Filed under: Audi,Emerging Technologies,Infotainment

Continue reading Audi design boss dishes on next-gen digital displays

Audi design boss dishes on next-gen digital displays originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 14 Dec 2019 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments www.autoblog.com | 12/14/19 4:00 AM

Filed under: Government/Legal,Green,Tesla,Safety,Emerging Technologies

The U.S. auto safety agency said on Friday it will investigate a 12th Tesla crash that may be tied to the vehicle's advanced Autopilot driver assistance system after a Tesla Model 3 rear-ended a parked police car in Connecticut last week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) special crash investigation program will investigate the Dec. 7 crash of a 2018 Tesla Model 3 on Interstate 95 in Norwalk, Connecticut, the agency confirmed. Autopilot had been engaged in at least thr

Continue reading Latest Tesla Autopilot crash will be the 12th investigated by NHTSA

Latest Tesla Autopilot crash will be the 12th investigated by NHTSA originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 13 Dec 2019 16:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments www.autoblog.com | 12/13/19 10:35 AM

Filed under: Green,Emerging Technologies,Autonomous,Electric

Consumers in some Western countries appear unconvinced as automakers overhaul their factories and supply chains to produce pricey electric cars and invest billions to develop self-driving technology, the survey by OC&C Strategy Consulting showed. While more than 90% of Chinese residents said they would consider, were likely to or definitely would buy an electric car, only about half of the surveyed consumers in the United States were eyeing an electric car as their next purchase. The research

Continue reading Chinese consumers more open to EV, autonomous cars than Westerners

Chinese consumers more open to EV, autonomous cars than Westerners originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 8 Dec 2019 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments www.autoblog.com | 12/8/19 4:00 AM

The 2019 UN IGF is right now being held in Berlin and entering the last day. There has been a wide range of exciting discussions. It is a huge step forward that this year's IGF has been able to bring a plethora of topics together under a framework of thinking after the efforts done by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres' High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (The Age of Digital Interdependence) and by German scholars' engagement with all the stakeholders (Towards a Global Framework for Cyber Peace and Digital Cooperation: An Agenda for the 2020s).

A central underlying topic of this year's IGF is about the conceptions about digital sovereignty. It is totally predictable that Chancellor Merkel would use Berlin Wall metaphor to enshrine the value of free speech. It is rare, however, to hear that she emphasizes digital sovereignty, which is said to be neither censorship nor protectionism, but a way through which individuals are capable of determining their own digital development.

Sovereignty in cyberspace has long been labeled by Western mainstream literature as a "monopoly" by China. But this is no longer the case, perhaps has never been. This column piece wants to share a different narrative: Washington DC is, in reality, the strongest supporter of the notion of cyber sovereignty in the military domain; China pays more attention to the content category; EU is more concerned about big tech giants.

Or, an easier way to put it might be this. All nations and every individual like nice words and they all support freedom and free flow. The important thing is how they make exceptions. China has social stability exceptions. U.S. has national security exceptions. Germany has privacy exceptions. All the three nations, however, attach great importance to political stability, who is the core for a society to function.

I shared my ideas in the IGF 2019 Digital Sovereignty & Internet Fragmentation session. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p55_LZmJ-2o&t=3795s). Below is a rewriting of what I said about how national sovereignty has made its extensions into cyberspace — with different degrees, in different categories, by different stakeholders — which shapes the complexities and contradictions in the articulation of digital sovereignty by different nations and stakeholders. There are five contexts.

Category No. 1 Military or legitimacy of cyberspace as military domain and the rules for it if it is legitimate. We see in this category the most hardcore extension of traditional national sovereignty into cyberspace by some nation-states. You will be given a Nobel Peace prize if you can find a multi-stakeholder solution to this unilateral or multilateral issue. If we can reduce the tensions in this category, all the rest of the challenges will become irrelevant and evaporate. China remains reluctant to admit that cyberspace has become a military zone but still eagerly promotes national sovereignty for defensive purpose against the possibility that the same two words — national sovereignty — might be used for offensive purposes by some other countries. That is a rather paradoxical situation.

Category No. 2 Crime or cybercrime governance. This is also a sovereignty story, but there are some transnational initiatives and mechanisms installed. EU has the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. Russia has submitted a UN Convention on the Fight against Information Crimes. U.S. and UK have signed the first bilateral data-sharing agreement under CLOUD. China follows a practical approach and is busy taking back suspects committing telecommunication fraud from abroad. Cybercrime is now No.1 type of crime in China, which is also good news because the crimes in the streets have significantly reduced.

Category No. 3 Trade or digital economy and digital trade rules. The most recent update is Osaka Track. It is another challenging field that brings together a lot of elements that call for multi-ministry and multi-stakeholder coordination. This is where free flow is upheld and may lead to the removal of many practices of data localization. The word trust in the principle of "data free flow with trust" is problematic and subjective. A plain use of free flow is much clearer.

Category No. 4 Code or technical communities and management of core Internet resources. This is where institutional innovation really happens and should be more widely exported to inform other categories. China is happy about the current situation. Multi-stakeholder is firmly supported. The words have been spread and repeated by Chinese President for quite some years at the World Internet Conference WuZhen Summit. All the WuZhen gatherings have carried a theme of "Digital Commons." The values nurtured by the technical communities are highly appreciated and resonate with some universal values deeply rooted in Chinese culture. The Chinese philosopher Zhao Ting-yang captures this Chinese worldview in his books about global governance. He concluded his dialogue with his French counterpart Régis Debray that the Internet changed the world more than revolutionaries like Marx, Lenin, and Mao Zedong.

Category No. 5 Content or social media governance. China so far prefers a sovereignty approach in this category. But domestically, It is important to pay attention to the diversity of media ownerships in China. There are state media like People's Daily. There are commercial media such as Tick-Tok. There are grassroots media like half a billion users' Microblog or WeChat accounts. The rise of private media ownership is quite reassuring.

Therefore, there are different extensions and projections of national sovereignty in different cyber contexts. A U.S. military version of hardcore cyber sovereignty assumes certain enemies, bases itself basically purely on imaginations, and makes China and perhaps many other developing parts of the world feel extremely uneasy. However, the Chinese way of protecting cyber sovereignty in the content domain makes the U.S. cry foul over human rights principles.

German Chancellor Merkel and her more outspoken French counterpart President Macron share the same U.S. worries about Chinese domestic practices in the content domain, but are more urgently concerned about the big U.S. Internet platforms, and this is perhaps the direction of a European version of digital sovereignty is pointing to. All of these are further enhanced by the uncertainties and competition for huge opportunities brought by emerging technologies.

Solution: return to the insights and values of the Founding Fathers of the Internet and flexibly combine multistakeholderism and multilateralism in global digital policy-making.

Written by Peixi (Patrick) Xu, Professor, Communication University of China

www.circleid.com | 12/1/19 9:20 AM

Around the globe, across all industries, every organization intent on surviving the next decade of economic disruption is shifting from analog to digital. Any company serious about advancing its brand, capturing its best customers and expanding its future is in the process of integrating digital technologies that will help them reimagine every aspect of their business.

And most of them are failing.

According to a recent McKinsey global survey on digital transformation, more than 80% of organizations have undertaken such steps in the past five years, but only 16% of respondents say their efforts have successfully improved performance, while also equipping them to sustain long-term change. Reported success rates in more traditional industries — like automotive and pharmaceuticals — are even more dismal (4%-11%).

Why? That 50-page proposal made the idea of insinuating new digital technology into everyday business processes, operations, communications and other systems seem so simple. Why, then, are almost 9 of every ten organizations who attempt any type of digital transformation dissatisfied with the results?

Because digital transformation isn’t just about technology. It’s about leadership and partnership and stewardship.

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It should come as no surprise that one of the most important influences McKinsey identified when it comes to determining the ultimate outcome of any transformation is a team of leaders who not only understand digital tech but also feel a sense of urgency about leveraging it — who can’t wait to start the process and bring the rest of the organization along.

That’s a tall order, becoming that kind of leader. Being someone who’s willing to challenge the status quo, experiment with the unfamiliar and get comfortable with the prospect of failure. But the only time I’ve ever seen any organization enjoy dramatic growth is when they tried something (and hired someone) dramatically different.

Which brings us to an equally important ingredient of transformational leadership: Integrators. According to McKinsey, the leaders most likely to succeed in exacting change are those willing to step back and recruit uniquely qualified partners who’ll help them integrate — and translate — new digital tactics into existing and evolving business strategies.

Given that description, it follows that the best integrators do much more than just provide technical specs or practical explanations of the digital solutions being developed. They also excel at crafting and communicating a “change story” that helps employees and other stakeholders understand where the organization is headed, why it’s transforming itself, and what will happen when it does.

The integrators you choose and the change story they tell are particularly important when it comes to the evolution of your marketing systems. That digital transformation will eventually affect every aspect of your business, from product design to consumer packaging, prospect identification to customer service, email marketing to market analytics.

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But building fully integrated digital systems calls for fully defined business strategies; the kind that turn big data into smart data, prospects into customers and industry challenges into marketing victories; the kind of strategies you only get from those who’ve already done it for others you respect and continue to do it every day.

There’s a reason the world’s largest consulting firms are attempting to acquire more sophisticated digital marketing firms: Buying is much faster — and cheaper — than learning. Today’s marketing technology and tools can be complex and confusing, so once the general plan has been accepted, these generalists need a team of specialists who can actually make it work; from your technical stack and digital marketing platforms to your data management systems and creative content.

In today’s hyper-connected world, brand equity is now often predicated exclusively on the prospect or customer’s last interaction with your organization — personally or otherwise. So, the object of the digital transformation game is not just increasing efficiency but reducing friction; to produce actionable intelligence that allows you to expedite transactional activity and reserve human interaction for instances when human interpersonal skills are really needed.

Combining smart, connected and emerging technologies to digitally transform your marketing allows you to shift your entire focus toward hyper-personalized experiences that attract, engage, encourage and retain your best customers.

But as I pointed out in another recent editorial, “Your Customer Is the New CMO,” the first step may be building a more sophisticated strategy for harnessing your customer data.  Defining protocols and practices that extract meaningful insights about those you already serve allows you to understand and interact with each of them in a new, dynamic way.  And changing the lens through which your organization views its entire business can deliver powerful, profound rewards.

Michael Priem is founder and CEO at Modern Impact, an AdTech firm in Minneapolis that specializes in omnichannel marketing, AI and machine learning. Clients include Samsung, Best Buy, Delta Dental, HP, Harley Davidson and many others.

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www.thewrap.com | 11/26/19 8:54 AM

In their annual hype cycle on on network technologies, Gartner lists the emerging technologies and an estimate of the timeframe in which they will reach the plateau of productivity. The latest hype cycle on enterprise networking labels Software-Defined Networks (SDN) as an obsolete technology. So on the surface, it would appear that SDN is now semi-officially dead.

While most natural scientists accept the Darwinian theories, the technology industry has traditionally been trying to defy evolution. Every 10-20 years, new revolutionary technology is born with the expectation that it will completely transform how a certain thing is being done. Assuming that Gartner's analysis of SDN is correct, it would appear that it has moved on to the nowhere land of promising technologies that never happened.

Yet when one thinks about it, the development of technologies tends to advance in waves of incremental improvements. A good example is electric cars. Most of the technologies needed to build them have been around for decades. However, it required a major catalyst like climate change to start their journey to the mainstream. And while the transformation of the automotive industry is getting into full swing now, there still are many familiar elements from the previous technology generations that make up a good 90% of the electric cars offered in the showrooms.

Networks are no different in this regard. While SDN may well be dead in the water, it does not necessarily mean that the school of thought it represents should be forgotten or obsoleted. Quite the opposite. SDN is all about programmability, agility and resulting service elasticity, which I believe will remain at the core of future networks.

If not SDN, then what?

When engineers fall in love with a specific technology, they often forget that most people do not care how something has been implemented. Instead, what they care about is convenience and utility. Like the slow uptake of IPv6 shows, even the most eloquent of technologies struggle to be adopted when they are not powered by a megatrend that drives concrete benefits to end-users.

Looking at the industry trends, the 2010s have been all about cloud computing and digital transformation. While networks remain an important piece of this puzzle, SDN, in its purest form, is too big a leap to take at once. Enterprises and service providers around the world have invested hundreds of billions into the network infrastructure they have today. The assumption that they would write off all these investments may err to the side of optimism.

That said, what we are seeing increasingly today are the features pioneered by Software-Defined Networks being implemented using alternate methods. Programmability leading to service agility, better performance characteristics, and lower latency are all key factors when new networks are being designed. In the cloud-native era, any new business infrastructure that lacks these abilities will not have a very long future ahead of it.

Instead of SDN, these architectures are being implemented using automation frameworks and orchestrators such as Ansible and Open Network Architecture Platform (ONAP). These technologies allow organizations to introduce automation to even existing network devices. Network automation reduces the largest cost of networks of today; downtime caused by manual mistakes. Automation is perhaps one of the highest yielding investments an entity running its network can make.

There are, of course, new use cases, especially in the enterprise space where emerging network technologies such as Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN) and virtual extensions of the enterprise network such as AWS VPC and Azure VNET make perfect sense. Both differ significantly from how enterprise networks have traditionally been run. While these technologies are still rather young, the chances are that the future of networks is in automation that allows both these new technologies and the traditional networks to co-exist side by side through the 2020s.

Conclusion

While SDN in the academic sense may not gain the traction it was initially hoped to, it has paved the way for network automation that is used on a much broader scale. Rather than forcing a tightly defined new network paradigm such as SDN upon service providers and enterprises, the industry is headed towards agnostic network automation frameworks that are driven by the business objectives rather than an academic definition. The technologies facilitating the transformation in this area are network automation frameworks such as Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) and orchestrators such as Ansible.

Written by Juha Holkkola, Co-Founder and Chief Technologist at FusionLayer Inc.

www.circleid.com | 10/11/19 4:51 AM

Contentsquare's Chief Strategy Officer shares his thoughts on providing optimal digital customer experiences; the impact of AI and other emerging technologies. www.cmswire.com | 10/2/19 2:13 AM

The healthcare industry has historically been slow in adopting technology, however, studies show that by embracing emerging technologies such as AI, EHR, IoMT, augmented reality, wearables and robotics the industry can reap significant benefits, namely improved patient care, lower healthcare costs, dosage error reduction, hospital asset tracking and monitoring, and reducing the need for large [&hellip www.itnewsafrica.com | 9/22/19 8:34 PM