New industries are emerging as businesses take advantage of the millennial generation’s greatest weakness: fear. Our largest generation fears reality, avoiding truth at any cost. It has seen school shootings and police shootings on 24-hour cable news. It has seen terrorist attacks. It has lived through hard economic times. It’s tired of being berated by the propaganda machine. So what...
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Fear is just an extension of the greater fear — one of dwelling too long inside one’s head, of having to think about reality. Do anything to get away, including using the smartphone and signing up for an experience event. Other millennials are doing it; why not you? Maybe the most explosive recent experience is that of non-traditional running. In...
Breakthrough in light-based technology
Engineers dream of replacing electricity inside computers with light. Silicon bends infrared light the way a prism bends visible light, so specific shapes of silicon could move infrared light along computer circuits the way optical fibers carry regular light. The problem: There’s been no easy way to design the circuitry; the thousands of point-to-point connections have had to be designed...
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As much as 80 percent of the electricity in a computer is used to send messages down wires, with some portion of that energy wasted as heat. That shortens components’ lives. Using light instead carries far more information at a time while using much less power, making computers faster, more powerful, cheaper to operate and giving them longer lives.
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The flavored water movement is peaking this year thanks to a saturation of brands attempting to capitalize on the initial success of coconut water. We likely won’t see high demand for maple and artichoke water, but coconut should stay competitive with sugary sports drinks like Gatorade and Powerade. Boxed Water is Better’s success might force changes in how water is...
Boxed water? A nutrition trend in the making
Next time you visit your convenience store, look closer at the beverage section. Have you checked the water? Sure, your fitness friends are sipping coconut water, touting the drink’s low carbohydrate count and high potassium value. Maybe you’ve heard of maple water — unreduced pasteurized tree sap — being sold at places like Trader Joe’s at $2.99 for 32 ounces....
Co-working in second phase
Recently, a trend of co-working environments emerged, specifically in cities with high technology-sector employment. Starting in 2007, you could find independent contractors — mostly members of Generation X — toiling away at sparsely decorated hubs with other workers, simply to mimic a traditional workspace without the buttoned-up chokehold of a corporate workspace. Thanks to millennials, co-working is starting to re-emerge,...
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Now that millennials are leaving the traditional workplace, a true trend line is emerging for co-working. Larger cities remain the most desirable locations for co-working, but as millennials move into smaller cities and suburban areas, watch for co-working spaces — and associated industries — to follow.
Computing with water comes of age
A Stanford bioengineer has designed a computer that calculates with water. The result could be faster, cheaper chemical processes on an industrial scale. In Manu Prakash’s computer, water microdroplets infused with magnetic nanoparticles take the place of digital ones and zeroes. A magnetic field organizes the droplets the way a computer’s internal clock orchestrates electrical processes. As the field turns...