Lifeboat Foundation

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”

I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.

After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.

Geospatial analysis shows that ‘mini-grids’ would be the cheapest technology to provide universal electricity access by 2030.

Achieving universal access to electricity is essential for solving many global development challenges. Decentralized renewable energy technologies have emerged as a viable solution. Small, clean energy utilities called mini-grids are a key piece of the puzzle. They are community-based grids that generate and distribute power at the point of consumption. And they could be the most cost-effective way to deliver access to more than a third of the 1.1 billion people across the world who still lack any electricity supply, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Yet mini-grids are still largely an afterthought for many governments and their financial backers in Africa and Asia. Evidence strongly suggests that this mindset must change if the world is to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 – access to modern, affordable, clean and reliable energy for all by 2030.

Continue reading “Here’s the solution for 1.3 billion people still lacking electricity” »

Since late 2013, this band of cybercriminals has penetrated the digital inner sanctums of more than 100 banks in 40 nations, including Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S., and stolen about $1.2 billion, according to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency. The string of thefts, collectively dubbed Carbanak—a mashup of a hacking program and the word “bank”—is believed to be the biggest digital bank heist ever. In a series of exclusive interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek, law enforcement officials and computer-crime experts provided revelations about their three-year pursuit of the gang and the mechanics of a caper that’s become the stuff of legend in the digital underworld.

Carbanak’s suspected ringleader is under arrest, but $1.2 billion remains missing, and his malware attacks live on.

In terms of moral, social, and philosophical uprightness, isn’t it striking to have the technology to provide a free education to all the world’s people (i.e. the Internet and cheap computers) and not do it? Isn’t it classist and backward to have the ability to teach the world yet still deny millions of people that opportunity due to location and finances? Isn’t that immoral? Isn’t it patently unjust? Should it not be a universal human goal to enable everyone to learn whatever they want, as much as they want, whenever they want, entirely for free if our technology permits it? These questions become particularly deep if we consider teaching, learning, and education to be sacred enterprises.

When we as a global community confront the truly difficult question of considering what is really worth devoting our limited time and resources to in an era marked by global catastrophe, I always find my mind returning to what the Internet hasn’t really been used for yet — and what was rumored from its inception that it should ultimately provide — an utterly and entirely free education for all the world’s people.

In regard to such a concept, Bill Gates said in 2010:

Continue reading “A Free Education for All the World’s People Will Save our Species” »

Faraday Future, the fledgling Tesla competitor working to build a $300,000 electric SUV, has been thrown a financial lifeline.

Evergrande Health, a division of a large Hong Kong conglomerate, has committed to invest $2 billion to keep alive the all-electric luxury SUV project, according to a report in TechCrunch.

Faraday Future showed off its ultra-futuristic—and ultra expensive—FF91 electric SUV at the 2017 CES show, but has struggled to bring the car to market.

Continue reading “Faraday Future gets a $2 billion lifeline to build expensive crossover” »

Driven by the needs of the financial industry, researchers are working on ways to manage vast computer systems down to 100 billionths of a second.

Cafe X, the robotic coffeeshop startup, debuted its second generation robot barista kiosk on the streets of downtown San Francisco today.

Unlike other dedicated storefront locations, this new version of the Cafe X robot is a standalone kiosk that sits literally on the sidewalk at the corner of Sansome and Bush in SF’s Financial District. In addition to the updated form factor, the new version of the robot can handle multiple drink sizes (8 oz and 12 oz), clear cups, and also does nitro-infused cold brew coffee.

Continue reading “Cafe X Debuts 2nd Gen Coffee Robot Kiosk in Downtown San Francisco” »

Early adopters, speculators and Geeks are never sufficient to bring a new paradigm to market. Mass appeal and adoption of a mechanism that requires education and a change of behavior is never ‘fait accompli’—until it reaches a tipping point. Once at the tipping point, it can go viral without a structured PR campaign and with risks tied only to technology and scalability.

Continue reading “What will it take for Bitcoin to be widely adopted?” »