Natural humans are at a decided disadvantage these days. Not only are we competing with robots and smart computer systems – no one talks about “artificial intelligence” anymore – but we also have to hold our own against people who have had an ‘upgrade’; augmented human beings. Not that this comes as a surprise. For...

A decade ago, Shanghai scientists completed testing of a prototype small nuclear reactor using thorium as fuel and molten salt as the coolant. Now the first commercial power plant using this technology has connected to China’s grid. Although small by traditional nuclear reactor standards, at 100MW the new plant can power up to 100,000 homes,...

It was common cause that all global growth, all added economic value, came ultimately from two sources – agriculture and mining. Even manufacturing relied on raw material inputs, and everything else was just supporting activity. But that was before the digital age. Now services account for 80% of all economic output, virgin mining is declining...

Electric cars have come a long way, and because they can virtually drive themselves, they’re packed with computer chips and smart software that makes the typical model more powerful than 350 laptops. And they’ve got hyper cloud connectivity to boot! When I was a freelance consultant and expected to commute to clients, my office was...

The focus on electric cars and solar power has not achieved global climate action targets. With greenhouse gas emissions from animal farming far exceeding those of transport, the leverage point was never really going to be with planes or trains. In 2024, once coronavirus was finally brought under control, the EU and United States could...

Contrary to many expectations among economists and trend watchers, the 2020s have not favoured Africa with a huge growth spurt or demographic dividend. With the rise and rise of China – and other southeast Asia countries – the biggest markets in the world are no longer in Europe or North America. In fact, five of...

There’s a dominant use case emerging for the Ethereum blockchain, a killer app that will make crypto as widely adopted as smartphones. And it isn’t money. It’s all about digital property rights, identity, and ownership. Public blockchains are essentially massively multiuser databases. Decentralized and authenticated by the network itself, they allow anyone with a blockchain...

Move over, cobalt, nickel and titanium; there’s a new material to build things at the nanoscale, and it’s more versatile than silicon. Like graphene and carbon nanotubes, nanodiamond is pure carbon, but with unique chemical and physical properties. By varying the size of the diamond nanoparticles, we can alter their optical properties – think lasers...

It’s been 25 years since the last Concorde flight, when the supersonic airliner was retired in 2003. Since then, only military jets have been breaking the sound barrier on training and combat missions. That’s all about to change, as the Overture plane from Boom Supersonic rolls out in United Airlines livery. After a decade of...

Once the biggest polluter in the world, China now has the enviable position of being ranked as the cleanest and greenest of all large, industrialized economies. The ‘airpocalypse’, Beijing’s notoriously thick grey smog, has been permanently eradicated, and the sky above Tiananmen Square is clear and blue. With many cities banning petrol and diesel cars,...