Category Archives: Futurism

AI Will Lead to Big Money

Mark Cuban is a self-made billionaire. The worlds first trillionaires, however, will be made by artificial intelligence (AI).

Thats what the Dallas Mavericks owner reportedly said Sunday night at the 2017 SXSW Conference. He believes that, givenall the advances in technology today, AI entrepreneurs are bound to be the worlds first trillion-dollar men.

I am telling you, the worlds first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of,Cuban said. We should expect to see more technological advances over the next ten years than we have over the last 30. Its just going to blow everything away.

Cuban believes that, if you want a shot at being one of those future trillionaires, you need to prepare for it right now. Whatever you are studying right now, if you are not getting up to speed on deep learning, neural networks, etc., you lose, said Cuban.

The star investor of ABC reality show Shark Tank expanded in his vision of the future during the talk:

We are going through the process where software will automate software, automation will automate automation. I would not want to be a CPA right now. I would not want to be an accountant right now. I would rather be a philosophy major. Knowing how to critically think and assess them from a global perspective I think is going to be more valuable than what we see as exciting careers today, which might be programming or CPA or those types of things.

This change in which skills will be relevant in the coming years is born from the expectation that AI and automated systems will replace human workers in a range of jobs, both blue- and white-collar. Automation, strengthened by better AI, will disrupt the workforce, potentially taking over about 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. and 40 percent in Canada, according to studies. One possibleanswerto the widespread unemployment this will causeisuniversal basic income (UBI), butCuban doesnt believe that UBI would be a great solution.

What he does believe is that automation is inevitable and that we need to be prepared for it. What kind of opportunity can I create that gives these people hope for jobs and the ability to live a valuable life? Thats what people in this room can help think of, because our current administration is not going to solve that problem by thinking they are bringing back factories, Cuban said, obviously referencing President Trumps labor plans.

Governments role remains crucial, however. Theres a need for well-informed and research-based policies to guide the development of AI systems a task the Obama administration beganand thatseveral private institutions are actively pursuing.

Theres more to AI, of course, than just taking over jobs. In fact, the technology is already transforming the way we go aboutour day-to-day lives, as we become increasingly dependent on devices that rely on machine learning systems and deep learning algorithms. AI is transforming the medical field, bringing better diagnosis and more effective treatments, and soon, our cars will drive themselves. Given the innumerable ways AI tech could disrupt our world, the idea that the first person to cross into trillionaire territory will do so while riding the AI wave isnt far-fetched at all.

Excerpt from:
Mark Cuban: Tech Will Advance More in the Next Decade Than It Did in the Last Three - Futurism

AI: Ripe For Abuse

In her March 12 talk at the 2017 SXSW Conference, Kate Crawford of Microsoft Research warned that artificial intelligence is ripe for abuse.Crawford, who researches the social impact of large-scale data systems and machine learning, described how encoded biases in AI systems could be abused to target certain populations and centralize power in the hands of authoritarian regimes.

Just as we are seeing a step function increase in the spread of AI, something else is happening: the rise of ultra-nationalism, rightwing authoritarianism and fascism, she said in Dark Days: AI and the Rise of Fascism, her SXSW session.

Crawford believesthe issue is that AI is often invisibly coded with human biases that oftencorrespond with the characteristics of fascist movements: to demonize outsiders, track populations, centralize power, and claim neutrality and authority without accountability. AI can be a potent tool in achieving those goals, especially if it is coded with human biases.

As an example of this kind of biased coding, Crawford described research from Chinas Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The authors claimed they created a bias-free system which had been trained onChinese government ID photos that could use facial features to predict criminality. The conclusion of the research data found that criminal faces were more unusual in appearance than law-abiding faces. The interpretation being that law enforcementwas less likely to trust people whose physical appearance deviated from the norm. AsCrawford explainedit:

Crawfords concerns center around using AI as a black box of algorithms that mask discrimination. AI could also be misused to build registries, which could in turn be used to target specific populations. To this end, Crawford cited IBMs Hollerith Machine, used by Nazi Germany to track ethnic groups, and the Book of Lifes role in South African apartheid.

Back in 2013, researchers could already predict religious and political affiliations on Facebook with more than 80 percent accuracy, and since that time AI has made leaps and bounds.

In the U.S., an AI system to assist in mass deportations has been in the works atPalantirsince 2014,and the companys co-founder Peter Thiel is an advisor to President Trump. But Crawford believes predictive policing has already failed, because research has shown that it results in unfair targeting and excessive force against minorities.

To avoid biased systems with bad data, we must develop AI to be moreaccountable and transparent. This way we can map unintended effects despite their complexity.We want to make these systems as ethical as possible and free from unseen biases, Crawford says, and shes also putting in the work. She founded the research community AI Now, which focuses on AIs social impacts, with these goals in mind.

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Tech Expert Warns That AI Could Become A Fascist's Dream - Futurism

Mimicking The Human Brain

Since 2014, DeepMind has been playing Atari video games. Initially, its machine learning systems could learn to win games and beat human scores, but couldnt remember how it managed to do it. Therefore, for each Atari game, a new neural network was created. DeepMind never benefitted from its own experienceuntil now.

A team of researchers from DeepMind and Imperial College London created an algorithm that bestows memory on the system, allowing it to learn, retain knowledge, and reuse it. The system uses supervised learning and reinforcement learning tests to learn in sequences.

In the human brain, synaptic consolidation is the basis for continual learning. Saving learned knowledge and transferring it from task to task is critical to the wayhumans learn. The inability to do that has been a key failure in machine learning. The algorithm, called elastic weight consolidation (EWC), choosesthe most useful parts of what helped the machineplay and win games in the past, then transfers onlythose parts forward.

The system is impressive, but isnt perfect yet. DeepMind can now retain the most important information from its previous experiences in order to learn, but despite that huge bank of experiences, it still cant perform as well as a neural network that completes a single game. Efficiency of learning is the next step if machine learning is to match or eventually eclipse real-world learning.

Elastic weight consolidation is a core component of any intelligence biological or artificial because it enables the thinker to learn tasks in succession without forgetting. The new DeepMind algorithm supports continual learning just like the synaptic consolidation of the human brain, which is the next step for AI in terms of mastering more challenging tasks and learning contexts. In other words, it will mean that AI systems are better able to take on creative and intellectual challenges; previously thought to be the sole province of humankind.

Link:
Google's DeepMind AI Now Has a Memory - Futurism

In Brief

Ahead of the much-anticipated Tesla Model 3 launchlater this year, a prototype for the carmakers $35,000 sedan was spotted cruising around California streets.

A video of the vehicle in motion was posted online by Unplugged Performance, a Tesla-centric mod shop located near Teslas Design Studio in Hawthorne, California. According to the Unplugged team, the vehicle appeared to be conducting test runs around Jack Northrop Avenue, which is where the Model 3 did its test rides when it was first unveiled in 2016.

Pilot production for the Model 3 only began in February, which means that the Model 3 in the video was likely hand-built specifically for the unveiling held in March 2016. Model 3 battery cell production is set to begin in the second quarter of this year, implying that sightings of Model 3 test units will become more common later in 2017 as production continues to ramp up.

While Tesla is gunning to release the vehicle this year, it should be noted that the company has a long history of product delays, which means there could be a chance the release will be pushed. Nevertheless, Elon Musk has gone on record as saying that the Model 3 requires a simpler manufacturing process, which should make it easier to ensure quality control for its production.

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Watch This New Video of a Tesla Model 3 in Action - Futurism

Einstein For Millennials

At age 14, Sabrina Pasterski walked onto the MIT campus to request notarization of aircraft worthiness for her single-engine plane. She built it herself and had already flown the craft solo, so even within the bastion of brilliance that is MIT, people were interested. Nineyears have passed, and now Pasterski is an MIT graduate and Harvard Ph.D. candidate in physics at age 23. (You can stay up to date with her many published papers and talks on her website, PhysicsGirl.com.)

Pasterski focuses on understanding quantum gravity, explaining gravity within the context of quantum mechanics. She is also interested inblack holes and Spacetime. Its probably no surprise that shes known to the NASA scientists, and that she has a standing job offer from Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin.

Pasterski is exceptional in many ways, but shes also part of a growing trend. In 1999, the number people earning physics bachelors degrees in the U.S. was at its lowest point in four decades, with only 3,178awarded that year. However, in 2015 things looked much different, according to the American Institute of Physics. That year 8,081 bachelors degrees in physics were awarded an all-time high. Physics doctorates also reached an all-time high of 1,860 in 2015. These numbers arent flukes or random spikes; the numbers for the previous two years were also high.

This trend is due in part to higher enrollment and less attrition among female students.These women remain a minority in physics and astronomy, and many are still having to face challenges withimpostor syndrome and mentoring. However,more female students in physics means more graduates overall and a more active scientific community in the U.S.

Sabrina Pasterski and other women in science today have benefited from being part of a proud tradition of standout female scientists. Marie S. Curie, the mother of modern physics, was the first Nobel Prize winning woman in the history of science. She was the first European female to earn a doctorate degree for her scientific research, and she later became the first woman professor and lecturer at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Curies work with radiation a term she invented transformed our understanding of the natural world, and she remains one of the most notable minds in science, regardless of gender.

Less famous but no less significant to science was Ada Lovelace. Intrigued by Charles Babbages idea for an Analytical Engine, a machine for computing, Lovelace published an article on the machine and developed an algorithm that would allow it to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers. She saw the potential of the device and predicted that it might use its algorithms in many different ways. Ada was the first person to articulate the concept of machines following rules in order to manipulate symbols and produce graphics for scientific and practical purposes. She was recognized as the worlds first programmer posthumously.

Notable Women in Space

Rounding out this look back at female scientists, we look at Dian Fossey, a conservation biologist who fought passionately to save mountain gorillas. Fossey studied endangered gorilla species in the mountain forests of Rwanda and learned to mimic the actions, behaviors, and sounds of the gorillas in order to approach them. She strongly opposed poaching, financed patrols to destroy traps, and helped arrest several poachers. In 1977, Fosseys favorite gorilla, Digit, was killed by poachers as he defended his group against poachers. Fossey became totally focused on preventing poaching, destroying gorilla traps, capturing and humiliating the poachers, and even burning their camps. In December 1985, Fossey was found murdered in her camp in Rwanda. The case was never solved, although she is believed to have been killed by poachers.

Female scientists like Sabrina Pasterski are joining an amazing group and a proud tradition. Their work will inspire the scientists of tomorrow and change our understanding of the world just as the work of historical female scientists did for them.

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This Woman Is Said to Rival Einstein, and She's Only 23 - Futurism

In Brief

Bugatti, a brand best known for creating luxury sports cars, has partnered with Monaco-based yacht builder Palmer Johnson to create the Niniette 66 a titanium and carbon fiber yacht that features incredibly luxurious features.

Credit: Bugatti

Following Bugattis trademark, the horseshoe shape of the vehicle is very evident. But while it allows for optimum airflow to cool the the Bugatti Chirons massive engine, its more of an aesthetic addition to the Ninette 66.

The yacht isnt necessarily built for speed. Two MAN V-8 engines propel the Niniette 66, which can reach a top speed of knots (50 mph). But, as you might have expected, the whole point of a Bugatti yacht is being able to enjoy its super luxury features.

The Niniette 66 is specifically designed and built to be enjoyed by only two people. It has a master suite with a double bed, a guest bathroom with marble accents, and a galley kitchen that includes a sink, fridge, and microwave. The spacious deck is outfitted with leather and blue morta oak a type of wood known for its resilience against decay for thousands of years where you canenjoy a Sun pad for lounging, a champagne bar, and a fire pit.

The futuristic vehicle is priced at $2.2 million.

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This $2.2 Million Superyacht Is the Luxury Transportation of the Future - Futurism

Climate Change & National Security

At more than 400 ppm, atmospheric CO2 has achieved its highest peak in 800,000 years. This increased level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has caused a rise in global surface temperatures of about one degree Celsiussince 1880. Since 2001, Earth has experienced 15 of the 16 warmest years on record, and 2014, 2015, and 2016 have each been the warmest year ever recorded.

For U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, these facts are not just environmental matters; they impact national security and constitute a serious problem for the U.S. government. This overt position seems to indicate that Mattis will not be strictly toeing the Trump administration line, which is in contrast toEnvironmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, who recently denied that carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

In his written responses to his January confirmation hearing questions, which were obtained and verified genuine by ProPublica, Mattis warned that climate change is already a destabilizing force:

Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.

Asked how the military should prepare to address the threat posed to the United States by climate change, General Mattis responded, [c]limate change is a challenge that requires a broader, whole-of government response.

This is not a new stance for Mattis, who has repeatedly taken the position that the armed forces should explore renewable energy and cut dependence on fossil fuels. As commander of the U.S. Joint Forces Command in 2010, Mattis signed off on the Joint Operating Environment, which includes climate change among expected security threats to be confronted over the next 25 years.

His view isnt even a new one for the U.S. government: top officials have discussed the national security implications of global warming for decades, under both Republican and Democratic presidents. A whole-of-government response was initiated in 2016 by President Obama, who ordered more than a dozen federal offices and agencies including the Defense Department to ensure that climate change-related impacts are fully considered in the development of national security doctrine, policies, and plans. These agencies were also told in December to form a Climate and National Security Working Group within 60 days as yet, no action has been takenon that front.

It remains to be seen how Mattis will achieve his defense goals if the administration succeeds in defunding the NOAA and other bodies that conduct oceanic and atmospheric research. Mattis said it was the U.S. militarys job to consider how changes like drought in regions of conflict and open-water routes in the thawing Arctic can pose challenges for defense planners and troops. He also indicated that climate change is not a distant possibility, but a real-time issue.

I agree that the effects of a changing climatesuch as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among othersimpact our security situation, Mattissaid, I will ensure that the department continues to be prepared to conduct operations today and in the future, and that we are prepared to address the effects of a changing climate on our threat assessments, resources, and readiness.

Link:
The US Secretary of Defense Says Climate Change is Putting the World At Risk - Futurism

Dear Balilla Pratella, great Futurist composer,

In Rome, in the Costanzi Theatre, packed to capacity, while I was listening to the orchestral performance of your overwhelming Futurist music, with my Futurist friends, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carr, Balla, Soffici, Papini and Cavacchioli, a new art came into my mind which only you can create, the Art of Noises, the logical consequence of your marvelous innovations.

Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones. The strongest noises which interrupted this silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and waterfalls, nature is silent.

Amidst this dearth of noises, the first sounds that man drew from a pieced reed or streched string were regarded with amazement as new and marvelous things. Primitive races attributed sound to the gods; it was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich the mystery of their rites.

And so was born the concept of sound as a thing in itself, distinct and independent of life, and the result was music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an inviolatable and sacred world. It is easy to understand how such a concept of music resulted inevitable in the hindering of its progress by comparison with the other arts. The Greeks themselves, with their musical theories calculated mathematically by Pythagoras and according to which only a few consonant intervals could be used, limited the field of music considerably, rendering harmony, of which they were unaware, impossible.

The Middle Ages, with the development and modification of the Greek tetrachordal system, with the Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched the art of music, but continued to consider sound in its development in time, a restricted notion, but one which lasted many centuries, and which still can be found in the Flemish contrapuntalists most complicated polyphonies.

The chord did not exist, the development of the various parts was not subornated to the chord that these parts put together could produce; the conception of the parts was horizontal not vertical. The desire, search, and taste for a simultaneous union of different sounds, that is for the chord (complex sound), were gradually made manifest, passing from the consonant perfect chord with a few passing dissonances, to the complicated and persistent dissonances that characterize contemporary music.

At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.

This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.

To excite and exalt our sensibilities, music developed towards the most complex polyphony and the maximum variety, seeking the most complicated successions of dissonant chords and vaguely preparing the creation of musical noise. This evolution towards noise sound was not possible before now. The ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (whose members have trebled in number since then). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.

On the other hand, musical sound is too limited in its qualitative variety of tones. The most complex orchestras boil down to four or five types of instrument, varying in timber: instruments played by bow or plucking, by blowing into metal or wood, and by percussion. And so modern music goes round in this small circle, struggling in vain to create new ranges of tones.

This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and the infinite variety of noise-sound conquered.

Besides, everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of the efforts of all the innovatory musicians. We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the Eroica or the Pastoral.

We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.

Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.

Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!

Its no good objecting that noises are exclusively loud and disagreeable to the ear.

It seems pointless to enumerate all the graceful and delicate noises that afford pleasant sensations.

To convince ourselves of the amazing variety of noises, it is enough to think of the rumble of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the clatter of a trotting horse as it draws into the distance, the lurching jolts of a cart on pavings, and of the generous, solemn, white breathing of a nocturnal city; of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that can be made by the mouth of man without resorting to speaking or singing.

Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.

Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten. Recently, the poet Marinetti, in a letter from the trenches of Adrianopolis, described to me with marvelous free words the orchestra of a great battle:

To attune noises does not mean to detract from all their irregular movements and vibrations in time and intensity, but rather to give gradation and tone to the most strongly predominant of these vibrations.

Noise in fact can be differentiated from sound only in so far as the vibrations which produce it are confused and irregular, both in time and intensity.

Every noise has a tone, and sometimes also a harmony that predominates over the body of its irregular vibrations.

Now, it is from this dominating characteristic tone that a practical possibility can be derived for attuning it, that is to give a certain noise not merely one tone, but a variety of tones, without losing its characteristic tone, by which I mean the one which distinguishes it. In this way any noise obtained by a rotating movement can offer an entire ascending or descending chromatic scale, if the speed of the movement is increased or decreased.

Every manifestation of our life is accompanied by noise. The noise, therefore, is familiar to our ear, and has the power to conjure up life itself. Sound, alien to our life, always musical and a thing unto itself, an occasional but unnecessary element, has become to our ears what an overfamiliar face is to our eyes. Noise, however, reaching us in a confused and irregular way from the irregular confusion of our life, never entirely reveals itself to us, and keeps innumerable surprises in reserve. We are therefore certain that by selecting, coordinating and dominating all noises we will enrich men with a new and unexpected sensual pleasure.

Although it is characteristic of noise to recall us brutally to real life, the art of noise must not limit itself to imitative reproduction. It will achieve its most emotive power in the acoustic enjoyment, in its own right, that the artists inspiration will extract from combined noises.

Here are the 6 families of noises of the Futurist orchestra which we will soon set in motion mechanically:

In this inventory we have encapsulated the most characteristic of the fundamental noises; the others are merely the associations and combinations of these. The rhythmic movements of a noise are infinite: just as with tone there is always a predominant rhythm, but around this numerous other secondary rhythms can be felt.

Continued here:
The Art of Noises

California and Ubers Tricky Relationship

The well-known ride-sharing company, Uber, is making headlines again. After a struggle with the state of California, Uber notoriously packed its self-driving vehicles up and went to Phoenix, Arizona, setting up a location in addition to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the companys self-driving initiative. This time, its about the companys return to California streets with self-driving cars.

Uber finally applied and received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that allows the testing of two Volvo SUVs on public roads. In addition, 48 backup drivers were approved by regulators, requiring them to sit behind the wheel in the event ofa mishap with the autonomous vehicles.

The $150 permit seems to be an olive branch of sorts, resolving the issues from late 2016 when Uber introduced a pilot program of more than a dozen autonomous vehicles in San Francisco without consulting state regulators. While Uber claimed that its cars did not meet the states definition of autonomous vehicles because they need a person present to monitor the car in case an intervention is needed, legal authorities felt differently when faced with Ubers malfunctioning AI. Without the permit, the state revoked the license of the 16 autonomous cars from Ubers pilot program.

Uber is now the 26th company to hold a permit to test self-driving vehicles in the state of California. However, the company wont be offering driverless rides just yet, and its not clear when passengers will be able to hitch a ride with one of them.

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Uber's Self-Driving Cars Are Officially Allowed on California Roads - Futurism

In the 20th century we got used to a certain way of thinking: if you needed something, you boughtit. Cars, houses, records, you named it. Efficient manufacturing and logistics made it possible to createan unprecedented global overflow of stuff. Ownership quickly becameabout being someone; it was a way of definingwho you are.

All ofthis is still very much the case today: buying and owning things is a huge part of our lives. Yet something is still markedly different now: most of us have stopped buying CDs and DVDs. Young people arent buying cars anymore. Books are selling fewer copies. Many things we used to buy and keep at home we no longer do.

Let us take a closer look at what is happening with music, for instance. Artists still release albums, but very few people actually buy the physical album. Instead, they might buy the songs digitally on iTunes, and a growing amount of people will listen to the track on-demand. Music is accessed, not owned. The same goes for your favourite film. Ten years ago you would have bought a DVD to watch over and over again. Now you have iton stand-byon Netflix.

And this is just the beginning.

Things get really interesting when we start talking about cars instead of music. What would it be like to access a car on-demand? You might say that we already have taxis. But a taxi isnt as convenient as Netflix is. What would it be like to actually have the convenience of your own car without owning it?

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a model for traffic without ownership. You pay a monthly fee for it, like with Spotify, tell the app where you are going and get instant access to taxis, Ubers, buses, and so on. Everything is available on-demand and ownership is no longer needed.

MaaS is part of a trend called the as a service model. The frameworkbegan as a simple idea in software development, when companies started paying for access instead of buying permanent licenses for office programs. Now the same model is moving into the material world. Netflix, Spotify, AirBnb and Uber are all as a service companies.

As a service models become more and more feasible when the number of sensors that surround us increases. This development is often called the Internet of Things.But when we consider the Internet of Things from the perspective of disappearing products and the increase in newservice models, we caneffectivelyconclude that it is, in fact, the Internet of No Things.

What is so revolutionary about the as a service model then? Why is it good not to own things? There are two main reasons and these are related: First, ownership makes us lazy. Second, the planet cannot survive with us consuming somuch stuff.

When we buy things we easily get bored with them and forget they exist, or, alternatively, use them only because we own them. On-demand is about using things when we actually need them. It leads to the more effective use of resources. AirBnb gets more people to use the same apartment and Uber gets more people to use the same car.

It takes alarge amountof natural resources to manufacture a car, house, or smartphone in the first place. We are now running out of those resources. Thats why digital as a service platforms show great promise. In the future the as a service model will revolutionise some areas of our lives that are completely unsustainable right now such as housing, mobility and communications.

Can you imagine a world where you no longer have a phone in your pocket but instead pay for communication as a service? It might sound like sci-fi, but companies around the world are already offering housing and even Smart City as a Service.A world without smartphones? It may very well happen.

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The Era of Ownership Is Ending - Futurism