Best available human

“There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies”. This sentiment applies both to the direction the technology is taking in the long term as well as how humans can reliably apply AI in the short term in their work.

To address this, innovation professor Ethan Mollick proposed the best available human (BAH) standard. It “asks the following question: would the best available AI in a particular moment, in a particular place, do a better job solving a problem than the best available human that is actually able to help in a particular situation?” Applications include cofounding, coaching and more to come.

Cracking military grade secrets

Regular technology readers might remember the story of a USB stick containing millions of locked bitcoin. It’s back again, this time with hundreds of millions on the line due to price movements as well as a solution to the cryptographic riddle.

Wired reported that a startup founded by a group of white hat hackers had found a solution to cracking the IronKey USB, which was funded in part by the US Department of Homeland Security with the aim of being tamper resistant to be secure enough to be used by military and intelligence agencies.

The mechanism of the USB stick works as follows. If the wrong password is entered 10 times then the contents will be erased forever. The startup hacked the system by extending this trial and error window thereby applying brute force and guessing passwords 200 trillion or so times (which lasted a few hours).

Green oil

Extracting hydrogen from underground can serve as a clean energy source alternative. Using the adjective green is both testament to the geological promise as well as the actual green colour involved. More from how the US is investing in this here and how Algeria is helping Germany here.

Startup societies

During the second wave of the pandemic I wrote that one of the geopolitical implications of the increased reliance on home office is that the concept of a nation state will (have to) be revisited to allow for greater material mobility.

Back then (May ‘21) I referred to two examples of cities that applied the above principle. The map below shows the evolution of an entire ecosystem of such startup and remote worker societies. The full list as well as further thoughts can be explored here.

India’s space program

India has one of the oldest space programs in the world. It started in 1962 which is a year after JFK set the goal for the US to put a human on the moon. Recently it also joined the EU and the US to study the sun after launching a probe into space. Here’s how it all started and where it might be heading.

I’m currently reading about Dostoyevski’s life. Besides the non linearity of his events, the author’s approach to tea also stood out. “The world can go to hell as long as I get my tea”.

This reminded me of Orwell’s thinking. “All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes—a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.”

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7,000 slide presentation

To celebrate the launch of its new model, the Swedish car manufacturer Saab prepared a slideshow with 7000 slides which was broadcasted via 80 projectors. A brilliant summary of the history of slides, along with the story of creating PPT, can be found here – get tea, a long but entertaining read.

Geo-dirigisme 

Political researchers in Italy and Austria published a paper reconstructing the evolution of EU industrial policy via the lens of falling behind other global players. In addition to digital sovereignty, it’s a helpful perspective to evaluate how the union moves through the geotech world. The empirical heavy weight of the paper (the authors relied on an original set of almost 67,000 documents) makes it an impressive read.

Search engine traffic in the age of AI (and fast culture)

The traffic on StackOverflow, a popular fora based resource for programmers, went down by 50% since the launch of ChatGPT (and in response it launched OverflowAI). If you think of LLM prompts as search queries then ChatGPT become an advanced search engine and this trend makes sense.

Though Google constantly updates its algorithm (historically based on backlinks), TikTok, Meta’s duo and other social media platforms which are full of user generated and ranked content are gaining an edge over the search engine. This Verge article makes a thought provoking argument about Google’s future if it continues to remain the echo of vitality vs its driver. 

Business (and) history podcast

I recently started listening to Acquired and I haven’t been able to stop. Ben and David’s ability to contextualise historic deep dives with present day market moves is unparalleled and provides for a satisfying 2-3 hour listen. Best episodes so far are Nintendo and Blue Coffee.

🧠 🤍 🍵 Would love your help

I’m researching NeuroTech and the privacy, inter alia, challenges that it presents. If you work in the field or know someone who does, I would be very grateful to connect and speak over a virtual tea.

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What to expect in 2023

European DeepTech had a few milestones last year. For example, the Joint European Torus (JET) – largest existing fusion device in the world – achieved a record performance for sustained fusion energy. Even though the experiment lasted five seconds, the output produced was double that of a previous record that was set 25 years before. It's a big step to make fusion a safe, efficient and low carbon energy.

Another milestone deals with quantum computing. In 2022, the EU announced €7 billion to fund quantum innovation, see breakdown of technologies forming this sector. This is the world's second biggest budget, after China's €15 billion. Perhaps equally impressive is the fact that Europe has the world's largest concentration of quantum talent. The McKinsey Quantum Monitor report is a fascinating read if you want a deeper dive.

With those in mind, this year you can expect to read round ups on key technologies and sometimes the political obstacles facing their take off in Europe. These are, neural interfaces, ageing, SpaceTech, quantum computing and a few other DeepTech sectors.

Norwegian space industry

Now, back to presenting the #discoveries series as you know it, succinct and to the point. The Nordic country's space tradition dates to the 60s and Kramena Tosheva from Peter Thiel's backed SNÖ Ventures published a comprehensive list of everything orbiting Norwegian SpaceTech today.

Besides exploring out of Earth frontiers, Norwegian space operations also have a second order consequence on the arctic region. For example, Space Norway will offer the world’s first and only broadband service for civilian and military purposes. As the arctic unfortunately and irreversibly melts, making way for new seafaring routes, this is an important pillar of infrastructure. 

Positive Futures

Cynism abounds. Combine future dystopian tech imaginaries of self aware technologies (but also today surveillance capitalism) with natural and human made disasters and there can be little room left to picture a silver lining in the next decades.

However, the team behind supermind – combining human and machine work via augmented collective intelligence – published a list of stories that aim to inspire innovators of what the future could look like if we get it right.

A primer on longevity tech

This episode of the Stranded Technologies podcast is something to listen to with strong tea. It covers everything from immune system rejuvenation, the cross over between crypto currency and medicine and the business models and thinking needed to advance both.

(On) Language models

ChatGPT has entered the collective mind. Students use it to pass exams, publishers replace their writers with it, competitors fret to challenge it. 

Researchers, on the other hand, are driving this domain further and earlier this year released a language model for the medical domain. MedPaLM addresses multiple choice questions by patients and medical professionals, returning results that are up 92.6% correct (doctors score 92.9%).

One area that ChatGPT – with all of the promises of the new technologies – has not entered is the global south. While traveling between the years, I noticed that it is not available throughout the Middle East. A lot could be said on the historical, colonial and corporate backdrop of this that robs people of their shot at innovation until today. 

MAUs in Europe

The Digital Services Act – a piece of regulation reigning in the algorithmic and information power of big platforms in Europe by requiring technology reviews and other measures – had a big week. 

Companies with more than 45 million users had to disclose the number of their monthly active users (MAUs) – as a reminder, and based on UN 2023 estimates, the EU's population is over 740 million. 

Clothilde Goujard, Politico's privacy and content moderation reporter, compiled a great thread on what you might or might not have expected:

• Wikipedia: 151.5 million
• Meta/Facebook: 255 million
• Twitter: 100 million
• YouTube and Google search: 400 million and 332 million respectively 
• PornHub and YouPorn: 33 million and 7.3 million respectively 
• BeReal: 18 million
• Vinted: 37.4 million
• Lego: 800 thousand
• Spotify: didn't disclose but said “fewer” than 45 million

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Solar geoengineering

This was on the top of The Economist’s 22 Emerging Technologies to Watch in 2022 listicle. Also known as solar radiation management, solar geoengineering refers to offering the world some shade as it gets hotter. The solution is politically, morally and meteorologically controversial.

Hence a group of Harvard researchers are studying it for its potential effects on rainfall and greenhouse effect management – as one of the last resorts for the world to buy some time in its effort to cut emissions.

It is a fascinating read and other technologies include hydrogen powered planes, mRNA based HIV vaccines, 3D bone implants (and houses), and container ships with sails to reduce the shipping industry’s share of greenhouse-gas emissions which stand at 3%.

Also on the list are virtual influencers (engineered by teams to attract followers with the most convincing stories but no single “real” person behind it). Note to mis-information studies scholars, this will take this field into a different direction. Perhaps a better term is synthetic influencers.

While wearable trackers (mostly watches) made it on the list, I didn’t find it that impressive. What is however, and was not on the list, is medical tattoos. LogicInk is one company that produces a sticker that can be worn outside to inform its owner when the skin has been exposed to too much hazardous UV rays. Jeff Goldblum paid them a visit.

Digital non-aligned movements

Rivalrous techno-economic-geo-industrial policy between China, US and increasingly the EU exists. The paper by the Former Deputy National Security Advisor of India and a researcher at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata discusses what countries that don’t want to take sides, with the first two, can do. Moreover, the authors propose a few multilateral solutions such as a EU-Non Alignment Movement alliance for technology and standard sharing.

“While the US may be able to afford the economic consequences of banning Chinese companies, taking this hardline stance without providing its developing friends and allies with an alternative may end with the world divided not only on political lines, but with a redrawing of those lines out of economic necessity, and with states prioritising the responsibility they have to their own people.”

Just as the Non Alignment Movement “came from the desire to exercise greater collective bargaining power against existing “superpowers,” while remaining detached from the [nuclear] conflict”, a digital NAM hopes to do the same with controversial technology areas such as 5G and semiconductors.

I don’t agree with everything in the paper but an important contribution form the authors is the framing of alignment in the digital age. While in the Cold War alignment was on ideological grounds – in “Cold War 2.0” – alignment results from political and economic choices.

Lastly, the authors say that a country’s choice of technological equipment for economic reasons does/should not reflect its political commitments.

Excelling at research and digital body language

I came across two interesting books lately. The first one is for fellow researchers. The Craft of Research is your companion whether you’re writing a peer-reviewed article, industry report or a dissertation. It covers everything from how to select a specific enough and well rounded research question to making a strong argument to the ethics of research.

The second book is Digital Body Language. So far I read reviews about the book and it promising to be a great find given how it unpacks how technology has affected our communication. Short attention spans – born out of communication via emails, DMs and otherwise apersonally – make us expect in person communication to be delivered in concise and bullet point format. However this also leaves space for misunderstanding and lack of patience and empathy when speaking.

Understanding the Global Chip Shortage

The latest paper by the director of the Technology and Geopolitics Group at SNV explores the root causes of the global chip shortage which include, capital and knowledge intensity along with cyclical demand, transationality and shocks across many of these areas.

I’m keeping an ongoing thread of high level developments of this issue here. However, a sobering finding from the paper is that “there is no short-term solution to this problem, it needs to be addressed by long-term strategic decisions…[including] structural changes, new business models and supplier relationships”.

The paper has a very interesting table outlining the series of events including fires, lockdown measures, power outages and natural disasters that hit the value chain. The report is a great read and to get most of it, one needs to read other works by the team.

In other news

• Two months after the elections, Germany has a new government and Mr. Scholz will be sworn in in early December. Here's a collection of threads on what stood out in the coalition agreement.
• The Sovereign Tech Fund study outlines a new vision for using capital to fund Open Source (which has a 1:65-95 ROI). Great time to refresh on Zuckermann writings and Canada’s Sovereign Patent Fund.
• Speaking of funds, NATO’s new €1 billion Innovation Fund securitises startup driven digital sovereignty.

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Open source added €65-€95 billion to the EU's GDP

The European Commission recently published a report outlining the benefits of open source technology in Europe. While the figures are from 2018, it is still very interesting to observe the impact of this technology.

According to the report, that year companies from across the bloc invested €1 billion in open source software and received “an additional economic output of between €65 and €95 bn, the equivalent of air and water transport combined”.

Open source (software) means the copyright holder shares the source code of the technology used for anyone to observe and modify it. Being open about the technology used doesn't mean forgoing profits as there are many open source unicorn (valuation more >$/€1 billion) companies.

The report outlines how this technology can especially help GovTech's – i.e. public administration – autonomy and innovation capacity which has been slowed down by the high cost of switching providers that use closed systems.

On the other hand, China for example embraces open source a step further. It uses it as an industrial policy tool to boost domestic innovation by having participants build on each other's work.

Approaching data ownership

Three researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany wrote a fascinating article on the ethics of data ownership. In essence, this is a contested topic where it is difficult to pin down attribution in the face of replicability and utility.

The authors distinguish four dimensions of data ownership – “the institutionalization of property versus cognate notions of quasi-property; the marketability versus the inalienability of data; the protection of data subjects versus their participation and inclusion into societal endeavours; and individual versus collective claims and interests in data and their processing”.

They also “demonstrate how the meanings of data ownership raise both issues of material ownership (pertaining to the sphere of distribution) and issues of socio-cultural ownership (pertaining to the sphere of recognition).”

What particularly caught my eye is how one might go about protecting information and ultimately arriving at data ownership through different layers. This can happen on the syntactic or the “code layer which refers to the code that expresses it”. Other layers include the pragmatic level “which refers to the effects, uses, and purposes of information”.

I'm closely following the non fungible token (NFT) space at the moment and the build of such tokens is to attribute provenance (true ownership/origin) in the face of replicability. I'm also reminded of the Solid protocol which strives to give data sovereignty to the individual.

This is a project that is being worked on by Sir Tim Berners-Lee who is one of the modern web's creators. Whether both of these can be adopted en masse to address data ownership (and privacy and security) is an open question.

EU digital identity's blockchain potential

The EU has proposed a framework to enable all citizens to have an e-wallet and digital identity that can be used for administrative purposes. One of the goals of Europe's Digital Compass program is to have 80% of citizens use digital IDs by 2030.

As of today only 14 member countries have at least one eID scheme and out of those 7 are mobile. Among the interesting and important takeaways is that the proposal allocates a budget for the development and adoption of these solutions to reach a critical mass.

It also opens the door for technical implementation and stresses the importance of security, privacy and interoperability. These values are also the ones behind many blockchain projects and there is a huge potential for Web 3.0 technologies to lead the charge for European digital sovereignty.

A humble milestone and cadence revisited

This week Shift Print passed 100 Twitter followers. I'm very excited and humbled to count brilliant minds in academia, policy and tech among the blog's audience. Due to an increased workload, Shift Print will go out every two weeks instead of weekly (most of the summer notwithstanding :), at least until the end of the year.

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Trust zones for a more secure internet

At the moment, control over the internet stack is being disputed normatively and geopolitically. The main countries in the tech race started with asserting control over their domestic internet and are moving to establish a global vision of their local systems. Lastly, security of systems and data is constantly being debated.

Against this background, two computer science and internet infrastructure inventors and pioneers from MIT and University of California are proposing Trust Zones. This thinking would “focus on regional security rather than unachievable global security”.

Their article requires some technical familiarity and is a goldmine of information about learning from the history of unsuccessful initiatives.

“Our experience of the last 30 years has convinced us that the path to better security does not lie in proposals for global changes to the Internet protocols, but in finding operational practices that regions of the Internet can implement to improve the security profile of those regions.”

Trust zones would work by regionalizing systems (whether nationally or commercially). This approach is built for security and interoperability in mind and is different from balkanisation – which is more deliberate disconnection of regions.

Once a system is established by an internet service provider for example it will have to verified – sort of like an individual performing identity verification ahead of opening a bank account. Once verified, different zones would communicate on a “trust-but-verify framework”.

This approach would avoid exposing data in transit and the authors point to an example where it was successfully implemented by Internet Society.

Political science lab leaks

According to Paul Musgrave, assistant professor of political science at University of Massachusetts Amherst, “when ideas get out from academia into the wild, they can be surprisingly dangerous”.

The article has an intriguing argument and leaves one with many “what if” questions. “Isms” or concepts can come from policy as well as academia or research circles and affect governance, military and potentially technology.

According to the author, game theory and the “clash of civilizations” hypothesis are examples of such, untested/heavily critiqued, leaks. I'll focus here on the latter. “Huntington’s thesis was not a conjecture based on careful empirical study—it was a speculation”. As such “...it was primed to thrive in the wild, free from the confines of empirical reality.”

Putting on the tech hat, one reason why concepts like the above proliferated the world of academia and policy can be due to a high degree of “political theory-political environment fit”.

Neuroprivacy laws in Chile

Just as unknown or potential threats of AI are pushing researchers and policy makers to create handbooks and rules for governing this space, neurotechnology does the same.

The term refers to “any technology that can read and transcribe mental states by decoding and modulating neural activity” that can for example “detect neural activity related to people’s moods and can suppress undesirable symptoms, like depression, through electrical stimulation”.

Chile is leading the way in codifying rights to “personal identity, free will, mental privacy, equal access to cognitive enhancement technologies, and protection against algorithmic bias”.

Great article by Abel Wajnerman Paz who's an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Alberto Hurtado University, in Santiago.

Government led acquisition in Europe

A while ago, I wrote about how the generous support for startups in Europe stops at the exit stage. If governments were to acquire home grown companies, they would foster national champions and build excellence and capacity in critical areas and technologies.

Both of these pursuits are cornerstones of the European digital sovereignty pursuit. With this in mind, it was great to read about Swiss Post's acquisition of Tresorit – an encrypted cloud provider.

Hopefully this is the first of many, Web 3.0, acquisitions as the EU builds its capacity in key technologies.

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Tech crackdown (or correction) in China

The past week was full of news about China's actions towards its tech enterprises. In addition to the size of the companies targeted, what's also fascinating is the nature of complaints brought against these companies.

Didi was removed from Apple's app store – along with other local stores – on Sunday and from Tencent's 1 billion WeChat service a few days later for misusing customers' private data.

Online grocery units of Meituan and Pinduoduo also suffered scrutiny recently for improper pricing. According to several reports, it all started with Alibaba's $2.8 billion fine for improper financial and consumer lending conduct in October of last year and the wave of state investigations will continue into the future.

China's president is targeting data based platform companies (a very broad definition) to eradicate the systemic risk of consumer debt. In other words, the crackdown is about protecting consumers and maintaining financial stability. But looking at the valuation of state vs private enterprise, the picture becomes different.

The companies mentioned above are valued more than the state bank and collect as much information – via different but aggregated services – as the state. From this perspective the recent moves maybe about not letting any tech company (even if homegrown) become too big to govern. This echoes a sentiment voiced by the French President about Facebook and Google a few years ago.

Another way to tackle big tech is by creating “10,000 little giants” and a generation of “hidden champions”. Six Chinese ministries envision the creation of smaller companies that specialise in niche sectors. These would further protect China's technological sovereignty from any supply chain attacks from manufacturers that are currently located in Germany, US and Japan.

Ransomware is getting out of hand

The latest victim is the bitcoin.org website which experienced a DDoS attack while the perpetrators demanded 0.5 BTC. It seems that attackers are moving down the chain from grid infrastructure targets. Hundreds of smaller scale businesses were targeted and the super market chain Coop had to close its doors for two days while the situation was being resolved.

This newly launched website tracks the amount that's been paid in ransomware along with the cryptocurrency addresses used to receive the ransom.

On the same topic, the German newspaper Die Zeit ran an article about how unprepared Germany is in the face of cyber-attacks. More than 100 public institutions were targeted in attacks in the past years and had to pay to get control back. Cyber crime along with disinformation is a big topic ahead of this year's elections.

Moore's law and wafer chips

When you ran out of space to place transistors on a chip – increase the surface upon which transistors are placed. This is the premise of wafer scale hardware that uses the entirety of a silicon wafer. To address the extreme shortage of chips taking place these days and future dependencies, the EU has designated chip production and competence as one of the pillars of the Digital Compass program.

It aims to double the output capacity and reach 20% of the global supply by 2030. On the heels of this ambitious plan comes Bosch's $1.2 billion chip plan opening that took place in June.

Weaponized interdependence

John Hopkins' Henry Farrell and Georgetown University's Abraham Newton define weaponized interdependence as “a condition under which an actor can exploit its position in an embedded network to gain a bargaining advantage over others in a contained system”.

I first came across the concept in an article bearing the concept's name by the authors that was published in 2019. Arguing from an international relations perspective, they cite a few examples of weaponized interdependence such as the SWIFT network (elaborated in honourable mentions of digital sovereignty here) and communication technologies.

Their recently published book includes many other examples and is a goldmine for analysing this phenomenon which once understood take place in many aspects of today's geopolitics and geoeconomics. It also adds a particular angle to observe the digital sovereignty debate through.

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Space nation

The micro (space) nation of Asgardia was established in 2016 and its constitution adopted a year later. It also had parliament election in July of 2020 and to date counts almost 2,000 (Earth bound perhaps for now) residents.

What's interesting with Asgardia and network states like Plumia is the extent to which they reflect identification, association and cohesion outside of the existing boundaries of states.

In addition to Asgardia, another interesting data point for the geopolitics of home office discussion is that as the world slowly returns to normal – 39% of US employees would rather quit if not offered remote or partially remote working modality. Others are also quitting to pursue more meaningful careers.

Ethics as a Service

Authors from the Oxford Internet Institute, Digital Catapult and Alan Turing Institute argue that gap between “AI ethics principles [and codes or frameworks] and the practical design of AI systems” exists because these tools are either “too flexible (and thus vulnerable to ethics washing) or too strict (unresponsive to context).

Enter Ethics as a service. Based on Platform as a Service it is a multi agent approach with a board and AI practitioners whose job, among others, is to audit AI systems for ethical compliance and social impact and inject context into models.

An interesting read and a great example of an academic paper that combines industry knowledge and practical applications. Will be returning to it in the future.

Identity crisis

Apple's announcement of adding driving licenses to its existing wallet of user information (further)intensified the conversation of the state of digital identity.

More than 1 billion people globally don't have a legal form of identity. Digitising this element – as well as facilitating online ID usage for 3.4 billion who do have one – will save $1.6 trillion in payroll fraud and facilitate billions in money transfers.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change report outlines the role companies can play in this pursuit. Another solution is Self Sovereign Identity and here's a handy primer on the topic. In essence, it should rest on the user's device and managed with their oversight alone (along with other elements of the Web 3.0 digital economy).

This is a very important one and it occupies a significant space in the EU's Digital Compass which aims to have 80% citizens use digital identity. Many individual European countries have piloted reusable identity – for example Germany's recent hotel wallet use case.

Digital sovereignty from the USSR

Digital sovereignty in ex-Soviet European countries from the USSR is an interesting narrative. Tiigrihüpe (or Tiger Leap) was a 1996-97 project to modernize Estonia's networking capacity with a focus on the school system and in the face of the previous technological lag.

It is often forgotten in academia and I also unfortunately left it out from the history of digital sovereignty initiatives since (due to a different and more contemporary focus). In academia, the frequency of using the term(s) has increased in the past decade.

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Two books on Asia

The Future is Asian is the second book I read by Parag Khanna. As with Connectography, each page is packed with interesting facts and statistics around the future of Asian countries which, in the book's definition, extend from North Africa to Japan.

The history chapters are enlightening and recap the region's contribution to the world before the 21st century and establish what to expect in the field of infrastructure, trade and more in the years to come.

The Great Tech Revolution is a book that zooms in on China's innovations and advancements; from FinTech and E-commerce to GreenTech and quantum technology. Christina Boutrup authored it after living several years in China and working as a journalist – something that adds additional insight and first hand info to the developments covered.

ICT female to male worker ratio in the EU

A brilliant and empowering fact to read: of the 72.9 million people working in science and technology in the EU in 2020, 51.3% are women. In Lithuania and Latvia, the number goes up to 63.7% and 62.9% respectively.

The numbers include scientists, engineers, health professionals and those working in the information and communications technology sector. Last but not least, the number of female doctorate students has also grown faster than male students.

Digital sovereignty initiatives in the 1990s

With the addition of the Research and Development in Advanced Communications in Europe, European Telecommunications Standards Institute and TELEMATICS2 which was set up under Maastricht Treaty's Fourth Framework R&D Programme, the historical timeline of digital sovereignty initiatives in the EU now runs “uninterrupted” from the 1960's to today.

Although the post started a little over four months ago, it is a living one that is constantly updated. The main observation, from the projects that took place at that time (either started in or operated throughout the 90s), is that they addressed the challenges that had happened in the previous decades from hardware and software fragmentation.

This incongruence was among the reasons that an EU wide “internet” was not realised, despite the many attempts by grassroots movements, industries and research institutions. As such, the 90s was about ICT standardisation.

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The German Digital Council

Harvard's Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society recently published a case study observing the works, contributions and challenges of the German Digital Council (GDC). Set up in 2018, it brought independent expertise to act as a sounding board and propose new ideas to Germany's digital transformation journey (great dashboard).

The GDC is made up of 9 members with backgrounds in academia, startups and industry. Prior to this report little was know about the council – a fact mentioned in the report – and this was by design to help its members operate efficiently and focus on their 3 goals:

1. “Ask critical and constructive questions about government projects from a digital perspective”
2. “Alert the government to new technical and economic developments”
3. “Act as a symbol for “digitalization” and its supporters during its interactions with the government”

It ran workshops, trained senior government leaders and helped encourage the creation of a country wide data strategy. Composed by one of the GDC's members the report is very open about the challenges that it ran into and features quotes and learnings that are meant to help other countries seeking to implement a similar concept. This was a very interesting read.

What is deep tech?

According to a report by BCG and Hello Tomorrow, deep tech ventures are characterized by four main attributes:

1. Problem-oriented, not technology-driven
2. They combine more than one (advanced) technology
3. Focus on bits and atoms – rather than just the former
4. They “rely on a deeply interconnected ecosystem of actors”

China's 100 million people city clusters vs the “One-Minute City”

In the last 20 years, about 400 million people relocated into cities across China. By 2035, five major city clusters are expected to be established in the Middle Kingdom:

• Jing-Jin-Ji in the north
• Yangtze River Delta in the east
• Pearl River Delta in the south
• Cheng-Yu in the west
• Yangtze River Middle Reaches in central China

Combined, these are expected to generate almost 50% of the country's GDP and house an equal percentage of its population that is connected via a grid of 16 new high speed railway lines.

Street moves – the “One-Minute City”

Another approach to city planning is coming from Sweden that is planning to redesign every street. It's “an order of magnitude smaller” than Paris' 15 minute city approach, and functions at the street level and what lies immediately at the front door (vs the surrounding radius of the French approach).

Street moves will delegate urban planning decisions to local communities which can decide how much (or little) parking space a street should have via consultations and workshops. The ultimate goal is to “rethink...every street in the country over this decade” and engage the local community (I would equate it to giving ownership in startup terminology) in rethinking these pieces of pavement.