Each week Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, summarizes the top-5 future looking developments and news items that I find to be inspiring, interesting, concerning, or downright strange. Each day he reads through dozens of blogs and news websites to find those things that we should be aware of.
In Future Trends – Amazon’s Global Plan we look at Amazon Go, overpopulation, predicting jobs that will be destroyed, and the future of robotics.

Amazon Go Is About Way More Than Groceries

• Brian Rommele’s writing on Amazon Go: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/…
• NYTimes, “Amazon’s Cloud Business Lifts Its Profit to a Record” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/tec…
• Quartz, “Amazon Web Services is the financial life preserver that Amazon desperately needs” http://qz.com/821060/amazon-web-servi…
• Geekwire, How ‘Amazon Go’ works: The technology behind the online retailer’s groundbreaking new grocery store” http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-g…
• Recode first discovered the patents in 2015: We May Have Just Uncovered Amazon’s Vision for a New Kind of Retail Store http://www.recode.net/2015/3/30/11560…
• The Atlantic, “The Unbelievable Power of Amazon’s Cloud” http://www.theatlantic.com/technology…
• Fast Company profile on Bezos from 2013, also about Amazonfresh, which will benefit greatly from the data acquired from Amazon Go: https://www.fastcompany.com/3014817/a…
• Amazon Go means more than just job losses, it will restructure the economy https://www.theguardian.com/sustainab…

SpaceX Makes History

With unprecedented access to Elon Musk and his SpaceX team, witness the historic landing of a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral.

Overpopulation – The Human Explosion Explained

The world has no crystal ball to see into the future, but we do have Thomas Frey.
Frey is the founding executive director of the DaVinci Institute think tank and its senior futurist. It’s basically his job to envision how today’s technology will evolve, and to imagine the impacts it might have on society.
One of Frey’s more sweeping predictions: Over the next couple decades, driverless cars could eliminate jobs in up to 128 industries.
Read more at Business Insider

The future of robotics: 10 predictions for 2017 and beyond

What does the future hold for robotics? It’s hard to say, given the rapid pace of change in the field as well as in associated areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. But one thing seems certain: Robots will play an increasingly important role in business and life in general.
Research firm International Data Corp’s (IDC) Manufacturing Insights Worldwide Commercial Robotics program recently unveiled its top 10 predictions for worldwide robotics for 2017 and beyond. The list has some interesting forecasts, and if they come true, they will likely have a significant impact on business and society.
“Technological development in artificial intelligence, computer vision, navigation, MEMS sensor, and semiconductor technologies continue to drive innovation in the capability, performance, autonomy, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness of industrial and service robots,” said Jing Bing Zhang, research director of worldwide robotics at IDC Asia/Pacific.
“Robotics will continue to accelerate innovation, thus disrupting and changing the paradigm of business operations in many industries,” Zhang said. IDC encourages companies to “embrace and assess how robotics can sharpen their company’s competitive edge by improving quality, increasing operational productivity and agility, and enhancing experiences of all stakeholders,” he said.
Zhang shared top predictions and major robotics trends that are set to present opportunities and challenges to organizations in 2017 and beyond:
Read more at ZDNet

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.