Category: Trends

  • A Fourth Industrial Revolution

    The rumors of the demise of American manufacturing have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, American manufacturing is experiencing something of a renaissance. In 2018, the United States added 261,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector, mirroring an increase of 207,000 in 2017. This job growth has primarily been powered by small, high-technology firms working with cutting-edge…

  • The Autoimmunity Crisis

    Across the world a health crisis is quietly brewing. Diseases of autoimmunity are soaring across the globe and particularly so in the developed world. An autoimmune disease is when otherwise healthy cells provoke an immune response and are attacked and destroyed by the immune system. Autoimmune diseases are particularly pernicious because they attack the body…

  • American Isolationism

    Today the American intelligentsia is increasingly up in arms at President Trump’s steady and consistent reining in of US foreign policy, military and economic engagement with the world. Hundreds of news articles in publications like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and others have lambasted these decisions and the long-lasting damage that they are…

  • Can AI Create?

    In recent years artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have developed at breakneck speed. Today you find them across the economy doing everything from underwriting risk for new loans to language translation and helping diagnose cancer. Not only can machine learning systems do these tasks successfully, they usually do them orders of magnitude better than…

  • Global Money Laundering Part II

    The FinCEN files has quickly swelled into a news story globally with new revelations coming thick and fast – with everyone from Michael Flynn to the Tokyo Olympics now caught up in the scandal. But the FinCEN files – while rich in information – pale in comparison with the 2016 Panama Papers leaks. The Panama Papers involved the leaking of 2.6 terabytes…

  • The November Standoff

    In November 2020 amid a raging global pandemic the United States will hold its 59th presidential election. The result will either see incumbent Donald J. Trump reelected or see challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden become the 46th President of the United States. The 2020 election will bring many firsts but what will likely go down…

  • The COVID-19 Vaccine Race

    The Covid-19 pandemic continues to run rampant globally with over 22m confirmed cases and nearly 800,000 deaths globally. Many countries that successfully fought off a first wave – particularly in Europe – are seeing spikes that threaten to become a full-blown, uncontrolled second wave of infection. Social distancing, lockdowns and limits on public events have…

  • The Small Business Nightmare

    The Covid-19 pandemic has turned the world upside in a matter of weeks. Over a third of the world population is under lockdown, economies are in freefall and the disease continues to spread. The size and scale of this disruption is unlike anything we have seen in decades, and the depth, severity and speed of…

  • The Covid-19 Pandemic

    This is a truly extraordinary moment in history. Thanks to a global pandemic for the first time ever the world is demobilizing and shutting down societies and economies worldwide. From Asia through Europe and the Americas people are being asked to stay home, businesses are being shut down and people are losing their jobs. This…

  • The Rental Economy

    The Rental Economy

    This article was originally published in The Startup. One of the determining characteristics of any economy is who owns what assets. Different economic systems (capitalism, socialism, communism) differ primarily based on who owns and who rents capital assets. Ownership of assets shifts and evolves over time thanks to technological disruption, economies of scale and shifting…

  • Three Views on the CryptoBubble

    Three Views on the CryptoBubble

    This article was originally published on Cryptocurrency Hub. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have had a tremendous year in the media. The technology that was for a long time confined to the backwaters of tech has exploded into the public sphere in style. Dozens if not hundreds of Blockchain companies have been founded in recent months. Governments…

  • Conversational Intermediation & Chatbots

    Conversational Intermediation & Chatbots

    This post was originaly published in Chatbots Magazine. Language technology is all the rage across the world of innovation these days. Conversational interfaces, machine translation, natural lanuage understanding, chatbots — the buzzwords abound. The hype is not undeserved either. Truly interactive, powerful conversational interfaces could fundamentally change our relationship with technology by intermediating our every interaction with technology in…