19 Disruptive tech trends in 2017

 

As an amateur futurist I'm always watching the trends of innovation, here are some technology trends I'm keeping a close eye on as we approach 2017. Now we are entering a period where the convergence of multiple technologies and integrations results in an exponentially increasing potential for disruption in the future of work, commerce, manufacturing, Bigdata and AI.

1. Blockchain

Distributed ledger technology that are decentralized databases that are hacker and fraud proof don't just have the potential to impact Banking and FinTech, but transform how our digital identity and customer reviews work. In an era where trust in at an all-time low between citizens and institutions, the blockchain can give the fallen credibility of various institutions a new measure of legitimacy.

2. The AI Smart Speaker

You would not have thought Amazon's 9-inch tall cylinder speaker controlled by a cloud-based voice assistant that goes by the name Alexa would change the world, but it's becoming increasingly apparent this product is a deal-breaker that not only tap into chatbots, product search and ecommerce but the future of how apps work together via a personal assistant. I think Google Home and Apple's Competitor pushes innovation in this ecosystem to such an extent voice search begins to take traffic from mobile search.

3. Analytics of Everything

As the IoT matures it actualizes the Big Data era with predictive analytics that alters how the world interacts with our physical presence. An increasingly multi-layered digital mesh and new channels such as chatbots, AR, VR and mixed reality means our data is used in new ways that goes beyond what we now call the internet and digital or mobile influence. With graph databases and the convergence of many new technologies, such as AI and IoT produces an analytics of everything that's actionable, personalized and ubiquitous.

4. Automation Economy

Forget the information or digital economy, the automation economy increasingly scales machine learning, algorithms and AI to the point where many of our jobs are affected. A visible impact of the automation economy are fully autonomy vehicles and self-driving cars. Apply this same principle to nearly every field, and you have a very disruptive trend. This includes robotics, drones, 3D-printing, fully responsive chatbots, the smart home, Dash like shopping agents and so many other trends.

5. Mobile Ubiquity of Personalization

As mobile devices continue to replace PCs and secretaries, he devices mesh, smarter apps and innovation in IoT and new more powerful wearable devices means sensors in the IoT device mesh become more accessible. 2017-2020 is a period of integration, resulting in a greater mobile ubiquity of experience that's personalized, customizable and reacts to the individual. The emergence of a winning personal assistant is a key component of this process that can and will increasingly filter the notifications, emails, communications, our calendar, our search and access to the information and our professional and social lives.

6. The Chatbot Interface

Before human beings are able to directly find a neural interface to the internet and each other, there is a period of the chatbot interface that helps train AI to become smarter and that enables human beings to become more accustomed to living digitally expanding our speed, efficiency and removing own own bottlenecks while increasing our bandwidth. Chatbots that can help us organize our lives and humanize technology are absolutely necessary, these will take many forms but ultimately enable us to interact with an evolving AI.

7. Collaborative Innovation

The way companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and others crowd-source innovation moving towards a software of everything is crucial to how technology accelerates into the 2020s. Amazon's Alexa Skills Kit that lets you teach Alexa new skills is an example of this. Eventually, this is not a question of APIs and devs, but human beings helping machine learning self-learn. Tech companies become ecosystems and platforms while morphing into something else, anticipating and driving innovation, but this means the exponential evolution of technology takes on a more human AI hybrid environment, and collaborative process.

8. Biometrics and Digital Wallets

A digital wallet that's attached to our digital identity on the blockchain with payments made via biometrics is very interesting. The Apple pays, Android Pay and Paypals of this world are just the beginning. In an era of severe disruption, human beings will have access to a universal basic income and "payments" will be made via sophisticated digital wallets that do not require external verification such as cards, a mobile device or some physical proof of verification.

9. 3D-Printing

3D printing is set to disrupt manufacturing and as it enters the smart home, it disrupts retail and e-commerce. Additive manufacturing impacts not just mass production, but how we are able to personalize and customize products all in the comfort of our homes for cents per pound. Machines that build other machines in fact is a major trend, Elon Musk's ideas on how smart factories will scale with the "machine building the machine" is a precursor to self-replicating robotics, drones and self-repairing home systems. An intelligence of everything armed with 3D-printing will alter how we build and maintain infrastructure after all.

10. Video of Everything

Snapchat Spectacles are the precursor of ocular implants that will be able to record our experiences, replay and share memories and experience a new immersive depth of our own key moments. As video content increases in preference to written content on the web, how we experience media and news has already changed considerably and will continue to evolve. Facial recognition, drones, wearables and new kinds of VR, AR and mixed reality mix with video to create new modes of expression and social interaction.

11. Rise of Cyber Terrorism

The prevalence and scale of cyber hacking, corporate (government) espionage and using IoT to coordinate cyber attacks is set to increase creating a new kind of cyber politics, crime, warfare and of course terrorism.

12. Quantum Computing

Google, IBM and others are experimenting with Quantum computing it can be leveraged to create a whole new architecture and paradigm of computing, software and apps.

13. The Experience Economy

As products become no longer the center of capitalism, it will transition to the "experience" economy. This is already readily visible in how the customer experience is a key component to how brands sell products and services.

14. The Sharing, On-Demand and Gig Economy

Three different ecosystems, all becoming more relevant with each passing year. How we share, move and work are all set to change. The future is more like an Airbnb and WeWork of everything, than it is an Uber of everything.

15. Skills Gap Training

As the future of work is in flux, how citizens re-educate themselves to adapt to changing jobs, professions and career-paths means lifelong education is a must. Significant skill gaps and skill shortages in some industries will lead to new innovations that hasten the advent of the automation economy.

16. Corporate Renaissance

Just as cloud computing enabled and facilitated millions of new startups, new trends in corporate technology, culture and AI will continue this trend. Sales and marketing will become easier to automate, and how we replicate innovation, remain agile and pivot will evolve for every size of company and every kind of product.

17. Exascale Super Computing

With faster super computers, reaching the processing power required to simulate the human brain is within reach, with predictive modeling capable of not just simulating but reaching deeply into data and applying cognitive approaches (AI capacity).

18. Post App and Post Mobile Disruption

2017 is the year we realize mobile devices and apps are the past and no longer represent necessarily viable future products. Human beings don't really want to be tethered to their phones, they want a better experience of digital that's not so cluttered, impersonal, inefficient, wasteful and un-integrated. As VR, AR, mixed reality and 5G manifest, we'll have more options.

19. Biological Engineering & Augmented Self

Nanabots, biotech and human enhancements will radically change health monitoring, reverse aging, family planning and human leadership, among so many other things.

Like these insights, share this article.

What disruptive tech trends and innovations stand out to you as being relevant to watch in 2017 and beyond? 

This article is part of the LinkedIn Top Voices list, a collection of the must-read writers of the year. Check out more #BigIdeas2017 here.

Written by

Michael SpencerLinkedIn Top Voice 2016 | Copywriter | Social Media & Content Strategist at Freelance

Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better

World Economic Forum 

"Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams."

Image: REUTERS/Nicky Loh

Written by https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/shopping-i-can-t-really-remember-what-that-is/

Ida Auken, Member of Parliament, Parliament of Denmark (Folketinget)

Friday 11 November 2016

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much. 

First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?

Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.

"Environmental problems seem far away"

In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.

Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.

Have you read?

• 2030: the rise of compassion, or a world of warships and walls? 
• What will we eat in 2030? 
• What will we eat in 2030? 

This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.

The death of shopping

Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.

When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.

For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.

"They live different kinds of lives outside of the city"

My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages. 

Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.

Linked On and Microsoft can make such a positive difference to the future of constructive employment

 

Jeff Weiner shares Microsoft's and Linkedin's next "play"  of their merger.

 Exciting stuff!!!. 

There is so much opportunity for Microsoft and LinkedIn  to make a major shift in creating jobs and enhancing collaboration and connection - from the disruption of AI, robotics and machine learning. 

As a major user of LinkedIn and Microsoft - the biggest bang for the buck for me - will be the integration of Linked in and Microsoft Dynamics, and adopting the vision of Microsoft to being an "open sourced" technology company with a mindset of abundance, vs a company that was paaanoid about the competition. The reality is that there is no competition - only potential alliance partners! Onwards and upwards! Ivan Kaye https://members.referron.com/bsivc

From Jeff Weiner

As we closed LinkedIn's acquisition by Microsoft today, I sent the following to our team. Publishing it here on the network for those interested in learning more about where we'll be focusing our integration efforts. For additional context, here is a link to my original post at the time of the initial announcement.

Team,

Six months ago, we announced our intention to be acquired by Microsoft. At the time, Satya and I shared the background of the deal and our joint vision for changing the way the world works. Today I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just officially closed the acquisition. I’m more confident than ever that our move to join forces with Microsoft will accelerate our mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, and ultimately help create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

Over the past few months, the LinkedIn and Microsoft leadership teams have been meeting to understand and prioritize the opportunities ahead. We’ve been able to see first-hand the level of innovation being driven at scale -- in artificial intelligence, machine learning, the cloud, devices, and more. We’ve also had the chance to build a deeper relationship with Satya and the Microsoft leadership team, and to witness the strategic and cultural shifts they are driving, and the impressive traction they are seeing as a result.

As we move forward, our day-to-day operations will essentially remain unchanged: We’ll continue to have the same mission and vision, the same culture and values, the same brand, and the same leadership team.

Our members still come first. Our commitment to privacy and security will not change. And our partners are still core to our business. We’ll continue to remain focused on growing LinkedIn and creating value for our members and customers. Over the coming months we’ll start sharing more about how we’re integrating products, especially in areas where we can leverage Microsoft’s scale, e.g.,

• LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite
• LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center
• Enabling members drafting résumés in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn
• Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties
• Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365
• LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem
• Developing a business news desk across our content ecosystem and MSN.com
• Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365

Getting to this point wouldn’t have been possible without the teams who have been working tirelessly on the close since we announced the deal in June. I’d like to thank them for all they’ve done to set us up for success as we begin our next chapter.

In so many ways we’re just getting started, and I couldn’t be more excited about the future.

Next play.

Jeff

Written by

Jeff WeinerCEO at LinkedIn

Robots will enhance - not replace accountants

Photo: Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images
Great article from Business Insider http://www.businessinsider.com.au/robots-will-never-replace-accountants-heres-why-2016-12

It’s an interesting time to be a bookkeeper and an accountant. Australia’s economic reform is focused on being a prominent player in the world of innovation, the working class is changing global politics, and news articles debate whether robots can uproot our jobs. 

In fact, the latest report from CEDA states that, “More than five million jobs, almost 40 per cent of Australian jobs that exist today, have a moderate to high likelihood of disappearing in the next 10 to 15 years, due to technological advancements”. 

It begs many questions for the people on the ground within my industry. I am a proud bookkeeper, and that’s one of the jobs often quoted as being at risk of irrelevance. Certainly, I know that bookkeepers and accountants have access to more than 500 add-ons and integrations using Xero, which means technology can automate the time-consuming tasks we once did. So with all this power at play, what does that mean for our industry? Can robots really take our place? 

Just a robot and a dream 

Let’s think about it in real terms. I read an article recently that spoke about two people who quit their stable jobs and bought a bar, with no previous experience. The beauty of their decision, the article said, was that they could buy one point of sale system to provide all the information they needed: every drink sold, at what time, profitability levels, stock … even the financial information that could help them complete their tax return.

No bookkeeper, no accountant – just two new business owners, a ‘robot’ and a dream.

We all know that a small bar needs to run a tight ship. As a business, it must keep a close eye on staffing, costs and pricing to ensure profitability at all times. Often, there’s simply no space for big bookkeeping or accounting bills – especially from those still charging hours to file paper receipts.

There’s only space for a nimble, streamlined service that delivers data-driven insights in a timely, cost efficient manner. And that’s the key – it’s not just the data that businesses need, it’s the insight that can be invested back into the business. 

For data to be insightful, it must go beyond standard data aggregation services and tailor the numbers against an evolving knowledge of the business. And that’s where humans come in.

Situation, data, insight, action

It doesn’t make business sense to flood a busy small business owner with streams of ever-flowing data – especially if those business owners are learning the ropes as they go. No one has time to make sense of all the data available. There’s just too much of it. And at the same time, it won’t help to keep your clients in the dark to their data either. 

It’s far better for a small business to receive figures tailored to their evolving needs, delivered at precisely the right time to make a difference, from someone who can help turn those insights into actions.

And for that, you need an advisor who stands hand in hand with the robots, so to speak. You need someone who has taken the time to learn the best apps available for your small business – and who uses those same skills to streamline their own service. 

Statistics show that while only 51 percent of small businesses survive more than five years, 88 percent of those on Xero will still be around to celebrate their fifth birthday. And crucially, 92 percent of small businesses on Xero have an advisor. 

The formula for success

The fact of the matter is that turning data into insights and insights into action will always lie at the heart of innovative business. Once, such advisory services were only possible to monolithic organisations with large analytics and finance teams. 

Now, it’s at the fingertips of every bookkeeper and small business owner willing to work with technology – not against it. And that’s the real beauty of business.

Melanie Power is the Head of Bookkeeping at Xero.

How Coca-Cola Is Harvesting Innovation Energy

 

From Startups in Forbes https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2016/12/06/how-coca-cola-is-harvesting-innovation-energy-from-startups/amp/

Dan Woods , CONTRIBUTOR

In 2013, after senior leadership at The Coca-Cola Company challenged its IT staff to find ways to accelerate innovation, Alan Boehme realized that rounding up the usual suspects would not get the job done. Instead, Boehme, an enterprise IT veteran with deep connections in Silicon Valley, realized that he had to find a way to bring the vibrant energy of startups to the problems his company was facing.

The result is a program Boehme, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Innovation Officer & Chief Architect at the Coca-Cola Company, and his team created called The Bridge, which held its third showcase event in Atlanta on September 27, 2016. In short, The Bridge is a systematic way that a large organization can engage with startups to move the needle with respect to urgent problems. See this video for a summary of the 2015 Bridge Showcase event.

Here's how it works in a nutshell:-

• Internal sponsors are found who have problems and some budget to help fund The Bridge program. In later iterations external partners such as Turner have joined the program.
• The internal sponsors help define a set of relevant themes, like customer engagement, marketing innovation, health and wellness.
• Startups are found that have technology relevant to those themes.
• The startups are offered marketing and other training to participate in the program.
• Startups connect with internal sponsors over the course of the program, with a view to doing a proof of concept with their technology at Coca-Cola.
• At a public showcase event, all the progress made during the Bridge program is celebrated and the startups are introduced to customers and partners.

So far Boehme and his team have run three cycles of the bridge, resulting in a variety of projects that have applied the technology to both marketing and operations functions.

Here are some of the startups that Coca-Cola has engaged with through The Bridge:

• Cimagine allows a tablet to become an augmented reality system for projecting what a cooler, vending machine, signages, or other point of sale material would look like in an retail environment. Store owners can take a photo and virtually set up equipment. Using this technique reduces delays and return rates.
• Bringg is creating an “Uber” for the enterprise provides a platform to support delivery of products/services on demand.
• Fusic offers an innovative music and film creation , sharing and social platform allowing the user to be part of the theatrical video clip or music video and share with their friends
• Weisbeerger is a big data analytics platform that provides in-depth insights to beverage use-age and facilitates  on data driven  sight marketing and promotional campaigns.
• Endor out of MIT implements the concept of “Social Physics” to gain behavioral insights into consumers with minimal effort.
• Dov-e creates a way to use inaudible sound waves to trigger actions on mobile devices (promotions, coupons , experiences  ) delivered through TV, Radio, movie screens speakers etc.

The result of The Bridge is that Coca Cola has been able to quickly adopt new technology in ways that would have never been possible using traditional processes.

“Innovation is an engine, a journey toward something new that can be frightening. It must be pursued and fought for,” said Boehme. “The things you achieve through perseverance and by taking risks are worth all of the obstacles that you are facing.”

It is important to point out that Boehme and his team are not proposing that the current way that enterprise IT works should be tossed out. Traditional IT at a healthy and well-run company helps a business operate in a stable manner, reduce costs, adopt new technology in a way that minimizes risks and solve new problems with a certain type of innovation.

“IT departments constantly innovate with the help of consultants and vendors to solve the unique problems facing their businesses and also to adopt proven technology in a methodical manner,” said Anthony Newstead, Global Group Director Emerging Technologies & Strategic Innovation, who works on Boehme’s team. “But the processes in place to govern traditional IT act as an immune system against the type of innovation that comes from startups.”

Startups are not about proven technology, but about new technology and new ways of working that are just emerging. To succeed, startups must be targeting important problems that are present in many companies. The question The Bridge seeks to answer is: How can a large organization jumpstart its journey to new ways of working by engaging with startups?

“The Bridge is about balancing efforts at innovation in IT,” said Newstead. “We want to find the parts of Coca-Cola where a startup’s ideas and technology can move the needle, and try that approach out and see if it works.”

The Bridge overcomes the IT immune system by taking barriers away and getting to the proof of concept as fast as possible. If a project is successful, enterprise wide deployment may indeed be achieved through traditional IT processes. But The Bridge accelerates discovery of ways to make new technology work.

The Bridge also works because it creates good will. Boehme says that seeking sincerely to help the startups participating in The Bridge, rather than trying to negotiate purchase of equity or other models for engaging with startups, really creates a positive environment for exploring new ideas.

There are mechanisms for Coca-Cola to protect competitive advantages it may gain from new technologies. Limited non-compete agreements are signed so that the new technology cannot be used by specified competitors of Coke for the 7-month duration of the Bridge program.

The Bridge also nicely supplements the traditional form of IT innovation where consultants are brought in to create a company specific solution. In the Bridge, startups are creating general solutions with a broad appeal. This focus on using generally applicable technology for innovation also fills innovation white space in a new way.

Expanding the Bridge

At the event in Atlanta, Coca Cola was joined by Turner who signed up for The Bridge program for the most recent cycle. Boehme realized that by adding other companies to The Bridge it would be possible to engage with more start ups and to offer different types of training.

“We’re a company that has always strived to be ahead of where the media consumption patterns are going,” said Peter Scott, Vice President of Emerging Media and Innovation for Turner Studios and Turner Sports. “When Coke asked us to join, it was clear that The Bridge would allow us to explore and find new companies that have synergies with our mission, whether it’s blockchain, ad blocking, video highlights, or whatever the topic is.”

Mercedes-Benz is also planning to join the next cycle of the The Bridge. An IT innovation strategist at Daimler said Mercedes-Benz is in discussions for a strategic cooperation with Coca-Cola and Turner Broadcasting in order to enhance the status of the development and sales of digital services to customers, to introduce new working methods for their employees, as well as new organizational structures, and to better anticipate the needs of their customers and offer them more personalized products and services. The IT strategist said the Bridge will help Mercedes-Benz share best practices with other giants, like Coca-Cola and Turner, as well as the most promising startups. New concepts can be quickly tested and help foster an entrepreneurial spirit, and promote radical innovation and outside-the-box-thinking.

Startups find that The Bridge is an opportunity to learn about how their tech works in the real world, to learn key skills, and to build confidence.

“The Bridge provided a huge opportunity to work with a company like Coke,” said Noa Levy, COO and co-founder of Platica, which offers a vertical AI engine for automatic customer support over any chat platform. “As a small startup, getting to work with this kind of client would be near to impossible. Learning how to market and sell and also being treated as a peer by team members at Coke was amazing.”

Doron Alter, co-founder and CEO of Endor, a startup that offers analytics to help understand, predict, and influence the dynamics of human behavior, said that bringing the “fail fast” mentality of startups to Coke had a mutually beneficial effect. “Within a matter of two months of joining The Bridge, we actually started to pilot our technology within the Coca-Cola ecosystem and after only two more months the results were very clear,” said Alter. “Without The Bridge, we would have never been able to work with such a big company and in such a short time.”

The first round of The Bridge was run in Tel Aviv in 2014. It focused on bringing startups from Israel to the attention of Coca-Cola. The Tel Aviv program continues and is currently in its third cycle. Boehme’s vision is to carry The Bridge forward by including more sponsoring partners to startups in other geographies so that the local communities there can offer their technology to Coca-Cola and others. To find out more about The Bridge see http://thebridgebycocacola.com/.

Follow Dan Woods on Twitter:

Follow @danwoodsearly

Dan Woodshelps users (CITO Research) find the right technology and vendors(Evolved Media)explain their wares. Dan's Client List.

The future is coming - Self Driving Cars

Apple Drops Hints About Working on Self-Driving Cars 

In letter to U.S. transportation regulators, Apple said it is investing heavily in machine learning and automation 

Apple has written to U.S. regulators to offer the company’s thoughts on proposed rules regarding autonomous vehicles. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

By 

Tim Higgins and 

Tripp Mickle

Apple Inc. took its biggest step toward acknowledging it is working on autonomous vehicles, writing a letter to U.S. regulators offering feedback on proposed guidelines for the emerging technology.

The letter from Steve Kenner, Apple’s director of product integrity, to the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration offered no details on the project, but said Apple “is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation.”

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has been working on its car effort, code-named Project Titan, for several years, but has never publicly acknowledged it. The secrecy has made the exact status of Project Titan hard to pinpoint. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Apple had restructured some elements of the project, which has had several hundred employees working on it, after placing it under veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield in July.

Apple has looked at doing an entire car, but more recently its focus has narrowed to developing an autonomous-driving system and software. Focusing on software is more in line with the company’s historic expertise and fits its efforts to improve machine-learning capabilities that allow computers to adjust their behavior without being explicitly programmed. 

Apple’s five-page letter, dated Nov. 22, appears on the NHTSA website. It isn’t clear when it was posted.

“We’ve provided comments to NHTSA because Apple is investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Friday. “There are many potential applications for these technologies, including the future of transportation, so we want to work with NHTSA to help define the best practices for the industry.”

The letter comes as the Obama administration rushes to put guidelines in place to help guide self-driving development. Alphabet Inc. ’s self-driving project had already collected more than 2 million miles of public-roadway testing and General Motors Co. this year competed a $1 billion deal to acquire Cruise Automation to jump start its autonomous vehicle program.

In the letter to NHTSA, Apple called on the regulator to work quickly to adopt new safety rules and look at ways to be more flexible with regulations. Mr. Kenner said by “improving regulatory flexibility,” the agency would foster more innovation and encourage “the development of life-saving technology.” 

Not surprisingly, the letter showed Apple’s autonomous-vehicle ambitions go beyond the U.S. Mr. Kenner encouraged the agency to work with international groups such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and others to develop a “harmonized approach to automated vehicles.”

Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com and Tripp Mickle at Tripp.Mickle@wsj.com

What happened to our Economy?

Here’s one way of thinking about Bill Davidow’s seemingly insoluble problem of insufficient jobs.

****

There was once a country with a well-functioning economy. It enjoyed a virtuous circle of increasing prosperity for all. Firms were well managed and drew on the full talents of workers. Workers became steadily more productive. Innovation flourished. Customers were thrilled. Firms made more money. The gains in productivity were shared fairly with the managers and the workers who created them. 

The increased pay for citizens enabled them to spend more on products and services. As they spent more, firms were inclined to invest more. Some workers used the money to launch new businesses, some of which grew into big businesses.

As banks made money by financing investments, they were highly respected members of the community. Investments in turn generated more jobs for workers. Workers became more productive and had even more resources to spend. Many more new businesses were created. As the economy grew, everyone was better off. The future looked bright.

Then something went wrong. It was as if a strange new set of economic diseases began to infect everything. As globalization, deregulation and new technology empowered customers, firms found it more and more difficult to monetize gains in productivity. Customers increasingly demanded and extracted improvements for free.

Firms focused more closely on their own gain. Gains in productivity were not shared with workers. As salaries of workers stagnated, they became dispirited. Citizens had less money to spend. As firms perceived a lack of demand, they invested less in new products and services. Real economic growth slowed. 

Because salaries were stagnant, there was no money for workers to start small businesses—formerly the main source of new jobs.

The economy went into a spiral of decline. To make executives more entrepreneurial, firms gave them generous compensation in the form of stock. But instead of becoming more entrepreneurial, executives extracted resources from their firms and handed them back to the owners—the shareholders and themselves. 

As the economy slowed, there was less need for banks to finance investment. So bankers began making money from gambling, rather than investing in the real economy. The financial sector and the stock market grew but because they weren’t grounded in real products and services, real GDP stagnated and there were increasingly severe financial crashes. As bankers profited from the ensuing volatility and slid into rampant illegality, they became disrespected members of society. 

As the economy slowed and firms found it steadily more difficult to make money, they resorted to shipping jobs overseas in a desperate effort to cut costs and silence workers’ unions. In the short term, they were rewarded by the stock market for cutting costs, but the firms soon found that they had undermined their own long-term capacity to evolve and grow their businesses. When many firms did this, whole industries were lost and could not be retrieved. As a result, the sectors where the country could compete steadily narrowed.

As a result, in a further effort to cut costs, firms invested less in shared resourcessuch as pools of skilled labor, supplier networks, an educated populace, and the physical and technical infrastructure on which competitiveness ultimately depends.

These management actions in turn gave rise to serious social problems (loss of jobs, stagnating income, growing inequality) and eventually a decline of the public sector (an inability to fund health and pensions, or investments in the commons such as infrastructure, training, education, and basic research, fields that the private sector had abandoned.)

As new firms used new technology to produce the same output with much fewer workers, and as rate of new business creation declined, the prospect of not creating enough jobs for the entire population became a serious prospect. Most of the new jobs were in low-paying local service jobs not subject to international competition.

Because the education system was focused on producing students who could regurgitate the right answers, rather than ask the right questions, even graduates were not well suited to the emerging entrepreneurial economy.

As the future for average citizens was bleak, and income inequality increased, social unrest spread. In politics, demagogues emerged, proposing desperate remedies like “erecting trade barriers”, “getting rid of immigrants”  “taxing the rich,” or “printing money.” As social cohesion frayed, thoughtful observers wondered whether the country could even survive.

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No economy has ever functioned with the uniform growth and prosperity that I have just described. Nor are the economic diseases of our world today as uniformly grim and dispiriting as the misfortunes I have just recorded. Yet every one of these phenomena has been happening in significant parts of the economy today. An economic horror story has been unfolding almost unnoticed, and this imagined disaster is not far from our reality. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/10/29/the-surprising-truth-about-where-new-jobs-come-from/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/08/17/why-amazon-cant-make-a-kindle-in-the-usa/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/03/10/the-surprising-reasons-why-america-lost-its-ability-to-compete/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2016/11/15/will-trump-discover-why-so-many-americans-were-left-behind/

I believe that Bill’s problem of the shortage of new jobs needs to be seen in this wider context of an unfolding economic disaster that is only partly related to problem cases like the newspaper industry, which inexplicably and nonchalantly failed to take action to deal with the obvious pending problem of technological disruption. 

What we have is a whole series of problems emerging simultaneously causing economic stagnation. In this context, no one single action will solve the problem of jobs, which is part of a bigger set of problems.