Weekly Reading #3: The Industries of the Future

Chapter 1: Here come the robots

• Japan needs labor to provide senior care. They use robots to fill the gap. Robots take care of the seniors, become home assistant, assist people with weak muscles or pick sick people up and down.
• Japan leads the world in robots. It has 310,000 of 1.4 million industrial robots in the world.
• Robots that are used to take care of seniors could become the first mainstream adoption due to large need, not just in Japan but also in other European countries and China.

Geo-robotic landscape

• 70% of robot sales take place in Japan, China, United States, South Korea and Germany.
• China is the top growing market. Sales 25% YOY.
• South Korea (50 million people) produces more robots than entire Africa continent (2.8 billion people)
• African Robotics Network (AFRON) initiates the 10 Dollar Robot Challenge to create low-cost robots.
• As robots start to spread, the degree of its success depends on the culture. Japan culture is more acceptive of robots than in Western countries, where robots are viewed as soulless machines.
• The fear of robot is deep rooted in Western culture, while Eastern culture is more comfortable with having robots.
• We may see the first glimpse of a world full of robots first in East Asia

Humanizing Robots

• Two key developments that allow the recent robotic boom: improvement in modeling belief space and up-link of robots to the cloud.
• The recent boom of robots are linked to the raise of cloud robotics. Robots are“learning” at an accelerating rate.
• Another key factor: material science that allows robot be made of various materials.
• Many corporations, and Vcs are investing in robots
• Singularity? “Robots are going to become increasingly human. But the gap between human and robots will remain- it’s so large that it will be with us for the foreseeable future,” robotics experts and UC Berkeley Professor Ken Goldberg
• People have been thinking about building driverless cars for a long time. However, the driverless system will have to prove to be nearly perfect before it scales.
• Robots enter the medical field: help with surgery, automate the sedation of patient, help people with sensitive immune system disease attend school, even serve as teaching assistant in science and computer science classes.

Robots and Jobs

• Robots will take over routine jobs. The service in industry will be in danger, ex: paralegals, painters, welders waiters, etc.
• A MIT professor says the paradox of our era is that “productivity is at record level, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time we have a falling median income and we have few we jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and our organization aren’t keeping up”

Chapter 2: The Future of the Human Machine

• Genomics will become a trillion dollar industry, extending lived and nearly eliminating diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people a year today.
• Researchers are working on a way to cure cancer by genome sequencing.
• In Jan 2015, the Obama Administration announced 215 million dollars investment that could become decade-long, billion-dollar initiative involving 1 million volunteers to develop “precision medicines” tailored to a specific's person genetics and characteristics of their tumors.

Hacking the brains

• By 2008, anti-depressants were one of the most common drugs taken by Americans and the most prescribed drugs for Americans under age of 60.
• Scientists begin to unravel the number of genes that play a role in schizophrenia.
• Suicide prevention: John Hopkins University researchers studied 2700 people with bipolar disorder, 1021 attempted suicide. They found out that a gene ACP1 produce a protein that appears in excessive and fires in the brains of people who had attempted suicide. One day, we can create a pill to prevent suicide.

Unintended Unconsciousness

• As genomics grows more sophisticated, it will begin a process of crating designer babies. (The dark side to genomics.)
• But people can also learn from their inherited genomic info to design a better lifestyle. And the cost of being able to do that is going down.
• Genomics is being research to extend human lives. “Between 1910 and 2010 improvement s in medicine and sanitation increase human life span by 50 percent. From 50 to 75. Today, with the emergence of exponential technologies such as those pioneers and advanced by Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI) we have the potential to meaningfully extend the life span even further”
• HLI raised 70 million dollars from VC only after 8 months of existence.

Keeping Up with the Genomic Joneses

• Three things to create breakthrough in life science: Great scientists, Lots of capital for economic research, and a Venture capital market to help return academic research into commercial products.
• The US is not guaranteed to be the leader in brain power and scientific achievement forever. China is pouring capital to become the number One.
• China devotes 2% of its GDP to R&D. Its contribution in scientific articles has skyrocketed. China’s State Council established genomic research as an economic pillar of its 21st century industrial ambitions.
• China’s strategy are companies and institutes like Beijing Genomic Institute that live in the gray area between state and private sector. They operate like private organization, but receive capital and support from the State.

Innovation for Everybody

• Some companies have tried to harness the burgeoning telecommunication infrastructure in the developing the world to deliver everyday health care needs better.
• Mobile phone based programs that have proven to be effective for a range of health-related interventions, including diagnosis, disease monitoring and compliance, expert assistance and promote education and awareness.
• Example: Medic Mobile and EyeNetra
• We can even tap into human resources of poor countries and train them to be an expert of a single part of the body instead of expert in the whole body.

Chapter 3: The Code-ifixation of Money Markets, and Yrust

• Square worked on coded money.
• eBay and PayPal enabled coded market where people can trade with others online.
• The codification of African is pioneers by Mo Ibrahim and allows people to trade through the use of mobile phone.
• M-Pesa has seen 25 percent of Kenya GDP flow through the network by allowing people to send and receive payment on their phones.
• The sharing economy enabled coded markets of trust. “Leaned go trust a complete stranger. “
• Airbnb is 2x Hyatt. And Uber is taking over the world.
• Sharing economy will create specialized forms of labor where everyone can sell their service online and eliminate agent or third party. A set of new norms will replace government regulation. The platform owner will get rich and should pay for the added cost of the economy.
• Bitcoin and blockchain will be the next protocol.

Chapter 4: The Weaponization of Code

“The world has left the Cold War behind only to enter into a Code War”

• Saudi Aramco hack with viruses Shamoon and Distract.
• Cost of cyber attacks now enclosed $400 billion a year.
• From 2000 to 2020, cyber security grows from 3.5 to 175 billion dollar industry
• Target hack in 2014 began with hackers gaining access of a HVAC vendor and got inside the Target’s POS network.
• China’s most powerful cyber attacks have been rooted in corporate espionage: stealing intellectual property and trade secret.
• In May 2013, lost to property theft to China $300 billion, 6% of United States intellectual property (est. 5 trillion dollars).
• The growth of IoT increases vulnerability to cyber attacks. “Security has often been an afterthought in the design of those system,” Chris Brook, professor at Univerisy of Houston.
• In 2015, hackers managed to shut down a Jeep Cherokee while it was on a highway (Ryan: This is an experiment by Wired magazine Here is the video)
• The streamlined system makes it easier for us, but can also make it worse if fall into the wrong hands.

Clandestine Operation

• Jim Gosler, most celebrated person ever to work in the American intelligence community, says that our dependency on technology can lead to severe consequences.
• James Clapper, director of national intelligence , warned Congress that cyber attacks pose a greater long term threat to national security than terrorism.
• Meanwhile, folks in Sillicon Valley has a more optimistic view on the outlook of technology.

Cold War to Code War:

• It may take a large cyber attack that leaves great impact to GDP of all sides in other to get US, China and Russia to agree on a meaningful protocol. Until the , the cyber domain is still the Wild West
• The cyber security market had been doubling. $3.5B in 2000, $64B in 2011, $78B in 2015 and projected $120B at 2017.
• The author expectation is that there will be mega companies that brawl through from startup ranks rather than military-industrial giants that start big and stay big.
• Government should work intensively with the private sector to make sure that the brightest minds are working to develop cyber defense.

Chapter 5: Data: The Raw Material of the Information Age

• Big data is only as useful as the ability to understand it.
• Barack Obama campaigns were then first to bring big data to life in a meaningful way. Used big data to gain insights on how to raise money, where to campaign , how to advertise.
• Big data technology used in translation will one day open the door for non-elite and a massive number of non-English speakers to the world of global business
• Big data use in precision agriculture will gather and use the information including weather, water and nitrogen levels, air quality and diseases to instruct the farmers of what is best to do.
• Monsanto has FieldScript solutions and Field View app. In 2014, Monsanto CTO Robb Fraley: “I could easily see us in the next 5 or 10 years being an information technology company.”
• Precision agriculture can bring small farmer the advantage of bigger farms with technology. It will help them use scarce resources more effectively and reduce pollution to the environment because they don’t have to blanket the field with a fixed amount of fertilizer.
• Next impact of big data in fintech will come in retail banking. Example: Zac Towsend with Standard Treasury, Jack Dorsey with Square Capital.
• Palatir uses big data visualization for the military and financial market.

Chapter 6: The Geography of Future Markets

• With the industries of the future, new avenue of opportunity for countries and people alike will hinge on domain expertise-deep knowledge about a single indistry, which tends to concentrate on specific cities for regions (Detroit: cars, Paris: fashion, Silicon Valley: Internet-based businesses)
• Marc Andreessen formula for the next Silicon Valley
  1. Build a big, beautiful, fully equipped technology park;
  2. Mix in R&D labs and university centers;
  3. Provide incentives to attract scientists, firms and users;
  4. Interconnect the industry through consortia and specialized suppliers;
  5. Protect intellectual property and tech transfer;
  6. Establish a favorable business environment and regulations.
• Genomics research will flourish in Boston (Harvard and MIT), Baltimore (John Hopkins) and California. Another prong of genetics research in China and Beijing.
• Cyber security will grow DC, Tel Aviv, London, Moscow for having proximity to government, law enforcement and intelligence community.
• Robotics will grow in Japan, China and South Korea due to strength in electronics and advanced manufacturing.
• One view of distribution by Charlie Songhurst: Silicon Valley will become the Rome of the Roman Empire because it has the capacity to produce advanced software and analytics that virtually can apply to all industries in the world. Uber founder didn’t have expertise in transportation, but were able to build a platform on software and analytics.
• Another view will believe that data analytics will become accessible to existing industries to improve their growth. “Domain expertise is everywhere”. Example Germany leverages domain expertise in logistics and household appliance, New Zealand leverage data to improve their traditional diary farming (Pasture Meter, precision-agriculture tech)
• Silicon Valley builds thing that Silicon Valley wants. There is opportunity for stakeholders with domain expertise to innovate for themselves before California does that.

Cities as innovation hubs

• Cities are incubator of grow he because they product positive externalities or spillover effects. They allow ideas, labor and capital to flow rapidly and efficiently.
• The most important cities are alpha cities like Shanghai, London, New York and Tokyo. They export advanced services around the globe and are mini economy themselves.
• Second and third-tier beta and gamma cities that link smaller regions fill a particular services niche.
• Infrastructure is an important factor to help cities grow.
• Cities that are aspiring to become global hubs need to simultaneously invest in physical infrastructure and the big data application that often attach to this infrastructure. They also need to have a culture of openness to welcome everyone from all over the world.
• One doesn’t need to be in an alpha city to succeed. (Story of Maria Umar in Waziristan.)
• Estonia is an example of a nation that transformed to become the most innovative a societies in the world today. On the other end, Belarus decided to close itself from the world and is still the remnant of the 70s.
• Chinese government strategy is to jump start development in 7 key industries: energy saving and environment protection, new generation information technology, biotech, high-end equipment, new energy, new materials and new-energy vehicles.
• India however lack of infrastructure has hindered its growth. It can take years to move stuff forwards in India. That’s why infrastructure is super developed in China but underdeveloped in India. (In China, the government can force people out of their houses to build infrastructure.)
• Singapore is able to compete with China because it delivers some of the best primary education in the world.
• Going forward, another factor will be the ability to empower all citizens, including women citizens.
• The progress is women in Chinese society over the course of the decade is one of the major reasons it is the economic power it is today. By contrast, the role of women in Japan has contributed to its stagnation. Japan’s GDP could grow by 16 percent more, if women participated in labor as much as men.
• Africa is witnessing the convergence of demographic, economic and technological trends that hold incredible promise for its future. The combination of a young population, fast-growing economies, and rapid technology adoption is creating a dynamic engine for private sector investment.

About Weekly Reading

Weekly Reading is a personal project to expand my knowledge by exposing myself to new ideas. Every Saturday, I lock myself in the neighborhood Barnes & Nobles and consume a book in one reading. Then, I share my note with the world.

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