The latest and greatest from Apple used to be something to celebrate. At their Worldwide Developers Conference this week, the biggest tech company in the world announced its newest efforts to much fanfare and largely came up short. While the Apple Watch and the newly minted Apple Music streaming service have garnered lots of interest from the tech press, these offerings from Cupertino seem like pale shadows, trailing after the company's previous glory. In this episode of The Digital Life, we comment on Apple's innovation drought from a design and UX perspective.

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Apple Misses the Mark

In this episode of The Digital Life, we chat with special guest Suzanne Livingston, senior product manager for IBM’s enterprise social software platform, about the "consumerization" of enterprise software and the bring-your-own-device trend. 

This is a unique time for the enterprise, as software eats the world.  Product managers need to keep in mind a variety of factors as they consider the ongoing “consumerization” of enterprise software from user experience to security to productivity. How are enterprise software vendors responding to the trend of employees bringing their own mobile devices into the work environment? Has the time come when enterprise software needs to be “mobile first” in its UX strategy? Are successful upstarts like Trello, Box, Slack indicative of the way enterprise software needs to go? We examine all of these questions and more as we consider the the migration of enterprise software to a “consumerized” paradigm.


The Consumerization of Enterprise Software with Suzanne Livingston

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Madeleine Price Ball, Co-founder and Principal Investigator of the Public Data Sharing study, about Open Humans, an online platform that enables people to not only connect and participate with research studies but also receive data back from the scientists conducting them.

We explore the origins of the Open Humans project, its revolutionary data sharing model, and how it works for both members and researchers.

Open Humans

This week, on The Digital Life we chat about the top science and technology stories of 2015.

From new net neutrality rules to evidence of flowing water on Mars, Amazon's cut throat corporate culture to outrageous drug price increases, hacking exploits to genetically altered designer babies, we explore the biggest and most impactful news events of the year.

The Top Stories of 2015

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about the rapid evolution of design and innovation practice. Chinese companies are increasingly taking an assembly line approach to R&D, which allows them to accelerate the process using multi-functional problem solving teams. By industrializing the process, Chinese companies are looking to make innovative product development quick and inexpensive, using simultaneous, parallel engineering and design. Additionally, IP sharing is commonplace in China: Designs move quickly from one company to the next. For example, the hit toy of the holidays, the hoverboard, was created seemingly simultaneously by several Chinese manufacturers. Join us as we discuss the future of innovation.

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http://thedigitalife.com/bull-session/rethink-innovation

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Rethink Innovation

On this episode of The Digital Life we discuss Google's Sidewalk Labs and its radical plans to design a smart city from scratch. Sidewalk Labs wants to work with cities to build applications that solve big urban problems and accelerate innovation around the world. However, in their pursuit of these solutions, the company is  seeking autonomy from many city regulations, so it can build free of the many constraints that come with the design of streets, parking, and utilities.

Sidewalk Labs already has two solutions in progress: Flow, a transportation coordination platform in partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation; and LinkNYC, kiosks with gigabit fiber connections delivering WiFi, USB charging, free voice calls, and a tablet for access to the Internet.

Smart Cities and Sidewalk Labs

In this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss the next wave of innovation in technology and new forms of design that will come along with it. Emerging technology needs design —from the IoT to AI, virtual reality to robotics, nanotechnology to 3D printing, genomics to synthetic biology. We talk about where we've been, and where we're going next.

The Digital Life

The Next Wave of Innovation

Just last week the Associated Press announced that it's covering Minor League Baseball games using AI software. The software from Automated Insights, draws upon supplied game data to create a written narrative. This AI is already being used by the Associated Press to create earnings stories on U.S. public companies and by corporate customers like Edmunds.com, which uses it to generate descriptions of cars for its Web site.

So, AI can cover a baseball game, parsing the data and creating a narrative, but is the writing any good? So far, it seems to generate stories that are readable, but not really compelling or interesting beyond the most mundane facts. Is this the future of sports journalism? Join us as we discuss AI and baseball.

AI Goes to the Ballpark

On this episode of The Digital Life, we discuss business model innovation in places you might not expect. Bill Taylor, the founder of Fast Company magazine, spoke at the Business Innovation Factory Summit last week about his new book "Simply Brilliant". We use his examples of companies experimenting and succeeding with unique business models and practices — from Lincoln Electric to Megabus — as a jumping off point for our discussion about progressive firms.

Business Model Innovation in Unusual Places

This week on The Digital Life we discuss Jon Follett's new book, "Marvin and the Moths", a science fiction novel for young readers that takes a humorous look at life for middle school in a zany world impacted by emerging technologies. While "Marvin and the Moths" is Jon's first science fiction release, he has already authored a variety of other published works. Among them is “Designing for Emerging Technologies” for O’Reilly Media, published in 2014. Looking across a variety of emerging technologies and industries, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and synthetic biology, Jon outlined an audacious vision for how the technology of recent science fiction will manifest as the science fact of our near future. Jon used his background in emerging technology as fodder for this new work of fiction, and science plays an important role in "Marvin and the Moths" which was published by Scholastic in September.

Writing Marvin and the Moths

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss diversity in the world of tech, and the cultural, economic and societal factors that contribute to the oftentimes difficult landscape of inclusion in the industry.

Diversity in Tech

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss digital influence in the wake of this US presidential election cycle. From Wikileaks to Hillary's e-mail server, fake news on Facebook to digital online tribes of like thinkers, in this election cyber communication matured into a mammoth force. 

Facebook has been accused of helping to spread misinformation and fake news stories that influenced how the American’s voted. And, not only did WikiLeaks release thousands of hacked internal DNC e-mails just before this summer's Democratic National Convention, it also published e-mails purportedly from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman less than a month before election day. There's no doubt that digital has become incredibly influential, the question is, what happens next, as misinformation and real facts intertwine online in new ways.

Seeing Through Digital Haze

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we discuss parenting in the digital age. Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a study on Children and Adolescents and Digital Media. The study identified both benefits from the use of digital and social media — like early learning and exposure to new ideas and knowledge — as well as risks — including negative effects on sleep and a higher incidence of obesity and depression.
In this episode we explore setting boundaries for our children in the seemingly boundary-less environment of the digital life.

Parenting in the Digital Age

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss ethics and bias in AI, with guest Tomer Perry, research associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. What do we mean by bias when it comes to AI? And how do we avoid including biases we’re not even aware of?

If AI software for processing and analyzing data begins providing decision-making for core elements critical to our society we'll need to address these issues.

For instance, risk assessments used in the correctional system have been shown to incorporate bias against minorities.
When it comes to self-driving cars, people want to be protected, but also want the vehicle, in principle to "do the right thing" when encountering situations where the lives of both the driver and others, like pedestrians, are at risk. How we should deal with it? What are the ground rule sets for ethics and morality in AI, and where do they come from? Join us as we discuss.

Ethics and Bias in AI

On The Digital Life this week we explore storytelling, creativity, and artificial intelligence. Our cultural evolution is reflected in our ability to communicate through stories, creating shared experiences and meaning. Recent research from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide used an AI to classify the emotional arcs for 1,327 stories from Project Gutenberg's fiction collection, identifying six types of narratives. Could these reverse-engineered storytelling components be used to build automated software tools for authors, or even to train machines to generate original works? Online streaming service Netflix already uses data generated from users' movie and television preferences to help choose its next shows. What might happen when computers not only pick the shows, but also write the scripts for them?

Storytelling and AI

For our podcast topic this week, we discuss the digital life, automation, and eliminating the human in our digital interactions. In an essay in MIT Technology Review, David Byrne of Talking Heads fame postulates that “part of making something 'frictionless' is getting the human part out of the way.” He goes on, in his essay to reflect upon how automation is eliminating the human in areas as varied as e-commerce, digital music, online education, and even social media. Does this elimination of the human element lead to less tolerance and understanding of our differences? If cooperation is what has made us successful as a species, how do we survive if we're only self-interested to the exclusion of others? And, is technology headed in this direction?

The Human In Tech

On the podcast this week, we discuss artificial intelligence and music with special guest Pierre Barreau, CEO of Aiva. Aiva (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist) is an AI composer. Aiva has created music used in the soundtracks for films, advertising, and games, and is the first virtual artist to be recognized by an author’s rights society. Join us as we explore how man and machine collaborate to create the future of music.

AI and Music

On this episode of The Digital Life, we wrap up the year with some emerging tech predictions for 2018. We discuss the expansion of AI services in significant ways, automated trucks on the road, Target's online struggles, Amazon's difficulties in exploiting niche businesses,  and the streaming services war as Disney prepares to take on Netflix among other topics.

Tech Predictions for 2018

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about all the new technology fun as CES 2018, the de facto emerging tech showcase, gets going in Las Vegas.

The smart home battleground is heating up as AI virtual assistants, like Google and Amazon Alexa, are being built into everyday household items and appliances. For instance, the bathroom is fast becoming a smartroom with Alexa incorporated into products like Kohler's new mirror, which can personalize light levels for different tasks, and Moen's digital shower technology, that enables users to set a specific water temperature.  Connecting the digital to the physical is a big theme for CES this year, as AI is rolled out for a bevy of products and services. Join us as we discuss all this and more.

Emerging Tech at CES 2018

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about international law and cyber war. According to a World Economic Forum article, over 30 governments have acknowledged that they have offensive cyber capabilities including: espionage and spying; sabotage including denial-of-service attacks and attacks on the power grid; and, perhaps the most talked about recently, propaganda.

The difficulties of developing policy to regulate and respond to emerging technology like these cyber war capabilities highlights the problems of working within interlocking, complex systems of governmental and political process, meant for a previous era, that are now subject to rapid changes.

And managing policy within the areas of fast moving emerging technologies—from software to genomics to robotics—will only get more difficult. What is the right way, or is there even a right way for governments and societies to respond to this need for laws and regs? Join us as we discuss.

Cyber Policy and Cyber War

This week on The Digital Life, we chat about design and creative professionals and what the future of work might look like for them. Our special guest on the show is Daniel Harvey, Head of Product Design and Brand at The Dots, a professional network for “no collar'” professionals.

Alongside with the immense power and flexibility that technology can bring, comes an evolution in, not only how we get creative work done, but also why we do it. Values and behaviors are changing among job seekers in creative industries. We see some of this, for example, in the growing emphasis on project work, rather than on continuous employment. Further, with such powerful emerging technologies as AI, will it be possible, eventually, to automate creativity? And if this is the case, will people be able to accept that technology driven output as creative? How will designers and other creative professionals survive and thrive in this environment? It's critical that we design roles and organizations that make the most of people, while leveraging technology. And, that we properly educate the next generation of designers so they can thrive and compete in the future. Join us as we discuss.

Creativity and the Future of Work

On The Digital Life podcast this week, we chat with guest Mary Ellen Sparrow, CEO of NextShift Robotics, about collaborative robotics and automation. NextShift focuses on developing robots that work in concert with people on the warehouse floor for e-commerce operations. Unlike other automation systems, the company's technology works within a warehouse's existing infrastructure, rather than requiring a massive overhaul and build out. Its robots are designed to work in complex and variable environments. For example, they can avoid obstacles, navigating around objects in their path. Join us as we discuss robotic automation, misconceptions people may have about the relationship between jobs, workers, and robots, and the potential of this technology to transform industry in the near future.

Automation and Collaborative Robots

On this episode of The Digital Life, we talk about designing voice user interfaces with engineer Claire Sun, who just returned from the Conversational Interaction Conference. Today, the voice UI market is primarily focused on performing tasks and controlling devices related to the smart home. Voice recognition technology isn’t robust enough yet to function smoothly in noisy environments or tell the difference between multiple speakers. Additionally, the software that powers VUIs is still at the early stages of being able to understand language in context, as opposed to more simple, transactional phrases. Join us as we discuss approaches to designing VUIs, and the difficulties that designers and engineers encounter in their quest to create software that’s both personal and conversational.

Designing Voice User Interfaces

Our special guest this week on The Digital Life is design strategist, Ben Sauer, who's investigating the idea of secret design skills for his new book. Design is filled with cross-pollination from other fields, from writing to architecture, acting to music. From these other fields we find ways of seeking, thinking and doing that are useful to a designer. What's your secret design skill? Join us as we discuss.

Secret Design Skills

On The Digital Life this week, we chat with special guest Katja Grace from AI Impacts, whose research is focused is the future of AI. Where will AI be in 10 years and what kind of impact will it have on the world? The buzz now is that deep learning will increasingly automate knowledge work. AI and automation will change creative fields, from research science to journalism, fiction writing to graphic design, software engineering to management activities. Join us as we discuss.

AI and Knowledge Work

This week on The Digital Life, our guest is Pam Pedersen, Principal of Innovations Early College High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. There's perhaps no better way to invest in the future than in preparing students for their life and careers ahead. How that may be best achieved, however, is subject to debate. It's clear that the US educational system is ripe for change. But what teaching philosophies or methodologies are best? Innovations Early College High School is designed to facilitate blended learning and to allow for flexibility in order to best meet the academic goals of each individual student. It's an approach far different from the typical high school. Join us as we discuss.

Innovating High School

This week on The Digital Life, we chat with Ben Nelson, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Minerva, a groundbreaking university program, and an editor of the book “Building the Intentional University”. 

We discuss some of the key problems with higher education, how Minerva is rethinking the university system to support how people actually learn, and the ways in which the tech-enabled learning experience for Minerva students and professors is vastly different from those of a more traditional college or university.

Rethinking the University

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and science with special guest is Dany DeGrave, founder of Unconventional Innovation. AI and science are coming together in new and significant ways, including the use of cognitive and other innovative technologies in R&D — like NLP, machine learning, and advanced analytics. As bio-science companies rush to invest in AI, the implementation of scientific research, drug trials, and even personalized medicine is undergoing significant change. But with the potential to make erroneous decisions, and even be used for malicious purposes, it may be a long time before we fully trust AI to be used in such development.

AI and Science

On The Digital Life this week our special guest this week is Dr. Carie Little Hersh, an American cultural anthropologist, teaching professor in Anthropology at Northeastern University, and producer and host of podcast Anthropologist on the Street. We chat about human creativity and technology through time, from an anthropological perspective.

Which came first: humans or technology? And what is the relationship between homo sapiens and the species who came before us, or those such as the neanderthals with whom we competed? We consider the anthropological relationship between technology and creativity, as well as patterns in technological progression through time. Join us as we discuss.

Sapiens, Creativity, and Technology

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the pitfalls of predicting AI. AI predictions range from the measured and meaningful to highly unrealistic and downright hysterical. But how can you tell the difference? In this episode, we dig into some rules of thumb for thinking through the AI predictions we encounter, as laid out in the article "The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions" by Rodney Brooks, a founder of Rethink Robotics. From better understanding the properties of narrow AI to asking "how will it be deployed?", questioning supposed magical properties without limit, to admitting, in the long term, we just don’t know, we'll explore the many factors that counter the breathless hysteria of AI predictions. Join us as we discuss.

The Pitfalls of Predicting AI

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss emerging technologies and the self. What makes us ourselves, the way we take in information, the way we share, communicate, collaborate and interact with people has gone digital in a number of ways. In particular, we delve into the topic of virtual reality experiences and empathy, based on the article in Aeon, “It’s dangerous to think virtual reality is an empathy machine”. VR can change how we think about the world, helping us understanding different perspectives. For instance, the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University created a simulation from the perspective of a cow, of being raised for the slaughterhouse. There are immersive VR experiences of becoming homeless and experiencing racism. But what is the true impact of these early experiments? Join us as we discuss.

Emerging Technologies and the Self

This week on The Digital Life, we discuss the Productivity Paradox, inspired by the recent article in MIT Technology Review, “Advanced tech, but growth slow and unequal: paradoxes and policies”. While we're experiencing an unprecedented boom in technology, the accompanying massive productivity boost that we might expect to see has failed to materialize. In fact, in many major economies, productivity growth is slowing. So, what's the reason for this unexpected outcome? To begin with, our ability to absorb, integrate, and leverage technologies effectively — from mobile to artificial intelligence to the internet of things — has limits. While the technology might be present, it is not been distributed and utilized in ways that have yielded productivity gains in rapid fashion. Constructing the systems, workflows, and roles to take advantage of these new technologies will take time. And, in concert with these, it will be vital that, as a society, we develop policies that support and enable people to shift into new work roles and invest time in learning new skills. Join us as we discuss.

The Productivity Paradox

This week on The Digital Life we discuss the possibilities and perils of editing human genes in light of the news, earlier this week, that Chinese scientist He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology, claimed to have created the first gene-edited babies using CRISPR, the revolutionary gene-editing tool. The twin girls had the CCR5 gene deleted to make them resistant to HIV and other diseases. The scientist is now being investigated over whether the experiment was in violation of Chinese laws and regulations. This technology is particularly sensitive from an ethics standpoint because any changes will be inherited by future generations. What are the consequences that stem from this experiment, perhaps, the first gene-edited humans? Join us as we discuss.

Gene Editing and CRISPR Babies

This week on The Digital Life, we talk about the future of work, the anxiety of the gig economy, and how we might re-imagine digital platforms, inspired by the essay “Do platforms work?” on Aeon.co. In the Gig Economy, work is an on-demand affair, driven by the needs of the moment, whether you're an Uber driver, freelance marketing expert, or contract product designer. The temporary nature of this work — which is arbitrated by software which matches buyers and sellers — puts much power in the hands of the platform owner. For gig workers, earning a living is dependent on demand, reputation, and ultimately, the whims of a digital overlord. But what if there was a way for these workers to own a piece of that all important platform? Join us as we discuss.

Gig Economy Anxiety

This week on The Digital Life, we talk with author and designer Cennydd Bowles about ethics and emerging technologies. Cennydd’s new book “Future Ethics”, published in September, is available in print and digital from Amazon and the book's Web site (https://www.future-ethics.com/).

How do we conceive of  ethics for emerging technologies? From data privacy issues, to embedded bias in software systems, to the myriad problems posed by artificial intelligence, what ethical issues should really matter to us, as a society? And, how do we grapple with these as new technologies emerge and gain traction?

For instance, mainstream conversations about ethics and artificial intelligence are typically centered around science fiction-type topics such as machines that are smarter than, or even from an evolutionary standpoint replacing, humans. This might be entertaining but is not addressing the real ethical issues that matter in the years and decades ahead. Join us as we discuss.

Ethics for Emerging Technologies

From AI to gene editing, wearables to 3D printing, we take a look at the emerging tech trends for 2019 in this, our final episode of The Digital Life 2018 season.

Emerging Tech Trends for 2019

This week, on The Digital Life we discuss emerging tech and the transformation and fear of change that comes with it. For instance, over the past two years there have been at least 21 attacks on driverless vehicles in Chandler, a city located near Phoenix, Arizona, where Google spin-off company Waymo tests its vans. The reaction of Chandler's residents to this encroaching technology represents the worries that we face as a society when confronting an automated future. Join us as we discuss.

Transformation

This week, on The Digital Life, we discuss the future of education and the business models that will drive it.

Business Models for the Future of Education

This week, on The Digital Life, we discuss the impact of AI on the future of creative work.

The Future of Creative Work

The Digital Life http://www.thedigitalife.com is an online radio show that explores important, timely topics in the world of design and emerging technologies like genomics, robotics, and the Internet of Things.

The show is created by GoInvo http://www.goinvo.com, a studio designing the future of healthcare, whose clients include market leaders like Apple, Johnson and Johnson, and Walgreens, as well as micro startups that will create the markets of the future.

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tdlpodcast

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