Technology Revolution: The Future of Now

The Buzz 1: "Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming." (Dory in Finding Nemo, 2003 computer-animated adventure film) The Buzz 2: "Would that it were so simple." (Hobie Doyle in Hail, Caesar!, 2016 comedy film) The Buzz 3: "You're a wizard, 'arry." (Hagrid in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001 fantasy film) The Buzz 4: "Inconceivable." (Vizzini in The Princess Bride, 1987 romance-adventure...

The Buzz: Favorite quotes from Back to the Future, 1985–1990 American science fiction film movie trilogy – "Nobody calls me chicken." – "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." – "1.21 Gigawatts!?!" – "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it." – "This Is heavy!" If you're hoping to gaze into a crystal ball to see what 2023 holds for your company, your in...

Buzz 1: Smart home is a massive market, growing at 25.3% per year [Mordor Intelligence], expected to hit $314Bn a year by 2026.… Apple's Home app, Google's Nest, Google's Home app, Airthinx for air quality monitors, myQ for smart garage doors, Asmart bed app, Dyson app, Wemo app, Nanoleaf, Govee Home app. [forbes.com] Buzz 2: Safewise surveyed 1,000 Americans 18 and older about tech spending habit...

The Buzz 1: Holography is a photographic technique that records the light scattered from an object, and then presents it as three-dimensional. The development of hologram technology began in 1962, when Yuri Denisyuk, of the Soviet Union, and Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks, at the University of Michigan, developed innovative laser programs that recorded objects in 3D on silver halide photographic...

The Buzz 1: Raising kids is tough enough. Add the prospect of dating to the equation, and you've got quite a challenge. But regardless how your circumstance arose, you deserve to date… Divorced dads are usually dealing with limited time with their kids, so they can feel guilty about dating.…You'll know it's too soon to date if you need to talk incessantly about your former wife in glowing or not-s...

I LIKE IT. NO I HATE IT. IT FITS, NO IT DOESN'T FIT. I'M RETURNING IT! The Buzz 1: Retailers expect 17.8% or $158Bn of merchandise sold during the 2022 holiday season will be returned, according to the National Retail Federation. Returns have become a major headache in ecommerce, cutting into profit and straining resources. [www.digitalcommerce360.com] The Buzz 2: 37% of American households' finan...

Looking ahead to 2030: How will we work? How will we travel? What will we eat? How will we dress? Will we have ANY privacy? Will we all be space travelers? What old and new challenges will we face? The Buzz: The top 7 emerging future technology booms that will redefine the future and the world we live in – from https://unboxingstartups.com: *** Per Statista, 2,028 AI companies in 2018 were working...

The Buzz 1: Drones have been around for more than two decades, but their roots date back to World War I when the U.S. and France worked on developing automatic, unmanned airplanes…The last few years have seen significant drone adoption by individuals, commercial entities, and governments: Aerial photography for journalism and film; Express shipping and delivery; Gathering info or supplying essenti...

The Buzz 1: Dozens of song titles have "Edge" in the title, including: Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen, Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks, and Living on the Edge by Aerosmith. But what does EDGE mean in our tech-driven world? The Buzz 2: Edge computing reduces the volumes of data to be moved and the distance that data needs to travel for quicker movement of data and a reduction i...

Buzz 1: For some, a 'smart house' is chock-full of gadgets that automate or monitor almost every conceivable part of a house. For others, a smart house is extreme simplicity with only the slightest of technological intrusions as necessity demands…Apple's Home app, Google's Nest, Google's Home app, Airthinx air quality monitors, myQ smart garage doors, Dyson app, Wemo app, Nanoleaf, a Govee Home ap...

The Buzz 1: "Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic – taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick." School Days, song written in 1907 by Will D. Cobb and Gus Edwards, is about a couple looking back sentimentally on primary school. The Buzz 2: "In the past, financial literacy has been pushed aside within K-12 schools. There has been a lack of agreement about how and what to teach.…Because financial educati...

The Buzz 1: Women in technical roles are less likely than men to win promotions early in their careers, and many are exiting the field. Only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men at the same level…in technical roles, only 52 women per 100 men. Diversity is crucial to help de-bias the technologies in our modern life. [McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2021 report, coauthored with LeanI...

The Buzz 1: "What will be the most coveted skill of the future?…Creativity…A computer lacks imagination or creativity to dream up a vision for the future.…the emotional competence a human being has… We must embrace and develop our creativity, and then use technology creatively to solve problems of the world." [forbes.com/sites/annapowers] The Buzz 2: "When you think about old masters of art such a...

The Buzz 1: "NFTs are not just for digital art—and their popularity is growing. Now The Economist is experimenting with an NFT, to raise money for a good cause. – One candidate for the Oxford English Dictionary's "Word of the Year" for 2021 will surely be "NFT". Non-fungible tokens—cryptocurrency chits which represent digital images or videos—have been around since 2014, but took off in popularity...

The Buzz 1: "The science of social selling actually originated from academia. In a 2009 paper…'The Persuasive Role of Incidental Similarity on Attitudes and Purchase Intentions in a Sales Context,' researchers concluded that a purchase is more likely to take place when the buyer and seller happen to share things in common…sales practitioners began putting the science into practice and thus became...

The Buzz 1: In 1440 – 600 years after The Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest printed book – Gutenberg invented the wooden mass-printing press. In 1845 Richard Hoe invented the rotary press and first paperback. In 1993, Peter James published the thriller Host on 2 floppy disks – the first electronic novel – and BiblioBooks launched a website to sell eBooks. Along came the 2gb Kindle, able to hold 1,...

The in-person experience of car buying has always been alluring, letting you inhale the new car scent, examine the shiny power under the hood, literally kick the tires, ask questions of a human salesperson, and feel the road in a test drive. Now online car sales are offering a new experience: click it, order it, pick it up, keep-or-return it – and the automotive industry mostly isn't ready. The Bu...

The Buzz 1: "Privacy and security are those things you give up when you show the world what makes you extraordinary." [Margaret Cho, comedian] The Buzz 2: "Millions of people are unaware of and uninformed about how their personal information is being used, collected or shared in our digital society." [staysafeonline.org/data-privacy-week] The Buzz 3: "Digital freedom stops where that of users begi...

The Buzz 1: "There is such a thing as a glass ceiling…the invisible barrier which prevents women from advancement in their profession. Do we have an unacknowledged barrier that is an obstacle for women in Tech who are indeed skilled and experienced but can't get a promotion?" [huddle.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com] The Buzz 2: "The label 'woman in tech' seems redundant these days – how many women wou...

The Buzz 1: While the majority of solo parents are single mothers, up to 2.6 million families in the US are headed by single dads…The research on single fathers is limited. [healthline dot com] The Buzz 2: As a single dad, keeping a strong relationship between you and your child after a divorce is essential for your child's wellbeing.…children are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior if th...

The Buzz 1: "85% of the women I interviewed make money in ways that really aren't any different from how women made money in 1980: a third have jobs that pay salaries and bonuses, perhaps with a bit of a twist; about a quarter make money off of direct drive sales (a business model I remember well from selling photocopiers for Xerox in 1986!) and another quarter provide some sort of fee for service...

The Buzz 1: "Coming up with a great name for your characters is one of the hardest tasks you'll ever complete as a fiction writer… going too 'creative' with your name choices can distract or even confuse your reader." (nybookeditors.com) The Buzz 2: "Instead of calling the pizza delivery guy 'Bob,' if you give him an interesting ethnicity, a cowboy hat and a name like Galveston Ngyen, readers will...

The Buzz 1: Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword, but an environmental, economic and social driver that's changing our day-to-day lives… committing to sustainable practices is no longer a "nice to have" but a "must do"…. [forbes.com] The Buzz 2: Technologies shaping the sustainability agenda: Public electric transport. Electric trucks. Cheap energy storage. Plastic recycling. LED light effi...

The Buzz 1: ** "If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you'll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you'll get to where you want to be." [Eddie Van Halen, songwriter and musician] ** "Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to lone...

The Buzz 1: Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword, but an environmental, economic and social driver that's changing our day-to-day lives… committing to sustainable practices is no longer a "nice to have" but a "must do"…. [forbes.com] The Buzz 2: Technologies shaping the sustainability agenda: Public electric transport. Electric trucks. Cheap energy storage. Plastic recycling. LED light effi...