TechFirst with John Koetsier

This year we saw consumers push back hard on BMW's decision to include heated seats in vehicles but only make them actually work if people paid a monthly subscription fee. Why? And how does the concept of ownership change when everything is smart, everything is remotely configurable, and everything can report its own level of usage? In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Zach Supalla, the CEO and founder of Particle. We talk about music, software, hardware, and buying versus renting ... everything. What does value mean, and when do we like paying monthly fees versus when do we prefer to buy something upfront and own it outright? And what does that mean for our right to repair the products we think we own?  And does our new relationship with ownership of objects mean that the US government could force companies like Apple and Google to brick all iPhones and Android phones in Russia, if Russia used nuclear weapons? 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

We need more homes for people. We need them cheaper so people can afford them. And we need them eco-friendly and carbon-neutral and self-powering so that our planet doesn't die in the process. Is the answer 3D printing homes? Perhaps, partly. In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the CTO of Mighty Buildings, Dmitry Starodubtsev. We talk about the fact that the construction industry in the US produces 600 million tons of waste annually, that we need robotics, automation, and 3D printing involved in home building, and we talk about Might Buildings, which says they have a solution that is 80% automated, 50% faster, and produces 99% less construction waste to create Net Zero communities: communities that produce all the power they need. We also chat about Light Stone, which Mighty Buildings has pioneered, which the company says is lighter than concrete while 4X stronger. Links: TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Subscribe to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/techfirst  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

It's not every day that you get to interview a 357-year-old company founded by a king, and the company that ships 1 out of 6 things moved globally. In this TechFirst I chat about how we're going to fix the $100 trillion global economy: make it smarter, make it faster, and make it much, much more planet-friendly. This is a session I moderated at Web Summit in Lisbon about a month ago with Ursula Soritsch-Renier, the Chief Digital & Information Officer of Saint-Gobain, and Rotem Hershko, Senior Vice President, Head of Business Platforms for Maersk. Enjoy!

We've seen it in tickets and gaming consoles. But now it's happening in diapers and food and consumer goods: bots buying, taking up all available supply, and driving up prices for the rest of us. What can we do about it? In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Niels Sodemann, CEO of Queue-it, about bots, e-commerce, pricing, supply, and what we can do to fix the problem. Links: TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Subscribe to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/techfirst  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

In this special episode of TechFirst, I'm sharing the on-stage chat I had with Ghazi Shami, the Founder & CEO of EMPIRE, an innovative hip hop music label, and Wilfrid Obeng, the Co-founder & CTO of Audiomob. We chat metaverse, gaming, NFTs that don't suck, and what the tie-in is between a hip hop label and an audio ads company. Both also chat about their metaverse plans ...

Tesla CEO suggested Optimus, the Tesla Bot, would come in around $20,000. He's been wrong about pricing before.  But is Tesla the only company that can pull off humaniform robots with strong AI that can do multiple tasks? In this TechFirst we chat with Robert Scoble and Irena Cronin from Infinite Retina about what Tesla Bot is, what it can do, and whether it's possible.

Unity CEO John Riccitiello talks about playing his first game (Pong), coding his first game, co-coding his first game with his daughter, and of course all the other stuff:  - gaming  - game monetization  - ironSource acquisition progress  - Applovin attempt to get Unity to buy them  - the metaverse and the future of gaming

We’re seeing so much generative art today: text, images, even video created by AI. I can’t get the image out of my mind of “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo in which God reaches down to touch Adam and stir him into life. In this TechFirst, we’re going to chat about generative AI  - What it can do - What it means - How it will change the world - And how it might change us Our guest is Alex Cardinal, CEO of Glimpse.ai. They have 2 AI projects … Article Forge, that generates articles on a topic based on a keyword And WordAI, which will rewrite content uniquely in the same style.

Is Tesla Bot more than vaporware? Will it be useful and effective in general tasks and duties? Most robots are designed to do one thing or a small subset of things well. Tesla Bot and Xiaomi’s CyberOne robot seem to be attempts to create general purpose smart robots that can follow complex orders. Elon Musk, for instance, suggested that you could tell Tesla Bot go to a store and get you groceries, and that it will “replace people in repetitive, boring, and dangerous tasks.” MIT professor Daniela Rus, however, has her doubts. MIT is working on multiple types of reconfigurable robots, including ones made out of reformable smart sand, but making a humanoid general purpose robot is counterproductive because, as Rus says, " the more you generalize, the less you optimize." In this TechFirst, we chat about the future of robotics and automation. Links: 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 do you define the future of augmented reality? Is it a $2,000 headset from Apple or a $1500 Oculus Quest Pro from Facebook? Or is it a device that we all hold in our hands that can cost just a few hundred dollars. A device that there are literally five billion of on this planet? AR platform Blippar is betting on the latter while not ignoring the former, and in this TechFirst we chat with the CEO Faisal Galaria about exactly why. And, of course, an integration Blippar just built and announced for Unity, the technology that underpins half the world's games and many of its immersive 3D experiences. Links: 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