Death isn’t forever, companies build digital avatars so people can “live on after death”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Digital Avatars will mean that physical human death is simply a doorway into a new digital reality where our descendants interact with our Avatars instead of the real, physical us. Over the past couple of years, asides from the giant strides we’ve seen in...
Canada ends its three year Universal Basic Income trial two years early
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Governments fear the fall out from the mass automation of jobs by AI will be extreme so they’re investigating new welfare systems to limit the damage, but solutions are illusive. 4,000 people in Ontario, Canada just lost their Universal Basic Income (UBI) cash and...
Canada and UK partner to develop the West’s first Quantum Radar system
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Any technology like Quantum Radar that renders all traditional stealth obsolete is a game changer. Hot on the heels of China’s announcement last year that they’d managed to create the world’s first working Quantum Radar, a technology that would render military stealth technologies nothing...
New battery technology triples the ranges of electric vehicles
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the world starts to move away from fossil fuels we need to find new ways to squeeze more power from our batteries, and innovations like this one help us achieve that. In the latest battery breakthrough claim researchers from the University of Waterloo...
Researchers use duelling AI’s to defeat facial recognition technology
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As both our online, as well as our offline privacy, continue to be eroded, scientists are using AI to fight back. Most of us probably don’t like the idea of some stranger finding out who we are, and then where we live, or what...
This AI reads your mind to recreate the faces you’re thinking of
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to read someone’s mind leads down two roads. It can either be used as part of a dystopian state apparatus, or to help catch criminals and help people who can’t communicate communicate. It’s frustrating to have a clear mental image of something...
Ethereum falls after rumours of new powerful ASIC emerge
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The more centralised the mining of an individual cryptocurrency becomes, especially if it leverages new, more powerful technology, the greater the impact on a cryptocurrencies value. Rumors of a new ASIC mining rig from Bitmain have driven Ethereum prices well below their one week high of...
Blackberry’s AI Robo-hacker gets to work finding bugs in connected cars code
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more products become reliant on software to function, and as programs get increasingly complex, human developers are finding it increasingly difficult to find and patch all the bugs and vulnerabilities. As cars, especially self-driving ones, become more reliant on software it’s critical automakers...
Ethereum founder thinks crypto can disrupt Mastercard and Visa in “next few years”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The processing networks that the major credit card companies have built up over the years means that they’re difficult to disrupt, but as we learn so often difficult doesn’t mean impossible… The brain behind the runaway train that is Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is matter of...
Building a blockchain based Flash Organisation; by Ken Bodnar
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF In the future work, and jobs, will be more fluid than they are today, driven by the rise of globalisation, hyper-connectivity and the “Gig economy” but noone has so far managed to create a Flash Organisation that works, one day though that will change… ...
Scientists found a way to selectively erase memories forever
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Imagine being able to forget memories at the flick of a switch, and now imagine the impact that would have on your life, good or bad. As scientists unravel the mysteries of the brain one day this will become science fact. One thing that...
Scientists have turned light into a frictionless fluid that acts like water
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Light can behave in strange ways but now that scientists have managed to turn it into a superfluid at room temperature we could see new breakthroughs in communications and computing. Light only travels in straight lines, or does it? Scientists have known for centuries...
Clinton, Obama and Trump just endorsed a scarily accurate AI mimic
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial intelligence is gaining new skills all the time, and now it’s creating scarily accurate impressions of celebrities. The Lyre Bird is a unique bird that lives in the Amazon Rainforest because it’s especially skilled at copying the sound of its surroundings. It’s so...
Scientists work out that time travel is ‘mathematically possible’
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Science fiction has a habit of very often becoming science fact and proving that something is mathematically possible is often the start of a journey of discovery and invention As a futurist, or, yes, okay, an emerging technology nerd, I often find that people...
eSight’s new glasses give sight back to the legally blind
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Millions of people are legally classified as blind, and in the past blind meant blind forever, but today new technology is restoring sight like never before Over the past few years there have been a range of significant developments, from gene editing to bionic...
Two world firsts as researchers hack an unhackable quantum network
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF A team of Canadian researchers have achieved a world first and hacked a quantum network, then they accomplished another world first and discovered how to identify hacks. As we saw during the recent 2016 US election, protecting traditional computer systems and electoral systems, which...
Scientists might have found a way to turn Parkinsons on and off
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF From Parkinsons to Alzheimers, there are millions of people suffering from brain related disorders, now a new field of medicine, called Neuromodulation might let doctors turn these conditions on and off, for good. Dr. Andres Lozano at the University of Toronto is one of...
QuirkLogic’s new E-Ink whiteboard is a giant kindle for your office
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF E-Ink is one of those technologies that won’t set the world alight, but it’s going through a renaissance and it still has a place in the market Backlit touch screens have, arguably, helped propel smart phone and tablet sales into the stratosphere ever since they...
New gene editing technique switches off cells ability to repair themselves
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF When scientists edit DNA sometimes the cells natural repair mechanism undoes the modification, this new technique prevents that from happening and reduces the side effects of genetic modification CRISPR, the revolutionary gene editing tool that’s also been dubbed the “Genesis Engine” because of its...
Promising HIV vaccine moves to human trials
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF HIV is a stubborn virus and while scientists have managed to “rip” it out of patients noone has yet managed to create a vaccine for it, we’re hoping that is about to change HIV is a stubborn disease but over the past year scientists...
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