Economics of Digital Age 5: Technologies of the world unite

While the singularity focusses on AI it is a distraction from what is clearly happening every day at the moment and which wasn't present even a decade ago. That is a technological advance in one place is enabling technological advance somewhere else.

'Innovation systems' has now been replaced by 'innovation ecosystems' in the academic literature. Do we really know more - not really it is mostly just an exercise in talking about ' innovation systems' sounds dated so 70s. I am going to be pointed - I truly do not believe you can have an innovation ecosystem - you can have technology ecosystems but not innovation ecosystems in the geographic sense it is most often used. Clusters is also out of fashion, so we can't use that term either.

The point of ecosystems if anybody bothered to read the ecology literature is that they are so multidimensional. There are population dynamics, energy cycles nutrient cycles food web dynamics, shock and resilience dynamics. When it is used in innovation circles it typically means "do we have the right institutional blocks' in place.

If we were really interested in ecosystems we would be trying to figure out how AI is fuelling autonomous cars and how autonomous cars will rewire cities. Now to be fair this is happening - MIT labs and others have been doing some incredible modelling of possible scenarios with autonomous cars. But that is because it is such an obvious example - the problem is we need more and we need to think how to build an idea of the whole - how do different technologies possibly interact at the economic level.

What is clearly coming is multiple waves of change crashing in on us almost simultaneously. However, publishing cycles remain slow and policy makers are trained in ways that are now decades out of date.

It gets mighty complicated. In a recent article The Economist pointed out that http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21717365-wind-and-solar-energy-are-disrupting-century-old-model-providing-electricity-what-will  while renewable energy is coming online there are design problesm with the grid itself and as renewables drive down cost it gets less attractive to build the new grids. If you are temped to blow this off as "The Economist" then you should read this by the ABC in Australia on the South Australia power grid situation.

 So while the electricity grids are not built for significant amounts of renewable power, electricity demand will only increase because of new technologies increasing the viability of using batteries/ electricity in an ever wider range of products (IoT, cars, trucks, drones, robots etc etc.)

(Digital) Robotic mining - the future happened yesterday

In the second and last summer special blogs this year I want to follow up the digital the agriculture blog here.

If you think the Google's autonomous cars are cute and futuristic then I think your missing something. If you think my blog on Google being interested in mining might be a little far fetched then you are just a little behind what is happening.

While it is easy to imagine the impact of digital technologies on agriculture, the words robotics, autonomous vehicles, digital mining still seems Asimovian. But and this is a huge BUT in fact it is not in the distant future or even in the near future, it is in the past.

In 2008 Rio Tinto introduced driverless heavy haulage trucks - we are talking 300 tonne dump trucks into its Pilbara mines in Australia.

Multinational Rio Tinto pre-empted the move, teaming up with Japanese giant Komatsu to start trialling driverless trucks on its Pilbara mine sites in 2008. It now has 30 autonomous trucks across two of its Pilbara mine sites, with ambitious plans to roll out 150. Fortescue Metals Group was the next cab off the rank, signing up with Caterpillar in 2011. It now has a fleet of 12 trucks on its Solomon Mine sites. BHPBilliton is beginning its trials now. ABC 2014-04-25.

The vehicles are autonomous but are watched over from remote operations centres. This example breaks three myths. First, that mining is old school - here three Australia related tech giants are at the leading edge of autonomous vehicles and robotics. Second, the related industries of heavy industry are old school - who has heard of Komatsu and Caterpillar as leading autonomous vehicle developers. Third, note the first company was Komatsu. It is too easy to write off Japanese tech capability because Sony and Toshiba have fallen behind. That is too simple a story.

Globally speaking mining is a massive industry in itself but due to its capital intensity it is a major source of demand for technologies from across the economy. What this example shows is that mining rather than a laggard, can be a lead purchaser / driver of technology. Chris DeBresson and Von Hippel - right again.

The focus on consumer technologies is catchy news but sometimes distracts out attention from where change is already happening.