Take a ride into the future with me!
My personal summary of SXSW 2023 in Austin, TX
The SXSW conference in Texas — my yearly “guilty pleasure”.
It is of course debatable whether a physical gathering of this size is still the setup of choice for an exchange on inspiration, culture and arts — given the climate crisis that we all are in. But so far, no digital experience can make up for the human interaction this festival provides — so I deliberately chose to fly to Austin to take home relevant impulses regarding Digital, Sustainable Development and future Megatrends and take the consequences, no bullshitting at his point.
Before I dive into my personal summary, I would like to point out the very interesting finding of what was not on the menu: NFTs, Web3 and Crypto which were the defining topics in 2022 did not play a substantle role one year later.
While Web3 and Crypto were still present as underlying infrastructure but not independent topics, NFTs were completely gone. This goes along with META’s recent announcement to ditch NFTs completely.
Overarching topics this year were leveraging digital for a more sustainble planet and a view on the potential downsides of recent digital developments: Social Media and generative AI. Believe it or not, Europe and its GDPR were mentioned as a role model multiple times.
Apart from my personal highlights, I had some first time interactions. Firstly, with the next generation teleconferencing tool Proto which records normal 2D action and transforms it into a holographic experience. Table-size devices are in the making and a first installation will be done this month in Munich.
But see for yourself:
Also, I saw my first autonomous food delivery devices at Chick-A-Fil:
Please find my personal highlights below:
1. Scaling carbon removal
2. Amy Webb’s Tech Trends 2023
3. Non-obvious Tech trends
4. Profitable despite of or because of prioritising sustainability? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert
5. The dangers of Social Media
6. Brain/Computer Interfaces (BCI) at scale
7. Our most important energy — Nuclear power?
8. Can de-extinction help to save the world?
9. Carbon to products
1. Scaling carbon removal
As of today, there is an estimated carbon removal capacity of 10 million tons yearly on the planet. To achieve or even overachieve our global carbon goals (i.e. limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees celsius), a capacity of at least 10 billion tons yearly will be necessary by 2025.
So fresh ideas are needed.
CarbonCure for example has found a way to capture and store recycled CO₂ into fresh concrete .
Once injected, the CO₂ undergoes a mineralization process and becomes permanently embedded in the concrete. This results in economic and climate benefits for concrete producers.
RunningTide focuses on the oceans for carbon storage. The ocean’s biological carbon pump plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle. The biological pump is a natural process through which carbon is transported from the fast carbon cycle, involving the atmosphere, biosphere, and upper ocean, to the slow carbon cycle, involving the deep ocean and geosphere.
OceanTide applies three methods.
CO2 Removal by Macroalgae
Running Tide seeds carbon buoys with macroalgae that grow rapidly, converting nutrients to biomass in the surface ocean and absorbing dissolved CO2 in the process. Macroalgae are up to three times more efficient than phytoplankton at fixing carbon, due to macroalgae’s higher carbon-to-nutrient (nitrogen, phosphorus) ratios. These ratios cause macroalgae to sequester more carbon for the same nutritional input. As macroalgae are comparatively large and negatively buoyant, they sink through the water column more rapidly than phytoplankton, reliably moving carbon into slow cycle reservoirs in the deep ocean.
CO2 Removal by Sinking of Terrestrial Biomass
Running Tide produces carbon-rich buoys for macroalgal growth using biomass feedstocks that are sustainably sourced from forestry residues, forest fire fuel reduction efforts, and agricultural byproducts. This biomass, if not utilized in Running Tide’s CDR system, will either decay or be burned, reintroducing fixed carbon directly back to the atmosphere as CO2. Running Tide’s process sinks terrestrial biomass along with marine biomass into the deep ocean, effectively moving the carbon contained within that biomass from the fast carbon cycle to the slow carbon cycle.
CO2 Removal by Calcium Carbonate
Running Tide sources lime and limestone from sustainable suppliers for use as a binding agent in the manufacture of carbon buoys. Limestone contributes to carbon removal in three distinct phases of the CDR system:
Direct air capture — CO2 is captured directly from the atmosphere through the initial mineralization of the input material Ca(OH)2 into the binding agent CaCO3 during Running Tide’s manufacture of carbon buoys. This process can sequester 1 mole of CO2 from the atmosphere per mole of Ca(OH)2 mineralized as CaCO3. Contrary to the natural formation of calcium carbonate in seashells that releases CO2, Running Tide’s land-based mineralization of CaCO3 relies on atmospheric CO2 as the sole source of carbon involved in the formation of CaCO3, thereby removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
This process offsets CO2 released by the initial calcination of the input Ca(OH)2 in
Carbon removal in the ocean — The gradual dissolution of limestone ( CaCO3) from floating carbon buoys sequesters atmospheric CO2 via seawater alkalinization.
Increased durability — As buoys reach the ocean floor, the limestone coating increases the likelihood that they will be buried in sediments, thereby extending the duration of time that the carbon is removed from the fast carbon cycle.
It should definitely be mentioned that, according to MIT Technology Review, this approach could have a negative impact on the ocean’s ecosystem. Moreover, Running Tide claims that the carbon would be “gone for about 1,000 years” — in other words, once again, we are kicking the problem down the road to future generations.
2. Amy Webb’s Tech Trends 2023
This year, Amy Webb focussed very much on recent technology developments and its possible future impacts.
Conditions post covid are mixed as never before, thus chaos is ruling and focus is her main theme this year. Two convergencies across all trends can be observed:
It’s the end of the internet as we know it and we don’t know if we should feel fine. Up to now, you used to search the Internet. Now, the Internet is searching you. It’s continous information transfer: All your actions are transformed into data and are read and analyzed. A concept that Shoshanna Zuboff already defined as “Surveillance Capitalism”.
ChatGPT has seen enourmous adaptation and attention globally. But an inherent problem of GPT3 and GPT4 is that Artificial Intelligence -despite its name- is all but intelligent. In essence, it’s advanced statistics. The system does not “know” anything, but checks millions of datapoints when attaching one word to another according to itself.
The systems are pre-trained so that no illegal, threatening or inappropriate output is generated. But this is being done by human beings, hords of clickworkers. Humans are ranking results, but who are these humans? Inherent in the concept of Generative AI is that it is biased apparently.
Did somebody say market entry barriers? Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) need enourmously powerful computing and huge data oceans to work. Only a very limited amount of companies can afford that — so currently, Generative AI is owned by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. As in all areas, oligopols have never been a very beneficial situation. But here, we are talking about the next generation of infrastructure global society will rely on.
Regulators are late to the party and a vivid concept is not yet foreseeable.
As said, Generative AI needs huge data oceans to be trained. Available data is somewhat limited, so literally everything will be converted to AI-minable date in future. What does that mean?
Think about for example:
- School kid behaviour data. No way? Already done, take a look at the consent you signed when opting in Microsoft TEAMS and alike during COVID19 pandemy for your kid(s)
- Your personal body odor is data. Google has filed Principle Odor Mapping for patent. On the hand this could be used to piss off mosquitoes, on the other hand it is much more powerful than your personal fingerprint. Your presence in one certain location could be tracked for days for example.
- Your personal brain content: Prefer thinking about something explicit over reading this boring text? No offense to me ;-), but if you relied on the secretiveness of your thoughts, know this: FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) in combination with the image generator Stable Diffusion can -in fact- read and paint your brain.
- Data from “smart” connected toilets: Let’s not go down that road, I guess you understand the concept.
Looking ahead, Amy distilled two scenarios for 2033:
The Optimistic
- Monopolies or oligopols did not happen
- Multicloud systems are in place
- OpenSource plays a vital role
- Antibodies can be generated from scratch instantly— as ABSCI aims to
- Everyone can generate scents on a scent-print-on-demand device at home
The Catastrophic
- We weren’t prepared
- Revenue generation is the superseeding goal as it was with Social Media
- Knowledge workers (i.e. Human marketers, advertisers and independent journalists) are gone
- Aggressive chasing of humans by AI is daily standard
- We are surrounded by information but cannot get the exact information we aimed for: AI is curating search results at its very own discretion
- Digital Divide to-the-max: There are the people who are able to work with AI and those who don’t. The latter ones are simply f*ckd. Full stop.
Amy sees 80 percent probability for the catastrophic sceanario, please judge for yourself.
However, it is very clear that we have entered the “Assistive Computing Era”.
We have stopped thinking ourselves. Forever.
If you would like to follow up Amy’s 666 Trends in total, here is the source.
3. Non-obvious Tech trends
This year’s Non-obvious Tech Trends presented were quite tangible.
From the mentioned products and wearables here, probably the most important is the Supersapiens Glucose Monitor. Every human being independently reacts to food. But there are no individual diets yet. So it is no surprise that Diabetes has become the popular disease in the US.
Estimated 100 million Americans suffer from Pre-Diabetes today.
Monitoring glucose levels will become standard, so a continuous glucose monitor makes a lot of sense.
Talking about food, “lab-grown” as we are already familiar with from meat continoues to be a trend.
Gourmey offers lab-grown Foie Gras and Vitrolabs just needs a single biopsy from an individual cow to produce real leather — leaving the cow perfectly well and alive.
Another trend are virtual companinships: Having a relationship with a non-human bot might become mainstream. Replika offers a virtual girlfriend, Woebot a mental health ally and BerriAI a quick way to generate individual ChatBots.
Augmented creativity is a thing we all will not be wanting to miss anymore.
Analogenie for example creates AI-powered analogies while Byrdhouse is able to generate live translations via App — using your very own voice.
And finally, celebrating in style can be done with a good conscience again: Glitter hase become biodegradable and thus sustainable with Hemway.
4. Profitable despite of or because of prioritising sustainability? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert
Patagonia and its management have taken three major decisions that set the company apart from usual capitalist-oriented companies:
- Their products are built durable and are being repaired for their entire lifecycle — the very contrast to Fast and UltraFast Fashion
- Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, the eccentric rock climber who became a reluctant billionaire with his unconventional spin on capitalism, has given the company away. Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe (Source NY Times)
- Diversification into other additional fields most relevant to humans: Food for example via the acquisition of Moonshot (“Climate-friendly snacks”) as Ryan believes that Agriculture is most the broken supply chain on the planet. That’s why they joined the Regenerative Organic Alliance as well
Of course, Patagonia still produces negative impact. But according to Ryan, issues should be tackled step by step. One action is an OpenSource approach for finding new alternatives to nylon.
On the questions whether other companies should follow Patagonia’s example, Ryan believes that this definitely has to happen — we would have no alternative anymore. We, the consumers, need to force business leaders to turn to away from shareholder value maximiation towords stakeholder management.
And an advise to all of us: Be cynical about what business people tell you!
I will close this with Patagonia’s view on itself.
5. The dangers of Social Media
As has by now become apparent, also Socia Media which started with the idea of connecting people all over the world, has dark implications.
Who could explain about this better than Brittany Kaiser, the whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica?
As we now know, Social Media can be used to influcence large target audiences towards a target, decide public elections and erode trust in general.
MEMEs are means to fight Information warfare, Search is broken because of monetarization and Big Social platforms control culture.
Unfortunately, no valid solution approaches to counter the current situation were discussed.
6. Brain/Computer Interfaces (BCI) at scale
If you are rather on the benefits side of the Digital Technology coin, you will like the easiness which Synchron can bring to you: The world’s first brain computer interface (BCI) implant in humans using the natural highways of the brain — your blood vessels. Yes, you read correctly: They have solved how to deliver electronics throughout the brain without open surgery.
This technology allowed the first “thought-controlled” hands-free tweet by a patient with ALS, to the first U.S. human patient implant of a permanent BCI, conducted at Mount Sinai Health System in July 2022.
Sounds like very far away? Well, not so much:
- FDA approval is around the corner
- Commercialization is planned for 2030
So, will scalable BCI technology be as common as LASIK surgery in the future? By 2050, will the majority of people have a permanent BCI implant, to communicate with their digital devices hands-free?
I might be living to see it…
7. Our most important energy — Nuclear power?
Without question, energy is at the root of everything we do. It enables human and economic development. It’s vital to progress. The challenge: how to unlock its potential without destabilizing the planet.
“Our current approach is failing us, despite massive advancements across the energy sector. We’re falling dangerously short on urgent climate goals, energy access remains highly inequitable, and global energy insecurity has only compounded these challenges. We need solutions that fuel massive growth in clean energy supply to make power accessible, affordable and reliable.
Nuclear energy is unique in its ability to address these issues — but it needs to scale, quickly.”
According to Bret, renewable energy has only helped to reduce carbon globally by 1% in 2022, while global energy demand in 2050 will be 2023 tripled.
That’s the point of view of Last Energy’s CEO Bret Kugelmass. Consequently, he aims to create a replicable, manufacturable nuclear power plant and size for private capital.
Meet PWR-20.
While I totally get Bret’s points and arguments, one point remains unsolved to me:
What to do with the nuclear waste?
We might produce energy for one generation, while the subsequent 100 or so will have to bear the cost. Bret stated in his speech that nuclear waste would not pose a problem as 90% of the material would have disintegrated after 10 years on average.
Given the problems in finding an ultimate storage for nuclear waste in many countries and the fact that the area around Pripjat, where Tchernobyl catastrophe happened in 1986, is still highly polluted and in accessible, I do not know if this statement is true and could not verify it anywhere.
You might have expected this skepticism from a German native; the very nation that is putting its last remaining atomic plants to rest during the course of this year 2023.
But I remain undecided: I get the benefits of nuclear and I can also see that Germany being the one and only country deliberately pulling the plug on nuclear while all others are planning to expand.
8. Can de-extinction help to save the world?
Serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm, CEO and Co-founder of Colossal talked about the future of de-extinction and why it’s not just a big business, but vital work in the face of a changing climate.
Since launching in September 2021, Colossal has raised $225M in total funding. In addition to announcing the de-extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger and Woolly Mammoth, the company recently launched its Avian Genomics Group to pursue the de-extinction of the iconic Dodo.
Colossal creates technologies for extinct species restoration, critically endangered species protection and the repopulation of critical ecosystems that support the continuation of life on Earth. The company’s technologies shall also have the potential to advance human health, enhance food production, reduce environmental impact, and optimize animal health and welfare.
Driven by the fact that we will loose estimated 50% of today’s biodiversity by 2050, Ben thinks de-exctincting key species might be a working way to counter that development.
Mammooth reproduction is planned for 2028. That’s not too far away.
9. Carbon to products
So we are where we are with Greenhouse gases (GHGs), which is not only carbon dioxide but methane to a huge degree as well.
Three Australian StartUps showed how these gases could be transformed into products. And yes, they would be bound in those products only until they are dissolved again, but using existing Greenhouse gases in the production process instead of “generating” otherwise needed saves future emissions.
In essence, we are talking about products to eat and wear:
String Bio for example converts CO2 into protein:
Greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide (or CH4 and CO2), have been largely looked at as waste or by-products. Using a patented fermentation platform, String is re-defining these waste gases as valuable raw materials to make an array of high-performance products, from food to cosmetics. By utilizing the energy present in GHGs as the core of our solution — we strive to make the manufacturing and commercialization of carbon neutral, or often carbon negative products, the norm.
LanzaTech’s carbon recycling technology is like retrofitting a brewery onto an emission source like a steel mill or a landfill site, but instead of using sugars and yeast to make beer, pollution is converted by bacteria to fuels and chemicals. Imagine a day when your plane is powered by recycled GHG emissions, when your shampoo bottle started life as emissions from a steel mill. This future is possible today using LanzaTech technology and LanzaTech’s CarbonSmartTM IP licensing services.
One tangible and actually available product example is a dress made partially from steel mill emissions. It’s currently avaialable at 70 USD with Zara.
ReCarbon transforms GHGs into useful products and clean energy. We use CO₂ to make everyday items that are low-carbon, zero-carbon, or carbon negative:
Competitive Now — Gen 1 Technology
ReCarbon has brought Generation 1 technology to market in organic waste and industrial emissions settings, producing carbon-negative hydrogen and CO₂-free syngas.
Changing the Game — Gen 2 Technology:
ReCarbon is rapidly developing its next-generation technology, which shall redefine the clean energy landscape. Using greenhouse gases, ReCarbon will produce syngas and hydrogen at any scale. Lower costs. Higher output. Cleaner future.
All three stated that they will only be succesful, if their processes and products become commercially viable, meaning that their solutions must outplay today’s cheaply available fossil raw materials.
And, as Zara so nicely ended: Life is only moving electrons ;-)
