Future Magazine 2015 pdf

Transcription

Future
We’re taking the future into our own hands!
New Ideas for
Industry
Economic development,
added social value
Five Nations,
One Future?
The Silicon Valley model
for success — what Bangalore,
Chile, London and Rwanda
want to learn from California
Science and
Fiction
From fantasy to new
technology
voestalpine AG
voestalpine -Strasse 1
4020 Linz, Austria
T. +43/50304/15-0
F. +43/50304/55-0
www.voestalpine.com
www.voestalpine.com
2015 issue
voestalpine magazine
voestalpine Information
“We’re taking the future
into our own hands.”
Dear reader,
In keeping with the motto “We’re taking the
future into our own hands,” our new 2014
image and brand campaign illustrates what
sets us apart: we employees, with our own
personal strengths! Our daily dedication,
our love for detail and our pleasure in taking on a challenge, whether professional or
personal, demonstrate our versatility.
1
Get to know our “stars” of the campaign
and become part of their lives for a moment with the enclosed DVD, which features all twelve films in twelve languages.
You get authentic and emotional insights
into their daily lives as well as the chance
to discover surprising and unexpected topics that relate to our company.
When was the last time you looked forward to
learning something, or were pleased with having just learned something new? The Chinese
philosopher Laotse once said that “learning is
like paddling against the current. If you stop,
you drift backwards.” Those who learn something often do it for the collective good, but
even more so for themselves, as the will to
learn is closely related to the desire for self-fulfillment. For growing numbers of people it is
an opportunity to develop beyond their original
educations. To what extent does this also apply
to our society? Why does a society sometimes
display a high capacity to learn while at another
time fall back into old patterns of behavior that
are considered badly outdated? What is the key
to aptitude for learning? Our authors grapple in
this issue with these and other questions. This
much I can reveal: We have not come close to
exhausting the possibilities.
“Do something today that your future self will
thank you for.” This was the response of
voestalpine employee Dimakatso Mathebula
of South Africa when we asked what advice
she would give coming generations. This is advice that the young people in our “Bright Minds”
report have already internalized. Their fresh
ideas have impressed even established experts.
We also need to continue learning if we want
to ensure a secure supply of energy for coming
generations. There are promising new developments in oil and gas production, as Antje Ellwanger shows. And if you would like to watch
us at work in the area of energy and mobility,
just take a look at the enclosed DVD with films
on our company’s success stories, provided in
twelve different languages.
The world of industry in particular is marked by
continuous – and sometimes painful – learning
processes: In fact, today it is undisputed that a
strong industry can bolster a region, especially
in economically difficult times. But in what direction is the industry of the future headed?
Petra Hannen examines this question.
In any case, a successful industrial sector for the
21st century needs new, additional dimensions
in information technology. This was demonstrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and attempts are still being made to copy this model
for success in the rest of the world. Our reporters investigated five different countries to
find out where the next Silicon Valley is being
created.
We hope you thoroughly enjoy these and other
exciting topics in Future – and who knows?
Maybe they will inspire you to learn more about
one topic or another.
With best regards
Wolfgang Eder, CEO voestalpine AG
3
Contents
Be There
Think Ahead
Stay Curious
12 “It has to be personalized”
Interview with Alex Hunter on the science
of marketing
28
60
2015 issue
How can we secure
raw materials for
coming generations?
— page 46
Link between China
and Europe: the new
Silk Road
— page 52
Collectively creative:
how the Internet is
supporting creativity
— page 60
14
Our Future
Economic development, added social value
34
When Ideas Connect
36
Our World
What will our world of tomorrow
look like?
20
Bright Minds
Smart young innovators are changing
the world
Five Nations, One Future?
The Silicon Valley model for success — what
Bangalore, Chile, London and Rwanda want
to learn from California
The TED phenomenon
6
Future Mobility
Collectively Creative
How social media is revolutionizing art
64
How we may soon get from one place
to another by road, rail and air
What people from voestalpine expect
of the future
16
New Ideas for Industry
Flight to Tomorrow
New paths in aviation
70
Smart Home
Our lives in the world of tomorrow
72
Science and Fiction
From fantasy to new technology
46
Raw Materials for the Next
Generation
New advances in oil and gas production
8Contributors
People who helped create this
magazine
8
4
52
New Goods on Old Routes
We paid a visit to three sites along the
rediscovered Silk Road
Publication Information
5
Our
World
What will our world
of tomorrow look like?
These are the places we
examine in this issue.
London
Dostyk
Victoria
New York
Xi’an
Victoria, Canada
At age 15, Ann Makosinski invented a
flashlight that is powered by the heat of
the operator’s own hands.
Bright Minds — page 20
Bangalore
Mexico
Sierra Leone
New York, NY, USA
Man Bartlett transformed a bus station into
a platform for interactive art.
Collectively Creative — page 60
Bolivia
Mexico
Stable wage levels, low taxes and a reliable
currency make the country an attractive
place for industry.
New Ideas for Industry — page 28
Bolivia
“These days a country that doesn’t
produce any technical products quickly
falls behind.”
New Ideas for Industry — page 28
Chile
Is Chilecon Valley the new Silicon Valley?
With Start-up Chile the country wants to
position itself in the region as a hub for
entrepreneurs.
Five Nations, One Future? — page 36
6
Johannesburg
Chile
London, England
The IT scene flourishes in the East End of
London, even without government support.
Sierra Leone
Necessity is the mother of invention: Kelvin
Doe builds electric generators and even a
radio station from scrap.
Bright Minds — page 20
Johannesburg, South Africa
Dimakatso Mathebula advises: “Do something today that your future self will thank
you for.”
Our Future — page 14
Bangalore, India
India works to emerge from Silicon Valley’s
shadow.
Dostyk, Kazakhstan
A railway between China and Europe
energizes the local economy.
New Goods on Old Routes — page 52
Xi’an, China
Linking the city with the new Silk Road.
New Goods on Old Routes — page 52
7
The people behind
“Future”
Contributors
Contributors
We can’t predict what the future will look like.
But we are shaping the world of tomorrow with
our ideas today – and as a result we are preparing for the future we want.
We asked people all over the world to tell us
about their ideas, new developments and pioneering innovations: from India to Chile and
from the United Kingdom to Rwanda. On these
pages we would like to present some of the
people who helped produce this issue of Future.
Petra Hannen
André Uhl
Jesko Johannsen
Journalist ( Germany )
Petra Hannen’s primary topics are raw materials,
energy and consumption. For this issue she sought
out “new ideas for industry.” Hannen lives and
works as a freelance journalist in Berlin.
Editor ( Germany )
André Uhl has shared responsibility for the concept
and editing of Future magazine since its inception.
The graduate in geography focuses on issues relating to social trends. He lives and works as an editor
and freelance journalist in Berlin.
Journalist and media trainer ( Rwanda )
Jesko Johannsen looks for stories that offer a different perspective on Africa for German radio and
TV stations. He describes how Rwanda is trying to
become Africa’s IT hub. He is also working on a
series of children’s books: Simon in Rwanda.
— page 32 —
— page 36 —
— page 28 —
Owner and media proprietor:
voestalpine AG
voestalpine - Strasse 1
4020 Linz, Austria
Publisher:
Peter Felsbach
Executive editor:
Maria Reibenberger
T. + 43 / 50304 /15- 5432
maria.reibenberger@voestalpine.com
Concept, editing and layout:
Commandante Berlin GmbH
Owner: Toni Kappesz
Schröderstrasse 11
10115 Berlin, Germany
Printer:
Kontext Druckerei GmbH
Spaunstrasse 3a
4020 Linz, Austria
8
Mathis Rekowski
Ellen Lee
Dinara Nurusheva & Nurtas Janibekov
Illustrator ( Germany )
After completing his studies, Mathis Rekowski first
worked for various film productions and ad agencies. Today he works as a freelance illustrator to
create imaginative and colorful pictures for customers like Mercedes, Delta Airlines and voestalpine.
Journalist ( USA )
Ellen Lee is a business and technology journalist
who works for organizations such as the Washington Post and CNBC, among others. For us, she
examined Silicon Valley to discover the factors
that make the IT location what it is today.
Researchers ( Kazakhstan )
Dinara Nurusheva is primarily concerned with the
political economy and regional interests of Kazakhstan. Nurtas Janibekov deals with world history
and world politics. He is an expert on geopolitics
and geoeconomics.
— page 36 —
— page 36 —
— page 52 —
9
Be There
Giving people support and security.
Thanks to our decentralized structure, we can act and react faster. This means
we are readily available to all of our stakeholders and attempt to satisfy
their needs with utmost flexibility and dynamism. We tackle problems at their
source and don’t let go. After all, the future is worth fighting for.
12
“It has to be personalized”
of marketing
14
Our Future
What people from voestalpine expect
of the future
16
When Ideas Connect
The TED phenomenon
20
Bright Minds
Smart young innovators are
changing the world
10
11
Be There
Be There
“It has to be
personalized”
You said you “find the science
behind marketing fascinating.” On
what principles is it based?
I am fascinated by it and I think it’s
amazing. The focus in my philosophy
in general is the balance between the
emotion and the reason, the technology and the humanity. One component
that I think is so often overlooked is
that marketing and the response to
marketing is very emotional. It’s not
always a logical response to a set of
facts or data, like product specifications versus price versus what my
needs are, and then making a decision
based on that. I’m making a decision
based on how the experience makes
me feel ... how I respond to the purchase process, the service process,
even advertising. So if we had a terrible experience that made us feel
bad, the chances of us buying that
product or using that service are very,
very low. But if I had a great experience ... it is much more likely that I
am going to purchase again.
Text Björn Lüdtke
W
hat Alex Hunter does cannot be described in simple
words. He used to call himself an independent digital ninja, but
no longer does so because people
never quite understood it.
Hunter says he enjoys hanging around
in the digital world; he is fascinated
by it and by how it is changing everything. He likes to observe what excites people and then discuss that
with them.
Alex Hunter is a public speaker who
invests in startups and creates all
kinds of products on the Internet –
12
from the initial concept on a small
piece of paper to the finished product.
“The response to
marketing is very
emotional”
Although he is considered an expert
in branding and communication, he
claims he is no better at communicating in daily life than anybody else.
He does watch commercials more
closely than most others, though.
And this analytical view of marketing
benefits the customers he advises.
Before he started his own business
he was responsible for global digital
strategy at Virgin Group, helping
founder Richard Branson make his
airline what it is today. In this interview, Hunter tells us what he finds so
fascinating about marketing and why
we should never forget the person
who is on the other end of the mouse
click.
© PerformanceIN
of marketing
Do you have some factors of success
for communication today?
For a long time we have worked hard
to make sure our digital operations
were running as efficiently as possible.
We optimize every click, every search,
and every email to try and squeeze
every penny out of them. But I think
this has been at the cost of the human
side of business; we tend to forget
that there’s a human on the other side
of that click, a human that is always
going to be more comfortable interacting with another human, especially
when things go wrong. So I think if
we can continue the great optimization work that we’ve all been doing,
but marry it with personal touches
that defined successful businesses of
the past, then we’ll start to see some
real differentiation in what is a very
crowded marketplace. I think that
even going as far as hand-writing letters and notes ... can do an amazing
amount of work for making a customer
feel good about your product. And I
think that big companies get frightened ... that they don’t think they can
have individual conversations with
their millions of customers. And that
might be the case but as long as you
“Today brands
also belong to the
customer”
can add a human touch ... you’re already going to be so far ahead of the
competition who tried to automate it
to the point where it becomes obvious.
Today, communication is no longer
about business-to-consumer or business-to-business, it’s about people-topeople.
Do you have an idea how the future
world of communication and branding might look?
I think it will continue to get democratized. Five or ten years ago there
were all of these proclamations that
a company doesn’t own their brand,
their customers do ... but now it’s
actually ... becoming reality that your
brand is defined just as much by what
you say professionally as what people
say about you online and offline. I
think we will continue to see companies moving further away from traditional big-spend advertising ... to
much more tactical, ultra-targeted,
very relevant communication. But a
picture of a car and a logo ... it’s not
working the same way.
It’s about how you approach the customer. It’s great to be able to prod
them when they haven’t completed
an online transaction, or email them a
promotion for a product they’ve used
in the past, but there is a large segment of the population that finds that
type of thing creepy and invasive.
Remember, the essence of good customer service is the illusion of magic.
The customer doesn’t have to know
the intricacies of how things happen.
That’s part of the magic – things just
work.
Alex Hunter, branding and communication expert
13
Be There
Be There
Our Future
Text Björn Lüdtke
ZHU YI QIAN ( 5 )
Kindergartner
Suzhou, China
What people from voestalpine expect of the future
1. What do you look forward to next year?
2. What dreams do you want to make reality?
3. What advice would you give future generations?
4. How and where will we travel in the future?
WILL DONOVAN ( 16 )
Student
Missouri City ( Texas ), USA
“Love your parents.”
“Don’t overuse technology;
it’s not good for your brain.”
1. I would like to have a young brother. 2. I want to
be a teacher. 3. Love your parents. 4. I’d love to go to
Disneyland.
1. I am looking forward to baseball season and playing for
my high school. 2. Making it into the MLB ( Major League
Baseball ), becoming a millionaire and getting married.
3. Don’t overuse technology; it’s not good for your brain.
4. Farther out in the solar system with advanced rockets.
DIMAKATSO MATHEBULA ( 29 )
Planning Clerk
Johannesburg, South Africa
HELENE EGARTNER ( 26 )
Sales Administrator
Bruck an der Mur, Austria
1. I’m looking forward to a great vacation in South Africa.
2. I’d like to travel around the world. 3. Life is beautiful
and full of surprises. Enjoy it! 4. In the future we’ll travel
at the speed of light wherever we like.
14
Page 14 –15 © Private
“Life is beautiful. Enjoy it!”
“Do something today that your
future self will thank you for.”
1. I am looking forward to studying Logistics Management.
I don’t care too much about what happened in the past, I
prefer to focus on what is coming next year. 2. I would like
to achieve my goals. To some people the sky is the limit.
For me there is no limit because my dreams tell me secrets
and my future gives me power, abundance and victory.
3. Do something today that your future self will thank you
for. Just because the past didn’t turn out like you wanted
it to, doesn’t mean your future can’t be better than you’ve
ever imagined. 4. Thinking about how technology has
changed our practices to date, we might be able to teleport
straight to our next holiday destination.
15
Be There
Be There
When Ideas
Connect
Text Anne Kammerzelt
Dr. Brené Brown at TEDxHouston 2010
16
© TEDxHouston / Flickr / Photo courtesy of Blue Lemon Photo (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The TED phenomenon
P
hilosopher Francis Bacon once
said that “knowledge is power.”
This is truer than ever, but
thanks to the World Wide Web, the
way we acquire information and convey knowledge has fundamentally
changed in recent years. The global
connection via Internet has intensified
both the generation and dissemination of information.
TED conferences are trying to make
knowledge freely accessible. Originally launched as an annual conference
in Monterey, California, TED makes
a wide array of information available
through its own website where videos
of the best conference lectures are
provided free of cost. Prior to the digital revolution, this kind of information
was reserved for a small group of elites.
Behind TED – which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – is a
US nonprofit organization whose goal
What began as a
small-scale experiment has now
grown into a worldwide movement
is to spread innovative ideas and
make them accessible to a worldwide
public. In keeping with their slogan
“Ideas Worth Spreading,” clever inven-
tors, musical virtuosos, political visionaries and other leading minds
present their ideas in the form of 18minute live talks – and subsequently,
in the freely accessible videos.
The list of prominent speakers is long.
Personalities like British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who lectured
on the origins of the universe, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who spoke
about carbon emissions and their impact on climate change, and Google
founders Larry page and Sergey Brin
have all been guests.
And the notice they’ve attained has
been considerable: Videos of the
speeches, which have been translated
by countless volunteers into more than
100 languages, have already been
viewed several billion times on ted.com.
17
Be There
“The lectures are much more personal, shorter and more focused on a
certain idea than other presentation
formats. Our communication culture
is undergoing intense change – leading today increasingly means being
able to communicate inspirationally,”
explained Stephan Balzer, curator of
German TEDx events.
The first conference took place in California in 1984. Looking back, it is
clear the talks were already groundbreaking: The first Mac computer was
presented during one speech. At the
time no one could have guessed how
successful Apple would become.
Financially, however, this first event
was a flop, which is why another six
years went by before the next conference.
Since 1990 the TED conferences have
taken place annually. What began
as a small-scale experiment has now
Be There
grown into a worldwide movement.
Along with the original conference
there are now numerous other formats
with various references, focal issues
and sizes.
The success of
TEDx can be attributed to a loyal
community
At the forefront are TEDx events,
independent franchise conferences
that are conducted according to the
rules of the prototype. The “x” stands
for “independently organized event,”
a kind of franchise variation of this
format that is organized all over the
world and is largely independent.
TEDx offers the chance to organize
events with the same global perspective at a local level as well. Anyone
who has an idea for a conference can
organize one on their own. In keeping with TED’s “Ideas Worth Spreading” slogan, TEDx also ensures that
good ideas are disseminated and are
made available at no cost to a wide
audience. Although the TEDx conferences don’t feature famous personalities like those found at their “big
brother” TED events, the wide range
of topics covered by the TEDx conferences held in more than 140 countries
provide for passionate discussions,
exciting insights and new discoveries.
The unique success of TEDx can
largely be attributed to a loyal community of enthusiasts around the world
who have worked hard and committed
their time to the cause. As a result, all
of the lectures have been recorded
on video and made freely accessible
to anyone interested. This not only
means that international knowledge
and information is being consolidated,
but also that attention is being paid to
the ideas, dreams and visions for the
future of enthusiastic people on the
other side of the globe.
For instance, the “Scaling up technical
education” lecture by Kamau Gachigis
at TEDxNairobi in Kenya offered insight into the increasing importance
of technical training in Nairobi. Sangeetha Isvaran spoke at TEDxSairam
about social innovations in India.
And anyone who wants to know more
about the opportunities, desires and
dreams for change should watch the
“Sueños que transforman” TEDxCazuca talk by Jhon Bucurús from
Columbia.
This “first-hand information” traditionally cannot be learned from the
daily press and instead must be heard
Craig Venter and TED curator Chris Anderson discuss synthetic life
18
© Joshua Wanyama / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
© Steve Jurvetson / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
The goal is to
spread innovative
ideas and make
them accessible to
a worldwide public
directly from representatives of the
specific community. To obtain a license
for a TEDx event, organizations must
go through an extensive selection
process in which their desired topics
and venues as well as their personal
motives are examined. They promise
to comply with mandatory rules that
are meant to protect the democratic
and noncommercial character of the
concept.
“It’s impossible to pick out a single
talk, actually,” said Lara Stein, one
of the founders of TEDx. “But Brené
TEDxNairobi 2013 at the World Agroforestry Center ( ICRAF )
Brown’s TEDxHouston talk ‘The
power of vulnerability’ is most certainly an indication for what the community is capable of.” The lecture on
self-doubt as the engine for success,
creativity and love is incredibly inspiring and has developed into one of the
most-viewed lectures on ted.com.”
The best way to learn more is to simply pay a visit yourself to the website
and click through the multitude of
lectures that match your interests.
Or perhaps even organize your own
TEDx event, since the community is
made up of people who truly believe
that big ideas can change the world.
And that takes initiative. Anyone who
would like to encourage others to reflect or act either through a live worldwide event or through an online video
should take advantage of this opportunity to introduce their ideas to the
world.
Number of countries
where TEDx conferences
have already been held
130
19
Be There
Be There
Bright Minds
Text Kathrin Gemein
Digital rendering of a structure from The Ocean Cleanup
20
Page 21 –22 © The Ocean Cleanup
Innovative people display a lot of curiosity and
an ability to view routine processes with fresh
eyes. Expertise and professional experience are
also required — usually, that is. But young people
are often able to come up with ideas that help
change the world. This makes sense — after all,
the future belongs to them.
A sea without plastic — Boyan Slat
When Boyan Slat, then 16, went diving off the coast of Greece, he couldn’t see the fish because of all of the plastic trash.
He asked himself: “Why don’t we just clean this up?” Slat and a team of one hundred produced a study that concluded
with a relatively simple idea – a 100-kilometer long structure made of floating barriers. The natural sea current would
drive the plastic into the two arms of the barriers, positioned at 120-degree angles. This floating waste would be picked
up eight times each year by a ship. And wildlife would be able to swim around the barriers without being harmed.
Efforts to implement the plan are currently underway.
21
22
© Saskia Vanderstichele
Radio station from scrap electronics — Kelvin Doe
Necessity is the mother of invention. Kelvin Doe has taken this proverb to heart. Because electricity is only available
by the hour in his hometown in Sierra Leone, at 15 the self-taught electrician began collecting and tinkering with scrap
electronics until he had assembled an electric generator. Still not satisfied, Doe also built a radio station from the scrap
and broadcasts from it each day under the pseudonym DJ Focus. A biography like that is hard to keep under wraps –
which is why a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) invited the young man for an internship
in the US. The teenager’s sense of mission has paid off.
Be There
© James Mollison / COLORS Magazine
Be There
Air-powered Lego car — Raul Oaida
It’s the stuff of dreams for many kids: to build a car from Lego blocks and drive off in it. At the age of 20, Raul Oaida
used 500,000 Lego blocks to build a life-size car; only the tires and weight-bearing parts are not made of plastic. The
engine is air-powered – and the car actually works. The Romanian inventor had previously designed a Lego space
shuttle that rose 35 kilometers with the help of a helium balloon. His portfolio also includes a jet bike. Oaida’s description of himself is therefore apt: he calls himself a “maker of things.”
23
24
© Scott Stuppi
Light from body heat — Ann Makosinski
Not many 15-year-olds have a burning passion for electric energy storage. Canadian Ann Makosinski considered the fact
that people are a source of unused thermal energy and thought there should be a way to prevent this energy from simply
going to waste. As a result, Makosinski developed the Hollow Flashlight, which is powered by body heat. This requires
certain conditions to be in place. The maximum outside temperature is 16 degrees Celsius ( 60.8 degrees Fahrenheit ),
and the body temperature must be at least 36 degrees Celsius ( 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit ). This difference in temperature
creates electrical energy – and powers the Hollow Flashlight for 20 minutes.
Be There
© Darren Stone / Times Colonist
Be There
Communication through breathing — Arsh Shah Dilbagi
When people who are paralyzed lose their voice, it becomes difficult or impossible for them to stay in contact with the
outside world. Arsh Shah Dilbagi gives them a voice again. As a 16-year-old student, Dilbagi developed a device that
requires only their breath. For each letter, the breath must be exhaled at different times. The small device transforms the
signal into an artificial voice that can be adapted to the proper gender and age. The device could sell for 100 euros –
if it actually goes into volume production. That is the sincere hope of Arsh Shah Dilbagi.
25
Think Ahead
Creating movement and supplying energy.
We drive development – open to new ideas and with the curiosity of scientists,
we are visionaries who think far beyond the box; ingenuity is the hallmark of
our products and processes as well as our relationships to those around us.
After all, nothing is so good that we can’t improve it.
28
New Ideas for Industry
34
Future Mobility
How we may soon get from one place
to another by road, rail and air
36
Five Nations, One Future?
The Silicon Valley model for success — what Bangalore, Chile, London and Rwanda
46
Raw Materials for the Next Generation
52
New Goods on Old Routes
We paid a visit to three sites
along the rediscovered Silk Road
26
27
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
New Ideas for
Industry
One look at the United Kingdom
shows that traditional industrial sites
are also part of this future. London
recently replaced Hong Kong as the
world’s most expensive place to work
and live. The United Kingdom is
meanwhile the most cost-efficient production site in Western Europe and
also needn’t fear comparison with
Poland and the Czech Republic or
China, according to the Boston Consulting Group ( BCG ). Even the internationalization-minded automotive
industry has invested about GBP 10
billion in the location since 2010 and
has created thousands of new jobs.
More will reportedly follow. Where
one company after another went
bankrupt twenty years ago, leaving
tens of thousands unemployed, today
Text Petra Hannen
diverse products ranging from toys to
textiles are produced. And qualified
suppliers for the automotive, aviation
and high-tech sectors are also breathing new life into the historic locations.
But what makes a country or region
an attractive place for industry? Stable wage levels, relatively low taxes
and a reliable currency are beneficial,
but not enough. Low prices for energy have led to an industrial renaissance in the United States. Thanks
to fracking, among other things, the
country is considered the most costeffective production location in the
league of industrialized nations. The
extraction of gas from shale not only
keeps the price of gas significantly
below that in other countries, but also
below electricity rates – a clear sup-
porting argument for locating energyintensive businesses in the petrochemical, glass or steel industries.
Neighboring Mexico is competitive
Industrialization is
no longer a historical term, but rather
a concept for the
future
with China in terms of costs and also
scores points with free trade agreements with 45 countries. As a conse-
L
uis Arce Catacora has a big
goal. He wants the people of
Bolivia to not only mine the
local raw material lithium but also to
design and control the entire value
chain, including the production of
batteries for smartphones or electric
cars. The economics minister is focusing fully on the industrialization
of this country in the Andes. “These
days a country that doesn’t produce
any technical products quickly falls
behind.”
Just ten years ago, Catacora’s statement would have met with disapproval. Some politicians, scientists
and businesspeople no longer considered industrial power a worthy
goal. A society based on knowledge,
28
information and services was thought
to be the next stage of development.
Now, following an economic and
“These days a country that doesn’t produce any technical
products quickly
falls behind”
financial crisis, the priorities have
shifted. Up to now at least, people
in countries with a strong industrial
sector have usually been much more
prosperous than in other countries.
For one thing, industry serves as an
economic hub as companies send
orders to suppliers and service providers and thus shore up the business sector. For another, they provide
know-how and attractive jobs at their
locations. Not only are expenditures
for research and development higher
than in many other sectors, but the
wages and salaries are higher as well.
Industrial enterprises therefore make
up a considerably greater share of
gross domestic product than manufacturing businesses. And industrialization is no longer considered a
historical term, but rather a concept
for the future.
© svedoliver / Thinkstock
Robot arm used in automated production
29
Think Ahead
quence, multiple industrial clusters
have formed in that emerging market,
including for household appliances,
PC hardware, medical technology and
automotive manufacturing.
Think Ahead
can be attractive production centers
in all regions of the world holds a big
advantage for industry: close proximity to the market. In developing and
emerging markets, there is generally
Special sections and tubes for commercial vehicles are developed in Shanghai
Qualified employees are an additional
locational advantage, as industry is
currently undergoing an evolutionary
phase. Following the steam engine,
mass production with assembly lines
and automation, the Internet of Things
is now becoming part of production.
In this concept, which is sometimes
described as Industry 4.0, production
plants and products communicate and
connect through IT interfaces. The
goal is intelligent production that
conserves resources. For such complex
production processes companies rely
on well-educated employees who are
motivated and willing to learn.
China is at any rate no longer the
automatic answer when considering
where a production site should be
built or continue to operate. The location continues to be attractive due
to low wage costs, a large and fastgrowing domestic market and considerable government incentives for foreign investors. But the fact that there
30
growth in all industrial sectors. Two
billion people will rise to the global
consumer class in the coming ten
years, but their requirements are
developing differently than those in
the old industrialized countries. For
instance, consumers there skip the
PC and landline telephone phase and
immediately request mobile solutions
for communication and the Internet.
In highly industrialized countries,
on the other hand, overall economic
growth is often fairly low. Instead,
not least due to the number of older
inhabitants, they are demonstrating
significant growth in specialized
segments: medical products, means
of transport, energy and electrical
engineering. This requires not only
major centralized industries – decentralized production that is adapted to
the region is becoming increasingly
important.
Two other aspects that up to now have
been more regional are also growing
in importance: energy prices and environmental regulations. EU countries
have formulated much more ambitious sustainability goals than the
United States or China, for instance.
This is good for the climate but is a
problematic trend for European industry. Companies accrue costs for
investments in greener technology
or compensatory measures that their
competitors do not have to bear. This
not only hurts the bottom line but
also carries a risk. Energy-intensive
industries in particular could relocate
their production, and jobs and economic strength in Europe would be
lost along with know-how. A climate
agreement that is legally binding for
all world nations is to be concluded at
the end of 2015 during the UN Climate
Conference in Paris. This is a chance
to more fairly distribute environmental costs like climate protection and
energy efficiency worldwide – and a
chance to strengthen industry in a
Eurozone still in crisis.
Companies are in any case now expected to do more than merely offer
products for various world markets.
Since more people are consuming
Lightweight steel on an automotive assembly line
But what makes a
country an attractive
place for industry?
more and more all the time, efficient
management of raw materials has
now become a central issue for every
industry. This also includes companies keeping resources in material
cycles and thus keeping them available. Bolivia’s Economics Minister
Luis Arce Catacora is sure to extend
his targeted lithium value chain with
this element.
31
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Interview
Wolfgang Eder
Text André Uhl
Which global challenges do you
think industry must confront today?
The biggest challenge, at least in
the long term, is certainly to create
something approaching a comparable
environment – a level playing field –
for all of the major industrial regions.
There are many worldwide issues of
comparable urgency that can only
be resolved globally, such as climate
protection, market access, minimum
social and legal standards, and much
more.
Incidentally, in my view, “the industry”
with uniform trends no longer exists.
We should therefore also scrutinize
the term “industry” itself. It is high
time to adapt the conventional view
of individual sectors to modern reality
and stop thinking in terms of catego-
32
ries. For instance, services have long
been an integral part of a modern
industrial concern. Without industry
many services would either not exist
at all today or would only exist in a
very limited form.
Is there such a thing as reindustrialization? Where are the opportunities,
and where are the limits?
In the year 2000 industry still made
up 18 percent of Europe’s total economic output; today that is – at most
– no more than 14 percent, with a
continuing downward trend. If you
will recall, the goal set by the European Commission for 2020 is a – completely unrealistic – 20 percent. It
is certainly no coincidence that the
decline of industry has been accom-
Wolfgang Eder
Wolfgang Eder is Management
Board Chairman and CEO of
voestalpine AG
panied in many countries by record
unemployment, particularly among
young people, that Europe threatens
to fall behind Asia and the United
States irrevocably in research and development, and that growth is stagnating.
We should therefore talk more about
the limits of deindustrialization before
we discuss the issue of reindustrialization – and about what prospects
a once leading and proud continent
still possesses on the world stage in
political, social, economic and business terms. This has nothing to do
with “EU bashing” – even if that is
what the media hype might suggest.
Industries produce where they find
the best conditions in terms of costs
and markets, and not where the highest stacks of paperwork are produced
with the same, unfulfilled declared
intentions. Neither hot air nor romanticism are a category here.
What impact do these trends have
on European companies?
European companies have definitively reached the limits that they
can bear in many respects. Also contributing to this is the fact that national governments are increasingly
abandoning their inherent responsibility – namely their responsibility to
their voters, or better said, to people
– because their priorities are focused
more on the next elections than on
solving longer-term existential problems. Things that policymakers and
society can’t or don’t want to solve
are frequently dumped into new regulations and laws and delegated to
industry – mostly in the form of additional burdens, and by that I not only
mean those of a monetary kind. This
cannot work. This leads to politics
At voestalpine, we develop products to satisfy extreme requirements
ad absurdum; they cannot discharge
their responsibility at the cost of
third parties.
To what extent is the steel industry affected by these trends and
developments?
The sector is to blame for some of
its own problems; that much must
be conceded very openly. With a few
exceptions, it has not been able to
acquire a modern image, to convey
its importance and that of steel as
a material, and it still relies too much
overall on a volume mindset rather
than on quality, which means that
it produces much too much commodity steel on a worldwide basis, in
a quantity the market no longer
needs.
The trends in the market and in
technology are not the problem –
they instead offer great opportunities
that the industry now needs to put to
use. But in general it must confront
a much more complex challenge,
namely to make clear that it is not a
part of the problem, but rather part
of the solution. It must develop from
that which is driven into a driver
itself.
What is your view of the future of
industry? In Europe and worldwide?
What is required now in order for
the future of industry to be a positive
one?
I’m not worried about the future of
industry. There will inevitably always be a producing real economy
for the simple reason that people
cannot live without its products. It
will also continue to contribute decisively to making the world more
modern and efficient, and ultimately,
more livable. The only question is,
where this will happen.
33
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Future Mobility
Noncontact energy transfer
What will future railway transport be like? Scientists at
the German Aerospace Center are currently puzzling
over this question. In addition to the issues of speed and
energy savings, the Next Generation Train project focuses
on overhead contact lines, which require intensive maintenance, are prone to failure, and frequently cause delays.
The Next Generation Train will therefore operate without
overhead contact lines and instead will be powered by
noncontact energy transfer via induction loops.
Text Kathrin Gemein
How we may soon get from one place to another
by road, rail and air
Saltwater replaces gasoline
Elevator to space
Hopping into an elevator and taking it to the moon sounds
like an idea straight out of a science fiction movie. But in
fact, this concept is in the planning phase. The LiftPort
company is currently working on an initial study – with
support from crowdfunding. In the next eight years a test
construction will be devised. This robot elevator, called
the Lunar Space Elevator Infrastructure, will transport
people into space on a system of rails, and will defy gravity.
34
Left top © DLR (CC-BY 3.0) Right © nanoFLOWCELL Left bottom © Sanu K R
Sometimes it helps to take a new perspective. Josh Shercliff
observes trucks from an aerodynamic perspective, which
has allowed him to develop a design that uses less fuel
over long distances. It’s actually quite logical: After all, boxshaped truck produces greater resistance than a vehicle
with a fuel-efficient shape. Designs inspired by Formula
One race cars could provide a visually appealing, futuristic and environmentally friendly alternative on the roads
of the world.
Left © Josh Shercliff Right © Michael Laine / Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Aerodynamic freight transport
Replacing gasoline as a fuel for cars with something
cheaply available and nearly inexhaustible is no longer a
pipe dream. The QUANT sedan is designed to rely solely
on saltwater. This model developed by nanoFlowcell
AG is the first electric car that produces electricity with
an electrolyte solution and can cover a range of up to
600 kilometers. This innovative drive system and energy
storage concept is made possible by flow cell technology,
in which electricity is produced by two different saline
liquids that are contained in tanks. It may however take
a few more years for this model to be ready for volume
production.
Joystick navigation
Looking for a place to park can be especially maddening
in highly congested cities. Indian product designer Sanu
K R has developed a one-man vehicle that makes these
searches a thing of the past. The vehicle is round and features two additional wheels with a special angle that improves the car’s balance and supports its weight. Powered
by two motors, this car does away with the steering wheel
completely – and instead is steered via joystick. It’s an extremely playful and space-saving mode of transport.
35
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Five Nations,
One Future?
T
ime and again, we read headlines like “Bangalore: India’s
Silicon Valley” or “The Allure
of Chilecon Valley.” When it comes to
new locations for information technology ( IT ) companies, the whole
world looks to the valley south of San
Francisco. And with good reason,
since the industry in California has
repeatedly demonstrated how millions
and even billions of dollars can be
earned with IT.
That’s reason enough to take a closer
look at the Silicon Valley phenomenon. Our author Ellen Lee first examined the original Silicon Valley for the
factors that produce a breeding ground
for new ideas and successful startups.
We also sent an additional four reporters out into the world to find out
if this success can be replicated in
other places and whether the factors
identified by Lee play a role.
Text Björn Lüdtke, Ellen Lee, Jaideep Sen, Gwendolyn Ledger, David Nicholson, Jesko Johannsen
Illustration Mathis Rekowski
When it comes to IT, Silicon Valley is viewed
worldwide as the model for success. What can we
learn from the drivers of innovation in California?
We investigate in Bangalore, Chile, London and
Rwanda.
36
© Kirk Lougheed
View of the Santa Clara Valley, located in the middle of Silicon Valley
California demonstrates how billions
can be earned
We started our IT journey in Bangalore, one of the best-known of the
“new” Silicon Valleys. Our reporter
Jaideep Sen discovered that its success was more of an accident of
geography. Today, great effort is being put toward emerging from the
shadow of the original.
And then it was on to Chile. Not long
ago, it was considered a disgrace in
that country for a business to fail. But
a startup culture like that of the United
States is slowly developing. Journalist
Gwendolyn Ledger reports that failure is increasingly being viewed as
an opportunity for starting over.
While the government in Chile is
trying to boost the IT sector, the East
End of London has developed into a
location for IT without any govern-
ment help at all. David Nicholson has
taken a look at the Silicon Roundabout.
And our reporter Jesko Johannsen
finds big visions for the future in tiny
Rwanda. Efforts are underway there
to use information technologies to
skip a stage of industrialization and
go directly from an agrarian society
to a service economy.
Silicon
Valley
— Virtuous circle
Silicon Valley, the birthplace of tech
giants such as Google and Yahoo, is
known for its culture of innovation,
which other regions all over the world
have been trying to replicate. Even
so, Silicon Valley has yet to cede its
place as the destination for entrepreneurs with big dreams.
One such entrepreneur is Michele
Colucci, who was living in Southern
California when she came up with her
idea for a startup. An attorney whose
friends often turned to her for legal advice, she dreamed of creating a platform that helped people find a lawyer.
But as she started building her business, Colucci realized she needed to
move to succeed. Being situated in
Silicon Valley has helped her connect
with partners, investors and advisers,
such as Steve Bennett, former CEO of
Intuit and Symantec, and it has made
a difference in the launch of her business, Justiquity.
“There’s an energy and excitement
around ideas,” she said. “Entrepreneurship is a collaborative process. What’s
nice about the Valley is that there are
people with expertise in all the necessary elements. You have to have
people who are experts on running a
startup, marketing or raising money
– all the different types of expertise
you need to be successful.”
Considered the world capital of tech
entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley is
the place where new technology
companies are born and bred. When
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
wanted to expand his social networking site beyond his Harvard dorm, he
moved there, but most Silicon Valley
success stories begin elsewhere. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was
raised on a farm in Nebraska, and
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin was
born in Ukraine and went to school
in Illinois.
In 1939, Stanford graduates Bill
Hewlett and Dave Packard started
tinkering in a garage in Palo Alto.
Decades later, in 1998, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin began developing Google
in the garage of a friend’s house.
Chances are, the next big tech company is currently being built in someone’s home somewhere in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
How has this been possible? The
simple answer is the people that can
be found there. Both Stanford and
the University of California, Berkeley
groom and graduate hundreds of talented engineering students each year.
Silicon Valley’s major tech companies
are also breeding grounds for future
entrepreneurs. LinkedIn founder Reid
Hoffman, for instance, got his start at
Apple, and Salesforce.com founder
Marc Benioff was a protégé of Oracle’s
Larry Ellison.
Successful entrepreneurs also pay it
forward, mentoring and investing
in new startups as well as going on
to start new companies. One of the
best-known networks is the “PayPal
Mafia,” made up of the founders and
early employees of PayPal. They include Peter Thiel, who went on to
invest in Facebook; Elon Musk, who
runs Tesla; and Chad Hurley and
Steve Chen, who started YouTube.
Perhaps most important of all, the immigrants and transplants who migrate
37
Think Ahead
38
the Facebooks of the world.” But
therein lies the hope for the future:
to establish Bangalore as a center
for fostering indigenous talent and
thereby validating its claim as a
genuine hotbed for IT ingenuity and
groundbreaking ideas. That is the
only way to bridge the divide between
San Francisco Bay and the areas of
Bellandur Lake and Iblur Village.
Chile
— Startup frenzy
Chilecon Valley: view of Santiago
“These tweaks were tailor-made for
MNCs,” he noted. “Such policy prescription isn’t easily found in other
countries.”
The emergence of Bangalore as an IT
hub, in Abraham’s words, was “an
accident of geography, being the
graveyard shift for companies in the
US.” When everyone in New York
is going to bed, the workday is just
starting in India. Above all, the city’s
“cyber coolies,” a term used to describe
New trend in Bangalore: makerspaces
— City of
opportunity
At the start of 2015 the city of Bangalore – or Bengaluru, as it is officially
known – is a picture of extremes typical of a growing metropolis. The
capital of India’s Karnataka state is
praised as “India’s most livable city,”
while an ongoing garbage crisis has
prompted a newer epithet: “Garbage
City.”
Bangalore is nonetheless considered
worldwide to be one of the biggest
employers in the IT industry and is
attracting university graduates from
India as well as highly qualified talent from all over the world. The city’s
available infrastructure, although
seemingly in a perpetual state of flux,
is among the best in India.
Other “softer” reasons that enabled
the IT phenomenon include the city’s
cosmopolitan cultural climate, a research background, with the Indian
Institute of Science established here
in 1909, and a long tradition of spoken English. A significant contributing
factor was the blossoming of engineering colleges in the city in the 1980s
and ’90s, attracting students from
other Indian states prior to the rise of
software as a preferred course.
But hard factors also played a part,
including a tax holiday, streamlining
of land acquisition for building tech
parks, and a dismantling of labor
regulations, as Sunil Abraham, who
heads the Centre for Internet and
Society research group, explained.
The city attracts
talent from all over
the world
© Matt Mawson / Getty Images
Bangalore
© Dibyangshu Sarkar / Getty Images
to Silicon Valley bring with them new
ideas and energy.
“It’s a virtuous cycle,” said Vivek
Wadwha, a fellow at the Stanford Law
School. “You get more creativity and
productivity, and that attracts more
people to it, and it just builds on itself.”
It also helps that Silicon Valley has
the infrastructure to support its entrepreneurs. Tech incubators and accelerators nurture and guide young
startups. By one count, about 40 percent of U.S. venture capital dollars
were invested in the San Francisco
Bay Area in a year.
It isn’t unusual for those dollars to
be trusted to entrepreneurs who are
young and untested, or even who
failed at their last endeavor. Silicon
Valley’s culture sees failure as merely
a path to innovation.
“Here if you are a dissenter, you are
applauded,” Wadwha said. “You are
allowed to be different. You are allowed to express strong opinion. You
are allowed to fail. You are allowed to
experiment. This is the magic of Silicon Valley.”
However, Silicon Valley has reached
a key juncture. Immigration laws are
making it more difficult for new entrepreneurs from outside the US to
come and stay. Affordable housing is
scarce. There is a widening gap between the rich and the poor. And
although Silicon Valley prides itself
as a meritocracy, with the best ideas
bubbling to the top, it recently conceded that it has done a lackluster job
of welcoming women and minorities
into its fold.
But those may prove to be mere road
bumps. Not surprisingly, several initiatives have been launched to tackle
the region’s housing crisis and poverty,
as well as its immigration and diversity issues. In Silicon Valley, after all,
failure just means that it’s time to regroup and try again.
Think Ahead
the city’s unskilled IT workers, are an
indicator of the business model based
on wage cost advantages that many
IT companies continue to rely on.
Abraham believes the term provides
a great deal of insight into the industry’s inception, especially about the
policies that determined its success.
The crucial aspect, he explained, is
to do with intellectual property rights
held by clients in the West. “Engi-
neers here might innovate, but the
ownership of that work is compromised.” Abraham therefore doesn’t
think the “Silicon Valley” label entirely fits Bangalore, and says it is
more a function of political campaigns
and media hype.
But the world of IT in Bangalore also
has another side – an independent
one that is not reliant on the West. The
number of startups is growing. Reports
of investment jackpots like Flipkart
in the e-commerce segment, a number of app-based startups, and a growing animation industry go a long way
toward countering negative impressions of the city as an inexpensive
back office.
In more recent times, access to opensource resources has been pivotal in
enabling developers and coders of
original products, said Abraham, who
is also an outspoken free-software
advocate. New maker / hacker spaces
are also gradually engaging in community-based technical training. The
next big idea, in effect, could emerge
from previously unheard-of companies
or self-employed individuals who are
not restricted to an IT park.
The dream might well be to attract
foreign investment and “sell out to
After three attempts in the food business, Ecuadorian Miguel Torres got
the idea for a technology startup
while studying in Georgetown. This
was the birth of ESCAPESwithYOU,
a B2B logistics solution supported in
2010 by Start-up Chile, a government
incubator that has been fundamental
in positioning Chile as an entrepreneurial hub in the region.
“They gave us a visa, USD 40,000,
mentoring, and access to a flourishing
environment where public policies
are designed to help and improve
entrepreneurism,” says Torres.
His startup is just one of almost 1,000
projects supported since 2010, when
the government aimed to attract international talent and investors by giving
them something the US was cutting
back on: broad work permits. This
March the program began its twelfth
generation of startups, bringing high
impact entrepreneurs to Chile from
all over the world, including the US,
India, Brazil, Argentina, the UK and
many others.
With witty names such as Chilecon
Valley or Mapocho Valley, there has
been praise from Europe, Asia and
the US, and this has permeated into
local public opinion too. There is
a startup frenzy in the air, making
entrepreneurship and innovation a
regular section in newspapers and
39
Think Ahead
40
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41
Think Ahead
magazines over the last couple of
years. Eduardo Amadeo, Associate
co-founder of venture capital fund
Nazca Ventures, believes Chile has
proven it possesses and can attract
talent. “They don’t have a real entrepreneurial culture yet, but it’s only
a matter of time. Something positive
about Chileans is their optimism and
their openness to trends and innovation,” he said.
Before Start-up Chile, failure in business was considered shameful – unlike
in the US, for example – and starting
a new company was uncommon. Now
new and old local entrepreneurs, investors and government officials think
it is acceptable to fail and try again in
business.
But business is all about money, which
is why Torres is now based in Belo
Think Ahead
Horizonte, Brazil, with Shippify.co,
a spin-off for EWY. Working under
SEED, a Brazilian government incubator that was inspired by Start-up Chile,
he claims to have a lot more opportunities to scale up worldwide and access to the financing he needs.
Now it is acceptable to fail and try
again
“In Chile almost all the financing comes
from the government. Today Chile
is prestigious compared to the rest of
Latin America, but it is in other countries, especially Brazil, Mexico, Ar-
gentina and now Colombia where
the smart money – investors who are
willing to share their network with
you – is located,” said Diego Izquierdo,
CTO and co-founder of the startup
platform Fundacity.
The Chilean government is aware of
this weak spot, which is why they are
starting a new stage in their entrepreneurial policies aimed at keeping
startups in Chile beyond the mandatory six months and at developing a
broader market for investors, as well
as at creating high-value jobs once
the startups have finished the incubation process.
So the trend continues. Other incubators and accelerators such as Wyra,
IF, UDD Ventures and UAI garage
have flourished thanks to Start-up
Chile and its leadership. People see
entrepreneurs as powerful motivators
for change in society and the country
feels more integrated with the rest of
the innovation world.
One of many local entrepreneurs supported by Start-up Chile, Mario Mora
puts it all in perspective. The creator
of the employment site Firstjob says
that “now you see young people increasingly leaving their daytime jobs
to search new horizons as entrepreneurs. Before Start-up Chile, that was
unheard of.”
So where is Chile and its Silicon future
heading? “If you wish to find the next
Twitter in Chile maybe you are wrong,”
Amadeo said. “But if you aim to find
a team able to develop the first-class
tools to solve finance problems in medium and small companies in Latin
America, the result may be positive.”
London
Silicon Roundabout in London’s East End
42
© Oli Scarff / Getty Images
© Bloomberg / Getty Images
— Tech city
The East End of London, an area that
suffered from underinvestment for
much of the 20 th century, entered the
21st century with a new zest for life.
With a brief lull after the global dot.
com crash, the area rebounded in
2005 with even more energy and passion. Following the rise of Google and
Facebook in Silicon Valley, dozens of
Internet startup companies congregated around Hoxton, Shoreditch and
Old Street – with its large roundabout
taking on the “Silicon” tag in 2008.
A patchwork of web services, design,
publishing and video game companies, it prospered thanks to its proximity to the City’s finance, its continued
affordability compared to the rest of
London, and informal links to London’s
many universities.
But Silicon Roundabout was only a
vague entity, rather than a living community. This began to change in the
2010s. Announcing some modest tax
breaks and incentives, and coining
the term “East London Tech City,” the
government attempted to give the
a higher proportion than in any other
G20 nation. By 2016 this will rise to
12.4 percent, with a quarter of sales
More than 5,000 IT companies have settled near Old Street
area international credibility and
boost its attractiveness for investors.
There were quick rewards. Google
declared that it would acquire an office building in the area. Google
Campus opened in March 2012. By
this time there were more than 5,000
tech companies operating in the area.
A patchwork of web
services, design,
and video games
companies
Looking yet further afield, recent estimates show almost 750,000 people
working in computing, gaming, telecoms, film and media in London and
the southeast of England.
According to the Boston Consulting
Group, Internet-based commerce
makes up 8.3 percent of British GDP,
anticipated to take place online.
“Congratulations,” Google Executive
Chairman Eric Schmidt told an audience at the London Science Museum.
“You’re among – if not the – world
leader in this.”
Alongside Google’s Old Street venture, further investment has come
from the government, which pledged
approx. 80 million U.S. dollars to
improve Silicon Roundabout’s facilities, while Microsoft, Amazon and
Cisco have all announced major new
developments, some in tandem with
London universities.
Tech City benefited from an ‘entrepreneur’s visa’ and tax breaks for
early-stage investors. “London’s moment has arrived,” says Saul Klein,
partner at Index Ventures. “We
haven’t had this role in 100 to 120
years or more. We’re living in an Internet age where English is the most
important language. I think we are
very well positioned for the future.”
So with government funding, large
multinationals, a booming digital
43
Think Ahead
a combination of design, software,
gaming companies and academic
research, London’s Silicon Roundabout is alive and buzzing. So long as
Popular in Rwanda: co-working spaces
Some would say not. London’s property values have risen by more than
60 percent in the past decade, pricing
many small companies out of the
area. Rival European cities such as
Berlin remain far more affordable.
The UK government’s current hostility
to immigration has restricted access
to visas for overseas talent. And the
government’s priorities are suspect,
according to some.
“Governments like to boast of a portfolio of large, nationally identified,
successful firms,” says Silicon Roundabout veteran Cory Doctorow. “Not
thousands of hare-brained schemes
whose doom is a near-certainty.”
Nevertheless, there remain many
thousands of companies in the area
doing fantastic work, creating games
like Moshi Monsters for example, with
millions of customers around the
world.With the presence of more large
global corporate IT firms than elsewhere in Europe, higher GDP from
the IT sector than elsewhere, and
44
enough companies can move beyond
their startup origins and make sufficient money to afford the rents, it will
buzz for years to come.
Rwanda
— Investment
instead of aid
The area deep in the Nyungwe rain
forest in southwest Rwanda is uninhabited. There are only small, yellow
cones made of plastic on the side of
the road every couple of kilometers,
with “Fiber Optic Cable” written
on them. About 2,500 kilometers of
this cable have been laid to connect
the Central African country to the
international data network.
As a hilly, landlocked country poor in
raw materials, Rwanda has no real
prospects for large-scale agriculture
or industry. Still, Rwandans hope to
achieve emerging market status by
2020. For this, President Paul Kagame
is placing special emphasis on information technologies: “As many people
as possible should be able to afford
to access a broadband network.” The
government is investing millions in
the sector: fiberglass cable, 3 G and
now 4 G LTE are being expanded.
Nonetheless, information technologies are by no means widespread in
Rwanda. Less than nine percent of
the country’s residents use the Internet, fewer than two percent have a
Facebook account, and two thirds
of all Rwandans are extremely poor.
This means that for many developers
there is still no market in the country
with roughly eleven million inhabitants.
The government’s Vision 2020 program seeks to change that: Rwanda
now has its own IT minister, technical
education is supported with computers starting in the early grades,
and free workstations are being created for developers.
On the sixth floor of the Telekom
building, which features a view of the
hills of Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city,
you’ll find the centerpiece of this
strategy: the kLab ( Knowledge Lab).
“It is the only location for innovation
in Kigali, where many ideas are discussed that could actually be developed into something,” said Claudette
Irere, who heads the institution.
Since 2012, people with computer
skills have been able to work here for
free. They get Internet access and,
above all, motivational support. There
are mentors, continuing education
options, and Demo Nights, where the
entrepreneurs allow their ideas to be
critiqued. This might involve an app
that can be used to pay a fine with a
mobile phone credit, or software that
farmers can use to get expert advice
for their everyday problems.
On its way to becoming an emerging
market, however, the industry is pri-
marily a means to an end, Irere explained: “The benefit of information
and communication technologies lies
in their ability to find solutions to the
Still no market for
many developers
problems of the citizens. They empower the people who at the same
time become a resource.” The farmer,
for instance, can expect a better harvest thanks to the expert advice he
receives.
Many developers also meet in The
Office, a shared workplace of the
American Jon Stever. It has become
the networking center of Rwanda. “In
our co-working space, we discover
time and again that innovation is often simply the result of diverse groups
of people coming together,” he said.
He’s confident that the view of the
country from outside will change.
“There are countless opportunities here
© Rwanda Government / Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
industry and the UK’s economy growing at the fastest rate in several years
– does this mean that Silicon Roundabout’s future is secure?
Think Ahead
to found successful, growing companies, to innovate and to change lives.
People should stop wanting to help;
they should come to invest.”
As a mentor to the young sector, it is
also the job of Claudette Irere to prevent the entrepreneurs from giving
up: “Good developers are always
looking for good ideas. And an idea
that fails creates room for a better one.
The feedback from the kLab community was always of great benefit
for them.”
In 2017 a technology park is to be established just outside Kigali, where
kLab will find a larger home. By then
Rwanda hopes to be the undisputed
Silicon Valley of Africa.
At the outset we asked if the success
of Silicon Valley could be repeated
in other parts of the world. Whether
this is possible is likely due in part
to the three factors for success that
we discovered in California.
First, there is comparatively easy access to capital and, second, an entrepreneurial culture that encourages
innovation without excessive fear of
failure. But success depends above
all on one thing: the people.
Meeting up for an informal discussion
at a coffee shop is popular in California, while in Bangalore, they are
learning to support their own residents.
While Chile welcomes talent from all
over the world with open arms, they
may be scared away by restrictive
immigration policies and high rents
in London. And in Rwanda they are
building upon the knowledge that innovation is produced primarily from
interaction between a diverse range
of people.
Will any of our four contenders manage to emerge from the shadow of
the original? We will see what the
future brings.
A. Talent pool
B. Access to money
C. Culture of failure and innovation
Silicon Valley
Bangalore
Chile
London
Rwanda
A. Stanford and
A. Abundance of
A. Three times each
A. Good at the top of
A. Carnegie Mellon
Berkley graduates,
talent from all over
the world
graduates seeking
mentorship from top
global talent
year, the government
selects almost 100
projects from all over
the world to support
University now has a
campus in Kigali
B. Angel and venture
B. Growing number
capitalists are willing
to place bets, even on
risky startups
of angel investors
hedging bets on the
city’s startup culture
the pay range, where
salaries are able to
keep up with international competition;
poor at the lower end
due to high rents
C. Entrepreneurs
whose first startup
failed can still get
funding for their next
startup
C. Growing group
of former multinational corporation
employees turning
into entrepreneurs
B. The government
started a venture
capital early stage
fund to attract private
investment
C. Entrepreneurship is
taught at universities
B. Many investors
C. Lower tolerance
for failure than in the
United States, but still
a lot of innovation
B. In 2013 about
USD 300 million was
invested from abroad
in the IT sector and
IT infrastructure
C. kLab and The
Office are trying to
equip the IT scene
for setbacks
45
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Raw Materials
for the Next
Generation
Text Antje Ellwanger Illustration Jan Erlinghagen
Ensuring the supply of energy for our world will pose many new challenges in the coming decades
46
47
Think Ahead
O
il and gas have become
indispensable to us as carriers of energy for safe power
generation, as fuels for our mobility
and as starting materials for countless products essential to our everyday lives. This makes a long-lasting
supply of oil and gas even more
crucial – at least until the chemical
industry is able to develop new base
materials or renewable energies can
replace these two energy carriers.
According to calculations in the BP
Statistical Review of World Energy
2014, global oil and gas reserves
will last until approximately 2060.
Companies worldwide are working
on solutions to
make better use of
existing reserves
However, the good news is that resources are much more extensive.
“International competition and developments in oil prices are driving innovations that are pushing the limits
of technical possibilities. The age of
oil therefore won’t be ending anytime
soon,” says graduate engineer Karl
Rose, a professor at Graz University
of Technology and an expert on the
development of global energy scenarios, describing the future outlook.
Around the world, companies are
working on solutions to make better
use of existing reserves, tap new ones
and improve drilling techniques.
As a result of global warming, regions that were previously difficult
to access have for several years now
been transforming into sought-after
exploration and production areas.
Simply put, the ice is revealing its
treasures as it melts. However, in
48
Think Ahead
contrast to the classic extraction
areas, these remote regions and the
extreme weather conditions there
are posing entirely new challenges
to people, materials and technology.
These challenges start with exploration of the oil deposits. Test drilling,
commonly used elsewhere, is hardly
feasible in polar ice. Instead, companies are relying on remote radar
sensing via satellite to identify suitable geological structures. “We must
solve a large number of problems
before we can extract oil and gas
in these locations both successfully
and economically,” says Professor
Rose. For example, how can people
live and work at temperatures with
a wind chill factor of down to minus
70 °C. Experience drawn from research stations at the South Pole
could help here. Significant investment must also be made in surface
drilling technology. After all, conventional steel becomes brittle at
these temperatures, just as do seals.
What is more, oil is extremely vis-
cous at such low temperatures and
clumps on the way to the surface.
Profitable extraction of oil and gas
in the polar region is therefore still a
thing of the distant future.
of what makes good economic sense
and is technically possible, we will
wind up at about a 60 percent yield
rate in the future,“ says Professor
Rose.
“The age of oil
won’t be ending
anytime soon”
In contrast, offshore gas production
is already easy and economical today. Technical progress is making
it possible to go deeper than ever
before. Just a few years ago, it became possible to reach depths of up
to 4,000 meters. Underwater robots
permit precise drill holes accurate
to within 30 centimeters. And new
drilling techniques are being used
to reach even further down into rock
as well. By relying on highly automated applications and advanced
Increasing demands are being made of production technology and materials
Competition on the
markets will drive
companies to continue innovating
Oil and gas production in pipe sections of up to 7,000 meters long
sensor technology, the snake sword
technique is able to follow the geological structuring of rock layers up
to 6,000 meters deep.
Tapping new deposits is one approach.
Yet another route is making better
use of existing ones. Crude oil reservoirs are therefore currently exploited
New advances are
making it possible
to go deeper than
ever before
in three phases. During the first phase,
the oil flows to the surface through its
own inherent natural pressure. In the
second phase, oil is brought to the
surface using conventional pumping
techniques. Approximately 30 to 40
percent of the oil in a reservoir can
be removed in these two phases.
Enhanced Oil Recovery methods are
then employed in the third phase.
Additional oil is removed from the
rock by injecting steam and special
liquids. The disadvantages of these
methods: They are energy intensive
and pollute the environment with
the chemicals they require. This is
why scientists at the oil and gas producer Wintershall are working on a
new solution copied from nature itself. Instead of chemicals, the company is relying on the fungus Schizophyllum commune. The gel-like
substance that the fungus produces,
referred to as Schizophyllan, thickens the water injected into the rock
and thus helps to press oil out of its
pores. Wintershall is currently testing
Schizophyllan in a pilot project. “We
know many deposits that would be
well-suited for this type of application,” says Rainer Seele, CEO of
Wintershall. “The limits here are determined by physics, however. Laboratory tests have shown that this
method can be used until approximately 80 percent of the oil in a
reservoir has been removed. In terms
Companies are relying on continual
innovation to tap more unconventional reservoirs as well. Traditional
reserves are being augmented with
oil sand and oil shale. In order to
extract oil from these deposits, the
rock is heated and then releases
substances similar to crude oil. This
technique, known as the in-situ procedure, requires a great deal of energy because the oil-bearing rock
must be heated over a long period
of time, in some cases several years.
Typically, this is accomplished by
pressing steam or heated liquids into
the drill hole. Attempts are then made
to heat the rock electrically from under the ground – similar to an electric kettle. Companies must rely on
innovative equipment during this
process, because extracting oil several thousand meters under the
ground requires equipment made
exclusively for deep drilling, such
as special non-magnetic devices.
“The in-situ procedure requires drill
pipes and directional drilling equipment made from non-magnetic steel,
because a compass is still needed
for directional guidance,” explains
Gerald Grohmann, CEO of the oil
field equipment supplier SchoellerBleckmann, during an interview
with The Wall Street Journal. “If the
equipment was made from normal
steel, the devices that permit direc49
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Scientists are
looking to nature
for solutions
Fracking liquids pumped into the
drill hole fracture the rock along a
horizontal wellbore, allowing the
gas to flow out. Companies such as
Packers Plus Energy Services Inc.
have revolutionized extraction with
their developments: The new procedures reduce both the amount of
time required for the procedure as
well as the amount of liquid needed
and the number of drill holes. New
drilling techniques under the ground
50
are enhancing production as well.
According to experts, fracking has
the greatest potential for the future.
In the next ten years, 40 to 50 percent of oil and gas could come from
fracking.
For several years now, scientists
around the globe have been focusing
their attention on a previously untapped form of gas deposit: methane
hydrate. Simply put, methane hydrate is ice with natural gas trapped
inside. According to current estimates,
the total volume could overshadow
all known oil, gas and coal reserves.
Methane hydrate forms at low temperatures and high pressure – conditions such as those found on the
continental slopes of the oceans at
water depths of 500 meters and more.
Huge deposits also exist under the
hundreds of meters of permafrost in
Canada, Alaska, Russia and western
China. The problem is how to extract
it. As soon as the pressure is reduced
even a small amount, the gas is released from the ice. The question
is therefore: How can conventional
drilling techniques be used to reduce the pressure in a controlled
manner so that the gas is released
First phase of production
In the first phase of production, oil flows to the surface
virtually by itself because
of its own natural pressure.
However, only about ten
percent of oil rises this way.
Traditional pumping techniques, such as pumpjacks,
can be used to extract an
additional five to ten percent
of an oil deposit, depending
on the reservoir.
Third phase of production
The maximum rock depth
reachable with the snake
sword technique
6,000 m
Second phase of
production
Production then enters the
second phase. Water, for
example, is then pressed
into the deposit via injection
wells in order to maintain
the decreasing natural
pressure of the reservoir.
An additional ten to 20 percent of the oil can be extracted using this method.
Once some 30 to 40 percent of the oil has been
extracted, production stops
and the rest remains in the
pores in the rock.
Source Wintershall
tional deep drilling would not function properly.”
North America is a forerunner in the
production of shale gas, tight gas
and coal gas as well as oil sand. Companies there are driving innovation
for a wide variety of extraction methods. In hydraulic fracturing (also
known simply as fracking), gas is
freed from the rock in the deposit.
— The Three Phases
of Oil Production
© Torbein Rønning / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Liquid gas tanker in the Arctic
from the ice and flows upward? This
challenge will likely occupy scientists around the globe for many years
to come.
Despite all the innovations and new
developments, we must still ask ourselves: How long will our reserves
last? Experts have been speculating
about oil wells running dry ever
since oil and gas became an indispensable part of our lives. Just a few
decades ago, it was thought that
these sources of energy would already be a scarce resource today. In
fact, however, proven reserves are
now nearly double what they were
in 1945. Competition on the markets
and political changes in production
regions will drive companies to continue innovating. Technical progress
in drilling techniques, access to new
reserves and expansion of unconventional production approaches
will ensure availability of the finite
resources oil and gas for generations
to come.
In the tertiary phase of
production, Enhanced Oil
Recovery ( EOR ) methods
are employed to extract
even more oil from the reservoir. They include steam
flooding and polymer flooding with synthetic polymers
or biopolymers such as
Schizophyllan.
Schizophyllan
The white cotton wool-like
fungus Schizophyllum
commune produces this
biopolymer that will enable
increased crude oil production in the future.
51
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
New Goods on
Old Routes
Text Björn Lüdtke, Zoe Tian, Dinara Nurusheva, Nurtas Janibekov, Lukas Plewnia
The cities and towns on the rediscovered Silk Road —
and what the connection between China and Europe
means for them
In Dostyk, a train driver waits for customs documents to be processed before continuing his journey
52
53
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
L
inking China and Europe by
train is not the most obvious
solution. There are tried and
tested sea routes for transporting
goods, and everything is much faster
by airplane anyhow. Yet the economy
in China is steadily migrating away
from the sea ports and into the interior. So why not take the land route
right off the bat?
Rail transport is usually twice as fast
as ship and only half as expensive
as flying goods by air. These are the
reasons behind the revival of the old
trade route known as the Silk Road.
The Yuxinou train has been making
the journey from Chongqing to Duisburg in Germany several times a week
since 2012.
sharply. The void is currently being
filled through the export of more lightindustry products – ranging from car
tires to kitchen utensils, as the market
for daily necessities is not as affected
as more “dispensable” items, equipment for oil exploitation for example.
“The short-term goal is to make the
line viable, with the long-term aim being to invigorate the local economy,”
Zhao conceded.
Yet for the city, which sits among terra
cotta warriors and the splendid imperial palaces, there’s another aim – to
create a modern glory to match the
ancient one associated with the Silk
Road. At a time when China is seeking to combine commerce with culture and history to build a strong
bond with nations along the ancient
One of the many sights worth seeing in Xi’an: the city wall
54
— Strange cargo
Zhao Jianjun is the director of a Xi’anbased logistics company that sits in
the city’s International Trade & Logistics Park. According to him, the majority of the logistics companies inside
the park, have been capitalizing on
the opening of the nearby Chang’an
line, which opened in November
2013. “The first six months saw six
trains leave the station. Today, that
number has increased to one train
per week,” he said. Factories located
in and around Xi’an include some
of China’s major manufacturers of
power generation and oil exploitation
equipment. As countries in Central
Asia are their traditional trading partners, the opening of the line has facilitated the local businesses in their
westward expansion.
The Chang’an line was inspired by
the Yuxinou train which originates in
Chongqing. It passes Xi’an by, without stopping – and it can afford to, as
its freight cars are usually loaded to
their limits: Chongqing is an electronics manufacturing giant and Europe
its single biggest market. This is
where the Chang’an comes into play –
to connect Xi’an to the New Silk Road.
The problem: With a frequency of one
train per week, the train cannot be
filled by locally-manufactured goods.
Supplements are needed, which so
far have come from the distant sea
ports of Zhejiang and Guangdong.
“Why would manufacturers in those
areas haul their goods overland to us
to be sent out by train? Because we
give them a highly competitive price,”
said Zhao. The price is subsidized by
the Xi’an municipal government.
Over the last six months, he has witnessed “a rather strange change in
cargo content.” Due to the economy,
orders from overseas, especially for
heavy machinery, have declined
route, Xi’an feels that it cannot miss
out.
There are plans for Chang’an to reach
the heartland of Europe, although
the financial winter there might have
temporarily frozen it. But wait: Who
said only products can be transported
by train? “With all the historic sites
Left & Right © James Hill
Xi’an
Page 52 –53 © James Hill Left © Godwater / Thinkstock The railway route, which passes
through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus
and Poland, is expected to bring economic growth at both ends. But how
will it affect the locations along the
way? We sent our reporters to three
of these sites.
Our first station was Xi’an, nearly
700 kilometers behind Chongqing.
Because the Yuxinou was successful
right from the start, the trains driving past Xi’an are fully loaded. And
so Xi’an quickly decided to link up to
the new Silk Road with the Chang’an
train.
The gauge of the tracks in China and
western Europe is smaller than that of
the tracks in Russia. As a result, the
containers on the Yuxinou must be
transshipped at two locations: Dostyk
in Kazakhstan and Małaszewicze in
Poland, the second and third stops on
our journey.
The Dostyk railway station in Kazakhstan is one of the connecting points
on the Yuxinou Railway, the freight
rail route coming from Chongqing in
special program that expanded the
station’s capacity has improved the
socioeconomic conditions of the region
considerably. In 1991 only a few dozen
people lived in Dostyk; now it is close
to 10,000. Notably, most of them work
at the railway station. The region has
attracted large numbers of young specialists from different regions of the
country. Dostyk today is a mini-town
with new apartment buildings, a school,
hospital, hotel and other facilities.
Most of the staff have big plans for
the future of the railway company.
Some of them, like Azat and Irina,
came to Dostyk station from other
regions. Some, like Tatyana and
Daniyar, are already planning to move
to the capital Astana in search of promotion. Almost all of them believe
China to Duisburg in Germany. The
station has its roots in 1950s Soviet
Russia. But transit activities only
gained momentum during the 1990s,
after the emergence of an independent Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhs have paid great attention to the station’s development. The
that this station is the best place to
get useful knowledge and experience.
Some of the station workers have also
needed to learn Chinese in order to
cooperate with Chinese. Work at the
station means much more for them
than just money or a career. The employees of Dostyk station see oppor-
we have, a train direct from Europe
to Xi’an would no doubt serve the demands of foreign tourists very well,”
said Zhao. “Of course they can come
by plane, but a journey by train is
different – it’s more like a modern pilgrimage, to a city that houses the treasures of treasures.”
The terra cotta soldiers agree.
Dostyk
— Connecting point
The train dispatch system is still from the Soviet era
Safety check in a terminal in Dostyk
55
Think Ahead
Think Ahead
Małaszewicze
goods. These are primarily headed
westward. Siberian coal, for example,
poses tough competition to the “black
gold” from Silesia on the Polish market. The share of raw materials and
goods transported in the other direction is still tiny. Yet China’s strong
economic growth harbors great potential. According to Mirosław Kuk, a
press spokesman for PKP CARGO,
plans are in place for gradual expansion of the loading station in the future.
This means Małaszewicze will have
opportunities to continue growing. It
is easy to see that the small village is
prospering. The sidewalks and roads
are in a good repair, the houses are
well kept, and a new sports field has
been built for the village’s young people. The single-family homes of the
— Between worlds
“No, I am not worried about my job,”
says the Polish worker, a lifetime
of hard labor etched on his face. His
workplace is one of the largest dry
ports in Europe. He has been here
for many years now, he says, and is
happy to have a job. The pay could
be better, though, he notes.
It is dusty, windy and dry. Although
the sun is shining, the raw eastern
climate is clearly evident. We are
in Małaszewicze, a sleepy village of
4,000 inhabitants on the outer border
56
I couldn’t find a job, so my brother
suggested I should apply as a TSE
operator. I have become quite passionate about railways now and I prefer
this job over being a lawyer.”
Most people of
Dostyk work at the
railway station
Tulepov also noted that the railway
is improving local living conditions.
It is a source of income for local
people and the fact that people are
coming to work and live there demonstrates the potential of the railway
for the local economy. While trade
between China and Europe intensifies, the hope is that it will continue
to have a positive effect on the people who live in and around Dostyk
railway station.
of the EU, just a few kilometers away
from Belarus. Another world is just
a stone’s throw away. This is exactly
what makes the village so special – it
is a mediator between worlds.
The Małaszewicze loading station has
become an international freight transport hub. It maintains its position by
functioning as a bridge between the
different gauges used for Russian
and western tracks. This is one of the
reasons that PKP CARGO, a former
subsidiary of the state railway and
the second largest freight company in
Europe, operates four terminals here.
The Yuxinou train is reloaded in the
central container terminal, which was
modernized in 2010. The terminal
is operated by some 20 employees
working in four shifts. Among other
things, the containers are packed
with parts from Foxconn and laptops
from Hewlett Packard, manufactured
in factories in Chongqing.
The loading station also specializes
in transshipping of piece and bulk
China’s strong
economic growth
harbors great
potential
The municipal buildings are modernized and any small details still needing attention are under renovation.
All of that is not matter of course for
Poland, which is still a relatively
young democracy. The country has
undergone far-reaching changes
that hit especially hard in the east.
Two women in a small grocery store
on the main road comment: “Many
young people have emigrated to
Ireland and England in recent years.
But we hope that our village will
grow.” The worker at the dry port is
optimistic about the future. “Thanks
to my work at the loading station in
Małaszewicze, I have been able to
provide my daughter with a good education She is in Ireland right now,
her first experience abroad,” he says.
After a moment he adds: “But hopefully she will come back soon and settle down in this beautiful spot, too.”
A train driver getting ready to pull out of the station
© James Hill
tunities to learn and advance as well.
Life at the station is not easy. Each
job requires special skills and a high
level of responsibility. The station
is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year, and most people work at least
12 hours per day. Young and experienced specialists work together, and
the latter mentor new employees.
What is important is that all specialists
respect each other. Most of the people
who work in office jobs used to work
“in field” and can do hard work as
well. Most of the people who began
their career at this station have moved
on to distinguished positions in other
regions of Kazakhstan. They believe
that Dostyk station was key in their
current success.
One of the young specialists, Ruslan
Tulepov, a technical security equipment ( TSE ) operator, tells his story:
“I have been working here for about a
year. I moved from another part of the
Almaty region. I graduated from college in Taldykurgan as a lawyer, but
© James Hill
The vast Kazakh steppes
well-to-do inhabitants could easily
be located in a middle-class neighborhood anywhere else in the world.
57
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Turning ideas into reality.
As a worldwide association of independent specialists, we bring all the right
minds and competences to the table for every project, offering a maximum
of experience and know-how. We thus enable progress and advancement in
many different ways, while also ensuring the success of our company.
60
Collectively Creative
64
Flight to Tomorrow
New paths in aviation
70
Smart Home
Our lives in the world of tomorrow
72
Science and Fiction
58
59
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
Collectively
Creative
Text Paul Sullivan
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity during his mission
60
© Martin Hieslmair / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A
rt might often be created in
isolation – but it is almost
always made with others
in mind. It is widely acknowledged
that artists ultimately seek connection through their work, whether by
touching, inspiring, shocking or even
intimidating. As was once said about
music, “without an audience, musical
composition is just notes on paper.”
Over the decades some artists have
broken down traditional separations
between the artist and audience, creating what is known as participatory
art that relies on others for its realization. Beginning with the Dada artists
such as Marcel Duchamp around a
century ago, the movement has intensified over the decades, catalyzed
in the 1960s and ’70s by the likes of
Brazilian theater director Augusto
Boal, whose Theater of the Oppressed
employed spectators as actors, and
American painter Allan Kaprow’s
Happenings, which he described as
Some artists have
broken down
the separations
between artist and
audience
“a game, an adventure, a number of
activities engaged in by participants
for the sake of playing.”
The last couple of decades have seen
many contemporary art luminaries
continue to explore audience partici-
pation within their work. These range
from Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s outsized environmental art pieces, which
include wrapping the Pont Neuf bridge
in Paris and the German Reichstag in
100,000 square meters of fabric and
aluminum in 1995, to photographer
Spencer Tunick’s live nudes, which
bring together volunteers willing to
be photographed naked en masse in
public places like New York’s Grand
Central rail station, London’s Selfridges department store and The
Lowry in Manchester.
While the ways that artists and audiences interact are endless and continually evolving, the rise of social media in the last few years has had
revolutionary implications in that the
traditional, professionalized art world,
which is often described or experienced as elite, has suddenly been
61
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
62
artist Man Bartlett turned New York’s
Port Authority bus station into a platform for an interactive online experience where he translated tweets into
sculpture. During a 24-hour period,
Bartlett received some 1,500 responses,
which he read aloud, attaching a
Social media
has given artists
a whole new
online reach and
potential
feather to a mannequin for each tweet.
He then sold the feathers to a collector.
In the same year, artist Jonathan
Gray created Tree Blogging, a fiveday online event that consisted of the
artist “planting” several prompts
on a website – a quote from conser-
© Bjoern85 / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
rendered more accessible than ever
thanks to the democratic and interactive nature of platforms like Twitter,
Facebook, Tumblr and others.
Where traditional participatory art
has functioned offline, social media
has given artists a whole new online
reach and potential, and a whole
new movement of artists have subsequently been engaging with what
has been termed social-media art – an
umbrella term that includes everything from crowd-sourced poems on
Twitter, paintings inspired by Facebook profiles, and music videos that
evolve as increasing numbers of people add to them.
Interestingly, social-media art not
only blends performance and participatory art thanks to its inherently
social aspect, but is also a predominantly visual field. To cite a few examples, in 2009 a relatively unknown
US artist called Matt Held became
“Internet-famous” when he started
painting portraits based on people’s
Facebook profiles. In 2011, Brooklyn
Harlem Shake in front of O2 World Berlin
© judyboo / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
People with painted bodies, part of a human installation by Spencer
vationist John Muir, sound samples
from a chainsaw – and invited people
to respond. Gray then traced the
development of the responses, which
came in the form of text, photographs,
video, and sound, noting how they
“branched out” from the original
prompts in much the same way as a
tree.
The art form that seems to have best
tapped into social media’s viral potential is music. A glance at the most
shared content on the Internet in the
last couple of years reveals many music-themed videos, such as Ylvis’ The
Fox ( What Does The Fox Say? ), Harlem Shake and Canadian astronaut
Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s
Space Oddity while floating around
the International Space Station.
One of the more nuanced projects in
this field is a crowd-sourced music
video for Johnny Cash’s posthumously
released song Ain’t No Grave. The
project’s website allows users to draw
and contribute a frame for the film,
not only drawing over an original
frame but also adding their own personal take – or even departing from
the original completely. The results
were then sequenced randomly
together, forming a compelling stopmotion animation.
In this way, social media has really
helped emphasize the art in participation. While traditional art hasn’t yet
reached these kinds of viral tipping
points, it is surely only a matter of
time before the digital era produces
artists who bypass the traditional infrastructure of galleries and auction
houses and become “Internet-famous”
versions of Damien Hirst and Jeff
Koons.
It is of course unlikely that social
media art will ever replace traditional
infrastructures completely. But it is
a given that artists and audiences
alike will have increasing opportunities to join forces and create something magnificent and unforgettable
together.
63
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
Flight to Tomorrow
The largest civilian transport airplane in the world: the Airbus A 380
Text Andreas Spaeth
F
or many people, the world is
growing ever smaller. This is
because more and more of us
can afford to travel long distances
by plane in just a matter of hours.
Three and half billion passengers are
expected to travel by air in 2015.
Nearly 100,000 flights currently take
off and land each day. Statistically
speaking, the volume of air traffic
worldwide doubles every 15 years.
In purely arithmetical terms, practically the entire world population
will be traveling by plane within two
decades. Airbus anticipates 6.7 bil64
lion air passengers by 2032. While
the number of passenger airplanes
worldwide was just some 16,000 in
2012, European aircraft manufacturers expect this number will more
than double to over 33,000 by 2032.
This continuing growth poses huge
challenges for the aviation industry. After all, growth must now be
sustainable. More and more people
have to be transported through the
air in an increasingly efficient and
yet environmentally friendly manner.
All fields of aviation are therefore
subject to unique innovation pres-
sure – airports, aircraft manufacturers and airspace monitoring authorities alike. There are many interesting
approaches to making future air
travel more sustainable: planes that
chart their course in the sky almost
by themselves, jet engines that run on
sustainable bio-fuel and aircraft construction materials that are stronger,
lighter and recyclable. Naturally
everything must meet the highest
safety requirements. Below we have
outlined a few of the exciting approaches for sending aviation on its
flight to future.
© Herr Olsen/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Three and half billion passengers will travel by
plane this year. Read on to discover how we are
mastering this challenge.
65
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
Testing the limits
Orderly air traffic
Before being approved for series production, a new airplane model is subject to extreme tests under conditions
that would never occur in regular passenger traffic. For
example, test pilots take off at such a steep angle that
the tail drags on the runway, sending sparks flying.
There are lightning strike tests, nose dives, takeoffs with
water covering the runway and functional braking tests
that leave the brakes glowing with heat. The tail is exposed to extreme temperatures in both the Arabian desert
and the Arctic. It goes without saying that there are
no passengers on board during these rigorous tests, but
their weight is simulated with water tanks in the cabin,
such as during testing of the new A 350. Just like the
Boeing 787, the A 350 is setting the course for the future.
Instead of aluminum, it is made primarily of composite
materials. Five planes were subject to a total of 2,500 test
flight hours over the course of some 15 months.
Even the best planes are of no use when clogged skies
and airports make efficient flight impossible. Proper handling of air traffic is therefore vital. This is the responsibility of air traffic control. In the future, however, the role
of air traffic controllers will change. Until now, they have
guided jets from the ground via radar and radio communication. In the world of tomorrow, new satellite-based
systems will make air traffic management increasingly
autonomous. Using precision navigation and communicating with each other automatically, planes will determine
their ideal flight path themselves, minimizing the risk
of collision and making significantly better use of limited
capacities.
Air traffic is controlled from the ground
Number of air passengers
Airbus expects by 2032
Passengers will soon replace the water tanks in this cabin
Safety is top priority
Airplanes are the safest form of transport around. Over
the course of the past several years, the number of casualties has sunk to a record low even while the overall
number of passengers has steadily increased. The number
of fatalities on commercial passenger flights in 2013 was
210. Statistically that is one accident for every 2.4 million
flights. Aviation safety requirements are extremely strict,
and crews regularly train the correct responses to emergencies. Yet the industry wants to take it up a notch with
a declared goal of zero deaths in passenger transport. A
diverse array of initiatives has been launched for this purpose. They include technical efforts such as improved collision and ground proximity warning systems in aircraft
and detectors on the ground for dangerous wind shears.
Or more robust cabin equipment to simplify evacuations.
Stricter certification requirements for airlines and their
safety standards will play a role as well, just as will more
standardized pilot training programs.
6.7 billion
Technically speaking, it is essentially already possible to
control planes from the ground. Be this as it may, flight
captains will be a part of on-board crews in the future as
well. Only humans can respond to any challenge that may
arise with complete flexibility. What is more, passengers
would very likely refuse to board if no one was in the
cockpit. Here in the cockpit of the A 380, all important information is presented in easy-to-read format on large displays. Cameras on the tail and under the fuselage make
it easier to maneuver the aircraft on the ground. Joysticks
have replaced the control stick at Airbus. Key flight data
can even be projected onto a transparent display in front
of the cockpit windshield.
Screens in the cockpit of the A 380
66
Page 66 – 67 © Andreas Spaeth A modern workplace for pilots
Number of flights that currently
take off each day
100,000
Training for evacuation on an emergency slide
67
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
How Airbus sees the future of flight
Interview
Hans Freudenthaler
Text Anne Kammerzelt
What products does your company manufacture for the aviation
industry?
We are one of the leading manufacturers of structural components for
airplanes. For example, we produce
the engine mounts and the components for the engine nacelle, what
is known as the pylon, a carrier
mounted on the wing of an airplane
to which the engine is attached. Our
manufacturing portfolio includes
engine discs and many other products as well.
Over the course of your career,
which innovations were the most
exciting for you?
I am still fascinated by the fact that
airplanes can be developed on computers and that processes can be defined with the help of simulations.
The developments in the past several
years have been really incredible.
One thing is clear: The planes of tomorrow will not have
the fuselage, wings and tail unit of their current counterparts. Aircraft cannot be built much larger than the A 380
and still remain physically stable. The flying wing aircraft, with a fuselage that also serves as the wings and
ensures lift, is a long-imagined concept. It is a fascinating
idea, but one afflicted with numerous unsolved problems.
Airbus recently unveiled a revolutionary bionic concept
plane built to mimic bird bones. Solid structure is only
68
present where needed for stability. This opens the door
to previously undreamed of possibilities – such as an
exterior skin that can become transparent at the touch
of a button, giving passengers a truly awe-inspiring flight
experience. Other developers, however, anticipate that
future aircraft will have no windows at all. Virtual views
will instead be provided by screens on all sides of the
plane.
© Airbus
A plane that learns from birds
What might airplanes look like in
20 years?
It is conceivable that planes could
have adjustable wings. Or they could
be flying wings, models in which the
fuselage is aerodynamically integrated
into the wing. There might also be
electrically powered airplanes in the
future, known as e-fan aircraft.
Do you have a favorite product and
if so, what makes it so special to you?
My absolute favorite are the engine
mounts, the connections between
the engine and the wings that must
be able to withstand extreme stress
completely intact. The materials and
complex geometries pose immense
challenges during the forging process
used to manufacture them. Our aim is
always to satisfy our customers’ high
demands.
What do you find so fascinating
about flying?
The construction of airplanes has
enabled humans to fulfill their dream
of flight. I am genuinely proud that
my work helps people travel huge
distances in a short amount of time.
What do you think will be the greatest
challenges to air traffic in the future?
The increasing number of passengers
will pose entirely new challenges for
the aviation industry. Each and every
traveler must be transported from one
location to another safely and quickly
in the future as well. As the number
of passengers increases, so does the
number of flights and thus the amount
of fuel consumed. I am certain that we
will find new solutions to reduce noise
and pollution in the future.
Hans Freudenthaler
Hans Freudenthaler is the Head of
Engineering at Böhler Schmiedetechnik GmbH & Co KG, a leading
supplier to the aviation and energy
industry. His company specializes
in the production of forged parts
made from steel as well as from
titanium- and nickel-base alloys.
69
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
Smart Home
Text Anne Kammerzelt Illustration Alf Ruge
Our lives in the world
of tomorrow
6
3
5
4
2
1
1
Smart grid
Household appliances receive information
on current energy prices from energy suppliers. Using a program, the appliances
then calculate how electricity prices will
develop in the next few hours and switch
themselves on exactly when the most
economical point has been reached.
70
2
Refrigerator
Food is allocated to the optimum storage location and the expiration date
monitored. A display provides information on the amount of food and sends
a message via smartphone when something is needed. In addition to recipe
ideas, the food manager also offers
news and social media.
3
Nest labs
Adaptive thermostats adjust themselves
to the room temperature, the outside temperature and the habits of the occupants.
Temperature changes are controlled by
sensors, even when no one is home. This
automated programming helps to lastingly
reduce energy costs.
4
Coffee machine
Those of us who have a rough time of it
in the morning won’t even have to bother
selecting our favorite coffee from the menu
on the coffee machine. The device will
scan the user’s fingerprint and prepare a
hot drink according to the preferences of
the person at the controls.
5
Medical dispenser
The medical dispenser ensures optimum
medical treatment. This device reads the
health status of the home’s occupants
and determines how much medication
they will need that day. All the user has to
do is place his or her hand on the bathroom mirror for scanning.
6
LED wallpaper
Electronic wallpaper also serves as a
source of illumination and a projection
surface for various images. Users can
select their favorite motif for the wallpaper via app.
71
Stay Curious
Stay Curious
Science and
Fiction
Text Alma Faber Illustration Mathis Rekowski
72
W
ednesday, October 21, 2015.
Marty McFly is having a
bad day. His friend Doc
Brown has just catapulted him thirty
years into the future in his DeLorean
sports car. In the world in which Marty
finds himself, cars are powered by
garbage, consumers are overwhelmed
by three-dimensional holographic
advertising and shoe laces tie themselves. Anyone who watched Back
to the Future II, released in 1989, is
likely to clearly remember one unique
piece of technology from the movie:
the hoverboard, a kind of floating
skateboard on which Marty McFly,
played by Michael J. Fox, escaped
his pursuers.
The year 2015 in which the story in
the movie unfolds is no longer the future but the present. The hoverboard,
the favorite movie gadget of countless
amateur inventors, is currently in
the final phases of development and
could hit the market before the year’s
end. It is not the first piece of science
fiction technology to make the leap
into the real world. When inventions
from books or movies become real,
it may seem as if their original creators had prophetic abilities. This is
of course not true. However, science
fiction does provide the ideal projection surface for breathing life into
technological visions. And that is precisely what makes it so fascinating
and inspiring for scientists, engineers
and product developers.
The love affair between science fiction
and science is a long-standing one.
It started with the stories by Jules
Verne, who is regarded as one of the
co-founders of the science fiction
genre and who anticipated the technical development of submarines in
An ideal projection surface for
breathing life into
technological
visions
his book Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under the Sea. It continued with
Isaac Asimov, who was the first to
use the term robotics in his short
story Runaround published in 1942.
And it extends all the way to Gene
Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek,
who turned researchers’ heads with
a whole series of ideas. Even astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, one of the
most important scientists of our day,
once consented to make a guest appearance in a Star Trek episode, living proof of his fascination with the
genre.
Star Trek plays a very special role
in the world of science fiction. The
stories surrounding Kirk, Picard and
friends have given rise to the longest list of fantasy technologies to
ultimately become real and assume
an integral role in our everyday
lives. While folding communicators
may have elicited an incredulous
laugh from viewers in the 1960s,
they have long since become reality
in the form of mobile phones. “On
screen” were the instructions issued
by Captain Kirk when he wanted to
communicate across long distances
via image transmission – in principle
nothing other than the videotele-
phony in common usage worldwide
since 2003 in the form of Skype. Or
Bluetooth headsets, which were
introduced in the series in 1966 before being actually developed in the
1990s. The voice control featured
in many of the episodes is now standard on tablets and smartphones,
even modern refrigerators and television sets have such systems. The
glasses for simultaneously receiving films, information or news in
later Star Trek episodes bear more
than just a passing resemblance to
Google Glass. With all that in mind,
it comes as no surprise that the tablets used by the crew of the Enterprise likewise made the transition
to reality and are today a part of our
mass culture.
One technology to play a key role
not just in Star Trek but in many
other science fiction stories as well
is the tractor beam. A tractor beam
is used to guide large objects such
as spaceships in a certain direction.
A long-standing
love affair between
science fiction and
science
The idea is based on a fictitious
gravitation principle, similar to artificially generated gravity or a magnet.
What sounded like a scriptwriter’s
wishful thinking just a few years
ago is now a plausible technological
scenario. In 2010, Australian physicists developed a laser tube in which
they could move tiny particles. As
only fitting for the world’s leading
space agency, a NASA team led by
Paul Stysley in 2011 presented not
just one but three development
approaches to creating a real-life
tractor beam: another type of laser
73
Stay Curious
tube, a spiral laser beam and optical tweezers made from two lasers.
Originally, the idea was to use the
tractor beam to remove space junk
from orbit. “However, moving something that large is not possible at
present. Then we had the idea to use
been numerous development approaches to gesture-based interfaces
since the movie appeared.
The sense of excitement remains.
What fantasy technologies will authors and scriptwriters dream of
“We are developing more highly alloyed materials in order to meet the
most extreme demands in the oil
and gas sector.”
Johann Zand, Head of Business area Energy, Austria
The key factor is
that technologies
are embedded in
human stories
the technology to collect samples,”
explains Stysley. In other words, it
will take some time until this technology is ready to move huge objects
such as Space Shuttles, but it is heading in that direction.
The charm of some science fiction
adventures comes from their setting
in the far distant future or in exotic
worlds. Others stories fascinate us
because they are already conceivable today and therefore seem truly
realistic. The movie Minority Report
falls into the latter group. Its clever
mix of forward-looking technologies,
the rudiments of which already exist today, and fantastic ideas gives
rise to an especially authentic vision
of the future. Director Steven Spielberg was able to accomplish this so
successfully in part because of the
scientists and future researchers he
relied on as advisors. In the movie,
insect-like robots fly through the
air, advertising boards can identify
potential consumers via a scanner,
paper is electronic and cars drive by
themselves. One image has exerted
an extraordinarily powerful influence until this very day: Tom Cruise
waving his hands to shift data back
and forth in the blink of an eye. In
this case as well, reality has already
caught up with fiction. There have
74
Brian David Johnson, a future researcher at Intel, relies on the power
of science fiction stories for a living.
He does not limit himself to the stories in movies and books, however,
but instead encourages others to
create their own stories about the
future and to use these as the basis
for innovations. Johnson refers to
this method as science fiction prototyping. In this approach, a new technology serves as the basis for a short
story, movie or comic. The storyline
depicts the influence that this technology could have on an individual
or society as a whole. The prototype
is thus not identical with the product, merely a vision of it. “The key
factor is that the technologies are
embedded in human stories, fates
and dramas. They are not the focus
of the story, just a part of it,” explains Johnson. This facilitates personal identification and makes the
technology understandable. What is
more, it is the exact same way that
Hollywood stories work.
next? And which of those will one
day become reality? Who knows
what the future will bring? One thing
is certain: Researchers and developers will keep coming up with new
Numerous development approaches
to gesture-based
interfaces
ideas and amateur inventors will
keep searching for flashes of inspiration. And by the way, an initiative
on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is seeking to bring Marty
McFly’s hoverboard into the present. The envisaged delivery date for
the first board has already been set:
Wednesday, October 21, 2015.
Any disruption through the earth’s magnetism must be avoided during long
and directional drilling for oil and gas. That is why our teams are developing
special steels with very unique properties. It is this absolute determination,
this pleasure in taking on a challenge, that sets us all apart. We’re taking the
future into our own hands.
www.voestalpine.com
75
Future
We’re taking the future into our own hands!
New Ideas for
Industry
Economic development,
added social value
Five Nations,
One Future?
The Silicon Valley model
for success — what Bangalore,
Chile, London and Rwanda
Science and
Fiction
From fantasy to new
technology
voestalpine AG
voestalpine -Strasse 1
4020 Linz, Austria
T. +43/50304/15-0
F. +43/50304/55-0
www.voestalpine.com
www.voestalpine.com
2015 issue
voestalpine magazine

Future Magazine 2015 pdf

Transcription

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