. And in that blood sample they can detect cancerous cells at 1/100 the size of what can be detected by an MRI. What does that mean? It means that cancers that are routinely found in stages 3 and 4 and which are more likely than not fatal will be found early in stage 1 where cure rates are far, far higher. This is another life expectancy changer. This is another thing that is going to add years to many people’s lives.
Modern medicine is pretty fantastic, right? Wrong. Wow, you walked right into that honey trap. Pharmaceuticals are incredibly impressive and most of us wouldn’t be alive without them, but this industry is set to skyrocket in innovation over the next few decades, making our current practices seem as primitive as the 130-pound mobile phone that seemed really futuristic in '90s.
Alec Ross is one of America’s leading experts on innovation (in fact he served for four years as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a role that earned him a Distinguished Honor Award from the State Department). The world’s last trillion dollar industry was created out of computer code. What’s the world’s next trillion dollar industry? Turns out it’s been inside us all along – genomes. Procedures like genome mapping that cost $2.7 billion dollars a mere 15 years ago are now available for just a few thousand dollars, and if that still sounds like a lot to you, don’t worry, it will get a lot cheaper still.
With genomic mapping as part of our everyday medical arsenal, doctors and technicians will be able to diagnose illnesses much earlier, which has everything to do with survival rates and quality of life, and will be able to develop precision medicines that are specific to your genetic make-up and to the genomic make-up of each disease. Ross says this is "kind of a big deal" as it will add years onto our life expectancies.
Currently on the cusp of exploding, this industry will be able to detect cancers that are usually only recognized at stages 4 and 5, in stage 1 where cure rates are far, far higher. The times are exiting and hopefully many of us will be able to experience them a little longer thanks to genomic innovation.
Alec Ross' most recent book is The Industries of the Future.
- Map details dramatic shift from CNN to Fox News over 10-year period
- Does it show the triumph of "fake news" — or, rather, its defeat?
- A closer look at the map's legend allows for more complex analyses
Dramatic and misleading
Image: Reddit / SICResearch
The situation today: CNN pushed back to the edges of the country.
Over the course of no more than a decade, America has radically switched favorites when it comes to cable news networks. As this sequence of maps showing TMAs (Television Market Areas) suggests, CNN is out, Fox News is in.
The maps are certainly dramatic, but also a bit misleading. They nevertheless provide some insight into the state of journalism and the public's attitudes toward the press in the US.
Let's zoom in:
- It's 2008, on the eve of the Obama Era. CNN (blue) dominates the cable news landscape across America. Fox News (red) is an upstart (°1996) with a few regional bastions in the South.
- By 2010, Fox News has broken out of its southern heartland, colonizing markets in the Midwest and the Northwest — and even northern Maine and southern Alaska.
- Two years later, Fox News has lost those two outliers, but has filled up in the middle: it now boasts two large, contiguous blocks in the southeast and northwest, almost touching.
- In 2014, Fox News seems past its prime. The northwestern block has shrunk, the southeastern one has fragmented.
- Energised by Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Fox News is back with a vengeance. Not only have Maine and Alaska gone from entirely blue to entirely red, so has most of the rest of the U.S. Fox News has plugged the Nebraska Gap: it's no longer possible to walk from coast to coast across CNN territory.
- By 2018, the fortunes from a decade earlier have almost reversed. Fox News rules the roost. CNN clings on to the Pacific Coast, New Mexico, Minnesota and parts of the Northeast — plus a smattering of metropolitan areas in the South and Midwest.
"Frightening map"
Image source: Reddit / SICResearch
This sequence of maps, showing America turning from blue to red, elicited strong reactions on the Reddit forum where it was published last week. For some, the takeover by Fox News illustrates the demise of all that's good and fair about news journalism. Among the comments?
- "The end is near."
- "The idiocracy grows."
- "(It's) like a spreading disease."
- "One of the more frightening maps I've seen."
- "LOL that's what happens when you're fake news!"
- "CNN went down the toilet on quality."
- "A Minecraft YouTuber could beat CNN's numbers."
- "CNN has become more like a high-school production of a news show."
Not a few find fault with both channels, even if not always to the same degree:
- "That anybody considers either of those networks good news sources is troubling."
- "Both leave you understanding less rather than more."
- "This is what happens when you spout bullsh-- for two years straight. People find an alternative — even if it's just different bullsh--."
- "CNN is sh-- but it's nowhere close to the outright bullsh-- and baseless propaganda Fox News spews."
"Old people learning to Google"
Image: Google Trends
CNN vs. Fox News search terms (200!-2018)
But what do the maps actually show? Created by SICResearch, they do show a huge evolution, but not of both cable news networks' audience size (i.e. Nielsen ratings). The dramatic shift is one in Google search trends. In other words, it shows how often people type in "CNN" or "Fox News" when surfing the web. And that does not necessarily reflect the relative popularity of both networks. As some commenters suggest:
- "I can't remember the last time that I've searched for a news channel on Google. Is it really that difficult for people to type 'cnn.com'?"
- "More than anything else, these maps show smart phone proliferation (among older people) more than anything else."
- "This is a map of how old people and rural areas have learned to use Google in the last decade."
- "This is basically a map of people who don't understand how the internet works, and it's no surprise that it leans conservative."
A visual image as strong as this map sequence looks designed to elicit a vehement response — and its lack of context offers viewers little new information to challenge their preconceptions. Like the news itself, cartography pretends to be objective, but always has an agenda of its own, even if just by the selection of its topics.
The trick is not to despair of maps (or news) but to get a good sense of the parameters that are in play. And, as is often the case (with both maps and news), what's left out is at least as significant as what's actually shown.
One important point: while Fox News is the sole major purveyor of news and opinion with a conservative/right-wing slant, CNN has more competition in the center/left part of the spectrum, notably from MSNBC.
Another: the average age of cable news viewers — whether they watch CNN or Fox News — is in the mid-60s. As a result of a shift in generational habits, TV viewing is down across the board. Younger people are more comfortable with a "cafeteria" approach to their news menu, selecting alternative and online sources for their information.
It should also be noted, however, that Fox News, according to Harvard's Nieman Lab, dominates Facebook when it comes to engagement among news outlets.
CNN, Fox and MSNBC
Image: Google Trends
CNN vs. Fox (without the 'News'; may include searches for actual foxes). See MSNBC (in yellow) for comparison
For the record, here are the Nielsen ratings for average daily viewer total for the three main cable news networks, for 2018 (compared to 2017):
- Fox News: 1,425,000 (-5%)
- MSNBC: 994,000 (+12%)
- CNN: 706,000 (-9%)
And according to this recent overview, the top 50 of the most popular websites in the U.S. includes cnn.com in 28th place, and foxnews.com in... 27th place.
The top 5, in descending order, consists of google.com, youtube.com, facebook.com, amazon.com and yahoo.com — the latter being the highest-placed website in the News and Media category.
//This will actually fire event. Should be called after consent was verifed