technology Archives - Page 17 of 40

Software is eating the world – and surfing

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

The picture below is of surfboard fins. These days they are not permanently attached to the surfboard, but screw in. This allows surfers to change fin sizes and shape for different surf, it also allows you to travel with out busting them.

3D Printed Surfboard fins

The fins on the left come from a company called FCS and they retail for $140. The fins on the right came off a 3D printer and cost exactly zero dollars, well maybe $3 in raw in materials. In general fins sell for between $100 and $200.

Sure the FCS fins on the left look fancy and are made from carbon fibre, the 3D printed versions above are various plastics, but in many ways they are better. I can print fins quickly and cheaply with varying degrees of flex. I can print fins with more flex at the top and less at the bottom, I can even add other technology to the fins like a GPS, to track my surfing without wearing a bulky watch. I can customise my design on my fins, the colour, create personal branding anything, sell my designs to other surfers….the options are endless, and the cost is negligible. That said, I can print fins in carbon fibres, light metals and pretty much any material I want.

It won’t be long before the days of buying expensive fins are over.

These fin companies are less than 20 years old, and unless they facilitate 3D printing of their product, they’ll be disrupted – maybe me and my new surfing company Sneaky Surf. Mind you this company (FCS) was recently bought by Surf Stitch for $23.7 million. I hope they get their money back quick or it will be a classic diworsification. If they paid a 10 times price earning ratio, they’ll never get their money back. I reckon within 3 years no one will buy fins again.

If you make any widget like the example above, or buy them, then the time is now to move to 3D printed versions. You don’t even need to own a printer – there are plenty of startups on line who can print your designs for you and ship them to you customers. GO – this opportunity to dematerialise a category (like music was dematerialised) is big. We all know that software is eating the world – Make it happen in your industry.

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A world before the World Wide Web?

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a documentary I want to see. Two families living life as it was were before the world wide web arrived. For most homes that was some time during the 1990’s. I imagine life is very different for teenagers, toddlers and parents today compared to say in 1985. We’ve all seen the documentaries comparing life in the distant past – this farming one living like it’s 1885 comes to mind. But how would today compare to just 30 years ago – 1986 to 2016?

I think we’d find it is more different than we remember or younger people expect. I’d love to see a house, school, shopping, media, politics, transport systems all set up to run the experiment with a family or two. Document it – compare it to our modern economy and boom – compelling viewing

Someone go make it – it’s a cool idea for free. I’m sure a production company or TV station would love it.

You can thank me at the award ceremony.

Love, Stevie.

Low tech jobs in a high tech world

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

look alike robot

The robots are taking over. Seriously, they are. They are taking a lot of the crappy and dangerous jobs we’ve done in the past. They’re taking a few of the good ones too. So here’s a thought, why not try and own some robots? Maybe save some money with your robot – oh, like your phone which saves you buying music…

Here’s another thought experiment: If a person has $100 in their wallet, and instead of spending 30 of those dollars on a CD, where does the money go? Does it just evaporate? Of course not. Money doesn’t evaporate, it just changes places. It is relatively easy to see where it will dry up and where it will get invested instead. The transition is obvious to people who pay attention to the world they live in. Good news, that new place where old new money gets spent also has new new jobs associated with it – most will be low tech. They always are.

Here’s another little known fact – the worlds most profile tech company ‘Google’ is not the nerd nest of techies you think it is. More than half of its global workforce are sales people. Yep, that same person who would normally have sold TV ads, cars, vacuums, real estate and health insurance is now a sales person at Google.

Humans invent jobs as new industries and technologies emerge. We surround the new thing with people – it’s like a force of gravity. People aggregate around money and commerce. And yes, some good paying jobs do disappear, but some other high paying ones arrive too.

If you want to be on the high paying end of things, here’s what to do, go out and learn some new skills few people have, there are enormous skill gaps in the market today. And these skills are free to learn on line. Here’s a website I love called the ‘No Excuses List’ – which is full of things you can learn for free. Skills companies and people need today! If you make the effort to reinvent yourself in times of great change, the prize is big, I know I’ve done it myself.

But of course there’s a catch, I can’t do your push ups for you.

Questions established companies must ask themselves

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

future

“How could our customers do this thing without us?”

“What can be removed from the process and still solve this problem?”

“How could this problem be solved without using a physical product?”

“What technology is likely to be introduced into our things?

“What will happen to prices of the thing we sell when more technology is introduced.?”

“What would a new entrant into this market likely do to meet customers needs?”

Once these questions are answered sufficiently and honestly, they ought go ahead and do these things. They are going to happen anyway aren’t they?

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When to resist technology

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

My readers know that I love technology – I literally rub my face in it.

But technology is not always the answer. Sometimes it pays to resist the use of it. This is especially true when technology lacks differentiation or is the lazy option. A hand written letter has far more value today than an email, tweet or whatsapp message does. We know you care more, we know you made more of a concerted effort with a pen and a post box.

It comes down to swimming against the tide. Music is one industry that has been impacted incredibly by new technology. Every laptop is a world class studio, opening up the music making to everyone regardless of their budget. But prized musician David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) has some interesting views on why this might not be the answer to make great music. Watch the video below, and think about the work you do and how it applies. If you listen close enough you’ll come up with some new anti-tech ways to both make a difference and a better product. Enjoy!

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Tesla Model 3 & the start of the end of petrol cars

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

The hype of the new Tesla model 3 is understated as far as I can tell. While it is true Tesla hasn’t actually sold any of the cars – they haven’t made any yet – it is also true that there has never been a car in history (any product?) which achieved $8.86B in pre-order sales. Yes, 253,000 on order at the time of publishing.

Tesla Model 3 Launch

The hype is understated for a simple reason: most people are yet to discover their annual fuel bill costs will cover a $35,000 car repayments. So it will be a curve jump transition to electric cars, not a phase in. I refer you to this earlier vitally important post I’ve written on the subject.

The interesting bit is how it impacts the industry beyond Tesla. We are about to go through a war time like reconfiguration of manufacturing facilities as the world rapidly moves to electric cars. Every auto player in the world will need to fast track and maybe even scramble to have relevant cars on the market. A shift the likes of which we’ve not seen in any industry since World War 2. It’s gonna be big.

Giddy up.

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The economic future of the Western World

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

The economic future of the Western World is bright, so long as it doesn’t squander its opportunities. So long as it remains open to the growth of developing nations and we manage to collaborate cross borders. Isolation and protectionism is not the answer, just ask China before it reopened to the world. Yet, all we ever hear is about the impending doom of the middle class and the end of manufacturing.

Abandoned factory USA

While reading my Quora feed I came across a brilliant answer to this question by Balaji Viswanathan:

About a decade ago, I was chatting with my buddy who was working at Windows Mobile. He was lamenting how the mobile industry was racing to the bottom where everyone was trying to produce $10 phones. Industry experts thought that the future of telephony was ultra cheap commodity.

A year after that conversation, an American company came with a nice gadget named iPhone that started at around $500 [without contract]. And another company in the same city brought a great competitor in Android. In a matter of months, it was clear that the future of phone market was not down, but up. Apple went on to be the biggest the most profitable company ever. Android became the biggest ever mobile OS.

That is the future of American manufacturing and middle class, if they can focus on out-innovating the world, rather than constantly whining about cheap countries. And the US is still a world leader in manufacturing with the likes of GE, Caterpillar, Dow, 3M, Boeing etc [see more: How does the USA make money despite much less manufacturing?]

There is a whole range of exciting new technology ahead of us – Virtual reality revolution, a 3d printing revolution, autonomous vehicles on land, air and water, robotics revolution, clean energy revolution, space exploration revolution and so on. Just like how Apple changed everything in a span of mere months, there could be enormous new innovations that are to come in the next few years.

This is probably like being in the 1950s – where everything is exciting and every field is getting rapidly changed. US has all the energy sources, a large market, the biggest labs, the most innovative companies & the best of universities. If you cannot win with all these advantages, there must be something wrong.

Do you want to build that tomorrow or keep complaining about losing the yesterday?

It’s worth reading twice. And here’s a few more of the so ons:

Internet of things, quantified self, nano technology, molecular manufacturing, genetic engineering, vertical farming, crypto currencies, block chain technology, crowd funding and fintech, wearables, quantum computing, augmented knowledge…. I could continue, but we all know that there’s enough opportunity in this list for every industry known to humanity, and the prices of all of them are dropping – which means the cost of innovating with them is low and the opportunity for value creation is high.

Now lets get excited and lets get going.

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