The Digital Life - Design and Technology Podcast: Recent Episodes

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The Digital Life http://www.thedigitalife.com is an online radio show that explores important, timely topics in the world of design and emerging technologies like genomics, robotics, and the Internet of Things.

The show is created by GoInvo http://www.goinvo.com, a studio designing the future of healthcare, whose clients include market leaders like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Walgreens, as well as micro startups that will create the markets of the future.

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tdlpodcast

This week, on The Digital Life, we discuss the impact of AI on the future of creative work.

This week, on The Digital Life we discuss emerging tech and the transformation and fear of change that comes with it. For instance, over the past two years there have been at least 21 attacks on driverless vehicles in Chandler, a city located near Phoenix, Arizona, where Google spin-off company Waymo tests its vans. The reaction of Chandler's residents to this encroaching technology represents the worries that we face as a society when confronting an automated future. Join us as we discuss.

From AI to gene editing, wearables to 3D printing, we take a look at the emerging tech trends for 2019 in this, our final episode of The Digital Life 2018 season.

This week on The Digital Life, we talk with author and designer Cennydd Bowles about ethics and emerging technologies. Cennydd’s new book “Future Ethics”, published in September, is available in print and digital from Amazon and the book's Web site (https://www.future-ethics.com/).

How do we conceive of ethics for emerging technologies? From data privacy issues, to embedded bias in software systems, to the myriad problems posed by artificial intelligence, what ethical issues should really matter to us, as a society? And, how do we grapple with these as new technologies emerge and gain traction?

For instance, mainstream conversations about ethics and artificial intelligence are typically centered around science fiction-type topics such as machines that are smarter than, or even from an evolutionary standpoint replacing, humans. This might be entertaining but is not addressing the real ethical issues that matter in the years and decades ahead. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we talk about the future of work, the anxiety of the gig economy, and how we might re-imagine digital platforms, inspired by the essay “Do platforms work?” on Aeon.co. In the Gig Economy, work is an on-demand affair, driven by the needs of the moment, whether you're an Uber driver, freelance marketing expert, or contract product designer. The temporary nature of this work — which is arbitrated by software which matches buyers and sellers — puts much power in the hands of the platform owner. For gig workers, earning a living is dependent on demand, reputation, and ultimately, the whims of a digital overlord. But what if there was a way for these workers to own a piece of that all important platform? Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss the possibilities and perils of editing human genes in light of the news, earlier this week, that Chinese scientist He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology, claimed to have created the first gene-edited babies using CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool. The twin girls had the CCR5 gene deleted to make them resistant to HIV and other diseases. The scientist is now being investigated over whether the experiment was in violation of Chinese laws and regulations. This technology is particularly sensitive from an ethics standpoint because any changes will be inherited by future generations. What are the consequences that stem from this experiment, perhaps, the first gene-edited humans? Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the Productivity Paradox, inspired by the recent article in MIT Technology Review, “Advanced tech, but growth slow and unequal: paradoxes and policies”. While we're experiencing an unprecedented boom in technology, the accompanying massive productivity boost that we might expect to see has failed to materialize. In fact, in many major economies, productivity growth is slowing. So, what's the reason for this unexpected outcome? To begin with, our ability to absorb, integrate, and leverage technologies effectively — from mobile to artificial intelligence to the internet of things — has limits. While the technology might be present, it is not been distributed and utilized in ways that have yielded productivity gains in rapid fashion. Constructing the systems, workflows, and roles to take advantage of these new technologies will take time. And, in concert with these, it will be vital that, as a society, we develop policies that support and enable people to shift into new work roles and invest time in learning new skills. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss emerging technologies and the self. What makes us ourselves, the way we take in information, the way we share, communicate, collaborate and interact with people has gone digital in a number of ways. In particular, we delve into the topic of virtual reality experiences and empathy, based on the article in Aeon, “It’s dangerous to think virtual reality is an empathy machine”. VR can change how we think about the world, helping us understanding different perspectives. For instance, the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University created a simulation from the perspective of a cow, of being raised for the slaughterhouse. There are immersive VR experiences of becoming homeless and experiencing racism. But what is the true impact of these early experiments? Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the pitfalls of predicting AI. AI predictions range from the measured and meaningful to highly unrealistic and downright hysterical. But how can you tell the difference? In this episode, we dig into some rules of thumb for thinking through the AI predictions we encounter, as laid out in the article "The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions" by Rodney Brooks, a founder of Rethink Robotics. From better understanding the properties of narrow AI to asking "how will it be deployed?", questioning supposed magical properties without limit, to admitting, in the long term, we just don’t know, we'll explore the many factors that counter the breathless hysteria of AI predictions. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we explore the difficulties of establishing an AI code of ethics, inspired by an article from MIT Technology Review, “Establishing an AI code of ethics will be harder than people think”.

There's already ample evidence that artificial intelligence can exacerbate existing system bias if left unchecked. And, a set of design ethics guiding AI development may be far in the future, as the difficulty of defining an applicable rule set, and the subjective nature of ethics itself, makes the task extremely difficult. However, such arguments over AI ethics often emphasize top-down efforts rather than bottom-up — for instance, auditing AI decision-making from the initial data curation stage and throughout the process. In this view, AI design and development is not a purely technical practice, but instead incorporates cultural aspects, similar to teaching children right and wrong. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week our special guest this week is Dr. Carie Little Hersh, an American cultural anthropologist, teaching professor in Anthropology at Northeastern University, and producer and host of podcast Anthropologist on the Street. We chat about human creativity and technology through time, from an anthropological perspective.

Which came first: humans or technology? And what is the relationship between homo sapiens and the species who came before us, or those such as the neanderthals with whom we competed? We consider the anthropological relationship between technology and creativity, as well as patterns in technological progression through time. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and science with special guest is Dany DeGrave, founder of Unconventional Innovation. AI and science are coming together in new and significant ways, including the use of cognitive and other innovative technologies in R&D — like NLP, machine learning, and advanced analytics. As bio-science companies rush to invest in AI, the implementation of scientific research, drug trials, and even personalized medicine is undergoing significant change. But with the potential to make erroneous decisions, and even be used for malicious purposes, it may be a long time before we fully trust AI to be used in such development.

This week on The Digital Life, we speak with special guest, Jason Grant, CEO of Integral, about human development models and the role of human development in creativity.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Ben Nelson, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Minerva, a groundbreaking university program, and an editor of the book “Building the Intentional University”.

We discuss some of the key problems with higher education, how Minerva is rethinking the university system to support how people actually learn, and the ways in which the tech-enabled learning experience for Minerva students and professors is vastly different from those of a more traditional college or university.

This week on The Digital Life, our guest is Pam Pedersen, Principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. There's perhaps no better way to invest in the future than in preparing students for their life and careers ahead. How that may be best achieved, however, is subject to debate. It's clear that the US educational system is ripe for change. But what teaching philosophies or methodologies are best? Innovations Early College High School is designed to facilitate blended learning and to allow for flexibility in order to best meet the academic goals of each individual student. It's an approach far different from the typical high school. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, chat about automation and reinventing yourself in the job market.

Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of books like Sapiens and Homo Deus had this to say about automation and the difficulties of reinventing your career on the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast:

“It’s questionable how many times a human being can reinvent himself or herself during your lifetime—and your lifetime is likely to be longer, and your working years are also likely to be longer. So would you be able to reinvent yourself four, five, six times during your life? The psychological stress is immense. So I would like to see a science fiction movie that explores the rather mundane issue of somebody having to reinvent themselves, then at the end of the movie—just as they settle down into this new job, after a difficult transition period—somebody comes and announces, ‘Oh sorry, your new job has just been automated, you have to start from square one and reinvent yourself again.'”

Have you ever had to reinvent yourself during your career, maybe due to automation? Personal characteristics like flexibility and creativity play a role as well as external factors like work availability and the market. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week we chat about human / machine hybrids — the combination of AI and people — into advanced teams that produce amazing creative output. From chess to photography, art to science, these so-called "Centaurs" may represent the future of work for many fields. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the next step in art and AI. While AI has certainly been used to create artwork like the Next Rembrandt project, these pieces have been more curiosity or proof-of-concept. But, is the art world really ready for pieces generated by Artificial Intelligence? We'll find out this fall, in October, when Christie’s New York — a branch of the British auction house, founded in 1766 — sells an AI-produced work of for the first time. The print itself was created by an algorithm developed by the French art collective Obvious. Is AI the new tool for artists? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about synthetic biology and the new categories of emergent life that will result from its practice. The work of synthetic biologists is changing the way that life evolves. How can we sort through the new categories of life that will be designed by humans, not necessarily evolved through natural selection? And what is the nature and role of digital information — genetic data that will now define a blueprint of a newly designed life form? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat with special guest Katja Grace from AI Impacts, whose research is focused is the future of AI. Where will AI be in 10 years and what kind of impact will it have on the world? The buzz now is that deep learning will increasingly automate knowledge work. AI and automation will change creative fields, from research science to journalism, fiction writing to graphic design, software engineering to management activities. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about the Department of Homeland Security's new cyber defense organization. The National Risk Management Center will be in charge of coordinating efforts to prevent hackers from targeting key US economic and other assets including the country's power grids, energy infrastructure, and importantly, its electoral system during the midterm elections. The new organization will work closely with private companies to tackle the wide variety of cyber threats facing the nation. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about capitalism and the problems that it causes as we're creating a digital future. Digital capitalism, as it stands, is not only an extension of an unfair and oppressive system, it's actually making things worse. If indeed technology is leverage, we're not using it for solving the right problems. We may have Fair Trade coffee, but we certainly don't have Fair Trade mobile phones, software, or digital services. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we dig into the broad array of applications of AI and the role that the AI mind has in augmenting human intelligence. When it comes to AI, what kind of intelligence are we talking about? On one end of the continuum, we have Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that's theoretically capable of human cognition. AGI is an intelligent agent, aware of its surroundings, adaptable to a variety of circumstances, and capable of solving problems and achieving goals. But AGI is a long way from being achieved. On the other end, we have AI services today that specialize in particular tasks, narrow AI that can be used for things like image or speech recognition. Within this continuum, there are, of course, many different ways that we can create and apply AI to augment human intelligence. Join us as we discuss.

Our special guest this week on The Digital Life is design strategist, Ben Sauer, who's investigating the idea of secret design skills for his new book. Design is filled with cross-pollination from other fields, from writing to architecture, acting to music. From these other fields we find ways of seeking, thinking and doing that are useful to a designer. What's your secret design skill? Join us as we discuss.

On the podcast this week, we take a look at the strange new world of developing digital humans — convincing CGI rendering of people in virtual space, which may or may not be connected to AI. Pioneering this category of virtual person are brand influencers and supermodels on Instagram, like Lil Miquela, who conceivably could make money endorsing fashion products like clothing and make-up. In a B2B context, when wired up to an AI-driven chat bot, these virtual people could take the place of person-to-person customer service, as in the case of Ava, from Autodesk. What happens when we're able to create convincing digital representations of people who can communicate and influence? Join us as we discuss.

On the podcast this week, we examine facial recognition software and digital disguises. It seems like AI-driven facial recognition systems are just about everywhere—from the face-scanning technologies for law enforcement and government to everyday social media tagging. Tools like these can be used for the public good or harm. And there's no doubt that we're concerned about facial recognition surveillance encroaching on our personal privacy. While clothing like glasses, hats, or even masks can somewhat inhibit facial recognition, it's not a huge surprise that disguises of a digital nature, anti-facial-recognition systems, are on the rise as well. For example, researchers at the University of Toronto have developed software to hinder facial recognition using an algorithm that slightly alters the images. And while humans can't really tell the difference, an AI that scans a photo altered in this way, won't be able to identify a face. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss “gaming" techniques and design fiction for the purposes of imagining possible scenarios around emerging technologies and their effects and consequences.

Johns Hopkins University's Center for Health Security recently sponsored an exercise in Washington DC, CladeX, to evaluate governmental response to potential future pandemics. This exercise introduced a scenario—using realistic virology and epidemiological models—in which a man-made virus was released as part of a terrorist attack. This CladeX exercise is similar to the type of envisioning practice that's used in design fiction to work through the implications of a new technology, imagine it within a human context, and look at elements related to its misuse. As a part of the event, the Center for Health Security also presented strategic policy recommendations for preventing or reducing the worst possible outcomes in future pandemics. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the idea of “super technologies”—the combination and subsequent amplification of emerging technologies like AI, robotics, and the IoT.

The recently released MIT Sloan executive guide "Seven Technologies Remaking the World" highlights pervasive computing, wireless mesh networks, biotechnology, 3D printing, machine learning, nanotechnology, and robotics as "the starting line of a universal technological revolution”. Further, the report continues, “beyond their individual impact, an intriguing and powerful aspect of the seven technologies lies in their potential as combinations.”

On The Digital Life, we've previously discussed the concept of super technologies under the moniker of Smartware. Together, these technologies promise to create a radical inflection point at the same scale as personal computers in the 1970s, the Internet in the 1990s, and mobile computing in the 2000s. Join us as we discuss!

On The Digital Life this week, we take another look at the future of food, in particular, meat. Because the agriculture industry is the source of about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions, there are serious environmental concerns about the consequences of producing meat for a growing global population. The UN predicts that the number of people on the planet will grow to 9.8 billion by 2050, from 7.6 billion today. Compared to vegetable protein, raising animals for food is highly inefficient, using more land, water, fertilizer, and pesticides. This won’t work for a population of nearly 10 billion people.

While replicating meat in a convincing way is difficult, companies like Impossible Foods are now selling well-reviewed substitutes for ground beef. To see what the future of food might hold, we try out some meatball sandwiches made of Impossible Foods' product for lunch. Join us as we discuss the results of our experiment, and the evolution of food tech in general.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the creative jobs of the future with special guest, Daniel Harvey, Head of Product Design and Brand at The Dots. With current technology trends in mind, from AI to robotics, and their effects on design practice and ethics, we look forward a decade and speculate how a variety of the jobs of today—software engineer, UX designer, digital composer, and onward—will change, and correspondingly what the job titles and needs within that time frame might look like.

This week on The Digital Life, our special guest is Noam Brown, a PhD student in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, who with his advisor, Professor Sandholm, created Libratus, an AI which decisively defeated four of the world's best human poker professionals in a Man vs. Machine competition. The breakthrough was published in Science, received widespread mainstream news coverage, and continues to be cited as one of the milestone achievements of AI. Join us as we discuss poker, the application of AI to imperfect information games, and the possibilities for this kind of artificial intelligence to be used in negotiation and other real world scenarios.

This week on The Digital Life, our special guest is Christopher Janney, a pioneer in the field of sound art, merging architecture, sound, light, and interactive technology. For over 30 years, Janney has been blending music and light with the physical space in unexpected ways, including public art installations like Soundstair, which can be viewed at the Boston Museum of Science, and the playful Rainbow Cove at Logan Airport. Janney famously worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov on "Heartbeat:mb", which used a medical sensor to monitor Baryshnikov's heartbeat to provide the rhythmic music to his dancing. Janney is bringing his show, “Exploring the Hidden Music”, to the Boston University Dance Theater on Friday, June 8th at 8 pm. Join us as we discuss art at the intersection of music, architecture, and technology.

"Exploring the Hidden Music" at BU http://www.bu.edu/fitrec/2018/04/27/exploring-the-hidden-music-6-8/

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the latest salvos in the streaming video wars as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube Red duke it out.

On YouTube Red, the show Cobra Kai is full of GenX nostalgic goodness. But is that enough for a service to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu? And will it attract new subscribers in a crowded marketplace for streaming video? Netflix may have some original content programming problems of its own. Does data really give you a better show? Or does every television series wind up feeling the same—the plots washed out imitations? When it comes to video streaming, what’s more important, content or platform? And how does this all shake out? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the environmental price of technology and the growing need for sustainable design and UX. A series of research studies has detailed the increasing carbon footprint of the tech industry. The largest contributor to this carbon footprint are servers and data centers, but as more IoT devices come online, they are sure to play an increasing role. We need to reduce, reuse, and recycle our technology, over the course of the product lifecycle, and this is where sustainable UX design can have an impact. In industrial design, there are a number of environmentally friendly approaches including Design for Disassembly and Design for Remanufacturing. Can these types of ideas be applied to the design of software and the Web? In what ways can UX help reduce the carbon footprint of tech? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about creativity and the neuroscience of improvisation. Over the past decade, the field of improvisational neuroscience has exploded. Neuroscientist Dr. Charles Limb investigated the neural underpinnings of spontaneous musical performance by examining improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. Dr. Limb wanted to know more about the cognitive context enabling the emergence of spontaneous creative activity. Dr. Limb's research and others like it are fundamental to discovering how human creativity operates. Everyone is creative, it’s just a matter of degree. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the Redwood Genome Project, a five-year initiative launched by the Save the Redwoods League to sequence the coast redwood and giant sequoia genomes, in order to better understand the redwoods on a genomic scale, and in so doing, protect and restore the forests.

Threats to the redwoods include not only logging and development, but also disease, drought, and pests, which have been exacerbated by climate change. Because the redwoods manifest a broad genetic range, some are better at withstanding drought or resisting disease than others. In the past, reforestation projects placed an emphasis on those varieties exhibiting rapid growth rather than these other traits. However, today managers must be able to plan for a genetically diverse forest.

The Redwood Genome Project has begun to sequence, assemble, and annotate these genomes. It will also develop tools for assessing genetic diversity, which will assist in the creation of the forest management plans. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about automation, potential job losses, and the findings in Barclay's newly released report: "Robots at the gate: Humans and technology at work".

Technology is reshaping work and the global workforce from agriculture to manufacturing, financing to healthcare, and everything in between. Transformation is coming, maybe more quickly than we think. Routine work is being automated and non-routine jobs that favor human ingenuity and adaptability will make up the core of future employment. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the USDA's recent announcement, declaring a regulation free approach to the design, cultivation, and sale of certain gene-edited plants.

On March 28, 2018, the USDA made an important announcement that included the following statement: "Under its biotechnology regulations, USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques ...." This includes new methods, like genome editing, that "can introduce new plant traits more quickly and precisely, potentially saving years or even decades in bringing needed new varieties to farmers."

Genetically modified crops may be better able to resist herbicides, withstand viral and fungal attacks, contain more nutrients and even be more flavorful. However, in the US, because such GM food products will not likely be subject to disclosure, it's only a matter of time before CRISPR altered foods are available at your grocery store with (or without) your knowledge. Join us as we discuss.

What happens when we can’t distinguish between the real and the artificial? On The Digital Life this week, we chat about what happens when we're able to create convincing representations of people, digitally.

At the Game Developer Conference last week, Epic Games showed off Siren, a digital character powered by the real-time motion capture of an actress on the stage. The character detail, shading, and lighting was of especially high quality, including realistic looking facial expressions. While Siren isn't quite capable of blurring the line between CGI and reality, the technology is definitely a big step in that direction.

The longer term possibilities of technologies like this seem endless: With realistic digital rendering of people in virtual space, it will be possible to digitally capture yourself or your family to potentially interact with future generations. On the other hand, it will also be possible to make it appear as if people said things that they really didn't, further contributing to the deluge of digital misinformation. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week we chat about data, our digital selves, and the ongoing debate over privacy and permission given the recent revelations regarding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook's user profiles.

This week on The Digital Life, for our 250th episode, we discuss designing a creative culture with guest Juhan Sonin, director of our studio, GoInvo.

Many companies try to create a design-centered culture in order to drive innovation but fall flat. We talk about some of our studio tenets and approaches that have worked. In particular we dig into the concept of transparency: seeking to tell the truth to others, both within and without an organization, with the intention of doing the most possible good. We also explore the concept of continuous learning, as we are curious, open creators, who welcome new ideas and the input of others. Join us as we discuss!

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about a recent study, published in the journal Science by researchers at MIT Media Lab and the MIT Sloan School of Management, showing that false news spreads more quickly online than truthful news. We explore the alarming implications for our ongoing political discussions and possible impacts on society of the spread of misinformation on social media.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about net neutrality, the digital divide, and fast, cheap Internet for all with guest Brough Turner, Founder of netBlazr.

What is net neutrality and why is it important? And why should it matter to the average consumer? Often, access to the Internet is controlled by only a few providers in a given geographic area. Given this near monopoly in many regions of the country, the idea of net neutrality, or the idea that ISPs should enable access to all content regardless of source, without showing favor to or blocking particular sites, is rooted in an egalitarian view of online information and service distribution. Join us as we discuss.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we talk about designing voice user interfaces with engineer Claire Sun, who just returned from the Conversational Interaction Conference. Today, the voice UI market is primarily focused on performing tasks and controlling devices related to the smart home. Voice recognition technology isn’t robust enough yet to function smoothly in noisy environments or tell the difference between multiple speakers. Additionally, the software that powers VUIs is still at the early stages of being able to understand language in context, as opposed to more simple, transactional phrases. Join us as we discuss approaches to designing VUIs, and the difficulties that designers and engineers encounter in their quest to create software that’s both personal and conversational.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we chat about Estonia's E-Residency program, which encourages entrepreneurs to become virtual residents of the country, so they can have a European company. It's a really interesting and innovative way to think about citizenship, basically ignoring geography, but leveraging it at the same time. It's not unusual for countries to sell their citizenship, including the US, but this is slightly different. If innovators and entrepreneurs can go anywhere they want in the world to find the best deal, best benefits, or the like, what does that mean for the future of nation states? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we chat with guest Mary Ellen Sparrow, CEO of NextShift Robotics, about collaborative robotics and automation. NextShift focuses on developing robots that work in concert with people on the warehouse floor for e-commerce operations. Unlike other automation systems, the company's technology works within a warehouse's existing infrastructure, rather than requiring a massive overhaul and build out. Its robots are designed to work in complex and variable environments. For example, they can avoid obstacles, navigating around objects in their path. Join us as we discuss robotic automation, misconceptions people may have about the relationship between jobs, workers, and robots, and the potential of this technology to transform industry in the near future.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we chat about the Human Genome Project Write. Synthetic biologists are building the engineering blueprint for life: a human cell that contains all the DNA it needs to produce more human cells. Such a blueprint could be a significant step towards major medical breakthroughs, including wiping out genetic diseases.

Synthetic biologists build DNA using specialized bio-informatics design software to write the code. In the lab, this DNA code is then chemically synthesized. The software tools for this process, however, are still at their formative stages, and lack the necessary abstraction layer. Synthetic biologists must still work at the most basic level of DNA code—the A,C,G, and Ts—unlike, say computer coders who usually stay several layers above the 0s and 1s.

Some of the other challenges this project will face include creating a legal framework and policy to govern the technology, establishing rules around intellectual property, and even coming to a shared understanding of ethical boundaries and prohibitions across the genomic research community. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about water scarcity, natural resources, and design.

In Cape Town, South Africa, the current water shortage has reached crisis level. Residents are cutting water usage in every way possible— using water collected from showers to water plants and flush toilets. The authorities warn that Cape Town is just a few months away from having to shut off its taps: “Day Zero”. To prevent this from happening, starting Feb. 1, residents will be required to use no more than 13.2 gallons of drinking water a day. By way of comparison, the average American uses about 100 gallons of water per day.

If climate change is causing extreme weather events, like droughts, to become more common, humanity will have to adjust to using less of that most important resource, water. Design of water conservation products and services, along with technological solutions for obtaining more potable water, like desalination, will become increasingly important. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about design and creative professionals and what the future of work might look like for them. Our special guest on the show is Daniel Harvey, Head of Product Design and Brand at The Dots, a professional network for “no collar'” professionals.

Alongside with the immense power and flexibility that technology can bring, comes an evolution in, not only how we get creative work done, but also why we do it. Values and behaviors are changing among job seekers in creative industries. We see some of this, for example, in the growing emphasis on project work, rather than on continuous employment. Further, with such powerful emerging technologies as AI, will it be possible, eventually, to automate creativity? And if this is the case, will people be able to accept that technology driven output as creative? How will designers and other creative professionals survive and thrive in this environment? It's critical that we design roles and organizations that make the most of people, while leveraging technology. And, that we properly educate the next generation of designers so they can thrive and compete in the future. Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about international law and cyber war. According to a World Economic Forum article, over 30 governments have acknowledged that they have offensive cyber capabilities including: espionage and spying; sabotage including denial-of-service attacks and attacks on the power grid; and, perhaps the most talked about recently, propaganda.

The difficulties of developing policy to regulate and respond to emerging technology like these cyber war capabilities highlights the problems of working within interlocking, complex systems of governmental and political process, meant for a previous era, that are now subject to rapid changes.

And managing policy within the areas of fast moving emerging technologies—from software to genomics to robotics—will only get more difficult. What is the right way, or is there even a right way for governments and societies to respond to this need for laws and regs? Join us as we discuss.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about all the new technology fun as CES 2018, the de facto emerging tech showcase, gets going in Las Vegas.

The smart home battleground is heating up as AI virtual assistants, like Google and Amazon Alexa, are being built into everyday household items and appliances. For instance, the bathroom is fast becoming a smartroom with Alexa incorporated into products like Kohler's new mirror, which can personalize light levels for different tasks, and Moen's digital shower technology, that enables users to set a specific water temperature. Connecting the digital to the physical is a big theme for CES this year, as AI is rolled out for a bevy of products and services. Join us as we discuss all this and more.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about science, emerging technology and whiskey with Sammy Karachi from Relativity Whiskey. American craft whiskey is having a big moment and, more and more, innovation in science and technology is changing how whiskey is being made. In particular, Relativity Whiskey, uses a special, data-driven, maturation technology to age the spirit more quickly, saving years of time in the process. How will software and algorithms shape the whiskey creation process in the future? Join us as we discuss.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we wrap up the year with some emerging tech predictions for 2018. We discuss the expansion of AI services in significant ways, automated trucks on the road, Target's online struggles, Amazon's difficulties in exploiting niche businesses, and the streaming services war as Disney prepares to take on Netflix among other topics.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about the future of education and skills our children may need in the next economy. A recent article featured on the World Economic Forum Web site, “Forget coding, we need to teach our kids how to dream”, argues that attributes like relationships, curiosity, agility, creativity, and empathy, will be more important for the economy of 2030, rather than skills that could very well be subsumed by machine automation, like, for instance, coding. Join us as we discuss.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about the frontiers of CGI and how we might approach it as reality and the virtual become increasingly indistinguishable. In a video essay, “Goodbye Uncanny Valley” in Aeon online magazine, artist and animator, Alan Warburton, explores this topic, examining everything from Hollywood blockbuster to political propaganda to digital art. What are the agreements that we make as a society regarding what is fact and fiction? How do we make decisions about important issues? Have we reached the post truth era? And, if so, how do we create policy when we have such powerful technology capable of both distorting and augmenting our experience of reality? Join us as we discuss.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about the new "company town" and real estate development by Google and Facebook. As a part of their attempt to attract the best and the brightest to their tech organizations, Google and Facebook are acquiring and developing swaths of real estate in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places to live in the US and real estate values there continue to skyrocket. This means that the affordability of housing can be a significant obstacle to the hiring process. Of course, by adding strategically located housing not far from their office facilities to their expansive list of company perks, Google and Facebook encourage hires to work longer hours too. Join us as we discuss this latest wrinkle in creative class work.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about artificial intelligence (AI) and Juvet Agenda. In September of this year, a group of designers, innovators, and futurists gathered at the Juvet nature retreat in Norway to discuss AI, its trajectory and potential outcomes. The group explored making AI human centric, the big and small problems to solve using AI, and dealing with unintended consequences of the technology. The Juvet Agenda, an online publication that came out of the conference, highlights four major areas of discussion, including: power and control; bias, transparency, and authenticity; human and societal well-being; and perspectives for action. How do we understand and prepare for the opportunities brought about by AI? How do we consider AI within the toolset of emerging technologies? Join us as we discuss.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat with special guest Karen Kaushansky about designing new user experiences and interfaces for emerging technologies. Karen is an Experience Designer and Futurist, who works on products 5-10 years before they are on most people’s radars — designing new experiences from speech recognition to biometrics to autonomous vehicles. We discuss new technologies that should be on a designer’s radar now and how both the design field and the designer’s job is evolving. For instance, the design process for creating new experiences, like autonomous vehicles, needs to include ways of managing the unforeseen consequences of emerging technologies — a much different approach from design for more established product categories. Creating these new experiences requires understanding how a broad array of design factors intersect, from industrial design to interaction design to service design.

For our podcast topic this week, we chat about new developments in additive fabrication / 3D printing and the implications for the future of manufacturing. In the past, additive fabrication systems have used powered metal materials, which are both dangerous to inhale and have a risk of exploding. However new 3D printing machines from Markforged and Desktop Metal are impressive on many fronts — faster, safer and much less expensive than previous technologies. These 3D printers use plastic-encapsulated powders and extrusion systems, which can produce parts at 1/10th of the cost. They can currently handle copper and steel. Soon even aluminum and titanium will be coming. Designers need to pay attention to the overlap of digital and physical design advanced by these technologies. Join us as we discuss.

For our podcast topic this week, we discuss the design proposal by Sidewalk Labs—a smart city technologies firm, owned by Alphabet, Google parent’s company—for the City of Toronto. Sidewalk Labs will be partnering with the city to create a mixed-use community on Toronto's waterfront. The aim of the pilot project is to build a smart city from the ground up, drawing on recent technological innovations in software analytics, the IoT, and self-driving cars, as well as improvements in methods of construction, waste disposal, and energy systems. Concerns about privacy abound, however. A recent Toronto Star editorial voiced some skepticism that promises of security and privacy protection would actually be built into the new infrastructure of the smart city. Join us as we discuss.

Resources: Alphabet is Trying to Reinvent the City, Starting with Toronto https://www.wired.com/story/google-sidewalk-labs-toronto-quayside/

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to turn Toronto area into a model smart city https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/17/alphabets-sidewalk-labs-to-turn-toronto-area-into-a-model-smart-city/

Don’t lose sight of personal privacy in futuristic city: Editorial https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2017/10/22/dont-lose-sight-of-personal-privacy-in-futuristic-city-editorial.html

For our podcast topic this week, we discuss the changing public perceptions of tech giants — Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon — and their power in and over our lives. Once seen as the facilitators of a potential techno-utopia, they're now seen as ... threats? Technology is no longer seen as neutral; It is, after all, created by people. And, the user is less and less seen as being in control; rather, we are being controlled. For instance, recently, Facebook's tools have been used to undermine the US democratic process. But, where are we headed next? Join us as we discuss.

For our podcast topic this week, we discuss product innovation for the smart home and whether Amazon is overtaking Apple when it comes to creating category disruption. Of course, Apple has a long history of disrupting categories — from the personal computer with the Apple II and again with the iMac; to music with the iPod; to mobile with the iPhone; to the tablet with the iPad. But it looks like Amazon is well positioned to be a dominant player when it comes to the smart home, with their television, music, ecommerce, and other systems all driven by the Alexa voice UI. Amazon's new hardware products, announced at the end of September, extend the Echo line in significant ways, with industrial design reminiscent of Apple's groundbreaking work on the personal computer. Is designing hardware and software for a complex ecosystem like the home, fundamentally different from other kinds of consumer product design? Join us as we discuss.

On the podcast this week, we continue our multi-episode discussion about the evolution of software and the future of computing, looking at how a handful of advances will come together to transform software and hardware into something new, which we’re calling “Smartware”. Smartware are computing systems that require little active user input, integrate the digital and physical worlds, and are continually learning on their own. Join us as we discuss the major advances in science and technology that are driving Smartware — from artificial intelligence (AI), neuroscience, and genomics to the Internet of Things (IoT) and additive fabrication / 3D printing.

On the podcast this week, we begin a multi-episode discussion about the evolution of software and the future of computing, looking at how a handful of advances — such as AI, the IoT, neuroscience, and additive fabrication — will come together to transform software and hardware into something new, which we’re calling “Smartware”. Smartware are computing systems that require little active user input, integrate the digital and physical worlds, and are continually learning on their own.

We’ll start our discussion with “a tribute to dead machines”. Technology and humanity are inseparable: It's present in every facet of our civilization. We’ll take a look at the history of technology from the era of big machines to personal computing to mobile. And, we'll discuss some early examples of Smartware including self-driving cars like Tesla's automobiles and the AI-driven voice user interface of Amazon's Echo.

On the podcast this week, we discuss artificial intelligence and music with special guest Pierre Barreau, CEO of Aiva. Aiva (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) is an AI composer. Aiva has created music used in the soundtracks for films, advertising, and games, and is the first virtual artist to be recognized by an author’s rights society. Join us as we explore how man and machine collaborate to create the future of music.

On the podcast this week, we discuss the dangers of hacking robots. As you might expect, the rise of robotics in manufacturing and other industrial activities also means a rise in possible attacks. Of course, with a successful hack of industrial robots comes the potential for some dire physical outcomes. Security researchers have demonstrated unpatched vulnerabilities in a variety of industrial robot models including collaborative robots, which are designed to work together with people, in environments such as manufacturing. These industrial robots can be compromised in ways that could cause humans bodily harm. Join us as we discuss.

For our podcast topic this week, we discuss the digital life, automation, and eliminating the human in our digital interactions. In an essay in MIT Technology Review, David Byrne of Talking Heads fame postulates that “part of making something 'frictionless' is getting the human part out of the way.” He goes on, in his essay to reflect upon how automation is eliminating the human in areas as varied as e-commerce, digital music, online education, and even social media. Does this elimination of the human element lead to less tolerance and understanding of our differences? If cooperation is what has made us successful as a species, how do we survive if we're only self-interested to the exclusion of others? And, is technology headed in this direction?

On the podcast this week, we discuss advances in the digital life and in biological engineering that are fueling the human search for immortality. It seems like humans have always been obsessed with living forever. The path to immortality, however, has necessarily been more fantasy than reality. Even The Fountain of Youth, one of the most famous fables of immortality, was erroneously connected to the biography of the conquistador Juan Ponce de León, perhaps to give the legend more weight.

It's a natural human desire is to try to extend our lives as much as possible. We’re getting better at fighting off diseases, although we’re encountering new ones all the time — obesity, various cancers, and even West Nile virus are all examples of relatively new threats. Digitally, we’re finding better and better ways of preserving our perspectives in 0s and 1s. And, there’s an interesting sociological thread that's tightly connected with such technological advances: Who gets to live the longest, and most desirable life? Whose ideas are maintained and propagated? Join us on the podcast, as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the difficulties that early adopters can encounter when using new consumer technology. In many instances, the first version of a tech product is no better than a beta release. Initial consumer iterations are often test cases for unproven inventions that can barely survive QA. Today, with so many tech products being released on a regular basis, the role of the early adopter is akin to that of an innovation guinea pig. So, why be an early adopter?

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss 21st century storytelling in light of emerging technology, which has given us a wide variety of media possibilities.Technology and storytelling have always gone hand in hand. For instance, the novel has historical roots going back hundreds, maybe even a thousand years, the technology of paper and writing language underpining its evolution. And the motion picture began in the 1930s as a storytelling medium, although the technology itself was invented 40 years prior. In the 21st century, the media for telling tales, real and fictional, is ever expanding — from video games to chat fiction to virtual reality movies. And with the possibilities of emerging tech like brain-computer interfaces and the IoT, the potential for immersive stories seems vast. How can reality compete? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss China's push to dominate AI, the interplay of technology and politics, and the competitive stakes in the rising digital global order. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China country announced a development plan last week to build a domestic industry worth almost $150B and become the world leader in AI by 2030. The Chinese government will be investing heavily to ensure it moves to the front of the line when it comes to AI. Will China become the same kind of economic powerhouse in AI, as it has in manufacturing? With the US cutting back on science research, it seems possible, even likely. Regardless, the race for AI leadership is on.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss SoundCloud's cashflow woes, the difficulties of making money with online audio, and the ongoing problem of finding business models for digitized content. Last week, SoundCloud announced layoffs of 173 employees — about half of its staff — as well as the closing of its offices in San Francisco and London, leading to speculation that the service would soon shut down. However, in a blog post entitled “SoundCloud is here to stay,” the company's CEO stated, “we did this to ensure SoundCloud remains a strong, independent company.”

As a premiere online music and podcast streaming service that enables users to share tracks, SoundCloud gives unsigned artists and podcasters an easy to reach listeners. However, the streaming audio category is getting increasingly competitive: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Pandora vie with SoundCloud for listeners' ears. How will SoundCloud survive? Is there a new business model in the company's future? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we explore designing bioinspired products with special guest Nic Hogan, a computational designer focused on the creation of design and fabrication techniques that emulate or implement biological processes. Nic’s work includes projects with Harvard iLab and bioinspired technologies currently being developed at the Wyss Institute.

On The Digital Life this week, we explore Amazon’s recent purchase of high-end grocery chain Whole Foods and how this transaction will impact the future of retail. For its $14 billion investment, Amazon gets, among other things, a strong real estate portfolio in areas of the US with wealthy, desirable demographics; sophisticated food industry logistics and warehousing; a host of purchasing relationships and agreements; and some potentially rich customer data.

It's a little ironic that an e-commerce giant such Amazon now has an unique opportunity to redefine brick-and-mortar retail as well. But, the company has been experimenting in this space for a few years. Its Amazon Go offering, for instance, is a IoT-enabled grocery store which enables customers to forgo the checkout line. People can walk in, tap their mobile phones on a turnstile, grab what they like from the shelves, and just walk out again — no waiting in line required. We can imagine that Amazon's retail technology might soon make an impact on its newly purchased grocery stores. Join us as we discuss the evolution of the retail and the consequences of the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods.

On The Digital Life this week we explore sleep, sleep tech, and creativity.

Before technology ruled our nights, humans had a much different relationship with sleep. Our rhythms, creative and otherwise, were ruled by our internal clocks and the rising and setting of the sun. But with the advent of industrialization and electric lights, and the eventual influx of glowing screens into every aspect of our lives, sleep is something that we began seeking inconsistently and increasingly doing without.

For the modern day quantifiers and body optimizers, sleep is increasingly a new realm of interest. For instance, Apple recently acquired the Finnish sleep tech company Beddit, which makes a device for tracking heart rate, breathing, and sleep time.

And, sleep is, of course, vital to our health, our mood, and our productivity. For artists, designers, and creative people in general, the sleep cycle can be intricately entangled with their creative routines and output. Whether you're an early riser, a segmented sleeper, or a night owl, the interaction of sleep and creativity can be very important. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week we take a look at designing trust in human-robot relationships. More so than with other technologies, robots require a certain level of trust. Our comfort level with robots will dictate whether we're willing to ride in driverless cars, work on the assembly line with a collaborative robot, or have a health robot caregiver. Designing human robot relationships will be key to overcoming barriers in the transition to a robot filled world. But how do we manage the wide variety of human emotional reactions? And what does this mean for the future of robot services?

Resources: Most westerners distrust robots – but what if they free us for a better life? https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/mar/27/most-westerners-distrust-robots-but-what-if-they-free-us-for-a-better-life

On The Digital Life this week we explore trends in food tech and the variety of ways we can address the problem of feeding a growing global population. According to the UN report “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision” the current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030. To feed such a population, we'll need to change the way we eat. For starters, with such a large population, there will be a high demand for protein. However, there are significant environmental and nutritional limitations for our current animal and plant-based sources. Cultured meat — meat that's grown in a lab rather than in an animal—is one option for producing protein to meet this demand. So far, however, it is expensive to produce, and as a result, has a long path to commercialization.

Other options include alternative protein sources like insects, such as grasshoppers. However, in Western societies, insect protein generally, is viewed with skepticism. To circumvent this aversion, grasshopper protein could be used in a powdered format as an additive for foods like protein shakes, energy bars, pasta sauces, and baked goods.

Lastly, we'll need to manage our existing food supplies more proactively, so that surplus is not wasted. Food waste is an issue that costs the US $218B on a yearly basis. Software for managing the logistics of food surplus is another developing area of food tech.

On The Digital Life this week we explore the variety of reasons we might be looking at the end of the Internet as we know it, at least as an open global phenomenon. This one of the ten predictions for 2017 by Nesta, (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) a UK innovation foundation that explores trends, social movements, and technological breakthroughs.

The push back against globalization, alongside nationalist movements and tense politics all over the globe, governments are increasingly subject to cyber attacks as well as a deluge of misleading information, fake news, and propaganda. According to Nesta, the results of this chaotic environment is making governments wary of the uncontrollable Internet and the possible dire consequences that come with such an open system — so much so that some are willing to consider a walled garden approach of cyber isolationism, cutting themselves off from the world and creating their own independent networks. Join us as we discuss the possibility of the end of the open, global Internet.

On The Digital Life this week we look at cybersecurity in the wake of the WannaCry ransomeware attack that affected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries on Friday and over the weekend. WannaCry is malicious software that's transmitted via e-mail. It encrypts files, locking users out of their computers and threatening to destroy their data if they don’t pay a ransom to the hackers. Last weekend, the malware spread across Europe and Asia, attacking hospital systems, universities, and companies. NHS, the National Health Service of Britain was particularly affected by the attack, causing emergency rooms to turn away patients, and medical appointments and surgery to be rescheduled. The malware behind WannaCry was stolen from the NSA, which raises the question, what is the role and responsibility of government when it comes to cybersecurity?

On The Digital Life this week we’ll look at automating knowledge work, and scientific discovery, in particular. There’s no doubt that knowledge work will change significantly in the coming decades due to massive computing power coupled with AI. It's fascinating to consider the aspects of science, technology, and design that might be easily automated. AI and deep learning are rapidly changing areas of activity that were previously thought to be the exclusive arena of human cognition. For instance, in the pharmaceutical industry, AI might automate aspects of drug discovery and development, by helping to characterize drug candidates according to likely efficacy and safety. Additionally, the number of scientific papers published each year far exceeds any scientist's ability to read and analyze them. It's reasonable to assume that AI and deep learning could assist scientists in navigating this data.

On The Digital Life this week we look at the mission to Mars. For over 40 years, NASA has sent spacecraft and rovers to study the red planet. Now, the space agency is developing the capabilities required to send astronauts, planned for the 2030s. So, why should humanity go to Mars? Luminaries from Buzz Aldrin to Elon Musk have cited a variety of reasons, which include: exploring our universe, searching for life beyond Earth, and even expanding the human presence in the solar system.

NASA has outlined three stages in its plan: Earth Reliant, Proving Ground, and Earth Independent. The first stage has already begun with the International Space Station, which has served as a proving ground for technologies and a way of advancing understanding of how the human body is effected by an extended time in space. However, in mid-April of this year, NASA announced that it will likely delay the second stage — human spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit — due to budget and software validation concerns. Join us as we discuss the mission to Mars.

On The Digital Life this week we look at how additive fabrication / 3D printing is increasingly being used for production applications in manufacturing. We may be on the verge of a new kind of product lifecycle, as we imagine a future with greater digital / physical integration, where we can print more products locally than we ship from a warehouse far away, where we can create new things that can't be manufactured in a traditional way, and where everything can be customized.

According to the Financial Times, 60% of the $6.1B of additive manufacturing product and services is now related to production applications. This includes industries including aerospace, healthcare, consumer goods and others, for products ranging from sneakers to dental retainers to jet engines. For example, the McLaren Racing team is using 3D printers from Stratasys to create and modify parts on its Formula 1 race car. Reducing the time it takes to replace parts is a key competitive advantage since Formula 1 race cars need to be constantly maintained.

Of course, additive fabrication is still limited by the speed of 3D printing and the types of materials you can use for various applications. But, as quality and speed improve, there may come a time soon where this new product lifecycle is truly possible, if not probable.

On The Digital Life this week we explore storytelling, creativity, and artificial intelligence. Our cultural evolution is reflected in our ability to communicate through stories, creating shared experiences and meaning. Recent research from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide used an AI to classify the emotional arcs for 1,327 stories from Project Gutenberg's fiction collection, identifying six types of narratives. Could these reverse-engineered storytelling components be used to build automated software tools for authors, or even to train machines to generate original works? Online streaming service Netflix already uses data generated from users' movie and television preferences to help choose its next shows. What might happen when computers not only pick the shows, but also write the scripts for them?

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss our vulnerable infrastructure, in light of the recent hacking attack on the Dallas emergency sirens. Our real world infrastructure — from power plants to airports to dams — is increasingly subject to both online and offline security breaches, which represents a significant problem in a world where the Internet of Things (IoT) is just beginning to take hold.

While the Dallas hack was accomplished via a radio or telephone signal — not an online breach — it nonetheless provides a prime example of how such attacks disrupt municipal emergency response. Over 4,000 calls flooded the city’s 911 system, forcing real emergencies to wait. Unfortunately, the spectrum of these attacks runs from malicious prank to terrorism and it's hard to know what kind of attack is happening as it occurs.

Potential outcomes, including the difficulties brought on by service disruptions for electricity, water, transportation, etc., not to mention increased skepticism of emergency systems, could potentially be life threatening. What are the solutions for such hacks on critical infrastructure? And how should we view these types of events and react to them in a resilient fashion in the future?

On this episode of The Digital Life, in light of Congress overturning online privacy rules created by the FCC, we discuss the potential consequences of corporations tracking people's online activities and selling their data. Last week, House Republicans overturned privacy rules — slated to go into effect later this year — that required broadband providers to receive consumers' permission before collecting data on their online activities. Because consumers often don’t have many options for high-speed internet providers, and because ISPs can monitor nearly everything about consumers' digital lives — from the sites they visit to the applications they use — these rules were seen as a privacy backstop, giving people the power to prevent companies from profiting from their personal information.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss ethics and bias in AI, with guest Tomer Perry, research associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. What do we mean by bias when it comes to AI? And how do we avoid including biases we’re not even aware of?

If AI software for processing and analyzing data begins providing decision-making for core elements critical to our society we'll need to address these issues.

For instance, risk assessments used in the correctional system have been shown to incorporate bias against minorities. When it comes to self-driving cars, people want to be protected, but also want the vehicle, in principle to "do the right thing" when encountering situations where the lives of both the driver and others, like pedestrians, are at risk. How we should deal with it? What are the ground rule sets for ethics and morality in AI, and where do they come from? Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss bioprinting, its various applications, from 3D printing bones to organs, and the implications for design and science. There are, of course, many uses for 3D printing in healthcare — for instance, the creation of prosthetic limbs. Bioprinting, in contrast, involves the construction of living tissue via the output of multiple layers of living cells. While bioprinting is still very much at its nascent stages, the various techniques for creating 3D organic objects have had some early triumphs, including the construction of functional blood vessels. While reproducing cells in the lab has been done for many years — skin tissue, blood vessels, etc — bioprinting, which leverages natural processes, offers the opportunity to create more complex tissue, and perhaps even complete organs. Join us as we discuss the future of bioprinting.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss deceptive software in light of the recent revelations that Uber used its Greyball application to evade and thwart municipal officials nationwide, who were looking to regulate or otherwise monitor the service. This has a similar flavor to the Volkswagen story from last year, in which the company installed special software in its diesel powered cars to specifically reduce emissions during testing by authorities. What are the ways in which consumers now need to be aware of these deceptive practices? And how should we navigate the marketplace?

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about biomimicry and nature-inspired design. As design and science intersect, biomimicry is becoming an increasingly important method for engineering new products. Recent examples include bullet train engineers imitating the beak of the Kingfisher bird to improve the aerodynamics of the train's nose; wind turbine designers creating fins inspired by the Humpback whale to reduced drag and improved lift; and automobile engineers at Ford developing a recycled paper honeycomb material to gives the cargo area of the new EcoSport exceptional strength. Scientists, engineers, and designers across many different industries are drawing inspiration from nature’s materials and seeking to understand and imitate them.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about how open source design is being brought to bear on some of the most important problems of the 21st century, including creating new tools for urban agriculture, home building, and medicine. For instance, furniture retailer Ikea recently released open source designs for a garden sphere, an urban agriculture project that can feed a neighborhood. Open source design, the Maker movement and desktop / DIY manufacturing are converging in interesting ways. Join us as we discuss.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about Ford's recent billion dollar investment in self-driving cars and what that might mean for the future of the auto industry. Ford Motor recently announced their $1B investment in Argo AI, a start-up developing autonomous vehicle tech in Pittsburg with former Google and Uber experts at the helm.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the next wave of drone technology. Most of the country saw the massive swarming drone light display that was part of Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show. The Intel Shooting Star drone system created effects not unlike sophisticated fireworks.

Have we entered the age of the drone? The possibilities seem endless: search-and-rescue missions to assist emergency crews after natural disasters, crop inspection and fertilizer / pesticide distribution for agricultural producers, delivering humanitarian supplies and medicine for NGOs, or even land surveys using heat-sensing cameras for scientists and archaeologists. Facebook is even preparing to deliver Internet to underserved areas using drones.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the high-powered Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, an initiative whose founding members include Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple. Apple was just recently added as a founding member.

The mission of the group is to educate the public about AI, study its potential impact on the world, and develop standards and ethics around its implementation. Interestingly, the group also includes organizations with expertise in economics, civil rights, economics, and research, who are concerned with the impacts of technology on modern society. These include: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the MacArthur Foundation, OpenAI, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Arizona State University and University of California, Berkeley.

Will AI build upon our society's biases and disparities and make them worse? Or does it have the potential to create something more egalitarian? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss workplace automation and the technologies that will make it happen — from robotics to artificial intelligence (AI) to machine learning. The McKinsey Global Institute released a new study on the topic this month, "A Future that Works: Automation, Employment and Productivity", which contains some interesting insights.For instance, almost every occupation has the potential to be at least partially automated, and it's likely that more occupations will be transformed than automated away. However, people will need to work in conjunction with machines as a part of their day-to-day activities, and in this new age of automation, learning new skills will be critical.Add to this the fact that working-age population is actually decreasing in many countries, and we can see how the story of automation is multi-faceted. The path to automating the workplace is a complex one that could raise productivity growth on a global scale.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss Amazon Go and the future of retail. As e-commerce continues to rise in popularity, retail stores are taking a huge hit, losing billions of dollars in transactions which have migrated online. What should physical retail look like then, in the 21st century? Ironically, Amazon, the e-commerce giant, might have the answer.

Amazon Go, the company's new retail offering being beta tested in Seattle, is a IoT-enabled grocery store which forgoes the checkout line. Customers can walk in, grab what they like from the shelves, and just walk out again — no waiting in line required. How does Amazon Go work? When customers walk in, they tap their mobile phones on a turnstile, which logs them into the store's system. It connects them to their Amazon account via an app. Amazon Go uses machine learning, sensors, and AI to track the food items that a customer selects and adds them to the app's virtual cart. If the customer picks up an item and puts it down again, the item is likewise removed from their cart.

Amazon Go is just one of a host of ideas for retail store formats that re-define that experience: product curation, showrooms (a la the Apple Store), immersive environments, etc. Join us as we discuss the evolution of the retail store.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss how data on human behavior has become an increasingly important asset in the 21st century. We start with an examination of Uber Movement, which offers access to the company’s data on traffic flow — meant for use by city planners and researchers looking for ways to improve urban mobility. This is a global data trove with information from cities all over the world, and it reflects the growing use of data assets by tech companies to influence local and national policy and law. Data on human behavior will be come an increasingly important asset in the years ahead. We can already see how Amazon, Netflix and Uber are using the data at their disposal as leverage. The big question is: what comes next?

To start off the new year on The Digital Life, we discuss cyber rights including the "right to disconnect" law that took effect in France on January 1. It looks like the enlightened humanists in France are now staking out new territory for human rights in the digital age. After hours, the French no longer need to pay attention to work e-mail for reasons of health and well being. What should digital human rights or cyber rights include? A right to our data? A right to not be harassed? A right to privacy? Maybe even a right to vote? Join us as well discuss all this and more.

For our final podcast of 2016, we chat about the big themes on the show and our favorite episodes over the past year. We had conversations on design and tech with some wonderful guests including ground breaking geneticist George Church and open science advocate and researcher, John Wilbanks. From AI to genomics to cybersecurity, we covered a wide range topics on The Digital Life in 2016. So what did we learn from a year talking tech?

AI is too smart for its own good.

Artificial intelligence is evolving rapidly, with both high profile public failure and success by a number of tech giants this year. For instance, Microsoft had to terminate Tay, its teenage chatbot, after the bot started tweeting neo-Nazi propaganda and other abusive language at people. Meanwhile, Google's DeepMind created an AI capable of beating some of the very best human players in the world at Go, the Asian strategy board game. And, we were introduced to a brand new "Rembrandt", which was 3D-printed with eerie accuracy by an artificial intelligence algorithm, trained by analyzing the artist's paintings.

DNA replaces silicon as the new material for innovation.

The fields of genomics and synthetic biology continue to press forward in astonishing ways. In Seoul, Korea, a controversial lab revealed plans to clone endangered animals in order to save them from extinction. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston University (BU) synthetic biologists created software that automates the design of DNA circuits for living cells.

Hacking and cybersecurity are front and center as online and offline worlds collide.

In 2016, cybersecurity became a primary issue in a host of critical areas including communication, energy, and politics. Power grids, airports, and other infrastructure were increasingly subject to cyber attacks and an increasing number were successful. The debate over privacy and security was reinvigorated by the hubbub around the FBI request of Apple to unlock an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters. And, Wikileaks distributed e-mails obtained by sources who hacked the DNC and individuals associated with the Clinton campaign during the U.S. presidential elections.

The automation of work is coming.

We got another startling look at what the future of work could become as software, robots, and the IoT continued to automate activities previously completed by humans. According to preliminary findings of a recent McKinsey report, 45 percent of all work activities could be automated today using technology already demonstrated. From fulfilling warehouse orders to suggesting medical treatments for ailments, the coming wave of automation will redefine jobs and business processes for factory workers and CEOs alike.

Design and science are intersecting in new and significant ways. Whether it’s in the creation of high tech clothing, embeddables, or materials, design and science are coming together in new and significant ways. Clothing designers are working with multi-disciplinary teams, integrating input from engineers and synthetic biologists into their work. From 3D-printed couture to scarves dyed with bacteria to textiles grown in the lab, emerging tech is creating rapid innovation in the fashion industry. And this year, in the burgeoning world of designing embeddables, the U.S. Patent Office approved Google’s patent for electronic lens technology, which implantable directly in the eye. These mechanical eyes might give you superhuman abilities — to see at great distance or view microscopic material, and document it all by capturing photos or video.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about our tech predictions for 2017 — from AI to custom manufacturing — and look back at how well we managed with our predictions for 2016.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about the top tech stories of this year. From Twitter's acquisition woes to exploding batteries in the Galaxy Note7, Apple vs. the FBI to the Wikileaks influence on the US presidential election, it's been an eventful and notable year with plenty of surprises.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about Facebook's new censorship tool, which features largely in the company's attempts to get back into China. The software, among other things, will regulate what kind of content is allowed in the Facebook news feed. The Chinese government is particularly concerned about unfavorable news reports, on subjects from pollution to protest, that have the potential to go viral. While critics cry foul, Mark Zuckerberg's response is that having some access to Facebook is better than none at all. Is this just a pragmatic view from Facebook, as it continues to grow its global user base? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss parenting in the digital age. Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a study on Children and Adolescents and Digital Media. The study identified both benefits from the use of digital and social media — like early learning and exposure to new ideas and knowledge — as well as risks — including negative effects on sleep and a higher incidence of obesity and depression. In this episode we explore setting boundaries for our children in the seemingly boundary-less environment of the digital life.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss digital influence in the wake of this US presidential election cycle. From Wikileaks to Hillary's e-mail server, fake news on Facebook to digital online tribes of like thinkers, in this election cyber communication matured into a mammoth force.

Facebook has been accused of helping to spread misinformation and fake news stories that influenced how the American’s voted. And, not only did WikiLeaks release thousands of hacked internal DNC e-mails just before this summer's Democratic National Convention, it also published e-mails purportedly from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman less than a month before election day. There's no doubt that digital has become incredibly influential, the question is, what happens next, as misinformation and real facts intertwine online in new ways.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss diversity in the world of tech, and the cultural, economic and societal factors that contribute to the oftentimes difficult landscape of inclusion in the industry.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that took down the Internet on the East Coast for a sustained period of time last Friday. Dyn, a Domain Name System (DNS) services company from New Hampshire was hit with multiple waves of attacks on its Internet directory servers.

This DDoS attack was propagated by an IoT botnet — essentially webcams, DVRs, and routers from all over the world — that were infected with malware. This is a very public example of an IoT outcome that was malicious rather than beneficial, an interesting case study for this emerging technology that raises serious questions about its future implementation.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss innovation, game design, and the mind of Albert Einstein. Dirk Knemeyer has been working with the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to create a new game based on the scientist's life. We explore insights gained from Dirk's research, his approach to designing the game, as well as takeaways helpful to today’s technology innovators.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss Jon Follett's new book, "Marvin and the Moths", a science fiction novel for young readers that takes a humorous look at life for middle school in a zany world impacted by emerging technologies. While "Marvin and the Moths" is Jon's first science fiction release, he has already authored a variety of other published works. Among them is “Designing for Emerging Technologies” for O’Reilly Media, published in 2014. Looking across a variety of emerging technologies and industries, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and synthetic biology, Jon outlined an audacious vision for how the technology of recent science fiction will manifest as the science fact of our near future. Jon used his background in emerging technology as fodder for this new work of fiction, and science plays an important role in "Marvin and the Moths" which was published by Scholastic in September.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss the recent announcement that the world's first baby was born from new procedure using DNA of three people. Dr. John Zhang, from the New Hope Fertility Center in New York, led the team that attempted the mitochondrial transfer procedure. The procedure replaces faulty DNA in a mother’s egg with healthy DNA from a second woman — the baby inherits genes from two mothers and one father. This prevents certain, potentially fatal genetic diseases from being passed on to the child. The United Kingdom was the first country to legalize mitochondrial transfer in 2015, but, no other country has followed with a similar law. The procedure was conducted in Mexico where there are no rules in place for this kind of activity, with a team from the US. While this technique does not specifically impact the concerns about “designer babies”, it's clear that the genomic technology is advancing far more quickly than governments are able to deal with it.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the question: "Are we too trusting of technology?"

It takes time to build trust in technology — using e-mail instead of mail, for instance, or using a credit card to purchase something online, rather than going to the store and paying there. But we now have a host of new, emerging technologies that could help us navigate life and death situations. How do we develop trust in these new systems?

An study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology, placed people in a fake emergency situation to see whether they would blindly follow a robot, rather than trust their own instincts. According to the researchers, 26 out of the 30 participants decided to follow the robot, even though it was clear that it was potentially leading them in the wrong direction and into a dangerous scenario. What kinds of questions does this raise for battlefield robots or even surgical robots? How do we maintain a healthy skepticism, but still incorporate such emerging technologies into our lives?

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss business model innovation in places you might not expect. Bill Taylor, the founder of Fast Company magazine, spoke at the Business Innovation Factory Summit last week about his new book "Simply Brilliant". We use his examples of companies experimenting and succeeding with unique business models and practices — from Lincoln Electric to Megabus — as a jumping off point for our discussion about progressive firms.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the gig economy and labor disputes. What are the new labor disputes? In many ways, they're the same as the old ones — unemployment insurance, workers comp, minimum wage, snf the right to organize — but for a new kind of worker. If the future of many kinds of work is found in their Uber-ization, what does this mean for fair labor practices? Does distributed, just-in-time work, mean that the protections for workers are gone forever? Or are there new models that we could use to fairly compensate people? We discuss regulation and the design of new labor policy in the age of Uber.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the strange and exciting world of quantum computing. Quantum computers operate on an atomic level, harnessing the power of quantum mechanics to perform processing tasks much more rapidly than computers designed using classical physics. They have the potential to perform calculations much, much faster than any of our silicon-based super computers today — up to 100 million times faster, in fact.

Research in quantum computing has up until recently, been largely theoretical, with the practical technology needed to achieve it beyond reach. But now both Google and D-Wave, a Canadian company, have made some significant progress. Will there be a coming revolution in computing power? Will quantum computers one day replace our silicon chip based computing devices?

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the quickly progressing evolutionary cycle from wearable devices to electronic clothing to embeddables. We're in a time of design experimentation combined with rapid technological advancement. A great example of this experimentation comes from design student Lucie Davis, who embedded the RFID chip for a subway pass into her high tech nails for a university project.

Technology, like attachable computers from Cambridge, Massachusetts company MC10, will provide computing power that can be placed almost anywhere on the body, in the form of small, rectangular stickers. And the MIT Media Lab working with Microsoft Research has created DuoSkin, a smart tattoo that can act like a smart device or connected interface.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss human-animal chimeras and bioethics. If you know your Greek mythology, you might be familiar with the chimera — a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature, part lion, part goat, with a tail that ends in a snake’s head. Today, the term chimera is used in embryology to describe a hybrid organism that has tissues from multiple species. And there’s interest in producing chimeras for studying disease pathology, testing drugs, and eventually organ transplantation.

Last year, however, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said it wouldn’t support this research and banned funding for it, due to bioethical and animal welfare concerns. Now, the NIH is requesting public comment on a proposal to amend sections of their guidelines for human stem cell research on the proposed scope of certain human-animal chimera research.

This week on The Digital Life is the third in our special series of episodes put together in conjunction with our friends at the GET Conference, on the cutting edge of research science and technology.

In this week’s episode we explore the topic of genomics and life extension, with interviews by Dirk Knemeyer with James Crowe of the Human Immunome Project and George Church of the Personal Genome Project.

Genomics and the science of life extension are inexorably tied together, whether we’re talking about slowing down or reversing the processes of aging to extend the human lifespan or future breakthroughs in gene therapy and organ replacement, which might eventually enable humans to have indefinite lifespans.

This week on The Digital Life is the second in our special series of episodes put together in conjunction with our friends at the GET Conference, on the cutting edge of research science and technology. In this week’s episode we explore the topic of the microbiome, with interviews with Embriette Hyde and Justine Dubilias of American Gut Project and Brian Klein of the Forsyth Institute.

We’re only just beginning to understand the microorganisms that resides in, on, and around us. In the past it was estimated that we have 10x more non-human cells than human cells. More recent estimates lower that number to equal amounts of cells for both human and microorganisms. And, while we have a mutually beneficial relationship with some of the microbiota that colonize us, for some we just don’t understand what the relationship is, yet.

On The Digital Life this week, we embark on the first in a special series of episodes put together in conjunction with our friends at the GET Conference, on the cutting edge of research science and technology.

The GET Conference is on the front lines of the open science movement, seeking to make scientific research and data accessible to both professionals and citizens.

In this episode we explore the topic of open science through interviews with Brian Bot and Jon Wilbanks of Sage Bionetworks, Alexander Wait Zaranek from the Personal Genome Project and Curoverse, and Tim Errington from the Center of Open Science.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss cyberwarfare, propaganda, and the release of the DNC's e-mails on WikiLeaks, but what some security experts have indicated to be Russian hackers.

Small groups of technologically empowered people are shaping our digital world in new ways. We've heard about the creative class of knowledge workers who leverage digital technology to build new things. These destructive actors are, in many ways, their polar opposite.

This week on The Digital Life we chat about augmented reality's first big hit — the Pokemon Go craze. The massively popular game has some good points— it forces people to get out and walk around, and it can be part of family playtime—and some not so good—it can engender fan obsession bordering on downright e-addiction.

Pokemon Go may be augmented reality’s introduction into pop culture, but how long will it last? Other attempts at AR apps, from shopping to games, have failed to catch on. What makes Pokemon Go so different? And, all the attention being paid to the app has had some negative consequences as well. This weekend, Niantic rolled out Pokemon Go to 26 countries and the game was plagued with server issues. This may have been caused by the onslaught of new players, but hackers were likely involved also in the server outages.

On this episode of The Digital Life we discuss the consequences of the Dallas police using a robot kill a gunman, who had shot and killed five officers, wounding many others.

For some observers, that the robot delivered the explosive that ultimately killed the sniper has been cause for alarm; this is the first time that police have used a robot like this in a deliberately lethal manner. However, unlike the famous dystopian sci-fi movies of our popular culture, such as the Terminator, this robot was not autonomous — It was remote controlled. In fact, the robot model is currently used by police and the military to dispose of bombs. It clearly wasn't designed to be a weapons system, and is not part of a greater strategy for police use, at least for now.

Unsurprisingly this incident contributes to the "killer robot" debate, held at the UN and elsewhere, where policy makers struggle to determine the ethics of battlefield robots. Does this event in Dallas become a precedent, prototyping future use? Robots are particularly good at repetitive, dirty, dangerous jobs. It remains to be seen if a police robots—coupled with ad hoc, tactical, creative problem solving in emergencies—become further involved in such lethal scenarios.

Just last week the Associated Press announced that it's covering Minor League Baseball games using AI software. The software from Automated Insights, draws upon supplied game data to create a written narrative. This AI is already being used by the Associated Press to create earnings stories on U.S. public companies and by corporate customers like Edmunds.com, which uses it to generate descriptions of cars for its Web site.

So, AI can cover a baseball game, parsing the data and creating a narrative, but is the writing any good? So far, it seems to generate stories that are readable, but not really compelling or interesting beyond the most mundane facts. Is this the future of sports journalism? Join us as we discuss AI and baseball.

On The Digital Life this week we chat about the intersection of technology and the home, and how it's changing our lives.

Furniture maker, Ikea recently released their third annual "Life at Home" report, which has some interesting insights into how tech is altering our home lives. In particular, there are some great revelations and analysis about privacy, light and noise pollution, and "things"—because, let's face it, we're probably own way too much stuff.

On The Digital Life this week we discuss the future of UX as envisioned in Dirk Knemeyer's article “Understanding Us: A New Frontier for User Experience” which was published in the recent UXmatters relaunch.

It seems like today is a good time to be a UX professional, but what does the landscape look like professionally, and how is it going to change in the future? In the article, Dirk considers neuroscience, in particular, as an area that UX will both influence and be influenced by, as it converges with the world of science and biotech.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the next wave of innovation in technology and new forms of design that will come along with it. Emerging technology needs design —from the IoT to AI, virtual reality to robotics, nanotechnology to 3D printing, genomics to synthetic biology. We talk about where we've been, and where we're going next.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we chat about urban agriculture and its importance to the cities of the future. We’re quickly approaching 8 billion people on the planet. More than half of them live in cities, and this number will continue to grow. The agriculture industry is resource intensive, especially when it comes to water and energy usage. Around the world, as they plan for the cities of the future, people are looking at urban agriculture.

Urban agriculture has many benefits.Because food is grown locally, near where we live, it reduces the cost and environmental impact of long supply chains. Locally grown also means we always get fresh produce.

Cities benefit from the increased greenery of urban agriculture which, importantly, reduces the "heat island" effect, caused by impermeable city surfaces are and dry which make urban regions warmer than nearby rural areas. Additionally, urban farming can bring healthy food as well as jobs to underserved urban areas.

In this episode we discuss the current state of urban agriculture and its future, including vertical farms and products like the Grove Ecosystem.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the plan to create a complete artificial human genome. A few weeks ago, scientists, entrepreneurs, and government officials met in a closed door meeting at Harvard University at an eventintended to create interest and momentum around the follow-up to the Human Genome Project — apublic / private collaboration to synthesize a human genome.

Over the past decade, the technology for encoding genes has improved at a fantastic rate. Since the early 2000s, the cost has dropped from four dollars to just three cents per base pair. However, while big pharma and big agriculture currently synthesize gene sequences for products including biologic drugs and GMO plants, these strands of genetic material are usually only a few thousand letters in length. Contrast that with the 6 billion letters needed for the human genome, and we can begin to see the ambition of this new proposed endeavor. In this episode, we explore some of the arguments in favor of and against writing human code.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the myriad products launched at Google I/O 2016.

To begin with, this summer the latest and greatest version of Android, the master platform for much of the Google software ecosystem, will make its debut. No longer just a mobile device OS, Android supports wearables (Android Wear 2.0), virtual reality (Daydream), and even automobile interfaces. In addition to the many flavors of Android, Google also showcased Allo, its AI-powered messaging app; Duo, its FaceTime competitor; as well as Google Home, its voice-activated product for the smart home.

On this episode of The Digital Life we discuss Google's Sidewalk Labs and its radical plans to design a smart city from scratch. Sidewalk Labs wants to work with cities to build applications that solve big urban problems and accelerate innovation around the world. However, in their pursuit of these solutions, the company is seeking autonomy from many city regulations, so it can build free of the many constraints that come with the design of streets, parking, and utilities.

Sidewalk Labs already has two solutions in progress: Flow, a transportation coordination platform in partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation; and LinkNYC, kiosks with gigabit fiber connections delivering WiFi, USB charging, free voice calls, and a tablet for access to the Internet.

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we chat about the ever changing world of eSports and how it's evolving.

Esports are becoming increasingly important and varied. For instance, at the collegiate level, the Big 10 Network is broadcasting the League of Legends invitational event at PAX East, the major gaming conference.

And new, virtual sport platforms are gaining in prominence as well. ESPN recently signed a multi-year deal with the International Drone Racing Association (IDRA to bring races to a mainstream audience, beginning with the US National Drone Racing Championships in New York City. In drone races, operators see a first-person view of the action, via goggles streaming video from a camera positioned on the front of the drone.

Can an AI create art? This week on The Digital Life we chat about the brand new "Rembrandt", 3D printed by an artificial intelligence algorithm that was trained by analyzing the artist's catalog of 346 paintings.

The Next Rembrandt project, which was recently unveiled in Amsterdam, is, of course, not exactly the work of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, but rather a portrait that replicates both the subject matter and the style of the artist with eerie accuracy.

If art is an expression of humanity, a reaction to the world and the events around us, what does this latest AI advancement mean? We discuss all this and more.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about the intersection of computer science / engineering and synthetic biology and Cello, a programming language for living cells.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Boston University (BU) synthetic biologists have created software that automates the design of DNA circuits for living cells. This software, called Cello, has the potential to help people, who are not necessarily skilled biologists, to quickly begin designing useful, working biological systems. Using Cello, oil companies, for example, could develop smart bacteria that could clean up oil spills. Cello, which is open source, can be downloaded from the online repository GitHub or accessed via a Web interface.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about the evolution of artificial intelligence in light of recent public failure and success by tech giants in the AI space. First, Microsoft had to terminate Tay, its teenage chatbot, after the bot started tweeting neo-Nazi propaganda and other abusive language at people. Meanwhile, Google's DeepMind has created an AI capable of beating some of the very best human players in the world at Go, the Asian strategy board game.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss efforts to clone animal species to save them from extinction. In Seoul, Korea, a controversial lab plans to clone endangered animals using a technique called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), in which you extract the nucleus of skin cells from the animal you wish to clone, and then insert them into an egg with its nucleus removed. The lab has successfully used SCNT in their current business, cloning favorite pets who are recently deceased for a high price tag.

Will cloning help or hurt these endangered species? What is the ultimate purpose and benefits? On The Digital Life, we discuss all this and more.

This week on The Digital Life we discuss how death, burial, and remembrance is changing as it intersects with technology.

A host of factors, from demographic shifts and an increasing population to lack of land space and environmental concerns, are changing the ways in which we remember the departed.

For instance, in a downtown Tokyo temple, Ruriden, a futuristic graveyard space, features thousands of glowing glass Buddha statues. Each of these statues will eventually represent a deceased person and visitors can use a swipe card to easily locate the correct statue corresponding to their deceased family member or friend. The selected statue glows a different color when the visitor arrives.

From green cemeteries burying bodies equipped with a global positioning device to virtual graveyards and digital memorials, death and burial are changing as the digital life gives way to the digital afterlife.

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss future crime and the surveillance state in light of China’s recent efforts to use predictive analytics and big data to stop terrorism. China Electronics Technology Group, a state-run defense contractor, is developing the software to analyze data on everything from employment to hobbies to purchasing habits of ordinary citizens to try to predict terrorist acts before they happen. The software, in more ways than one, echoes the fantastical pre-crime technology featured in the science fiction film Minority Report. In this week's episode we explore the question of predicting crime using technology and its consequences.

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss a world filled with robots and what this could mean for humanity as we adjust to another type of "being" in our midst. It’s coming sooner than we might think.

For instance, last week, Boston Dynamics, a Google company, released a video of their next generation Atlas robot, that shows it walking through the snowy woods, recovering from slips, and picking up a 10-pound box.

To demonstrate the robot's resilience, a Boston Dynamics employee wielding a hockey stick pushes the robot backwards, knocks a box out of its hands, and even shoves it to the ground. The robot is able to recover each time and go back to work, but the unease of watching a near humanoid manage these abusive trials is palpable. The phenomenon, known as the Uncanny Valley, has long-term implications for collaborative robotics.

Get the full transcript: http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/robot-world

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss privacy, security, and the hubbub around the FBI request of Apple to unlock an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that Apple would not comply with the FBI request, as it would force the company to build a backdoor to the iPhone, an outcome that no reasonable person would find acceptable. The US government and the FBI in particular has a history of misusing information in the name of security, dating back to J. Edgar Hoover. And Apple's defiance of the FBI comes at a time when the US government is still trying to repair the damage of the Snowden revelations about surveillance and massive data collection. Nonetheless, the government is attempting to force Apple's compliance insisting that the law, not the company's technology, should not be the final word on access for data critical to an investigation.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the rapid evolution of design and innovation practice. Chinese companies are increasingly taking an assembly line approach to R&D, which allows them to accelerate the process using multi-functional problem solving teams. By industrializing the process, Chinese companies are looking to make innovative product development quick and inexpensive, using simultaneous, parallel engineering and design. Additionally, IP sharing is commonplace in China: Designs move quickly from one company to the next. For example, the hit toy of the holidays, the hoverboard, was created seemingly simultaneously by several Chinese manufacturers. Join us as we discuss the future of innovation.

Get the full transcript: http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/rethink-innovation

The world of transportation and logistics is changing rapidly as emerging technologies start to overlap with more traditional industries. In this episode of The Digital Life, we go on a technology trend spotting journey, discussing the intersections of supply chain automation and autonomous trucks, ride sharing and car manufacturing, and drones and passenger vehicles.

What does the future of work look like? As software, robots, and the IoT automate activities previously completed by humans, change is coming all too quickly. In fact, according to preliminary findings of a recent McKinsey report, 45 percent of all work activities could be automated today using technology already demonstrated. From fulfilling warehouse orders to suggesting medical treatments for ailments, this coming wave of automation will redefine jobs and business processes for factory workers and CEOs alike. In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the inevitability of automation and what that means for future occupations.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about hacking power grids, the IoT, and the escalation of cyber warfare.

Power grids are becoming increasingly subject to cyber attacks and now, at least one has been successful. In December, an attack on a utility in Western Ukraine caused a blackout for 80,000 customers, which was the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. The malware used in the attack, called BlackEnergy, infected systems via a corrupted Microsoft Word attachment. In January, Kiev’s main airport went dark after a power outage, once again linked to BlackEnergy. As cyber attacks begin causing life and death situations in the real world, the concern over security and the IoT grows.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about digital healthcare services in 2016 (and beyond). From sensor technology for medication adherence to conversational UI, health analytics to digital care planning, we cover the top industry trends to watch. If you like what we have to say on this topic, we encourage you to check out our piece on MobiHealthNews (http://mobihealthnews.com/content/digital-healthcare-services-2016-and-beyond).

This week on the podcast, we discuss accessing the digital life in 2016. How do you get online? A recent Pew Research Center study indicates that fewer Americans have high-speed Internet at home in 2015 than they did two years ago in 2013 — a drop from 70% to 67%. And while broadband use is declining (ever so slightly), people who access digital services solely via smartphones is actually up 5%. The competition between wireless high speed internet and broadband has clearly begun to heat up.

Is there an upper limit to high speed mobile internet growth? Network saturation — too many consumers using too few towers — is one bounding constraint. And signal quality can be variable based on the weather. But high speed mobile access is less costly to roll out than broadband.

In this episode, we chat about the ever growing need for online speed and the battle between broadband and mobile.

For our final podcast of 2015, we chat about the big themes, learnings and insights on the show and our favorite episodes over the past year. We had conversations on design and tech with some wonderful guests including Niti Bahn, Madeleine Price Ball, Uday Gajander, Kelly Goto, Bill Hartman, Suzanne Livingston, Jon McKay, Scott N. Miller, Juhan Sonin, Scott Stropkay, Scott Sullivan, and Giuseppe Taibi.

From UX in the enterprise to emerging technologies like wearables and robotics to the disruptive nature of creative class work, we covered a wide range topics on The Digital Life in 2015. So what did we learn from a year talking design?

Enterprise UX is on the rise

Enterprise users — from employees to customers to managers — face experiences that are antiquated and needlessly complicated when compared with the experience of consumer-facing software. For those large, complex businesses, government agencies, and other organizations, UX research and design can provide enterprise products with a competitive edge. What is the current state of enterprise software when it comes to UX? What is the scale and complexity of enterprise UX problems? And, most importantly, how is UX changing the way the enterprise works?

Emerging technologies require design to be successful

From robotics to wearables to bio-inspired materials, emerging technologies represent a future that desperately needs design. There are immediate, significant opportunities for emerging technologies in energy, health, and manufacturing. Designers working in these areas will need to help identify the major challenges in these areas and seek proactive solutions — not an obvious or easy task.

The innovation economy is changing the way we work, collaborate, and live our lives

How do we separate work from play, busyness from leisure in the digital age? Is South by Southwest the big tent tech revival for the American creative class? What is the connection between creative routines and output? Creative work and digital automation are changing the economics of the American middle class. The need for meaningful work is an essential one for humanity, and one that increasingly is falling prey to technological change.

This week on The Digital Life we chat about our tech predictions for 2016, from the Internet of Things to genomics to open organizations.

This week, on The Digital Life we chat about the top science and technology stories of 2015.

From new net neutrality rules to evidence of flowing water on Mars, Amazon's cut throat corporate culture to outrageous drug price increases, hacking exploits to genetically altered designer babies, we explore the biggest and most impactful news events of the year.

On The Digital Life podcast topic this week, we chat about philanthropy and patronage in the digital gilded age.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife recently announced that they were giving 99% of their Facebook stock to charitable causes over the course of their lifetimes and were rewarded by the public and the media with equal parts praise and criticism.

With a select few mega donors helping to drive the agenda on everything from education to politics to climate change, is the billionaire philanthropist of today, the new patron of progress, or just another manifestation of elite control? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about media decline in the digital age. In its current state, media has ceased to be the gold standard and alarmingly, is becoming just another kind of noise in the cacophony of the 24-hour always on news cycle.

The media appeals to the lowest common denominator. And, it's a valid question as to whether it's a well-designed product at all anymore. Worse still, in the Internet age, our smorgasbord of media choices perpetuates the dangerous world of self-validating viewpoints. We can’t remember things correctly. We edit our memories. Has it always been like this? Or are our minds being transformed by the age of information?

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about Anonymous, in the wake of their declaring war on the terrorist group, ISIS.

This conflict represents something entirely new in 21st century warfare, and is strongly related to the transformation of power in the digital age. Both of these groups are new types of organizations — nimble, distributed, and asynchronous — they present their adversaries with few primary targets. They both rely heavily on digital tools to inspire others to join a movement.

Will Anonymous' war on ISIS ultimately be harmful or helpful? While stopping the ISIS propaganda machine would be of great benefit, removing terrorists from Twitter and other social networks will make it more difficult for national intelligence agencies and security firms to track them. And, in response to the campaign by Anonymous, ISIS will no doubt change its online tactics to defend itself.

As we watch this cyberwar unfold, we can only imagine how it is a precursor to future conflicts where the boundaries blur between the digital and physical worlds.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about Apple and the state of its software design. Is Apple off the rails? Is Google nipping at its heels? You could argue that Google is getting better at design at the same time Apple is getting worse.

An interesting article on Fast Company by Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini, “How Apple is Giving Design a Bad Name” sets the stage for this discussion. With the mobile iOS, Norman and Tognazzini argue that Apple has abandoned some of the fundamental principles of good design including discoverability, feedback, and recovery.

In contrast, Google is doing some interesting things with its Android OS. Experimental design is part of the conversation and the company is unafraid to evolve in the open.

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about crowdfunding and its place in the innovation ecosystem.

The creative class — knowledge workers in industries like biotech, design, gaming, and software — need new models and structures for collaborating and interacting. Crowdfunding's open model means that nearly anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit and a good idea can start up a project and hopefully, get some money behind it. For this reason crowdfunding is great for testing markets, and launching new product categories. But for all its benefits, it also come with some high risk potential.

Recently the TechJect Robotic Dragonfly drone project — funded to the tune of $1 million in 2012 on Indiegogo — disintegrated when the company ran out of money. And it's far from the first.

And the Glowing Plant synthetic biology project — a great example of how cutting-edge technology and innovation could receive crowdfunded backing — set off a series of events that led to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being banned on Kickstarter.

Is crowdfunding Wild West capitalism for the digital age? The new face of funding for innovation? Or just a flash in the pan?

This week on The Digital Life we chat about fantasy sports, big data, and the user experience.

It’s an interesting time for fantasy sports, to say the least. With 57 million players in the US and Canada, the industry is seeing booming growth. However, both the Justice Department and the FBI are investigating two of its biggest players, FanDuel and DraftKings. In particular, the Justice Department is looking at whether fantasy sports fall outside of a Federal prohibition on Internet gambling, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, which outlawed online poker and sports betting. Is it a game of skill or gambling, pure and simple?

And, on the digital side, we ask, what are the implications for fantasy sports, when your big data product is derived from the activities of athletes whose personal licensing is, at least for the time being, entirely controlled by larger interests, the sports leagues and players associations themselves?

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about designing for enterprise user experience with UX designer, strategist, author and consultant, Uday Gajander.

Uday tells us about "Wicked Craft", the current state of enterprise software UX, and how designers can better understand enterprise users.

On the podcast this week, we chat about dark UX patterns, those dirty UI tricks that some designers use to get people to do things they never intended to do — like purchase products or services they don’t need.

UX designer Harry Bignull has brought attention to this problem with his curated pattern library at Darkpatterns.org. Scams like the "bait and switch" have been around for hundreds of years, but in the digital world, whether its online or via a voice UI, the potential for deceit at scale is so much greater.

Lots of big brands use dark UX patterns. For instance, most recently LinkedIn was subject to a class action lawsuit, with an award of $13 million in compensation for a deceitful UI workflow that resulted in spam related to “expanding your professional network”.

We discuss the proliferation of dark UX patterns in every kind of digital communication and commerce.

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Madeleine Price Ball, Co-founder and Principal Investigator of the Public Data Sharing study, about Open Humans, an online platform that enables people to not only connect and participate with research studies but also receive data back from the scientists conducting them.

We explore the origins of the Open Humans project, its revolutionary data sharing model, and how it works for both members and researchers.

This week, on The Digital Life, we chat about the Volkswagen scandal and the increasingly important role that software plays in controlling our physical world.

Last week, Volkswagen, the biggest automaker in the world, got caught cheating on its diesel engine emissions tests. The automaker installed software, a “defeat device” in its cars to make them appear cleaner while they were being tested. As a result, the company faces $18B in fines in the US alone.

While this is probably not the first time software has been used to circumvent regulation, the VW scandal is so high profile that it feels like a game changer. In this, the digital and physical worlds are colliding in ways we haven’t seen before. What is the responsibility for software in the real world? And what is the responsibility of design and user experience?

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the themes and take aways from the BIF2015 and Big Design conferences.

At BIF 2015, the Business Innovation Factory annual gathering in Providence, RI, personal stories intertwined with tales of innovation and design. One of the primary themes was innovation in education — a social design critical to the future. Storytellers included Jaime Casap, Chief Education Evangelist at Google, who spoke from his own experience about how education disrupts poverty in one generation, and Sophie Houser co-creator of Tamponrunner and Girls Who Code alum discussed the power of technology to create discussion and social change.

While at Big Design, the multi-faceted conference for user experience and usability professionals, digital marketers, designers, content strategists and developers, the conversation incorporated not just the digital, but also emerging technologies like robotics.

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss open organization culture in theory and in practice. As the creative economy continues to grow and evolve, knowledge workers are discovering and developing new ways of working together. In contrast with the closed, hierarchical structures of 20th century industrial enterprises, in the 21st century open organization, transparency, authenticity and access are foundational elements.

But how do these open source organizational principals really work in a business context? Join us as we examine the impact of the open organization, on companies small and large.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we explore helping companies infuse design and UX strategy into their culture and structure, with special guest, entrepreneur, product designer, and AI expert, Giuseppe Taibi.

Many companies are constructed to do one thing well — efficiently produce their current products or services. But this kind of focus can oftentimes create overwhelming inertia against change and innovation.

Today, there is a significant trend toward companies building their own in house design and UX teams, some of them for the first time. However, introducing user experience and design culture, and making a company more customer-centric in its thinking, is an investment that requires patience and experimentation. It’s a multi-point process that happens over time — requiring buy-in across the organization, from the executive level to the managers to the doers and makers on the front lines. Join us as we discuss some real life scenarios that we've encountered introducing design into companies.

Robots are ideal for taking care of jobs that are repetitive, physically demanding, and potentially hazardous to humans. There are immediate, significant opportunities for using advanced robotics in energy, health, and manufacturing. Designers working in robotics will need to help identify the major challenges in these areas and seek proactive solutions — not an obvious or easy task.

In this episode of The Digital Life we discuss the future of UX for robotics, and interview Scott Stropkay and Bill Hartman of the design firm Essential, on human-robot interactions. This interview aired originally on O'Reilly Radar.

Today, the field of UX is evolving faster than ever before. There’s never been a greater need for digital design — from mobile to desktop to every device in between. Add to that the tremendous need for design for emerging technologies — including the Internet of Things, wearables, genomics, and robotics — and you have all the right factors that should point to an industry on the rise. However, at the same time, the UX industry is maturing: There's a strong trend to bring work in house at tech companies of all shapes and sizes, which has made the design landscape, at least for independent consulting agencies, tentative at best. Since the sale of Adaptive Path to Capital One almost a year ago, we’ve heard the rumors of the demise of the design firm. For our podcast topic this week, we’re going to explore the current state of affairs and the necessary re-invention of the UX design agency.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we explore Google’s corporate transformation to holding company Alphabet, what that means for unleashing innovation in the company, and how that effects the firm's chief technology rivals, Amazon and Apple. So far, Wall Street has loved the move and the company has increased its worth by $20B.

Alphabet is well-positioned to be the dominant emerging tech company of the 21st century, with fingers in the IoT, wearables, self-driving cars, robotics, and genomics. But what does that dominance mean for our data, when innovation is reliant on advertising revenue for financial fuel?

In the science fiction film "Minority Report", a PreCrime police division hunts down potential criminals and arrests them before they commit their crimes. While we are far from being able to predict crimes before they happen, we are using risk assessments — statistical tools that aim to quantify whether or not a criminal will re-offend — in the American justice system, a solution that is particularly controversial, especially when it comes to sentencing.

Using big data and statistical analysis, risk assessments promise fewer incarcerations as individuals suitable for rehabilitation are steered in that direction, and less crime as truly dangerous criminals are kept off the streets. As states struggle with the burden of increased spending on their prison systems, this potential solution appeals to policymakers on both sides of the aisle: Conservatives see fewer tax dollars spent, while liberals see a fairer system, arbitrated by big data.

But for the individuals effected, many questions remain. Can statistical data analysis accurately assess how people might behave in the future, and give us insight into whether or not criminals might re-offend? And, is it fair to decide their fate, at least in part, based on that data? This week on The Digital Life, we'll explore the design and use of risk assessments in our criminal justice system.

This week on The Digital Life, we explore the future of food. There are few things more personal, more intimate, more important than what we put in our bodies every day. We'll touch on a few areas at the intersections of food, science, and technology — from food as fuel where optimizing nutrition is key, to new food delivery technology like 3D printing, to the molecular gastronomy movement.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the Jeep auto hack in which cybersecurity researchers were able to remotely take control of a car's critical systems, the subsequent 1.4M vehicle recall by Chrysler, and the new bill introduced by Senators Ed Markey (Dem - Massachusetts) and Richard Blumenthal (Dem - Connecticut) to protect automobiles from cyberattacks. Are security and privacy the defining issues for the Internet of Things? Unfortunately, it seems like this incident may be the first of many examples of hacking the IoT and connected environments.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we chat with special guest Suzanne Livingston, senior product manager for IBM’s enterprise social software platform, about the "consumerization" of enterprise software and the bring-your-own-device trend.

This is a unique time for the enterprise, as software eats the world. Product managers need to keep in mind a variety of factors as they consider the ongoing “consumerization” of enterprise software from user experience to security to productivity. How are enterprise software vendors responding to the trend of employees bringing their own mobile devices into the work environment? Has the time come when enterprise software needs to be “mobile first” in its UX strategy? Are successful upstarts like Trello, Box, Slack indicative of the way enterprise software needs to go? We examine all of these questions and more as we consider the the migration of enterprise software to a “consumerized” paradigm.

In this episode of The Digital Life we chat about about digital automation, innovation, and its effects on the economics of the American middle class.

Is the growing contractor economy, as typified by Uber, another signal that the middle class is in real trouble? As a part of her campaign rhetoric, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, is making some hay of the topic. But the concern is very much a real one. The need for meaningful work is an essential one for humanity, and one that increasingly is falling prey to technological change.

In this episode of The Digital Life we chat about streaming television, cord cutting, and the future of the medium.

2015 has been a big year for streaming TV, with HBO NOW making its debut, Sling TV (from Dish) launching, and Netflix stock roaring. In fact, next week Netflix stock — currently trading around $650 — will split 7 times. Technology and increasing bandwidth has acted as the facilitator to streaming TV's rise, which is now effectively built into the infrastructure of our lives. Users can access their shows anywhere, consuming them on any device containing a screen — from mobile phone to tablet, to computer, to smart television.

And the audience has an even greater stake in determining what shows survive and thrive; Netflix and Amazon are using in-depth customer data to make decisions about what original shows they make. The end result of all this is (mostly) high-quality new television series and a golden age of storytelling. But ongoing audience splintering is a real concern, and while ordering just what you want may be perfect for some, for others the paradox of choice is getting even harder to manage.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss rapid prototyping, the coming hardware renaissance and the Internet of Things with Technical Machine co-founder, Jon McKay.

Our big institutions, both corporate and government, are not able to keep up with security in the digital age. As our communications, commerce, and even our health data continue to move online, what is the individual to do?

From the recent breach of US government systems exposing valuable personal data, including Social Security numbers, for millions of Federal employees; to the Sony hack revealing private corporate communications to embarrassing effect; to the intrusions on computer networks at major health insurance companies Anthem and Blue Cross, the list of concerning events goes on and on.

Do we need a cultural shift in our understanding of cyber-privacy? And what would that be? In this episode of the Digital Life, we discuss the consequences of online privacy devolution.

Virtual reality headsets could be the next big thing for entertainment. A bevy of new product offerings from the Oculus Rift to the HTC Vive to Sony’s Project Morpheus, mean that there will be plenty of consumer choices when it comes to this new computing and communications device. But how, exactly, will this medium will fit into our online and offline lives? Product demonstrations so far have been severely limited. And no one knows exactly how much these things will cost.

In this episode of The Digital Life we take on the new virtual reality product craze from a user experience perspective — examining everything from the new social norms of virtual space to the practical realities of navigating your environment when you can't see.

The latest and greatest from Apple used to be something to celebrate. At their Worldwide Developers Conference this week, the biggest tech company in the world announced its newest efforts to much fanfare and largely came up short. While the Apple Watch and the newly minted Apple Music streaming service have garnered lots of interest from the tech press, these offerings from Cupertino seem like pale shadows, trailing after the company's previous glory. In this episode of The Digital Life, we comment on Apple's innovation drought from a design and UX perspective.

As UX has become a hot commodity, software prototyping has similarly become increasingly popular. Every day, it seems like new tools appearing for creating interactive prototypes — from Axure to InVision to iRise, not to mention a host of HTML/CSS + Javascript frameworks.

From design validation to experimentation to risk mitigation, the opportunities for and impacts of prototyping in the design process are many. What role will prototyping play as software “eats the world”? And what does the future hold for prototyping techniques? We discuss all this and more.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss healthcare experience and the Internet of Things (IoT) with Juhan Sonin, director of Involution Studios. Juhan will be speaking on these topics at the Rework Internet of Things Summit in Boston on Friday, May 29.

What role is the Internet of Things going to play in the coming revolution in human health? As the experience of healthcare changes, there will be massive opportunities for and impacts of technology and design in this area. But in order to make it real, designers will need to be familiar with the digital, materials and networking technologies.

In this episode of The Digital Life we chat about user experience for the enterprise with designer, researcher, and studio leader Kelly Goto. Enterprise users — from employees to customers to managers — face experiences that are antiquated and needlessly complicated when compared with the experience of consumer-facing software. For those large, complex businesses, government agencies, and other organizations, UX research and design can provide enterprise products with a competitive edge. What is the current state of enterprise software when it comes to UX? What is the scale and complexity of enterprise UX problems? And, most importantly, how is UX changing the way the enterprise works? We discuss all of these topics and more.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the latest UX news including Microsoft's mobile strategy to encourage developers to port their Android and iOS apps to Windows, Tesla's batteries for solar power storage, and the start of the luxury smart watch wars.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we talk with Niti Bhan about the highly active entrepreneurial space around mHealth in Africa, her perspective on human centered strategy for digital health, and the unique and innovative methods developed for Africa's emerging healthcare consumers.

Is South by Southwest the big tent tech revival for the American creative class? As knowledge workers make their annual pilgrimage to Austin this week to participate in a giant festival filled with the latest in technology, music and film, it's worth asking if conferences like this one are the 21st century's communities of engagement.

As traditional organizations, civil and religious alike, like Lions Club International and Rotary International, churches, and even unions lose membership, there is a need for new structures to organize and engage people in meaningful ways, especially those in the creative class.

Witness the rise of the conference, the unconference, the meetup and the ascendancy of the professional group as one of the primary binding elements of our society — at least for those involved in the information economy. In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss this phenomenon examined through the lens of the popular SXSW festival.

At Apple's big unveiling on Monday, we got a better look at the Apple Watch, what the company hopes will be its next category-busting tech product. At the event, Apple also announced HBO NOW, fulfilling the dreams of cord-cutters everywhere; ResearchKit, the open source health study software; and the next generation of its CarPlay system, rolling out with 40 new autos next year. In this episode of The Digital Life, we consider whether Apple has jumped the shark with its new Watch, the implications of CarPlay for the rolling tech boxes that used to be just transportation, and the promise of ResearchKit for the medical research community.

The age of bio-inspired technology is upon us. Whether it's DNA as data storage, transparent displays based on mollusk shells, or surveillance robots modeled after swarming bees, the possibilities abound for natural systems to serve as patterns for the products of the future.

In this episode of The Digital Life we consider the evolution of the designer as technologist and engineer in conjunction with the ever expanding importance of bio-inspired technologies.

Get the full transcript: http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/designing-bio-inspired-technology

Will 2015 be a breakout year for digital health testing? It's still a little early to tell, but the news this week was good for advocates of mHealth and personalized medicine.

23andMe received FDA approval to provide screening for Bloom Syndrome, a rare gene disorder indicative of a predisposition to develop cancer. At Columbia University, research engineers developed an inexpensive HIV test that can be conducted using a smartphone. And, "tricorder" mHealth darling Scanadu entered the testing phase for its Scanaflo iPhone-ready urinalysis strip.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss these latest achievements in digital health diagnostics and explore the future of mHealth.

Across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles to Boston, there are a variety of new initiatives to develop Smart City services, using sensor technology and the Internet of Things to improve the quality of urban living.

Examples of these initiatives range from well-coordinated transportation services using big data to reduce traffic congestion and save commuters time and fuel, to public safety and security services controlling police dispatch, municipal repairs, and even snow removal.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the long-term implications of designing Smart Cities, and the potential pitfalls of such wide-ranging projects, as the digital infrastructure of our environment grows.

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the rise of voice recognition and voice user interfaces. More so than any other interface type, the VUI has the potential to be seamless and "magical". We've all used Siri, and there are plenty of VUI's for car dashboards, but what's coming down the road? From a first take on the new Amazon Echo to the future possibilities of voice services, we share our thoughts on the landscape of speech recognition.

The Internet of Things by GoInvo

Information Visualization by GoInvo