Keep With the Times or Your Business Will Die Trying

Today we live in a world where the products of today are likely to be outdated in just a few months time. We see this with things like the hard drive in your computer. Only a few short years ago the thought of having a relatively cheap computer with multi-terabyte storage was insane, and being able to have a laptop that ran all day was impossible. Now it's common practice. Back in the early 2000's we used to take pictures with dinky little plastic cameras like the one below. Now though, your camera is on your phone. Along with your music player, games, contact book, email, internet and a million other functions. The world moved on quickly from pictures on film to pictures in cyberspace.

Image from Amazon

This was not something which Kodak took action on. They stubbornly decided not to move with the trend and believed that their product was superior to that which was being developed. Rather than see the future, which was digital photography, they chose to invest and pursue other ways of making their films better. Lets not forget that digital photography was something that Kodak themselves invented and yet chose to ignore.

It wouldn't probably be surprising then to say that because Kodak chose not to pursue the new digital form of picture taking, they ended up going broke. While everyone else was moving forward with the new, Kodak stuck with the old and the results of doing so are clear to be seen. Kodak is now no more.

So what can we learn from this? Well its important that any company can not only develop and build new technology, but also adapt to it if they can see a shift in the market. A business should also always be open minded to the idea of changing their flagship product, or tossing it out in favour of the new and the 'better'. Any company should also encourage firm testing and analytics of not just its products, but those being developed for implementation in the future. This is so as to accurately gauge their market worth and potential to drive sales.

In short then don't be like Kodak. Embrace new technology and embrace change because in the fluid world that we now live in, keeping up with the pack is life or death for any business.

As always thanks for reading and if you have any thoughts on this, please post in the comments section below.

An Arm, A Finger And A Couple Of Ears Please

Here is an idea to consider. According to Zacks.com, 3D printing is taking off at the moment, having "only just brushed the surface of its potential applications, and looks set to take off in a big way in the near future". Today and into the future we wont just be able to 3D print a scale model of you house, but something much more important and life changing. Organs, limbs and skin.

Despite advances in modern medicine people are still dying every day from diseases of their organs, or from infections of things like massive burns. These are vital and at the moment, hard to replace parts of the machine that is the human body. Take a moment then to consider the possibility that if you had a terminal disease of something like the heart that you could just order up a new one to be surgically installed. This is the reality that 3D printers, or more specifically, 3D bio-printers offer. Using live cells, new body parts and organic components will be built up, layer by layer, into an exact copy of the piece its replacing.

A piece of experimental breast tissue implant for those who have had a mastectomy being developed by QUT - Image taken from abc.net.au

The quality of life for many people with chronic illnesses or pains of joints would be drastically increased. We could print off new cartilage for those who really need it, like retiring sportspeople and the elderly. Do you have early onset liver cancer? No problem. We can just take it out before the cancer can spread and put in a new one. Finger chopped of in a workplace accident? Just copy and paste the other remaining finger and you're good as new. Waiting lists could become a thing of the past.

Now I do realise that I'm massively over simplifying the complexity of turning some cells into a fully functioning organ or piece of tissue. But for the sake of those who don't have a strong biological background or aren't that interested I have done this deliberately. The point however remains the same. Sometime in the near future it may be possible to be admitted to hospital and have life threatening diseases removed from your body by removing the diseased body part. How this will work for something like the brain is still uncertain but for those who don't need a brain replacement (although I can think of a few who do), the fairly near future looks very bright.

Thanks for reading and if you have any thoughts or comments, please post below. I'd be very interested to see what you think of this technology.

3 Ways To Be A Better Learner And Prepare For The Future

Thinking back to the year I was born, 1995, I can't imagine that half of the things we take for granted every day were even beginning to be thought of. Mobile phones with a million different functions, touch screens controlling the functions of your car, tablets, 4G mobile data, Bluetooth the list goes on. Every single one of these modern marvels requires a host of people to turn raw materials into the technological piece that they are.

If you had approached a electrical engineer at a major TV maker 20 years ago and told them that they would need to build a 4k screen, 3D imaging and Netflix into it they'd probably bend their head to the side and go 'huh'? What you can buy today is made using an entirely different rule book and instruction set to what was being built 20 years ago. can you imagine what the next 20 years will hold? To keep up with modern developments people have to re-skill and relearn to constantly stay up to date.

I can feel that some of you may be thinking 'well since we don't know whats coming how can we train for it?' and it' a fair point. But, and its a big fat juicy but, what if we could teach our children and ourselves to self educate, allowing us to be better poised to take on any new developments in the future and be better equipped to acquire the skills to take part in future industry. Here are 3 ways I think this can be done:

Image taken from Steli Efti of Quora.com

1. Instil a message that education does not end after you finish school or University. It's and ongoing process that never really ends. By doing this we can better inspire our kids to be life long learners and be open to new information later on in life.

2. Make sure that failure is seen as a positive thing because with new knowledge comes lots and lots of learning and forgetting and then relearning. Rarely do things go in the first time but need constant reinforcing and that's important to understand because it can be disheartening when you don't understand something the first few times

3. Be ready to be confused and challenge yourself. The whole reason that you learn new things is because you don't understand them. It can be quite uncomfortable feeling like you don't know something. But rather than it being a this to maybe be embarrassed about, turn it into a positive. You're going to learn something new today!

Hopefully this helps some of you in the future and I think that these 3 things are a good start towards better readying ourselves and those to come next for the future. As always comments and thoughts are always appreciated and thanks for reading!

The Synergy of Art and Science Part 2

I want to start this post with a question. How has scientific progression influenced the way we design the things around us? I think that a clear answer to this lies in a personal passion of mine, aviation. I'll use 3 notable aircraft since the first flight in 1903 to generally compare how much things have changed and how the balance between art and science has shifted.

Image Source

Humble Beginnings

Its December 17th 1903 and the Wright Brothers have just taken the machine you see on the right into the sky for 120 glorious feet. This aircraft lies at the bottom end of the scale where science and engineering dominate and artistic merit is irrelevant. Just getting the thing to fly was 100% of the challenge and so 100% of the plane was function and not form.Wood, Canvas and pulleys were the materials used during this time and this further limited the shapes and forms an aircraft could take to small and boxy designs.

Art Claws Back Some Ground

Before I go on I want you took look at the two images below. The first image is of a Spitfire from WW2, the second is a faithful scale model, one of which now sits on my desk.

Image taken from the Daily Mail

Image taken from Tailwinds

To many aviation enthusiasts this is one of the most evocative and beautiful machines ever constructed by man. Here is what I thinks is the quintessential example of art fighting back against functional design. Not a single component of this aircraft looks like the 1903 Wright Flyer above apart from that it has wings. The incorporation of lightweight and strong metals allowed for single wings to be built, engines went from modified car motors to powerful generators of horsepower and overall size increased. Aircraft designers could finally experiment and produce planes (that were essentially aerial gun platforms) that pleased not just the engineers' eye but the eye of the general public. The Spitfire shows how changes in materiel sciences changed the path of aviation, and don't forget, only 33 years separate these two aircraft.


Artistic Freedom Arrives

While the final aircraft in this lineup does not yet exists, it hints towards the potential future of aeronautical design. The AWWA Sky Whale Concept (yep you read that correctly) incorporates both current and future materials such as carbon nantubes, advanced ceramics and alloys to create shapes never seen before. While Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, there's no doubt that the blending of sharp angles and curvaceous undulations and sweeps makes for an catching aesthetic. None of the looks of this future concept would be possible without the aforementioned mediums providing strength gains and weight reductions improving efficiency - the ongoing golden term of current and future aeronautical development.



We are now looking at a future where if it can be drawn, it probably can be built and flown. This is a world away from those flimsy wooden aircraft that first took to the sky 112 years ago and only time will tell where plane design goes next.

This marks the end of a 2 part blog series on the blending of science and art but don't worry, more content on many other topics will be coming soon.

Thanks for reading!