WHAT IS ...........ROBOTICS PROCESS AUTOMATION AND CHATBOTS?

Have you ever wished a clone would do your chores? One version of you tends

to tedious, repetitive tasks like laundry and cleaning while the “real” you 

tackles more interesting goals. Clones aren’t here yet, but robotic process 

automation (RPA) serves a similar business purpose. RPA is a software that 

can be trained to complete administrative tasks like formatting documents, 

copying spreadsheets, and answering frequently asked questions. It’s also 

the engine behind chatbots, probably the most familiar type of RPA-in-action. 

While RPA focuses on executing tasks and process steps, chatbots enables 

interactions through natural language and conversation. While a chatbot can 

interact with a customer to take information about an order issue or answer 

frequently asked questions, RPA can connect to the back office order system 

to retrieve the order status and make updates. The RPA market is expected to 

reach $5 billion by 2024, according to a Global Markets Insights report.

How it works

A copycat bot records a user’s every click and keystroke in completing a task. 

The bot then mimics the human actions like the user it learned from, and it can

 do it faster and without mistakes. A combination of screen scraping, workflow

 automation, and machine learning technologies underpin how the bot works 

and learns. RPA can interact with various web applications, documents, 

spreadsheet, reports and data exactly like a human user would. In action, 

the bot swiftly pulls relevant data from specific documents and can glean 

based on statistical analysis how to alter or format that information. RPA 

reduces possible human error while letting people devote their time and 

energy to work that computers can’t mimic and critical-thinking tasks rather 

than repetitive ones.

The a-ha moment

The path to RPA began in the 1990s with user interface testing, which ensured

that a program visual layout functioned smoothly. As personal computers 

cropped up, companies automated UI testing with programming scripts. In the 

2000s, screen scraping tech boomed in large part from banks and insurance 

companies, which handle oodles of data at once. In the 2010s, as businesses 

sought to reduce expenses while continuing to go digital and with the 

advancement of computer vision technology, RPA was born from other 

developing tech like work automation and machine learning, emerging as an 

efficient, affordable option. 

What it means for everyday life

RPA can save a boatload of time and energy. RPA most immediately lends 

itself to round-the-clock customer service, back office tasks, procurement and 

shipping order processing, and administrative assistance at a retail, insurance,

healthcare website, or customer support portal where chatbots can respond to

customers with natural language. RPA is also 

becoming an automation tool for everybody given that you do not need a 

programming background to use it. Businesses save money and labor costs, 

reduce errors, and can devote more time to matching customers with human 

reps and dealing with more complex issues. 

How it might change the world

Soon you’ll be able to use RPA for things like insurance claims processing 

operations and other tedious but necessary tasks without any paperwork. As 

RPA becomes more intelligent, bots will be able to file and process data 

online directly. One day, a chatbot will be able to tell you how much you save 

while comparing flights or autonomously answer an email inquiry regarding a 

banking dispute. Eventually the technology will move into hyper-automation 

where it is able to do more complex tasks without human intervention.

WHAT ..........IS 5G?

Back in 2009, fourth generation or “4G” mobile data technology introduced consumers to fast internet connection over mobile networks and paved the way to a slew of transformative technologies, including mobile video, live streaming, mobile shopping, and ridesharing apps. No 4G, no Netflix, no TikTok.

But even as 4G was rolling out, engineers were already laying the groundwork for its successor: 5G, the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks. The bet was that customers would eventually demand dramatically faster and more reliable data connection — and it paid off. Today, four years after its 2018 debut, 5G is a $58.8 billion market. It accounts for a fifth of all North American mobile subscriptions and by 2027 that number should hit 90% and nearly 50% worldwide.

How it works

5G is all about speed: putting more data through the air in less time. To do that, it uses additional chunks of the radio-frequency spectrum, effectively adding new pipelines alongside those currently in use. Like waterfront real estate, radio frequency bands are something they’re not making any more of, and in an age when everybody wants more bandwidth, cell service providers spent billions to snatch up frequency bands they could use for 5G.

It will also repurpose existing 4G bandwidth more efficiently through hardware and software improvements. For instance, rather than broadcasting equally in every direction, 5G towers can concentrate signals and beam them to the parts of their coverage area with the highest need.

What it means for everyday life

As 5G coverage expands, consumers with compatible phones (including Apple iPhone 12, 13 and SE; Samsung Galaxy S22, A13 and S21 SE; and Google Pixel 6, among others) will increasingly experience a dramatic improvement in their service. Downloads are up to 100 times faster; a movie that takes 50 minutes to download on a 4G network takes 49 seconds on 5G. Streaming performance is similarly improved. While 4G networks can support streaming at HD video resolution, 5G can livestream to a VR headset in 8K resolution. And network latency will be much less, meaning that gamers will experience virtually no lag when playing with multiple opponents online. The benefits of 5G’s technology will be especially impactful when user density is high, as in city centers or in concert venues. While 4G can accommodate no more than 4000 devices per square kilometer, 5G can support one million.

How it might change the world

Down the road, 5G data will help speed the introduction of real-time virtual reality apps, augmented reality, even holographic video calls. The British telecommunications company Vodafone has already carried out public demonstrations of technology that projects life-sized, 3D images of callers in real time.

Not all of 5G’s impact will be directly visible to consumers, however. The so-called ‘internet of things,” or IOT, which links everything from fridges and lightbulbs to factories and drones, will allow for safer, more efficient operation in all kinds of situations. 5G will make it possible, for instance, for fleets of autonomous cars to safely move in tight formation at high speed by forming spontaneous, ever-changing networks as they move. It’s estimated that by 2027 more than half of 5G traffic will come from the IoT.

But the most exciting thing about 5G is the use cases people haven’t even thought of yet. When 4G first rolled out, no one imagined that it would enable ridesharing apps that would upend the taxi industry or turn a repository of seconds-long video clips into a social media juggernaut. It’s having a technology available, and already in consumer’s hands, that makes innovation possible. So when it comes to 5G’s long-term impact, expect the unexpected.

WHAT......IS COMPUTER VISION?

Before the Facebook app could automatically tag your friends in a photo, computers had to be taught to “see.” The road to artificial intelligence must pass through perception, the ability for machines to have vision. The field of computer vision enables such sight — it’s the science of extracting information from visual data, including images, videos, and scans. It’s computer vision that helps you deposit checks at an ATM or through your mobile phone and tags your friends’ pictures on social media.

How it works

Humans make sight look effortless. A two-month-old infant can recognize caregivers. A toddler knows the difference between a four-legged chair and a four-legged dog. But computers have only recently been able to recognize things in images.

Most of today’s computer vision algorithms are based on a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) called “machine learning,” in particular, “supervised learning.” To teach the computer to recognize a chair, you label thousands of images of chairs in all kinds of angles, and images that don’t contain chairs, and feed them to a statistical model. With each example image, an algorithm trains the model, so that it can later identify a chair correctly in other images that it has never seen before.

The a-ha moment

Computer vision has been used in some form since the 1950s, when machines could process checks. For this process, called magnetic ink character recognition (MICR), to work, the numbers had to be printed along the bottom edge of the check in a specific shape and size. The advent of more muscular computing power in the 1970s enabled computer vision algorithms called optical character recognition (OCR) to recognize characters from scanned or photographed images.

Today’s machine learning models can recognize handwritten digits or faces in photographs. In the early 2000s, with phone cameras and the internet making a wealth of photographic images available, researchers built an online database of millions of everyday images, ImageNet. This library was used in an open contest to let researchers test the performance of their computer vision algorithms. In 2012, researchers from Canada debuted a deep learning model that aced the test and blew away the competition —  it could identify objects with nearly twice the accuracy of any other model. 

What computer vision is used for today

Today, computer vision enables the “lane assist” function on your vehicle and can find COVID-19 in X-Rays ten times faster than radiologists and with more accuracy. The technology also helps detect cancer earlier and enables automatic toll collection for vehicles without transponders by taking pictures of license plates and sending the owners an invoice in the mail. Computer vision helps HP find manufacturing defects on the production line and assemble the best photo collages before sending them to be printed.

How computer vision might change the world

Computer vision is the primary pillar for autonomous driving and will likely expand to more self-driving functions. Before we get there, scientists will have to understand how machines arrive at the decisions that they make and whether those decisions align with ours. In the future, expect drones equipped with computer vision to execute search-and-rescue missions in remote locations or help submarines track marine ecosystems autonomously. Computer vision might deliver more capable robots able to map their surroundings and perform basic functions with ease. A domestic robot butler? Why not?

WHAT IS..... NANOTECHNOLOGY?

When it comes to technology, some say bigger is better. But there’s another frontier in the realm of the super-tiny. Nanotechnology is the term for all the ways engineers can manipulate atoms and molecules on a scale way too small to be visible to the naked eye. To get an idea of how small, picture a single grain of talcum powder, a spec that averages a diameter of about 27,000 nanometers. Scientists believe nanotechnology could help create clean energy, improve medicine, and make electronic devices exponentially more powerful — and that’s just for starters. Though it’s an idea that is still in its infancy, nanotechnology is expected to be worth $60 billion by the end of the decade.

The a-ha moment

The idea of pushing engineering into the micro scale is generally credited to physicist Richard Feynman, who discussed the idea in a 1950s lecture. But it really took off in the 1980s, when author K. Eric Drexler published Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. The book predicted that one day miniscule devices would be able to replicate themselves atom by atom, leading to a world teeming with useful micro-machines. (Or, more pessimistically, beset by a “gray goo” of swarming micro-Terminators.)

How it works 

Drexler’s claim was reinforced by the invention that decade of the scanning tunneling microscope, which could not only take images of individual atoms but move them one by one. Another encouraging step forward was the discovery of molecular structures like the buckyball and carbon nanotubes that utilized the kinds of structural geometries popularized by Buckminster Fuller, but 100,000 times smaller than a human hair. Assembled together, they could form workable machines. At this scale, matter exhibits properties that are very different from what we’re used to: opaque substances can become transparent, for instance, and inert ones highly reactive.

What it means for everyday life 

As nanotechnology became a buzzword in the 90s, all sorts of products were trotted out claiming to feature it, such as textiles treated with nanotubes to make them stain resistant or fuel additives that could improve engine efficiency by up to 5%. None of these products really involved the manipulation of matter at an atomic scale, however. 

How it might change the world 

Since we know that biology uses molecules to create other molecules, machines able to make copies of themselves must be at least conceptually possible. A tentative first step in this direction has been the successful creation of nanotube motors, which use electrical or chemical gradients to produce rotational motion on a microscopic scale. Commercial development of this idea could one day lead to surfaces that clean themselves and injectable machines that deliver medicine exactly where it’s needed inside the body. Someday, nanotechnology could even repair micro-scale tissue damage to reverse the effects of aging and create structures to pull greenhouse gasses from the air to fight global warming. In fact, nanotechnology experts believe that all sorts of transformative ideas are out there waiting to be found. You just need to look closely enough.

HOW WILL WE SHOP IN THE METAVERSE?

Everyone from Walmart (filing trademarks for NFTs, creating its own cryptocurrency) to Gucci (opening a virtual multi-store in Roblox) has been trying to imagine what the metaverse will look like. Brands that get it right will bring digital wallets, gaming, and mixed realities together, along with digital storytelling and new forms of engagement — a kind of 360-degree retail.

Brands are banking on the metaverse as the platform that will leave digital catalogs (even that well-used Amazon app) in the dust, one not confined by device, medium, or channel. Some are already filling their digital shelves with products that will get your crypto wallet twitching. They’re developing creative and interactive experiences where the pixelated sky’s the limit.

Why? To excite the next generation, already buried in their smartphones and video games, about shopping for goods, services, and even real estate in an entirely new way. You’ll access and immerse yourself in this world with lightweight, affordable VR and AR headsets, a voice assistant obeying your every command. Our real-life and digital selves merge into one representation, and our avatars become us—a so-called phygital, along with data on our tastes and preferences. Brands will tap into this, merging the virtual and digital worlds into a seamless shopping experience.

What does retail look like in the metaverse? Here’s our guide to how we might shop ’til we drop in the future.

Meta mall

Visit app stores or digital marketplaces in virtual space. Drop into awe-inspiring digital hangouts to see concerts, entertainment, and fashion shows. Be enticed by storefronts and personalized offers. Browse with friends away from crowded physical malls.

Virtual real estate

Retailers buy prime digital plots in the metaverse. The “land” will be used to develop metaverse commerce projects or fully immersive digital shopping centers. Republic Realm, a metaverse real estate firm, recently paid Sandbox $4.3 million for a plot of virtual land, the largest public virtual real-estate deal ever.

Decentralized commerce

So-called d-commerce allows metaverse transactions to happen peer-to-peer, just like in the real world, without relying on a centralized intermediary. It will allow communities to evolve new experiences and pop-ups, while people will be able to create new value, enabled by smart contracts.

Gaming

Gaming is now a major sales platform for retailers where real-world and digital goods are bought, gifted, and exchanged. In 2020, around $54 billion was spent on virtual goods, skins, and lives.

Virtual clothing

The possibilities are truly limitless for new fashions. Think exclusive or even one-of-a-kind digital clothes, shoes, makeup, and accessories. Trends are sparked by virtual fads, and all products are verified using NFTs.

Digital workers and salespeople

Salespeople that are created using AI will interact with real-life virtual versions of ourselves. Businesses will fill the metaverse with a digital workforce that humans will converse with.

Influencer avatars

The digital doppelgängers of stars and social media influencers guide shoppers around stores, encouraging them to try out products that they use or recommend, or are simply branded with their faces.

Livestreamed shopping assistants

Expect real-life expertise on retail in the virtual world, where human-assistants-as-avatars offer advice on your real-world wardrobe, give out discount coupons, and inform shoppers of the latest sale. They also push personalized content to customers who then purchase a physical outfit. The metaverse knows your measurements, body shape, and preferences.

Book a vacation

With a virtual travel agency, you can ski the mountain, tour your resort or hotel room before you book, sit in different rows on the plane, and get a preview of what you’ll see on a cruise or safari. Then have the avatar agent help you choose destinations and book flights and accommodations.

Paying for goods

Seamlessly connect your real-life bank account to your digital avatar. Use biometrics to authenticate that it’s physically you. Click to make payments using open banking.

Virtual purchase, physical product

View a piece of digital art on the wall of your virtual home, or test out a digital tennis racket. See what it looks like, buy it online. It turns up on your actual doorstep, ready to hang on your wall or take to the court.

HOW TO BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER

Becoming a thought leader doesn’t happen overnight. But if you foster your social media presence, publish high-quality content, and seek out speaking engagements to share your innovative ideas, more people will start to take note of your industry presence. Eventually, you’ll be poised as a thought leader ready to take the business world by storm.

WHAT IS …..BLOCKCHAIN?

The eponymous “blocks” — in the blockchain, a system of recording information, aren’t much to look at. To most of us, they appear as a jumble of code organized in a prescribed way. What might seem to be an indecipherable string of ones and zeros is actually a very special type of container, one that can record — for anyone to see — thousands of digital transactions.

Taken collectively (and linked together in a chain), they form a universally accessible, distributed, unforgeable database that’s continuously growing as anyone, anywhere adds their data and forms new blocks (a process that happens on average, every 10 minutes). 

As practical as that might seem, it’s a technology that’s been riven by controversy. To supporters, it could transform almost every kind of business. “What the internet did to publishing, blockchain will do to about 160 different industries,” Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne has declared. To detractors, it’s a broken concept that has done nothing but defraud rubes, launder ill-gotten wealth, and accelerate global warming. In the words of noted computer scientist and skeptic Nicholas Weaver, it should “die in a fire.”

The a-ha moment

Blockchain traces its origin to the financial meltdown of 2007 when the US stock market lost more than half its value and big banks were bailed out. What if, some wondered, a new form of currency could be created that could operate beyond bank and government oversight and interference? In 2008, an unknown person who called themselves Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper explaining how a new digital currency called “bitcoin” could be created using the principles of cryptography. 

How it works

The core of his idea was something called a blockchain, essentially a publicly-viewable database that is stored collectively by users all over the internet. Anything stored on the blockchain is impossible to erase, and no one entity has control over it, as owners of proprietary systems do. The database is composed of blocks that are added in sequence as time goes by. The only way to write to the blockchain is to solve a labor — intensive math problem — a challenge called “proof of work.” People who solve these problems are called “miners” and are rewarded in a cryptocurrency called bitcoin. Other blockchains can use different currencies and alternatives to proof of work. The Ethereum blockchain, for instance, uses a cryptocurrency called Ether.

What it means for everyday life

Blockchain’s novelty and abstractness have made it a blank canvas for ambitious tech innovators. One idea was that the blockchain’s transparency and immutability could be used to verify the identity of items in a sensitive supply chain — things, for instance, like sustainably harvested tropical hardwoods, or votes, or doses of medicine. However, in practice high cost and low transaction speed has proved a massive stumbling block. While the Visa payment network can process 1,700 transactions per second, bitcoin’s blockchain manages about five. Some say that no significant practical applications have yet emerged even after years of constant experimentation. 

How it might change the world

So far, blockchain technology has mostly been used for speculation, because it’s extremely well suited to creating all kinds of novel digital assets. Among them: altcoin currencies, NFTs, and flashmob — like investment clubs called DAOs (for “decentralized autonomous organization”). It’s a key technology for use in the metaverse, where many projects are blockchain-based. All of these have generated intense media interest and investor enthusiasm.

The downside is that digital assets have yet to produce any useful economic activity outside virtual markets, but instead are chits in a zero-sum game that requires tremendous amounts of energy just to exist. The cryptocurrency ecosystem consumes as much electricity as Norway or Argentina. We’re currently in the midst of a so-called “crypto winter” that has seen bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies lose more than half of their value, with fraudulent schemes imploding regularly and hackers swiping billions of dollars. 

But the technology has been through tough times before, and each time — it’s come roaring back. In the next 10 years, some techno-optimists predict blockchain technology will underpin a decentralized digital banking system, support smart contracts that can execute themselves when stipulated conditions are met, and secure sensitive information like medical records. Don’t count the blockchain out yet.

 

SHARING INNOVATION: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

In today’s market, people’s spending is limited, budgets are tight but technology is faster than most people can keep up with. Even with little to spare, people still want the newest gadget, the newest technology and all the apps, accessories and connectivity that go with it. It becomes obvious who is behind the times, both in your circles and in the businesses you patronize (or used to). Because the economic times are rough, people want their spending to matter, to get them the newest and best for the lowest price. The price doesn’t even always have to be the lowest if the technology is clearly cutting edge. Consumers want it to be obvious that what they are getting is the most modern and hip or at least the most efficient and effective. Part of a successful marketing plan must make it plain to consumers that the product or service a business is offering is either the best or a classic that will always stand the test of time.

One of the best ways for a business to show that their products are current or classic is through a full scale social media marketing campaign. Social media marketing allows the business to post in real time and stay in the consumer consciousness. The fact that the consumer already follows or “likes” the business means they are interested in what they are selling and will be looking for their next big move, product or price-wise. Marketing with social media lets a business or organization keep their customers apprised of their progress, what they are working on and that it will be worth the wait. They can share proposed products or aspects of products and get feedback during the process.

Businesses can even let their friends or followers into testing groups so they are actually participating in product development. Social media marketing allows the customers to know the value of the wait for the perfect new release because they have already helped design and formulate the actual product. The business can even use social media to give away the finished product to random fans or contest winning followers, so that the flow of information to their targeted audience is real and objective, because it is being shared by a social media peer. Some successful businesses even allow customer input on social media to help name their new products. Social media marketing allows a business to prove themselves as innovative as well as interested in including their consumer base in their development of high quality products and services.

STEVE JOBS ONLY 5 WORDS THAT TEACHES HOW TO BUILD A GREAT BUSINESS

The year was 1984. It was shortly before Steve Jobs left Apple and several years before Jobs would go on to conduct one of the biggest turnarounds in business history, bringing Apple from the brink of bankruptcy to make it one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Jobs was giving an interview to Michael Moritz, who at the time was a reporter covering Silicon Valley. In the interview, Jobs argued that the key to his success, what truly set him apart, wasn't a superior design sense, or any other special gift.

"Things get more refined as you make mistakes and do them," Jobs told Moritz. "So I've had a chance to make a lot of mistakes. Your aesthetics get better as you make mistakes."

"But a real big thing is, the way I've always felt is, that if you're going to make something, it doesn't take any more energy--and rarely does it take more money--to make it really great," continued Jobs. "All it takes is a little more time. Not that much more. And a willingness to do so: a willingness to persevere until it's really great."

There's a great message in perseverance for anyone trying to build a better product or business. But it all starts with five keywords from Jobs:

"Make a lot of mistakes."

Jobs's "make a lot of mistakes" philosophy is emotionally intelligent because it allows you to shift your mindset. It takes the process of making mistakes, which most view as negative, and reframes it as an integral key to making your business or product better.

Let's break down a story from Apple's history that illustrates the value of this advice, and see how you can apply it as you build your own business.

How to get better: Make a lot of mistakes

Fast forward to 2001, and Jobs had already begun Apple's turnaround. However, the company faced an unexpected dilemma.

The iPod had just been released and became an overnight sensation. Designers and executives at Apple were understandably thrilled, but they also knew they needed to keep innovating--fast.

Why? Because the next logical step was to place MP3 players inside cell phones. It was only a matter of time before a major phone manufacturer figured out how to do it, which would make the revolutionary iPod obsolete.

And herein lay the problem: Apple didn't make cell phones.

To avoid losing market share, designers quickly got to work on the first prototype of an Apple cell phone. Tony Fadell, one of the original designers, described it as "an iPod with a phone module, if you wanted to dial a number, it was like using a rotary dial."

His conclusion? "It sucked."

Jobs scrapped the entire project and went back to the drawing board. He pulled up plans from 1993's Apple Newton--the company's first attempt at a touchscreen device (and one of its biggest flops of all time). But a decade had passed, technology had advanced, and touchscreen research had improved. Jobs took one look at the plans and said, "Maybe this is the phone."

And the rest is history.

Stories like these illustrate the value in Jobs's philosophy: Apple's success hasn't been based on getting everything right the first time. In fact, critics say that the company doesn't actually innovate. After all, the Mac wasn't the first computer, the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone, and the iPad wasn't the first tablet.

However, Apple has built a reputation for "getting things right." They find creative ways to take design, functionality, and user experience to the next level and give the public products they adore.

So, how do you apply this lesson to your business?

Let's say you want to build an online course, or an app, or some other product. Start by studying your competitors, and identifying what problems or gaps their product has. How can you fill those gaps? Use that question to guide your process.

As you do that, you may be tempted to wait until your product is perfect before launch, or to beta test forever using a small test group. You shouldn't. No matter how much you research, test, and iterate it won't be perfect. Remember, the Newton was a total failure, and even the iPhone didn't come close to iPhone two, or three, or 10.

Instead, make things as good as you can, and ship. Use user feedback (and your own good sense) to help you identify what needs to be improved. Then, improve. And keep improving. Continue to revise your product, again and again.

Persevere until it's great.

Above all, remember: Mistakes are part of the journey. The more mistakes you make, the more chances you have to refine and improve. 

All you need is a little more time, and the desire to see it through. Because if you can persevere, the result will be nothing short of greatness.

BY JUSTIN BARISO, AUTHOR, EQ APPLIED@JUSTINJBARISO

BUILD SELF-ESTEEM

When you take steps toward building your self-esteem, your confidence grows and the natural outcome is that you start to believe in yourself. Use these six elements of self-esteem building to help you learn how to believe in yourself:

GOALS

Setting clear, accomplishable goals gives you purpose and makes you feel good about yourself. Each step you take toward achieving your goals builds your self-esteem.

STANDARDS

People with high self-esteem have high standards, and they make choices that are consistent with their standards. Develop values and ideals that you can be proud of, and make sure your goals are aligned with them. 

SUCCESS EXPERIENCES

When you are setting your goals, write down the smaller milestones it will take for you to reach them.  Each positive experience you have with success — large or small — will add to your belief in yourself. 

COMPARISON WITH OTHERS

Identify people you respect and look up to, whose standards align with the ones you want to have. As you progress, compare yourself to see how you measure up and get clues about how you can improve.

RECOGNITION

Recognition from people who are important to you, such as your family members, boss, or mentor builds your self-esteem. Striving to achieve your goals will attract recognition.

REWARDS

Along with recognition are tangible rewards. Your self-esteem grows as you work toward and receive a bonus at work, certification or licensure, an advancement in position or level of trust, or other status markers.