Category: Uncategorized

Previous year left us with (large) choice of what do you believe COVID has altered the most. Many industries have gleamed (e.g. video conferencing), some folded cards and gestured in resignation (e.g. hotels). Besides the ingenious pharma effort in vaccine development, there is less obvious 2020 hero in health sector. Artificial intelligence managed to prove it can detect diseases at their out-break, before tardy human-based detection networks can even put their protective cloth on.

You may have heard that smart watches (enabled with oximeter) could detect COVID from oxygen level in blood readings (and AI algorithm behind), but news of detecting the COVID from cough might not have reached ears of all. Yes, within few weeks after COVID outbreak there has been AI project completed that detected COVID from mere cough sound recording of the patient, with accuracy beating Antigen tests and without infected person going anywhere (which is benefit of itself).

But he lessons to take here is not anecdotal, rather fundamental. If there is something that Machine learning is strong in, then it is detecting something for which you have annotated examples of. So may it be another pandemic, or just important enough illness, if it has visual or audial symptoms, it can be immediately geared into AI detection. Now think of all the (PCR test cases) waste and human effort that could have been saved with COVID tests if all you had to do was cough into microphone.

Yes, artificial intelligence has proven that it is ready to take over significant burden of mass (symptoms) testing. And it can claim early stage detection role in health-care systems. If only doctors let go …

 

 

Working from home-office was THE topic of the 2020 employees’ debates and certainly phenomenon worth several blogs. However, what is interesting that the debate was led mainly on micro level: What it means for the comfort and being of the individual worker (and his household). As much as it feels relatable to many of us, maybe to your surprise, how to work from particular place (being it your very flat or well internet-connected cottage in woods) is not the main aftermath of this trend. The actual impact happens on region or even country level.

And seismic impact it is. But let’s explain it step by step. In pre COVID times, employer was picking WHO will be working for them, WHERE will they sit (or work from) and WHAT will they do. Global pandemic shook the employer’s reality and then forced employer to pick only 2 out of W’s of the past. In desperate situation and under extreme pressure, companies decided to keep power about WHO and WHAT. In other words, in middle of COVID, also of sudden employer was happy enough that his workforce did what was needed from wherever the employee could. Nobody questioned you where from you gonna make your video calls during quarantine or lock-down, as long as your internet connection from there was strong enough to make it.

This “choose WHERE YOU CAN (or want) work/live from” is more impactful than you might think after first reading. Because I am quite sure you can name long list of places that beat your apartment in where you would like to spend quarantine. Let’s assume some of that places are equally safe and offer better or at par services as your home location. And your employer does not mind you working from there, your salary will still come, your bills still paid. How tempted would you be to (temporarily) move there?

Does not have to be beach house (or it might), can be literally any place that you would feel better in. Yes, in 2020 many realized that being German citizen and tele-working from French Riviera (Austrian Alp resort or Madeira island) is neither sci-fi, not that much of the bad idea. Ok, so you moved there and now you learn that this wonderful location also asks half your recent tax rate (if you only consider moving your permanent stay there,  with few signs or even clicks). Do you see where this is rolling?

Yes, COVID pandemic made it clear, how easy is to decouple your official, paper life from the real one. Add disillusion about how badly the pandemic was treated by your (local) government or municipality (felt by Britts or most of the CEE countries citizens) and you are on edge of “Hey this XY region feels much more home than I would admit before trying.” Year 2020 opened round of identity porting and countries enter competition for this porting’s (even if their governments don’t realize).

Reading these thoughts from experts of top-notch technology magazine, as WIRED certainly is, sends shivers down my spine. As I speculated about this to happen in video interview (in Slovak here) with futurist Andrej Tichy year and half back. Now we see this taking off. Wow! Feels both special and weird at the same time.

Admitting the trend makes you think, how to ride it. If you are ordinary person, dream up. Don’t get yourself locked down (literally) to something which was not your place of choice but happened to be just close to your work. Of course, if your kids go to school here or you have senior parent to take care of, things get a bit less rosy. But would not this other place be actually better for them, too?

More importantly, if you are mayor, regional MP or government member, take quality time to think about what makes location (you lead) special for REAL life. Nice nature, great cuisine, or lots of culture events? Magnify it! And brag about it! (in this sequence, please) Cities are competing for citizens, often in most rudimentary things you can think of. (Like Indian city of Mongla who for great flood prevention system is magnet for Bangladesh migrants torn by horrific landslides and flooding’s in their home country). Inevitable climate change will make “pick another location for life” real strategy for tens of millions.

States need to rethink and reposition as well. How much more do you get (for your taxes) as a citizen from German government than from Austrian or Dutch, which are one fuel-tank away from you? How do you keep citizenship of people who want to live in (climate) locations your country could not offer? What can state remotely offer its citizens choosing to live in (far) abroad? Solving health issues coming from COVID is important. But countries, regions and cities enter now completely different level of game. If you open eyes enough to see this coming …

 

 

Commercial success of autonomous vehicles was bit like Berlin airport construction. Every year it was expected to happen in the next year. Look back, when my blog on this topic (in Slovak) went live.  After several years of missed promises (mainly from Tesla), self-driving cars finally realized that they have been eating the cake from wrong side. Most of the showcases (and demo videos) for cars driving on their own focused on passenger cars. Sounds logical, as most of the cars in world are the personal ones. Or?

If you take few steps back, as much as you charm most of the population with making David Haselhoff’s K.I.T.T. dream come true, when it comes to commercial value (what would be people willing to pay for), most people are not ready to pay extra to replace them behind the steering wheel. However, segment where there IS somebody willing to pour money in for replacing the driver is TRUCK transport.

It makes whole much more sense, as the roots of many truck shipments are tedious round trips between two locations (e.g. from supplier to factory OR from warehouse to the store), which are easier to program and monitor. These shipments often can (or even have to) happen in the night, when there is less traffic on roads (and extras for night work of drivers apply). Also truck drivers drive many more kilometers per day than us, passenger car drivers. Robo-driver also does not have to take mandatory brakes, unlike his human counterpart, so the robo-truck can drive more km’s per day, too. Makes you almost think why all those years tesla was expected to be the pioneer of self-driving cars?

If you wonder “Why all of the sudden in 2021?”, there are few reasons that favor now from yester-<insert_your_time_unit_here>. The 2020 pandemic pushed so hard for e-commerce that demand for deliveries went through the roof. Second one is that it cumulatively took several years of “experience” to pass the necessary Prove-of-concepts, which one after another seem to be arriving at encouraging successes. Thirdly, due to large data flow between the self-driving car and its control center, operating large fleets of autonomous cars without 5G networks would be tricky. Therefore, (mass) autonomous car deployment needs to be cart of the 5G internet horse. Lately also Waymo, Nuro, Aurora (and other autonomous driving software providers) realized that driving goods off the road is better insurable and faces less regulation (and reputation hit) than killing human driver in autonomous muscle-car.

Yes, it is coming, there are already signed 2021 projects for cargo transport across US highways. The itching question is: What comes next? Taxis? Airport busses? Last-mile delivery robots? Probably all the above.

 

 

Out of long list of what you could do during lockdown’s, somewhere at the top was to rent/move to cottage in woods with good internet connection. As much as you might lough, one of the side effects of tele-working is that flats stand out as the worst places to telework from. You get all the discomfort of busy place (yes, think you, spouse and 2 kids in house scenario) with, ehm, no extras to compensate (and few kilos of body-fat as side effect). This trend goes hand in hand with States reprofiling (mentioned in this year’s trends as well).

But this “trash-the-office” mega trend will have another effect to adapt to. Vast empty office spaces. In many cities developers have built new shiny office towers in hope of luring the businesses from office complexes of the previous decades. After all, who would not like to boast in HR interview with all the Google-like perks? As a result, in many locations the (total) supply of office space (including the clumsy ones) was already pre-COVID slightly about demand. Now factor in few businesses going bust, many realizing that they do not need permanent office, and you end-up with plethora of hollow floors or even entire buildings.

So, what happens next? Small cities and communities will feel inflow, especially those close to pleasant nature habitat. End empty office spaces will turn into what there is already shortage in many metropoles: individual housing. Some urban planners even go as far as suggesting that shopping malls (hit by e-commerce habit being created) will need to convert some parts into in-house-parks or other amenities to attract the human flow needed for their business operation.

 

 

Every few years or so we are pushed by galloping innovation to change to something-new-first. We lived through digital-first, social-first and mobile-first eras. (And still managed to stay alive 😊). So what exactly is waiting round the corner?

Working for TeamViewer, one gets across heap of feature suggestions from customer, trying to improve their video conferencing and digital connectivity experience. But what struck me in last years was how pulsing the demand was for tiny meeting feature. Black-screen (or fixed image behind you while video calling) seemed to be popping suspiciously too often even before COVID times. With coronavirus turning our libraries (or storage racks) into video call background, need for making your kitchen or living room bit more virtual than real, became really imminent.

With no clear cut-off time for lockdown and remote work period end, businesses realize that singularity of our office space shattered in 2020 not only to duality of office+home-office, but into triage of office+home-office+virtual-office. Number of virtual Xmas parties, virtual shareholder meetings or other range of events happening, literally in the air, just confirms this. And it also makes companies think twice.

If you are teacher, bank teller or psychologist, your living room will not make for long term office replacement. With Augmented reality and Virtual reality turning so cheap and easy to set, why would you project image of your pre-schoolers running around onto your client(s). Almost 93% of all GP meetings in UK happened last year neither at client-side, nor physically in the doctor’s office, but rather in virtual set-up. And primary health care is the not the only sector jumping on virtual-first.

Augmented reality can “move” all of the furniture or appliances objects into customer’s own space. And no one even sweats to do so. Co-browsing and supervising-remotely-along has becoming the norm not only for setting your boiler after surprising reset, but for any task that needs somewhat know-how to get things right. Virtual reality (headsets) can emulate also any set-up or situation you need to walk the person through. So for long time, many more beyond army virtual drills can benefit from it already.

As much as your business might not to be on the frontier of turning fully virtual, it becomes advisable to at least blue-print how your business would in virtual look like. Or some of your rivals might do that instead of you.  Ignore on your own risk.