Sounds great — as long as we don’t call it a Moon Village. That sounds inane.
The director general of ESA, Johann-Dietrich Woerner, believes that the world should collaborate to create a permanent lunar base for “science, business, tourism or even mining.” Plans to use robotics and 3D printing for building the base have been discussed.
” “There is going to be a boom for design companies, because there’s going to be so much information people have to work through quickly,” said Diane B. Greene, the head of Google Compute Engine, one of the companies hoping to steer an A.I. boom. “Just teaching companies how to use A.I. will be a big business.” ”
Back in 2014, we told you about Rise, a film about a robot insurgency that was the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. The result of the $38,000 raised is this proof of concept video, which definitely looks good enough to deserve a full feature.
Rise comes from director David Karlak and writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Feast). It’s one of those classic robot revolution stories. Of course, in this case you find yourself in the awkward position of rooting for the failure of humans, but that’s sometimes how these things shake out. Plus, it’s always easier to side with Anton Yelchin than Rufus Sewell.
This is clearly a pitch for some studio to give them money to make a full thing, and it’s one of the most successful of that genre I’ve ever seen. There’s clearly a story in mind and Karlak’s vision looks great in these five minutes.
My new article for TechCrunch on capitalism and the robot revolution:
Economic experts are trying to figure out a question that just two decades ago seemed ridiculous: If 90 percent of human jobs are replaced by robots in the next 50 years — something now considered plausible — is capitalism still the ideal economic system to champion? No one is certain about the answer, but the question is making everyone nervous — and forcing people to dig deep inside themselves to discover the kind of future they want.
After America beat Russia in the Cold War, most of the world generally considered capitalism to be the hands-down best system on which to base economies and democracies. For decades, few doubted capitalism’s merit, which was made stronger by thriving globalization and a skyrocketing world net worth. In 1989 — when the Berlin Wall fell — the world had only 198 billionaires. Now, according to Forbes, there are 1,826 of them in 2016.
Despite growing riches, when banks collapsed in 2007 during the Great Recession, the world stepped back and wondered aloud if a more nuanced approach to economic progress was needed. These doubts of 21st century capitalism helped set the stage for an economic paradigm shift just starting to appear — economists observing jobs not just disappearing to other countries, but disappearing off the face of the Earth. The culprit: robots and software.
