Memia 2022.20: Arriving soon at an airport near you🐒🦠// backing DACCS💨// ontology state engine⚙️// fusion in a backpack⚛️// Möbius carbon nanobelt♾️// 4D toys🤯// dutch drone gods do Valparaiso🚵
From open standards to standards of openness
Kia ora
Welcome to another midweek Memia newsletter - scanning across emerging tech and thinking about the future from Aotearoa New Zealand.
20th weekly newsletter of the year already!
A reminder for iOS users - you can read Memia in the Substack app (click below). For Gmail users, you can click on the email title above to read online and avoid the annoying “[Message clipped]” link.
Weekly roundup
The most clicked link in last week’s edition (7% of openers) was the all-too-convincing Pantheon.ai demo reel.
Also happening around the world in the last week…
🐒🦠Arriving soon at an airport near you
So… who had Monkeypox on their 2022 bingo card? A nasty infectious disease related to Smallpox, which has historically been contained within Central and West Africa, but now appears to be suddenly spreading widely, possibly due to sexual contact. The WHO is monitoring:
🔑🟤Aotearoa
😥The number of deaths from Covid-19 in Aotearoa tipped over 1000 last week. Currently plateauing at around 55,000 active community cases, which is surely well under the real number.
BusinessDesk ($walled) reports on plans for MIQ 2.0 - a BAU national quarantine system with 1000 quarantine-standard rooms. Given the NZ$Billions economic and social boost from hastily-cobbled-together hotel-based MIQ for Covid-19, the reported NZ$600M price tag for a purpose-built, permanent facility feels like a bargain?
(Missed this 3 weeks ago but better late than never): against a backdrop of climate change mitigation efforts & COVID-19 disruption, the Government is planning NZ's first ever comprehensive freight and supply chain strategy.
🇺🇦Ukraine
The intense heat of the Russo-Ukraine war is draining out of daily media coverage as the conflict enters a drawn out battle of marginal territory gains and losses. Looking out ahead, Russian political scientist Andrey Kortunov writing in the Economist ($walled) describes three scenarios for the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical ramifications:
1. A decisive Ukrainian win:
“a re-emergence of the unipolar moment, a tamed and domesticated Russia…would allow the West to cope more easily with China, which would be the only major obstacle to liberal hegemony and the long-awaited “end of history”.”
2. An imperfect but mutually acceptable settlement:
“A less-than-perfect compromise between the West and Russia might be followed by a more important, and more fundamental, compromise between the West and China. …That would lead to a reformation of the global order, with major changes to the UN system, archaic norms of international public law and recalibrations at the IMF, the WTO and other bodies.”
3. No agreement on Ukraine and enduring conflict:
“cycles of shaky ceasefires followed by new rounds of escalation….expect decay in global and regional bodies. Inefficient international institutions may collapse amid an accelerating arms race, nuclear proliferation and the multiplication of regional conflicts. Such change would lead only to more chaos in the years ahead.”
Aside from geopolitics, it could be that the largest long term impact of the war is tens of thousands of tonnes of concentrated hydrogen sulfide near the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol leaking into the Azov sea, killing all marine life nearby. (These photos look a bit doctored but the original post from Mariupol City Council seems genuine).
Environmental crimes like these should also come under international War Crimes law.
🪃Australia
Reverberations continue across the ditch after the landslide change of government in Australia. One of the most persistently underrated Labor party politicians is Ed Husic, about to become the new minister for Industry and Innovation. Ed is one of the few politicians in our region who takes an active line on AI and tech policy.
Here he is just before the election framing new Australian re-shoring policies:
“Geopolitics is shaping industry policy in a way that it really hasn’t done for decades. …to respond to that…the National Reconstruction Fund [is] designed to mobilise and replenish and rebuild capability in this country, particularly that necessary capability of manufacturing.”
🌏Indo-Pacific
Aotearoa announced it was to join the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity” (IPEF), a new (vaguely purposed) US-led alliance of 13 countries — seemingly intended as a workaround to US domestic opposition to the CPTPP, but mostly as a counterweight to China’s growing economic power in the region.
Meanwhile, the “Quad” alliance of US, Japan, Australia and India launched a practical solution to address illegal fishing activities:
[Weak] signals
As usual, lots of eclectic tech developments to cover this week. In no particular order…
Drone mothership
We were all anticipating this, right?
(From Memia 2022.18 2 weeks ago:)
“…wouldn’t some of Aotearoa’s increasing military budget arguably be better deployed on building drone capabilties than on more planes and boats to carry ever-scarcer military personnel…??”
🧬One and done
I talked last week about society’s unreadiness to deal with real-world applications of genetic base editors such as CRISPR. US biotech company Verve Therapeutics is about to be one of the first to test a variant of CRISPR-Cas9 in living humans: aiming for a “one and done” injection which directly edits a cholesterol-controlling gene and significantly lowers heart attack risks in the most vulnerable people. Revolutionary if it’s proven to work.
💨Backing DACCS
Also last week I expressed disappointment that Aotearoa’s limp new climate-change programme didn’t include any investments in DACCS (Direct Air CO2 Capture and Storage).
Last week the US Department of Energy announced investment of US3.5 billion for 4 direct air capture hubs, each capable of removing over a million tons of CO2 per year (equivalent to taking around 200,000 petrol-powered cars off the road).
⚙️Ontology State Engine
One of Aotearoa’s hidden-away tech success stories is software firm Nextspace - with >15 years of accumulated experience building interoperable Digital Twin data models for some of the largest industrial, construction and infrastructure customers in the world. Last week founder and CEO Mark Thomas gave this passionate talk at the annual Infrastructure Commission Looking Ahead Symposium, outlining a multi-billion dollar national opportunity for data sharing and digital twin development. Watch the whole thing.
Nextspace digital twin models combine historical data with what they term an “Ontology State Engine” - which then enables visualization and simulation - creating a fully-4D interactive model of the real world.
One of his most compelling slides was titled “Unlocking Data Held Hostage”:
“We need to move from Open Standards to Standards of Openness …We’ve got to stop this business of data hoarding…make it very clear that where IP is of national interest that there is legislation that forces [sharing of the] data that we have today. We already have much more data about our infrastructure, but it’s sitting on the desktops and the servers of engineering consultants, architects and others… we have a lot more data than we realise and we’ve got to get it flowing”.
With some estimates of the Three Waters maintenance costs alone being NZ$90Billion over 30 years, Mark contends that there are $NZbillions of savings, efficiencies and improved outcomes to be had from:
A nationally legislated open data model
A market-driven data economy
A federation of open, portable digital twin models for use right across the infrastructure and government sectors.
I agree.
🗳️Any politicians want to add this to their policy platform next election!?(@RafManji?)
🌍Rewiring Africa
Rest of World reports on how Google and Meta’s new subsea cables connecting Africa mark a tectonic shift in how the internet works, and who controls it.
“In 2010, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively owned only one long-distance cable; by 2024 they will own all or portions of more than 30”
(Ironically, the excellently refreshing Rest of World was founded by Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.)
😬1984 in 2022
I just came across this study from 2021 in Nature which found that a facial recognition algorithm was able to predict people’s political orientation by comparing their similarity to faces of liberal and conservative others. The results:
“Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal–conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%).”
⚛️Fusion in a backpack
By far the craziest link to grace my feed this week - Avalanche Energy - a VC-funded startup founded by a group of ex-Blue Origin engineers are aiming to develop the Orbitron - a working fusion reactor that generates 5kW of zero-emission energy (enough to power a home), which you could carry in a backpack.🤔
🥽Reference design drop
Qualcomm released their new reference design for AR glasses built using their Snapdragon XR2 chips, which now works wirelessly:
💉Moderna miracle?
☀️Solar in the field
A couple of newer outdoor use cases enabled by the latest solar panels:
Agrivoltaics: How to grow crops (and profits) under solar panels
Starlink can now work completely off-grid:
Source: Reddit
♾️Möbius carbon nanobelt
A team of Japanese scientists have synthesized a belt-shaped molecular nanocarbon with a twisted Möbius band topology: a “Möbius carbon nanobelt”:
“The Möbius carbon nanobelt was a dream molecule in the scientific community after we reported the first chemical synthesis of a carbon nanobelt—an ultra-short carbon nanotube—in 2017. Just like belts we use every day, we imagined what would happen to our ‘molecular belt’ when tightened with a twist. It’s another amazingly beautiful molecule,”
Mind expanding
Where else has the mind been wandering this week…?
Experimental policy design
From the UK Government Policy Lab, no less, 12 new methods for policymaking. A set of a set of virtual cards which describe 11 experimental methods and approaches which have “the potential to shift how policy is developed, in radically different ways. The last one is blank because our horizon scanning work for policymaking is an ongoing process and we expect to discover more new methods.” Well, quite.
Planetary boundaries
The Stockholm Resilience Centre is an international research centre focused on resilience and sustainability science. Their work on Planetary Boundaries presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come:
In January 2022, 14 scientists concluded in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology that humanity has exceeded a planetary boundary related to environmental pollutants and other “novel entities” including plastics:
🤯4D Toys
After the link at the weekend to 4D Minecraft, thanks to the excellently orthogonal @teh_aimee for putting me on to Miegakure, maker of “4-dimensional toys”. Try and get your neurons around this:
Rollcall
A couple of shout-outs around the motu this week:
Hoe ki angitū
Waka Kotahi / NZ Transport Agency have announced the launch of a substantial new innovation programme, Hoe ki angitū. The initiative includes a $NZ15M innovation fund designed to accelerate innovative projects within the transport sector - open to everyone in the private sector, including community groups, startups, mobility providers, organisations, iwi, and research institutes.
More details in the video below and you can apply here from June 7th.
AI for the Environment
Te Kāhui Atamai Iahiko o Aotearoa / AI Forum NZ have released a thorough new report on AI for the Environment in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Gems
Some quality items to round out this week’s newsletter!
🎨Art generating art
🦜🏀Parrots playing basketball
🎼Vivaldi on marimba
From South Africa, this is an uplifting moment:
🚵Dutch Drone Gods do Valparaiso
And finally, the city of Valpariso in Chile hosts the world’s most intense urban downhill mountain bike race each year. The Dutch Drone Gods were set the task to follow MTB legend Thomas Slavic on his run downhill…in one continous shot! Gripping footage in this “how they did it” video.
That’s it for another week… thanks for reading and *as always* 🙏🙏🙏 to everyone who reaches out and gets in touch with thoughts, feedback, links, always appreciated!
Ngā mihi
Ben
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