Breakthrough
Robert Glennon: Why a Higher Price for Water Makes Sense
Without sensible water prices, industry has no incentive to innovate and conserve.
Industrial users are not paying enough for water. The same goes for farmers, commercial businesses, municipal residents — and every other user group.
sustainability
Navi Radjou: Fighting Global Warming with Frugal Innovation
Businesses can do more with less and find a sustainable path to growth by following the principles of frugal innovation.
Heads of state from around the world have gathered in Paris with a lofty goal — no less than saving the world. While political leaders seek an international agreement to keep global warming from threatening human existence, business leaders are confronted with their own challenge: how to achieve a sustainable model for growth.
climate-change
François Austin: Progress Toward Balanced, Sustainable Energy World Remains Slow
From the Brink: As part of a regular series featuring content from BRINK, François Austin discusses the need for greater international cooperation on sustainable energy.
sustainability
Brandon Owens and Thibault Desclee: Beyond Policy — The Future of Renewable Energy
Renewables are key to a sustainable global power supply. Private-sector ingenuity and collaboration can help accelerate the transition toward a low-carbon energy future.
artificial-intelligence
Will Artificial Intelligence Do Great Harm or Great Good? — Interview with Marcelo Gleiser of Dartmouth College
We must consider the key moral and policy questions around artificial intelligence and cyborg technologies to ensure our innovations don’t destroy us.
How much do we really know about the impact of scientific breakthroughs — on technology or on society? Not enough, says Marcelo Gleiser, the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College.
Breakthrough
Aubrey de Grey: Can We and Should We Give Ourselves Indefinite Youth? Oh Yes
The marginalization of anti-aging research is our most shameful humanitarian failure.
sustainability
Debora Frodl: Solving Global Resource Challenges
Beyond smart policies, innovation and private-sector collaboration will help solve the world’s resource challenges.
The world’s resource challenges are very much top of my mind as we anticipate the start of the important 2015 United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP21), which will take place in Paris from November 30th through December 11th. At GE, we are deeply committed to helping to address the world’s most pressing resource challenges.
3D Printing
Nicole Y. Lamb-Hale: How to Protect Your 3D-Printed Assets
The gains from the global 3D printing revolution come with tremendous risk of IP theft — if not carefully managed.
The 3D printing industry is expanding at a rapid pace. Global revenue from additive manufacturing, which consists of printing layer upon layer of a material to make an object out of a digital file, is expected to top $21 billion by 2020 — a seven-fold increase from 2013.
Breakthrough
Are Humans Becoming More God-Like? Interview with Yuval Noah Harari of Hebrew University
Technology will enable people to “upgrade” to god-like cyborgs in a century or two. That could be a good thing, as long as the technology is serving us — not the other way around.
Is technology enabling us to become ever-more god-like? And would that be a good thing?
As artificial intelligence (AI) and embedded technologies empower people to become “more than human,” future advances could become as much of an ethical question as a technological one.
Breakthrough
Steve Gullans: To Be Human Is To Adapt
The pace of innovation may be accelerating, but our ability to adapt to the latest technologies remains undeterred.
Technology is not an obstacle to humanity. Humans evolve — behaviorally, physically, morally, biologically.
Over many millennia, humans migrated around the globe adapting to changing climates, predators, foods, pathogens, rival tribes and countless obstacles and opportunities. To be human is to adapt.