Version 2.017

I took Julian to the vet and on the way over listened to the BBC World Service. That is one of the best things about living in Memphis, as I have never been anywhere else where you had three public radio stations. The first two station take turns playing classical music or talk radio and the third one has BBC World Service. It is a real treat, although one has to have an HD radio to be able to listen to all three radio stations, so that was one of the requirements I had while shopping for a car.

Anyway, one of the stories I heard was about the use of 3-D printers to produce PPE masks and the feature was about an 8-year old British girl who had decided to use her family's 3-D printer to make them. I had already heard a similar story about a family that was working day and night to produce masks in their printer. That is so wild...

If there is a silver lining to these most dark times in which we live, it is that it will spur innovation and entrepreneurship, which will define the 21st century. And from here we roll the dice to determine how nations will fare. Those who concentrate their resources on ensuring the survival of the status quo will see their fortunes worsen. And for the first time, we will have a public record of what most everyone thought or did.

Another story was about collecting information on what governments were doing to handle the pandemic. The objective was to give each country a report card to inform the public on whether a country was safe to visit. Clearly, there will be lots of investment in the ability of artificial intelligence to understand content in different languages.

Things will not stay the same, unless the goal is to remain poor.