NEXT with John Koetsier

Glasses haven’t changed much in 500 years: Take glass, grind it to a shape, refract the angle of light impacting your eye … see better, hopefully.

But a new Apple patent, however, seems to indicate that Apple is working on glasses that will change as your prescription changes. And just maybe … do even more.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we’re joined by Robert Scoble, now former Chief strategy officer, Infinite Retina, and co-author of "The Infinite Retina: Spatial Computing, Augmented Reality, and how a collision of new technologies are bringing about the next tech revolution."

Everyone in my family uses a Mac, most of them on laptops. That includes my two sons, one in university and one in high school, both of whom are doing school from home these days.

So I didn’t think when I ordered a new MacBook Pro recently I’d have to return it almost immediately. And I didn’t think Apple would completely and utterly ignore the meaning of the word “Pro.”

Unfortunately ... both are true.

Is 5G safe or is it dangerous to humans, animals, and the environment? 

There are a lot of concerns and worries about 5G. Pictures of dead birds near cell towers. Even snake oil products to protect you … USB sticks with a "bio shield."

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we’re going to get the facts by talking to a research scientist in Belgium. What we'll talk about:

 - is 5G dangerous

 - what is the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation?

 - how much RF radiation does 5G expose you to?

 - is that dangerous, over time? How much would be required to be dangerous?

 - does 5G give users more radiation than non-users?

 - should we stop the 5G roll-out?

 - how are you testing the effects and impact of 5G?

You’re an NBA all-star ... what do you do when the league’s shut down thanks to Coronavirus?

If you’re Chicago Bull and 2-time NBA dunk champion Zach Lavine … you work out … you play Call of Duty or Apex Legends, and apparently … you give away free JBL headphones.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Zach as well as JBL VP Chris Epple and learn more.

We also get Zach's take on some of the most important matters in tech ... GIF or JIF ... EV or gas ... Windows or Mac ... iOS or Android ... and whether he'd accept a free ride to Mars from Elon Musk.

Massively social platforms built around gaming or video or news might be our new way to experience entertainment. We've already seen concerts in Fortnite -- Travis Scott, a month or so ago. Now we're going to see movies being screened in Fortnite.

Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker behind Inception, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar will be bringing “one of his iconic films” to the massively popular Fortnite game this summer.

And guess what:

No risk of COVID-19!

(cross-posted from my future39 podcast)

Today we plug our computers in to power. Tomorrow, we might plug ourselves into them.

AR and VR are changing how we see the world. AI and augmentation and brain-machine interfaces will change how we live, how we work, and how we play.

Cathy and I chat about HTC Vive, Magic Leap, Oculus Quest, brain-machine interfaces, Upload (the new show on Amazon Prime), and augmented intelligence. We also talk about Apple and where Apple's upcoming product will fit, as well as the convergence of AR and VR.

How do you survey 330 million people across 4M square miles?  

Every 10 years: the United States government is constitutionally required to take a census, which then gets used as the basis for distributed hundreds of billions of tax dollars.  

In 2010, doing the census cost $12 billion. They printed 17 million pages of paper maps and 50 million paper questionnaires.   

In 2020, the Census Bureau is going digital in 59 languages. Good timing too: COVID-19 happened, and the Census Bureau had to cut back some of their door-to-door surveying.  

In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with the US Census Bureau live on the 2020 digital census ... what kind of technology do you need to build for that? What's the required capacity? How do you secure it all? How do you protect it from bots and hacking?   

And, how do you run a census during Coronavirus shutdowns?

Joe Rogan is getting $100M+ to move to Spotify exclusively. But that might just be less than he's worth ...

Dan Ariely is working with Wisdo on a 25 million student study. The question: Are we losing our young people to depression, anxiety, and loneliness thanks to COVID-19?  

Dan is a 3-time NYT bestselling author ... my favorite book of his is Predictably Irrational. He's also a professor at Duke University.  

We discuss his horrific injury, why he wears half a beard, and what that taught him about power, control, depression, and all the challenges that we're facing now with a global pandemic. Specifically, we focus on problems that college students and young people are having right now: more abuse, more loneliness, more anxiety.  

And ... we talk about what people can do to combat those problems.

I work from home. Many others do too. 

But not many companies with 55,000 employees with a million clients in 52 countries. Especially fintech companies managing the flow of $10 trillion via 95 billion transactions annually.

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with the chief risk officer of FIS, Greg Montana.

We talk about the company moved to working from home, what technology it takes, how they've managed security, and how Montana views the back-to-work timetable.