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Innovation in fashion is sparking radical change. In the future clothes could be computers, made with materials designed and grown in a lab.

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A new wave of innovation is fueling a radical change in fashion. Wearable technology, data, automation and lab-grown materials will have a major impact on what people will be wearing in the future.

Since the birth of sewing and weaving, technology has always led developments in fashion. The Industrial Revolution mechanized manufacturing enabling mass production. In the 1960s synthetic materials like polyester took off, creating new possibilities for fashion.

Now the convergence of new technologies is opening up previously unimaginable possibilities. Self-styled fashion scientist Dr Amanda Parkes is in the vanguard of the industry’s latest reinvention. She heads up innovation at FT labs, a venture capital firm that invests primarily in disruptive fashion tech startups. Among these startups the race is on to find the next generation of renewable materials that can be grown in a lab. Traditional silk is produced from insect larvae that form cocoons, most commonly silkworms. But rather than relying on these insects bolt threads is creating silk in test tubes. Bio fabricated materials remove the need for animals and insects and they are a more sustainable and efficient way of producing raw materials.

Other companies are creating leather alternatives. Rather than using animals scientists are creating bio fabricated materials from pineapple leaves and even mushrooms. The convergence of fashion and technology also provides opportunities to transform not just clothes but the people wearing them.

The future is just over the horizon and we’re accelerating towards it. And while the famous Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future once said, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nissan revealed not only the future of road-based transportation but equally your future whip.


Driving in the future will not only be autonomous, but will also seamlessly integrate the virtual world into your physical domain using mixed reality, creating an all-around intelligent, connected, transportation ecosystem.

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The Pentagon’s emerging technologies unit put out a call last week for proposals that use insect brains to control robots — because they could be used to create efficient new models for artificial intelligence, but also because they could be used to explore the meaning of consciousness.

“Nature has forced on these small insects drastic miniaturization and energy efficiency, some having only a few hundred neurons in a compact form-factor, while maintaining basic functionality,” reads a document in the proposal. “Furthermore, these organisms are possibly able to display increased subjectivity of experience.” It goes on to say that there’s evidence suggesting that “even small insects have subjective experiences, the first step towards a concept of ‘consciousness.’”.

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By giving $1,000 per month to a family.


  • Democrat Andrew Yang is running for president of the United States. His long-shot campaign is centered on providing a universal basic income for Americans.
  • Yang wants to help Americans who are losing jobs to automation, and he believes a basic income could create 4.5 million new jobs.
  • The core of Yang’s campaign is the Freedom Dividend, which would give out $1,000 per month to every American between the ages of 18 and 64.
  • Yang is testing the dividend this year in Goffstown, New Hampshire, where one family will receive $1,000 a month for a year. The family got the first payment on New Year’s Eve.

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang, a 43-year-old entrepreneur-turned-politician, is focusing his campaign on helping Americans who are losing jobs to automation.

Yang wants all Americans to benefit from a universal basic income, which would provide regular cash payments to people regardless of their employment status. Although he is a long-shot candidate, the Democrat said he believes so strongly in the need for a basic income that he is dedicated to running.

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As the new year begins, we approach one of the most awaited life extension events of 2019: the Undoing Aging conference.

Starting off with a success

The Undoing Aging conference series started off in 2018, with the first being held in Berlin, Germany, in mid-March. Especially when you consider that UA2018 was the inaugural event of the series, it was extremely successful; the three-day conference organized by SENS Research Foundation (SRF) and Forever Healthy Foundation (FHF) brought together many of the most illustrious experts in the fields of aging research, biotechnology, regenerative medicine, AI for drug discovery, advocacy and policy, and business and investment.

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Isaac Asimov was one the world’s most celebrated and prolific science fiction writers, having written or edited more than 500 books over his four-decade career. The Russian-born writer was famous for penning hard science fiction in his books, such as that in I, Robot, Foundation and Nightfall. Naturally, his work contained many predictions about the future of society and technology.


We’re not living in space, but the Russian science-fiction author foresaw the rise of intelligent machines and the disruption of the digital age.

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