Future of Computers P5

                It's an abstract term that snuck its way into our public consciousness: the cloud. These days, most people under 40 know that it's something the modern world can't live without, that they personally can’t live without, but most people also barely understand what the cloud really is, let alone the coming revolution set to turn it on its head. In this chapter of our Future of Computers series, we’ll review what the cloud is, why it’s important, the trends pushing its growth, and then the macro trend that will change it forever.

              In other words, a server is any application that listens for requests over a network and then performs an action in response to said request. So when people refer to the cloud, they are actually referring to a group of servers where digital information and online services can be stored and accessed centrally, instead of inside individual computers.

                Overall, these edge computing needs to will spur a growing demand for ever more powerful computing and digital storage devices. And as is always the case, as computing power goes up, the applications for said computing power grows, leading to its increased use and demand, which then leads to a reduction of price due to economies of scale, and finally resulting in a world that will be consumed by data. In other words, the future belongs to the IT department, so be nice to them.

China's waste-to-energy plan

             The Chinese city of Shenzhen plans to tackle its serious waste problem by burning 5,000 tonnes of it a day in what will become the largest waste-to-energy plant in the world. Cities have to move towards more recycling and reducing their waste for sure - and of course developing more sources of renewable energy. Expected to be up and running by 2020, the plant is less about generating electricity and more about finding a solution to the existing trash problem - the energy is just a handy bonus.

                The According to Adele Peters at Fast Company, the new incinerator is one of 300 waste-to-energy plans that the Chinese government plans on building over the next one year. What Hardie is referring to there is the fact that the roof of the massive plant - which will stretch about 1.6 km long (1 mile) - will be topped with around 44,000 square metres of solar panels. 

               The idea is that the plant won’t just be about getting rid of trash, it will be providing clean and sustainable electricity to the surrounding city, and inviting members of the public to visit the facility and see it in action.Fast Company points out that by 2020 - the year the plant is expected to be operational - San Francisco plans on being a zero-waste city through some serious composting and recycling efforts. If burning waste is our reality today, let’s hope no waste at all will be our future.

Data-driven healthcare

         The amount of data available in the world is growing exponentially, and analyzing large data sets (so-called big data) is becoming key for market analysis and competition. Analytics will dramatically shift away from reporting and towards predictive and prescriptive practices, dramatically improving the ability of healthcare providers to help the ill and injured. Even more importantly, it will create the possibility for truly personalized healthcare by allowing providers to impact the biggest determinants of health, including behaviours, genetics and environmental factors.

         The emergence of data-driven health care has presented tremendous opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges. Reducing health care costs while improving quality of care, handling complex, ever-changing demographics, and adapting to the rapid increase and globalization of patient data are just a few of the realities facing health care providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and government entities today. 

        The need to derive insights from trusted health data has never been greater. The following stories illustrate just a few ways organizations today are using analytics to harness the potential of data, gain new insights, and transform the way we look at health at the individual and global level.

Future of space exploration is red

           The future of manned space exporation is bright, according to some space experts.Humans may one day tread across some of the alien worlds that today can be studied only at a distance. Closer to home, private industries like Mars One seek to establish a permanent settlement on the Red Planet. At the Smithsonian Magazine's "The Future is Here Festival" in Washington, D.C. this month, former astronaut Mae Jemison and NASA engineer Adam Steltzner spoke optimistically about the future of manned space exploration."Exploration and the curiosity that motivate it are fundamentally human," Steltzner said during the conference.

           Steltzner served as the lead engineer for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. He helped to design and test the rover's one-of-a-kind descent system, but he isn't solely focused on robotic exploration of the solar system. Landing a human on the Red Planet would be far trickier than landing a robot. For instance, Curiosity hit the Martian atmosphere at 15 times the acceleration of gravity (15 gs). Traveling at such extreme speeds would be disastrous for humans, who only experience 1g while standing on Earth's surface. At 15gs, the retinas would detach from human eyes, Steltzner said.

      "Humans should be involved in exploration," Steltzner told the audience. That form of exploration could come in a number of ways. In addition to kicking up dust on a moon or planet in the solar system, Steltzner suggested another way to spread humans throughout the galaxy.

Wastewater is an asset, not a liability

          Historically, wastewater treatment started as risk reduction for human health and welfare, migrated to environmental risk reduction, and has now matured into resource recovery and revenue generation. Technology and common practices are in place to treat water as a sustainable resource; we simply can no longer afford to use it once and "throw it in the ocean" nor can we afford the liability of not treating water to our best abilities to protect human health and the environment.

             Specifics, metrics, and detailed examples, not generalizations and platitudes, about recovery of the "water" from wastewater, profitably. It comes down to dollars and cents, a little math, and common sense, and usually much more the first than the last of those. Note: This is a live webinar delivered via WebEx. Session instructions will be emailed to you 24-48 hours prior to the webinar and the morning of the webinar. Webinars are live and interactive and students will have the ability to directly interact with and ask questions of the presenter.

              By 2020 I predict that a new class of distributed systems, powered by advances in our ability to use biotechnology to extract resources, such as energy, from waste, and the dropping cost of industrial automation, will begin to change our approach to managing water globally. Rather than a liability, wastewater will be viewed as an environmental resource, providing energy and clean water to communities and industry, and ushering in a truly sustainable and economical approach to managing our water resources.

China's "Great City" is fully built

               The architects behind the Kingdom Tower -- planned to be the world's first building to reach 1km in height -- have been chosen to build a completely new suburban city from scratch on the outskirts of Chengdu in southwest China. The "Great City" is effectively an entirely new municipality, designed as one whole instead of the chaotic and environmentally inefficient alternative of urban sprawl. The designers -- Adrian Smith +  Gordin Gill Architecture, based in Chicago -- have marked out a 1.3km2 circle surrounded by 1.9km2 of farmland and parks, where residents won't need cars because everything is within a 15-minute walk of the city centre.

         If the model is successful, the Great City will be copied on the edges of China's other megalopolises and their populations continue to boom -- putting pressure on housing, infrastructure and the environment. The 80,000 people expected to live in the Great City would give it a population density of 61,538 people per square kilometre. In London, the most densely populated boroughs in the inner city have a density of around 10,000 people per square kilometre.

           The entire Great City complex -- urban circle and surrounding open park/farmland -- is roughly the same size as Hampsted Heath.The Great City will offer an inner-city experience for residents on the edge of an existing conurbation, rather than something semi-rural that we might recognise -- a good thing, too, as postwar suburban sprawl is a hugely inefficient way of living.

New cures from the bacteria that live in the human body

         In life sciences, we’ll have greater understanding of the dynamics of how our microbiome – the tiny organisms, including bacteria, that live in the human body – influences multiple systems in our body, including our immune systems, metabolic processes and other areas. This will result in seminal discoveries related to a variety of conditions, including autoimmune diseases, pre-term birth and how our metabolism is regulated. Regenerative medicine approaches to creating new tissues and organs from progenitor cells will expand significantly.

       The use of bacteria can be a more gentle, biological and thus also more sustainable alternative. The use of synthetic drugs has been likened to the use of herbicides to get rid of weeds in a lawn. Depending on its intensity, bacterial therapy would be equivalent in this analogy to replanting the lawn or laying down turf. One of the first major breakthroughs in bacteria research was achieved back in the nineteenth century by Robert Koch from Germany.

        The level of training in Germany is very good, as is the research infrastructure. If these excellent framework conditions are used for well-organized and long-term studies, Germany can remain at the forefront of world-class research. Today spectacular breakthroughs are no longer made by individual groups, let alone individual researchers. This is why international cooperation is essential in this field of research.