Category Archives: Technology

BEIJING, Aug. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei published a white paper titled 5G-Advanced Technology Evolution from a Network Perspective Towards a New Era of Intelligent Connect X with China Mobile and other industry partners. This paper is the first in the industry to expand on the architecture and technical direction for 5G-Advanced, aiming to provide guidelines that will promote 5G technologies and construct a sustainable 5G industry.

Though scaling up rapidly, 5G has yet to reach maturity. To extract greater social and economic value from 5G, 3GPP officially announced 5.5G as the second phase of 5G, naming it 5G-Advanced. From here, industry partners reached consensus on 5G-Advanced development and composed this white paper to clarify the requirements and technologies for its evolution from 5G, thus expediting its development on networks.

5G is essential to upgrading service experience and fueling digital and intelligent transformation of industries. To penetrate deeper into industries, 5G requires the convergence of DT, OT, IT, and CT (DOICT). And the core network, akin to the brain of the E2E network, plays a pivotal role in 5G-Advanced network evolution. Therefore, we must promote the development of 5G core network architecture and technologies in line with our business models, as it will help operators improve ROI and help industry players better utilize 5G networks during digital and intelligent transformation.

To enhance network capabilities and meet ever-diversifying service requirements, 5G-Advanced will evolve both 5G architecture and technology.

At the architectural level, the 5G-Advanced network needs to fully consider the concept of cloud-native, edge network, network as a service, and continue to enhance network capabilities and eventually move toward cloud-network integration and computing-network integration. At the network technology level, 5G-Advanced networks need to have the characteristics of intelligence, convergence, and enablement.

With continuous enhancement, 5G-Advanced will allow us to rapidly roll out network functions and iterate them on-demand to fit into various service scenarios.

The white paper will serve as a valuable reference for 5G-Advanced development. For it to thrive, however, cooperation is needed. If you want to go far, go together. Huawei is eager to work out a solution with industry partners to ignite 5G development, and build a fruitful 5G industry.

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Huawei, China Mobile, and Industry Partners Release 5G-Advanced Technology Evolution White Paper - Markets Insider

Dell Technologies CFO Tom Sweet

The global chip shortage has impacted everything from the production of game consoles and smartphones to computers and home appliances. One of the industries affected the most is tech, which saw an uptick in demand for PCs and laptops when Covid pivoted employees and students to work remotely. Even Dell Technologies, which has a global supply chain and is often held up as a bellwether for supply chain management, isnt immune to the effects of the shortage.

Dell Technologies CFO, Tom Sweet, says the rapid reopening of global economies due to the coronavirus pandemic has impacted many industries besides tech, including lumber and automotive. The shortage has resulted in a longer lead time for certain Dell products, according to Sweet. Its a day to day juggle, but were managing our way through it, working with our customers. Its a challenging environment, he says.

The tech sector has been turned upside down due to the dearth of semiconductors, which has led to empty store shelves, created production bottlenecks and frustrated many consumers. Its also affected cash flow as its difficult to plan how much to buy when prices and availability are constantly changing. The shortage of key components has resulted in backlogs in delays and shipping across companies, Sweet adds. Its a widespread problem that companies are working their way through, he says.

In the face of this worldwide shortage, Dell has been powering through. Part of Dells strategy has been working closely with its supply base and giving them early indications of Dells needs. The company is also working with its selling organizations and customers to manage the availability it has and the configurations Dell can supply, Sweet says. The global economy is rebounding and the IT market is growing, he says. We are bullish on our ability to execute our strategy, grow and achieve our vision of becoming the essential tech company of the data era.

While Covid has wreaked havoc, its also reinforced the vitalness of technology. The pandemic overall accentuated the key role of technology and helping people do their jobs, learn from home, work from home and stay connected, Sweet says. In many ways it accentuated or accelerated the importance of technology and the digital platforms across the various ecosystems. In addition to pivoting its workforce to be remote, Sweet says the software company took action around cost frameworks to protect the liquidity of Dell. There were also growth opportunities that Dell hadnt planned on, particularly around the growth of its PC business. During the onset of the pandemic, people stockpiled computers and tech equipment for telework and remote learning.

Dells financials reflect this demand for tech during Covid-19: First quarter revenues were $24.5 million, which is 12% up. The Texas-based companys strong quarter revealed $1.4 billion in operating income, an increase of 96% year-over-year, and a net income of $938 million. Another source of income was its cloud-computing infrastructure giant VMware, which in the first quarter generated revenue of about $3 billion, an uptick of 9%. Dell acquired VMware in 2016 as the result of a $67 billion merger with IT services company EMC, which saddled the company with debt.

In April, Dell announced that it would spin-off its 81% stake in VMware, resulting in two standalone public companies. VMware will distribute a cash dividend of $11.5 to $12 billion to VMware shareholders, including Dell Technologies. Dell would receive approximately $9.3 to $9.7 billion and will use net proceeds to pay down debt, which will position the company for investment grade ratings.

VMware has got a very large ecosystem of other partners besides Dell Technologies and we needed to give them a bit more freedom around their partner ecosystem base. Dell Technologies also wanted to have a bit more freedom around our partner ecosystem, Sweet says. Its also a great opportunity to drive and provide shareholder value through this. Post-spinoff, Sweet notes that Dell will still have a close relationship with VMware.

The pandemic and chip shortage, coupled with the spinoff of VMware, has made for a big year for Dell so far. Experts predict that the market will see growth. As we look forward, technology spending is forecasted to be competitive to improve over the next number of years, Sweet says. According to the International Data Corporation, the worldwide edge computing market will reach $250.6 billion in 2024. Gartner projects worldwide IT spending to total $4.1 trillion in 2021, which is an increase of 8.4% from 2020, and 2022 is expected to see an uptick of 5.5% at about $4.3 trillion.

Dell experienced a strong quarter, but Sweet says it also felt pressure on parts of its business. While PC sales were strong, Sweet says customers pivoted their budgets, which for example, resulted in a softer infrastructure business. Customers made different buying decisions out of necessity, he says. Overall, the company navigated reasonably well.

Were technology optimists. We believe that technology can empower human progress, says Sweet. We think about ourselves as an essential infrastructure company thats going to help our customers realize their business outcomes.

Read more: Deal Of The Century: How Michael Dell Turned His Declining PC Business Into A $40 Billion Windfall

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Dell Technologies CFO Tom Sweet On The Chip Shortage, VMware Spin-Off And The Post-Pandemic IT Market - Forbes

As the need for better capabilities and more predictability in the offshore wind sector is growing, the industry has welcomed its collaboration with robotic technologies.

Robotics and AI come as powerful tools to help unlock human potential, providing assistance and support to inform human decision making, often adding great benefits to the process and allowing it to be more environmentally friendly.

While the robotisation of the wind industry doesnt come without its challenges, big industry experts such as Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and GE Renewable Energy have even taken a step towards supporting smaller innovative companies to further encourage the renewable energy acceleration.

Offshore wind turbines and their support structures are regularly serviced during planned maintenance visits. Typical tasks include external and internal inspections, the repair of blades and cleaning inside of towers, the replacement of lubricants for rotating machinery, and the testing of navigation warning and lightning protection systems.

With the robotic industry offering the opportunity for such daily maintenance tasks, currently performed by service technicians in challenging areas, to be conducted from a distance, it means that operators can recover time from relatively mundane and repetitive tasks and work smarter.

Robotics contributes by providing a hyper enabled capability to human decision makers by providing new levels of visibility time and interaction with remote systems, which advances operational understanding of these complex systems and environments.

With the UKs Crown Estate estimating that over 80% of the cost of offshore operation and maintenance is accounted for by the cost of transporting staff to sites, robotics can help reverse this impact.

When offshore wind was first developed in the UK, wind farms were relatively small and closer to shore, so it wasnt as demanding for workers to visit them on a crude transfer vessel.

Alex Louden, senior technology acceleration manager at the ORE Catapult, says: For example, Hornsea wind farm being developed by rsted is well over 100km from shore, and it covers an area of around 400km2 So that task of operating and maintaining is becoming larger and to me thats the biggest challenge theres more wind turbines to maintain and theyre bigger.

I guess thats why robotics has got such a big role to play. And as the industry grows, theres only going to be more wind farmers requiring operations and maintenance.

As well as being at a distance, some inspection tasks, such as rope access inspections of blades, are also very expensive to conduct offshore, so these are two areas where robotics can have an immense impact.

Robotics really enables valuable skill sets in the sector where they can be redeployed and targets where human intervention is really valuable, so robotics can be used in those areas to increase the efficiency of how we carry out operations in the sector as a whole, Louden says.

In a similar example, by using drones fitted with advanced radar sensing technology, industry experts can identify defects in the turbines as they begin to develop. Instead of using field support vessels to transport turbine inspectors offshore, which can cost approximately 250,000 a day, the use of robot assistants to monitor turbine maintenance can save time, money, and help reduce safety risks.

Another quite significant advantage that comes with the use of robotics is the opportunity to reduce the use of huge vessels that normally produce a lot of emissions within the sector.

Similarly, as Louden explains, the incorporation of robotics promotes vessels with a lower energy usage, because theyre smaller systems, or potentially even residence systems, whichremain in the wind farm over a period of time so that youre reducing most of the number of transits to and from sight. And this can lead to a reduction of operational emissions.

Robotic solutions can also help towards improved asset management capabilities and contribute to extended operational lifetime of offshore wind turbines.

Today, 95% of wind turbine blades are burnt or put in landfill at their end of life. If we can extend their operational life and incorporate them into a circular economy, then we can create value while further protecting the environment from harmful emissions.

When it comes to protecting marine life, unlike people, robots can use non-contact methods of sensing, such asradarandsonar, which allow them to interact with ocean infrastructure and its surrounding environment without causing anydisruption or damage, says DavidFlynn,professor at the National Robotarium and founder of the Smart Systems Group at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland.

In this respect, low-frequency sonar, a sound-based technology inspired by dolphin signals, makes it possible to inspect structures in the ocean, such as subsea infrastructure, without damaging the surrounding environment.

We can also help avoid issues like biofouling, where microorganisms, plants, algae, or small animals accumulate on surfaces of cables. A bio-fouled cable can grow heavy, potentially distorting its outer protective layers and decreasing its useful life span. Autonomous underwater vehicles can monitor and clean these cables safely, Flynnadds.

While robotics undoubtedly adds a lot of value to operations, they also come with their unique set of challenges and considerations.

For instance, a primary challenge to creating robotic technologies is to ensure that the robots do not represent a cost or risk burden to current operations, so some obstacles linked to adoption relate to run-time safety compliance, reliability, and resilience.

Flynnexplains: The robotics market is predominantly a product-based business model but, for the offshore environment and many other sectors, its the continuity of autonomous service that delivers the real value to company, consumer, and environment.

We need to design systems that can cope with knowns and unknowns during operations, and in the event that they do fail, they do so safely and with explainable behaviour that allows operators to understand why.

And with bigger companies leading the way to increased offshore wind capacity, it is no mean feat for small operators to tap into the market or showcase their potential.

For this reason, ORE Catapult and GE Renewable Energy have partnered and work with smaller innovative companies to help them develop new technologies and commercialise their capabilities.

We help out in a few key ways. So, weve got a lot of technical experts who can provide support across a range of engineering disciplines. Weve got some cutting-edge facilities that we can use to test and demonstrate new technologies and really validate that performance, Louden says.

For example, monitoring and analysis company Eleven-Iand product development consultants Innvotekare the latest companies that have successfully joined the robotics innovation call, in a series of challenge competitions through GE Renewable Energy and ORE Catapults Stay Ashore research and development programme, delivered through theOffshore Wind Innovation Hubs Innovation Exchange, in partnership withKTN.

For example, they have recently invested about 3m with the North of Tyne Combined Authority to try and improve the facilities available there because in some cases it is more challenging to test and validate new robotic technologies, since they are so different to other areas of technology and often have their own sets of needs.

Looking ahead to the future of the industry, Louden says that robotics activity has really increased a lot over the last three or four years: I think thats because of this huge opportunity for robotics to have a really large impact within the offshore wind sector.

But were also going to see the integration of different robotic systems being addressed. So, probably in five to seven years, were going to start to see things like aerial systems working together with unmanned surface or increased surface vessels, which reduces some of the costs associated with deploying aerial systems.

Tool Supply, Repair and Rental Services for the Electrical Transmission and Distribution Industry

28 Aug 2020

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Robotic technologies in offshore wind - Power Technology

BEIJING, Aug. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ambow Education Holding Ltd. ("Ambow" or "the Company") (NYSE American: AMBO), a leading cross-border career education and technology service provider, today announced that the Company's OOOK ("O Course," https://oook.com), with its path-breaking and innovative technology and application, won the "2021 Best Product Technology Innovation" Award at the 10th Annual China Finance Summit (the "CFS"), which was held in Shanghai from July 28 to July 29, 2021. Separately, Ambow was named "2021 The Most Influential Brand (Industry)" at the event, marking the third consecutive year that the Company has been included in the list.

The China Finance Summit, established in 2012, is a prominent event collectively organized by authoritativefinancial and mass media, and one that is widely recognized as being among the most influential platforms for communications in economic field. The CFS Award presented at the Summit is a well-known and highly-regarded business award. O Course, an open teaching platform developed by Ambow Education, is supported by over 70 patented technologies and operates on a cloud service model. The platform provides high-quality, cross-terminal live and recording services, and immersive and interactive live broadcast experiences that combine images and shared files and one-stop operation management functions to deliver a seamless experience to users.

Dr.Jin Huang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ambow, commented, "Technology is the driving force behind the education sector's ongoing digital revolution. Ambow Education is committed to grasping developing trends in technology, while continually expanding our own brand influence and exploring the intersection of learning and technology to boost the development of the education industry as a whole."

About Ambow Education Holding Ltd.

Ambow Education Holding Ltd. is a leadingcross-border careereducational andtechnology service provider, offering high-quality, individualized services and products. With its extensive network of regional service hubs complemented by a dynamic proprietary learning platform and distributors, Ambow provides its services and products to students inChinaandUnited States of America.

Follow us on Twitter: @Ambow_Education

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the outlook and quotations from management in this announcement, as well as Ambow's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. Ambow may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its reports filed or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its annual reports to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the following: the Company's goals and strategies, expansion plans, the expected growth of the content and application delivery services market, the Company's expectations regarding keeping and strengthening its relationships with its customers, and the general economic and business conditions in the regions where the Company provides its solutions and services. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and Ambow undertakes no duty to update such information, except as required under applicable law.

For investor and media inquiries please contact:

Ambow Education Holding Ltd.Tel: +86 10-6206-8000

The Piacente Group | Investor RelationsTel: +1 212-481-2050 or +86 10-6508-0677Email:[emailprotected]

SOURCE Ambow Education Holding Ltd.

http://www.ambow.com

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OOOK Wins "2021 Best Product Technology and Innovation" Award at 10th Annual China Finance Summit - PRNewswire

Clean technology transportation pioneer, Martin Schuermann, appointed as Executive Chairman of Aberdeens Board of Directors

Mr. Schuermann to drive refined focus on downstream, transportation and consumer-facing low-carbon strategy

With addition of Mr. Schuermann, the Company elevates its governance, deal sourcing and execution capabilities

TORONTO, Aug. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aberdeen International Inc. (Aberdeen or the Company) (TSX: AAB) (F: A8H) (OTC: AABVF) is pleased to announce the appointment of Martin Schuermann as Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Company.

Mr. Schuermann has been involved in the clean energy sector since 2009, serving as Chief Executive Officer of Vision Motor Corp and Vision Industries (Vision), an early innovator in fuel cell vehicles focused on developing zero emission heavy-duty transportation solutions, using hydrogen as the dominant energy storage medium. Vision was the first company in the world to put hydrogen-powered Class 8 trucks through regular duty cycles in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Prior to and since his time at Vision, Mr. Schuermann has been a serial entrepreneur, notably in the media and film industries. Mr. Schuermann holds a BA from Westfaelische Wilhelms Universitaet Muenster (Germany) and a MBA from Azusa Pacific University and UCLA (Los Angeles).

As the Company continues to shape a vision focused on clean energy, Mr. Schuermanns appointment brings new strategy and governance expertise, adds executive experience directly in the areas of clean transportation and electrification, and bolsters Aberdeens deal sourcing and execution capabilities.

Martin brings a wealth of energy and transportation sector experience that will accelerate our ambition to be the partner-of-choice for early-stage clean technology companies. Martins strategic vision, expertise and industry contacts will help us identify and execute on world-class opportunities, commented Mr. Bharti, director of the Company.

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Im excited to work with Chris and the team to build a compelling roster of low and no-carbon investments that truly drive transformation across energy, transportation and industrial sectors. My aim is to help Aberdeen substantially grow its asset base and attract high quality capital and talent to generate significant value for Aberdeen shareholders, said Mr. Schuermann.

Mr. Schuermann replaces Stan Bharti as Executive Chairman of the Board. Mr. Bharti will remain a Director of the Company.

ABOUT ABERDEEN INTERNATIONAL INC.

Aberdeen International is a global resource investment company and merchant bank focused on small capitalization companies in the rare metals and renewable energy sectors. AES-100 Inc., an Aberdeen portfolio investment, owns the exclusive rights and all intellectual property pertaining to the Advanced Electrolyzer System for the production of hydrogen from dilute syngas.

For additional information, please visit our website at http://www.aberdeen.green

For further information, please contact:

Chris Younger Chief Executive Officer Aberdeen International Inc. Chris.Younger@Aberdeen.green (416) 861-1685

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, without limitation, statements regarding the appointment of directors, investment portfolio of the Company; the renewable energies sector and the Companys future plans. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including risks inherent in the mining industry and risks described in the public disclosure of the Company which is available under the profile of the Company on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com and on the Company's website at http://www.aberdeen.green/. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

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Clean Technology Industry Veteran, Martin Schuermann, Appointed as Aberdeens Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors - Yahoo Finance

FP trendAugust 9, 2021 17:08:32 IST

Motorola is ready to launch the new Edge 20 series smartphones in India. The company has the potential to launch Edge 20, Edge 20 Fusion, and perhaps Edge 20 Pro.The company has launched a teaser release twitter, Suggests that Edge20 smartphones will be available in India soon. Teaser also reveals the design of the Edge 20 and Edge 20 Fusion handset. The former is similar to the global variant of Edge 20, but the latter looks like Edge 20 Lite.

It was revealed that Edge 20 comes with a vertical rear camera module that houses three cameras. Edge 20 Fusion comes with a square rear camera setup with two large cameras and one small camera.

In terms of specs, the Edge 20 comes with a 6.7-inch OLED full HD + screen with a refresh rate of 144Hz and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G processor. It has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Edge 20 Fusion is offered in the same display size, except that it supports a 90 Hz refresh rate. It is equipped with MediaTek Dimensity 720 SoC.

Both phones come with a 108MP triple rear camera. The Edge 20 has a 16MP ultra-wide-angle lens and an 8MP periscopic lens, while the Edge 20 Fusion has an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera and a 2MP depth sensor. Both come with a 32MP front camera.

Both devices come with Android 11, which is close to stock, and fall into the mid-price range.

However, Motorola has not disclosed an official release date at this time.

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Everything you know so far-Technology News, Firstpost

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Everything you know so far-Technology News, Firstpost - Ohionewstime.com

Dublin, Aug. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Immunoassay Market by Product & Solutions, Platform, Application, End User - Forecast to 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global immunoassays market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% from 2021 to 2028 to reach $46.5 billion by 2028.

Succeeding extensive secondary and primary research and in-depth analysis of the market scenario, the report carries out the key industry drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities.

The growth in the immunoassays market is mainly attributed to the increasing prevalence of chronic and infectious diseases, technological advancements in immunoassays, increasing use of immunoassays in oncology and drug & alcohol testing, and the emergence of COVID-19.

Based on type, in the immunoassay kits and reagents market, the ELISA kits and reagents segment is estimated to account for the largest share of the immunoassays market in 2021. The continuous development of new biomarkers and the growing adoption of automated platforms for ELISA are the factors expected to increase the adoption of this segment.

Based on platform, the chemiluminescence immunoassays platforms segment is estimated to account for the largest share in 2021 due to the increasing prevalence of acute and chronic diseases, rapid technological advancements, and the high specificity of chemiluminescence platforms.

Based on end user, the diagnostic reference laboratories segment is estimated to account for the largest share in 2021. Factors contributing to the large share of this segment include growing technological advancements for immunoassay diagnostic platforms in laboratories, increasing number of tests carried out in diagnostic labs, rising laboratory automation, availability of well-equipped immunoassay systems, and growing prevalence of infectious diseases.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Research Methodology

3. Executive Summary

4. Market Insights 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Drivers 4.2.1. Growing Prevalence of Chronic and Infectious Diseases 4.2.2. Technological Advancements in Immunoassays 4.2.3. Increasing Use of Immunoassays in Oncology 4.2.4. Role of Immunoassays in Drug and Alcohol Testing 4.2.5. Impact of COVID-19 4.3. Restraints 4.3.1. Technical Impediments Concerned with Immunoassay kits 4.3.2. Inadequate Reimbursement Policies for Immunoassays in the U.S. and Europe 4.4. Opportunities 4.4.1. Emerging Economies 4.4.2. Integration of Microfluidics Technology in Immunoassays

5. Immunoassays Market - Regulatory Analysis 5.1. North America 5.2. Europe 5.3. Asia-Pacific5.4. Latin America and the Middle East & Africa

6. Global Immunoassays Market, by Product & Solution 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Immunoassay Kits & Reagents 6.2.1. Elisa Kits & Reagents 6.2.2. Rapid Test Kits & Reagents 6.2.3. Western Blot Kits & Reagents 6.2.4. Elispot Kits & Reagents 6.2.5. Other Immunoassay Kits & Reagents 6.3. Immunoassay Analyzers 6.4. Immunoassay Software & Services

7. Global Immunoassays Market, by Platform 7.1. Introduction 7.2. Chemiluminescence Immunoassay 7.3. Fluorescence Immunoassay 7.4. Colorimetric Immunoassay 7.5. Radioimmunoassay 7.6. Other Immunoassay Platforms

8. Global Immunoassays Market, by Application 8.1. Introduction 8.2. Infectious Diseases 8.3. Oncology 8.4. Endocrinology 8.5. Cardiology 8.6. Bone and Mineral Diseases 8.7. Autoimmune Disorders 8.8. Other Applications

9. Global Immunoassays Market, by End User 9.1. Introduction 9.2. Diagnostic Reference Laboratories 9.3. Hospitals & Clinics 9.4. Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies 9.5. Academic and Research Institutions 9.6. Other End Users

10. Immunoassays Market, by Geography 10.1. Introduction

11. Competitive Landscape 11.1. Introduction 11.2. Key Growth Strategies 11.3. Competitive Benchmarking 11.4. Market Share Analysis (2020) 11.4.1. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (SWITZERLAND) 11.4.2. Abbott Laboratories (U.S.) 11.4.3. Siemens Healthineers AG (GERMANY)

12. Company Profiles (Business Overview, Financial Overview, Product Portfolio, and Strategic Developments)12.1. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG 12.2. Siemens Healthineers AG (Subsidiary of Siemens AG) 12.3. Abbott Laboratories 12.4. Danaher Corporation 12.5. Sysmex Corporation 12.6. bioMerieux SA12.7. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. 12.8. Becton, Dickinson and Company 12.9. Merck KGaA 12.10. Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. 12.11. Agilent Technologies, Inc. 12.12. PerkinElmer, Inc.

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Global Immunoassay Market Report 2021: Opportunities in Integration of Microfluidics Technology in Immunoassays - Forecast to 2028 - Yahoo Finance

Eon's operating system can enable many new uses for a garment.

Your smartphone has already made you familiar with whats called an Operating System. An operating system lets the apps to talk to the device. You know it as either Apple AAPL iOS or Android. Conceptually, an operating system is a simple idea: a series of rules that software uses to interact with other software and hardware.

Now the concept of operating systems is moving beyond software and being applied to physical things; thats called the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT allows previously separate objects, like your lights or air conditioning, to communicate with other devices. You have seen IoT when an Alexa device adjusts room lights or garage doors or temperature settings. Over time, there will be a lot more such interaction between devices and things; operating systems facilitate those interactions.

Inevitably, connections of software to physical things will extend to the fashion industry. Imagine scenes like these:

You may be saying all of this sounds good but its far off in the future. Maybe it is, but we are seeing critical steps being taken right now for all of it and for services yet to be imagined. A company called Eon Group has created an operating system that allows manufacturers, recyclers, resellers, consumers or anyone to access complete and correct information about a garment or consumer product as smoothly as your email app gets your messages and displays them on your smartphone. Randall of Waste Management says Eons system allows us to get more materials to the top of the pyramid, where they can be recycled and re-used.

Eons operating system is getting real traction:

Natasha Franck, Founder and CEO of Eon, says, the relationship between the brand and the customer ends the moment that product is sold. But its really just the beginning of the product life cycle and the brand experience. Being able to use communication to extend that cycle and experience improves opportunities for the brand and experiences for consumers.

Annie Gullingsrud, Chief Strategy Officer at Eon, said, Eon introduces a language for those connected products to speak. Franck of Eon says, Fundamentally what were doing is very simple. Were [allowing brands or retailers] to manage it across its life cycle. That includes knowing what a product is, where it came from, who made it and what happened to it over time.

Recycling, resale and outfitting are obvious uses of a fashion operating system. But like your smartphone, once the system is in place, inventors and entrepreneurs are likely to develop more innovative ways to use the information. Industry analysts assume this technology will improve supply chain efficiency, reduce out-of-stocks and enhance marketing performance. Given the scale of the fashion and accessory industries, it is likely that the impact of this kind of information will create opportunities that are impossible to foresee right now.

Data in a report recently published by Sharpend, an IoT advisor to PepsiCo PEP , Campari, Levis and other consumer companies, says 53% of consumers would pay more for a connected product. 78% of U.S. consumers have already used an on-package QR code to engage with the product and a majority say they expect to do that more often in the next year. More than three-quarters of U.S. consumers have used connected packaging to learn about recycling or disposing of the package or product.

Cameron Worth, the founder and CEO of Sharpend, believes the fashion industry is not developing this new technology in the most effective way. About Eon, Worth said, we're big fans of Eon's proposition to the market, we think ... they have the strongest brand out there for fashion designers who want to engage in the connected space. But he believes the technology is distracting to brands. He said brands have to place experience before technology and right now ... most people are placing technology before experience. Worth thinks more focus is required on identifying a consumer pain point or exploring a transformation of new business opportunities with connected products. But the consensus among leaders is well articulated by renowned Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, a leading business strategy thinker. He says that these smart, connected products are likely to be the biggest IT-driven transformation yet, creating more innovation, productivity gains and economic growth than previous developments in information technology.

When personal computers were first created, it was not known that the companies that make the operating systems for them would become more important, and more valuable than the makers of the actual hardware. Operating systems have proven to be the underpinning of communications and operating systems are poised to move beyond computers now. Today the garment, fashion and accessories industries are still making products that cant connect with its customers or makers. With an operating system for the industry, recycling can take off, resale will be much easier and reliable, supply chains will be more efficient and the table will be set for new and innovative services to be developed. Like Uber UBER /Airbnb/Doordash/Instacart, an operating system makes physical objects more accessible and usable. Its hard to foresee all the ways those services will work before they begin but the impact on how consumers access and use fashion products will be massive.

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This Technology Will Have A Profound Effect On The Fashion Industry - Forbes

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Im Ezra Klein, and this is The Ezra Klein Show.

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So before we get into it today, were going to be doing an ask me anything episode of the show. If youve got a question youd like to hear me answer, email it to ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Again, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

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Todays show is about technology. And I want to be upfront about this. I would be useless without technology. I mean, Im for the first part, functionally blind without glasses. I cant see anything. Im a writer, but I have this terrible, unreadable handwriting that makes it difficult for me to communicate using a pen both you cant read it, but also I cant think clearly while doing it. Im so distracted by the way it turns out.

I got rejected for my college newspaper. And so the path I took into journalism it was completely built on a narrow technological moment. I happened to have a lot of free time because I was in college at the exact moment blogging became a thing. And that is how I got into journalism. And so I think of myself fundamentally as a techno- optimist. I mean, I believe that technology can make our lives better, richer, more fulfilling.

A lot of the things I care about politically, ranging from climate change to animal suffering to the dignity people have at work, it seems to me we are going to need big technological advances to make the politics of those things easy enough to overcome. But partly because Im so taken by the power of what technology can do for us, I think we underestimate and actually worse, we ignore what technologies to actually do to us.

We do not just use these tools. We become them. We are reshaped by them. This was a big theme in 20th century media criticism. And if you read Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman, it is all over their work. And it is still true. One of the critics carrying these ideas into the modern era, into our modern technologies, is Michael Sacasas, or as his pen name is, L.M. Sacasas. I know his work because I follow his excellent newsletter, The Convivial Society, which I highly recommend. What he does in that newsletter is interesting. He brings theorists of the past into conversation with the technologies of the present. And he does so to look at todays technologies outside of their current narratives and business contexts, to treat their evolution not as inevitability, but a series of choices we made, all of which should revolve around the human character and experience. And certainly, the way we evaluate whether or not these tools are serving us should revolve around the human character and experience

Sacasas recently did a piece in which he posed 41 questions 41 we should ask of the technologies we use. And technologys defined here broadly. Its computers and artificial intelligence and Zoom, but its also tables and alarm clocks and ovens. And what I loved about these questions is theyre ways of not just thinking about technologies, but about ourselves, and how we act, and what we want. And what, in the end, we truly value. As always, my email ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

Michael Sacasas, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

So I want to begin with a technological experience many of us have had over the past year. Why is talking to someone on Zoom so much more exhausting than talking to them in person or even talking to them on the phone?

Yeah, so the way I began to think about this early in the pandemic last year is that were abstracting the body from the act of communication. And not entirely in fact, Zoom in some respects provides more of a view of the body than, say, a telephone call does. But the body is really essential to the work of meaning making in communication settings. Right, so we pick up on all sorts of cues from one another to register whether someones paying attention or theyre losing interest, or whether theyre tracking with what were having to say.

There are ways in which we use our body to generate meaning. We might point or gesture. Body language, again, conveys a lot of the sense of the interaction. And so when were on Zoom, there are a number of things that sort of distract us from that. For one thing, if we havent hidden self view, we have a tendency just to look at ourselves in these settings. We see ourselves there and we want to make sure that we dont look too foolish in our presentation. And our eye glances at that.

Theres no need to get personal.

[LAUGHS] Im thinking just in my own experience. The camera is positioned in such a way that if I try to give you eye contact, I cant see your eyes and vice versa. And so we lose that ability to look into one anothers eyes. And again, I think were laboring. Our mind is sort of laboring when its used to using these tacit cues from the bodily experience, and it loses track of those or has a really hard time focusing on them. I think its just really laboring to just make sense of the kind of things were trying to talk about. And for that reason, I think it becomes exhausting. At least thats, I think, a big part of the picture.

One thing I loved about the piece is, you gave me language for something I was feeling, and then gave me courage to stop Zooming with people early in the pandemic, which there was this period when everything tried to move there. But something I reflected on a lot after it is, well, then why do I find it easier to be on the phone?

And I do think it comes back to this idea of the body. You talk about the body being there and not there on Zoom. You cant see it. You cant move it. Its micro-delayed, given what you would expect on the other end of the connection.

But youre also stilled. So on the phone, I cant see your body right now. You cant see mind. Weve turned off the cameras for all these reasons. But it means I can move around.

My body can be like a body, at least on my end, as opposed to a still body, because Im worried about your end. And just that point that what is happening in our bodies affects profoundly what is happening in our interactions with technologies and each other its pretty big, and its laced through your work. So I was wondering if you could talk a bit about it.

So Ive picked up bits and pieces from a variety of philosophers and theorists to kind of help me make sense of what were doing when were using technology. And at some point early on, it became clear to me that the body is a really essential part of this picture. I sometimes think of the body and the world in our minds kind of creating a circuit.

And so then, we introduce a tool into that circuit, and its going to shape how we perceive the world, and its going to shape how we interpret the world. And so the body is at the nexus of our experience of reality, and technology enters into that loop of perception in ways that can be benign, in ways that can be beneficial, in ways that can be detrimental. But it certainly changes it.

And so thats one important lesson that Ive taken from people like Don Ihde, who is a philosopher of technology, who I think is one of the ones that has kind of made this a central concern in his little branch of philosophy of technology. And I think its always useful to ask that question: how is this tool that Im bringing to my body, into my interactions with the world, shaping the way that I perceive the world, in often very subtle ways?

Were about to ask a lot of good questions like this about technology, but let me ask you about one place Ive seen you bring this, which youve made me attentive to, which is technologies that make you forget your body is there. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah, so many of us whose work focuses around the computer or around the workspace where we sit down to do knowledge work, I feel like we get very absorbed in that. Theres a tendency to just become absorbed in what were doing and to forget the needs of the body, right? Im thinking, for example, of this idea of email apnea, which was coined by Linda Stone, a researcher with Microsoft many years ago.

You know, you essentially kind of catch your breath when youre focusing on what youre reading online. Its one way in which it kind of upsets the ordinary rhythms of our bodily existence. Theres a lot of effort made to make our tools ergonomic, friendly to the body.

But more often than not, we find ourselves in postures that are not really great for us. And so we have to be reminded. We have an app that reminds us to get up every so often, so we dont stay in that position. So thats one way, I think, in which a very, very common work experience for individuals and an experience that frankly is not just limited to work can make us forgetful of the needs of the body.

So this begins to get at something you do a lot in your work, which is reverse the way we usually think of the ethics of technology. And you use it in this essay that will frame a lot of our conversation about 41 questions one should ask of technology. You begin with the example of a hammer. Now, a hammer can be used, you say, to build a home. It can be used to bash in a skull.

So one way of looking at a technology like a hammer is the ethics of it are simply what we do with it. It is just our ethics, transferred to the hammer. But you suggest a different question, which is, how does having the hammer in my hand encourage me to perceive the world around me? What feelings does it arouse in me? So tell me a little bit about that move, from us directing the technology, to the technology changing our experience, or the nature of ourselves.

A lot of thinking about ethics or technology traditionally a little less so now often involved the question of, what am I going to do with this tool? So hence, the example of the hammer. In this view, the tool is ostensibly neutral.

And I think thats the idea that I find myself pushing back against a good bit. So in one sense, it makes a certain amount of sense that, yeah, I can do good things with this tool, this hammer. I can use it to build a house or repair something, or I can use it to hit somebody. And in that sense, what matters is my intention and the use to which I put it.

So I want to push back on not the fact that thats untrue, but that its inadequate as a way of thinking about how technology impinges on the moral life or what we think of as ethics. And so the example that I give there with the hammer has to do with perception. So one of the key ways in which I think technologies fail to be neutral is that they shape how we perceive the world, and they dispose us in a certain way towards the world.

So the hammers a trite example. People often have heard the expression: to the person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And this reflects the way in which, when that hammer comes into that circuit of mind, body, and world, it transforms how the world appears to us or what it makes us see the world as.

And so that is one example. A camera is another example. And by cameras, I simply mean the smartphone so many of us carry with us all the time, and how it kind of reframes aspects of experience as memories to be recorded, for example.

So we might have felt differently about experiences, seen it differently, without the camera in hand. But now that its there, even if we choose not to take the picture, for a moment, it has changed how we interpret what is happening or what is going on.

The camera is such a good example of this. I think sometimes about how much the smartphone camera has changed my experience of parenting. Because constantly, when my son does something cute, my instinct is that I need to whip out my phone to record the cute thing, so it can be shared with my family or memorialized for the future.

And seven times out of 10, when I do that, I stop the thing that was happening. He sees the phone, he gets interested in that, he sees me doing something, he just gets interested in whatever change had happened to me, and I break the circuit of the experience. Im not even saying its all bad. Im happy to have many of the photos and videos I have of him. And then, sometimes I now try to not have my phone when Im with him. I leave it at home. But then, hell do something cute, and Ill be, in a part of my head, frustrated that I just have to sit there and experience it, and I cant let anybody else know this wonderful thing has happened. And its a really different experience, even though I just didnt have access to a smartphone camera at all.

Yeah, I mean, thats a great example. I have two little girls, so I can very much relate to this. And I want to echo the point that you made. A lot of this is not about saying its good or bad. And I think very often, people just want to know, is this a good thing? Is this is a bad thing?

And I think part of the point that I often try to make is that something can be morally significant without necessarily being good or bad by itself. So thats a point that we can come back to at some point. But yeah, definitely, the experience of wanting to document reality. You know, one thing Ive found I dont know if this is true for you as a parent is that somewhere, theres this sense that you want to kind of arrest the growth of your kids, you know.

Theyre growing up so fast, and you want to document where theyve been along the way. Paradoxically, in my experience anyway, I think Ive almost found that having this very pervasive record, visual record of their growth, has made that actually a more pronounced experience, a greater sense of things slipping by, slipping away.

And I often wonder, how would the experience of being a parent in relation to a child in this way have been different, as it was the majority of human history. People just didnt have a photographic record of the sort. All they had was their memory to work with. And so to me, thats an interesting question. Its a moral question that involves a very profound human relationship and how we experience it.

So let me take that as a bridge to the 41 questions. And Im simply going to pose these to you. Youre the one who wrote them. I appreciate you making my job so easy.

And I will maybe sometimes offer a prompt of the technology we can talk about, but of course, you should feel free to take it wherever you want. And so the first question you implore us to ask of a technology is, what sort of person will the use of this technology make of me? And I would say, lets use Twitter as the example.

Yeah, and thats the most general of those questions, I think, and it comes out of my sense that we become what we habitually do. So Ill say that the way I think of the moral life and moral formation is really influenced by virtue ethic theory, which places a lot of emphasis on habit, disposition, and inclinations.

And so Im on Twitter a lot. So this is the one social media platform that I am on with some regularity. And I find that when Im on Twitter, I tend to feel a little anxious, a little scatterbrained. I do feel like my focus is sort of distracted in ways that arent entirely good for me.

So I use it as a way of building relationships, garnering information, kind of keeping an eye on the way the world in that little Twitter sphere is reacting to current events. But I do feel it taxes me mentally. It frames the way I think about what I say.

So Im very aware of the audience on Twitter and how they might respond to what I may want to tweet. And so theres this little editing voice in my head that takes the Twitter audience for granted. And I think eventually, that sort of spills out, that may spill out into other spheres of life.

And then, theres of course the tendency to take the experience of Twitter and normalize it, or to say that this is a one-to-one map of reality. And we have to, I think, guard against that tendency. So there are ways in which it kind of plays with our emotional, cognitive lives the way it frames the self.

Its a kind of performance that were undergoing for the audience on Twitter. Those are some of the ways that I think come to mind, in terms of how thats beginning to shape me as a person, the way that I think about myself and what I do.

I want to hold on that idea of the self as a performance. Because thats one of the things I noticed. People who listen to the show know I have a lot of thoughts on Twitter, and I stay off of it a lot of the time, and then I tend to jump on it when I have something to promote.

But particularly when Im using it more, one of the things that is striking to me about it is it makes me somebody who thinks a much wider expanse of my thoughts are things other people should also hear. You know, I was a writer before there was really Twitter.

And as a writer, the things I thought people should hear were of a certain variety. They had a certain weight to them. A certain amount of effort went into them. They were about a certain set of topics, for the most part. And on Twitter, its literally what I thought of the Loki season finale. I mean, its anything.

And it makes me more audience- and approval-hungry, and possibly more backlash-aversive or something. I do think it is both believing more of what I think should be shared, and also shaping that more to social approval, than I do in other mediums. But over time, that actually does change how I think, and if I let it, what kind of person I am, but also what kind of person I present myself as to the world.

Yeah, no, absolutely. An example of this resonates what you just described. I found myself reading a book a couple of days ago, and underlining some passages of note. And immediately, my first thought was, Ive got to put this on Twitter.

And I had to resist the urge, and I consciously thought of, how would I have done this if I didnt have Twitter? How would my experience of reading have been a little bit different? And why do I feel compelled to share this? Do I feel compelled to share this because I think, oh, this will play really well within my networks?

And I think that sense of approval, of its sometimes described as a kind of dopamine hit that you get and then, we begin to crave that, and then that bending of the self to the perceptions of the audience, that feedback loop, I think, can become really powerful.

Lets go to the next question. What habits will the use of this technology instill? And lets talk about electric lighting.

I recently wrote a little bit about the loss of the night sky, so this is what comes immediately to mind. Famous anecdote I think it was in LA. There was a massive power outage.

And there were a number of calls to 911 about this striking, glowing thing in the sky, which turns out to be the Milky Way, which numerous people hadnt seen. And so one thing that comes to mind with electric lighting this maybe isnt quite a habit, but theres a sense of where I look. What can I see? How do I experience darkness?

And there are long social trends here, going back to the beginning of electrification and even gas lighting in European cities. But it changes the character of daily life, in terms of my habits even of experiencing sleep and rest. And so its mundane technology, but its one thats been profoundly formative of just the experience of the day, how we order and structure our day.

It opened up the night, in many respects, for activities that wouldnt have been possible elsewhere. But I think also, and again, going back to the question of the body, remembering were embodied creatures. Maybe its kind of messing with the rest our body needs. We have the habit of staying up later than perhaps we ought. Were timing ourselves to rhythms that are not necessarily conducive to our well-being.

And so theres a way of experiencing the night, both at a macro level with regards to what we see, and the loss of connection with the naturally dark sky, to social life, impact on social life, and then impact on personal life. So at those three scales, different habits will be generated by the fact that we can flip a switch and carry on with our activities when the sun goes down.

Your next question, I really love. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time? And Ill let you choose the example here.

Oh, the clock. I love thinking about technologies that we take for granted, that we dont think of anymore as technologies. And so the clock is a fascinating piece of technology, the mechanical clock. It was originally used to help monks keep their daily rhythm of prayer, and then it comes to structure so much of modern life.

Lewis Mumford in the 1930s, in his book Technics and Civilization, makes a great deal of this. He says that its the clock that is the centerpiece of the modern world, in that it divides time. It segments time into discrete measurable units. To think that without the mechanical clock, it really doesnt make sense to say, Ill meet you at 12:10.

But that just wasnt the way that human beings experienced the passage of time. It gives us a sense of time as something to be lost or wasted, measured. It generates a kind of anxiety about that. So time, I think, is one of the fundamental moral dimensions of human experience.

And so we tend to think, well, time is just time. Everybody experiences it similarly, and we relate to it similarly. But in fact, its one of the realities that has been, I think, most profoundly shaped by the technologies that we use to measure time. And then, of course, when we were able to put that measurement device on our wrists, it made that ubiquitous.

We all know where we are in this finely calibrated ordering of time, and that allows us to relate to it in different ways, to think of punctuality differently. It changes our sense of the politeness of arrival and departure. And I think there are still certain cultures in which you can see that there is a profound difference with the way, certainly, that Westerners tend to think about what it means to abide by time.

Speaking of always knowing where you are, the next question, which I really like, is how will the use of technology affect my experience of place? And I want to use here a technology that arose in my lifetime, which is ubiquitous GPS maps.

Thats another great example. I actually thought of it on the way to the studio here. I dont have a smartphone, so I dont have GPS on me all the time, and I have an old car.

So I made note. I did use Google Maps to find the location of the place, relative to where I was, and then just made a mental note of it, and I made my way here. And I thought, well, itd be really bad if I got lost and wasnt on time, so I made a point of taking down the number.

And one thing Ive observed in other contexts is that sometimes these technologies that make things very easy very efficient, in some respects they eliminate certain things. So what would I have done if I had gotten lost? I would have stopped for directions. It would have required a kind of human interaction.

And so that changes. But then, also, I think the way we tend to use when I have used GPS the way we tend to use GPS is that it directs our attention not so much to the place itself, but to the directions were receiving. So if were just listening to the voice thats going to tell us, turn in 100 yards or whatever the case may be, our attention is focused on that, rather than, if I were told, you need to watch out for the corner of this intersection, then Im more actively engaged in figuring out where I am.

And so its not that we have to do that all the time, that we need to necessarily that using GPS is bad. But it does, I think, change the relationship that we have to the place, our ability to know that place well. And you may or may not put a moral value on that. But if you do, yeah, definitely, I think that ubiquitous GPS use has an effect of creating a certain distance from place, of abstracting us from place, making us less attentive to it in ways that might be beneficial.

How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people? And the example Id like to use here is search engines.

Thats a good example, in that it pushes it a little bit. Because if we rely on the search engine, for example, to form our picture of the world, our idea of what others are like, when we try to understand those that are not immediately in our network of friends or colleagues, then it filters a picture of the world of others to us.

How are those search results being determined? What is being included? What is being excluded? How is the algorithm calibrating the kind of information Im going to receive?

And I think that does tend to impact the shape of our perception of others, not necessarily those closest to us, but those others that we know in this more mediated fashion. It changes our understanding of who they are, and eclipses, I think, important aspects of the fullness of their personality, or the complexity of their view of the world. I think that would be perhaps a risk with the search engine as the mediator of our relationship to others.

You know, theres somewhere else I thought you might go, but this is in truth just where I went when I saw the question, which is, it made me think about how many conversations with other people I do not have because of search engines.

Yes.

How many times when my map of knowledge to fill something in would simply require, and did require when I was younger, just asking. Do you know? What do you think? Where should I go to dinner? Do you know this persons phone number? Have you heard of? Do you remember that president? Do you know when this happened?

And on the one hand, the information I got from those conversations was probably much less precise. And on the other hand, there was a lot of other information, and there was relationship building that happened in those conversations. And so I dont think I would tend to think about search engines as a social technology or a technology with a heavy social effect.

Theyre not social media, famously. Theyre the thing that came before it. But they actually really changed the social world and took a whole expanse of interaction out of it and into a sort of bilateral between me and the computer.

Yeah, and thats a great example. I think thats a wonderful thing about these questions, you know. Whatever might come to my mind is not going to be what comes to somebody elses mind. But thats, I think, a terrific example of the way that it enters into that loop of social relations, yeah.

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Im going to jump forward a little bit here. What practices will the use of this technology displace? What do you think of when you hear that?

I think of something like the example of the GPS. So the practice of finding my way on a map or getting directions from someone, and so that social connection that gets set aside because I can just look this up on my phone and find my way there. I can think even of something more mundane, the way we organize our dinners or our meals together.

Theres a philosopher of technology, Albert Borgmann, who famously made a big deal about this. And we think about what was involved for a family, and again, one has to recognize that not all families are structured similarly. But if we think about the way that all members of a family might have been involved in putting a meal on the table and gathering around it. So then we think of the alternative, which initially, maybe in the 1980s when Borgmann was writing, was just, pop something into the microwave, and everybodys served.

More recently, you might think of the app, delivery app, that just brings you the food. It has displaced certain rituals or roles within a family, certain interactions within a family or within a network of friends, even, who might gather for a meal. That might be a felt loss.

Again, not necessarily morally wrong or morally right, but consequential with regards to what is binding that family or that network of friends together. There was a kind of labor involved in putting that meal together, and that labor itself had an important role to play in the dynamics of the relationship that are outsourced when we change the practice by finding technological shortcuts around it to get to the same end, but through different means.

I really like this couplet of questions: what will the use of this technology encourage me to notice? And the technology that came to mind there was the ubiquity of social media or just social profiles for people that when I meet somebody or even often before I meet them, I can look them up on a profile that is going to encourage me to notice other things than I would have if I had just called them up or heard about them from a friend.

Yeah, each of us are such complex realities, such a tangle of desires, emotions, insecurities, capacities and capabilities, and histories and narratives. And any attempt to kind of capture that, certainly in an online profile, is necessarily going to leave some important dimensions of the person out.

And if we come to know a person chiefly, initially, through a profile by looking them up, well bring those preconceptions to the table when we meet them, and it will have the tendency, I would say, to reduce our understanding. But of course, that can change over time. The dynamics of the relationship might be such that we get to see these other aspects of one another.

Well, if there is a relationship, it might. But what that made me think of: there was a very funny but also telling article in New York Magazine, probably a month ago now. And it talked about how on dating apps in New York, Tinder and, I guess, Hinge I dont know what everybodys dating on in New York. But it talked about the amount of very far-left signaling on a lot of the apps.

So eat the rich, or Im going to burn civilization down and light my joint in the fires, or just a lot of very hardcore socialist signaling. But then, people meet each other, and of course theyre not that hardcore, and theyre not really revolutionaries, and theyre not really trying to upend society. And theres a very, very funny anecdote in there of a woman who ended up on a date with a guy whose profile was all about how much he hated the rich, about how much he wanted to abolish billionaires, and so on.

And then, when they met, after a couple times and he just kept ranting about how he hated the rich hed be like, listen, Im actually rich. And she was like, oh, well, I still like you. [LAUGHTER] Lets keep dating.

I think a lot of the way we display who we are in flattened profiles is wrong about who we are, what tradeoffs we really make. But what it does is, it creates a kind of filtering of, is this person like me or not?

I wonder how much of that has to do with the scale at which were operating. So you know, like you said, if we build a relationship, we might correct our perception. But were not going to build that kind of relationship with the vast number of people that we interact with online, even if its not directly with them online.

And there is a need to find some quick way of sorting, of categorizing. And so theres this built-in temptation, I think, to use these categories to drop people into or if we think that thats what theyre going to expect of us, to try to fill that role or to live up to that role.

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Opinion | This Conversation Changed the Way I Interact With Technology - The New York Times

It was on the day I read a Facebook post by my sick friend that I started to really question my relationship with technology.

An old friend had posted a status update saying he needed to rush to the hospital because he was having a health crisis. I half-choked on my tea and stared at my laptop. I recognized the post as a plea for support. I felt fear for him, and then I did nothing about it, because I saw in another tab that Id just gotten a new email and went to check that instead.

After a few minutes scrolling my Gmail, I realized something was messed up. The new email was obviously not as urgent as the sick friend, and yet Id acted as if they had equal claims on my attention. What was wrong with me? Was I a terrible person? I dashed off a message to my friend, but continued to feel disturbed.

Gradually, though, I came to think this was less an indication that I was an immoral individual and more a reflection of a bigger societal problem. I began to notice that digital technology often seems to make it harder for us to respond in the right way when someone is suffering and needs our help.

Think of all the times a friend has called you to talk through something sad or stressful, and you could barely stop your twitchy fingers from checking your email or scrolling through Instagram as they talked. Think of all the times youve seen an article in your Facebook News Feed about anguished people desperate for help starving children in Yemen, dying Covid-19 patients in India only to get distracted by a funny meme that appears right above it.

Think of the countless stories of camera phones short-circuiting human decency. Many a bystander has witnessed a car accident or a fist-fight and taken out their phone to film the drama rather than rushing over to see if the victim needs help. One Canadian government-commissioned report found that when our experience of the world is mediated by smartphones, we often fixate on capturing a spectacle because we want the rush well get from the instant reaction to our videos on social media.

Multiple studies have suggested that digital technology is shortening our attention spans and making us more distracted. What if its also making us less empathetic, less prone to ethical action? What if its degrading our capacity for moral attention the capacity to notice the morally salient features of a given situation so that we can respond appropriately?

There is a lot of evidence to indicate that our devices really are having this negative effect. Tech companies continue to bake in design elements that amplify the effect elements that make it harder for us to sustain uninterrupted attention to the things that really matter, or even to notice them in the first place. And they do this even though its becoming increasingly clear that this is bad not only for our individual interpersonal relationships, but also for our politics. Theres a reason why former President Barack Obama now says that the internet and social media have created the single biggest threat to our democracy.

The idea of moral attention goes back at least as far as ancient Greece, where the Stoics wrote about the practice of attention (prosoch) as the cornerstone of a good spiritual life. In modern Western thought, though, ethicists didnt focus too much on attention until a band of female philosophers came along, starting with Simone Weil.

Weil, an early 20th-century French philosopher and Christian mystic, wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. She believed that to be able to properly pay attention to someone else to become fully receptive to their situation in all its complexity you need to first get your own self out of the way. She called this process decreation, and explained: Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty ... ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it.

Weil argued that plain old attention the kind you use when reading novels, say, or birdwatching is a precondition for moral attention, which is a precondition for empathy, which is a precondition for ethical action.

Later philosophers, like Iris Murdoch and Martha Nussbaum, picked up and developed Weils ideas. They garbed them in the language of Western philosophy; Murdoch, for example, appeals to Plato as she writes about the need for unselfing. But this central idea of unselfing or decreation is perhaps most reminiscent of Eastern traditions like Buddhism, which has long emphasized the importance of relinquishing our ego and training our attention so we can perceive and respond to others needs. It offers tools like mindfulness meditation for doing just that.

The idea that you should practice emptying out your self to become receptive to someone else is antithetical to todays digital technology, says Beverley McGuire, a historian of religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington who researches moral attention.

Decreating the self thats the opposite of social media, she says, adding that Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are all about identity construction. Users build up an aspirational version of themselves, forever adding more words, images, and videos, thickening the self into a brand.

Whats more, over the past decade a bevy of psychologists have conducted multiple studies exploring how (and how often) people use social media and the way it impacts their psychological health. Theyve found that social media encourages users to compare themselves to others. This social comparison is baked into the platforms design. Because the Facebook algorithms bump posts up in our newsfeed that have gotten plenty of Likes and congratulatory comments, we end up seeing a highlight reel of our friends lives. They seem to be always succeeding; we feel like failures by contrast. We typically then either spend more time scrolling on Facebook in the hope that well find someone worse off so we feel better, or we post our own status update emphasizing how great our lives are going. Both responses perpetuate the vicious cycle.

In other words, rather than helping us get our own selves out of the way so we can truly attend to others, these platforms encourage us to create thicker selves and to shore them up defensively, competitively against other selves we perceive as better off.

And what about email? What was really happening the day I got distracted from my sick friends Facebook post and went to look at my Gmail instead? I asked Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google. He now leads the Center for Humane Technology, which aims to realign tech with humanitys best interests, and he was part of the popular Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.

Weve all been there, he assures me. I worked on Gmail myself, and I know how the tab changes the number in parentheses. When you see the number [go up], its tapping into novelty seeking same as a slot machine. Its making you aware of a gap in your knowledge and now you want to close it. Its a curiosity gap.

Plus, human beings naturally avert their attention from uncomfortable or painful stimuli like a health crisis, Harris adds. And now, with notifications coming at us from all sides, Its never been easier to have an excuse to attenuate or leave an uncomfortable stimulus.

By fragmenting my attention and dangling before it the possibility of something newer and happier, Gmails design had exploited my innate psychological vulnerabilities and had made me more likely to turn away from my sick friends post, degrading my moral attention.

The problem isnt just Gmail. Silicon Valley designers have studied a whole suite of persuasive technology tricks and used them in everything from Amazons one-click shopping to Facebooks News Feed to YouTubes video recommender algorithm. Sometimes the goal of persuasive technology is to get us to spend money, as with Amazon. But often its just to keep us looking and scrolling and clicking on a platform for as long as possible. Thats because the platform makes its money not by selling something to us, but by selling us that is, our attention to advertisers.

Think of how Snapchat rewards you with badges when youre on the app more, how Instagram sends you notifications to come check out the latest image, how Twitter purposely makes you wait a few seconds to see notifications, or how Facebooks infinite scroll feature invites you to engage in just one ... more ... scroll.

A lot of these tricks can be traced back to BJ Fogg, a social scientist who in 1998 founded the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab to teach budding entrepreneurs how to modify human behavior through tech. A lot of designers who went on to hold leadership positions at companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Google (including Harris) passed through Foggs famous classes. More recently, technologists have codified these lessons in books like Hooked by Nir Eyal, which offers instructions on how to make a product addictive.

The result of all this is what Harris calls human downgrading: A decade of evidence now suggests that digital tech is eroding our attention, which is eroding our moral attention, which is eroding our empathy.

In 2010, psychologists at the University of Michigan analyzed the findings of 72 studies of American college students empathy levels conducted over three decades. They discovered something startling: There had been a more than 40 percent drop in empathy among students. Most of that decline happened after 2000 the decade that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube took off leading to the hypothesis that digital tech was largely to blame.

In 2014, a team of psychologists in California authored a study exploring technologys impact from a different direction: They studied kids at a device-free outdoor camp. After five days without their phones, the kids were accurately reading peoples facial expressions and emotions much better than a control group of kids. Talking to one another face to face, it seemed, had enhanced their attentional and emotional capacities.

In a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, 89 percent of American respondents admitted that they whipped out their phone during their last social interaction. Whats more, 82 percent said it deteriorated the conversation and decreased the empathic connection they felt toward the other people they were with.

But whats even more disconcerting is that our devices disconnect us even when were not using them. As the MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, who researches technologys adverse effects on social behavior, has noted: Studies of conversation, both in the laboratory and in natural settings, show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of their vision changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they feel. People keep the conversation on topics where they wont mind being interrupted. They dont feel as invested in each other.

Were living in Simone Weils nightmare.

Digital tech doesnt only erode our attention. It also divides and redirects our attention into separate information ecosystems, so that the news you see is different from, say, the news your grandmother sees. And that has profound effects on what each of us ends up viewing as morally salient.

To make this concrete, think about the recent US election. As former President Donald Trump racked up millions of votes, many liberals wondered incredulously how nearly half of the electorate could possibly vote for a man who had put kids in cages, enabled a pandemic that had killed many thousands of Americans, and so much more. How was all this not a dealbreaker?

You look over at the other side and you say, Oh, my god, how can they be so stupid? Arent they seeing the same information Im seeing? Harris said. And the answer is, theyre not.

Trump voters saw a very different version of reality than others over the past four years. Their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other accounts fed them countless stories about how the Democrats are crooked, crazy, or straight-up Satanic (see under: QAnon). These platforms helped ensure that a user who clicked on one such story would be led down a rabbit hole where theyd be met by more and more similar stories.

Say you could choose between two types of Facebook feeds: one that constantly gives you a more complex and more challenging view of reality, and one that constantly gives you more reasons why youre right and the other side is wrong. Which would you prefer?

Most people would prefer the second feed (which technologists call an affirmation feed), making that option more successful for the companys business model than the first (the confronting feed), Harris explained. Social media companies give users more of what theyve already indicated they like, so as to keep their attention for longer. The longer they can keep users eyes glued to the platform, the more they get paid by their advertisers. That means the companies profit by putting each of us into our own ideological bubble.

Think about how this plays out when a platform has 2.7 billion users, as Facebook does. The business model shifts our collective attention onto certain stories to the exclusion of others. As a result, we become increasingly convinced that were good and the other side is evil. We become less empathetic for what the other side might have experienced.

In other words, by narrowing our attention, the business model also ends up narrowing our moral attention our ability to see that there may be other perspectives that matter morally.

The consequences can be catastrophic.

Myanmar offers a tragic example. A few years ago, Facebook users there used the platform to incite violence against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority group in the Buddhist-majority country. The memes, messages, and news that Facebook allowed to be posted and shared on its platform vilified the Rohingya, casting them as illegal immigrants who harmed local Buddhists. Thanks to the Facebook algorithm, these emotion-arousing posts were shared countless times, directing users attention to an ever narrower and darker view of the Rohingya. The platform, by its own admission, did not do enough to redirect users attention to sources that would call this view into question. Empathy dwindled; hate grew.

In 2017, thousands of Rohingya were killed, hundreds of villages were burned to the ground, and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee. It was, the United Nations said, a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

Myanmars democracy was long known to be fragile, while the United States has been considered a democracy par excellence. But Obama wasnt exaggerating when he said that democracy itself is at stake, including on American soil. The past few years have seen mounting concern over the way social media gives authoritarian politicians a leg up: By offering them a vast platform where they can demonize a minority group or other threat, social media enables them to fuel a populations negative emotions like anger and fear so it will rally to them for protection.

Negative emotions last longer, are stickier, and spread faster, explained Harris. So thats why the negative tends to outcompete the positive unless social media companies take concerted action to stop the spread of hate speech or misinformation. But even when it came to the consequential 2020 US election, which they had ample time to prepare for, their action still came too little, too late, analysts noted. The way that attention, and by extension moral attention, was shaped online ended up breeding a tragic moral outcome offline: Five people died in the Capitol riot.

People who point out the dangers of digital tech are often met with a couple of common critiques. The first one goes like this: Its not the tech companies fault. Its users responsibility to manage their own intake. We need to stop being so paternalistic!

This would be a fair critique if there were symmetrical power between users and tech companies. But as the documentary The Social Dilemma illustrates, the companies understand us better than we understand them or ourselves. Theyve got supercomputers testing precisely which colors, sounds, and other design elements are best at exploiting our psychological weaknesses (many of which were not even conscious of) in the name of holding our attention. Compared to their artificial intelligence, were all children, Harris says in the documentary. And children need protection.

Another critique suggests: Technology may have caused some problems but it can also fix them. Why dont we build tech that enhances moral attention?

Thus far, much of the intervention in the digital sphere to enhance that has not worked out so well, says Tenzin Priyadarshi, the director of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.

Its not for lack of trying. Priyadarshi and designers affiliated with the center have tried creating an app, 20 Day Stranger, that gives continuous updates on what another person is doing and feeling. You get to know where they are, but never find out who they are. The idea is that this anonymous yet intimate connection might make you more curious or empathetic toward the strangers you pass every day.

They also designed an app called Mitra. Inspired by Buddhist notions of a virtuous friend (kalya-mitra), it prompts you to identify your core values and track how much you acted in line with them each day. The goal is to heighten your self-awareness, transforming your mind into a better friend and ally.

I tried out this app, choosing family, kindness, and creativity as the three values I wanted to track. For a few days, it worked great. Being primed with a reminder that I value family gave me the extra nudge I needed to call my grandmother more often. But despite my initial excitement, I soon forgot all about the app. It didnt send me push notifications reminding me to log in each day. It didnt congratulate me when I achieved a streak of several consecutive days. It didnt gamify my successes by rewarding me with points, badges, stickers, or animal gifs standard fare in behavior modification apps these days.

I hated to admit that the absence of these tricks led me to abandon the app. But when I confessed this to McGuire, the University of North Carolina Wilmington professor, she told me her students reacted the same way. In 2019, she conducted a formal study on students who were asked to use Mitra. She found that although the app increased their moral attention to some extent, none of them said theyd continue using it beyond the study.

Theyve become so accustomed to apps manipulating their attention and enticing them in certain ways that when they use apps that are intentionally designed not to do that, they find them boring, McGuire said.

Priyadarshi told me he now believes that the lack of addictive features is part of why new social networks meant as more ethical alternatives to Facebook and Twitter like Ello, Diaspora, or App.net never manage to peel very many people off the big platforms.

So hes working to design tech that enhances peoples moral attention on the platforms where they already spend time. Inspired by pop-up ads on browsers, he wants users to be able to integrate a plug-in that periodically peppers their feeds with good behavioral nudges, like, Have you said a kind word to a colleague today? or, Did you call someone whos elderly or sick?

Sounds nice, but implicit in this is a surrender to a depressing fact: Companies such as Facebook have found a winning strategy for monopolizing our attention. Technologists cant convert people away unless theyre willing to use the same harmful tricks as Facebook, which some thinkers feel defeats the purpose.

That brings up a fundamental question. Since hooking our attention manipulatively is part of what makes Facebook so successful, if were asking it to hook our attention less, does that require it to give up some of its profit?

Yes, they very much would have to, Harris said. This is where it gets uncomfortable, because we realize that our whole economy is entangled with this. More time on these platforms equals more money, so if the healthy thing for society was less use of Facebook and a very different kind of Facebook, thats not in line with the business model and theyre not going to be for it.

Indeed, they are not for it. Facebook ran experiments in 2020 to see if posts deemed bad for the world like political misinformation could be demoted in the News Feed. They could, but at a cost: The number of times people opened Facebook decreased. The company abandoned the approach.

So, what can we do? We have two main options: regulation and self-regulation. We need both.

On a societal level, we have to start by recognizing that Big Tech is probably not going to change unless the law forces it to, or it becomes too costly (financially or reputationally) not to change.

So one thing we can do as citizens is demand tech reform, putting public pressure on tech leaders and calling them out if they fail to respond. Meanwhile, tech policy experts can push for new regulations. These regulations will have to change Big Techs incentives by punishing unwanted behavior for example, by forcing platforms to pay for the harms they inflict on society and rewarding humane behavior. Changed incentives would increase the chances that if up-and-coming technologists design non-manipulative tech, and investors move funding toward them, their better technologies can actually take off in the marketplace.

Regulatory changes are already in the offing: Just look at the recent antitrust charges against Google in the US, and President Joe Bidens decisions to appoint Big Tech critic Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission and to sign a sweeping executive order taking aim at anti-competitive practices in tech.

As the historian Tim Wu has chronicled in his book The Attention Merchants, weve got reason to be hopeful about a regulatory approach: In the past, when people felt a new invention was getting particularly distracting, they launched countermovements that successfully curtailed it. When colorful lithographic posters came on the scene in 19th-century France, suddenly filling the urban environment, Parisians grew disgusted with the ads. They enacted laws to limit where posters can go. Those regulations are still in place today.

Changing the regulatory landscape is crucial because the onus cannot be all on the individual to resist machinery designed to be incredibly irresistible. However, we cant just wait for the laws to save us. Priyadarshi said digital tech moves too fast for that. By the time policymakers and lawmakers come up with mechanisms to regulate, technology has gone 10 years ahead, he told me. Theyre always playing catch-up.

So even as we seek regulation of Big Tech, we individuals need to learn to self-regulate to train our attention as best we can.

Thats the upshot of Jenny Odells book How to Do Nothing. Its not an anti-technology screed urging us to simply flee Facebook and Twitter. Instead, she urges us to try resistance-in-place.

A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind, she writes. What is needed, then, is not a once-and-for-all type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it, to improve its acuity.

Odell describes how shes trained her attention by studying nature, especially birds and plants. There are many other ways to do it, from meditating (as the Buddhists recommend) to reading literature (as Martha Nussbaum recommends).

As for me, Ive been doing all three. In the year since my sick friends Facebook post, Ive become more intentional about birding, meditating, and reading fiction in order to train my attention. I am building attentional muscles in the hope that, next time someone needs me, I will be there for them, fully present, rapt.

Reporting for this article was supported by Public Theologies of Technology and Presence, a journalism and research initiative based at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Sigal Samuel is a Senior Reporter for Voxs Future Perfect and co-Host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes about artificial intelligence, neuroscience, climate change, and the intersection of technology with ethics and religion.

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Technology may be wreaking havoc on our morality - Vox.com