Is Amazons automation a good thing?

The Seattle Times reports that Amazon significantly expanded its army of warehouse robots in 2016 to 45,000 robots across its 20 fulfillment centers.  That is a 50% increase from the same time in 2015, when Amazon had 30,000 robots working alongside 230,000 people.

Amazon bought a robotics company called Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million and Kiva's robots automate the picking and packing process at Amazons large warehouses making the company much more efficient their warehouses more productive.  Kiva’s robots can run at 5 mph and haul packages weighing up to 700 pounds.

Amazon also uses other types of robots in its warehouses, including large robotic arms that can move large pallets of Amazon inventory.

The company has been adding about 15,000 robots year-on-year with the number of robots varying from warehouse to warehouse. saying that some are "fully outfitted" in robots, while others don't have "robot volume" for economic reasons.

Beyond the warehouse, Amazon is also looking at automating other aspects of its business. In December, Amazon made its first delivery by an automated drone from its secret Prime Air fulfilment center on a guarded farm just outside Cambridge in the UK.

Moments after receiving an order, an electrically powered Amazon drone makes its way down an automated track and then rises into the sky with the customer's package on board.

Amazon's autonomous drones, which are guided by GPS, can fly at speeds of up to 50mph, heights of up to 400ft and carry packages up to 5lbs.

Amazon has been testing drones in the UK much longer than previously thought and the have been endorsed by the UK government, which has given the company permission to operate drones beyond line of sight.

Sent to me from Bob Pritchard 

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming seems to be gaining traction globally and have major advantages to traditional farming. Los Angeles based Local Roots' three farms demonstrate the extraordinary advantages.  They are no ordinary farms. They're not even outside — but inside three small shipping containers.   The startup uses vertical hydroponic farming, a method where plants grow year-round with LEDs rather than natural sunlight.  Instead of soil, the seeds lie on trays with nutrient-rich water, stacked from the floor to the ceilings inside the shipping containers. The containers live inside Local Roots' warehouse in California. Local Roots' farms save both land and water.  Each 320-square-foot shipping container produces the same amount of plants as four acres of traditional farmland, this is the same  amount of produce in 1/400th of the space. It also uses 97% less water on average and no pesticides.   The farms' trays also constantly track the vegetables growing parameters in real-time, like temperature and levels of oxygen and CO2. The startup then uses machine learning to analyze that data and improve the growing process.  For example, compared to the average growth cycle of lettuce that requires harvesting, storing, and transportation, Local Roots' process use about 45% less energy than traditional farming. The downside is that like most vertical farms, it uses a significant amount of electricity to power its LEDs. Local Roots' farms consume 205 kWh of power per day, which is nearly seven times the daily energy consumption of the average American household. It is currently exploring options like solar power that are more carbon-neutral than the traditional power grid.  Local Roots grows 50,000 pounds of butterhead lettuce and 15,000 pounds of baby kale and spring mix per year. For now, the greens are only available at select fast-casual restaurants and markets in LA.

Welcome to 2030 - I own nothing, have no privacy and nothing could be better!

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

Image: REUTERS/Nicky Loh

Written by

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.

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.

Author's note: Some people have read this blog as my utopia or dream of the future. It is not. It is a scenario showing where we could be heading - for better and for worse. I wrote this piece to start a discussion about some of the pros and cons of the current technological development. When we are dealing with the future, it is not enough to work with reports. We should start discussions in many new ways. This is the intention with this piece.

15 predictions that were a tad off the mark

Predictions are very difficult ..... especially if it's about the future!

1876: "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — William Orton, President of Western Union.

1889: “Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time.  Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison

1903: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank

1921: “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.  Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?” Associates of David Sarnoff

1946: "Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.  People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." — Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox.

1959: "Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles.  We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." — Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General.

1961: "There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States." — T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner.

1966: "Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.”— Time Magazine.

1981: “Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.

1995: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.

2005: "There's just not that many videos I want to watch." — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.

2006: "Everyone's always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone.  My answer is, 'Probably never.'" — David Pogue, The New York Times.

2007: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

5 Recommendations Australian Government suggested to boost Innovation

An innovation report was published by the Australian Government, Senate Economic References Committee, in December 2015. It would be cool to measure activities against policy recommendations 

In the report innovation is described as “ideas applied successfully”.

Recommendation 1 paragraph 2.32

The Government target and build policies  to lift investment in research and development to three per cent of GDP.

Recommendation 2 paragraph 2.32

The establishment of an independent government agency responsible for maintaining a continuous and consistent approach to innovation policy across the whole of government.

Recommendation 3 paragraph 2.4

Develop policy to enhance collaboration and the free flow of knowledge between the university system and the private sector; increasing the size of the research and development workforce employed in industry; and ensuring that public funding to support science, research and innovation is long- term, predictable and secure.

Recommendation 4 paragraph 2.57

Develop  a range of measures to support the role of local and regional innovation ecosystems.

Recommendation 5 paragraph 2.66

Focus on  the education system acknowledging the central importance of the interplay between innovation, the STEM subjects and the humanities, social sciences and creative industries.

Full report and response to recommendations:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Economics/Innovation_System/~/media/Committees/economics_ctte/Innovation_System/Final_Report/report.pdf

Inspired by Lynn Wood

www.IdeaSpies.com

5 Tech Predictions for 2017 - from TIME

 

From time magazine https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/amp.timeinc.net/time/4609004/tech-predictions-2017/?source=dam

Tim Bajarin had been writing a tech predictions column for time magazine for nearly 30 years now. Below are 5 trends of what he believes might be the hot topics and issues that will impact the tech industry in the coming year

1.Trumps relationship with Tech and Silicon Valley 

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and meet with Trump to see how tech company's can work together with the President .

2. Augmented/Mixed Reality Will Be More Important Than Virtual Reality

Although VR is the hot tech product at the moment, with the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony’s PlayStation VR garnering much of the consumer attention, VR will mostly be used in gaming over the near future.

On the other hand, Niantic’s Pokémon Go game introduced AR to a broad worldwide audience, giving players a taste of how information and images can be superimposed on any kind of image or setting to add content and even video to the real world.

Apple CEO Cook said he believes AR is much more interesting to his company than VR. I would not be surprised if AR will be a big focus when Apple introduces its next iPhone, likely in the fall of 2017. Expect more non-Apple phones to pack AR as well, likely via Google’s Tango tech. I also believe we will see the first generation of mixed reality consumer glasses that have both AR and VR apps, although AR will be the predominant solution in this generation of consumer devices.

3. 2-in-1 Computers Take Off

Talking with most PC vendors, especially those making Windows portable PCs, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to innovate on a traditional clamshell laptop design. Consequently, PC makers are putting most of their attention on innovating around what the industry calls 2-in-1s, which feature a tablet-style design with an attachable keyboard. (Think Microsoft’s Surface Pro lineup.)

PC vendors will also work on “convertibles,” which look more like traditional laptops but also have a touchscreen and removable keyboard. (Think Lenovo’s Yoga machines.)

The PC industry’s goal now is to move everyone over to 2-in-1 and convertible designs, as they are a more versatile computing platform. (And convincing users they need to upgrade could help juice flagging sales.)

4. Car buyers will increasingly demand smart automobiles

Although we’ll see plenty of news and activity around the development of self-driving vehicles, these types of cars won’t be on the market for mainstream use until at least 2022. In the meantime, consumers will be interested in finding ways to make their existing cars smarter using software like Apple’s CarPlay or Google’s Android Auto and other data-connected systems to add intelligence to any car.

Additionally, there are some interesting new smart automotive systems like one from Navdy, which adds a heads-up display (HUD) to nearly any vehicle, displaying navigation information, notifications and more. In 2017 we’ll see more car owners opt to smarten up their existing vehicles using tech like this.

Look out for the name Graham Gordon (or GG) and the Consol Group  

5. Hackers and criminals will get smarter

There were around 707 million cybersecurity breaches in 2015, with 554 million in just the first half of 2016, according to Intel Security, formerly McAfee. This year, hackers are learning to use artificial intelligence to automate their attacks, making it even faster for them to break into targets’ accounts. The New York Times‘ John Markoff has more:

The alarm about malevolent use of advanced artificial intelligence technologies was sounded earlier this year by James R. Clapper, the director of National Intelligence. In his annual review of security, Mr. Clapper underscored the point that while A.I. systems would make some things easier, they would also expand the vulnerabilities of the online world.

The next generation of these tools will add machine learning capabilities that have been pioneered by artificial intelligence researchers to improve the quality of machine vision, speech understanding, speech synthesis and natural language understanding. Some computer security researchers believe that digital criminals have been experimenting with the use of A.I. technologies for more than half a decade.

Tim Bajarin is recognized as one of the leading industry consultants, analysts and futurists, covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin is the President of Creative Strategies, Inc and has been with the company since 1981 where he has served as a consultant providing analysis to most of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry.

Who is the 27 year old Mathemetician building a Bitcoin Empire?

 Since being introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, Bitcoin has swiftly evolved to transform the way we imagine global currency in a digital world. Developed by programmers and released as open-source software in 2009, Bitcoin is credited as the first decentralized digital currency, commonly referred to as cryptocurrency, serving as an alternative peer-to-peer payment system.

Deviating from traditional payment methods, transactions are direct between users, without the need for third-party systems, such as physical dollars, coins or credit cards. Additionally, bitcoins can be exchanged for other forms of currency, products or services.

Bitcoin transactions are verified by a network of nodes, then recorded in a publicly distributed ledger known as a “blockchain”, which authenticates bitcoins as monetary units of measurement – or money. Bitcoin mining refers to bitcoins created as a reward in which users verify and record transactions in the blockchain. Users who mine successfully receive fees per transaction in the form of new bitcoins.

In 2015, the total number of merchants accepting bitcoins as currency surpassed 100,000 -- with users being charged less than 2% per transaction, as opposed to the 2-3% processing fee assessed by credit card companies. Even with the impressive strides made, the Bitcoin space has a lot of room to grow.

Much like Gold, bitcoins can be used to store value, minus being a tangible form of currency. Yet, Bitcoin currently has a market cap of around $12.5 billion, while the market cap of gold is $7 trillion. Noticing the potential of the emerging marketplace, one young entrepreneur stepped away from a promising career path to focus on building a bitcoin empire.

Founded in 2013 by 27-year-old Marco Streng, Genesis Mining stands as the largest bitcoin cloud mining company in the world. Boasting more than 300,000 daily customers, the startup has grown to become a global power that employs over 100 full-time staffers from all parts of the world.

Prior to developing the idea for Genesis Mining, Streng was on pace to become a mathematician, dropping out of college amidst his training to pursue his business idea full-time. Strong would eventually team up with two unlikely entrepreneurs and began incubating a concept that would eventually reshape how today’s digital generation makes purchases and accumulates wealth.

"In 5-10 years, Bitcoin, or one of the other cryptocurrencies, will be well established and accepted as a currency." - Marco Streng 

Boot-strapping from the start, as the growth of the company began to accelerate, venture capitalists began expressing interest in funding the startup, but the founding team decided against taking outside investment. Instead, the team turned to using profits to fuel growth, which is a very uncommon tactic for hyper-growth startups.

In March, the Genesis team adjusted their strategy by launching Logos Fund, an investment fund catering to top-tier venture capitalists. To date, the fund has raised a reported $100 million in assets. which went on to raise a reported $100 million in assets under management.  Now, Genesis Mining is respected as one of the few companies within the Bitcoin industry that has created a highly profitable and sustainable business model.

I spoke with Marco Streng about the vision behind his company, battling the skepticisms surrounding the changing industry, and his ambitious plan for reshaping global currency.

What specific void or opportunity did you discover that inspired the idea to launch Genesis Mining?

Marco Streng: We found that there was a lack of trustworthy mining companies in the altcoin market. Not enough providers were enabling users to mine the coins they were most interested in. After establishing our brand and a reputation as a reliable and trustworthy mining company, we also entered into the Bitcoin mining space.

With the space developing so rapidly -- What have been the biggest challenges or surprises you’ve experience while building your business? 

Marco Streng: The cryptocurrency world as a whole moves at an incredible speed. Almost on a daily basis, something in the market changes, and we have to adapt our strategy and business accordingly. If you are not smart and fast in the cryptocurrency world -- you are out.

Each co-founder comes from a very interesting background — How did the three of you come together and what does each member bring to the table the gives the company an edge in the space?

Marco Streng: Two of us have a background in mathematics and physics; one already had experience in running a company. Also, everyone brought in good and valuable contacts, such as our entire legal team. The vibe between us is very good, and 99% of the time we quickly reach consensus about how to go forward. We all also share the same goal: making this world a better place by spreading the idea of cryptocurrencies.

How do you see the Bitcoin industry evolving in the next 5-10 years and where does General Mining fit into your vision of the future? 

Marco Streng: It is hard to forecast what is going to happen in the next five days in crypto-land. In 5-10 years, Bitcoin, or one of the other cryptocurrencies, will be well established and accepted as a currency. Smart contracts and second layer technologies like lightning will play an important role in some parts of the financial industry. Mining and proof-of-work will probably still be used for some major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but the industry will be more settled and the product cycles will be much longer. Cloud computing is still in the the early stages of its development, and due to its enormous computational power, we will probably be able provide services beyond mining.

Describe the potential in the Bitcoin space and how you believe people should be looking at the industry?

Marco Streng: Bitcoin has the potential to become the most important non-government form of money, or even the one and only form of money.  In other words: if Bitcoin succeeds in becoming a good store of value the Bitcoin price can easily go up by a factor of 500. This would just take into account being used only as store-of-value. However, Bitcoin is so much more: with second layer technologies it could facilitate very fast and cheap payments all over the world. Projects like Rootstock would allow Bitcoins to be used in smart contracts and so on. So the potential is enormous, which is why Bitcoiners often encourageone another with the phrase "to-the-moon!”

Bitcoin is understood as a form of currency for the future — But what other functions does Bitcoin serve and what added value does the industry add to the new economy?

Marco Streng: Bitcoins are durable, divisible, easy to transfer and Bitcoin is a scarce commodity. Because it is easy to divide, simple and cheap to transfer and almost impossible to counterfeit one could argue that Bitcoin are a better store of value than gold. Global micropayments - with 2nd layer technologies like Lightning, it would be possible to transfer even the smallest amounts from one person to the other in almost no time and at almost no cost. Bitcoin could then be used for micropayments of any sort around the world. Complex contracts can be written and their execution can be guaranteed on a blockchain (called rootstock); Bitcoin would be the currency used for such smartcontracts.

How do you see the growth of the Bitcoin industry shaping the global economy and impacting politics, social enterprising, e-commerce, etc. ? 

Marco Streng: The world is getting smaller every day. Traveling by airplane became relatively cheap, and technologies like the internet, email and skype allow people from distant places to work together. For example, programmers in San Francisco and Armenia can work together without ever meeting. But, how do they get paid? With the legacy of the financial system, it takes a long time to make wires, and they are expensive too. How is it possible to tip someone who created great content? Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will allow all of that. Not only will we be able to easily move around the world and share information, but we will also be able to transfer value between each other quickly and almost no cost. This will allow us to create many new solutions for consumers. Crowdfunding of projects becomes a lot easier, workers that work abroad to earn money for their families can be paid without delay. Smartcontracts will replace expensive third parties and will make businesses between entities easier and safer. But these are just the simple obvious low-hanging fruits. The interesting question is what people will come up with going forward. The technology is young. It's reminiscent of the early days of the internet where no one had youtube, wikipedia and online universities in mind. You could speculate about the future but no one new exactly what shape the tech would take.

You travel at least 30 weeks per year all around the world to expand the business — Describe what your hustle is like and how you balance the different demands of the job? 

Marco Streng: We have teams all around the world working to innovate and improve our services, so one of my chief goals as we travel is to make sure those teams are empowered to stay innovative and delivering top of industry services for our customers. I also believe strongly in the fact that the success of Cryptocurrency and fintech rely on community support and innovation. That's why all of our leadership regularly attends and speaks at industry conferences to help imagine the future with other leaders in these efforts.

Follow me on Twitter to share your comments and continue the conversation @Allthingsmitch 

This story was originally published onForbes.com

Written by

Julian MitchellEntrepreneur + Multimedia Producer