Club of Amsterdam Journal, November 2021, Issue 237

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The Future Now Shows

 

CONTENT

Lead Article

Gambling live streams on Twitch: What are they and why do they matter?
By Brett Abarbanel, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Dimitrios Avramidis, University of British Columbia; Luke Clark, University of British Columbia, and Mark R Johnson, University of Sydney

Article 01

A Blockchain-based decentralised university
By John Domingue | TEDxOpenUniversity

The Future Now Show

Crypto Economy
with Rohit Talwar, Kapil Gupta, Mario de Vries

Article 02

Opulous - Decentralized Finance to the music industry

News about the Future

> Kiva: Loans that change lives
> E2S Power

Article 03

HubTropolis

Recommended Book

The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
By Yanis Varoufakis

Article 04

The music of proteins is made audible through a computer program that learns from Chopin
By Peng Zhang, The Rockefeller University and Yuzong Chen, National University of Singapore

Climate Change Success Story

Cellular Farming

Futurist Portrait

Ian Khan
Technology Futurist, Author, Speaker


Tags:
Algorand, Blockchain, Cellular Farming, Crypto Economy, Cryptocurrencies, Defi,

ENERGY, Energy Storage, FOOD, MUSIC, NFTs, Online Games, Opulous, Proteins,
Sustainability, URBAN DEVELOPMENT





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Welcome



Felix B Bopp

Website statistics:
https://clubofamsterdam.com

Visits January 2021- October 2021: 295,000



Rohit Talwar: "Aftershocks and Opportunities 2: Navigating the Next Horizon is a provocative, challenging, and inspiring book in which 37 world-class futurists, analysts, subject matter experts, and strategists explore the issues and opportunities that could arise in our post-pandemic world in a range of fiction and non-fiction chapters."

Ian Khan: "Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence form the technology trifecta that is slowly leading the path to unlock a tremendous amount of value. These three technologies are revolutionary in nature and will shape positive outcomes in the era of the 4th Industrial revolution."

Yanis Varoufakis: “Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born.”

Lead Article

Gambling live streams on Twitch: What are they and why do they matter?
By

Brett Abarbanel
, Director of Research, International Gaming Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas;
Dimitrios Avramidis
, Research Assistant, Centre for Gambling Research, University of British Columbia;
Luke Clark
, Director, Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, University of British Columbia, and
Mark R Johnson
, Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of Sydney



ClassyBeef are casino streamers on Twitch. (ClassyBeef/Twitch)


Streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube Live are now a significant part of popular entertainment. These sites host millions of “live streamers” and tens of millions of daily viewers.

Streamers broadcast their lives and activities — often digital gaming — to audiences who interact and chat with them in real-time. Twitch, the dominant streaming platform, also currently houses around 150 channels offering the live broadcasting of real-money slot machine gambling — the most popular of these regularly receive over 100,000 views.

Slot streaming channels have recently made headlines. Well-known streamers have been racking up views and wagering and winning large sums of money. Criticism from other streamers has flowed in, such as Imane “Pokimane” Anys calling the hosted slots sites “sketchy” and “ethically ambiguous.” And Felix “xQc” Lengyel eventually ended his slots streaming, concerned he was addicted to gambling and apologized for exposing his audience — which included underage youth — to gambling.

Age-gating and gambling

Research on Twitch is growing, particularly in relation to gambling streams. One of the first studies in this area found that approximately four per cent of adults in the United Kingdom watch gambling streams like the Twitch slot channels, compared to approximately 14 per cent who actually play such slot machine games online. This study also found a correlation between watching gambling online and self-reported problem gambling, but cause and effect remain unclear.

Live gambling streams inspire some important ethical and regulatory discussions. The media outcry over these streams often points to the risk of exposing youth to gambling. Age-gating, or age verification, on Twitch or elsewhere is minimal. A streamer can indicate that the stream is intended for mature audiences, but this does not restrict any viewer from clicking “Start Watching.”

A magnifying glass is overtop of the twitch logo on a browser
Twitch is the dominant streaming platform when it comes to live broadcasting of
real-money slot machine gambling.
(Shutterstock)

The decades-long norm of disregarding age-gating in digital games demonstrates how easy these sorts of barriers are to evade. This suggests new legal concerns for live streaming platforms that allow gambling to be broadcast.

Transparency and legal issues

A separate set of issues exist when it comes to transparency. Streamers may be committing malicious deception, or even outright fraud, if they fail to disclose affiliations with the gambling sites at which they play.

For example, some sponsorship contracts may entitle the streamer to regular balance “top ups.” This involves a gambling site providing a free (or in casino terms, “comped”) account balance refresh. This practice raises questions regarding advertising standards, as well as the safety and mental health of the streamers themselves — like xQc’s concerns over a possible gambling addiction.

In addition, the underlying gambling activity itself could be illegal depending on the license status of the gambling website and geolocation of the streamer. Yet determining what is permitted is not always a simple task.

If the gambling website is hosted in one location, the streamer in another and the viewers are located around the world, which local, national and international laws apply? Compound this with a variety of currencies — like fiat, fungible crypto, non-fungible crypto, virtual currencies without cash value — not all of which are legal tender for gambling in all jurisdictions, and the complexity of the situation becomes clear.

A young woman sits in front of a computer gaming set up.
Streamers should be cautious of committing fraud, like failing to disclose gambling site affiliations. (Shutterstock)

Twitch’s community guidelines are nevertheless clear that streamers must follow relevant laws, that illegal content is prohibited and that the platform will take action via suspensions or bans following investigations of reported illegal gambling.

In mid-August, Twitch announced a creator update prohibiting sharing links and referral codes to slots, roulette or dice games. The goal was “preventing harm and scams created by questionable gambling services that sponsor content on Twitch.” As a blanket prohibition, it does not discern between licensed and unlicensed gambling sites and does not include poker, another commonly streamed game.

Why do people watch live gambling streams?

With this range of issues, why do people watch live gambling streams? For people experiencing problems with their gambling, they might turn to casino streams to cope with cravings. On a recent podcast episode of All Bets Are Off, a gambling addiction recovery podcast, two men discussed using live gambling streams as part of their recovery.

Alternatively, interest in these streams may be unrelated to gambling cravings and focus on entertainment, excitement or other gambling motivations like financial interests.

Our latest ongoing research explores viewing motives using data from Twitch live chat, alongside an analysis of the characteristics of Twitch’s major slots stream videos.

LetsGiveItASpin is a popular streamer in the Slots category on Twitch and YouTube Live.

Technological innovation has always developed more quickly than government rules that govern any given space. As a result, activities like slots streaming fall into an area of uncertainty. Ultimately, it seems that consideration of consumer protection in this space cannot solely be a government-regulated effort.

Given the complexity of jurisdictional rule and the potential harm that may arise from gambling, all stakeholders — streamers, platforms, game developers, consumers themselves, parents and more — have a role to play in ensuring that games and their many means of play and broadcast are, as Twitch declares as its goal, “a friendly, positive experience for our global community.”

Broadcasting real-money gambling inevitably complicates the ethical practices of such a platform. Gambling live streams appear likely to become an increasingly important part of contemporary gambling practices in the years to come, and merit the closest study. The Conversation

 

 

 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.



CONTENT

Article 01

A Blockchain-based decentralised university
By John Domingue | TEDxOpenUniversity

 



I believe that with blockchain technology we can create a radically new type of university: a DAO University. A DAO is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation which operates with no central control and no humans in the loop and are based on Smart Contracts: pieces of computer code on a blockchain which can represent and enact financial and legal contracts.

In a DAO University value and reputation associated with teaching and learning would be accounted for through a blockchain with no central control. Instead the whole learning community would agree how the educational elements, for example, learning materials, teaching resources and teaching delivery are shared and recompensed.

A DAO University is a next step evolution in higher education. A born digital community owned educational institution for the 21st Century.

John Domingue is a Professor of Computer Science at the Open University, Director of the Knowledge Media Institute, the OU's technology research and innovation centre, and the President of STI International, a semantics focused networking organization. He has published over 280 refereed articles (h-index 56) in the areas of semantics, the Web, distributed ledgers and eLearning. His current work focuses on how a combination of blockchain and Linked Data technologies can be used to process personal data in a decentralised trusted manner and how this can be applied in the educational domain.

Fellow of the British Blockchain Association.


 



 

 

CONTENT

The Future Now Show


Crypto Economy
with Rohit Talwar, Kapil Gupta, Mario de Vries


Aftershocks and Opportunities - The Rise of the Crypto Economy

In this fast-paced session, Rohit Talwar and Kapil Gupta will share key insights from the new book Aftershocks and Opportunities 2: Navigating the Next Horizon published on September 28th, 2021. They will focus in particular on how the development of the crypto economy has been accelerated, how it is starting to impact individuals, nations, and businesses, and the types of assets and applications that are emerging. The aim is to demystify the underlying concepts, explain what's going, highlight where it might be heading, and explore the potentially transformational impacts the crypto economy could have on every aspect of our world.

 

 

 

 

 








 




 

 

 

 

Credits

Rohit Talwar
Global futurist, award-winning keynote speaker, author, and the CEO of Fast Future
UK
https://fastfuture.com

Kapil Gupta
Master Coach, TEDx Speaker
UK
www.nibana.life

Mario de Vries

Impact Management | BlockChain Strategist | Digital Innovation | Author & creator CQ Test
the Netherlands
www.gazooom.nl

Felix B Bopp
Producer of The Future Now Show

clubofamsterdam.com

The Future Now Show

https://clubofamsterdam.com/the-future-now-show



You can find The Future Now Show also at

LinkedIn: The Future Now Show Group
YouTube: The Future Now Show Channel



CONTENT

Article 02

Opulous - Decentralized Finance to the music industry


 

Opulous brings Decentralized Finance to the music industry, changing how artists access the funding they need and providing a launchpad for the first music copyright-backed NFTs (non-fungible token - NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files.).

Opulous offers music copyright NFTs and DeFi loans for musicians and have fans invest in them.

 

Welcome to Opulous: A Game-Changing Platform for the Music Industry

 

 



How Opulous Differs From Other DeFi Platforms

DeFi is one of the crypto world’s fastest-growing sectors and set to shape the future of finance. It’s already started to break the stranglehold of banks and make people rethink the archaic processes established by traditional lenders.

While existing platforms have experienced rapid growth — with over $37 billion currently locked up in DeFi projects — Opulous will introduce a new peer-to-peer service, with a game-changing approach to collateral which harnesses the true value of real-world music assets.

DeFi is The Future of Finance

DeFi allows any borrower to quickly access loans without the need for credit checks and audits commonly used by conventional banking institutions.

Essentially, DeFi uses blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to provide financial services like loans, all facilitated via smart contracts.

It is decentralized and anonymous, cutting out unnecessary middlemen and extortionate fees. Users can also generate above-average interest rates by staking their crypto funds in lending pools.

While the benefits of DeFi are clear, current platforms still have challenges to overcome and users must accept a number of unpredictable risks.

Challenges Facing DeFi

As with any lending process, borrowers need to provide collateral of at least equal value to the DeFi loan they want to take out. On current platforms, cryptocurrency is used as collateral. This is where DeFi faces its biggest challenge.

The price of cryptocurrency is notoriously unpredictable. If the value of the crypto in question drops, so does the value of the loan’s collateral. The price of Bitcoin and other alt-coins have been on a wild ride in recent years, which can cause real problems for both DeFi lenders and borrowers using it to back up loans.

In order to mitigate this risk, one of the most prominent DeFi platforms MakerDAO asks borrowers to provide crypto collateral at a much higher value than that of the loan they’re requesting. A minimum of 150% in fact.

And if prices drop, the borrower often ends up paying the price.

In cases where the value of a DeFi loan’s crypto collateral does start to tail-spin, the lending pool is usually regulated to make sure investors don’t lose the money they’ve staked. This can be done by liquidating the collateral to cover the loan. The borrower will be able to keep their loan, but will likely lose out on the crypto they provided to cover it.

As you can see, the fluctuating price of cryptocurrency can bring about complications. But this is where Opulous differs from other DeFi platforms.

The Opulous Solution

Opulous is a decentralised peer-to-peer DeFi loan platform, providing artists with a more direct and accessible way to secure funding, while also offering everyone the opportunity to invest in one of the world’s fastest growing and most lucrative industries: music.
But it’s the Opulous approach to collateral that truly sets it apart.

Opulous loans are backed by future music royalty earnings and copyrights. Unlike cryptocurrency, these assets have predictable future value and carry no risk.

The platform will analyse a borrower’s music data and copyright assets to ascertain how much money they are eligible to borrow. It will then establish a custom loan repayment plan based on their predicted future earnings.

Musicians currently earning a steady royalty income will be eligible to receive up-front loans equal to the value of revenue they generate over 12 months, paying as little as 4% in interest rates.
Harnessing Algorand

Most of the DeFi services out there right now run on Ethereum. Opulous however, is built on the Algorand blockchain.

Algorand is one of the most advanced and exciting blockchain projects in the world, renowned for its security, efficiency and scalability. It can handle 84 million transactions a day and completes all transactions in under 4.5 seconds. It’s the perfect partner to help Opulous scale at pace as more people become aware of the platform’s ground-breaking potential.

The Algorand blockchain is built around its permissionless Pure Proof-of-Stake protocol, which was developed by two-time Turing Award winner Dr Silvio Micali. Since its inception, Algorand has attracted leading computer science, network and cryptography experts from across the globe and established itself as a major player in the blockchain space.

Alongside partners and investors including Borderless Capital, Somesing, Basic and TrustVerse; Opulous and Algorand are set to revolutionize DeFi.


Source:
Opulous


CONTENT

News about the Future


> Kiva: Loans that change lives
> E2S Power


Kiva: Loans that change lives

More than 1.7 billion people around the world are unbanked and can’t access the financial services they need. Kiva is an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 in San Francisco, with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive. Kiva allows people to lend money via the Internet to low-income entrepreneurs and students in 77 countries.

"We do this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world. Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care."

 

E2S Power

E2S Power AG in Switzerland will offer a cost-effective and easy to operate solution for transforming fossil fuel power stations into thermal storage systems for renewable energy.

Our primary product is a novel energy collector, the “hamster”, which constitutes the building block at the heart of our power plant conversion solution. The hamster is a standardized module of about the size of a typical shipping container, a number of this modules will be combined to match the required storage capacity of a project. The modular design enables both, minimizing investment cost and maximizing adaptability to a variety of power-plant sizes and configurations. Like the boiler they replace, the hamster modules are integrated into the water-steam cycle between feed water pumps and turbine system.

E2S Power’s vision is to turn the world’s existing power plants into large-scale thermal storage systems for electrical energy. Together with batteries for frequency response applications and a chemical energy carrier for seasonal load shift, these converted plants will provide the capacity required for balancing demand and supply in the fully-renewable future energy system. Giving legacy thermal power plants a second life is also a contribution to reusing valuable infrastructure.

 

 

 



CONTENT

Article 03


HubTropolis



 

A Collaborative Creation Ecosystem for the Symbiotic Integration of Disruptive Concepts from Mobility to IT and Social Structures and their Implementation Path, given a 10 year Time Horizon and a Critical Mass Scale ... created to build the First HubTropolis.

 

 


CONTENT

Recommended Book


The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
By Yanis Varoufakis



 

In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis explores the myth that financialisation, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalisation were the root causes of the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a ‘Global Minotaur’ was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the ‘rest of the world’ began sending incredible amounts of capital to America and Wall Street. Thus, the Global Minotaur became the ‘engine’ that pulled the world economy from the early 1980s to 2008.

Today’s crisis in Europe, the heated debates about austerity versus further fiscal stimuli in the US, the clash between China’s authorities and the Obama administration on exchange rates are the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global ‘system’ which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis lays out the options available to us for reintroducing a modicum of reason into a highly irrational global economic order.

An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.

 

Yanis Varoufakis

Ioannis "Yanis" Varoufakis is a Greek-Australian economist and politician. A former academic, he has been Secretary-General of MeRA25, a left-wing political party, since he founded it in 2018. A former member of Syriza, he served as Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. - Goodreads



CONTENT

Article 04


The music of proteins is made audible through a computer program that learns from Chopin
By Peng Zhang, The Rockefeller University and Yuzong Chen, National University of Singapore



 





Training an algorithm to play proteins like Chopin can produce more melodious songs. Frederic Chopin/Wikimedia Commons

Peng Zhang
, Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Biology, The Rockefeller University and Yuzong Chen, Professor of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore

With the right computer program, proteins become pleasant music.

There are many surprising analogies between proteins, the basic building blocks of life, and musical notation. These analogies can be used not only to help advance research, but also to make the complexity of proteins accessible to the public.

We’re computational biologists who believe that hearing the sound of life at the molecular level could help inspire people to learn more about biology and the computational sciences. While creating music based on proteins isn’t new, different musical styles and composition algorithms had yet to be explored. So we led a team of high school students and other scholars to figure out how to create classical music from proteins.

The musical analogies of proteins

Proteins are structured like folded chains. These chains are composed of small units of 20 possible amino acids, each labeled by a letter of the alphabet.

Illustration of the four levels of protein structure.
Aspects of potein structure can be analogous to musical notation. LadyofHats/Wikimedia Commons

A protein chain can be represented as a string of these alphabetic letters, very much like a string of music notes in alphabetical notation.

Protein chains can also fold into wavy and curved patterns with ups, downs, turns and loops. Likewise, music consists of sound waves of higher and lower pitches, with changing tempos and repeating motifs.

Protein-to-music algorithms can thus map the structural and physiochemical features of a string of amino acids onto the musical features of a string of notes.

Enhancing the musicality of protein mapping

Protein-to-music mapping can be fine-tuned by basing it on the features of a specific music style. This enhances musicality, or the melodiousness of the song, when converting amino acid properties, such as sequence patterns and variations, into analogous musical properties, like pitch, note lengths and chords.

For our study, we specifically selected 19th-century Romantic period classical piano music, which includes composers like Chopin and Schubert, as a guide because it typically spans a wide range of notes with more complex features such as chromaticism, like playing both white and black keys on a piano in order of pitch, and chords. Music from this period also tends to have lighter and more graceful and emotive melodies. Songs are usually homophonic, meaning they follow a central melody with accompaniment. These features allowed us to test out a greater range of notes in our protein-to-music mapping algorithm. In this case, we chose to analyze features of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” to guide our development of the program.

To test the algorithm, we applied it to 18 proteins that play a key role in various biological functions. Each amino acid in the protein is mapped to a particular note based on how frequently they appear in the protein, and other aspects of their biochemistry correspond with other aspects of the music. A larger-sized amino acid, for instance, would have a shorter note length, and vice versa.

The resulting music is complex, with notable variations in pitch, loudness and rhythm. Because the algorithm was completely based on the amino acid sequence and no two proteins share the same amino acid sequence, each protein will produce a distinct song. This also means that there are variations in musicality across the different pieces, and interesting patterns can emerge.

For example, music generated from the receptor protein that binds to the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin has some recurring motifs due to the repetition of certain small sequences of amino acids.

OXTR protein music. Zhang et al., CC BY-NC-ND3.28 MB (download)
Oxytocin receptor protein structure
OXTR, or the oxytocin receptor, has repeating sequences of amino acids. AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI, CC BY

On the other hand, music generated from tumor antigen p53, a protein that prevents cancer formation, is highly chromatic, producing particularly fascinating phrases where the music sounds almost toccata-like, a style that often features fast and virtuoso technique.

TP53 protein music. Zhang et al., CC BY-NC-ND2.12 MB (download)
Tumor protein p53 protein structure
TP53, or tumor protein p53, produces chromatic music. AlphaFold Data/EMBL-EBI, CC BY

By guiding analysis of amino acid properties through specific music styles, protein music can sound much more pleasant to the ear. This can be further developed and applied to a wider variety of music styles, including pop and jazz.

Protein music is an example of how combining the biological and computational sciences can produce beautiful works of art. Our hope is that this work will encourage researchers to compose protein music of different styles and inspire the public to learn about the basic building blocks of life.

This study was collaboratively developed with Nicole Tay, Fanxi Liu, Chaoxin Wang and Hui Zhang.

The Conversation



This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.


CONTENT

Climate Change Success Story


Cellular Farming

 



Cellular agriculture is the production of animal-sourced foods from cell culture. ... Acellular products are made of organic molecules like proteins and fats and contain no cellular or living material in the final product. Cellular products are made of living or once-living cells. - Google

 


The Future of Meat - Lab Grown Meat Explained
by Roborock S7


Lab-Grown Real Meat is Finally Here
By Bloomberg

 



 

Mosa Meat


Current meat consumption is causing devastating damage to our planet. Producing meat takes up 80% of all agricultural land, and contributes to around a fifth of all human-produced greenhouse gases. And that’s just what’s happening right now. Meat demand will continue to soar as the world's population reaches 10 billion, and our planet will be stretched beyond its limits.

People love meat, and always have; the problem is how it’s made. We want to move away from traditional agriculture practices, to a more sustainable and efficient model.

  • In 2006, scientist Mark Post and food technician Peter Verstrate met for the first time, through a government-funded program exploring the opportunities of cultured meat. After the program ended, Mark and Peter continued to try and make sustainable burgers a reality.
  • In 2013, they unveiled the world’s first cultured beef burger at a packed press conference in London. Just this one burger took years of research and €250,000 to make. And luckily for us – the press loved it.
  • In 2016, Mosa Meat was incorporated and the team of scientists and engineers started to grow. Crucial technical milestones were reached, like adding fat, removing animal components from the production process, and reducing the cost.

Fast forward to now, and it’s all about getting that burger to you. We’re working at our new Mosa Home in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to develop our burgers, bring the price down, and help make the future of food a bit brighter in the process.



Crave Change - Mosa Meat

 




Perfect Day



Founded in 2014 by bioengineers Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, Perfect Day is on a mission to create a kinder, greener tomorrow through the thoughtful use of biology. Leveraging expertise across biological engineering, food innovation, and consumer products, Perfect Day is helping companies big and small to develop, scale, and commercialize next-generation products that satisfy consumers’ demands and champion a path toward a sustainable future.

The company’s flagship product, the world’s first precision-fermented protein, debuted in 2020. Instead of relying on cows, Perfect Day utilizes microflora to create proprietary animal-free milk protein. Perfect Day’s protein can be used across a range of products to deliver the same taste and texture without compromise. An ISO compliant, third-party reviewed life cycle assessment (LCA) found that Perfect Day’s whey protein reduces blue water consumption by up to 99%, greenhouse gas emissions by up to 97%, and non-renewable energy use by up to 60%, compared to conventional production methods.


Perfect Day created a new way to make the foods you love today, for a kinder, greener tomorrow. We’re taking the compromise out of the dairy aisle and restocking it with the best of both worlds: the taste and texture of conventional dairy, but produced sustainably, without the downsides of factory farming, lactose, hormones, or antibiotics.

Changing the world doesn’t happen overnight, and we couldn’t have gotten here without collaboration and support. Look at all the people, places, and events that helped get us to where we are today. And join us where we’re going next.




Changing the Dairy Industry by Perfect Day





 


Solar Foods

Solar Foods is a Finnish food-tech startup that is pilot testing a technology that uses electricity to produce hydrogen which is combined with carbon dioxide, water, vitamins and minerals to feed and grow a microbial biomass that can be used as edible protein. The company was founded in 2017.

Solar Foods is developing processes to manufacture protein powder called Solein that can be used as a protein ingredient in food production, and plans to license its technology.

Although it's natural, Solein is disconnected from agriculture: we intended our platform for an environmentally sustainable food industry to be used anywhere scaling us beyond the agricultural limitations of the Earth.

This was literally taken to another world when Solar Foods collaborated with the European Space Agency ESA by developing a food production concept for a mission to Mars as part of the astronauts' life support system.



Solar Foods - Cellular Farming For A Better Future

 

 








CONTENT

Futurist Portrait


Ian Khan
Technology Futurist, Author, Speaker



 

Forbes contributor and Featured Technology Futurist on CNN, Ian Khan is a highly sought-after emerging technology expert. A three times TEDx Speaker & Author, Ian has impacted hundreds of organizations in his career of 20 years to help organizations understand emerging technology and the steps they can take to create limitless value.

Philosophy

Ian is a passionate believer in good things. Dedicated to his expertise in helping organizations achieve excellence, he is always hard at work to cut through noise and to find ways to deliver a message of hope.

Inventor

Ian is the creator and inventor of the Future Readiness Score, a management and Future Readiness methodology to help organizations address the impact of Disruption before it occurs.

An advocate of emerging technologies, Ian helps organizations gain a competitive advantage in today’s era of disruption and rapid change. His core speaking topics include technology trends, industry future outlook, and the role of IoT, AI & Blockchain in shaping our future.

Author

Ian is also the author of over 8 books. Some of these include Cloud Wars, The Internet of Things (IoT) A Concise Introduction, The Internet of Things & the Future of Innovation, Make Me Like You, 21 Steps & Get Ahead, and Meaningful Conversations.

He is also a contributor to After Shock with Ray Kurtzweil, Ray Kurzweil, George Gilder, Martin Rees, Newt Gingrich, Alan Kay, David Brin, Po Bronson, John Schroeter, Deb Westphal and contributor to multiple industry publications including McGraw Hill, Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, Business.com.

A highly sought after expert, Ian has dedicated the last 20 years evangelizing technologies such as Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, and emerging tech. Though his career he Ian has worked with Information Technology startups, SAP EBS Partner Companies, and key Microsoft partner ecosystem providers. Through his two decades of working in the industry, he also gained a complete understanding of where organizations face a maximum challenge as his roles included Sales, Business Development, Management, to managing global marketing teams.

Filmmaker

As a filmmaker, Ian released his debut documentary “Blockchain City” in 2019, which was a raving success. A story that captured the development of Blockchain across the world, the documentary features interviews with leading influencers to understand the broader impact of Blockchain. He is also working on his second documentary, a film on Artificial Intelligence, to be released in early 2020. AI – The Next Frontier features Ian’s conversations with the worlds greatest AI minds in helping understand what the impact of Artificial Intelligence will be on humanity. He is also releasing a documentary on Government Experience (GXNow) that highlights changes within government service delivery across the world.

Ian’s other upcoming documentary films include “The Future of Work” & “The Bitcoin Dilemma”

Contributing Author

He is also a frequent contributor to industry publications including Forbes, Business.com, Entrepreneur Magazine, McGraw Hill Education, AccountingWeb and other publications.

Community Involvement

Passionate about helping newer generations develop key technology understanding, Ian also works with educational institutions & nonprofit organizations. His recent work includes Chang School (Ryerson University), Schulich School of Business (York University), and others.

Media Host

Ian is also the host of the Ian Khan Show, 4Sight, Unbreakable series of podcasts and video series. Ian interviews Futurists, celebrities, Executives, and thought leaders, helping shape the future of the world through meaningful conversations. He also hosts the official Government of UAE Government Experience (GX) Podcast.

Personal Life

Ian primarily lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and two children and has a local presence in Toronto, New York, and Dubai. He enjoys photography, creative arts, music, nature, and trail walking as hobbies.

 




 

Blockchain City - The Future of Cities Driven by Blockchain (Full Movie 40 minutes)
Director Ian Khan

Capturing the insights of leading figures from the technology industry, the Blockchain City Documentary is the story of cities around the world and their shift towards being technologically powered through Blockchain. With Interviews from leading governments worldwide that have implemented Blockchain technology, including the Government of the Netherlands, Government of Estonia and of course the City of Dubai, the film captures what is shaping our collective tomorrow so that we can all join hands and take the next steps together.


 

The Bitcoin Dilemma Documentary - The Past, Present & Future of Cryptocurrencies, NFT's, DeFi

The Bitcoin Dilemma Documentary delivers a new installment of the latest developments in Cryptocurrencies, NFT's and DeFi. Created by Futurist and Filmmaker Ian Khan, the Bitcoin Dilemma interviews some of the world's most prolific technology and finance leaders to help understand the future.

The Bitcoin DIlemma is a clear and conscious story of the development of the cryptocurrency industry today. Featuring interviews with key players within crypto, finance, technology, cybersecurity industries, Khan brings a highly sensitive topic to clarity. "Cryptocurrencies have received a bad name over the past decade and it's time to bring the real picture to people worldwide. We hope this clears a lot of confusion, eliminates the dilemmas behind crypto, and helps the common man or woman understand what role crypto is going to play in their lives in the future", says Khan.

 

 


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