Monthly Archives: February 2020

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Nationally recognized futurist and economist Rebecca Ryan delivers the keynote speech during the Springfield Business Development Corporation's 2020 Annual Meeting at the University Plaza Convention Center on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Jansen/News-Leader)

The way economist and futurist Rebecca Ryan sees it, Springfield is on the cusp of greatness.

When Ryan was here 10 years ago to help establish a network of young professionals, downtown wasn't yet the booming place it is now. The airport has sincegrown and changed.

But the city is still short of where it wants to be perhaps "stuck" like the rest of the country in a time of great uncertainty and upheaval.

Ryan said like the seasons, the United States goes through phases of prosperity, growth, stagnation and revolution.

This time, like during the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression, Americans are facing a "winter" period that will make way for spring.

In a Friday speech before the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce's development arm, Ryan encouraged attendees to prepareby looking toward the horizon.

A large crowd filled the University Plaza Convention Center to hear nationally recognized futurist and economist Rebecca Ryan deliver the keynote speech during the Springfield Business Development Corporation's 2020 Annual Meeting on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Jansen/News-Leader)

"During these winter periods is where great change can happen," she said. "When spring comes again, the competition is going to get even fiercer."

In order to make way for that future, Ryan referenced the city's comprehensive planning effort, during which the community is talking about what it'd like to see happen in the next 20 years.

During these winter periods is where great change can happen. When spring comes again, the competition is going to get even fiercer.

She noted that the city hopedto craft a more cohesive image and beautify the streets in its last visioning effort 20 years ago and didn't get it done.

State of the State: Here are four things that stood out in Gov. Parson's speech

Hundreds of Springfieldians said they'd still like to see the city create a "brand" for itself.

Ryan suggested they look toward Milwaukee.

TheMilwaukee Art Museum hired a Spanish architect and in 2001completed a building with a moveable sunscreen that unfolds each day like wings and is designed to serve as a symbol and mimic the "culture of Lake Michigan," according to the art museum's website.

The building has become an icon for the city, and Ryan said it was a bold and forward-thinking vision that made it a reality.

She also suggested residents look toward Henry Ford when they talk about quality-of-life and housing issues.

Nationally recognized futurist and economist Rebecca Ryan delivers the keynote speech during the Springfield Business Development Corporation's 2020 Annual Meeting at the University Plaza Convention Center on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Jansen/News-Leader)

When he started manufacturing his famous Model T in the 1900s, Ford paid his employees $5 a day the equivalent of just over $16 an hour today.

Ryan said that sort of pay structure, which allowed his employees to afford a Model T themselves, encouraged other employers to follow suit and resulted in a robust middle class for decades.

In Springfield's case, Ryan said the city should focus on building a place that works for its residents, whether that comes through public transportation, making public spaces more friendly for interaction or creating a sense of place.

Missouri rep: Thousands of kids taken off Medicaid were likely eligible for benefits

But in order to make those big, bold changes, Ryan told attendees they should expect resistance.

Nationally recognized futurist and economist Rebecca Ryan moves through the crowd as she delivers the keynote speech during the Springfield Business Development Corporation's 2020 Annual Meeting at the University Plaza Convention Center on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Jansen/News-Leader)

In the Civil War, she said, Union soldiers had to combat the opposition of Confederate soldiers, who wanted to maintain the status quo and continued slavery.

Ryan said in order to truly create change, people should lean into those difficulties and help bring others along for the ride if they can.

"Greatness never comes out of the voice of fear," she said.

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Economist: Springfield is 'on the cusp.' Here's what it needs to do to take the next step. - News-Leader

As the ongoing coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, sickening and claiming the lives of patients around the world, a plethora of confusing and occasionally-conflicting information is spreading along with it.

It doesnt help that it took so long for the World Health Organization (WHO) to nail down an official name for the disease. Nor is it ideal that the name we know it by, the name of the actual virus itself, and the outbreaks previous (unofficial) moniker are all fairly similar.

To help you and ourselves here at Futurism, to be honest stay on top of the vocabulary surrounding the outbreak, we put together the following glossary.

This is a now-outdated term that was used to describe the coronavirus linked to the outbreak before the WHO formally named it SARS-CoV-2 (see below). Its an acronym that stands for the novel CoronaVirus discovered in 2019.

The word coronavirus has served as an easy way to reference the ongoing outbreak, but its not terribly specific,since a coronavirus is a broad category of virus. There are hundreds of coronaviruses which, when they infect a human, cause diseases with flu-like symptoms. Think respiratory trouble, soreness, fever and, in more serious cases, pneumonia or kidney failure.

COVID-19, short for COronaVIrus Disease 2019, is the illness caused by a SARS-CoV-2 infection.You could say that a SARS-CoV-2 infection made someone come down with a case of COVID-19 not unlike how the varicella zoster virus causes the disease chickenpox.

A mortality rate is a statistic that represents the proportion of people dying from a specific cause. In this case, it means the percentage of people who get COVID-19 and ultimately die, not a tally of total fatalities.

As of this storys publication, Chinas COVID-19 mortality rate is around 3.4 percent higher than the mortality rate for the rest of the world, which is currently about 1.7 percent.

A pandemic is the term for an outbreak thats spreading rampantly on an international or global scale, as opposed to a more localized epidemic.

The WHO maintains that the ongoing coronavirus outbreak is not a pandemic: even though cases have been confirmed in 41 global territories, most of the countries affected have more or less contained the disease thus far.

Pronounced R naught, this is a statistical measure that represents how many people, on average, someone whos infected with a disease will spread it to. Tracking down an R0 value for COVID-19 has been difficult, in part because mild cases can go undetected and also because some countries have been hit harder than others.

Different studies have arrived at wildly different R0 values for the COVID-19 outbreak, and the number likely wont be solidified until after the fact but thus far the WHO suggests the R0 lies between two and three.

This is the formal name of the specific coronavirus thats causing a commotion right now.

The name is an acronym: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related CoronaVirus 2. SARS-CoV-2 is highly similar to the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003. In fact, when SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in Wuhan, China in December, one of the first doctors to send out a warning about it actually confused it for a resurgence of SARS.

A vaccine is a preventative tool that can strengthen the immune system against a disease. Administered in advance, a vaccine is different from a treatment or cure in that it doesnt fight the virus directly it just better equips your body fight it off and prevent the associated disease.

Specifically, a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 would contain inert and harmless fragments of the virus. If your immune system is exposed to the vaccine, it would generate antibodies capable of fighting the virus in the future, ultimately preventing you from getting sick with COVID-19. Thus far, there are no vaccines available, though many teams are working on them.

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Here's a Glossary for the Ongoing Coronavirus Outbreak's Vocab - Futurism

Alexis Kirke is something of a visionary when it comes to the future of TV. Once a quant on Wall Street, he took his Ph.D. in computer science and decided that he was going to be an artist. In 2013, he created Many Worlds, a film that changed the direction of its narrative based upon the biometric response of audience members, measured using special sensors capable of monitoring their brain waves, heart rate, perspiration levels and muscle tension. The average of these responses was then used to trigger different scenes.

It was, in essence, a low-budget, more high-tech Bandersnatch, years before Bandersnatch saw the dim light of a glowing Netflix screen. That was just the start.

In the years since, hes created an adaptive personalized radio project at the University of Plymouth collaborating with the UKs BBC amongst others; organized algorithmic film festivals; run experiments on quantum computers; and advised Hollywood studios on the future of interactivity. He is currently doing an additional postgrad study at Metfilm in Ealing Studios, the UKs oldest and most prestigious film studio.

Kirke shared his thoughts on what the next 10 years is going to hold for television and the way we experience on-screen screen entertainment.

Streaming services arent going away. But not all of them will go the distance. And while viewers will continue to reap the benefits of picking and choosing what they want to see when they want to see it, the landscape may wind up looking strangely familiar taking us back to a time of bundled shows more reminiscent of the heyday of cable.

I think that Netflixs dominance will die, Kirke predicted. It was a blip caused by them being first to market. The big players are entering the market in the form of traditional studios. But they will also fracture it. People will not want to subscribe to 10 different streamers, so streaming may consolidate back into the old TV channel system, where you pay a higher amount and get [a package of services.]

Kirkes Many Worlds helped lay the foundations for how interactivity could change the movies we watch. In an age of smart TVs, biometrics-tracking wearables and more, this data could be used by broadcasters to offer an alternative to current fixed narrative movies. Imagine, for example, a horror movie getting louder and more intense because it determines your heart rate isnt elevated enough.

But while this might be promising, Kirke said there is still a conceptual breakthrough that has to happen before this is truly possible. Branching stories are a fun gimmick, but the real challenge is auto-generation of stories that will cover every eventuality. Right now, the technologys not there yet. And we may not want it anyway.

Entertainment that can change its direction depending on the slightest decision of many people already exists and its called video gaming.

Choice can be debilitating when we log into Netflix, he said. And the knowledge subconsciously that we can change film to 30 others we want to watch, while watching the one were currently watching, can be distracting.

Entertainment that can change its direction depending on the slightest decision of many people already exists and its called video gaming. Games and TV-style entertainment may bleed over slightly, but dont expect them to merge entirely. At least not any time soon.

As Digital Trends has covered before, the personalization most of us might see first is not narrative-based, but rather the advent of things like real-time personalized product placement edited into our content of choice.

The idea of broadcast television sticking to a fixed schedule is over. As iGen (the generation who grew up with smartphones and constant connectivity) grows older, it will appear like more of an anachronism than ever. Subscription services will highlight the challenges faced by traditional broadcasting.

Theyll still have their niche, though mainly the province of live sport and ultra-popular watercooler reality shows that large numbers of people need to watch at the same time.

Last year, YouTube was the most used app and website for children between the ages of 8 and 11. U.S. pre-teens say they would pick YouTube over broadcast TV if they had to choose between the two. In a decades time, this group will be between 18 and 21. Some may graduate to more traditional streaming services such as Netflix for more episodic content. But theyll have grown up with the expectation that media is intrinsically social. The same age range are spending more time playing or social games like Fortnite, or watching them on Twitch.

Mainstream broadcasters and streamers will need to emulate YouTube and Twitch in order to to compete.

Mainstream broadcasters and streamers will need to emulate YouTube and Twitch in order to to compete. Imagine a social Netflix with an open upload policy, which has a sort-of bargain basement where anybody can get their content on Netflix, Kirke said. A Netflix with social streaming channels. And eventually a Netflix with built-in social games you can choose to either login and watch others playing, or login and play yourself.

The 2020s will likely see new form factors emerge, but these will not necessarily lead to a one-size-fits-all medium for watching content. Kids are happy enough to consume media on their phones, but not all the time. Theaters will continue to provide a social environment and shared experience, and better sound system and ambience, Kirke said. It is also a way of voluntary trapping ourselves in an environment and removing choice.

As studios tried in the mid-twentieth century with the innovation of widescreen and gimmicks like smell-o-vision, they will today work to separate theatrical event movies from small screen films. New devices such as foldable smartphones could help make mobile viewing more popular, as large screens would become portable. But dont write off the big screen experience.

Kirke thinks VR is currently a dead-end. The technology is too bulky and expensive. And efforts to provide a more immersive viewing experience miss the point by forcing users to be their own cinematographers and directors; responsible for choosing their own shots.

In terms of the next step up from VR/AR and screens, it seems that this would be eyeball projection, Kirke said. If a person is put into a dark room, then the only light hitting their eyeballs could come from a [ultra-high] resolution projector at ultra frame rates. Roll on the day. Or not, depending on your religious and philosophical implications.

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Humanitys media habits shifted radically in the 2010s. What do the 2020s hold? - Digital Trends

War Games

The Pentagon performed a training exercise last week in which it simulated a nuclear exchange with Russia, according to National Defense Magazine.

They attacked us with a low-yield nuclear [warhead], and in the course of the exercise we simulated responding with a nuclear weapon, an official told the magazine under condition of anonymity.

Its common for the Pentagon to walk through simulated conflicts in order to fine-tune its official response, according to National Defense but its unusual to publicize the simulations.

And this particular exercise sounds important, with Defense One corroborating National Defenses claim that U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper personally took part.

National Defense contextualized the exercise as part of the Trump administrations efforts to modernize the militarys nuclear stockpile and, chillingly, prepare to use it.

The other side is building their nuclear weapons up, modernizing their stockpiles, and so this [U.S. modernization effort] is just a sensible response to that, the anonymous official said.

READ MORE: BREAKING: U.S. Nukes Russia in Simulation Exercise [NPR]

More on nuclear war: This Video Shows Horrifying Devastation of US-Russia Nuclear War

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The Pentagon Just Simulated a Nuclear War With Russia - Futurism

Some Answers

As the Space Force evolved from a vague Trumpian thought to a full-fledged branch of the U.S. military, questions surfaced about what exactly it would do and how it would differ from NASA and the Air Forces ongoing work in orbit.

Lieutenant General David Thompson, the Space Forces second-in-command, sat down with GEN to clarify exactlywhat it does revealing the agencys goals, the scope of its operations, and that its already collaborating with SpaceX and Blue Origin.

In addition to scanning for hostile missile launches and other surveillance missions, the Space Force is also responsible for maintaining communication, GPS, and military satellites.

We already work pretty closely with Elon Musk and SpaceX, Thompson told GEN, specifically on developing and maintaining satellite constellations like Starlink.

Mainly, Thompson pressed back against the idea that launching a Space Force would be anything like Star Trek or Star Wars. The uniforms wont be spandex or have capes, he told GEN, nor does it expect to fight battles on the Moon or Mars any time soon.

Rather, Thompson told GEN the Space Force exists because we have to ensure space capabilities are there for the folks on the ground.

READ MORE: Space Forces Second-in-Command Explains What the Hell It Actually Does [GEN]

More on space: Space Force General: Russian Satellite Is Unusual and Disturbing

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Space Force Working "Pretty Closely With Elon Musk and SpaceX" - Futurism