Lifeboat Foundation

Life in the digital age is raising fundamental questions about the future of business and employment and hence the strategies, skills, and abilities we need to develop to survive in the next economy. This article explores two key changes that we need to start developing a core of capabilities for – namely the quest for exponential growth and the growing use of corporate venturing.

Why are these becoming important? Well, technology and the thinking it enables are driving new ideas and experiments on commercial strategies, the shape and structure of organisations, business models, and the relationship with extended ecosystems of partners. Both strategies are seen as options to drive growth and accelerate the realisation of market opportunities.

Exponential thinking is seen as a fast track approach to driving business innovation and growth. We are used to the idea of exponential growth in many fields of science and technology. For example, Moore’s Law in information technology tells us that the amount of computer power we can buy for £1,000 doubles every 18–24 months. This has inspired digital innovators to try and grow their business at the same pace or faster than the underlying technologies. The broader business world is taking notice. The stellar rates of development and growth we are witnessing for some exponential businesses in the digital domain are encouraging many organisations across literally every sector from banking to aviation to try and apply similar thinking to some or all of their activities.

Hence, it is now common to see businesses pursue a vision of doubling of revenues within three to four years and a achieving a 2-20X or more improvement in other aspects of the business. For purely digital entities, their business models are predicated on using network effects to drive exponential growth or better in user numbers and revenues. Some suggest that to embrace the exponential model, businesses must reject defined end goals and step-by-step plans in favour of such ambitious visions and develop a high tolerance of uncertainty. Typically, the exponential growth initiatives are driven through a combination of iterative task specific ‘sprints’ to define, test, refine, and deliver business changes that could result in massive performance improvements in specific areas of the business.

Continue reading “Strategies for the Digital Age, Part 1” »

Happy New Year! 2019 has seen a number of milestones for Agility, including the final deliveries of Cassie and the launch of Digit. To celebrate, we’ve compiled a supercut of (mostly) never-before-seen testing footage. Here’s hoping 2020 is as robotastic as its predecessor — a big thanks to all of our employees for their hard work.

We often hear this word used in Transhumanist (H+) discussions, but what is meant by it? After all, if H+ is about using scitech to enhance Human capabilities via internal modifications what does it mean to go beyond these? In the following I intend to delineate possible stages of enhancement from what exists today to what could exist as an endpoint of this process in centuries to come.

Although I have tried to put it in what I believe to be a plausible chronological order a great deal depends on major unknowns, most especially the rapidity with which Artificial Intelligence (AI) develops over the next few decades. Although AI and biotech are at present evolving separately and in parallel I would expect at some point fairly soon for there to be a massive crossover. Exactly how or when that might happen is again a moot question. There is also a somewhat artificial distinction between machines and biology, which exists because our current machines are so primitive. Once we have a fully functioning nanotechnology, just like Nature’s existing nanotech (life), that distinction will disappear completely.

The display is part of a growing trend to find alternatives to fireworks, which create noise and smoke pollution and can be a fire hazard.

The children at BiZoHa, an orphanage and school in southwest Uganda, wake up at 7 a.m. Within an hour they’re ready and dressed in their school uniforms, blue shirts with bright yellow collars and either charcoal grey pants or dresses. There are classes after that and, at 10:30, a pause for porridge, bread, and fried bananas. The day continues from there — classes, meals, play, and sleep — perfectly routine and peaceable. But in the Kasese District, a multi-ethnic region on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, this schedule, with all its reassuring regularity, is radical. There are no prayer breaks. There are no church services. BiZoHa, described by its backers as “the world’s first atheist orphanage,” is a humanist raft adrift a choppy sea of faith.

Whether or not BiZoHa really is the first atheist orphanage or not — any facility in North Korea could stake a claim — doesn’t much matter. To debate that point is to lose the specific context. Thanks to a missionary history and the influence of American conservative activists, Uganda is an enthusiastically, zealously religious country. It is not constitutionally Christian, but it basically functions that way, which makes the Reddit-funded orphanage something akin to a humanist fortress. And there is a distinct militarism to some of the language embraced by its teachers. Number six on the list of the school’s ten values is “NO SUPERSTITION.” Students who see those words know that they are a reminder to “Rely on Reason, Logic, and Science to understand the universe and to solve life’s problems.”

It’s a hallowed lesson to BiZoHa’s founding director, Bwambale Robert Musubaho. A Ugandan orphaned at five, Musubaho was raised by his grandmother and eventually graduated from college with a diploma in Biological Sciences. Frustrated by what he saw as hypocrisy among believers, Musubaho stepped back from religion in the late 1980s. But he still took inspiration from the religious people he saw around him, specifically the missionaries. He became an atheist, a homegrown Richard Dawkins preaching good works and good, solid reasoning. After many years, he found the word for what he was on the internet and declared himself a humanist.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions.

The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year.

Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry.

Previous versions of a vaccine that Mayo Clinic was working on were a lot more invasive than their current one. This shot is administered easily and requires no special bells and whistles.

“It’s supposed to be just off the shelf, kind of similar to when you get the flu shot or pneumonia shot,” Chumsri said.

The team is working on vaccines for every stage of breast cancer. They’ve already started using this vaccine on two new patients, and they are looking for additional trial subjects. If you’re interested in being a part of the next trial at the Mayo Clinic, you can search through your options here.

2019 is quite a milestone for LEAF; this will be our fourth year of bringing you the latest industry news, organizing online events, hosting our annual conference in New York, and crowdsourcing important research projects over at Lifespan.io. We have been incredibly busy and, as has been customary in previous years, we will be taking a look back at the year.

January

Continue reading “Looking Back at 2019 – and Forward to 2020” »

For your 2020 New Year’s resolutions, think about keeping the microbes that live inside your gut healthy. Look after them and they’ll look after you.