WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

My 2016 predictions focused on the shifting world of customer experience. I have viewed experience through a next generation lens, realizing that our interaction paradigms will change considerably in the next five years (conversational systems, ecosystems, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.). Rather than expand on that theme this year, I am shifting my lens to purpose. At the end of the day, it’s about human well-being. The experiences that business and government create are in some way linked to our own life experiences – and ultimately our well-being. History tells us that we experienced great improvements in the standard of living of developed countries during a special century between 1870 and 1970 – but there has been little change since.

Raffi Khatchadourian on Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher who asks whether inventing artificial intelligence will bring us utopia or destruction.

Elon Musk recently explained at Code Conference why he believes we're all living in a simulation. His argument that such a simulation is possible is based on the exponential developments in video game graphics: "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by one thousand from what it is now. It's a given that we're clearly on [that] trajectory."

Whether or not you believe simulation theory is true, it's hard to deny how much the gaming world has changed—even in the last decade.

Thanks to a sleek new computer chip developed by IBM, we are one step closer to making computers work like the brain. The neuromorphic chip is made from a phase-change material commonly found in rewritable optical discs (confused? more on this later). Because of this secret sauce, the chip’s components behave strikingly similar to biological neurons: they can scale down to nanometer size and perform complicated computations rapidly with little energy.