Category Archives: Singularity

Amid the coronavirus lockdowns around the world, one of few positive pieces of news weve heard is that carbon emissions have dropped dramatically. The clearer skies and cleaner air have led to a renewed vigor behind calls for retiring fossil fuels and investing more heavily in renewable energy. Proponents of renewables tend to focus on solar and wind as the best green energy sources, leaving out a lingeringly controversial yet crucial player: nuclear power.

Last week, the US Department of Energy (DOE) shone a light on nuclears potential in the most effective possible way: by dumping a bunch of money on it. The DOE launched its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program to the tune of $230 million. That sum is broken down into $160 million for scientists currently working on nuclear reactors that could be operational in 5 to 7 years, and another $70 million for additional research and development down the road.

The US currently gets about 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors; as of October 2019 there were 96 of them across the country. However, on average the reactors are over 38 years old. Though nuclear energy production still works the same way it did 38 years agosplitting uranium atoms releases energy thats used to heat water, producing steam that turns a turbine to generate electricitythere have been some notable advances in the technology involved, and in the design of reactors themselves.

Small modular reactors are touted as having the most potential to reduce the up-front costs of nuclear power while improving its safety. Rather than having to be custom-built onsite, small modular reactors can be manufactured in a central location and shipped to their destination in pieces.

Oregon-based NuScale Power is leading the small modular reactor charge with its 65-foot-tall by 9-foot-wide light water reactor. 100 of them could fit in the containment chamber of a large conventional reactor, and NuScale says its small reactor can produce 60 megawatts of energy per day (as compared to around 1,000 MW produced daily by conventional fission reactors)so the size-to-production-capacity ratio is pretty solid. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington DC, NuScale will likely be the first company to receive small modular reactor design certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Grants from the newly-minted Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program can go towards three different purposes: demonstrating a new light reactor design that can be fully functional within seven years, improving existing reactor designs to move them toward deployment, or doing longer-term research on conceptual projects that might see the light of day in the 2035 timeframe.

If small modular reactor and other nuclear tech moves forwardovercoming barriers from cost to bureaucracy to public opinionwe could see, in the not-too-distant future, large conventional reactors supplanted by smaller local ones. Under current safety regulations, reactors have to be at least 10 miles from the people theyre providing power to. Small modular reactors could be closer to the communities or industrial zones theyre powering, meaning less energy would be lost in transit and storage.

Regardless of how fast it advances, nuclear power will be facing some serious competition from solar, wind, and natural gas, whose prices continue to fall; solar in particular has beaten every projection of how low its cost would drop over given timeframes. While solar power enjoys widespread public support, though, it has some major barriers to overcome before we can count on it to replace coal and meet our future energy needs: storage, seasonality, and intermittency wont be easy problems to solve.

But NuScale and others, including Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, are banking on the US (and the rest of the world) needing additional clean power sources regardless of advances in solar. Given that energy demand is only going to grow along with the global population and, in developing countries particularly, an emerging middle class, they could very well be correct. And theyre not alone; in March, non-profit Energy Impact Center released the first open-source design for a small-scale reactor it says could be built in 2 years at a comparatively very low cost of $300 million.

Investments in nuclear power are nonetheless something of a gamble, especially now that were beset by uncertainty on all fronts. But its one the US government is up for making; we will, after all, be looking for ways to keep the skies smog-free and stop temperatures from rising for decades to come.

Image Credit: Wolfgang Stemme from Pixabay

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The US Government Just Invested Big in Small-Scale Nuclear Power - Singularity Hub

Astronomers studied the constellation the Telescope and found in it a black hole. The scale of the milky way singularity is two steps from the Ground.

Black holes are one of the biggest mysteries of the Universe. Scientists know that even in the milky way are millions of them, but to detect the singularity very difficult. Black holes have such strong gravity that even light can not break through the event horizon. One of such singularities astronomers have discovered in two steps from the Earth, of course, the scale of the milky way. A black hole is in the constellation the Telescope. Scientists drew attention to the two stars that revolve around invisible, but very heavy object. The analysis showed that it is a black hole. The distance to the singularity is about 1000 light years. However, astronomers believe that there are more close education, but they have not yet discovered.

Astrophysicists immediately rushed to warn that this black hole does not pose a risk to humanity. Theory on the entrainment of the planets and stars of the singularities is a myth. It is actually a little easier. A black hole has more gravity, which only in certain conditions, attracts the object. For example, the Sun also has a huge mass, but the planet is not falling on the surface. If you replace the star with a black hole in the global scale, nothing will change, therefore, experience, on this occasion it is not necessary.

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Astronomers have discovered a black hole in two steps from the Earth - The Times Hub

By PHILIP OCHIENGMore by this Author

Previously in the Saturday Nation, an official of a Nairobi book-publishing company made the grammatically puzzling statement that ... book publishing is one of the industries that attracts the least number of new investments...

Note that the subject industries is plural but that the verb (attracts) is in the third person singular form.

The expression one of the... is the perennial culprit. It gives Kenyas English-language journalists no end of grief.

In that expression, what exactly attracts? Is it the pronoun one or the noun industries? In the simple present third person singular form, the verb attracts is justifiable only if the speaker is referring to a single industry.

But, manifestly, thats not so. For he means many industries, of which the one (publishing) is only an example.

In such an expression, then, the plural noun industries not the singular pronoun one is what must control the form the verb takes. Thus, in accord with the plurality of the controlling noun, the verb must drop the plural s.

For our newspapers, the enduring question is this: In this form, is the expression one of the... referring to the singularity of the pronoun one or is it referring to the plurality of the noun industries?

For, clearly, one is singular. But in every such formulation, the singular one in the expression one of the... is always used to introduce a plurality of things. Charity Ngilu is one (singular) of the Cabinet secretaries (plural) who never cease (plural) to excite controversy.

The significance of the Nations statement does not rest on the one industry (publishing) but on a plurality of industries, of which the one is only an instance.

In the above statement, therefore, the plural noun industries, not to the singular pronoun one which merely exemplifies it is your grammatical take-off point.

In other words, in the phrase ... one of the industries..., the substantive "industries" is what occupies the grammatical drivers seat. It is what controls the form that the verb must take.

The pronoun one merely singles out an industry among many of the same kind.

I reiterate that the phrase one of the... always invites a plurality of collective things (or nouns). Publishing is just one of many industries that attract the fewest new investors. It is not the only one. No, it is among many.

Thus, when conjugated, the verb following it must agree with the plurality of industries, not with the singularity of the one.

In other words, the verb form attract (without the s) is plural because it reflects the plural noun industries, not the singular pronoun one.

Grammatically, the plural noun industries, not the singular pronoun one, is what controls the active verbs form.

In grammar, then, the form of the active (or conjugated) verb is what changes in accordance with the grammatical number of the subject to reflect the tense, the mood and the gender (though, in English, both the mood and the gender have long ago lost practically all their erstwhile grammatical significance).

Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist.

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Rule of thumb on proper use of active verb - Daily Nation

Donegal company Motarme has turned to crowdfunding to invest in new technology and finance plans to ramp up sales in overseas markets.

Headquartered in Letterkenny, the firm has developed an online platform to help business-to-business companies with sales prospecting and lead generation.

The company is raising 150,000 on Spark Crowdfunding, which will be match-funded by Enterprise Ireland. Motarme is a high-potential start-up client of the state agency.

Michael White, Motarmes founder and managing director, said the funding would be used to boost sales activity in Britain and the US and to invest in new machine learning technology.

We want to hire three sales and marketing people initially to focus on Britain and the US, and we also want to add a new machine learning component to our platform, White said.

That will mean we can analyse the campaigns we have already done so we can optimise campaigns for new customers. We have hundreds of thousands of communication points going back over the last few years. The machine learning system will be able to identify the patterns that produce the most successful results.

White described Motarme as an account-based sales system that helps businesses to identify and connect with potential customers.

Businesses need a steady flow of new sales, but a lot of companies have challenges in systematically finding target customers and then connecting with them, he said.

Motarme can find target companies that match a specific profile and engage with those targets to start a sales conversation.

White said Motarmes primary focus was on large enterprise contracts. The company has 15 customers in the software and manufacturing sectors. Clients include P-Mac, Principal Logistics Technologies and Woodco.

You often find B2B companies having to deal with a lot of sales activity, messaging and inbound marketing. They can find it hard to cut through the noise, he said.

Most of the tools available to them focus on contacting individuals and on transactional deals. With account-based sales, were targeting a much bigger group of companies that weve done some background investigation on. We use very tailored messages that go out across a number of channels at once, so they get emails, direct mail, social media and online communication, all coordinated with the same message.

White established Motarme in 2015, having worked as head of marketing at Singularity in Derry and as a senior product manager at Siemens in Dublin and Munich.

He said the company had opted to raise money on the Spark Crowdfunding platform primarily due to its location.

The vast majority of VC funding still goes into companies based in Dublin or Galway. Were in Letterkenny, right on the border, he said.

Its harder for companies like us to access investment, because we dont have easy access to a network.

With Spark Crowdfunding, youre appealing to a larger number of smaller investors and your location isnt such an issue.

Motarmes crowdfunding campaign will run on the Spark platform until May 29.

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Making It Work: Marketing consultancy crowdfunds to target overseas markets - Business Post

A scene from the music video for New Orders Singularity(via YouTube)For the quarantined sheeple, its as if rock n roll, punk, and hip-hop never happened.

History comes back to provoke us in New Orders Singularity music video, which debuted in 2016 but has found fresh popularity. Its new viral status owes to deep quarantine viewing. Confined spectators respond to the videos depiction of isolation, seclusion, and, finally, rebellion as captured in footage from West Berlin prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The actions shown in Singularity provide a strong contrast to the daily 7 p.m.ritual by self-imprisoned New Yorkers who crack open their apartment windows to clap, bang pots and pans, and cheer. The ceremony, supposedly intended to encourage the citys first responders, lasts only twice as long as a New York minute shorter than Singularity itself (4:13). This timid, self-conscious group activity has inspired appreciation of Singularitys nostalgia for genuine rebellion.

The Twitterverse is aroused by envy. New Order, the distinguished British dance-pop-synth band, had commissioned the Singularity video from designer Damian Hale, an expert in live-concert visuals, who compiled clips from B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin 19791989. That film was a fact-based chronicle of British music producer Mark Reeders experiences in Europes post-punk scene; its records frenzy, tumult, and chaos. More than a celebration of youthful uprising, it specifically exhibits live-wire reaction to silence and social obedience a marked contrast to Americas orderly sequestration during the COVID-19 quarantine.

Singularitys appeal raises questions about Millennial compliance so different from punk-era rebellion during this emergency. Does it set the stage for socialist dictatorship as newly ambitious mayors and governors, along with the hotly emboldened news media, control citizens behavior through fear? Singularitys images of dissent and unrest, edited to New Orders elegant dance beats, salute fearlessness and abandon by a generation that distrusted politicians and establishment media. Mark Reeder and his punk-culture cohorts sought to express their own sense of liberty. Scenes of close-quarters dancing and sex flout the seriousness of social-distancing. Repeated shots of various, vintage, flipped fingers seem aimed at 21st-century acquiescence itself.

Punk culture disregarded the maudlin fear of danger and embraced it an outrageous, unexpected expanse of FDRs idea that theres nothing to fear but fear itself, which COVID-19 politicians dont dare repeat. So Singularity commemorates fearlessness, and in doing so, it shames that 7 p.m.pseudo-civility. Compared with New Orders scenes of disorderly conduct, the polite clapping and cheering come from people in New Yorks most liberal, Hillary-supporting districts (from my neighborhood perspective, the nervously cracked windows are in swanky brownstones) that share a pampered sense of what resistance really means. Unlike those radicals in Berlins anti-Stasi youth subculture, the Manhattan noisemakers seem at a loss about what to do with themselves; they may well be of the ADD generation, former Ritalin kids who are now cautious homeowners and urban stakeholders.

The protests in Singularity havent yet happened in the U.S., tensely considering the reopening of the economy, but the fever of fed-upness (a better term than the now discredited resistance) indicates some underlying exasperation such as is inchoately expressed by the 7 p.m.bourgeois ritual. Singularity throws images of liberation back at a nation of sheeple. Baaing people. Applauding people. They really seem to be congratulating themselves for their own helplessness, for upholding government edicts during the clampdown, keeping quiet, and waiting all day for that brief moment when they can pretend to appreciate other peoples sacrifice. The typical liberal impulse is to mistake self-congratulation for altruism. A populace that disguises its own lack of self-awareness as gratitude demonstrates the essence of conformity and surrender.

This meek, docile applauding at 7 p.m. suggests a dire transformation of the American spirit. Its as if rock n roll, punk, and hip-hop never happened.

Some skeptics have asked: Wheres that rebel spirit? Wheres Antifa now to protest the confining of the indigent and shut-in, in the interest of justice the first steps toward fascism? Where are the Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movements when the republics freedom and liberty need to be restored, as those Cold War Berliners desired?

The popularity of New Orders Singularity offers a last hope against restrictions that are not entirely based on science but come from the fiat of leaders who claim to know whats best.The song Singularity mourns the loss of camaraderie, while the video supplies virtual, vicarious protest. Its a reminder of the punk ethic buried inside.

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Rebellion, New OrderStyle: What Happened to It? - National Review

By now, its well known that usage of video-conferencing software like Zoom has exploded as a result of the Covid-19 shutdown. What is less known is that interest in avatar-based virtual worlds and business-specific adaptations of concepts like Second Life, a well-known virtual world which peaked in mainstream popularity 15 years ago, is spiking as well.

Yes, weve been getting a ton of inquiries, said Philip Rosedale in an email to Singularity Hub. Rosedale is CEO and cofounder of High Fidelity, a software company currently building a new kind of virtual world thats not yet been released. Hes also the creator and founder of Second Life and said it is seeing a surge in use as well.

This is a strange moment for VR, virtualworlds, and the internetmore generally. We may now truly be forced to create an equitable public commons online, where historically weve had the fallback of real life proximity, Rosedale added.

While video-based software like Zoom will likely continue to be the preferred method for most remote business meetings during the shutdown, it is possible to wonder whether virtual worlds may prove uniquely useful now as well.

This point was underscored last week in an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal where Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson outlined why video conferencing on Zoom can feel so exhausting. In his view, Zoom forces people to display behaviors that are usually reserved for close and intimate relationships; what he refers to as nonverbal overload such as making direct eye contact for long periods of time and focusing on someone elses face. In the real world, Bailenson points out, individuals can control their own personal space, manage their distance from coworkers, and choose their location during a meeting. On Zoom, however, there is no concept of spatial distance since the experience exists in a flat 2D window.

According to Alex Howland, CEO of VirBELA, another virtual world provider, they have also seen a massive uptick in interest these past few weeks from companies, non-profits, and government agencies affected by the shutdown.

In VirBELA, users create an avatar and navigate a video game-like environment to attend meetings, collaborate around boardroom tables, use media surfaces to display documents or websites, and interact in ways that may capture social cues (like personal space) from the real world.

The most important benefit of a virtual world, then, may be that it replicates many of the behaviors you might expect to see in the real world. There is such a thing as getting too close or far away from someone, and this sense of spatial presence can be quite convincing. The Boston Globe even reported an anecdote in which one user in VirBELA felt uncomfortable and complained because their avatar didnt have a chair to sit in during a meeting.

And perhaps the biggest difference from video-conferencing is the ability to randomly stumble into a colleague you might not otherwise interact with.

In virtual worlds, users feel like they are at a place together and that place is persistent. This helps foster a sense of shared culture and brings back water cooler opportunities and unplanned social collisions that just dont happen on a conference call. We are even seeing people from the same global organization, in different geographies, meeting each other in the world for the first time by happenstance, Howland told me.

Several years ago, I profiled the case of a publicly traded business with a billion dollars in revenue per year and over 28,000 employees and contractors around the world which operates entirely inside VirBELA. (That company later acquired the virtual world business outright). It certainly registered as a mainstream turning point for the use of persistent online social environments.

Even before Covid-19 pressed the brakes on our economy, forcing employees around the world to shelter at home, parts of the business world were already moving in the direction of remote collaboration and long-distance communication. And while our current health crisis isnt steering us in a particularly new direction, it may be accelerating us toward the working from home destination many companies had already been aiming for.

While I dont expect virtual worlds to overtake the use of video conferencing for the vast majority of todays business meetings, it is worth noting the key attributes that make these environments unique. And the longer this global pandemic stretches on, the more it will continue to shape the future of what our working lives might look like.

As interest in virtual world platforms grows, its worth keeping an eye on whether they are a mere curiosity or here to stay.

Image Credit: stephan sorkinonUnsplash

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Why Interest in Virtual Worlds for Online Collaboration Is Spiking - Singularity Hub

One death in Steven Soderberghs terrifyingly prescient masterpiece, Contagion, stayed with me: Kate Winslets Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer who chased down peopled with a terrifying viral infection in an effort to warn those who might be at risk and reconstruct the viruss rampage through an unknowing society.

For most of us, Mears was probably our first introduction to contact tracing, a technique thats crossed centuries as a tour-de-force in battling outbreaks. The core idea is simple, if laborious detective work: manually seek out those infected, interrogate their movements through the world, and follow up with every single person who might have been in contact with the infected individual.

Its tedious. Its dangerous. Yet as a method, contact tracing has been wielded as a powerful weapon from typhoid fever to the 1918 flu pandemic, and more recently, from AIDS to SARS and the first Asian country responders to Covid-19.

Theres a reason contact tracing has survived the test of time: it works. Thanks to epic efforts at hunting down people with Covid-19which, in turn, was in part thanks to widespread testingSouth Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Indias Kerala district have emerged as success stories in their battle against a new foe, nipping new infections in the bud and dramatically reducing hospitalizations and deaths. Even Wuhan, under stringent autocratic surveillance from the central Chinese government, was lauded by the WHO as a positive responderthough their method of giving individuals a green, yellow, or red light as they return to society may give democratic countries uncomfortable chills.

But heres the thing: contact tracing has always teetered on the line between individual freedom and the good of the general public; the stigmatization of a viral scarlet letter versus keeping others safe; the price of health data sharing versus societal responsibility.

Today, thanks to the mini tracking devices in our pockets called smartphones, its easier than ever to bring an effective method for controlling outbreaks into the digital realm. Some epidemiologists even argue that due to the highly infectious nature of SARS-Cov-2, traditional analogue methods are both too dangerous and too slow; digital contact tracing is the only way to go. In a technocratic world where we rely on our gadgets every day for news, maps, health tracking, and communication, not using the digital tools we have to update a century-long method almost seems silly.

The good news is that western societies dont have to start from scratch. One reason why Asias democratic countries quickly responded to Covid-19 is because they all suffered through the 2003 SARS epidemic. They learned their lesson and were the first to implement digital contact tracing, with both successes and hiccups along the way.

Its time to learn from them.

There are multiple ways contact tracing helps limit the reach of a virus, but its power is mainly felt at the beginning and tapering ends of a pandemic.

Take South Korea. The countrys enormously effective testing regime in January was an exemplary highlight of how contact tracing can plug the viral gush at the beginning of an outbreak. While they reported the first Covid-19 case in the US, South Korea rapidly ordered medical companies to develop and roll out testing kits aggressively, allowing health workers to track cases and keep infections containeda rollout arguably more effective than in the US, which has since seen its cases explode in numbers. These data resources then powered Corona 100m, an app that alerts users of diagnosed Covid-19 cases within 100 meters of their prior locations. The apps been downloaded over one million times to overwhelming positive reviews.

Perhaps the gold medal in digital contact tracing goes to Singapore. Backed by widespread testing, citizens were encouraged to download a Bluetooth-based app called TraceTogether, which anonymizes a users phone ID but stores similarly encrypted IDs from people he or she has been in contact with. If a person gets sick, those stored ID will be used to alert previous contacts. According to TraceTogethers official website, part of the Singapore Government Agency, roughly one million citizens have voluntarily signed up for the service.

The US has missed the boat on stemming Covid-19 from entering the country. However, digital contact tracing also comes in handy as were considering reopening our languishing economy. Serology tests, which look for antibodies that (in theory) render people immune will help assess when its mostly safe to return to work.

But before herd immunity becomes widespread or a working vaccine is easily accessible to most, contact tracing will become a key component of squashing new infection sparks before they flare up. California and Massachusetts are just two states looking to hire an army of contact tracers as part of their bid to reopen the economy.

Its perhaps not surprising that two giant tech companies, Apple and Google, announced last week a team-up to explore digital contact tracing in the land of the free.

An immediate response Ive heard is that it wont work here. After all, the narrative goes, even democratic Asian countries have a different social contract with their governments. Theyre focused more on society than on the independent selfa Confucius-esque philosophy thats slapped onto most East Asian citizens. Western countries such as the UK have tried similar approaches before: in 2011, Cambridge Universitys FluPhone app was supposed to track the spread of flu on a population level, yet fewer than one percent of people in Cambridge adopted it.

Bollocks. Dont sell yourself short. FluPhone wasnt released during a pandemic. If Covid-19 has one silver lining, its how on average people in the West are just as willing to sacrifice personal freedoms and adopt strange new customs (face masks everywhere!) to keep themselves and others safe. (Outliers exist, but they exist in every country.)

However, societal norms aside, early lessons from digital contact tracing efforts show that there are serious problems that need ironing out, and for now, our phones wont completely replace human workers in tracing the pandemic.

The basic idea behind Google-Apples app is similar to TraceTogether: its Bluetooth-based, meaning that itll only work locally without logging your location data. For now its opt-in, in that you have to download the app on either iOS or Android. The companies stress that they wont collect personal or location data (though Google Maps certainly does unless youve opted out), and all phone ID codes will be encrypted, making it difficult to link to a particular person. The app will periodically check to see if its been recently in contact with someone diagnosed with Covid-19.

Theres obviously the problem of data privacy. According to Covid Watch, a similar community-based, open-sourced app that uses Bluetooth for tracking, at least 50 percent of a population will need to use it to make tracking effective, and if people are hesitant, itll fail.

Another pre-requisite is that we need massively wider testing, which is currently still mostly reserved for people with clear symptoms. The Covid Tracking Project reports that less than one percent of Americans have received the test, which means a tracing app based on Covid-19 positive data would be of little to no value. Others worry about the opposite, which is that a Bluetooth-based app could over-alert users. For example, the most common Bluetooth signals have a reach roughly five times more than the six feet apart social distancing guideline.

All of the above concerns are valid. Yet without implementing the app, theyre also theoretical. Whats clear from Singapores success story is that digital contact tracing by itself isnt yet enough to curb Covid-19. Health workers, for example, may need anonymized ID data to help track down potentially exposed individuals to encourage self-isolation or provide care. Without sufficient testing and social distancing, asymptomatic carriers will still unknowingly spread the disease.

Digital contact tracing may ignite every freedom, privacy, and independence fiber in your body in protest. Tech giants and government alike havent helped build a foundation of trust or respect for our private data. But without doubt, digitization is the way of the future: its a replacement for fallible human memory, which cant recall what you had for lunch two weeks ago, let alone everyone youve been in contact with. Its a safety guard for real-world equivalents of Dr. Mears, who risk their health and lives to warn you of health risks to yourself and others.

Since its invention, contact tracing has always towed the line between privacy and social service. With our actions and voices, were now helping lay the foundation of its digital future, not just for this pandemic but for all the ones to come.

Image Credit: StockSnap from Pixabay

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Contact Tracing Is the Next Step in the Covid-19 BattleBut How Will It Work in Western Countries? - Singularity Hub

The Singularity Machine, explained Carpentier-Alting, is a play about a family trying to escape a world in crisis through the use of a device that will transport them into the future.

Friday, April 3, would have been the premier performance of The Singularity Machine at the College of the Siskiyous Kenneth Ford Theater in Weed. The play, told in two acts, is the creation of COS director Neil Carpentier-Alting and deals with humanitys quest to survive climate catastrophe.

Who wouldve thought a play about the end of the world would get canceled by the end of the world? said Carpentier-Alting.

The Singularity Machine, explained Carpentier-Alting, is a play about a family trying to escape a world in crisis through the use of a device that will transport them into the future. The primary question that the play attempts to address is how humanity will survive the effects of the impending climate catastrophe and overcome societal divisions in time to pull together. Oh, and there are lots of killer robots too.

On the stage for their first and final technical rehearsal on Monday, March 16, COS students and actors were able to at least film some scenes with lights and technical props in action before the early shelter-in-place order went into effect on March 19. The students will most likely not be able to stage a live performance this year.

The play was a completely in-house creation. Carpentier-Alting provided the main inspiration with an eight-page narrative, and local musicians Dave Theno and Tristan Behm composed the score. COS dance instructor Wendy James provided choreography oversight, Nic Fabrio was in charge of costume design and Amy LaMachia oversaw makeup.

We were just able to get each scene on film, said Carpentier-Alting. We have had to move classes to an online format with the thought that we may have to do this again in the fall. For now, we are getting together with the cast to record our experiences with the pandemic with the hopes of making something out of it.

Stage Makeup instructor Amy LaMachia will continue teaching the students online. She prepared makeup kits for each student and says they will be able to finish the semester but there are challenges.

These students are so resilient and creative, I honestly cannot wait to see what they come up with for these remaining modules, LaMachia said. So much of what makes our department as amazing as it is, is the personal connection we have with our students. We hope to foster that even if it is through an internet connection.

The Singularity Machine was created as a piece of devised theater in which all the cast, crew and technicians collectively create a piece of visual art. The collaborative process uses dance, gesture, music and sound to tell the story. The play follows the quest of a father, mother, and their daughter as they travel through time to escape calamity. The father looks to technology to save humanity, while the mother looks to rouse others to their cause. It is their child who ultimately leads them to a new and better world. The dynamic piece of theater follows the three travelers as they battle sentient robots, meet strange alien civilizations, and travel through time through an on-stage portal. For Carpentier-Alting and his fellow instructors the focus now is on preserving the play digitally and thinking about a remount in the fall.

How do we plan for this level of uncertainty in this new world? Carpentier-Alting said. How do we plan for anything now?

Answering his own question, Carpentier-Alting offers the play as a possible starting point.

The play assumes adopting and cultivating humane practices in all aspects of life will help to create a broader safety net and increase the rate of survival, he said. Change is necessary for survival and growth.

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College of the Siskiyous play about end of the world canceled by end of the world - Siskiyou Daily News

It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek

Many of you likely recognize the truth in this quote from legendary Star Trek Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Many are dubbing the Covid-19 pandemic the biggest global crisis since World War II. Theres no way you could have had a foolproof plan to deal with it. Yes, scientists have long warned of a pandemic like this. And unfortunately, many countries have not been as well prepared as they should have been. But few businesses would have had incentive to plan for a potential pandemic where whole markets disappeared almost overnight.

Now its here, however, and the implications are massive. There is not one industry, not one organization, big or small, that has or will not be impacted.

So, what to do? Do we need to look at our organizations and see where we can cut costs and strengthen our core businesses? Yes. But protecting the core isnt going to be enough. Contrary to common practice and what may seem practical, businesses also need to double down on innovation.

Statistics show that in times of crisis innovation suffers. Organizations become more introverted and risk averse. But they need to do the opposite, not only to survive in the short term, but to also keep pace with a rapidly changing world.

Companies need to be constantly looking beyond their core businesses to stay relevant. And whatever the speed of innovation needed to be up until the point when Covid-19 hit our countriesit just became too slow. We now need innovation at warp speed.

The good news is that while there is a tendency to argue people dont like change and resist it, given the right context, people are actually remarkably adaptable. And the context has just changed dramatically. For the vast majority of people this is abundantly clear. All things being equal, with the right tools, this makes them much more open to innovation.

With that in mind, here are some crucial ways organizations can speed up innovation.

In Star Trek, the prime directivewhich dealt with ethical first contactwas essentially the most important rule or law to be obeyed above all others. For organizations, it should be to answer the question, How can we remain relevant in this radically different environment?

This means looking at core offerings and identifying how to adapt them to the new reality. For some industries where demand has disappeared almost entirely, at least for now, it means daring to pivot. Fast.

I would even argue we need to see something akin to pivot-mania. That doesnt mean acting in desperation, but acting with an acute sense of urgency.

I recently interviewed Brendan Ives, head of Division X at the telecommunications company Telia, for my podcast. One of Division Xs core focuses before the crisis was AI-enabled data products for retail. Then the entire industry just shut down before their eyes and demand all but died.

So, they huddled and discussed what other problems their work might solve.

Those conversations led them to pivot away from retail and channel their entire focus into digital health. Their new focus had the added benefit of increasing their potential positive impact in the world as it enabled them to directly work towards mitigating the Covid-19 threat.

Pivoting also applies to the individual roles people play in the organization. In Division X, employees had to change their perspectives on how they fit in the organization given the new reality. In many organizations, there may now be fewer people to get the job done and skills may need to be tailored to a different market. Every role needs to be revisited to ensure maximum impact.

Pivoting and identifying new strategic objectives is no small feat. To ensure you move in the right direction and get all important players on board, purpose, communication, and motivation have never been more important.

Having the right narratives and ensuring motivation are clearly related to having the right purpose. At Growth, logistics giant Maersks venture arm, CEO Sune Stilling initially set up the entity to build billion-dollar businesses. But they quickly learned that employees didnt find building billion-dollar businesses to be a particularly meaningful goal.

This led them to reflect more deeply on what should be driving their work and pivot their purpose to transforming trade and working to solve food waste.

Can we afford to only go after these kinds of meaningful ambitions right now? Perhaps not. But there are many opportunities currently to double down and ensure that, in addition to keeping your business afloat, you play an active part in addressing the crisis. This can be incredibly motivating for all parties.

Lowes Innovation Labs spearheaded many surprising initiatives for a retail chain over the yearsholo-rooms and robot assistants inside stores years back, exoskeletons for warehouse workers, 3D printers for outer space.

How did they get the company to try so many new things? The team developed a creative new approach to compellingly envision the future.

They gave inhouse market research to science fiction writers and developed future scenarios. Then they reverse engineered these futures step by step back to the present. Finally, they workshopped potential future-proof solutions and presented those solutions to top management in the form of comic books.

By shifting from boring PowerPoint bullets and graphs to visual storytelling, they were able to inspire seasoned, seen-it-all executives to say yes and grow the companys innovation capabilities.

While that may sound like a lengthy process, you can actually get it done in just a few days. If you dont have the resources to hire science fiction writers, then dont. Have your team make mood boards instead to visualize opportunities, and you have a low-cost version that will do.

Alex Goryachev, managing director of Ciscos Co-Innovation Centers, realized they were really good at partnering externally to accelerate innovation, but that they didnt apply that same principle internally.

Thus, there was no model for harnessing the tens of thousands of Cisco employees innovation powers. This led to the establishment of a hugely successful internal startup program with clear metrics that focused not only on actions but also outcomes. While that may sound obvious and bland, many, many innovation projects fail because they dont measure whats important.

To optimize for the quick wins you need in times of crisis, be sure to spend the time to set the right metrics. It will increase the likelihood of success and increase motivation because people know what theyre running after.

You also need to partner outside your company. You dont have time to develop all capabilities or technologies yourself. That was true before the crisis. It is more true now.

The good news is that openness to collaboration has never been greater. Startups, suppliers, and even competitors have never needed it more.

This provides the perfect platform for establishing win-win collaborations to accelerate each others businesses. Customers are also much more open to beta. They understand organizations have to work hard and fast to adapt to the new reality which may mean they dont always ship perfect.

Innovation is inherently risky. Innovation in times of crisis is even riskier. The stakes are higher. There is no way around that truth.

This means you need to create psychological safety at work.

Google conducted a two year study, built on top of research done by Harvard professor, Amy Edmondson, to identify what made consistently successful teams tick. Psychological safety was number one, by a mile. Even more important than team capabilities, rank, and prior successes.

Here are a few ways to create psychological safety.

Empower people to makes decisions. You dont have time not to do this because hierarchy slows execution. And lets face it, the people most able to make good decisions are likely the people in the trenches making stuff happen.

Create guiding principles instead of rules. Turn off the lights is a rule. Be environmentally conscious is a guiding principle. It allows people to make their own decisions and opens up opportunities for action.

Actively and visibly reward the right behavior. For example, some teams at Google hand out the Courageous Penguin award. You know when penguins assemble at the edge of an iceberg and look down? Theyre waiting for the first penguin to jump. That penguin doesnt know whats lurking under the water; it takes courage to jump first. Reward people who take on big challenges with uncertain outcomes, even if they fail. Celebrate your courageous penguins. It is contagious. It accelerates the desired behavior.

The world has changed for good. Hopefully, the crisis will soon be behind us. But its implications will follow us for years. Adapting to the crisis now by innovating at warp speed is essential for short-term survival. Even more, it sets you up in the best possible position to bounce back post-crisis.

Todays accelerated adoption of a more digital economy wont go away after the crisis. Yes, well start traveling again, visit our doctors in person, and take face-to-face courses. But we will have learned we dont have to do it the same way anymore, and we will have developed better solutions. New habits and business models developed to face the crisis will also prevail afterwards.

Im convinced there is a bright future out there. To navigate to it you must innovate fast.

To borrow another quote from Star Trek: One cannot summon the future, but one can change the present! Lets change the present and set sails for a brighter future. But most importantly, stay safe and take care of your loved ones. In the end, thats what really matters.

Image Credit: JR Korpa /Unsplash

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How to Navigate the Coronavirus Crisis With Innovation at Warp Speed - Singularity Hub

Economy April 22, 2020 Manisha Mirchandani Director of Strategy at Atlantic 57

A man walking around in a factory. The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan in January highlighted the pitfalls of China as the dominant global manufacturer of record.

Photo: Loic Venance / AFP via Getty Images

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The global spread of COVID-19 has sparked a clarion call to diversify supply chains away from China. But its singularity as a manufacturing location will make it hard to find alternatives.

The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan in January highlighted the pitfalls of China as the dominant global manufacturer of record. A delay in orders from Chinese factories was inevitable, given the scale of dependency on Wuhan alone. According to Dun & Bradstreet, a business intelligence company, 51,000 companies have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, while 5 million companies have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region. The data suggests that its not just Southeast Asia that is dependent on Chinese suppliers the problem appears to be much more widespread.

Another survey by the Institute for Supply Management captures the magnitude of the outbreak for global manufacturers: More than half (57%) of companies are experiencing longer lead times for tier-1 China-sourced components, while 44% are simply unprepared to address continued supply disruptions from China. A case in point the technology giant Apple was one of the first major global companies to inform investors that it would miss Q1 revenue projections, in part due to delays in production by its China-based assembly plants. Of late, Apple had begun to move some production activities to Vietnam and India, but the company remains reliant on Chinese assembly plants to power its inventory.

The spread of the coronavirus has made one thing clear across the technology, automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical, medical equipment and consumer goods sectors, nearly all supply chains lead back to China as the preeminent global provider of intermediate materials and components. Recognizing the risk that a dependency on China poses to national industries, some governments are offering manufacturers incentives to exit China and ease the pain of diversification. Japan is putting $2.2 billion of its COVID-19 economic stimulus package into supporting its manufacturers shift production outside of China. Theres also mounting public pressure in some countries, such as the United States, to move essential production of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment out of China and closer to home.

Indeed, the pandemic might accelerate pre-existing plans to reduce supply chain dependency on China. Alongside rising labor costs, the ratcheting of trade tensions between China and the U.S. had already pushed brands to re-evaluate their single-source strategies. More than 80% of fashion brands said they already planned to reduce sourcing from China, according to a July 2019 U.S. Fashion Industry Association report. Ensuring more resilience in supply chains is also likely to be a future expectation of investors, who will now be looking at the ability of companies to hedge risk in the event of continued outbreaks or other Black Swan events. The chairman of Wistron Corp, an iPhone assembler, told analysts that the company would locate 50% of its capacity outside of China by 2021. Simply put, the coronavirus has accelerated trends that have been evident for some time pertaining to Chinas manufacturing stature.

But the reality is that a major manufacturing shift away from China is easier said than done. Even those companies that have diversified production are finding it hard to break free of Chinas pervasive influence. Anticipating a rise in tariffs from the U.S.-China trade war, video game producer Nintendo had shifted the manufacturing of its blockbuster gaming console to Vietnam in 2019. Still, there is a shortage of Switch consoles in stores today due to a lack of essential components flowing to the companys Vietnamese factories, as COVID-19 paused production by Chinese suppliers of component parts.

The global technology and consumer electronics sectors are especially reliant on Chinas infrastructure and specialized labor pool, neither of which will be easy to replicate. The Chinese government is already mobilizing resources to convince producers of Chinas unique merits as a manufacturing location. Zhengzhou, within Henan Province, has appointed officials to support Apples partner Foxconn in mitigating the disruptions caused by the coronavirus, while the Ministry of Finance is increasing credit support to the manufacturing sector. Further, the Chinese government is likely to channel stimulus efforts to develop the countrys high-tech manufacturing infrastructure, moving away from its low-value manufacturing base and accelerating its vision for a technology-driven services economy.

To this end, manufacturers are cognizant of the potential of China as a major consumer market for iPhones today and for advanced technologies such as robotics, autonomous vehicles and smart devices tomorrow. A flash poll by the Beijing-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce conducted in March shows that U.S. businesses are still bullish on Chinese consumers, despite the impact of the virus. The consumer sector had the most businesses reporting that they intend to maintain planned investments (46%), followed by the technology industry (43%).

As manufacturers examine their supply chains for a post-COVID 19 world, the imperative for greater supply chain resilience versus the attractiveness of China as a manufacturing location and tech-forward consumer market is the defining tension that they will need to navigate. The outcome is unlikely to be a clean break from China for most. Lower-value sectors, such as apparel, are most likely to expedite diversification. Indeed, many garment manufacturers have already diversified from China to the likes of Vietnam, Cambodia and Ethiopia on the basis of rising labor costs. It will be the higher-value technology and consumer electronics sectors where the countrys manufacturing prowess and consumer potential is the most pronounced that will find it hardest to turn away from Chinas distinctive allure.

URL: https://www.brinknews.com/coronavirus-global-supply-chain-reliance-china-manufacturers-economic-recession-risk/

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