Nexttech

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Creating Generational Legacies

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Part-time, projects, portfolio careers: What workers can expect in 2017

Saturday, January 14, 2017

The Tech House of the future - have a look around


 

https://www.theguardian.com/



Grab the keys and get set to unpack your boxes. It’s time to move into the future. But before you cross the threshold and command your robo-butler to get the kettle on, take a moment to stand back and admire this feat of engineering.


First off, traditional clay bricks are out. Future houses are likely to be eco-friendly, eschewing CO²-heavy manufacturing processes. Your home might incorporate building blocks constructed from natural cement churned out by bacteria (1), or be fashioned from fungi – indeed several companies including MycoWorks and EvocativeDesign are exploring the potential of mushroom-based materials. Alternatively, if retro-chic is your thing, super-insulating straw-bale panels appear to be in for a renaissance, while new developments with aerogels also promise a well-insulated abode.


Roofs, too, will be working hard. Among the innovations that could take off are super-reflective tiles for those in scorching climes and, for the rest of us, biosolar roofs that combine habitat for pollinators with energy-generating panels (2). Self-cleaning finishes, already on the market, are in for an upgrade too.


Building on the well-established grime-busting properties of titanium dioxide, researchers are developing paints to keep your exteriors glistening even when scratched, scuffed or grazed (3). That sweeping driveway, by the way, is not going to be made of crunching, scrunching gravel. Oh no. 


Taking inspirations from Dutch plans for highways constructed from plastic waste scooped from the sea (4), your drive could be heated to avoid winter snow-shovelling and have charging stations for your electric self-driving car (5).


The path to your front door, meanwhile, could be embedded with tiles like those by Pavegen (6) that can turn your visitors’ footsteps into electrical power. Although with companies such as Google promising deliveries by drone (7), and Starship wheeling out dumpy-looking free-to-use delivery bots, the postman won’t be beating a path to your front door for much longer.


Your garden is also likely to see a fusion of tradition and technology – devices such as Blossom already monitor weather reports to regulate the watering of your lawn, while robot lawn mowers will keep it neatly trimmed – but the burgeoning field of digital art could finally allow you to jettison the ugly water feature and augment your lawn with beautiful and changeable statues and soundscapes created in virtual spaces (8).


For the flower lovers, multi-sensor gadgets such as the strangely shaped Parrot Flower Power and the Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor will keep tabs on everything from soil acidity to temperature, although, given that plants have coped on this planet for more than 700 million years without them, you might be as well served with a trug and a cup of coffee. And if you are still worried about keeping up with the Joneses, at least you can stop rustling the net curtains: firms like Sonte claim their WiFi-enabled digital shades can be switched from opaque to transparent at the push of a button (9).


The kitchen

 

Technology in your kitchen will help you cook, and clean up after. Illustration: Janne Iivonen


Sometimes it seems our appetite for tech knows no bounds. So perhaps it is small wonder that kitchen innovations are moving swiftly on from a lightbulb in the fridge and softly, softly closing drawers.


Pop in the raw meal and stand well back as its intelligent systems recognise the dish and know exactly how to cook it.


One thing that’s certainly on the menu is a spare pair of hands to wield the pans – be that a fully robotic chef like Moley (1) that can, by motion tracking, replicate your Jamie Oliver impression to a T or the fetching-and-carrying Care-O-Bot4 by Fraunhofer. Not only can the latter turn up with a colander but it can also do the laundry and, apparently, garnish your breakfast tray with a red, red rose. If you are so inclined.

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And it’s cheers all round as be-splattered recipe books and pastry-flecked screens get the boot in favour of hygienic upgrades. Among them is a nifty vertical recipe projector, suggested by Wan-Ru Cin for the James Dyson award and an even smarter system dreamed up by students at Lund and Eindhoven Universities that not only projects recipes onto the work surface but also uses a canny array of cameras to detect ingredients and offer culinary suggestions accordingly.

The kitchen is occasionally the domain of the muppet chef, but there too technology has the answer to lobbed tomatoes, dropped cheese and mishaps involving flour. Enter, on all fours, the Instinct Vacuum cleaner. The as-yet unmarketed brainchild of Australian Berty Bhuruth, and resembling a bull terrier with a vacuum for a head, it’ll 3D-map the room before hoovering up the mess (2).

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Future of food: how we cook


Not every kitchen aid will have limbs. Taking Amazon’s Dash button (3) to its logical conclusion, smart fridges brighter than the recent Budlight offering seem probable, although given the LG ThinkQ is no longer available it seems having your fridge in cahoots with both your phone (for notifications of low supplies) and your favourite supermarket (to reorder) might not be the way to go.


Ovens, however, are in for a renaissance. Electrolux’s upcoming ProCombi Plus Smart oven (4) will offer cooks the chance to cadge a sneaky peak on a rising cake without making the rookie error of opening the door, while smart oven June isn’t leaving anything to chance. Just pop in the raw meal and stand well back as its intelligent systems recognise the dish and know exactly how to turn out a perfect result.

Of course the one appliance we are all hoping to see upgraded is that bastion of the 1960s, the Teasmade. And, behold, it shall be done. Budding technologists have devised a smart coffee machine (5) dubbed the smarter.am (app controlled, of course), while innovation has been brewing on Kickstarter with offerings such as the Qi Theteamaker that adjusts temperature and steeping time to the leaves used. Teforia, meanwhile, has just launched a robot that can adjust antioxidant caffeine levels to taste, although the price tag of $1,300 might be harder to swallow.

With a kitchen bursting with such intelligent devices, there is always the chance your microwave might actually become your best friend. But beware. As Simone Rebaudengo’s cheeky design for Brad – the toaster with self esteem issues – reminds us, you don’t want your appliances getting jealous.


The bathroom

 

In the bathroom, gadgets will help you look your best, while reducing your carbon footprint. Illustration: Janne Iivonen

Morning ablutions might seem a private affair, but that could all change as technology finds its way into the smallest room in the house.


Among those vying to keep an eye on your vital statistics is Withings, whose “Smart Body Analyzer” (1) makes your old nemesis – the bathroom scales – look positively friendly. Claiming to measure your weight, body fat, heart rate and BMI, it will not only terrorise your tiled floor, but take to your phone: an accompanying app tracks your activity and adjusts your calorie budget for the day to meet your health goals. Think that teatime biscuit looks good? Think again.

Even that most benign of bathroom essentials, the humble loo, is in for an upgrade. Smart toilets (2) have already hit the stores, with American firm DXV anticipating what it somewhat alarmingly terms a “contemporary movement” through its heated seats, night lights and remote controls. But alternatives are already in the offing that can monitor your bodily extrusions better than an over-competitive parent. Japanese company Toto has unveiled its Flowsky toilet that keeps tabs on your rate of gush, while MIT SENSEeable City Lab is working on a loo that can not only recognise the be-throned, but analyse their excrement to shed light on the state of their health and microbiome.


The bathroom might well become the domain of Big Mother. Water-wasters will be chivvied by warning lights thanks to devices like Drop from Qonserve Technologies that displays a red light when the taps have been left running, while bathroom hoggers will be ousted by “water pebbles” (3) that can be programmed to flash red when bathtime’s up. Baths and showers too will be cleaning up their act, with Orbital Systems developing filters to recycle water as it is used and Nebia offering a water-saving shower based on an intense mist of water rather than a traditional deluge. And our towels might even be cleaned without H2O: designer Leobardo Armenta envisages a nifty device that eschews the washing machine for a doughnut-like contraption with a fan to dry the towel and UV light to kill bacteria.


Not that every bathroom gadget has the eco-system at heart. Pampering 2.0 will be based on a range of hi-tech devices from OKU (4) – a handheld gadget that scans your face and recommends a personalised skin care regimen to state-of-the-art hair dryers, like the simple and stylish idea “Column” concept that allows you to shout: “Look no hands!” while heating up your barnet (5). IOdigital meanwhile is hoping to corner the market for a home “digital spa” offering an interface through which you can programme your ideal bath or shower – although if you’re after some musical accompaniment to your washroom serenades you might prefer Moxie’s shower head with integrated Bluetooth speakers.

The mirror, mirror on the wall, might finally talk back too if AI holds true to its promises. A suite of tech companies are devising prototype smart mirrors (6) to offer advice on everything from wardrobe choice to makeup, together with news and weather updates. Let’s just hope they’re smart enough to know when to tell a little white lie.

And for those who aren’t content with merely embracing the future, but want to own it as well, Transylvanian designer Kovács Apor has the answer on his drawing board with a wall-mounted contraption that turns plastic bottles into stylish togs.

Indeed in the future it seems your conscience, as well as your body, could be squeaky clean at the push of a button.

The living room

 

Virtual-reality will allow you to enter new worlds from the comfort of your lounge. Illustration: Janne Iivonen

The living room is all about kicking back and enjoying yourself, so why not start your weekend wind-down with a cool glass of something festive, ferried to your side by your very own Robo-Carson?


Android helpmates are already being used in hotels around the world, such as the Cupertino Aloft Hotel in California, where two “ALO Botlrs” deliver items to guest rooms, such as extra towels or room service items. Such robot helpers (1) are likely to become ever more sophisticated, capable not only of fetching the port, but also having a jolly good natter.

But you might still want to run interviews for the job: RobotButler Inc’s creation – described by the company, somewhat bafflingly, as being “beyond intelligent” – looks positively sinister.

Perhaps a more endearing companion is the robo-pet. The ultimate conclusion to a trend kicked off by the Tamagotchi of the 90s, these zippy creatures – such as the long-awaited Miro (2) – will not only zoom around like their flesh-and-blood counterparts, but also incorporate machine learning so that they adapt to understand your commands with nary a doggy treat in sight.

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Virtual reality gym brings all the benefits of a strenuous workout

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Also keen to hang on your every word will be AI systems – building on devices like Amazon Echo (3) – that will not only give you a running commentary on news headlines, answer your questions and carry out a host of admin tasks but also let you know what the weather is up to. Although we’re pretty sure the house of the future will still have windows for that. Not every advance will be artificial, however. Hoping to clear the air, as it were, designer Ankit Kumar puts the aspidistra in its place, envisaging an interior bedecked with grass panels (4) to purify your lungfuls, while innovation company Hyve is planning to get your blood pumping with its interactive virtual-reality gym platform (5). Dubbed Icaros, the contraption “combines your workout with a unique flying experience”. Which makes the humble exercise bike seem remarkably pedestrian.


With VR headsets (6) becoming cheaper all the time, even the most benign night in could be transformed.

Couch potatoes could become globetrotters, as digital devices transport them to a wild expanse of David Attenborough’s latest vista, while immersive sound recordings, ultrasound haptic devices and internet connected scent cartridges (7) turn a visual feast into a multi-sensory smorgasbord.

Not that your telly will bear much resemblance to your current black box in the corner. Ultra-thin OLED displays – like LG’s flexible “wallpaper” (8) – will allow us to attach, or peel off, our screens from mounted magnetic backing while holographics, fuelled perhaps by devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens (9), will bring characters and objects into your living room through augmented reality.

But beware. Much as we would all like to meet Mr Darcy in the flesh, advertisers will no doubt be quick to spot the benefits of letting customers get up close to their wares.


The bedroom

 

Bedroom tech will monitor everything you do between the sheets – and also make the bed. Illustration: Janne Iivonen

Technology and sleep are unlikely bedfellows: for years scientists have been wagging their fingers at those who go to bed in the company of the dazzling blue lights of their connected devices. But when it comes to hitting snooze-mode, technology need not be a nightmare.


White noise generators such as those produced by Ectones are already available, offering the chance to drown out frisky foxes, chirpy birds and bickering kids with the comforting sound of a fan or pattering rain. But that’s a drop in the ocean compared to what the future could hold.

Rather than one speaker tucked in the corner, why not drift off into an immersive, self-sculpted 3D soundscape – waves lapping at your feet, palm trees rustling above your head, your left ear caressed by the caw of a parrot while the beat of a hummingbird’s wing flutters in your right? It might sound heavenly but, as installations by sound artists such as Martyn Ware have shown, it’s also practically possible. Better still, with the advent of directional audio devices, like those by Dakota Audio (1), able to beam sound with laser-like precision, your companion could simultaneously be transported to quite a different setting, be it a blustery Arctic tundra, bucolic pasture or the inside of their dream smart car.


The smart mattress cover will also inform you if you have not had sex for a while…


And if all that makes you want to take a nice deep breath, then you’ll be glad to know that air quality is set for an upgrade too: smart monitors such as the Foobot and Birdi (2) are already for sale, able to track everything from toxic gases to pollen and even volatile organic compounds (although whether they can sniff out musty socks yet isn’t clear). Quite when these will be hooked up to purifying systems is still up in the air but, while you’re waiting, why not ditch those 60-watt bulbs in the bedside lamp? 


Bioadaptive lamps (3) are already planned – one system was recently installed at the Technology & Innovation Centre of the University of Strathclyde. Tuned into your body clock, or “circadian rhythms” as those in the known call them, they could gently lull you to sleep, or wake you without a jolt.



Friday, January 13, 2017

AI replacing jobs - is this good or bad?

A future in which human workers are replaced by a machine is now a reality at Fukoku Mutual Life - an insurance firm in Japan. Employees are being laid off and replaced with  IBMs 'Watson" Explorer" - an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders.

Watson  possesses cognitive technology that can think like a human, enabling it to analyze and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video.

The technology will be able to read tens of thousands of medical certificates and factor in the length of hospital stays, medical histories and any surgical procedures before calculating payouts.

Fukoku believes it will increase productivity by 30% and see a return on its investment in less than two years. The firm said it would save about $1.25 million a year after the $1.6 million AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about 15m yen $125,000 a year.

Automation and AI is replacing process and analytical  jobs in recruitment, the legal profession, restaurants, airports, supermarkets, transport (self driving cars and  drones), the 45,000 robots installed by Amazon, motor manufacturing becoming almost totally automated and the list goes on. In the USA trade and industry ministry will introduce Watson  to help civil servants draft answers for ministers during cabinet meetings and parliamentary sessions. 

At the BBG Conference in Sydney, futurist,  Craig Rispin shared how Watson is helping legal firms create and analyse contracts - replacing the need for paralegals. 

At the I4J conference in Washington in November, Bill Foster, the Rocket Scientist Physicist Congressman shared USA Congress concern  that by 2030 it is forecasted that with the help of AI, 15% of the current workforce will be able to provide all needs of the current workforce, and applauded I4J with grappling the problem.

What will the other 85% of the humans do to pass the time and earn a living? Do they need to? Is the old economy changing to a gig economy? Will it be necessary for them to " earn a living" - Will  there be another way to survive? Maybe a better way? Where people will go to work because they want to - where they can find a way to add value to their fellow humans.

A new social and economic structure for society will be needed and soon! This is an exciting time to be in planet earth!! 

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

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 

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

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.
 

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

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.