Later, in a meeting with the senior staff, Picard expresses his belief that she is a con-artist and points out that all of her "powers" can be recreated with theatrically delivered technology.
Video companies are beginning to deliver technologies that allow the systems to analyze what they are watching and recording.
The Fund will provide risk capital funding to enterprises that create and deliver technologies and solutions that generate social and financial returns.
"Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so consumers can consume what they want online," he said.
One of the companies, Exchange.com, specializes in tracking down hard-to-find book titles, while the other two companies deliver technologies to enable e-commerce.
Philips is working on some fancy new drug deliver technologies that utilize microbubbles in a new way.
But for many years, agricultural science and development have focused on delivering technologies to increase farm-level productivity rather than integrating externalities such as impacts on biodiversity and the relationship between agriculture and climate change.
"The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love," Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said in a statement.
Moreover, few investors subscribe any longer to claims by the biggest oil producers that integration delivers technology synergies, helps pry open foreign markets or provides hedging opportunities.
The idea is to build networks for producing and delivering technology services much like the global manufacturing networks that have evolved over the last couple of decades.
