AmazonFresh
Webvan, the online grocery start-up, may have been the single most expensive flame-out of the dot-com era, blowing through more than $800 million in venture capital and IPO proceeds in just over three years before shutting its doors in 2001.
Continue reading… “Webvan rising from the dead, Amazon builds a grocery business”
Vision of Transformation
Francis Fukuyama published his book, The End of History in 1992. He argued that, with the cold war over and liberal democracy triumphant, the major historical narrative dialectic of history was over.
Continue reading… “Top 4 ways technology is changing business strategy”
Machines for High Frequency Trading (HFT)
On April 23 at 1:07 pm, a hijacked AP Twitter account falsely reported an attack on the White House. Just seconds later, major US stock indexes started to fall. They were down 1 percent by the time the tweet was publicly identified as bogus three minutes later. And in another three minutes, the markets had recovered to pre-tweet levels.
Continue reading… “High-frequency trading faster than the speed of reality”
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg aren’t so keen on the future of the film industry. Lucas and Spielberg agreed at a talk at USC that it’s on track to have a “massive implosion”. At the core of their argument: there just isn’t enough time in the day for consumers to support all the films released in theaters. Films are competing with all the content and options that the Internet provides.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_rVJ4pHcKY[/youtube]
Wearing a cloud computer like Google Glass on your face can be important for capturing moments in life from a first-person perspective. Now the WNBA, the female division of the National Basketball Association (NBA), has decided to deploy its own version first-person camera to referees for live games.
Continue reading… “WNBA referees debut live high-definition ‘Ref Cam’”
Raffaello D’Andrea, in a robot lab at TEDGlobal, demos his flying quadcopters: robots that think like athletes, solving physical problems with algorithms that help them learn. In a series of nifty demos, D’Andrea show drones that play catch, balance and make decisions together — and watch out for an I-want-this-now demo of Kinect-controlled quads.
Continue reading… “The astounding athletic power of quadcopters: Raffaello D’Andrea”
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/67177328[/vimeo]
We think of 3-D printers as desktop machines. But Silk Pavillion, a new, stunning piece of architecture by the Mediated Matter Group at MIT Media Lab brings all of those assumptions into question.
Continue reading… “Silk Pavillion: ‘3D printed’ structures created from silkworms”
RoboRoach
The minds behind Backyard Brains, a neurological education and outreach company, are bringing the first commercially available cyborgs to the general public. They landed on Kickstarter Monday, and they’re wooing support from Internet backers worldwide. (Videos)
Continue reading… “The RoboRoach: Control a living cockroach with your smartphone”
Baxter is a robot meant to work with people in small manufacturing facilities.
Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.
Continue reading… “How new technology is destroying jobs”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9RKXO1rr7g[/youtube]
We have seen food delivery drones, and drones that even deliver wedding proposals, but there is one restaurant in the U.K. that aims to inject a bit of this robo-fueled futurism into your dining experience.
Continue reading… “Drone waiter serves diners at U.K. restaurant”
Steve Mann, “the father of wearable computing.”
“People always ask me if this is the dawn of the augmented reality industry,”says Bruce Sterling, celebrated sci-fi author. “No, this is not the dawn,” he says with relish, “this is 10:45AM on what’s turning out to be a hot and turbulent summer day.” Augmented reality is here to stay.
Continue reading… “Augmented reality will reach 1 billion people by 2020”
Putting new information directly in front of users as they go about their daily tasks is sure to disrupt a wide variety of industries.
Technology that was once only science fiction is now becoming a reality. Robots, touch screens and iPads could become passé as Google’s latest invention, Google Glass, begins to change the world forever.
Continue reading… “Five industries Google Glass will change forever”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.