DLD is a global media and conference network on innovation, digitization, science, and culture; It happens in Munich, New York, Tel Aviv, Singapore. The event was founded in 2005 as an intimate gathering of friends; DLD (Digital – Life – Design) has developed into Europe’s leading innovation conference for visionaries from around the globe.
About: The annual DLD conference in Munich each January, shortly before the World Economic in Davos, is internationally renowned for attracting the best and the brightest in the world of digital. Here are some of the highlights of the event:
#1 Copilot Body Clock: How biology could drive the future of technology
In this DLD Sync session, two of the world’s leading chronobiologists put their research into perspective concerning the future of mobility. Elizabeth Klerman (Harvard Medical School) and Till Roenneberg (LMU Munich) explained chronobiology and why it is vital to know more about it. They also gave tips on avoiding common misconceptions and what you should know about restful sleep and sleeping patterns.
This is of particular concern regarding new technologies and how they change human behavior, with potentially serious consequences for the body clock. For example, imagine a camper van that drives you to your destination while you’re taking a nap in the back seat. Or electric air taxis that could bridge the gap between cities and rural areas.
#2 How are technologies aiding you to be on the edge of your research outcomes?
The study of omics is becoming more popular in every aspect of scientific research – the inculcation of strokes, sleep analysis, genetic calculations, and synergies. The scientists mentioned finding ways to predict whether a nocturnal sleep or any sleep is good for the human body.
Once valid, such medical devices may be able to measure the sleep quality- and aid the working of humans in their regular days, or even predict how tired their body shall feel the next day. On the other hand, scientists also worried about relying on technology too much. The concern of losing touch with the real world when replacing these devices with your natural body clocks/systems is alarming. The advice people to look at them as an additional device that aids their normal routines, but not something to completely rely on (as it is with other technologies as well)
“One magic wish in the field of sleep research that I would like to make is to educate as many people as I can about how sleep affects their health and how it’s becoming more of a global issue than anything else.” – Elizabeth.
#3 Business in the Exponential Age
Every year, the world consumes some 100 billion tons of raw materials to produce anything from planes, trains, and automobiles to furniture, smartphones, and socks. “Of this massive amount, only 8.6% is cycled back into the economy”, the Dutch NGO Circle Economy notes in its Circularity Gap Report 2021.
Consecutively, the emissions from greenhouse are on the rise, increasing the CO2 levels to their highest. The recorded ppm levels in the atmosphere were around 50% higher than the age of the industrial revolution.
In many ways, preventing waste and fighting the climate crisis are connected. For instance, plastic pollution is not only an environmental tragedy”, the authors of a landmark report on the plastic waste note, “it is also economically imprudent – billions of dollars of economic value are ‘thrown away’ after a single, short use.”
So, you need to take more risks and responsibilities for your businesses!
The design that we all should be looking closely at is:
D – Design for the future
I – Incorporate Digital Technology
S- Sustain and Preserve What’s Already There
R- Rethink the business model
U- Use waste as a resource
P- Prioritise regenerative resources
T- Team up to create joint value
#4 Naturally better and Molecular Design:
The most exciting opportunities mentioned in the conference for a more sustainable economy were around the intersection of biology, material science, and nanotechnology. The possibility to create products on a molecular level “has profound implications for business, but also the health of the planet,” as the French NGO explains in its report Nature Co-Design: A Revolution in the Making.
“The market opportunity is in the trillion-dollar range,” the authors conclude, predicting that “nature co-design is coming fast and will impact every industry, in every economy.”
#5 Technology for Sustainable Change:
People’s love for electronics leads to an ever-growing amount of electronic waste. Already at 7.3 kilograms per capita, the amount of discarded smartphones, laptops, and other gear is predicted to almost double by 2030.
Turning to sustainability, MacAfee argued that we can achieve the seemingly impossible: consume fewer resources yet live more prosperous lives. He also launched a research group named Tech For Good at the MIT Sloan School of Management to develop this idea further.
What would be a better approach?
The Spreadsheet Model: If you look at a complicated spreadsheet model, you don’t know why it gave you the answer that it did. Yet we don’t have high-risk spreadsheet applications where you have to satisfy all these requirements before you can go release that spreadsheet out into the world. Businesses can take advantage of the model to analyze risks, predict uncertainty in their operations better and before time, and make technological decisions in time.
There are areas where business owners need upstream governance. For instance, they need it for releasing drugs out into the world, like industrial pollutants. But there’s a deep difference of philosophy between permissionless innovation and upstream governance.
“Permissionless innovation” means First we’re going to let people do things, and we’re going to deal with the harms if, and when, they arise. With upstream governance, you’re always trying to make sure that you can identify, and deal with, all the important possible harms in advance. I am not confident in the ability of any group of people to do that upstream governance well.
We are not using the two best weapons that we have in our possession. Number one is the price of carbon. The United States doesn’t have a high enough price on carbon; Europe, in general, doesn’t. So the Swiss just voted to roll back their increased price on carbon. So around the world in general, we’re not putting a price on carbon.
In all, the conference touched on a few really sensitive topics that ought to be talked about today more than ever. Experts from science, enterprises, energy, and technology come together to talk about what the future holds for us. For more such information, keep following our updates.
