What's Emerging? June, 2020
A newsletter on interesting stuff that is emerging around the world so you can think about strategy
Introduction
Welcome to our end of June newsletter. As you may have noticed it looks a lot different because we have migrated it to Substack as our mailing and publishing system. We hope you like the changes.
In the next few weeks, Paul will be continuing to work on a regional tourism project and a strategic view for a national cleaning company. He is also participating in a working group with the Leading Edge Foundation in the UK looking at the industrialisation of robots, He is also presenting to Charles Sturt University on the Future of Work for veterinary students and working with one of the rural research and development corporations on what is over the horizon for agriculture.
If any of this interests you then please Contact Us
The Emergent Futures Team
In case you missed it. The most popular link from the last edition:
THIS LUXURIOUS AIRLINE UPGRADE COULD FIGHT COVID-19 ON YOUR NEXT FLIGHT
What are we Writing About?
Paul has published a post on the resurgence of cases in his home state in Victoria and why South Korea’s past month might be Victoria’s next month. You can read it by going to our Home Page and looking under our latest work
What’s Emerging?
Clean energy agency invests in soil carbon business venture
Australia's clean technology investment agency is taking a punt on an ambitious venture to tackle climate change, planting soil microbes in farm paddocks to capture carbon from the atmosphere and reduce global warming Read more
Facebook tests Forecast, an app for making predictions about world events, like COVID-19
What could possibly go wrong? …. Read more
Three people with inherited diseases successfully treated with CRISPR
Two people with beta thalassaemia and one with sickle cell disease no longer require blood transfusions, which are normally used to treat severe forms of these inherited diseases, after their bone marrow stem cells were gene-edited …. Read more
Assembly and Function of a Bioengineered Human Liver for Transplantation Generated Solely from Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
Takeishi et al. biofabricate human livers for transplantation using human hepatocytes, biliary epithelial cells, and vascular endothelial cells . …. Read more
Intel, Google, UC Berkeley AI team trains robot to do sutures
In a recently released research paper, researchers outline how they used YouTube videos to train a two-armed da Vinci robot to insert needles and perform sutures on a cloth device. …. Read more
Tencent is building a Monaco-sized 'city of the future' in Shenzhen
Dubbed "Net City," the 2-million-square-meter (22-million-square-foot) urban development will prioritize pedestrians, green spaces and self-driving vehicles, according to its designers.…. Read more
Tesla admits its approach to self-driving is harder but might be only way to scale
There are dozens of high-profile companies working on solving self-driving and virtually as many different approaches, but there are two main differences: those who rely mainly if not entirely on computer vision, and those who rely on HD mapping …. Read more
A.I. Robot Cast in Lead Role of $70M Sci-Fi Film
The feature, financed by the backers of 'To the Bone' and 'Loving Vincent,' is said to be the first to rely on an artificially intelligent actors…. Read more
Community Batteries Benefit The Grid More Says Latest Research
Dr Shaw’s work focuses on what (if anything) needs to change to enable community batteries on the east coast, and as part of that, her team modelled the viability of a 500kWh battery in the Jacka community.
Her team’s two key findings are that a community battery would generate customer savings double the cost of the battery; and that it would support more solar power installed on houses in the development..…. Read more
A millionaire at 34 and bigger than “Sunday Night Football,” China’s star saleswoman Viya rules a $60 billion world of live online shopping
The live, online shopping extravaganza the 34-year-old hosts most nights for her fans across China is part variety show, part infomercial, part group chat. Last month, she hit a record-high audience of more than 37 million—more than the “Game of Thrones” finale, the Oscars or “Sunday Night Football.” …. Read more
Manchester to replace half its bin lorries with electric vehicles
The switch to e-RCVs will save around 900 tonnes of carbon emissions a year, accounting for 4% of the council’s annual direct carbon emissions.
It will cost £9.757 million for the 27 vehicles, marginally more than if the existing trucks had been replaced like-for-like with diesel models. The cost difference is expected to be largely offset by energy savings and the availability of grants …. Read more
Apple’s App Store ecosystem facilitated over half a trillion dollars in commerce in 2019
the App Store ecosystem supported $519 billion in billings and sales globally in 2019 alone. The new study, conducted by independent economists at Analysis Group, found that the highest value categories were mobile commerce (m-commerce) apps, digital goods and services apps, and in-app advertising. …. Read more
NSW first renewable zone attracts stunning 27GW of solar, wind, storage proposals
Paul Italiano, the CEO of NSW government-owned network operator Transgrid said co-locating new renewable generation with new transmission infrastructure was expected to deliver better outcomes for all parties. …. Read more
High Resolution Neural Face Swapping for Visual Effects
Disney research presents a system for face swapping which seems to be far in advance of anything else stating that: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method capable of rendering photo-realistic and temporally coherent results at megapixel resolution”…… Read more
Business Tips
Microsoft starts rolling out consumer features for its Teams apps on iOS and Android
The battle for remote work and video conferencing options is just beginning. Zoom won the first battle but what will happen next will be fascinating. One to keep an eye on as we navigate the world of work over the next 12 months …. Read more
Slack Connect
In the same vein Slack has introduce a system which allows collaboration across corporate boundaries…..Read more
Clusters of Coronavirus Disease in Communities, Japan, January–April 2020
The research appears to be showing that younger people are responsible for the majority of the clusters and outbreaks in Japan. If that holds true for the rest of the world you need to factor it into your future risk management strategies…. Read more
Amazon Honeycode – Build Web & Mobile Apps Without Writing Code
This new fully-managed AWS service gives you the power to build powerful mobile & web applications without writing any code. It uses the familiar spreadsheet model and lets you get started in minutes. If you or your teammates are already familiar with spreadsheets and formulas, you’ll be happy to hear that just about everything you know about sheets, tables, values, and formulas still applies …. Read more