The entire demise of Blu-rays and DVDs are due to one company.
Innovation in the tech industry is moving fast. We can’t know all of the different technologies that will fill our lives in five years. We can however, predict what tech products won’t last. It’s clear the technology landscape will look dramatically different in the near future.
Computer science is a booming industry in the US — and it pays extremely well. There’s always demand for sharp, talented engineers, which is why learning how to code can seem like an attractive option.
But, as is the case with any new skill, it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are a few steps you should take early on and programming languages that are best-suited for beginners.
Venture capitalists invested a record amount in agriculture and food startups in the third quarter this year, totaling $269 million across 41 deals. Conservis, for example, raised $10 million to offer farmers a real-time view of operations. FarmLogs raised $4 million to deliver apps that help farmers increase their productivity and profitability by identifying the crops most likely to sell. In November, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Flextronics Lab IX launched Farm2050, a collective to support “ag-tech” startups whose solutions boost global food production.
Bottle rockets are always fun to shoot off but they are often dangerous. You are going to need more power if you want to make it into a real macho guy thing or make it go into orbit. (Videos)
It’s dismaying how easy it is to screw up college.
I don’t know exactly when, why, or how it happened, but important things are breaking down in the US higher education system. Whether or not this system is in danger of collapsing it feels like it’s losing its way, and failing in its mission of developing the citizens and workers we need in the 21st century.
This mission clearly includes getting students to graduate, yet only a bit more than half of all US students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities complete their degrees within six years, and only 29% who start two year degrees finish them within three years. America is last in graduation rate among 18 countries assessed in 2010 by the OECD. Things used to be better; in the late 1960s, nearly half of all college students got done in four years.
A British company, Choc Edge, claims to be able to create a chocolate sculpture of your face using a 3D printer. The 3D image can be created by building up layers of dark, milk or white chocolate. (Video)
In 2013, the tech world gave us plenty talk about. We can build smarter robots. We can 3D-print pretty much anything. Tablet wars are still going strong, Snapchat is still a thing, and now we can binge-watch our favorite TV shows in more ways than ever before. (Videos)
Austrian Innovative Aeronautical Technology (IAT21), an Austrian engineering firm debuted a new type of hovercraft at the Paris Air Show this week. They claim the hovercraft can take off and land vertically without using any rotor blades or fixed wings.
Advanced robots and automation are taking jobs from humans.
2013 has been a fast moving year. We thought we would revisit some of the year’s most notable stories in exponential technology before we dive headlong into 2014. Just keep in min this list is by no means all-inclusive.
On November 7, 2014, I attended the “Idea Jam – Innovating for the Future” session put on by the Pacific Center for Workforce Innovation in San Diego. The purpose of the session was to identify the major challenges to the San Diego workforce in the coming years and to generate audience participation in visioning exercises to explore new and innovative workforce development ideas. The event was held at Colman University, and major sponsors were SDG&E, Qualcomm, the Eastridge Group, Point Loma Nazarene College, and Cal State University, San Marcos.
To get our creative juices flowing, Master of Ceremonies Susan Taylor, San Diego’s TV news icon, introduced futurist speaker, Thomas Frey, of the DaVinci Institute as the keynote speaker. It is difficult to do justice to his very visual presentation of images of break-through technologies, but his statements alone created much food for thought about the future. He stated, “We are a backward-looking society…the future gets created in the mind. The future creates the present…Visions of the future affect the way people act today.” He rhetorically asked, “What are the big things that need to be accomplished today?
A 3-D printer can already make a prototype or spare part out of metal or polymer. Researchers at Princeton University have now taken an important step toward expanding the technology’s potential by developing a way to print functioning electronic circuitry out of semiconductors and other materials. They are also refining ways to combine electronics with biocompatible materials and even living tissue, which could pave the way for exotic new implants.