"The most convenient solution" isn't necessarily the best for a problem: take cheap, quick, instant coffee as an example.

​
If this held true, we'd drink soluble coffee all of the time for a dark embrace with a caffeine fix.
​
Why are many happy to travel some distance plus pay a premium for a gourmet artisan flat white which takes a comparative age to make?
​
The quality outcome is worth the investment value.
​
Just as customers increasingly demand speciality coffee, forward-thinking organisations regularly invest in high-quality strategic foresight.
​
Paying for independent, objective, and impartial advisory on the future implications of emerging technologies using strategic foresight delivers business value and actionable outcomes:
​
​EXPERTISE: just as artisan coffee is created by skilled baristas, deep knowledge plus strategic foresight expertise ensures high-calibre recommendations that are tailored to the specific needs of the business.
​
​QUALITY: similar to the freshness of artisan coffee, strategic foresight provides up-to-date insights into the implications of emerging trends so firms stay ahead of the curve and make informed decisions.
​
​CRAFTSMANSHIP: strategic foresight involves careful analysis and scenario planning, akin to the mastery of making the best artisan coffee; this thorough approach ensures that the guidance is bespoke and robust.
​
​HEALTH: just as artisan coffee has positive health benefits, proactive businesses partner long-term, investing in strategic foresight to ensure the retained health and consistent sustainability of their operations.
​
25% of the coffee consumed worldwide is the instant kind; it has its place, but it will be comparatively bland.
​
There is also a lot of generic free content available from big firms that is mass-produced; untailored, and lacking in freshness...
​
Granules will not deliver you granularity.
​
Contact us to give your business a boost by looking forward and gaining the benefits of fresh, crafted, and quality strategic foresight: let's grab a non-instant, proper coffee (physical or virtual).

The next hotel you stay at, or your next home, might be printed.

​
3D-printed.
​
A giant 3D printer layers concrete and other materials in a pre-programmed design, building the house from the ground up.
​
The robot extrudes the mixture out of a nozzle in layers to build up the various sections of the building.
​
The "ink" is a special cement-based material called Lavacrete, a proprietary mixture designed for strength, affordable scale, and printability.
​
3D-printing buildings allows them to be delivered at speed and scale in a way that’s energy efficient and minimizes material waste.
​
It also creates buildings that are technologically advanced, environmentally sustainable, and architecturally striking.
​
Once the printing process is finished and the basic structure of a house is complete, human builders take over and finish off the windows, doors, roof and interiors.
​
The world's largest 3D-printed neighborhood is almost finished - with homeowners have been moving into their new high-end homes in Texas, USA for months.
​
Construction of the "Wolf Ranch" settlement began in 2022 with the project planning to build 100 homes of eight varying designs; the last couple of dwellings are now nearing completion.
​
Wolf Ranch was previously analysed here: https://lnkd.in/gp9b4QfS​
​
In additional to homes, the first 3D-printed hotel in the world is also under construction with the same innovative firm involved - ICON.
​
"El Cosmico", an existing hotel and campground also in Texas, is expanding - building 43 new hotel units and 18 residential homes over 60 acres (24 hectares) - all with a 3D printer.
​
There will be creative domes, arches, vaults and complex parabolic forms - some dwellings will be topped by greenery and feature skylights to maximize daylight inside (pictured).
​
Construction of this ambitious project has already commenced, with an anticipated completion date of 2026.
​
It's not all about the USA - there are also initiatives like Project Milestone in the Netherlands.
​
Most 3D-printed homes are currently arranged on only one floor, somewhat limiting optionality and flexibility.
​
Showcasing the increasing complexity of 3D-printed architecture, Project Milestone will soon build several four houses that will include up to three floors - and are modelled on boulders.
​
The plan is to begin construction in early 2025, with completion expected in mid-2025.
​
None of these options will be cheap, however.
​
Wolf Creek homes have prices starting at USD$400,000; Project Milestone has two designs ranging from ~USD$630,000 - $730,000, whilst hotel units at El Cosmico will range between USD$200 and $450 per night.
​
In the future, autonomous robots and drones could build entire settlements, neighborhoods, towns, and cities - with minimal human effort needed.

Say "ahhhhh".

​
This simple request from a medical professional can provide valuable information on the health of a patient.
​
Having the patient open their mouth and say "ahhhhh" allows a doctor to view the pharynx and tonsils, as well as assessing the health of the throat plus the functioning of the vocal cords.
​
Depending on the symptoms, tongue colour is also important.
​
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been using tongue colour as a key indicator of health - and disease - for over 2,000 years.
​
A person's tongue colour can indicate their overall health, including their blood, circulation, and organ health.
​
The diagnosis of tongue disease is based on the observation of various tongue characteristics, including colour, shape, texture, and moisture, which indicate the patient’s health status.
​
In the future, machines might do this for us automatically.
​
A new algorithm developed by Iraqi and Australian researchers has achieved a 98% accuracy in predicting different diseases by analysing the colour of the human tongue.
​
The proposed imaging system can diagnose diabetes, stroke, anaemia, asthma, liver and gallbladder conditions, COVID-19, and a range of vascular and gastrointestinal issues.
​
Teams from Middle Technical University​ and the ​University of South Australia​ achieved the breakthrough in a series of experiments.
​
With the development of computer vision systems, especially in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there has been important progress in acquiring, processing, and classifying tongue images.
​
Automated systems for analysing tongue colour show remarkable precision in differentiating between healthy and diseased individuals.
​
Additionally, they demonstrate the ability to diagnose various diseases and determine the phases of their evolution.
​
They used 5260 images, classified with seven colours for different colour saturations and light conditions, to train six Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to detect tongue colour.
​
Thereafter, a second data set of 60 abnormal tongue images were used to test the proposed imaging system.
​
These images included patients with various conditions, including DM, mycotic infection, asthma, COVID-19, fungiform papillae, and anemia.
​
In the study, a webcam placed 20 centimetres from a patient captured their tongue colour and the imaging system predicted their health condition in real time.
​
It's possible that in the future this could be done remotely using the camera of a standard smartphone, with the patient even doing this themselves and submitting to the system for ailment diagnosis.
​
The paper "Tongue Disease Prediction Based on Machine Learning Algorithms" was published in the journal Technologies by MDPI.
​
These results confirm the feasibility of AI systems for tongue diagnosis as a secure, efficient, user-friendly, comfortable and cost-effective method for disease screening.

Tug-of-war is a great contest, especially if you're blessed with mass.

​

Whether its between two teams of people competitively pulling at opposite ends of a rope until one drags the other over a central line, or simply playing with a dog for dominance over its chosen toy - it's fun.
​
Until it gets serious, that is.
​
It can also be used to describe a situation in which two seemingly matched sets or factions are striving to keep or obtain the same thing.
​
Like securing the future of Digital Assets.
​
A Digital Asset is generally anything created and stored electronically, is identifiable and discoverable, and has or provides value.
​
Digital Assets come with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use; note that data that do not possess those rights are not considered Digital Assets.
​
According to a recent Bank for International Settlements – BIS​ survey, two-thirds of the 86 jurisdictions surveyed were or will soon be regulating Digital Assets.
​
In a recent Insight Report from the World Economic Forum​, four pressing issues are facing policy makers around Digital Assets.
​
These are: Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC); regulatory and technical sandboxes; Decentralised Finance (DeFi); and privacy and security.
​
Japan, for example, has tight regulations focusing on investor protection, with tax on gains from cryptocurrencies as high as 55%.
​
The country rolled out stablecoin rules in 2023, plus has a framework for crypto exchanges.
​
At the other end of the scale is El Salvador, which has doubled-down on its Bitcoin moves despite ongoing pressure from the International Monetary Fund​ (IMF) regarding the country’s use of the Digital Asset.
​
The IMF is certainly not against Digital Assets, having published a paper exploring potential choices between Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), faster payment systems (FPS) and e-money.
​
In the global commercial sphere, Visa is launching a platform for banks to issue fiat-backed tokens such as stablecoins and tokenised deposits.
​
The Visa Tokenised Asset Platform (VTAP) is expected to go live in 2025, allowing financial institutions to mint, transfer, and burn tokens.
​
All of these institutional changes are in addition to the significant progress being made at the more informal grassroots level, where cohorts of Web3 enthusiasts continue to build innovative products and platforms.
​
Digital Assets are not just crypto tokens; the trends show that they are becoming evermore important for countries, commerce, and for communities globally as more of our lives are spend digitally.
​
It's thus important to note that the future influence of Digital Assets will not be limited purely to finance; many industries will be impacted.
​
With much at stake, whether governments and big business will ultimately wrestle control over decentralised groups desiring a different model remains to be seen; the tug-of-war for the future of Digital Assets is very much on.

"Any way you want it, that's the way you need it" sang legendary rock band Journey.

​

If you don't know the song you could search for it by typing into Google...or with a new feature you can also now search by uploading a video.
​
Searching for products, songs, videos, and photos just got easier.
​
Video search via the Google Lens app will let people point their camera at something, ask a question about it, and get search results (see example pic from an aquarium).
​
Google Lens is a separate app on Android; iOS users can access it via the dedicated Google app - both are free, though only available in English for now.
​
The features use a customised version of the Gemini Artificial Intelligence (AI) model which uses computer vision to identify what is in the video and has the ability to answer pertinent questions.
​
It works impressively well.
​
To gain access to Lens’ new video search feature users must sign up for Google’s Search Labs program and opt into the “AI Overviews and more” experimental features in Labs.
​
Then, while in the app users you hold down the smartphone camera shutter button which will activate Lens’ video capture mode.
​
With the video recording, you can ask a question and Lens will link out to an answer supplied by AI Overviews.
​
The ability to ask a question about still photo images has also been released; you take a photo by holding down the shutter button and asking a question which will return a relevant search result.
​
There is also Ecommerce-specific functionality, when Lens recognizes a product it will display more detailed information about it, such as how much it costs or reviews.
​
This capability is currently limited to selected countries and also categories such as toys and electronics, but there's lots of potential here.
​
As well as visual search, there is also an enhanced feature to help you find what you hear.
​
The latest "Circle to Search" update means you can search for songs without leaving the page on which you heard the sound.
​
If you hear a song on social media and want to know more about it you simply activate Circle to Search to find out (similar to Shazam).
​
Circle to Search may be coming to videos too in the near future, allowing you to have contextual search within a video being streamed or stored locally (identifying a sound within a video, for example).
​
These updates come after ChatGPT-maker OpenAI announced it was trialling the ability to search by asking its chatbot questions.
​
Google introduced AI-generated results at the top of certain search queries this year, with mixed results (like suggesting non-toxic glue for pizza).
​
Google search has been the de-facto standard for a long time; to stay competitive with the threat of a new generation of AI search engines the company is really stepping up its game to remain dominant with these rollouts.

​

Before long we'll perceive having to laboriously type a detailed query in order to search as being positively prehistoric.
​
​Don't Stop Believin': give these new functions a try by cueing up some Journey & let us know what you think.