Skip to main content

Newsweek's List of Brilliant 'Disruptors' - how our world will change even faster

I subscribe to Newsweek Magazine. As its name states, it's a weekly magazine broadly arranged like a blog with articles rarely longer than a few pages, covering highly topical subjects such as cyberwarfare, Trump's legacy, vaccine science and the like, all from an American perspective. I strongly recommend you subscribe at https://subscribe.newsweek.com/.

In their Christmas 2021 issue they published a list of 50 people (or partnerships) whom they describe as 'agents for change' or 'disruptors', the most famous of whom is Elon Musk - considered the Thomas Edison of the digital age. It makes for a fascinating wander through what the world is turning into from many points of view, but especially new technologies, new politics, new awareness of the planet's fragility, new fashions, new fears and new excitements. Many of their choices raise further questions about what we are turning into such as overweight couch potatoes; superfluous actors in a world of robots and AI; screen and metaverse addicts etc, as well highlighting many of the more virtuous changes occurring such as the green revolution, inclusivity, ambitions for levelling society, and an overlying sense of fairness and of a worldwide community blind to flags, race, gender or belief.

For this post I have selected some of the more exciting businesses from their list of 'disruptors' to facilitate wider research around their innovations (I wish I had invested in some of them!). The Newsweek list focusses on the people, my focus is on what they've created with a link to their websites (it's also something to help pass the time while I isolate after a positive Covid test 😓... from which, thanks to previous disruptors who invented the Pfizer vaccine, I'm only experiencing very mild symptoms):

 Medical

  1. An Affordable Bionic Hand  www.psyonic.io
  2. Synthetic DNA at Commercial Scale  www.twistbioscience.com
  3.  Medicine Delivered by Mist  droplette.io
  4. Communicating by Thinking  synchron.com
  5. Robot Medical Assistants   www.diligentrobots.com
  6. DNA Printers to Spur Vaccine Development  codexdna.com
  7. Altering DNA to Cure Disease  www.intelliatx.com
  8. Collaborative Tech to Develop Affordable Drugs  www.openpharmaresearch.com
  9. Prescription Gaming for ADHD  www.akiliinteractive.com
  10. Flexible Electronics for Implants  www.anl.gov (one of their programmes)
  11. Powering Wearable Batteries with Sweat research.ece.ncsu.edu/bandodkargroup/group

Planet

  1. AI and Big Data to Feed the World  gro-intelligence.com
  2. Ecofriendly Alternative to Plastic  www.footprintcenter.com/footprint
  3. App to Replenish Forests  greenstand.org
  4. Eggs Without Chickens  theeverycompany.com
  5. Tech Help for Food Insecurity  plantvillage.psu.edu
  6. Food Preservative Alternative to Plastic Packaging  www.apeel.com
  7. A Metaverse Platform  www.roblox.com

 Art

  1. Blockchain Payment Platform for Musicians  raidar.mit.edu
  2. (one of my favourites) Sponsorship Platform for Creators  www.patreon.com
  3. Marketplace for NFTs  opensea.io
  4. Converting High Street Fashion into Digital  dressx.com

 General

  1. Detecting Emotion with AI smarteye.se
  2. Using Diamonds for Internet Access  akashsystems.com
  3. 3D Printed Housing  www.iconbuild.com

 

 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking an interest.

Popular posts from this blog

To kill or not to kill.

Had an interesting discussion with a Muslim friend today about the ethics of killing. Could it ever be morally justifiable? Abrahamic scriptures, especially the old testament, are awash with murders and killings, some sanctioned by the prophets and assorted mouthpieces for god. Some killing is even mandatory. For example all Jews are instructed in the old Testament to kill everyone belonging to the 7 Canaanite tribes for example - Deut 20:17 , or to slaughter Amaleks, especially their children - Deut 25:19 . So accepting for a moment that these draconian instructions were written in times when tribal leaders had fewer options available to them with respect to managing miscreants and maintaining some sort of law and order, I suspect that most people today would agree that killing people is a bad thing and should not be condoned except under extraordinary circumstances. My friend and I then proceeded to try to list those circumstances. We started with self-defence or perhaps protecti...
1 comment
Read more

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo...
7 comments
Read more

Review of the world's first AI product launched in 1988 - Tome Searcher

I am tired of reading and hearing statements by press and politicians alike that companies like OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT) started the AI revolution. Just today, with the announcement of the Stargate data centre project, the BBC's Verify (?!) website stated "OpenAI kicked off the AI race in 2022". I'm not claiming that a little company in London called Tome Associates Ltd, of which I was a founding director, started AI in the 1980s. There were already plenty of people exploring it around the world at the time. Indeed a project called Logic Theorist, developed in 1955 by Newell and Simon at the Rand Corporation in California, is probably the world's first AI application. But to the best of my knowledge, Tome Associates were the first company in the world to launch a commercial product based on AI... which subsequently met a resounding blank look from everyone we showed it to. People were fascinated, but confused about what to do with it (don't forget Tim ...
Post a Comment
Read more