TechFirst with John Koetsier

We have billions of smart things. How can we create a true internet of things with trillions? We won't ... unless we have a super-cheap, super-small, super-efficient chip that doesn't need a battery, has significant sensors and capability, and can be printed almost for free. That "almost" is still a problem, but the Wiliot Pixel 2 is a computer the size of a postage stamp. There's no batteries. You don't plug it in. And it powers itself by harvesting the energy from ambient radio waves. In this TechFirst, we chat with Wiliot exec Stephen Statler about the Pixel, about Wiliot's no-code applications in the cloud, and how he sees the future of IoT and IIoT. A big hint: expanding IoT at least 100X from where it is today to trillions of devices, not just billions. And that is when we'll really see the benefits of smart matter, a smart supply chain, smart cities, smart factories, smart stores, smart homes, and much more ... Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

COR is an infrared spectrometer that measures your blood health and how the food you eat and the exercise that you engage in impacts it. The first product of its kind, COR was created by a former Apple Health exec who wanted to know: is my diet good for me? Because everyone's response -- even to theoretically healthy foods -- is different. Even genetically identical twins don't have the same metabolic response to things, recent studies have shown. So the idea with COR is that you analyze your blood at home via infrared spectrometry about 4 times over a 3-week period, and you get specific data and recommendations back about what's good -- and what's bad -- for your health. The result, CEO Bob Messerschmidt says, is potentially the ability to have another 15 years of healthy, productive life. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

MIT scientists are building ElectroVoxels, small, smart, self-assembling robots designed for space.  It's programmable matter, infinitely recyclable large-scale 3D printing, if you will, and it could be the future of robotics and machinery in space. In this TechFirst, I chat with MIT PhD student Martin Nisser "Rather than building a robot or a structure in a top-down manner, we envision robots or structures as these modules of hundreds or thousands of small components or modules that can rearrange themselves with respect to their neighbors," Nisser says.  The mini-bots don't have actuators: they use "small, easily manufactured, inexpensive electromagnets into the edges of the cubes that repel and attract, allowing the robots to spin and move around each other and rapidly change shape." Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Is neuromorphic computing the only way we can actually achieve general artificial intelligence?  Very likely yes, according to Gordon Wilson, CEO of Rain Neuromorphics, who is trying to recreate the human brain in hardware and "give machines all of the capabilities that we recognize in ourselves." Rain Neuromorphics has built a neuromorphic chip that is analog. In other words it does not simulate neural networks: it is a neural network in analog, not digital. It's a physical collection of neurons and synapses, as opposed to an abstraction of neurons and synapses. That means no ones and zeroes of traditional computing but voltages and currents that represent the mathematical operations you want to perform. Right now it's 1000X more energy efficient than existing neural networks, Wilson says, because it doesn't have to spend all those computing cycles simulating the brain. The circuit is the neural network, which leads to some extraordinary gains in both speed improvement and power reduction, according to Wilson. Links: Rain Neuromorphics: https://rain.ai Episode sponsor: SMRT1 https://smrt1.ca/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

Will NFTs be a trillion-dollar market by 2030? Or will they vanish in a blazing explosion of hate from all the naysayers? (I might give even odds on each side, actually!) In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Rarible chief product officer Alex Salnikov. And yes, he’s aware that there’s way too many bored apes, yacht apes, space apes, technicolor apes, and all other kinds of crypto mishmash digital art that are vying for the stupid money that is out there chasing NFTs. But, he says, half of all digital commerce doesn’t need to have a physical component at all. And that would transform the future of commerce. Using, of course, the foundation built by today’s NFTs. But we’re early. In fact, we’re just now in the “Cambrian explosion,” Salnikov says, which will birth a massive amount of innovation and completely change the face of commerce, crypto, and how we buy, own, and share the things we want. Links: Rarible: https://rarible.com/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

So you got a great deal on your brand-new mutant ape yacht puppy NFT? But is it legit? DeviantArt is now scanning 5 million NFTs a week. Every month, it's finding  40,000 stolen, infringing, fraudulent NFTs. In other words, the people minting the NFTs don't actually own the images in the first place ... somewhat ironically since the whole idea of an NFT is prove ownership. NFTs are clearly the new gold rush (you have mine, right?) But where there’s gold, there’s thieves and opportunists, and apparently, that’s just as true of NFTs as crypto in general. DeviantArt is the world’s largest art community and has been around since 2000. It now has over 61 million members, and it's getting involved to ensure its members' art doesn't get stolen. In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with DeviantArt CMO Liat Karpel Gurwicz and COO Moti Levy. Sponsor: SMRT1, a Smart Vending Machine Platform that transforms traditional vending hardware into "Smarter, Better, Faster" automated retail kiosks, a convenience store without the store. Links: SMRT1: https://smrt1.ca/ DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

How soon will we have robot surgeons? Health care has gone remote lately, but in reality, most of it is fairly simple: video conferencing during Covid. But just recently for the first time ever a robot surgeon at Johns Hopkins University performed abdominal surgery on soft tissue. Granted … it was on a pig, not a human … but STAR, or Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, was a success. And that means there's significant hope that robot surgeons are not only possible but a reality. Unfortunately, it might be a decade or two before this is normal. But technology does advance quickly ... and we need it to. Healthcare is unevenly and inequitably available both globally and nationally, and cheap, fast, effective surgeries would be a huge boost to health care outcomes. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Tamir Wolf, CEO and co-founder of surgical intelligence platform Theator. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Studies say you can prevent about 50% of mental health challenges if you catch and address them early. Doctors from Cincinnati Children’s hospital are using the world’s second-most powerful supercomputer to help solve mental health right at the start: when we're kids. This is a big deal. About 13% of us suffer from some form of mental health disorder ... that’s 971 million people globally. And it’s only gotten worse since Covid. In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we meet and chat with Dr. John Pestian, who is leading the effort. Links: Cincinnati Children's hospital: https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Thinking to type sounds interesting to most of us. Crazy and futuristic, yes, but also freeing and fast. But for those with massive spinal cord injuries or degenerative diseases, it's an absolute lifeline. In this TechFirst, we chat with Marcus Gerhardt, CEO of Blackrock Neurotech, about a brain-computer interface they've invented, "installed" for people who cannot use their arms or legs anymore, and enabled typing, speech, and the use of robotic arms to feed themselves and more. Blackrock's tech enables thought-to-text typing at 90 characters per minute with 94% accuracy (just imagine what Dr. Stephen Hawking could have done with this) and gives tetraplegic patients the power to move a prosthetic arm, grab a glass of water, and drink by themselves again for the first time since their tragic accidents. Links: Blackrock Neurotech: https://blackrockneurotech.com Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

Can we save the coral reefs by 3D printing more? Not reefs themselves, of course: those are built by living creatures, the coral ... but by 3D printing the substrate that corals can attach to and kickstarting the process of reef construction. In this TechFirst, we chat with marine biologist Astrid Kramer and 3D printing expert Nadia Fani about their crowdfunding startup, Coastruction. Scientists say we've lost half the world's coral reefs, and that puts a quarter of the world's fish at risk. Astrid and Nadia are trying to help reverse that, with the help of 3D printing and local groups all over the planet. Their proposed 3D printer uses sand and other local materials, and can adapt the size and shape of the substrate to local needs as determined by depth, tide, waves, shoreline, and more. Links: Coastruction: https://www.coastruction.com Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier