⏩ Clean energy's tipping point, guilt-free food & flying, AI relatives & authors, robot laundry folding, and more...
The Future Normal: Fast Forward #28
A different format this week, after some positive feedback on last week's "What if..." questions. Let me know if you like the shorter format with more stories.
But first, let's open with DALL-E's interpretation of my summary of this week's glimpses of The Future Normal :)
What if...your next flight was sustainable? Eating meat...flying...pick a sector that's killing the planet and you'll undoubtedly also find a host of startups working to decarbonize it. Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy is investing $50m in sustainable aviation fuel producer LanzaJet to build its first commercial plant.
What if...we could enjoy animal-free food, but keep all of the flavour? Guilt-free alternatives are an ongoing Future Normal obsession. Plant-based meat might be facing some struggles, but Hoxton Farm's lab-grown animal fat offers a tantalizing solution. The startup raised $22m this week to scale up production.
What if...we are reaching the tipping point for clean energy? We know the combination of renewables, batteries and electrification is the Future Normal, it's how fast we get there that's is the problem. Bloomberg's data deep dive will help you feel optimistic.
What if...the humble bike lane could save the planet while paying for itself? A study of Bogota's $130m investment in protected (i.e. fully separated) bike lanes found they delivered a triple benefit of reduced emissions, lower transport costs, and healthcare savings.
Planning for 2023 & beyond?
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What if...you could talk seamlessly with people speaking other languages? Meta demoed its AI-powered speech-to-speech translation of Hokkien (a Chinese oral dialect).
What if...writers only had to think of their story headlines? Ali Abdaal posted a Twitter thread on productivity tips that got over 1 million impressions. He then revealed that the tips had been written by an AI (full disclosure, these stories & insights are still written by a human...for now ;) White collar workers – are you ready to become a centaur?
What if...we could continue to talk to dead relatives? A different AI-powered content use case and another Future Normal obsession is 'virtual companions'. This article dives deep into the handful of 'grief tech' companies that are working to create synthetic humans (remember when Kim Kardashian got there first?)
What if...we embraced millions of robot workers? Not Boring profiles Formic, a company helping fill labor shortages and shorten supply chains by offering Robots-as-a-Service to manufacturers.
One welcome robot-based Future Normal we'd all love to see...automated laundry folding. Researchers at UC Berkeley's AUTOLAB have developed a new robotic method of folding garments at record speed (for a robot) called SpeedFolding.
If you can see it, you can be it.
The Future Normal explores how we will live, work and thrive in the coming decade by highlighting the breakthroughs and pioneers building our future, today.
Thanks for reading,