Impact Lab – Page 648 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Analysis, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior

The history of a city, as told through its trash

July 14, 2018

Today’s garbage is tomorrow’s archaeology.

Humans have been tossing stuff into rivers for thousands of years, whether it’s trash, wished-upon coins, lost items, or dramatically dumped, once-significant objects. That makes the river bed into a microcosm of human history and the development of cities–and a rich source for archaeologists.

A 15-year project to excavate two locations in Amsterdam’s river Amstel, one in the city center and one at the river’s mouth, is currently reaching its conclusion. Prompted by a complex civil engineering project–a north-south metro line that goes underneath the river–archaeologists got the go-ahead to dig two immense holes, each about 100 feet deep, and excavate whatever they could. The fruits of the project, called Below the Surface, are now online, with an interactive photo catalog designed by Netherlands-based firm Fabrique showcasing 20,000 objects uncovered beneath the project. The items range from 1980s cell phones, contemporary ID cards, and a plastic camera film case, to centuries-old coins, pottery, and fishhooks. And that’s just a small fraction of the 700,000 items they found in these two small cross-sections of the riverbed.

Continue reading… “The history of a city, as told through its trash”

Analysis, Big Problems, Human Behavior

Which 7 countries hold half the world’s population?

July 14, 2018

People at a water park in China, which is home to the world’s largest population. Half of the world’s population lives in just seven countries. (VCG via Getty Images)

As of this month, the world’s population is 7.63 billion, according to the United Nations, which celebrates World Population Day today. More than half of all people around the globe (3.97 billion) live in just seven countries, according to the UN’s estimates. China has the world’s largest population (1.42 billion), followed by India (1.35 billion). The next five most populous nations – the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria – together have fewer people than India.

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Driverless vehicles, Food, Shopping

Kroger to bring driverless cars to grocery delivery

July 14, 2018

Kroger is partnering with autonomous car company Nuro to introduce driverless cars to its grocery delivery.

Kroger has made a number of investments toward expanding its digital and online delivery business.

“Last mile delivery” is one of the hardest feats in the delivery of fresh food.

Kroger announced plans Thursday to partner with driverless car company Nuro to deliver groceries using its autonomous vehicles.

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Amazon.com, Space, Space Flight, Tourism

The race to get tourists to suborbital space is heating up

July 14, 2018

SPACE: FINAL FRONTIER or ultimate tourist destination? Possibly both—provided you have the cash.

Already, you can buy tickets for (as-yet-unscheduled) flights aboard SpaceShipTwo, the crew vehicle developed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. And at a NewSpace conference in Seattle last month, Blue Origin—helmed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—announced that it has plans to sell tickets to wannabe space tourists as early as next year.

Both companies have solid plans to cash in on human space travel (and then, of course, there’s SpaceX, which will focus first on shuttling astronauts to and from the space station). Branson has said that Virgin Galactic is in a race with itself, not other companies, to achieve safe human space flight. But with Blue Origin aiming to start selling tickets next year, both companies could be competing for business sooner rather than later.

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Artificial Intelligence, cutting edge, Engineering, IBM, new technology

The AI revolution has spawned a new chips arms race

July 13, 2018

There’s no x86 in the AI chip market yet—”People see a gold rush; there’s no doubt.”

A lot has changed since 1918. But whether it’s a literal (like the City of London School athletics’ U12 event) or figurative (AI chip development) race, participants still very much want to win.

For years, the semiconductor world seemed to have settled into a quiet balance: Intel vanquished virtually all of the RISC processors in the server world, save IBM’s POWER line. Elsewhere AMD had self-destructed, making it pretty much an x86 world. And Nvidia, a late starter in the GPU space, previously mowed down all of it many competitors in the 1990s. Suddenly only ATI, now a part of AMD, remained. It boasted just half of Nvidia’s prior market share.

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Automation, Automobiles, China, Electric Automobile

A Chinese electric car startup is trying to take on Tesla by making its cars more like an iPhone

July 13, 2018

The Chinese electric vehicle startup Byton is developing three vehicles, the first of which will hit the market in 2019.

The company has prioritized interior features, like touchscreens and adjustable seats, over traditional performance metrics, like range and acceleration, in part because it assumes autonomous driving technology will become available to consumers in the next few years.

Byton president and co-founder Daniel Kirchert told Business Insider that Byton will sell a car with Level 4 autonomy — which means the car can handle all driving functions in certain scenarios — by the end of 2020.

Continue reading… “A Chinese electric car startup is trying to take on Tesla by making its cars more like an iPhone”

Electric Vehicles, Entertainment, Great New Product

You don’t even need waves to ride this electric hydrofoil surfboard

July 13, 2018

One of the biggest trends in surfing over the past few years has been the adoption of hydrofoil surfboards by some of the sports biggest names. Adding a hydrofoil to the bottom of the board creates lift and more speed, turning even ordinary waves into something that is a lot more fun and interesting to ride. But a new surfboard could eliminate the need for waves altogether, thanks to an onboard electric motor that generates all the thrust riders need.

The Fliteboard looks a lot like other hydrofoil surfboards already on the market, with one important distinction. Attached to the bottom of the foil is a small propeller that is engaged when riders fire up the built-in electric motor. When turned on, the Fliteboard is capable of reaching speeds of nearly 25 mph, while the removable battery pack — dubbed the “Flite Cell” — can give the board a range of up to 15.5 miles on a single charge. The engineers who designed the Fliteboard say that the battery is so powerful that it can actually keep the board moving for as much as an hour, depending on water conditions and the weight of the surfer.

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Science & Technology News

Scientists invented AI made from DNA

July 12, 2018

Researchers made a neural network out of DNA that can recognize handwritten numbers.

Last Wednesday, researchers at Caltech announced that they created an artificial neural network from synthetic DNA that is able to recognize numbers coded in molecules. It’s a novel implementation of a classic machine learning test that demonstrates how the very building blocks of life can be harnessed as a computer.

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Big Problems, Business, Economy, People Making a Difference

A new way to think about solving the world’s biggest problems

July 12, 2018

How to build global cooperation. It’s SIMPOL!

A while back I received a book in the mail titled “The SIMPOL Solution: A New Way to Think About Solving the World’s Biggest Problems” by John Bunzl and Nick Duffell, who were unknown to me. I get sent a lot of books with grandiose titles and don’t get around to reading most of them. But something about this one intrigued me, along with an endorsement by Noam Chomsky, who wrote “It’s ambitious and provocative: Can it work? Certainly worth a serious try”.

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Automation, China, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Why China is spending billions to develop an army of robots to turbocharge its economy

July 12, 2018

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a robot revolution in manufacturing to boost productivity.

Wages in China are rising, and it’s becoming harder to compete with cheap labor.

An aging population in China also necessitates automation. The working-age population, people age 15 to 64, could drop to 800 million by 2050 from 998 million today.

Chinese robotic growth is forecast to exceed 20 percent annually through 2020.

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Drone, drones, Engineering, Inventions, Science & Technology News

This flying ‘dragon’ drone can change shape in midair

July 11, 2018

Researchers at the University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab have developed a “dragon drone,” made up of several small drones and capable of transforming on the fly, as reported by IEEE. Not only can the drone change into different shapes, like a square or curved line, it can also autonomously decide what shape it needs to change into depending on the space it’s required to navigate.

The name of the drone is actually an acronym, standing for “Dual-rotor embedded multilink Robot with the Ability of multi-deGree-of-freedom aerial transformatiON,” or DRAGON for short. Its design was modeled off of traditional dragon kites, where the tail is made up of a series of smaller, interlinked kites.

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Ecological Products, Google, Microsoft, New Inventions

Photos show how Microsoft took a big step forward in its crazy plan to power the internet from the sea

July 11, 2018

Microsoft has put a data centre in the sea in an experimental effort to see if it can provide internet services faster to coastal cities using renewable energy.

As part of its bigger Project Natick “moonshot,” Microsoft has put the data centre on the seafloor close to Scotland’s Orkney Islands.

The data centre is submerged 117 feet under the sea and is powered by a submarine cable running from Orkney. Microsoft picked the islands because it wants its data centres to run on renewable power, and Orkney is a major hub for renewable energy.

Continue reading… “Photos show how Microsoft took a big step forward in its crazy plan to power the internet from the sea”