The Future is in Las Vegas

The Future is in Las Vegas

CES 2020 provides a glimpse of a fantastic tech-enabled future.

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The future now
CES in Las Vegas always treats attendees and far-off observers with a smorgasbord of futuristic tech. This year was no different, giving us a preview of a cooler, more connected world. Next gen AI interfaces, tech to replicate our sensory experiences like scent and temperature, an entire community purpose-built to test experimental technology, foldable computers and more were all on display.

As we buckle in for an exciting year ahead, we’re looking to broad innovation + business trends: The Purpose Collaborative lists 10 predictions for how consumers will increasingly influence purposeful businesses. GreenBiz released its 13 annual State of Green Business report examining key trends and metrics in corporate sustainability. And researchers at Penn State have developed a new way to measure innovation in rural America.

We hope you’ve been enjoying this newsletter and would love any feedback (erica@nycmedialab.org). Thank you again for reading!

Best,
Erica Matsumoto
NYC Media Lab

CES in Las Vegas is the biggest consumer electronics show in the world. Each year, this gigantic event gives observers excellent insight into next-gen consumer tech. At CES this year, foldable screens, color e-ink and the Samsung Ballie were just a few of the crazy-cool inventions on display. This week, we’re looking at nine of the most mind-blowing things seen at CES this year.

1. Toyota’s Woven City

Source: CNet

This is arguably the most ambitious thing shown at CES 2020. It’s a planned community that will be built on 175 acres of land near Mount Fuji in Japan. Toyota plans to use the land to create an experimental laboratory of future technologies, including:

• Self-driving vehicles run on hydrogen fuel cells
• Robots
• Smart homes
• New forms of personal mobility, such as the Wello bike-car mashup

Once it’s fully realized, the Woven City will house around 2,000 residents.

2. Computers that fold like phones
Last year, foldable phones were one of the hottest topics in tech — in 2020, foldable laptops are poised to swoop in to steal some of that thunder. Intel’s “Horseshoe Bend” reference design, which was unveiled at CES, is a major driver of this excitement.

Source: CNet

In essence, Horseshoe Bend is a 17-inch tablet or all-in-one computer (using a kickstand and attaching a keyboard and mouse) that folds in half to become a 12.5-inch laptop with a touchscreen on one half and a touch keyboard and touchpad on the other side. Similar concepts have been developed by Lenovo, Microsoft and Dell recently, as well. Check it out in action:

3. Samsung Ballie
Engadget writer Chris Velazco theorizes that the tennis ball-like Samsung Ballie “may well represent the future of Samsung’s home robot strategy.” If that’s the case, the future is both a little weird and a lot awesome. While there are some software issues that Samsung is still ironing out, it seems clear that Samsung is excited about its future plans for Ballie and, by extension, for robots in the home.

Bailie isn’t the only robot that’s just around the corner, either. Samsung-funded Neon is developing an artificially intelligent digital avatar to imitate real human appearance and emotions. Neon hopes to eventually develop a lifelike AI with potential uses as a language tutor, concierge and more.

To see it in action, check out “A waltz for Ballie”:

4. Exoskeletons to make humans stronger than life
Sarcos Robotics unveiled its Guardian XO full-body exoskeleton, which it claims allows users to safely lift up to 200 pounds in extended work sessions, at CES. The company also announced that the product is already ready for deployment: Delta airlines is going to be testing it out for aircraft maintenance, engine repair, and luggage handling. The exoskeleton makes users look a little like Gundams, but it’s certainly effective:

5. Your Uber’s en route… in the air

Source: Singularity Hub Hyundai and Uber showed off an air taxi concept at CES 2020. The aircraft boasts a 49-foot wingspan, four lift rotors and four tilt rotors. It would be manned by a pilot, and could carry up to four passengers at speeds of up to 180 miles/hour. According to the partners, the taxis will be “ready” by 2030.

6. Language barriers no more
Waverly Labs’ in-ear translator, Ambassador, was unveiled earlier in 2020 and was on display at CES 2020. The NYC-based startup’s Ambassador can translate real-time conversations in 20 languages into in-ear audio, text on an app, or live broadcasts for conference environments. If fully realized, technology like this could do away with language barriers.

7. The nose knows (remember smell-o-vision?)
Statuscent’s digital nose, eNose, which the company says is based on NASA patents, uses chemical receptors and AI to identify both simple chemicals and complex scents. Ultimately, the company aims to create the world’s first comprehensive database of everyday scents in order to make “intelligent” decisions for consumers. The digital noses have some immediate business applications, too: for example, their ability to sniff ethylene (the chemical that indicates spoilage) may allow them to monitor crop shipments. CEO David Wu demonstrated this live:

8. It isn’t real until you feel it
Smell isn’t the only sense that’s being improved by technology. Italian startup e-Novia’s Weart haptic glove uses a “sensing core” to record tactile sensations and a “actuation core” to reproduce those sensations onto wearers’ skin — specifically, these three sensations: forces, textures and temperature changes. This promises to bring VR and AR experiences more vividly to life. It could also be used to help digitize materials in gaming and entertainment.

9. Color e-ink is coming this year
Hisense showed off a color e-Ink phone at CES. The new display features improved contrast and refresh rates compared to 2019’s monochrome screen and id set to go into mass production in Q2 2020 (however, Hisense didn’t announce a time frame for the launch of the color e-Ink phone).

Once e-Ink displays become more commonplace, they’ll bring a range of benefits, including dramatically improved battery life, energy efficiency and comfort, to devices that use them. Anyone who uses a Kindle or Kobo e-reader is familiar with these benefits: whereas smartphones (which use LCD displays) last up to a day and a half without use, Kindles and Kobos last for weeks — or longer — as long as they aren’t used for hours at a time. These existing e-Ink devices are also more comfortable to use, as they don’t emit as much of the eye-strain inducing blue light that LCD displays do.

Source: The Next Web 10. Fake meat is real
Impossible Foods — the brand behind 2019’s Impossible Burger 2.0 craze — unveiled a new product, Impossible Pork, at CES 2020. This man-made pork product is designed for kosher and halal certification and can be used in any recipe calling for ground pork. Impossible Foods also announced plans to roll out Impossible Sausage in five test cities later in January.

CNET editors who helped prepare Impossible Pork dishes before CES nearly all reported that Impossible Pork looks, smells and cooks up like pork. 10 ways purposeful business will evolve in 2020 The members of the Purpose Collaborative, the world’s first (and largest) collective of purpose-first agencies and experts, believe that 2020 will be a year of tremendous evolution in purposeful business. They predict that business will be the hero with the political world in tumult, that long-term social value will begin to matter more than short-term gains, and more. 7 min read The State of Green Business, 2020 GreenBiz’s 13th annual State of Green Business report examines key trends and metrics around corporate sustainability. According to the report, 2020 will be a landmark year in the sustainable business realm. 9 min read New Index Reveals the ‘Hidden Innovation’ of Rural America

A study by the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development at Penn State shows a new way to measure innovation in rural areas, which are often ignored by traditional measures of economic innovation. Using this new methodology, the researchers find that innovation is widespread even in rural places that aren’t typically thought of as innovative.

One of the researchers, Stephan Goetz, explains the need for a better measure of rural innovation. “The way we traditionally measure innovation is very narrow, and focuses primarily on new products or processes that result in a patent or involve R&D spending. This overlooks another kind of innovation — the incremental improvements that businesses make to their products and processes as a result of information they obtain from outside their firm.”

Source: Daily Yonder 4 min read This Week in Business History

January 15, 1609: History’s first regular newspaper, Aviso Relation oder Zeitung, begins publication at Wolfenbuttel in Lower Saxony, Germany

The first issue stated that the news had been collected from various countries by January 15. The last issue of the newspaper likely appeared on December 15, 1632. This was the front cover of the first issue:

Source: Wikimedia While the oldest known printed text, a Buddhist book called The Diamond Sutra, originated from Dunhuang, China in around 868 A.D., this was the first official newspaper to appear anywhere in the world. It was shortly followed by the appearance of newspaper all over the European continent. This development formalized the printing press’ contribution to the growth of literacy, education and uniform information availability for ordinary citizens.





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