In this podcast, Michal Klaus, CEO at Ataccama, discusses what is required by governments around the world to successfully reopen their economies after the devastating impacts of Covid-19. The interview is conducted by Ron Powell, independent analyst and industry expert for the BeyeNetwork and executive producer for The World Transformed Fast Forward Series.

In this edition of Fast Forward, Simon Bain, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of ShieldIO and David Hicks (Vice President, Worldwide ISV Cloud Business Development and Marketing) with Oracle join us to discuss one of the biggest challenges software developers face in this era of heightened data security and strict regulatory requirements.  More than ever, application developers and testers need access to live data (not masked and fake data) to ensure that their solutions are effective and error-free. But that data has never been better protected or harder to access. What if there was a way to test and develop new applications securely, in the cloud, with full access to data without ever having to decrypt it? Learn more here: https://cloudmarketplace.oracle.com/marketplace/en_US/listing/61995171 About Our Guests: Simon Bain, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of ShieldIO. He is known for developing award-winning security and search applications, including an innovative parallel processing search engine. Simon has worked with leading banks to implement on-line banking platforms and payment processing systems, and he created the first online voting application to be granted security clearance for use on interactive digital TV in the UK. He is also a published author on security and E-Voting and Holds 6 security patents David Hicks is Vice President, ISV Cloud Business Development and Marketing for Oracle.  In this capacity he is responsible for driving Oracle Public Cloud adoption with Oracle broad partner community.  David also leads marketing focused on awareness, demand generation and go to market activities with partners. David joined Oracle in 2006 and has been in this role for the past six years.   FF 013-824  

Smart Cities, Part 2 Bill Pugh joins host Phil Bowermaster for an in-depth discussion of how smart cities are conceptualized and how smart city initiatives are rolled out. Bill explains how Smart Cities initiatives began with cities recognizing that they had unused or underused data assets and began looking for ways to use that data to address real-world problems. He also explains why it’s important to start addressing these kinds of issues regionally versus city by city. Other topics include: How do cities decide to place infrastructure in the Cloud vs on the edge? How can they best incorporate the smart grid into the overall smart city architecture? What are the challenges what are the challenges cities face when it comes to making real improvements regarding traffic and congestion? Join us. About Our Guest: With a background in telecommunications and IT, Bill Pugh is a Managing Partner Smart Connections Consulting, where he provides public and private sector clients technological thought leadership, guidance, and practical support for wired and wireless connected initiatives as well as roadmaps for open data and analytic objectives. Bill has over 25 years of experience in wired/wireless strategy of platform development and deployment of networking technologies for private and public companies. In recent years he has been engaged with cities on strategies for executing Smart City initiatives around Street lights, Smart Parking, Intelligent Traffic and Security.    SC 002-823 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

What if the planet Mars were to be made more Earth-like: the kind of place where human beings and other Earth life forms could live comfortably. Could we do it? Should we? Phil and Stephen discuss. NextBigFuture says we can and tells how to do it: Terraforming Mars in 50 Years with Large Orbital Mirrors, Bacteria and Factories https://bit.ly/2U58VSA George Dvorsky at Gizmodo says we'll never settle Mars: Humans Will Never Colonize Mars https://bit.ly/2BhENec Meanwhile, one guy is talking about nuking the joint: Looks Like Elon Musk Is Serious About Nuking Mars https://bit.ly/32ozEg0 Lots to discuss here. If we can do it, is it the right thing to do? What if there is already life there? What if instead of changing Mars, we changed humans? And most importantly -- is there a board game available that lets you try your hand at Terraforming the red planet? Join us. WT 495-822 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Smart Cities, Part 1 In this edition of Fast Forward, Frannie Mattews, CEO of the Colorado Technology Association, joins us to discuss the many ways that Smart City technologies are transforming transportation, the workplace, and the communities in which we live. This show is Part 1 in our new ongoing series on Smart Cities.  How will smart cities impact the economy and quality of life of the communities where they are  deployed? And what is the human impact of these technologies? Kicking off the discussion with us is Frannie Matthews, CEO of Colorado Technology Association (CTA).   What is a Smart City? The answers vary, from the highly abstract and theoretical to the completely practical. Most definitions include the idea of making use of data to improve government services, quality of life, and basic infrastructure. Smart City deployments are heavily dependent on the Internet of Things (IOT) and a new class of smart devices. Such  technologies can make cities cleaner, safer, more energy efficient, and less congested. But there are trade-offs . What new risks do we incur by giving our data over to Smart Cities applications? Our we making it easier for Big Brother to watch us? How do we balance the benefits and risks? SC 001-821 Music: www.bensound.com Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources. City photo by alejandro gonzalez on Unsplash

What would you make if you had a machine that could make anything? One day soon we may have machines that can do exactly that. The most famous example of the Universal Assembler is probably the Replicator from Star Trek. What do you need -- Equipment? Clothes? A Cup of Tea?  Recent developments suggest such a device may be closer than many of us expect. A Real World 'Star Trek' Replicator Is Now Possible Thanks To New Breakthrough https://bit.ly/2Ua7WAx A startup with alumni from MIT and Yale says it's made a breakthrough in creating a next-generation material that should make it possible to 3-d print literally anything out of thin air. New York-based Mattershift has managed to create large-scale carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes that are able to combine and separate individual molecules. "This technology gives us a level of control over the material world that we've never had before," said Mattershift Founder and CEO Dr. Rob McGinnis in a release. "For example, right now we're working to remove CO2 from the air and turn it into fuels. This has already been done using conventional technology, but it's been too expensive to be practical. Using our tech, I think we'll be able to produce carbon-zero gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels that are cheaper than fossil fuels." RELATED Chemists make first-ever ring of pure carbon https://go.nature.com/2Ha48da   WT 494-820 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

With a habitable super-Earth and  UFOs back in the news, we have to ask: Are we going to find the aliens or have they already come to see us? Could There Be Life? This Newfound 'Super-Earth' May Be Habitable https://bit.ly/2YN5fK5 Only 31 light years away! Pretty close for an earth-like planet. But then there’s this… The Hunt Is On for Alpha Centauri’s Planets https://bit.ly/2Ytlz3h Snake-like UFOs seen across US ‘could be military craft used by Space Force’ https://bit.ly/2YvHGVG A trio of ASU experts give their thoughts on recent UFO reports https://bit.ly/2ItJhT9 'Fleet of UFOs' Followed US Aircraft, Navy Pilot Says https://bit.ly/2yOxARp -- Between 2014 and 2015, seasoned pilots in the U.S. Navy experienced a number of harrowing encounters with UFOs during training missions in the U.S. While pilots were mid-flight, their aircraft cameras and radar detected seemingly impossible objects flying at hypersonic speeds at altitudes up to 30,00 feet (9,144 meters); these mysterious UFOs did so with no visible means of propulsion, The New York Times reported on May 26. This stuff has been going on for a long time. Takes us back to the days of the Foo Fighters. What Were the Mysterious “Foo Fighters” Sighted by WWII Night Flyers? https://bit.ly/2OO9WiG --Something strange was following the Beaufighter crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Dozens of these sightings occurred -- hundreds of similar throughout both theaters of war. What were they?  Popular theory at the time: Secret Nazi Weapons! WT 493-819 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

NASA's idea for making food from thin air just became a reality — it could feed billions https://bit.ly/2Zdu1zL It's not like you can make food out of thin air. Well…it turns out you can. A company from Finland, Solar Foods, is planning to bring to market a new protein powder, Solein, made out of CO2, water and electricity. It's a high-protein, flour-like ingredient that contains 50 percent protein content, 5–10 percent fat, and 20–25 percent carbs. It reportedly looks and tastes like wheat flour, and could become an ingredient in a wide variety of food products after its initial launch in 2021. Related: Edible Insects - Can it be Sushi-fied?   https://bit.ly/2ykQuzn A New Law to Describe Quantum Computing’s Rise? https://bit.ly/2KmxEQ4 Neven’s law states that quantum computers are improving at a “doubly exponential” rate. If it holds, quantum supremacy is around the corner. Cell Reprogramming Leads to Reversal in Cell Aging! https://bit.ly/3108TxE You might have heard of scientists turning adult cells (like skin cells) into undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells. However, the team at Stanford lead by Vittorio Sebastiano, Jay Sarkar, and Marco Quarta has found a way to turn adult cells into younger cells. That way, the cells don’t forget their assigned tasks since they maintain their cell type, but have the added advantage of having restored youthful performance. WT 492-818 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 Category People & Blogs

Daniel Mintz,  Chief Data Evangelist at Looker, steps us through some common misconceptions about who uses data for business, how they are using it, and what the future of business intelligence looks like.     Today's businesses face unprecedented challenges when it comes to the size and complexity of their data sets. New technologies allow more widespread and sophisticated access to data assets than ever before.  With such capabilities at our fingertips, it is easy to assume that the future of business intelligence will be a bigger, more complex version of what has come before. But will it?   About Our Guest Daniel Mintz is the Chief Data Evangelist at Looker. Previously, he was Head of Data & Analytics at fast-growing media startup Upworthy and before that, he was Director of Analytics at political powerhouse MoveOn.org. Throughout his career, Daniel has focused on how people interact with data in their everyday lives and how they can use it to get better at what they do. Music: www.bensound.com Videos and Images from Pixabay.com and other sources. Image by Gerd Altmann  FF 012-817

Phil and Stephen review the legacy of the first moon landing. We’re now as far in time from the moon landing as that event  was from the end of World War I. What does it mean to live in a world where the moon landing is (practically) ancient history? Why is the moon landing still important? Writing for the L.A. Times,  Ayn Rand had the following to say about Apollo 11: That we had seen a demonstration of man at his best, no one could doubt — this was the cause of the event’s attraction and of the stunned, numbed state in which it left us. And no one could doubt that we had seen an achievement of man in his capacity as a rational being — an achievement of reason, of logic, of mathematics, of total dedication to the absolutism of reality. How many people would connect these two facts, I do not know. https://bit.ly/2K3z2of Did landing on the moon bring us into another reality?  Which leads us to this headline: Elon Musk says SpaceX could land on the moon in 2 years. A NASA executive says 'we'll partner with them, and we'll get there faster' if the company can pull it off. https://bit.ly/2Gvs22B The SLS isn’t even scheduled to fly until 2021. Musk says he could have us on the moon in that period of time. Even if he’s blowing smoke, who would bet that NASA on its own could get there faster? WT 491-816 Eternity Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) | Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

In this edition of Fast Forward on the World Transformed, Jake Freivald,  Vice President of Product Marketing at Information Builders, talks with us about how rethinking data integration can open up new possibilities for data analysis.     As the buzz surrounding big data recedes, organizations find that they still face significant challenges when it comes to deriving business value from their data. More than ever, businesses need a clear understanding that comes from exploring the deep relationships that exist in their full datasets. But organizations continue to struggle to achieve that, and many are left wondering what lies beyond the big data hype.     It’s now been four years since Gartner removed Big Data from their annual Hype Cycle. With the advantage of hindsight, Jake describes how Hadoop in particular and big data in general may have failed to live up to the hype. At the same time, he points out there is a lot to be said for what organizations have done right when it comes to putting big data solutions in place.   Jake identifies three core questions: How can we stop wasting so much time mapping one set of rows and columns to another? How do we address the disconnect between business people and technicians? How much value do we lose by constantly shifting context in these complicated projects?  In the post Big Data World, businesses are still dealing with many of the same fundamental data challenges they always have. But today, new technologies are opening up a modern approach to data integration and master data management. Tremendous opportunities lie ahead.