Monthly Archives: April 2020

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC4 News) As Utah becomes the first state to implement a COVID-19 tracking system for people who enter the state, questions are being asked about how the technology works, the company behind it and what is being done with personal information.

During a press conference on Friday, Joe Dougherty, Public Information Officer, for the Utah Division of Emergency Management, explained how the system kicks in when drivers cross over into one of the states entry points.

We draw a number of shapes we call them polygons on a map, and then we write a 90 character message that has been sent out, said Dougherty. People who enter the area that has been geo-targeted, will if it works the way its supposed to will receive that alert.

That alert will direct travelers to Entry.Utah.Gov to fill out a COVID-19 declaration form, which asks if you have any symptoms of the virus.

The whole effort here in what were trying to do is in fact, the ability for us to gather critical information on those who are affected by this coronavirus and to protect those who are not yet affected, said Jess Anderson, Commissioner of Utah Department of Public Safety.

The technology being used is nothing new, but how it is now being implemented is new, according to state officials.

The technology, called WebEOC, is a system set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission, which allows critical alerts to be sent out to the public in emergency times.

That system does not track your data at all. It uses a technology called Cell Broadcast, Dougherty said. With Cell Broadcast, the message goes out to cell phone towers and then cell phones that happen to enter the geo-fenced area are pinged with that alert.

Dougherty said the system also doesnt store any data.

That data will be collected and given in a secure fashion to the Utah Department of Health so that they can track that and trace any movement of someone who has coronavirus in the state.

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The technology Utah is using to track the coronavirus - ABC 4

Common sense and a state-ordered ban on in-person group worship have changed, at least temporarily, how Vermonters can worship this Passover and Easter season.

But parishioners need to have faith that technology can work in their favor as they come together at the same time while also being forced apart, religious leaders from around the state said this week.

In response to COVID-19, the members of First Presbyterian Church of Barre will attend Easter service this Sunday by Zoom and telephone, as will the members of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Barre and the parishioners of dozens of churches statewide.

Roman Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne will broadcast live, from Cathedral of St. Josephs in Burlington, two Easter services with Masses available on the Burlington diocese web and Facebook page.

Also, members of the Rutland Jewish Center will worship remotely.

COVID-19 has indeed changed how I and the members of St. Peters parish will celebrate Holy Week and Easter. Since we are not able to congregate, as a faith community, for the safety of one another, parishioners will be celebrating these high holy days from their homes; they will have the opportunity to view the services of the week either on TV, live-streaming or other technological means, said the Rev. Thomas Houle, or Father Tom, pastor at St. Peters Roman Catholic Church in Rutland.

This week is one of the holiest weeks of the year for Christian and Jews. Islam starts its holiest month in two weeks.

On Sunday, Christians will hold Easter Mass, which honors the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. April 8-16 is Passover, the Jewish celebration of the journey from slavery to freedom when the Israelites left Egypt. The month-long Ramadan, a time of spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and heightened devotion and worship, begins for Muslims on April 23.

In some ways, this Easter is closer to the first Easter when there was a lot of uncertainty. There is a lot of fear and anxiety in this day and age, and I suspect that was the case for the first followers of Christ, said the Rev. Carl Hilton VanOsdall, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Barre.

Easter will be the fourth service by internet for VanOsdall, who broadcasts from his porch in Barre City. Although COVID-19 has created significant challenges, he said, on the plus side, it has forced churches to seek out and find new ways to connect.

The words were using are, we are not at church, but we are still being church, VanOsdall said.

Said Rabbi Ellie Shemtov, head of the Rutland Jewish Center, Theres a joke making its way around social media that goes something like this: Passover is canceled this year because of a plague. Well, I wouldnt say Passover has been canceled, but it has certainly been waylaid by COVID-19. Our plan was to have a congregational seder (a ritual service and ceremonial dinner) on the first night of Passover, which would have brought about 60 people into our building. Instead, we Zoomed our seders both nights and found new meaning in a variety of seder rituals as well as in the story of the Exodus.

Theres a point in the seder when we recite the 10 plagues God brought down on the Egyptian taskmasters, which included frogs, boils and darkness. This year, we added an eleventh plague, the coronavirus, a plague brought down not just on the Egyptians but on the entire world, Shemtov said.

Zoom, Facebook and other internet platforms are great tools to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, but none is proving to be perfect, and each has challenges and requires a learning curve on how to best use it, said Earle Kooperkamp, pastor at Church of the Good Shepherd in Barre. Easter will be Kooperkamps fifth internet broadcast.

Among the lesson learned: Mute the congregation for much of the service to avoid dogs barking and babies crying. It is also important that parishioners who attend by video conference to remember that they are on camera. Last Sunday, one member attending by cellphone was dual tasking attending the service by smartphone and feeding his pigs.

Not sure I would say we have adjusted as a congregation, but we have definitely adapted to this new environment. We started using Zoom fairly quickly after the restrictions came down. We have had two Zoom bar mitzvahs, Zoom adult education classes, Zoom Hebrew school classes, Zoom Shabbat (Judaisms day of rest) services, and in a few weeks we will have our first Zoom board meeting. Later this month we are looking at having a Zoom Holocaust Remembrance Day service, Shemtov said.

Music is very difficult by video conference.

We tried singing and that was a total disaster, VanOsdall said. The church now provides music from one origin site only.

Another issue with video services is the loss of revenue from plate collections. The loss has been significant, said Daniel Pudvah, deacon and office manager at St. Monica Catholic Church in Barre. With 1,200 members, St. Monica is one of the largest congregations in the state. It is too early to tell whether there will be a long-term impact, Pudvah said.

Although what we are collecting is not the same as if we were holding Mass and gathering as a faith community, the understanding, the commitment and the fidelity that parishioners have towards the parish is very favorable and impressive, Father Tom said.

Technical issues aside, the biggest issue with internet services is the inability for the parishioners to meet and greet. Some of the most heartfelt services that can only be done in person, such as the washing of the feet of 12 parishioners to commemorate when Jesus washed the feet of the 12 Apostles and the Good Friday procession, were canceled Pudvah said.

Kooperkamp agrees that the loss of human contact is unfortunate.

At this time of so many people dying and so much fear, we really had no choice, Kooperkamp said. His congregation started meeting remotely before the order from Gov. Phil Scott.

As for myself, I will be celebrating these very special liturgical celebrations alone, while keeping the parishioners in prayer, as well as all of those who are suffering with the virus, those who have died of it, their families and their caregivers. This is indeed a time for all of us to internalize, to take ownership on a deeper level of what our faith means to us, how we relate to our God. In the absence of such important live celebrations and gatherings, God will continue to make himself known and present to each one of us, as we take moments of silence, reflection and quiet time, to be one with him, Father Tom said.

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Using technology to celebrate the holiday | Pandemic 2020 - Barre Montpelier Times Argus

Editors note: This is Part 2 in a series on command philosophies and command technologies. The first article, Clarifying Command: Keeping Up with the (John Paul) Joneses, can be found here.

On 16 January 1778, American commissioners in Paris issued the following order to Captain John Paul Jones:

After equipping the Ranger in the best manner for the cruise you propose, that you proceed with her in the manner you shall judge best for distressing the enemies of the United States, by sea or otherwise, consistent with the laws of war, and the terms of your commission We rely on your ability, as well as your zeal to serve the United States, and therefore do not give you particular instructions as to your operations.

The order highlights the longstanding naval tradition of decentralized command, born of necessity as ships at sea were isolated from communicating with civilian leadership on land. It is also an excellent example of what today is called mission command. John Paul Jones had a mission, the means with which to accomplish it, and the leeway to decide how best to pursue it. That freedom was not infinite. It was bounded by the laws of war and the terms of [his] commission. Jones knew what to do, what not to do, and had space within which to make decisions.

Despite these deep American roots of mission command, it is hard to imagine commanders today with the exception of some submarine and special operations forces receiving such an order and being as trusted and enabled to the same extent. Not even a geographic combatant commander would be granted the same latitude. The current and future operating environment demands decentralized command, like that exercised by John Paul Jones; modern technology, prudently applied, makes that possible. However, the U.S. militarys obsession with technology has often conflated technological capacity with command. Though there are important exceptions, like retired Gen. Stanley McChrystals philosophy of shared consciousness and empowered execution, the majority of the U.S. force operates restrained, not enabled, by technology. Still, the Department of Defense can set the future force up for success by prioritizing personnel, institutionally embracing mission command, investing in the right technology now, and divesting of industrial-age anachronisms.

There are two main reasons why mission command is so difficult now as opposed to during the American Revolution: the development of information technology and the industrialization of the military. John Paul Jones had to be trusted to perform his duties on his own because there was no way to reliably communicate with captains at sea. Today, information technology connects leaders and subordinates immediately. Second, when the military industrialized in the early 20th century, it adopted the modes of industrial management; Frederick Taylors methods were adapted for the U.S. Army through the Root Reforms. The result was strictly formalized procedures of command and control a not-uncalled for reform as the military became more industrial in nature, but the inflexible processes designed to manage unskilled labor have long since outlasted their usefulness. Industrial warfare required, and fostered, an officer corps with engineering mindsets, more managers than leaders. The advent and incorporation of information technology has only further promoted detailed, procedural, and top-down methods.

An industrial-era military that employs information technology is not the same as an information-age military. In many ways, it is the antithesis. Information technology is now available to crunch numbers, synthesize data, execute deconfliction, and visually display spatial information, and the military is increasingly staffed by people who grew up familiar with these technologies. The detailed direction and centralized decision-making, however, make little sense to them, yet the people, processes, and hardware of the Department of Defense are trending toward ever more centralized command. This centralization occurs even in the face of the attempted institutionalization of mission command. All the while, to succeed in todays operating environment, the art of command in a decentralized manner mission command is required more than ever.

Our premise is simple. The Department of Defense cannot be an industrial-age military, permeated by information-age technology, executing mission command. One component must give. John Paul Jones was part of a pre-industrial-age military, without information technology, and was empowered to execute mission command. The German industrial-era military executed mission command (the roots of which are found in Clausewitzs under-read Guide to Tactics, or the Theory of the Combat) from the Austro-Prussian War until World War II without modern information technology. The Department of Defense may think that just by leveraging information technology it becomes an information-age military, but this is patently untrue. Information technology in an industrial-era military only emboldens the worst procedural trends of centralization, deliberate planning, acquisitions, and personnel management, the holdovers from Frederick Taylors scientific management. The exceptions to this general trend within the Department of Defense like nuclear submarines and special operations forces indicate that the U.S. military can become an information-age military enabled by technology. However, to do so, the Department of Defense should update its legacy procedures, enable new processes, and prioritize personnel to foster technology-enabled mission command.

John Paul Jones 2020: How Technology Strangles Mission Command

The Department of Defense is right to pursue information technology like mission planning tools, akin to Waze for war but it should be cautious when implementing them in a still legacy industrial-era military. Rather than enabling mission command, a jointly professed value, information technology proliferated in an industrial-era military can stifle subordinates freedom of action and undermine trust, especially as the desire for certainty as a way to mitigate risk squashes fleeting opportunities. Consider John Paul Jones, today, as Adm. John Paul Jones, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, receiving the same order from 1778. Despite his personal talents, Jones would be set up for failure. He would not have the hardware required, the necessary ideas proliferated and embraced, nor the people under his command trained, educated, trusted, and empowered to flourish with such orders. These vulnerabilities are amplified by the Department of Defenses current digital acquisitions and communications support structure, concepts, and its antiquated management of personnel.

Hardware

Digital awareness is synthetic awareness, and remote command and control can never replace personal command. The Department of Defense Digital Modernization Strategy is a plan to modernize information technology, including communications technology. However, it does not mention mission command or how the technology it seeks to acquire interacts with it. The Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network is a proposed network would link all units in a battlespace with all other sensors and command-and-control nodes. While it is intended to enable decentralized command, it is likely to disable any command and control, and command and feedback, unless it is enabled by the institution and from the commander down to the junior subordinate. A joint all-domain command and control network that emphasizes hardware over processes builds the means for commanders to bypass chains of command entirely, to abuse capabilities, and to create an insatiable need for certainty and immediacy. Since the network is in its nascent stages, it is essential that it does not conflate the doing of command and control with the means for it.

Ideas

Future concepts retread the same mistakes, centralizing command further. For example, DARPAs Mosaic Warfare misinterprets command and control, confuses it with planning functions, and proposes to automate the feedback to commanders that normally comes from their subordinate commanders. One idea is for human command, machine control, which exacerbates the debate over whether a human is (or should be) in or on the loop. Command and feedback highlights the misunderstanding: subordinate commanders provide commanders with an understanding of their situation, to which the commander responds based on knowledge and trust in that subordinate. These are human interactions that cannot be automated. Multi-domain operations, which is the Armys concept for joint combined arms, seeks to dis-integrate the enemys command and control and therefore disable it. This can devastate an opponent arranged to employ centralized command and control, such as Russia or China. However, those enemies in particular intend to do the same thing to U.S. command and control. Mission command ensures that commanders have the necessary context to continue to act in the inevitable event of communications disruptions, preventing the United States from becoming dis-integrated in turn.

People

Mission command is impossible without people trained and educated, trusted and enabled to employ it. However, the U.S. military tends to preach mission command for combat, but practices highly scripted, detailed command in garrison. The habits of mind and the trust necessary for mission command cannot be inculcated when theyre undermined at home. This requires sustained personnel readiness. Mission command demands cohesion, especially between commanders and subordinates. Yet the industrial-age, department-wide personnel system drives frequent (and exorbitantly expensive) Permanent Change of Station moves to support promotion systems. The practice depletes the necessary familiarity, trust, and confidence that must be established between leaders and the led by requiring short command tours. The revolving door of command, staff, and operating billets generates unnecessary friction and prevents close working relationships between key personnel.

In addition to the cost, frequent moves are harmful to recruitment and retention. The reasoning behind the frequent moves is more suited to an industrial-age military than an information-age military. Firstly, it assumes that servicemembers of like jobs and grade are interchangeable; any one can be fitted into any open billet without harming the cohesion of the unit. This may have been true for a military based on conscription, but it is patently false for a professionalized, volunteer force in the information age. Second, the practice supports promotion systems more than it supports operational effectiveness. Officer promotions are governed by the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act and enlisted promotions are governed by the services, but largely mirror the practices for officers. Since promotions are tied so heavily to serving in certain billets at certain times, the Department of Defense is obliged to constantly reshuffle its human capital to support their promotions, whatever the harm to operational effectiveness.

John Paul Jones 2030: Achieving Technology-Enabled Mission Command

Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 6, now 24 years old, was prophetic in warning against the misuse of technological means of command and control: technology is not without its dangers. It specifies, however, that not only is this a caution against the overreliance on equipment, but also, and importantly, against the failure to fully exploit the latest capabilities. In other words, technology can enable command and control as much as it can disable it. The question becomes how to leverage technology to enable mission command and avoid the pitfalls found in current acquisitions, inadequate concepts, and antiquated personnel policies. What needs to change for the Department of Defense, with respect to people, ideas, hardwarein that order, to set up Adm. Jones for success?

People

Mission command requires training and education built on trust. Trust, as defined by Oxford University Trust Fellow Rachel Botsman, is a confident relationship with the unknown. That unknown can be about the enemy situation or about friendly actions. When commanders trust their subordinates, they have confidence that their subordinates will carry out the mission in the face of uncertainty, in the face of risk. Feedback is the mechanism to build that confidence. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis used what he called a skip-echelon technique. Rather than duplicating personnel, for instance lawyers, at every level, Mattis trusted subordinate commanders and staffs judgments instead of replicating, in this case, the lower echelons judgments and considerations. Critically, a unit commander should understand the commanders intent two higher levels up the command structure, but should not get too involved more than one level down, to keep from interfering with, and distracting from, active operations.

Of the Department of Defenses few and exquisite assets the aircraft carriers and F-35s that consume much of the Pentagons time and budget none are more important than the departments personnel. The department needs a modern human resource system that fosters familiarity, trust, and unit cohesion first and promotion systems second. Or better yet, the system needs to evolve to see that unit cohesion breeds promotable service members. The U.S. Army has begun taking steps towards this through its Battalion Commander Assessment Program. But a full department-wide embrace will require congressional action. Promotion through a succession of Permanent Change of Station moves to gain experience in certain billets should remain, but only as one route to promotion. Other routes could involve regional expertise or billet specialization, beyond the conventional tour length.

Moreover, innovation leveraging agile methodologies within a garrison environment demands mission command. The detailed, stifling leadership so common to garrison culture should be snuffed out. Mission command cannot be turned on and off like a switch. It must be cultivated and fostered from the institutional level all the way down to the individual. Trusting distributed subordinate units to take action in the face of uncertainty is continuous and starts in garrison. Current operations during the COVID-19 crisis further highlight this need.

Ideas

Much of what we are arguing for is already in Marine Corps Doctrinal Publications, particularly Warfighting and Command and Control. It is a matter of following through with the doctrine. Tactics, techniques, and procedures like fire support coordination measures and attack guidance matrices can be used to enable subordinates just as easily as they can be used to constrain them. Doctrine has options for commanders to reinforce commanders intent with further guidance, tailoring subordinate initiative for the situation and intent that functions like a rheostat for disciplined initiative. Commanders and subordinates need to be better trained to use the doctrine that already exists.

Paul Birth, Ray Reeves, and Brad Dewees suggest that the joint force needs to be Building the Command and Control of the Future From the Bottom Up, but their view relies on a centralized architecture, whose friction is mitigated by speed. Speed is valuable, but only as it contributes to relative tempo and when executed at the right time. What matters more is the type of command and control philosophy used and the people executing that philosophy. Mission command inherently values the bottom up perspective and uses that to feed commanders.

Hardware

There must be the necessary communications architecture to transmit information between elements, as in digital logistics. This is a non-trivial problem and the one onto which the Department of Defense has latched. It is necessary for technology-enabled mission command, but not sufficient. Importantly, these forces need not be constantly connected, but must retain the resilient potential for connectivity. The danger that forward commanders will be smothered by too much data is real, but that danger can be mitigated by investing in technology that allows them to pull data when and if they desire instead of just pushing data technology on them in the name of command and control. A command node is not a piece of technology; it is a human invested with the authority and responsibility to command, wherever they are located across the battlefield.

The next required technologies are used for sensing, distributing information within the institution, and processing at edge nodes to modulate the bandwidth required to transmit data. The goal is to vacuum up outside information and then relay that information, as is feasible, to those whom it will help mitigating friction and managing, but not eliminating, uncertainty. Once the information is gathered, it must be analyzed and synthesized. However, the type of technology required for analysis and synthesis depends on whether it is for staff planning or for commanders in combat operations. In Guide to Tactics, Or the Theory of the Combat, Clausewitz signals the difference between the character of the determinations which form the plan and those which form the conduct of a battle: the cause of this is, that the circumstances under which the intelligence does its work are different. This corresponds to two types of technologies useful for technology-enabled mission command: decision aids to help form the plan and battle management aids to help form the conduct of battle.

Staffs require decision aids to plan, while commanders need battle management tools to fight. These technologies entail different algorithms, computational power, modeling and simulation, data sets, security, and latency, among many other requirements. For staff, applications include route and search optimization (for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets) and weather forecasting as well as organizing, collating, analyzing, and synthesizing data to help during problem-framing and mission analysis. Optimization problems are a way to leverage quantum computing. Mission planning tools help determine how best to use, coordinate, and plan for technology that each element possesses. These are narrow applications where machine speed would help aggregate and analyze faster than planners collectively do. Theres also the development of planning products, most of which are produced in PowerPoint, regardless of whether or not that is the best tool, consuming a great deal of time and energy. Offloading some of this work to computer systems on a local network or, when able, reaching back to teams of expert analysts or larger computational systems, would allow the joint force to produce cogent plans faster, and better inform commanders as they make operational decisions.

Once the plan is made and issued the first half of mission command it is up to the subordinate commander to manage the uncertainty by making and executing decisions to best achieve the intended end state. Whereas decision aids used by staffs will likely have larger access to data and time to compile and simulate multiple courses of action, battle management aids need to be satisficing during the fight: An 80 percent solution now is better than a 100 percent solution later. To be effective these systems need to be able to operate when sparsely stimulated, without large data sets, and return fast and clear options. A 59 percent likely hostile return, while helpful, will require further training and education before troops can be expected to act upon that information particularly, as argued by Daniel Eichler and Ronald Thompson, in understanding cognitive biases, probabilities, and software decisions.

Once the order has been issued and the plan is in execution, staffs require battle management aid (as opposed to the decision aids mentioned above) to follow how the plan progresses, monitor decision points, and remain vigilant for when the plan has deviated from its initiation course such that it requires revision, intervention at the point of friction, or rudder steers. Meanwhile, during the conduct of the battle, commanders require decision aids to filter through the barrage of data, mitigate the input-output problem, and find the information to enable action, in accordance with the commanders intent, yet consistent and faithful to the events transpiring on the ground.

Conclusion

This is not to say that the Department of Defense should not pursue advanced technology to assist commanders and staffs. Rather, that it should do so prudently. Reckless acquisition of technology can extinguish lower-level initiative and action before mission command is completely institutionalized. Artificial intelligence, automation, machine learning, and other increasingly desired technologies should always be seen as tools. War and warfare will remain a human enterprise no matter how remotely (in both time and space) some technologies operate. Command and control and command and feedback are people processes. Putting people first enables the Department of Defense to leverage the boundless capacity for human creativity to overcome inherent cooperative limitations and find ways to coordinate to accomplish the mission. The best asymmetric advantage in the United States military is, and has always been, its people. Americas democracy is primed to take advantage of the creativity, capacity, and inclusivity, and to harness the chaos and the ingenuity and innovation of the American people. In fact, mission command inherently leverages the unique nature of the American people, as the June 2010 Marine Corps Operating Concepts, Third Edition, notes. Now, when mission command is enabled by technology, imagine the possibilities; imagine a force of 21st-century John Paul Joneses.

B. A. Friedman is a Marine reserve officer, associate editor at The Strategy Bridge, and the author ofOn Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battleand21stCentury Ellis: Operational Art and Strategic Prophecy.

Olivia A. Garard is a Marine unmanned aircraft systems officer currently serving at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. She is also an associate editor at The Strategy Bridge. She tweets at@teaandtactics.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent the positions or opinions of the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Wikicommons (Drawing by John Watson Davis)

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Technology-Enabled Mission Command: Keeping up with the (John Paul) Joneses - War on the Rocks

Technology has played a key role in helping realtors keep business going.

FARGO, N.D.- Aspire Realty in Fargo is used to showing 15 to 25 houses a week and selling about 11 houses a month.

Through the month of March, business was really good, but coming into April and now as were seeing a massive increase in the numbers of positive cases, were starting to slow down tremendously, says Katherine Kiernan, the owner of Aspire Realty.

But, the agency says the show must go on- at least virtually.

So, we can do everything electronically. We can start having a conversation, like you and I are right now and its just really accessing a buyer and seller needs, wants, desirability of that nature, and then Ill put a search set up for them, and send them a bunch of different properties and well continue to have facetime and zoom calls with one another. I can also do that with sellers who are trying to sell their home, they can walk me virtually through that too, she says.

Their goal is to bring the most authentic experience to their clients.

If you go to one of our listing links, you literally bring this up and its walking through it, almost like virtual reality, through all of the different properties, up and downstairs, things like that.We also do a lot of facetime showings as well, So, Ill go to the house, call my clients through facetime and walk through the entire property that way, she adds.

But even with the use of technology, Kiernan says there are some things that not even technology can replace.

When people are looking for their home, how are we going to know what it feels like in that space, and thats something you just cant create in digital space, Kiernan says.

Many real estate agencies in the area are also doing virtual open houses and live showings where people can log in, ask questions and get a tour experience.

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Realtors Use Technology To Connect With Clients Amid COVID-19 - KVRR

David Basulto Discusses Archdaily, Technology and Design Thinking in Inspiring Design Podcast

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In this episode of Inspiring Design podcast series, host Rashan Senanayake and ArchDaily's CEO David Basulto discuss in detail the story of Archdaily, from its start as a local platform to the word's most visited architecture website, going more in-depth about the mission behind the website and its goals for the future. The interview covers the transformative role of technology within the architecture field, as David Basulto contemplates on the major innovation triggers in design and the shifting scope of the profession within society.

Having trained as an architect at Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, David Basulto has served as jury member for various awards and prizes and has acted as curator and editor for several exhibitions and magazines. In 2016, David Basulto was appointed curator for the Nordic Pavilion, Finland's, Norway's and Sweden's exhibition at the Venice Biennale. He has also lectured in institutions around the world including the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Sao Paulo's Escola do Cidade, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Inspiring Design, created by the author, speaker and entrepreneur, Rashan Senanayake, focuses on bridging the gap between practice and education, fostering knowledge exchange on topics such as design thinking, teaching techniques, or industry standards. Now in its third season, each with a different focus, the series' past episodes approached an array of subjects from BIM, VR, to graphic design and entrepreneurship.

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David Basulto Discusses Archdaily, Technology and Design Thinking in Inspiring Design Podcast - ArchDaily

Back in Hoosier Hysteria's heyday, stretching from the 1940s clean through the early 1990s, playing high school basketball was the ultimate goal for the stereotypical Indiana schoolboy.

Even many small schools had not only varsity teams chock full of players, but robust junior varsity and freshman squads, as well.

Schools of just a few hundred students often lacked enough slots on their high school rosters to accommodate all of the aspiring jump shooters, leaving some to swallow the heartache of being cut from the team.

Playing basketball was the dream, so the story goes, of most every red-blooded Indiana boy.

My, how things have changed.

Today, many schools, even some with several hundred students, can't find enough players to put a freshman team on the court. Some have to double-up varsity players to fill out a junior varsity roster. And some have cancelled JV schedules because they barely have enough participation to piece together a varsity.

Even schools with strong, stable basketball programs are feeling the pinch.

"We have been very fortunate ... to still field a full seventh- and eighth-grade team," North Decatur coach Kyle Nobbe said. "However, over the years, freshman basketball has now become more of a C team. The inclusion of 10th graders on the C team has helped, but we are seeing a major trend with schools not being able to field a C team at all."

What in the name of Bobby Plump, Oscar Robertson and Larry Bird is going on here?

Well, first you have to understand that it's not just Indiana high school basketball suffering from a decline in participation.

For the first time in 30 years, overall participation in high school sports decreased nationwide in 2018-19, when 43,395 fewer athletes played than in the previous year, according to the National Federation of High School Sports.

The decline is nothing new for the sport of basketball nationwide. From 2009-10 to 2018-19, 39 states saw boys basketball participation slide. This, despite the fact that 32 states had an increase in the number of schools putting teams on the court.

The decline has been especially pronounced in Indiana, often recognized as the high school basketball capital of the world. In 2009-10, a total of 12,032 boys played high school ball across 403 schools. In 2018-19, those numbers were 10,767 and 408, respectively. That's an 11% tumble in players.

Many Hoosiers still love the sport but decry various changes from inside the sport and out over the years that have eroded its traditions and discouraged would-be Plumps, Robertsons and Birds.

The rise of Amateur Athletic Union teams better known as AAU and offseason leagues have prompted more athletes to specialize in a single sport. For many, the goal, no matter how unrealistic, is a college scholarship leaving no time to play other sports for the fun of it.

This cuts both ways for high school basketball teams. They get a small group of dedicated, if sometimes burned out, players, but it's hard to find others to fill out a roster. That's because many athletes are specializing in other sports.

Definitely, we are getting fewer players participating, Batesville basketball coach Aaron Garrett said. The year-round schedule and the unfortunate motivation by parents to have their kids specialize in one sport is hurting all sports. Unfortunately, it is no longer satisfactory to be a member of a team.

Shenandoahs Andrew Bennett shoots as he is guarded by Andersons Tyrelle Wills in The Really Big Basketball Holiday Show at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in December.

Shenandoah junior Andrew Bennett is a three-sport athlete, but his primary sport is basketball. During the spring, Bennett plays on the schools golf team but misses weekend matches because of AAU basketball tournaments.

Other sports have gotten a lot bigger. ... A lot of kids play football now and just want to stick to one sport, he said. Back in the day, there was a lot more three-sport athletes than there are now.

Garrett doesnt foresee the one-sport mania that afflicts Hoosier moms, pops and schoolboys being cured anytime soon.

Youth sports, select travel teams, and prospect camps convince parents and kids that they need to choose only one sport to make their future," he said. "Multiple-sport athletes become better players and more developed competitors because of all the different physical training and lessons learned in the different sports.

Troy Neely doesn't hesitate. When asked why fewer Hoosier boys are taking to the hardwood, he points an unwavering finger straight at technology.

Id put my life on (it). That is having more of an effect on the athletes than anything else, said Neely, who won state championships in 1999 and 2000 as the coach at Westview and is now a physical education teacher there.

When I started at Westview, you could have 30 kids go out for the eighth-grade team," he recounted. "Now, if we can get a set of seven were doing good.

"Now, instead of going home and getting out there and playing ball, theyre on Facebook, theyre playing PlayStation, theyre on their phone or their computer ... taking up all of that time that used to be spent on things like basketball.

National statistics support Neely's assertion.

According to a 2019 study by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit promoting safe media for children, teens spend an average of nearly seven and a half hours on their phones a day, and that doesn't include any schoolwork done on the phone.

With junior's butt buried on the couch and nose buried in an iPhone, practicing to try out for a spot on the basketball team isn't even an afterthought.

Some schools are cancelling tryouts altogether. After all, why cut players if there aren't enough of them in the first place?

"It used to be more of an honor to be a part of the team," South Decatur coach Kendall Wildey said. "In todays culture, young people have so much more to do to occupy their time."

South Decatur girls basketball coach Kelly Fox has been on both boys and girls basketball coaching staffs during her career. In recent years, Fox has started trying to develop youth programs in order to get more kids to play sports in the summer.

She's not seeing the results she sought when she started the program.

"The number of younger children participating in youth leagues has been on the decline, either because the parent was too busy, thought it was not affordable, or the athlete was trying something new like dance, gymnastics or ice-skating that are not IHSAA activities, Fox said.

I am struggling with finding ways to change it. We have incorporated all-sports youth camps and travel teams that are free to play; however, none of these has significantly increased the elementary numbers."

Northwestern senior Tayson Parker thinks fewer students are playing basketball because of the high skill level required to compete on a high school team in Indiana.

Northwestern's Tayson Parker puts up a shot against Blackford on Feb. 11.

Parker is the Tigers' all-time leading scorer and averaged 28.8 points a game this past season. He will attend Indiana Wesleyan University to continue his basketball career.

Basketball is the sport that you need the most skill for, Parker said. You have to be able to dribble, shoot, be coordinated. Some kids just dont have those skills and they tend to go to baseball or football. Its a hard sport; it takes work ethic and the will to do it.

Many coaches and athletic directors believe a cultural tide generated by instant gratification is sweeping would-be ballers away.

I dont think our kids understand the full concept of what it takes to work hard to succeed, Lebanon athletic director Phil Levine said. It used to be very difficult to make a team, and when you did you were excited.

"Then the next goal was to get a letter. Now, our freshmen come in and want to play right away. And if they arent playing, instead of understanding how to work hard, get better and earn time the right way, they quit, find something else or transfer.

Both Fox and Wildey believe strong basketball programs on and off the court are the elixir for puny participation.

"No player wants to lose; however, I think that the ability to push through to get at the competitive level and accept criticism has declined," Fox explained. "As coaches, we have to be sure to incorporate additional team building and social activities to keep players.

"Many of the top athletes are multi-sport athletes that are academically taking a full load. We have to be sensitive to that in a small school."

Wildey emphasizes building strong relationships with players, no matter how few.

"In todays society, things are more about 'me' and less about 'we' and 'team,'" he said. "As a coach, you really have to work to create a strong culture."

While the number of players participating has declined, hoop dreams are still alive for many Hoosier schoolboys.

Just hearing the stories about my cousin and my uncle and my dad playing in college I wanted to be like them, said Charlie Yoder, who just finished his senior season at Westview, where his father is the coach.

Westview senior Charlie Yoder drives during the March 3 sectional game at Westview Jr.-Sr. High.

Yoder is 25th all-time in state scoring history with 2,163 points and helped the Warriors to a school record 91 victories as a varsity starter. He grew up in a basketball household and was inspired to play by his relatives.

I looked up to all of them a lot," Yoder said. "Those guys were like NBA players to me. That kind of influenced me, and I wanted to be like that when I got older.

Players like Yoder and Parker are throwbacks. They revere the game of basketball, just like the stereotypical Hoosier boys of generations past.

Basketball in Indiana, its right next to religion, Parker said.

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Specialization, technology and culture erode traditions, discourage participation - The Herald Bulletin

Phone apps and other technology are proving to be a key way for countries to come out of coronavirus lockdown but also pose privacy and civil rights threats that could linger long after the crisis has passed, experts have warned.

Such technology has already proved central to responses to the threat from coronavirus. Almost as soon as the alarm was sounded, authorities turned to technology, initially using it to begin contact tracing, working out who had been within reach of an infected person and how the disease may have spread.

In the future, as restrictions lift and lockdowns come to an end, the use of technology may mean downloading an app that will coordinate the response and should help stem the spread of coronavirus even as people go back out into society. Suggestions have included everything from virtual immunity passports to allow people to go outside and anonymous trackers that would alert a person if they had been within the presence of another person who may have been infected with coronavirus, to more authoritarian solutions like apps that could chastise or even report their users if their location data shows them spending too much time outside.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

The visions proposed by technologists for countries like the UK and already adopted in some form by other places is that in the months to come, as lockdown lifts, our movements and networks could be governed by technology. Citizens will move back to something like normality, the hope is, but may sometimes be buzzed to say that their phone has been in contact with another phone that belongs to an anonymous person suspected to have Covid-19 and that they should stay indoors.

Such solutions will require access to peoples most personal data their location, their health history, and that of their friends if it is to be successful. The world could face a profound trade-off between the privacy of that data and the speed with which they are able to go back to normal and be forced to choose between the efficacy of such technology and the protection of the information it relies on.

As Covid-19 became more prevalent, and the nature of the pandemic changed, so did the nature of the data and technology that is likely to prove most useful to authorities. Instead of individual interactions, the focus has moved instead to patterns in the population, such as the tracking and enforcement of social distancing measures that attempt to slow the spread of the disease.

But perhaps the most lasting effects will come in the later phases, which are still some time away in the UK but can be previewed in other countries across the world. There, contact tracing once again comes into play as authorities attempt to stem the spread of the disease in the world once more and to enforce the more long-term rules as citizens emerge from lockdown.

It is during that time that technology could prove central in allowing people to leave their houses, by allowing authorities to track peoples movements and enforce any restrictions that are required to let them leave lockdown safely. Such technology has already been hailed as part of the reason for the success of countries like South Korea in leaving lockdown quickly and with relatively little reinfection.

In China, for instance, leaving the house after weeks of lockdown is reliant on having the right app with the right information. The apps display specific codes red, yellow or green and only those with the right colour are able to enter restaurants, get on public transport or move between different places.

But leaving lockdown could also be the time when those surveillance plans are extended into the future, leading human rights groups to warn that it could lead to a power grab from governments that could leave the world with more surveillance and less privacy than before. The solution relied on by countries with questionable human rights records, from China to Turkey, has allowed people some measure of freedom from lockdown but has also prompted fears about the kinds of data that it is gathering about its users.

The wave of surveillance were seeing is truly unprecedented, even surpassing how governments across the world responded to 9/11, said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director of Privacy International.

A man walks down a deserted Camden High Street

Photos Angela Christofilou

Goodge Street Station is one of the many stations closed to help reduce the spread

Angela Christofilou

An empty street in the heart of Chinatown

Angela Christofilou

People in masks in Chinatown a day after the lockdown

Angela Christofilou

A near-empty Piccadilly Circus during the first week of lockdown

Angela Christofilou

Sonja, my neighbour, who I photographed while taking a short walk. It was nice to briefly chat even from a distance

Angela Christofilou

A couple sit on the empty steps of the statue Eros in Piccadilly Circus

Angela Christofilou

Making sure I stay two-meters apart DArblay Street, Soho

Angela Christofilou

A mannequin behind a shop window. UK stores have closed until further notice

Angela Christofilou

A notice displayed on a shop window in Camden

Angela Christofilou

As part of the lockdown, all non-essential shops have been ordered to close.Image from Camden High Street

Angela Christofilou

A skateboarder wearing a mask utilises his exercise allowance in the Camden area

Angela Christofilou

Communities have been coming together in a time of need

Angela Christofilou

A woman stands alone in a deserted Oxford Street. Up until a few weeks ago, on average, half a million people visited the street per day

Angela Christofilou

A couple walk hand in hand down a street in Soho, a day before the stricter lockdown was announced

Angela Christofilou

During the first week of March, shoppers focused on stockpiling necessities ahead of a countrywide lockdown

Angela Christofilou

Many supermarkers are operating a queuing system to make sure only a limited amount of customers are allowed in at anyone time

Angela Christofilou

Stay Safe Curzon cinemas are temporarily closed under the new measures

Angela Christofilou

Pubs, restaurants and bars were ordered to shut as part of the lockdown

Angela Christofilou

There are fears that coronavirus could lead to permanent closure of struggling shops

Angela Christofilou

Camden Town is eerily silent on a normal working day

Angela Christofilou

Shops and supermarkets ran out of hand sanitisers in the first week of the lockdown. As we approach the end of the second week most shops now have started to stock up

Angela Christofilou

Empty streets around Soho

Angela Christofilou

A noticeboard on Camden High Street urges the public to stay at home

Angela Christofilou

Camden High Street, one of Londons busiest tourist streets turns quiet

Angela Christofilou

Thriller Live confirmed its West End run ended in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak

Angela Christofilou

Empty and eerie Soho streets after stricter rules on social distancing announced

Angela Christofilou

A woman pauses for a cigarette on Hanway Street, behind Tottenham Court Road

Angela Christofilou

A man steps outside onto Hanway Street, that sits behind what is usually a bustling retail hub

Angela Christofilou

A man walks down a deserted Camden High Street

Photos Angela Christofilou

Goodge Street Station is one of the many stations closed to help reduce the spread

Angela Christofilou

An empty street in the heart of Chinatown

Angela Christofilou

People in masks in Chinatown a day after the lockdown

Angela Christofilou

A near-empty Piccadilly Circus during the first week of lockdown

Angela Christofilou

Sonja, my neighbour, who I photographed while taking a short walk. It was nice to briefly chat even from a distance

Angela Christofilou

A couple sit on the empty steps of the statue Eros in Piccadilly Circus

Angela Christofilou

Making sure I stay two-meters apart DArblay Street, Soho

Angela Christofilou

A mannequin behind a shop window. UK stores have closed until further notice

Angela Christofilou

A notice displayed on a shop window in Camden

Angela Christofilou

As part of the lockdown, all non-essential shops have been ordered to close.Image from Camden High Street

Angela Christofilou

A skateboarder wearing a mask utilises his exercise allowance in the Camden area

Angela Christofilou

Communities have been coming together in a time of need

Angela Christofilou

A woman stands alone in a deserted Oxford Street. Up until a few weeks ago, on average, half a million people visited the street per day

Angela Christofilou

A couple walk hand in hand down a street in Soho, a day before the stricter lockdown was announced

Angela Christofilou

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Coronavirus: How technology and apps could allow the UK to leave lockdown but impose new restrictions of their own - The Independent

My mother is a public school elementary teacher in a low-income neighborhood of Salinas, California, a modest suburban town fueled by the agriculture industry. Of all the schools nationwide, I would have expected her school to be one of the last to transition from the classroom to distance learning during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Almost 85% of her students come from low-income households, and many are the children of migrant workers.

Yet, to my pleasant surprise, my mothers school has been online for two weeks now, only days after Californias statewide shelter-in-place order came into effect. Not only that, she tells me that attendance is strong. Students whose families did not have a computer or internet connection were lent one temporarily with a hot spot connection from the school. In normal times, it would be nothing short of a miracle that a bureaucratic public school system could shift its centuries-old model so quickly. But these, of course, are not normal times.

If theres any light at the end of the tunnel with the coronavirus shutdown, it might just be schools such as my moms finally embracing the distance learning tools that have been available for years now. While the internet has the promise fundamentally to disrupt industries such as education and healthcare for the better, policymakers and professionals have dragged their feet for years. The coronavirus could finally push Americas largest and most important institutions to get with the program and unleash the promise of the 21st century.

This could clearly manifest in the healthcare industry, as state medical boards have strictly regulated telemedicine for years.

For private insurance, 49 states require that doctors are licensed in their jurisdiction to practice telemedicine a senseless cartel rule, considering that the internet can connect patients with doctors anywhere on the planet instantaneously. For Medicaid, states vastly differ on when patients can speak with their doctor remotely, what health information can be passed along electronically, and how much providers can be reimbursed for online versus in-person consultations.

Many of those long-standing laws are now out the window, with 46 states and D.C. having issued emergency exemptions for rules concerning telemedicine expanding access, matching in-person rates for reimbursements, and allowing doctors to consult with patients in other states.

Erick Wicklund gives a significant example in Americas second-most-populated state:

In Texas, for instance, Gov. Rick Abbotts March 14 State Disaster Declaration enables providers in the state to use telemedicine, including the use of telephone only to treat existing and new patients. Texas is well-known for the long-running battle between the Texas Medical Board and Teladoc over the states since-amended rule that a doctor must see a new patient in person before using telehealth.

Of course, the positive new policies of this exceptional time will not immediately become the new normal. Some states will doubtlessly revoke their emergency telemedicine policies when social distancing orders start to ease. Students will have to close their laptops and return to schools, and some schools havent made the transition online as well as my mothers in the first place.

This return to normalcy will be a key point for parents, patients, and the general public to stand up to our policymakers. If easing regulations worked in the worst of times, it certainly can in the best of times. And distance learning and telemedicine are just the beginning. There are so many innovations just waiting to be unleashed in these fields if we just let them.

Peter Thiel famously noted of past expectations of the future, We wanted flying cars. Instead, we got 140 characters. Its true the internet has the promise to improve the lives of millions in fields such as education and healthcare, but weve yet to see many groundbreaking changes implemented on a massive scale. The coronaviruss grand online experiment, combined with continued pressure for reforms when things return to normal, could finally unleash the 21st century weve all been waiting for.

Casey Given (@CaseyJGiven) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is the executive director of Young Voices.

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Coronavirus could finally unleash innovative promise of 21st century technology - Washington Examiner

Many families are turning to video conference to celebrate Passover Seders because of the coronavirus. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

Wednesday was the first night of Passover, a Jewish holiday celebrated with what is called a seder: big groups of family and friends sitting around the table, reading the story of Passover aloud. Songs are sung, prayers are said, symbolic foods are eaten, and a large feast is served that traditionally includes dishes like matzo ball soup and gefilte fish.

A snarky reply all email to Canlis restaurant results in a big donation

Now that were in quarantine, we cant gather. So how are people going to practice the seder ritual this year if they are separated from their family or, worse, all alone?

Theres the rise of the Zoom seder or the zeder as people are calling it, said Stephanie Butnick, deputy editor of Tablet Magazine and co-host of of Unorthodox, the worlds leading Jewish podcast.

The question we keep getting is, How are we all going to sing together? Because a big part of a Passover seder is the singing; you sing Dayenu, you sing Chad Gadya, she said. When you sing on Zoom, even when you try and talk at the same time, theres a weird lag, you cant really interrupt. But you have to remember that this is fun! Its supposed to be fun and uplifting. Yes, its a serious event, but were supposed to be around the table singing and, yes, this year it might be were sitting at a laptop singing and Uncle Myrons frozen on the screen. But its fun and were going to, I think, find a beauty and a sustenance in this ritual thats new this year.

For orthodox and Sephardic Jews, a sector of Judaism that originates from places like Spain and Turkey, Jewish law prohibits the use of technology on holidays. But something unprecedented happened this week.

A number of Sephardic rabbis announced that in situations of mental health, in situations of elderly people in isolation, it would be permitted to do Zoom for the seder, said Rabbi Ben Hassan of Seattles Sephardic Bikur Holim synagogue. To make sure that no one would be mentally or physically isolated to the point where there would be concern for their long term mental health.

Rabbi Hassans own mother will be alone on the holiday, across the country in Florida.

I put on Facebook recently, Please reach out to me if you have any concerns about spending Pesach alone and know that there are options for you. And a huge amount of people reached out to me privately saying people dont talk about mental health, people dont talk about the difficulties of spending a holiday alone, he said. It doesnt mitigate the entire thing, but to know youre not alone is a major factor for mental health.

For a lot of people, this will be the first time theyll have to cook the holiday meal, or the first time they havent spent the holiday with parents or grandparents.

Virtual happy hours and living room dates the new normal

The Hebrew phrase Gam zeh yaavor, This too shall pass. I think were going to get through this, Rabbi Hassan said. In the first ever Passover story, how did the Israelites spend Passover? They had to lock themselves in their homes and they could not go out, so they would not be killed. Thats the message Ive been telling everyone in Seattle. We stay in our homes and this plague will pass, coronavirus will pass. In two or three months, well be able to celebrate together as a community once again. These memories will last with us a lifetime.

A plague, indeed: The story of Passover includes The Ten Plagues.

Listen toRachel Belles James Beard Award nominated podcast, Your Last Meal, featuring celebrities like William Shatner, Rainn Wilson, and Greta Gerwig. Follow @yourlastmealpodcaston Instagram.

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Rabbis allowing Zoom, technology on Passover during quarantine - MyNorthwest.com

The Future Of Mixed Reality Technologies.

Home offices, home education, and virtual meetingsin the span of a few weeks, this has become the new norm for many people around the globe. Companies, once hesitant to allow workers to telecommute, have been forced to allow their employees to work from home and meet virtually. Teachers and students meet over video chat while parents manage their kids school days. Friends hold parties over apps on their phones. The coronavirus has dramatically changed how we live, work and socialize and, with no end in sight, we are probably all wondering if things will ever go back to the way they were before.

I think the answer is at once both simple and complex. The longer the pandemic lasts, the more well get used to a new norm. We will continue to look for alternate ways to live, and that presents a massive opportunity for both augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR). When the pandemic ends, we will have far more options on how to engage with others. Technologies, including Mixed Reality Glasses, will deliver AR/VR content and provide such an immersive experience we may choose a virtual concert, meeting, or classroom over reality anyway.

Mixed Reality Glasses has long been a futuristic technology. Even after Google released its Google Glasses, they were something for the tech geeks and later, the gamers. Thats all about to change. In the next few years, Mixed Reality Glasses will become as ubiquitous as the smartphone, and it will change the way we live and do business.

Today, most of the big technology players are investing in Mixed Reality Glasses. Facebook is fast pursuing Oculus. Google is on the third generation of Google Glasses. Microsoft is targeting the business world with its HoloLens. Apple is rumored to have hundreds of employees secretly working on augmented and virtual reality products. Samsung excited thefans with the release of its HMD Odyssey +, and Sony has a leadership position with its PSVR. These companies have all seen the writing on the wall and have been pursuing what will arguably be the most game-changing technology of this decade for years.

As I tried to make sense of the viability of these products in this pandemic time, I reached out to a friend, Drew Perkins, CEO of Mojo Vision. He is one of the most hands-on visionaries in our technology circles. Not only does he come up with big and revolutionary solutions to common problems, he knows how to build viable companies around these ideas to deliver new products and services to users.

These days, Perkins is pursuing the development of smart contact lenses that will offer both vision correction and AR capabilities. He believes AR will be the most consequential technology of the 2020s and draws parallels between the emergence of AR and the release of the PC or smartphone. If Perkins is successful, his contact lenses will upend the already revolutionary Mixed Reality Glasses industry.

Perkins explained how his contacts would work. Not only will the lenses correct the wearers nearsighted or farsighted, they will also be capable of displaying text, images, and video content, as well as AR/VR content right from the contact lenses. Content viewed through the contacts could be requested by the user (such as text, email, or video) or it could be delivered based on a trigger in the real environment (a review about that nearby coffee shop, or indoor GPS to find an item on a store shelf).

Perkins has a strong scientific research team working to bring the smart lens to the market and believes that his smart lens will be first used by people struggling with vision impairment. The Mojo Lens will augment Mixed Reality Glasses, and people will be able to use either or both as needed. Perkins explained his concept as: Invisible Computing where you get the information you want when you want it, but it stays out of your way when you dont.

Facebook, Apple, Google, and startups like Mojo, are on the cusp of releasing significant and commercially viable products. We are still in the early stages of this new technology curve, and I expect it will take years to deliver the ultimate vision, but everyone is rushing to shape the virtual market. The coronavirus is adding pressure to the need to offer new applications for social distancing, telecommuting, and tele-education especially since no one knows how long the pandemic will last and how the world will look when it ends.

For entrepreneurs thinking about getting into the market, I believe there are three main segments for Mixed Reality Technologieshealthcare, enterprise, and consumer.

In healthcare, Mixed Reality Technologies (Glasses or Lenses) will present a different experience for telemedicine. A patient can have a virtual presence with a doctor who might be in a remote location. Surgeons in the OR can see content related to the surgery through AR or consult with another doctor remotely. Doctors will be able to support patients through telemedicine all over the world at a significant cost reduction. Hospitals will be able to increase productivity by delivering healthcare information in real-time, and disabled patients will be able to participate in the workforce through the aid of Mixed Reality Technologies.

The enterprise will benefit from the use of Mixed Reality Technologies to optimize work and support a new level of teleworking. Imagine in this new world how your smart glasses or lenses and your IoT computing systems will work together seamlessly to provide you with on-demand content to do your job, whether you are at the office, on the road, or working from home. For example, an architect designing a new building could access content related to the design and perform a feasibility study in real-time while working in his office or at home. No matter the location, the access to information, and the ability to be productive would be the same.

Consumers, especially in the gaming world, are primed for Mixed Reality Technologies. Teachers will be able to aid students in a personal way, even if teaching in a remote location. All of us will enjoy the freedom of holding a phone and will have access to information at the flick of an eye.

The applications for Mixed Reality Technologies are extensive, and the need for technologies like this has never been so apparent. When the global coronavirus pandemic finally ends, there will be some things we will never be able to return to as a society, and regularly working from an office may be one of those things. The silver lining may be that our lives will improve for the better because of it. Fewer people will sit for hours in traffic, the air will be cleaner from fewer cars being on the road, and families will find more time to spend with each other instead of in the car alone. Telemedicine, telework, and tele-education are here to stay, and innovators like Perkins are ahead of the curve to deliver game-changing solutions.

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Mixed Reality Technologies To Reshape The Workplace Of The Next Decade - Forbes