Artists have always had an interesting interpretation of what our future might look like by fusing together technology with philosophical concepts, often with a cheeky sense of humour.
If we are to create the future, it is important to first envision it. Film has always been a medium in which we have had glimpses into what the future may hold. Blade Runner (1982) showed us a world of emotive humanoid androids, Logan's Run (1976) integrated concepts of wearable tech and virtual reality headsets, and of course, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994) predicted all the technology we would use today and still are developing: the tablet computer, A.I. assistants (communicator pin), nanofactories that output food (replicator), virtual and augmented reality (Holodek), transfer of energy via resonant inductive coupling (transporter) and more.

Currently at the Victoria & Albert Museum, a robot has taken up residence to build an interesting looking series of sculptures at the Elytra Filmament Pavilion. It is an interesting architecture in development that resembles bee hives.

Other artists have their interpretation of A.I. In 2014, an animatronic doll performed a rather disturbing dance in an installation at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City by the artist Jordan Wolfson.
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Israeli filmmakers experiment with their vision of augmented reality contact lens in Sight. (2014) Click to play here.

Keiichi Matsuda, a London-based artist and designer, creates a colourful collage of adverts, supermarket shopping, customer service and points-gathering in the short film Hyper-Reality (2016), a project he began in 2013 on kickstarter.

London-based artist Keiichi Matsuda's version of Hyper-Reality (2016). Click to play here. 

Keiichi Matsuda's Domestic Robocop (2010). Click to play here. 

Over the weekend, I read a very interesting book called Reversing Memory Loss (1992) by the neurosurgeon Vernon H. Mark, who was one of the pioneers of research into electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of the skull in the 1960s and 1970s.

In his book, which has a compendium of fascinating case histories and different accounts mainly dealing with the history of Dr. Mark's practice, he makes some interesting observations about the treatment methodologies for various neurological disorders. However, one of the key features he writes about in detail is that memory loss, despite that they might have various causes, are often due to a vitamin B-complex deficiency, lack of nutrition, dehydration and consequences from taking a combination of prescription drugs. Alcoholics often are deficient in vitamin B-complex and many may suffer from intermittent memory loss to full lapses in memory. In addition, Dr. Mark writes that he had seen many cases in which alcoholism and depression were often misdiagnosed when there were actually underlying undiagnosed states of hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism could produce clinical symptoms resembling those of alcoholism and Alzheimer's disease, and hyperthryoidism could cause a range of symptoms, including lack of concentration and hyperdistractibility with secondary memory loss. In fact, Dr. Vernon Mark writes that most memory loss is reversible with the right nutrition and avoidance or reduction in the usage of pharmaceutical drugs.
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The brain is an organ that needs precise amounts of glucose (sugar), oxygen, water, sodium, potassium and vitamins in order to function and when deprived of fluids, it begins to shrink and cannot work properly. In addition, Dr. Mark also makes the observation that often depression can also be an underlying cause of memory loss, mainly due to the treatment of depression itself. Anti-depressants prevent the brain from properly utilising acetylcholine​, which eventually leads to memory loss. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that is released by nerve cells to send signals to other cells; anti-depressants interfere with this neurotransmitter, hence leading to eventual lapses in both short-term and long-term memory. Dr. Mark writes that often the onset of depression, compounded with treatment via anti-depressants eventually lead to the underlying causes of memory loss in many people, and in his experience, people who eventually end up with dementia diagnoses had a pre-existing condition and treatment with anti-depressants several years or decades before.
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Another facet of controversy is the usage of drugs used to prescribe for attention deficit disorders. Dr. Mark also writes very cogently about the effects of stimulants, in particular, the widespread usage of amphetamines within the medical community to "improve" thinking and memory or just to feel better and be more energetic. He elucidates an example of a particular case history of a 25 year old medical student named Jerry who became addicted to amphetamines in order to increase his performance to remain in medical school. However, Dr. Mark makes the obsevation that although:

Dr. Mark remarks that the effects that amphetamines have are not unusual, and that the initial dose, particularly if small will enhance memory function and increase concentration with an elevation of mood, but as the dose is increased the three elements of memory, acquisition, storage and retrieval begin to deteriorate; and performance, with regard to new learning, becomes diminished. Dr. Mark also writes that repeated use of these types of stimulant-type drugs only enhances their negative effects and the elevation of mood proceeds too far, and leads to hyperexcitability, which in turn leads to distraction, not concentration, thus setting a pattern of difficulty in the acquisition of new information for storage in the memory bank. Amphetamines and methylamphetamines are actually detrimental to memory and brain integrity and can cause lasting disturbances in brain functioning.​ (p.77-78, 79)

Other drugs that have lasting effects on memory loss and brain functioning are depressants and sedative drugs, such as barbiturates, sleeping pills and tranquilizers, such as Valium, Ativan, Librium, Serax, Xanax and Atarax.

Polypharmacy is a term that refers to patients who are on a cocktail of several different medications. Dr. Mark makes the curious observation that, "doctors who prescribed these medicines weren't particularly concerned about their effects on the brain because none of the drugs were primarily for brain functions." However a compendium of several different medications also decrease and have an effect on memory abilities and intellectual capacity. In one case, he describes Jim, who had a significant decline in memory and brain functioning from the three medications he had been taking: one for his heart, one for his high blood pressure, and one for his asthma. Dr. Mark writes that oftentimes, the combination of these drugs are more toxic to your brain than a single drug alone.
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In the final analysis, Dr. Mark advises patients on the necessity of self-reliance and that the best safeguard is to question your doctor carefully every time a new drug is prescribed or the dosage is changed. (p.94) He ends the book with remarks upon the potential of transcranial direct electrical/ current stimulation (tDCS) in the treatment of various neurological disorders. Previously, I had written about tDCS here. One of the problematic areas of tDCS is that because that is great variability between the brains from one person to another that the effects of tDCS are not consistent. Currently, I am informally advising a Founder of a biotech startup based in South Korea called Neurophet who is working on solving this very problem, but as I am under NDA, I am not able to divulge any information of their research at this time; however, I think if tDCS becomes standard treatment for neurological and psychiatric disorders, then there would be a significant decline in the usage of psychiatric drugs across many nations such as in the U.K. and in the U.S.

As another bit of anecdotal information, a friend in the startup space told me several months ago that the brains of the current population are vastly different from before the era of mobile phones and texting; as via texting, people are more inclined to use both their thumbs to send messages, and in brain scans, researchers were able to determine that due to this activity, the frontal lobes responsible for the movement of thumbs became enlarged than in previous eras.
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Google keyboard focuses on the index finger to swipe, as opposed to using thumbs to "type".

​Currently, I am using the Google keyboard on all my mobile devices- which is more of an expansive swipe than typing- so perhaps, if this way of typing becomes more prevalent, our brains too, will alter with time.

I happened to meet a couple of attorneys who are based in India last December speaking about this very subject, and they told me that sadly, a lot of those cases will never see justice; in India, it takes more than an average of 10-15 years before a case will be settled or find resolution, with many cases taking more than 25 years. Cases that involve senior citizens are often given priority in cases, due to their advanced age, so that there isn't a system of priortisation aside from advanced age of the client. This is primarily due to the cumbersome paperwork involved in filing cases, and the bureaucracy involved between different government agencies, in addition to the fact that no legal documents or previous cases have digital documentation. This lack of a central database or even a blockchain of updated case information is causing the backup of approximately 27 million cases in India.

In the U.S., companies such as smartlegalforms allow users to find common legal forms that they can fill using an e-form to download for a one-time purchase price. These legal forms include those dealing with divorce, employment, living wills, deeds, landlord-tenant agreements etc. However, I think an exciting aspect of a potential web service are those that will serve as virtual attorneys in regards to many different matters that do not require mediation or those cases not looking to set precedent, but everyday matters that require consultation and the right paperwork filed.
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Imagine if you could consult your virtual A.I. lawyer or solicitor and immediately find the right forms to e-file, with the virtual A.I. lawyer giving you an overview of previous successful cases in matters of litigation or else, for corporations to consult before making investment decisions. Neota Logic does this to an extent by catering to businesses and corporations. It is a platform that utilises algos to automate legal documents for businesses to ensure compliance with regulations, politics and procedures and via their interface, businesses can receive analysis and advice, intake and assessment in addition to drafting counsel-approves sales agreements.

Thus far a lot of financial institutions and even the government in the U.K. are considering adapting to blockchain technology to de-centralise their database in regards to grants funding and keeping track of taxpayer money. For those who are unfamiliar with blockchain, in layman's terms, information is updated in blocks then bound together cryptographically with a time stamp and unique digital signature that are connected to each other in a chain, a bit like a large interconnected network, and if the chain is either broken or does not have the correct signature or security information for any of its blocks, then it is not accepted into the blockchain; thus instead of one centralised database of information, this blockchain has data that is spread out all over the internet between many different users so that it cannot be hacked nor altered. It is similar to a DNA sequence that continually adds new information and checks against itself for authenticity. Although blockchain has been used in bitcoin, and there have been several cases in which bitcoin exchanges had been hacked; however, this was not due to the integrity of the blockchain, but via the servers of the companies holding the bitcoin information, such as the debacle at Mt. Gox in 2014 and the more recent Gatecoin hack which lost $2m in bitcoin and Ethereum.
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Other financial institutions such as Visa and Mastercard are adapting to blockchain technology because it is more secure than a centralised database, and other services such as stock options platforms that also use a version of this blockchain; in addition to Nasdaq recently selecting a bitcoin startup chain to run pilots in trading shares of private companies last year and Microsoft allowing developers to build decentralised applications using the Ethereum blockchain to the Windows platform.

However, in the legal sector, blockchain could alter the way attorneys draft contracts which may resemble the way developers code software applications:

#include credit library
#include blockchain library
Var Debtor = ABC Corp.
Var Creditor = ABC Lender
New Document = new Credit Agreement.create {debtor:Debtor, creditor:Creditor, type:working capital}
New Document.interest = Libor(30 day)
New Document.fincovenants = Debt_Yield(4), LTV(65)

This is particularly compelling because the potential integration of blockchain with AI in the legal sector, the services provided by an attorney can be automated for the end user as smart contracts would be coded to be self-executing. I think this is an exciting webservice we will see more of in the next 10 years, as blockchain technology expands into many different sectors, as more LegalTech startups develop platforms allowing users to have access to a virtual A.I. attorney for simple transactions instead of the old way of doing things: which was to hire an attorney, solicitor or law firm, pay them a large retainer, and hire them on an hourly basis for them to fill out the correct paperwork for their clients.

By Sierra Choi

I think everyone at one time or another had wished that there were available sources of wireless power when dealing with electronics, mobile phones, personal computers and other tech devices. Of course, one such ubiquitous source is the sun, but for those nations, such as the U.K., in which there is scarce sunshine, solar energy to power our devices might not work at all, especially during the winter months. 

The sun is a radiative form of light energy. Although there are many sun worshippers out there, too much exposure can be harmful to humans. Another source of radiative energy is the laser, such as IPL (intense pulse light) which is a directed form of light energy and can have therapeutic uses for certain skin conditions. However, excess radiative energy can burn and potentially damage cells and interfere with biological processes. 

Although many companies around the world have been attempting to solve the wireless energy demand, I wanted to examine two companies based in the U.S.: WiTricity and uBeam.
WiTricity powers electronic devices via non-radiative transfer of power via electromagnetic coupling of objects within a resonant field. We are surrounded by electromagnetic fields as anyone who has used a compass will know that the needle will point north, where the magnetic center of the earth's gravity will pull objects. Although there has been safety concerns about electromagnetic (EM) radiation, especially those being emitted by our mobile devices and computers and wifi signals, WiTricity bypasses the safety concerns of EM radiation via resonant magnetic coupling in which essentially connects objects with the same resonant frequency and transfers energy without affecting surrounding objects nor the surrounding environment. This is referred to as ICPT (inductively coupled energy transfer). 
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In comparison, MRI (magnetic resonant imaging) is a different sort of process in which uses near-field resonant magnetic fields to create images, so that all objects in this near field are affected. Microwaves are also types of energy transmission that affects all objects within that radiation field using EM waves like radio frequency signals. Wifi is also a type of energy transfer using EM waves via radio frequency signals. The main problem with wifi is that because it is based in near-proximity, objects that are further away will have a weaker signal than objects that are closely located, therefore wasting a lot of energy on the radiation (the entire area affected). Whereas, WiTricity uses a method of coupling objects together using electromagnetic (EM) induction via a resonant field, so that the strength of the power transfer is not compromised, as long as all objects are located within that resonant field. ​

WiTricity was founded by a professor at MIT, Marin Soljačić, a Croatian-American physicist and electrical engineer who was said to come up with the idea for wireless energy as he was standing in his kitchen late at night looking for his mobile phone charger. 

In a parallel story, Meredith Perry, the founder of uBeam, was said to be in her dorm room at the University of Pennsylvania, and was surrounded by a chaotic mess of wires and adapters, before moving onto research the possibilities of wireless energy transfer. ​
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uBeam (founded 2011), although identical in concept of wireless energy transfer as WiTricity (founded 2007), utilises a completely different sort of technology. Instead of inductively coupled energy transfer (ICPT), uBeam utilises directional ultrasound to transmit energy. Most people understand ultrasound via medical devices, especially in female gynecology in order to create images of ovaries and also in pregnancies to detect images of developing fetuses. The development of ultrasound technology began in 1870 with the discovery of echolocation used by bats then was primarily utilised by the military in WWI, with applications of sonar devices to detect submarines, then starting in 1965, ultrasound became available for commercial use in medical devices for body scanning and detection of tumours. 

Although, ultrasound is generally considered safe in medical usage, there are many problematic issues with ultrasound in the transmission of energy. Firstly, ultrasound can negatively affect biological tissues and create cavities within the skin with prolonged exposure:

(source: Membranes for Life Sciences: Membrane Technology, Volume 1 edited by Klaus-Viktor Peinemann, Suzana Pererira Nunes; pp. 208) ​

Ultrasound-assisted sonophresis can be utilised between low frequencies (18-100kHz) to high frequencies (3-10 MHz). According to uBeam patents: Sender communications for wireless power transfer US 20120299540 A1  and Receiver transducer for wireless power transfer US 20120300593, the company has outlined the usage of its ultrasound energy transmitters between 50kHz to 110kHz. Although this is considered in the low range for human usage, and typically in the range of medical devices, the effects of long-term exposure to continual ultrasound exposure may be potentially dangerous as outlined above. In addition, since animals, such as cats and dogs hear in the 20Hz-80kHz range, with dogs being able to hear up to 60kHz (source: Metrics and Methods for Security Risk Management by Carl Young, pp.114) and cats up to 80kHz (source: The Neuroethology of Predation and Escape by Sillar, Picton and Heitler, pp.108), this might also have a detrimental effect on pets that people might keep in their homes. However, in the press, and on their website, uBeam has been reported that their ultrasound energy power transfer device will not affect pets, despite information to the contrary in their patents filed above in 2012, which clearly shows a range that will indeed affect pets. 
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Dogs can hear up to 60kHz and cats can hear up to 80kHz. uBeam's ultrasound is within the 50-110kHz range according to their patents. Ultrasound has been found to be harmful to animals and humans with prolonged exposure, potentially leading to illness and death. ​

Curiously, uBeam also states on their website that 99.9% of the emitted ultrasound will bounce off skin and the uBeam description makes a comparison to flourescent lights. However, florescent lights are an entirely different sort of energy source than ultrasound, and ultrasound has been proven to absorb into skin tissues even at a very low setting of 50kHz. Airborne ultrasound in the 20-50kHz range have caused a number of people who work in industrial applications to suffer from fatigue, headache, nausea, tinnitus and disturbance of neuromuscular coordination. The Canadian government recommendation for exposure limits of ultrasound range are given in 1/3-octave bands from 16 kHz to 50 kHz.  Again, in the 2012 uBeam patents, their ultrasound power transmission range is between 50kHz-110kHz, a range that is potentially harmful to humans under continual exposure. In addition, pets will also be detrimentally affected at this range as mentioned above. 

uBeam has also said in the press that the directional ultrasound waves will not be transmitted if it is not in the direct line of sight for the charging of electronic devices, such as the mobile phone and other devices, but because ultrasound waves penetrate skin at the 50kHz-110kHz range, a range clearly stated in their patents, there will have to be a way for the transmitter and receiver to recognise skin tissue and other objects so that the directional ultrasound waves will not affect humans. This will be exceeding problematic especially if as uBeam had outlined, they plan to construct an overhead ceiling fixture transmitting directional waves below, affecting entire areas instead of isolated locations where electronic devices can be charged. 
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In 1903, Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in regards to the discovery of radioactivity and the use of radiation in the death of cancer cells. However, it was not known at that time of the detrimental effects of radiation, and Marie Curie died in 1934 of long-term exposure to radiation. However, currently in our era, we do know the potential detrimental effects of ultrasound via the study of workers who have been exposed to airborne ultrasound. 

From a cursory standpoint, I think what Meredith Perry is doing is pretty brilliant- she, like Marie Curie, is attempting to solve a scientific and commercial problem in which a solution is in high demand. She is also an interesting figure and a cult of personality who should be lauded for her work as an entrepreneur, and not simply because she is a woman. She, like Travis Kalanick, has a kind of charisma that VCs typically are attracted to and both have been stalwart in the defense of their companies under heavy criticism. However, upon a closer analysis of the comparison between technologies, I think the problem of wireless energy is better solved by WiTricity's more private and reclusive founder, Marin Soljačić.  
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In the future, I predict WiTricity will potentially change the landscape of our wired present, so that we may no longer see twisted cables in the sky everywhere we go, and instead of those utility poles and cell phone towers, we might see an entirely different landscape, one that will perhaps be replaced by WiTricity's inductively coupled energy transfer. 

​By Sierra Choi

Over the past year, I have gotten to know many entrepreneurs, but one that definitely stands out is Michael Green, Founder of CaseHub, a crowdsourcing class-action online startup that aims to help people who cannot afford to hire a legal team for various injustices in the UK. I have previously written about CaseHub in June of last year. 

When I first spoke to Michael last summer, I had the immediate impression that I was in the presence of an eccentric future icon and visionary who had the exact combination of stubbornness, tenacity, and scrappy persistence to do exactly what he set out to do. There are entrepreneurs who are the typical salesmen types, the kind of people who tell investors exactly what they want to hear, fabricate some sort of unsubstantiated future revenue projections in a tidy excel sheet and discuss the overall market valuation, and then there are the entrepreneurs who you just have a gut feeling are going to disrupt the entire sector and everything is going to radically change in the next decade due to their actions, and the latter is Michael Green. 
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Recently, Michael launched a 15 minute documentary in regards to one of the developing class-action cases at CaseHub against the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in the UK. 
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In Dirty Little Secret, Michael outlines how the DVLA has been selling people's data to private parking agencies, in which the latter uses the information to target unsuspecting victims into lawsuits that they never become aware of, which in turn, can ruin their credit. 

This is something that doesn't happen in the U.S., as lawsuits cannot be filed without the intended recipient having proof of receiving that information through a service of process, in which the recipient is hand-delivered his or her legal documents.However, in the UK, no such protection exists to ensure that people receive their legal documents. The problem with the DVLA is that they have also been selling people's old addresses to private agencies, in which the intended recipients never receive their legal documents in the post telling them of an impending lawsuit against them. This is obviously a gap in protection (what Americans refer to as a legal loophole) that many private parking agencies have been exploiting via the Driver and Vehicles and Licensing Agency in the UK. 
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CaseHub in its description of this lawsuit against DVLA: 

If you have been a victim of such fraud, you can join the CaseHub class-action lawsuit here: CaseHub vs. DVLA
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Michael tells me that if CaseHub "can turn into a community-driven regulator that runs itself, I would be very happy." 

Thus far, the average citizen in the UK has not been able to pursue his or her cases due to the costs involved with hiring a solicitor. CaseHub aims to protect those people against predatory practices by public and private agencies. 

Michael has also been featured in the Economist, the Telegraph and ITV.


​By Sierra Choi