Digital technology has revolutionized many industries, and it’s no surprise that it’s making waves in healthcare. Numerous advancements are helping reform unsustainable healthcare systems, develop cheaper, faster, and more effective cures for diseases, and improve the welfare of patients and healthcare providers alike. The future of medicine and healthcare simply lies in successfully leveraging these game-changing technologies, which include artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality, and nanotechnology.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining the field of healthcare and all its functions by simplifying the analysis of complex medical data. With AI algorithms and software, healthcare professionals can fast-track medical records processing, treatment planning, and drug development, among other laborious tasks.

When the Ebola virus disease ravaged three nations in West Africa, Atomwise partnered with the University of Toronto and IBM to find a treatment for the virus. The drug discovery company applied AI to a complete database of existing drugs and their side effects to look for one that could be repurposed. The AI tech was able to predict two that could significantly reduce the Ebola virus’s infectivity.

More recently, Google’s DeepMind developed an AI tool capable of spotting breast cancer with as much accuracy as a human radiologist. Google Health and researchers from Imperial College London “trained” a computer to detect abnormalities on nearly 29,000 mammograms of women. The AI then outperformed six human radiologists in a screening trial, suggesting the tool’s potential to improve breast cancer diagnosis at an early stage.

The use of AI is also permeating the pharmaceutical industry, with companies using AI technologies to discover new drug candidates and novel therapeutic solutions. These are only a few of the many instances of companies using AI to automate and expedite highly elaborate processes and ultimately improve the delivery of healthcare solutions.

Augmented reality and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are immersive technologies that allow users to take in information and content visually. While AR pertains to the use of cameras, sensors, and displays to superimpose digital and real-world elements, VR lets users experience and explore entirely simulated environments.

New AR technologies help doctors and surgeons diagnose, treat, and perform surgery on their patients more precisely by providing them with access to real-time data and patient information. For instance, medical practitioners at Imperial College and St. Mary’s Hospital in London are using Microsoft’s HoloLens AR glasses during reconstructive surgery on patients with severe injuries.

Traditionally, surgeons located major blood vessels near wounds using a handheld scanner. With HoloLens, they can overlay 3D digital models of a patient’s CT scans onto their body parts during surgery to spot key blood vessels, bones, and muscles.

Meanwhile, a recent Harvard Business Review study found that surgeons who have undergone VR-based training performed 230% better compared to their traditionally trained counterparts. In the study, the VR-trained participants finished a surgical procedure 20% faster and completed 38% more steps correctly.

Medical institutions are also using AR/VR technologies to provide students and trainees with hands-on learning experiences, enabling them to better visualize diverse health issues and scenarios. Using immersive technologies can help them accurately learn and practice procedures without the risk of harming real patients if they make mistakes. What’s more, these can allow educators to constantly monitor and give feedback to their students during their education.

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the field of research and innovation concerned with the creation of materials and devices on an extremely small scale. Advancements in this field can pave the way for more effective treatments, rapid diagnosis of diseases, and easier delivery of vaccines through aerosols and patches.

As early as 2014, researchers from the Max Planck Institute designed micro-robots that can swim through bodily fluids and potentially be used to deliver drugs or other medical relief precisely to a target location.

In 2018, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed an electronic pill that can be controlled via Bluetooth. The ingestible capsules can be customized to dispatch medicine and transmit diagnostic information back to a smartphone.

More recently, medical technology company Grapheal developed a wearable patch that can help chronic wounds heal more quickly using electrostimulation. This patch would also allow healthcare providers to remotely monitor the condition of a wound using biosensors, or devices that send out signals when they detect the presence or concentration of a specific biological substance.

Future technological innovations are bound to transform the healthcare industry, and it’s our job to make sure it does so for the better.

Call us today and we’ll help you leverage technology to boost your business and help you deliver superior healthcare products and services.

Are you afraid that robots will replace healthcare professionals? Scared that a newly created drug will stir a new kind of addiction, or a genetic test will predict when you’ll die? While a future ruled by technological advancements may seem daunting, innovations — especially those pertaining to health and medicine — are always meant to make our lives better. It’s best to embrace and put the following technologies to good use to be in a better position to deploy the best healthcare solutions possible.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining the field of healthcare and all its functions by simplifying the analysis of complex medical data. With AI algorithms and software, healthcare professionals can fast-track medical records processing, treatment planning, and drug development, among other laborious tasks.

When the Ebola virus disease ravaged three nations in West Africa, Atomwise partnered with the University of Toronto and IBM to find a treatment for the virus. The drug discovery company applied AI to a complete database of existing drugs and their side effects to look for one that could be repurposed. The AI tech was able to predict two that could significantly reduce the Ebola virus’s infectivity.

More recently, Google’s DeepMind developed an AI tool capable of spotting breast cancer with as much accuracy as a human radiologist. Google Health and researchers from Imperial College London “trained” a computer to detect abnormalities on nearly 29,000 mammograms of women. The AI then outperformed six human radiologists in a screening trial, suggesting the tool’s potential to improve breast cancer diagnosis at an early stage.

The use of AI is also permeating the pharmaceutical industry, with companies using AI technologies to discover new drug candidates and novel therapeutic solutions. These are only a few of the many instances of companies using AI to automate and expedite highly elaborate processes and ultimately improve the delivery of healthcare solutions.

Augmented reality and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are immersive technologies that allow users to take in information and content visually. While AR pertains to the use of cameras, sensors, and displays to superimpose digital and real-world elements, VR lets users experience and explore entirely simulated environments.

New AR technologies help doctors and surgeons diagnose, treat, and perform surgery on their patients more precisely by providing them with access to real-time data and patient information. For instance, medical practitioners at Imperial College and St. Mary’s Hospital in London are using Microsoft’s HoloLens AR glasses during reconstructive surgery on patients with severe injuries.

Traditionally, surgeons located major blood vessels near wounds using a handheld scanner. With HoloLens, they can overlay 3D digital models of a patient’s CT scans onto their body parts during surgery to spot key blood vessels, bones, and muscles.

Meanwhile, a recent Harvard Business Review study found that surgeons who have undergone VR-based training performed 230% better compared to their traditionally trained counterparts. In the study, the VR-trained participants finished a surgical procedure 20% faster and completed 38% more steps correctly.

Medical institutions are also using AR/VR technologies to provide students and trainees with hands-on learning experiences, enabling them to better visualize diverse health issues and scenarios. Using immersive technologies can help them accurately learn and practice procedures without the risk of harming real patients if they make mistakes. What’s more, these can allow educators to constantly monitor and give feedback to their students during their education.

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the field of research and innovation concerned with the creation of materials and devices on an extremely small scale. Advancements in this field can pave the way for more effective treatments, rapid diagnosis of diseases, and easier delivery of vaccines through aerosols and patches.

As early as 2014, researchers from the Max Planck Institute designed micro-robots that can swim through bodily fluids and potentially be used to deliver drugs or other medical relief precisely to a target location.

In 2018, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed an electronic pill that can be controlled via Bluetooth. The ingestible capsules can be customized to dispatch medicine and transmit diagnostic information back to a smartphone.

More recently, medical technology company Grapheal developed a wearable patch that can help chronic wounds heal more quickly using electrostimulation. This patch would also allow healthcare providers to remotely monitor the condition of a wound using biosensors, or devices that send out signals when they detect the presence or concentration of a specific biological substance.

Future technological innovations are bound to transform the healthcare industry, and it’s our job to make sure it does so for the better.

Call us today and we’ll help you leverage technology to boost your business and help you deliver superior healthcare products and services.

Innovations in digital healthcare technologies are significantly changing the way healthcare providers deliver services to patients. Healthcare businesses are now able to address several key industry challenges, including improving healthcare accessibility and revolutionizing drug development. Here’s how three of the latest technologies are shaping the future of healthcare.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining the field of healthcare and all its functions by simplifying the analysis of complex medical data. With AI algorithms and software, healthcare professionals can fast-track medical records processing, treatment planning, and drug development, among other laborious tasks.

When the Ebola virus disease ravaged three nations in West Africa, Atomwise partnered with the University of Toronto and IBM to find a treatment for the virus. The drug discovery company applied AI to a complete database of existing drugs and their side effects to look for one that could be repurposed. The AI tech was able to predict two that could significantly reduce the Ebola virus’s infectivity.

More recently, Google’s DeepMind developed an AI tool capable of spotting breast cancer with as much accuracy as a human radiologist. Google Health and researchers from Imperial College London “trained” a computer to detect abnormalities on nearly 29,000 mammograms of women. The AI then outperformed six human radiologists in a screening trial, suggesting the tool’s potential to improve breast cancer diagnosis at an early stage.

The use of AI is also permeating the pharmaceutical industry, with companies using AI technologies to discover new drug candidates and novel therapeutic solutions. These are only a few of the many instances of companies using AI to automate and expedite highly elaborate processes and ultimately improve the delivery of healthcare solutions.

Augmented reality and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are immersive technologies that allow users to take in information and content visually. While AR pertains to the use of cameras, sensors, and displays to superimpose digital and real-world elements, VR lets users experience and explore entirely simulated environments.

New AR technologies help doctors and surgeons diagnose, treat, and perform surgery on their patients more precisely by providing them with access to real-time data and patient information. For instance, medical practitioners at Imperial College and St. Mary’s Hospital in London are using Microsoft’s HoloLens AR glasses during reconstructive surgery on patients with severe injuries.

Traditionally, surgeons located major blood vessels near wounds using a handheld scanner. With HoloLens, they can overlay 3D digital models of a patient’s CT scans onto their body parts during surgery to spot key blood vessels, bones, and muscles.

Meanwhile, a recent Harvard Business Review study found that surgeons who have undergone VR-based training performed 230% better compared to their traditionally trained counterparts. In the study, the VR-trained participants finished a surgical procedure 20% faster and completed 38% more steps correctly.

Medical institutions are also using AR/VR technologies to provide students and trainees with hands-on learning experiences, enabling them to better visualize diverse health issues and scenarios. Using immersive technologies can help them accurately learn and practice procedures without the risk of harming real patients if they make mistakes. What’s more, these can allow educators to constantly monitor and give feedback to their students during their education.

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the field of research and innovation concerned with the creation of materials and devices on an extremely small scale. Advancements in this field can pave the way for more effective treatments, rapid diagnosis of diseases, and easier delivery of vaccines through aerosols and patches.

As early as 2014, researchers from the Max Planck Institute designed micro-robots that can swim through bodily fluids and potentially be used to deliver drugs or other medical relief precisely to a target location.

In 2018, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed an electronic pill that can be controlled via Bluetooth. The ingestible capsules can be customized to dispatch medicine and transmit diagnostic information back to a smartphone.

More recently, medical technology company Grapheal developed a wearable patch that can help chronic wounds heal more quickly using electrostimulation. This patch would also allow healthcare providers to remotely monitor the condition of a wound using biosensors, or devices that send out signals when they detect the presence or concentration of a specific biological substance.

Future technological innovations are bound to transform the healthcare industry, and it’s our job to make sure it does so for the better.

Call us today and we’ll help you leverage technology to boost your business and help you deliver superior healthcare products and services.

Sketchfab is enabling multiplayer mode today with a new Sketchfab for Teams feature. The startup lets you share 3D models with other people in your company so that they can view, edit and download models. It could be particularly useful for companies working on augmented reality products, video games or even e-commerce websites with 3D configurators or visualizations.

Sketchfab has been working for years on a 3D model viewer for web browsers. It now works really well on both desktop and mobile. You can also import and export 3D models in many different file formats in order to reuse them in your favorite tool or engine — Sketchfab can convert files for you. That’s why 3D artists have been using the platform to share their work but also to sell 3D models, just like on a stock photography site.

The new team feature is essentially a sort of Google Drive specifically tailored for 3D — instead of opening spreadsheets and documents, you open 3D models. For instance, people working in marketing or communications could use 3D models to showcase products.

Even if your company uses a cloud storage system, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, to share files across the organization, people who are not 3D designers don’t necessarily want to use Blender to check if it’s the right file. Combining a shared drive with Sketchfab’s viewing and sharing tools becomes a compelling use case.

Like traditional cloud storage systems, you can manage permissions on a file-by-file basis. For instance, you could allow someone in your company to edit a 3D model while the rest of the team can only view the item. It works pretty much like the sharing menu in Google Docs.

You can also use Sketchfab for Teams with external collaborators. You can invite contractors to upload 3D models to your Sketchfab account or, if you’re a 3D designer, you can share 3D assets with a client to let them review your work. And if you want to share your 3D assets publicly, you can embed models on your website or use it in a 3D configurator.

The other advantage of switching to Sketchfab for Teams is that you get a central repository for all your 3D files. You can search, filter your assets by polycount, format and size, inspect 3D models in your browser and convert assets to multiple file formats.

Sketchfab recently launched another feature that could become quite popular on e-commerce website. The company added an AR button in its viewer, which lets you use your iPhone or Android phone to view a 3D object at scale through your camera before buying it.

Thanks to recent iOS and Android updates, you don’t need to install an app. It leverages the USDZ and glTF file formats that are natively supported by iOS and Android, respectively.

The company is launching Sketchfab for Teams with clients paying for the Enterprise plan. Eventually, the startup plans to roll it out to customers with a more limited feature set (Premium and Business customers).

When I was 10 years old, my dad took me to Fenway Park for the first time. I remember quite clearly walking up the runway and seeing the brilliant green lawn and being totally and completely amazed. Now that’s a great customer experience.

I was hooked simply by the beauty of the ballpark, even before watching these talented men flip the ball effortlessly around the diamond during infield practice, before the first pitch, the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. The sounds, the sights, the hot dogs and drinks were all part of it — and I was in love with that experience from the moment I saw that emerald lawn.

Stadium sports has always been about the experience. “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I ever get back….” That has only increased in the days of mascots and dancers and massive high definition scoreboards.

But sports suddenly face an existential crisis in 2020. If we can get back to the point of playing games again, yet there are no fans in the seats, how do the leagues reproduce the excitement of being there at home through the use of advanced technology? As every business is forced to rethink the meaning of customer experience during a pandemic, maybe sports could show the way. “And it’s root, root, root for the home team….”

This week we’ll get our first taste of how that could work as the NFL Draft goes virtual. It had previously been scheduled to be a three-day, fan-driven Las Vegas spectacle. The stage was going to be set up on the water in front of the Bellagio Hotel, and players were to be taken there by boat as they were drafted. All of that carefully-crafted pageantry is gone, and it will instead be delivered by technology in COVID-19 isolation.

In the short term, it would be unfair to look at the draft as the ultimate exercise in going virtual. It is the first, and chances are it will not be flawless, but like every business, from conventions to universities to retailers, suddenly just about every experience possibility is on the table, and it will be interesting to see how they do it.

It’s not just the first round spectacle that is changing due to the virus; the way teams work together has changed as well, just as it has for many businesses in the last 6 weeks. They have to figure out ways to recreate the “draft war room” when all of the key players can’t be in the same room together. Sound familiar?

If and when games resume, the way we watch live sports will probably change as well. How will all sports build off the NFL’s first attempt? How will they create community and generate excitement without a live audience to drive the mood?

Chances are we will see changes big and small. Spitballing some ideas, there could be live interactive communities in which the players participate with fans. There could be wider use of microphoned players and coaches on and off the field as we get a look behind the curtain. The possibilities are endless, and you can be sure there are many discussions going on across every sport, pro and college, about how this could work.

They could turn to virtual reality or augment the experience in other ways like advanced replays, creative camera views or putting the fan virtually on the field, ideas that have been on the table or been slowly implemented in recent years, some of which we saw in the recent, short-lived XFL. We already have advanced stats with brilliant visuals from AWS-sports league partnerships. All of these ideas and more are suddenly being forced to accelerate much faster.

However these experiences manifest themselves, we are about to find out just how creative the leagues can be. Perhaps we’ll find new ways to experience life outside the ballpark in our homes that give us a different, but no less exciting, experience. Maybe some 10-year-old kid will still feel that same thrill I felt, but learn in a different way “...if they don’t win it’s a shame, and it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the [new] ballgame.”

The Los Angeles-based app development shop, V/One, is giving away 50,000 free mobile app builds through the rest of April as the company officially launches its platform for would-be, LA-based mobile app moguls.

Since its soft launch, December 20th of last year, the app development company has built over 100 new applications.

The company’s December launch featured an “app accelerator” and offered a guidebook for people who wanted to develop mobile applications to work with the development shop on early applications.

Under the terms of the development agreement, wannabe app creators get their application for free as long as they sign up for the monthly hosting service. “They can walk away at any time and cancel the hosting if they don’t want the app anymore. Builds of the apps will be delivered around 60 days upon signing up,” said V One founder, Jeremy Redman.

For founder Jeremy Redman, V/One was a business that solved a problem he had faced himself as an entrepreneur just starting out, but lacking the technical experience to build his own applications.

“I had an app idea but no real idea how to executive it. I’m non-technical, meaning I can’t code. I tried finding a technical co-founder but got abandoned when things got tough. Dev shops were too expensive and on the verge of predatory, and cookie cutter builders don’t address the designs I had in mind,” Redman said. “But, I wasn’t going to let someone tell me I couldn’t be a tech entrepreneur.”

Image Credits: Chris Ede / Getty Images

The app development toolkit that V One uses was built entirely in-house to automate the build process on the back end, says Redman.

For small businesses, the plan is to charge $297 per month for app development and customization along with any future builds, hosting, and product support and maintenance. The company’s more robust place is a $997 per month package. Both offer the option to cancel anytime with the ability to own the code for the app.

“So far the only limitations are one’s creativity. Essentially speaking, if you can design it it can be made a functional app in our builder,” Redman wrote in an email. “If I had to put a constraint on it I would say we are not good at AR/VR and machine learning and some obscure features 99% of people don’t need [or] want.”

Redman thinks that roughly 98% of an app can be built using the company’s toolkit and then the final bit of coding and development (specifically for augmented or virtual reality — or other components) can be added in a final customization.

“If customers can describe their idea in one, clear sentence then it can be made in our builder and it can be made quickly,” Redman wrote. “What we don’t do is take pages and pages of details and make an app out of it. They can fill in the details later.”

V One uses a cross-platform framework, serverless technology and modern development practices to generate apps using an easy to use app builder, the company said. Users can think of it like Wix or WordPress for mobile app development.

“Never before has someone been able to build an app from just typing their idea out, let alone for this low a cost,” says Redman.

Roto VR, startup which markets an interactive, ‘360 degree’ chair, has raised £1.5 million in a funding round led by Pembroke VCT. Others in the round include TVB Growth Fund, managed by The FSE Group.

The chair is designed to make VR more accessible to a mass audience, many of whom have turned to VR and gaming to while away the hours as much of the world is locked-down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founded in 2015 by video games industry veterans, Elliott Myers and Gavin Waxkirsh, Roto VR is an interactive chair that addresses the physical problems of consuming VR whilst seated, such as motion sickness and tangling cables, whilst also enhancing the immersive experience with haptic / vibration feedback in the chair.

The Roto chair is motorized and can auto-rotate to wherever the user is looking, allowing for 360-degree viewing, and thus allows the user to stay in the VR simulation for longer periods of time.

The inbuilt desktop also supports input devices such as a keyboard and mouse which means it can be used in 360-degree desktop computing.

“Most people sit down to watch movies, work, play games and browse the internet whilst seated and we see no reason why the exciting new medium of VR will be any different,” said Myers.

The product is compatible with most VR Head Mounted Displays and is also compatible with all movies and games, as well as additional accessories such as racing wheels and joysticks.

The company is due to launch the consumer and office version of Roto imminently. In addition, it will be marketed to cinemas and arcades.

Andrew Wolfson, CEO Pembroke Investment Managers LLP, said: “In Elliott we have found an entrepreneur who has solved a problem for the VR market with a solution that addresses the physical issues encountered whilst consuming VR content, as well as significantly enhancing the experience. We see future customers coming from both the B2B and B2C markets, in fields such as experiential attractions, home, cinemas and shopping centres.”

There’s a joke* being reshared on chat apps that takes the form of a multiple choice question — asking who’s the leading force in workplace digital transformation? The red-lined punchline is not the CEO or CTO but: C) COVID-19.

There’s likely more than a grain of truth underpinning the quip. The novel coronavirus is pushing a lot of metaphorical buttons right now. ‘Pause’ buttons for people and industries, as large swathes of the world’s population face quarantine conditions that can resemble house arrest. The majority of offline social and economic activities are suddenly off limits.

Such major pauses in our modern lifestyle may even turn into a full reset, over time. The world as it was, where mobility of people has been all but taken for granted — regardless of the environmental costs of so much commuting and indulged wanderlust — may never return to ‘business as usual’.

If global leadership rises to the occasional then the coronavirus crisis offers an opportunity to rethink how we structure our societies and economies — to make a shift towards lower carbon alternatives. After all, how many physical meetings do you really need when digital connectivity is accessible and reliable? As millions more office workers log onto the day job from home that number suddenly seems vanishingly small.

COVID-19 is clearly strengthening the case for broadband to be a utility — as so much more activity is pushed online. Even social media seems to have a genuine community purpose during a moment of national crisis when many people can only connect remotely, even with their nearest neighbours.

Hence the reports of people stuck at home flocking back to Facebook to sound off in the digital town square. Now the actual high street is off limits the vintage social network is experiencing a late second wind.

Facebook understands this sort of higher societal purpose already, of course. Which is why it’s been so proactive about building features that nudge users to ‘mark yourself safe’ during extraordinary events like natural disasters, major accidents and terrorist attacks. (Or indeed why it encouraged politicians to get into bed with its data platform in the first place — no matter the cost to democracy.)

In less fraught times, Facebook’s ‘purpose’ can be loosely summed to ‘killing time’. But with ever more sinkholes being drilled by the attention economy that’s a function under ferocious and sustained attack.

Over the years the tech giant has responded by engineering ways to rise back to the top of the social heap — including spying on and buying up competition, or directly cloning rival products. It’s been pulling off this trick, by hook or by crook, for over a decade. Albeit, this time Facebook can’t take any credit for the traffic uptick; A pandemic is nature’s dark pattern design.

What’s most interesting about this virally disrupted moment is how much of the digital technology that’s been built out online over the past two decades could very well have been designed for living through just such a dystopia.

Seen through this lens, VR should be having a major moment. A face computer that swaps out the stuff your eyes can actually see with a choose-your-own-digital-adventure of virtual worlds to explore, all from the comfort of your living room? What problem are you fixing VR? Well, the conceptual limits of human lockdown in the face of a pandemic quarantine right now, actually…

Virtual reality has never been a compelling proposition vs the rich and textured opportunity of real life, except within very narrow and niche bounds. Yet all of a sudden here we all are — with our horizons drastically narrowed and real-life news that’s ceaselessly harrowing. So it might yet end up wry punchline to another multiple choice joke: ‘My next vacation will be: A) Staycation, B) The spare room, C) VR escapism.’

It’s videoconferencing that’s actually having the big moment, though. Turns out even a pandemic can’t make VR go viral. Instead, long lapsed friendships are being rekindled over Zoom group chats or Google Hangouts. And Houseparty — a video chat app — has seen surging downloads as barflies seek out alternative night life with their usual watering-holes shuttered.

Bored celebs are TikToking. Impromptu concerts are being livestreamed from living rooms via Instagram and Facebook Live. All sorts of folks are managing social distancing and the stress of being stuck at home alone (or with family) by distant socializing — signing up to remote book clubs and discos; joining virtual dance parties and exercise sessions from bedrooms. Taking a few classes together. The quiet pub night with friends has morphed seamlessly into a bring-your-own-bottle group video chat.

This is not normal — but nor is it surprising. We’re living in the most extraordinary time. And it seems a very human response to mass disruption and physical separation (not to mention the trauma of an ongoing public health emergency that’s killing thousands of people a day) to reach for even a moving pixel of human comfort. Contactless human contact is better than none at all.

Yet the fact all these tools are already out there, ready and waiting for us to log on and start streaming, should send a dehumanizing chill down society’s backbone.

It underlines quite how much consumer technology is being designed to reprogram how we connect with each other, individually and in groups, in order that uninvited third parties can cut a profit.

Back in the pre-COVID-19 era, a key concern being attached to social media was its ability to hook users and encourage passive feed consumption — replacing genuine human contact with voyeuristic screening of friends’ lives. Studies have linked the tech to loneliness and depression. Now we’re literally unable to go out and meet friends the loss of human contact is real and stark. So being popular online in a pandemic really isn’t any kind of success metric.

Houseparty, for example, self-describes as a “face to face social network” — yet it’s quite the literal opposite; you’re foregoing face-to-face contact if you’re getting virtually together in app-wrapped form.

While the implication of Facebook’s COVID-19 traffic bump is that the company’s business model thrives on societal disruption and mainstream misery. Which, frankly, we knew already. Data-driven adtech is another way of saying it’s been engineered to spray you with ad-flavored dissatisfaction by spying on what you get up to. The coronavirus just hammers the point home.

The fact we have so many high-tech tools on tap for forging digital connections might feel like amazing serendipity in this crisis — a freemium bonanza for coping with terrible global trauma. But such bounty points to a horrible flip side: It’s the attention economy that’s infectious and insidious. Before ‘normal life’ plunged off a cliff all this sticky tech was labelled ‘everyday use’; not ‘break out in a global emergency’.

It’s never been clearer how these attention-hogging apps and services are designed to disrupt and monetize us; to embed themselves in our friendships and relationships in a way that’s subtly dehumanizing; re-routing emotion and connections; nudging us to swap in-person socializing for virtualized fuzz that designed to be data-mined and monetized by the same middlemen who’ve inserted themselves unasked into our private and social lives.

Captured and recompiled in this way, human connection is reduced to a series of dilute and/or meaningless transactions. The platforms deploying armies of engineers to knob-twiddle and pull strings to maximize ad opportunities, no matter the personal cost.

It’s also no accident we’re also seeing more of the vast and intrusive underpinnings of surveillance capitalism emerge, as the COVID-19 emergency rolls back some of the obfuscation that’s used to shield these business models from mainstream view in more normal times. The trackers are rushing to seize and colonize an opportunistic purpose.

Tech and ad giants are falling over themselves to get involved with offering data or apps for COVID-19 tracking. They’re already in the mass surveillance business so there’s likely never felt like a better moment than the present pandemic for the big data lobby to press the lie that individuals don’t care about privacy, as governments cry out for tools and resources to help save lives.

First the people-tracking platforms dressed up attacks on human agency as ‘relevant ads’. Now the data industrial complex is spinning police-state levels of mass surveillance as pandemic-busting corporate social responsibility. How quick the wheel turns.

But platforms should be careful what they wish for. Populations that find themselves under house arrest with their phones playing snitch might be just as quick to round on high tech gaolers as they’ve been to sign up for a friendly video chat in these strange and unprecedented times.

Oh and Zoom (and others) — more people might actually read your ‘privacy policy‘ now they’ve got so much time to mess about online. And that really is a risk.

*Source is a private Twitter account called @MBA_ish

It turns out the virtual and augmented reality companies aren’t dead — as long as they focus on the enterprise. That’s what the Los Angeles-based extended reality technology developer Talespin did — and it just raised $15 million to grow its business. 

Traditional venture capitalists may have made it rain on expensive Hollywood studios that were promising virtual reality would be the future of entertainment and social networking (given coronavirus fears, it may yet be), but Talespin and others like it are focused on much more mundane goals. Specifically, making talent management, training and hiring easier for employers in certain industries.

For Talespin, the areas that were the most promising were ones that aren’t obvious to a casual observer. Insurance and virtual reality are hardly synonymous, but Talespin’s training tools have helped claims assessors do their jobs and helped train a new generation of insurance investigators in what to look for when they’re trying to determine how much their companies are going to pay out.

“Talespin‘s immersive platform has transformed employee learning and proven to be an impactful addition to our training programs. We’re honored to continue to support the Talespin team through this next phase of growth and development,” said Scott Lindquist, Chief Financial Officer at Farmers Insurance, in a statement.

Farmers is an investor in Talespin, as is the corporate training and talent management software provider Cornerstone OnDemand, and the hardware manufacturer HTC. The round’s composition speaks to the emerging confidence of corporate investors and just how skeptical traditional venture firms have become of the prospects for virtual reality.

The prospects of augmented and virtual reality may be uncertain, but what’s definite is the need for new tools and technologies to transfer knowledge and train up employees as skilled, experienced workers age out of the workforce — and the development of new skills becomes critically important as technology changes the workplace.

Cornerstone, which led the Talespin Series B round, will also be partnering with the company to develop human resources training tools in virtual reality.

“We share Talespin’s vision that the workforce needs innovative solutions to stay competitive, maximize opportunity and increase employee satisfaction,” said Jason Gold, Vice President of Finance, Corporate Development and Investor Relations at Cornerstone, in a statement. “We’ve been incredibly impressed with Talespin’s technology, leadership team and vision to transform the workplace through XR. Talespin’s technology is a perfect fit in our suite of products, and we look forward to working together to deliver great solutions for our customers.”

Talespin previously raised $5 million in financing. The company initially grew its business by developing a number of one-off projects for eventual customers as it determined a product strategy. Part of the company’s success has relied in its ability to use game engine and animation instead of 360 degree video. That means assets can be reused multiple times and across different training modules.

“Creating better alignment between skills and opportunities is the key to solving the reskilling challenges organizations across the world are facing,” said Kyle Jackson, CEO and Co-Founder of Talespin, in a statement. “That’s why it’s critical companies find a way to provide accelerated, continuous learning and create better skills data. By doing so, we will open up career pathways for individuals that are better aligned to their natural abilities and learned skills, and enable companies to implement a skills-based approach to talent development, assessment, and placement. Our new funding and partnership with Cornerstone will allow us to expand our product offerings to achieve these goals, and to continue building innovative solutions that redefine what work looks like in the future.”

Esports, video games and the innovations that enable them now occupy a central space in the cultural and commercial fabric of the tech world.

For the investment firm Bitkraft Esports Ventures, the surge in interest means a vast opportunity to invest in the businesses that continue to reshape entertainment and develop technologies which have implications far beyond consoles and controllers.

Increasingly, investors are willing to come along for the ride. The firm, which launched its first fund in 2017 with a $40 million target, is close to wrapping up fundraising on a roughly $140 million new investment vehicle, according to a person with knowledge of the firm’s plans.

Through a spokesperson, Bitkraft confirmed that over the course of 2019 it had invested $50 million into 25 investments across esports and digital entertainment, 21 of which were led by the firm.

The new, much larger, fund for Bitkraft is coming as the firm’s thesis begins to encompass technologies and services that extend far beyond gaming and esports — although they’re coming from a similar place.

Along with its new pool of capital, the firm has also picked up a new partner in Moritz Baier-Lentz, a former Vice President in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs and the number one ranked esports player of Blizzard’s Diablo II PC game in 2003.

While at Goldman, Baier-Lentz worked on the $67 billion Dell acquisition of EMC and the $34 billion acquisition of RedHat by IBM.

The numbers in venture capital — and especially in gaming — aren’t quite at that scale, but there are increasingly big bets being made in and around the games industry as investors recognize its potential. There were roughly $2 billion worth of investments made into the esports industry in 2019, less than half of the whopping $4.5 billion which was invested the prior year, according to the Esports Observer.

As Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer Venture Partners told TechCrunch last year:

“Gaming is now one of the largest forms of entertainment in the United States, with more than $100B+ spent yearly, surpassing other major mediums like television. Gaming is a new form of social network where you can spend time just hanging with friends/family even outside of the constructs of ‘winning the game.’”

Over $100 billion is nothing to sneer at in a growing category — especially as the definition of what qualifies as an esports investment expands to include ancillary industries and a broader thesis.

For Bitkraft, that means investments which are “born in Internet and gaming, but they have applications beyond that,” says Baier-Lentz. “What we really see on the broader level and what we think bout as a team is this emergence of synthetic reality. [That’s] where we see the future and the growth and the return for our investors.”

Bitkraft’s newest partner, Moritz Baier-Lentz

Baier-Lentz calls this synthetic reality an almost seamless merger of the physical and digital world. It encompasses technologies enabling virtual reality and augmented reality and the games and immersive or interactive stories that will be built around them. 

“Moritz shares our culture, our passion, and our ambition—and comes with massive investment experience from one of the world’s finest investment firms,” said Jens Hilgers, the founding general partner of BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, in a statement. “Furthermore, he is a true core gamer with a strong competitive nature, making him the perfect fit in our diverse global BITKRAFT team. With his presence in New York, we also expand our geographical coverage in one of today’s most exciting and upcoming cities for gaming and esports.”

It helps that, while at Goldman, Baier-Lentz helped develop the firm’s global esports and gaming practice. Every other day he was fielding calls around how to invest in the esports phenomenon from private clients and big corporations, he said.

Interestingly for an esports-focused investment firm, the one area where Bitkraft won’t invest is in Esports teams. instead the focus is on everything that can enable gaming. “We take a broader approach and we make investments in things that thrive on the backbone of a healthy esports industry,” said Baier-Lentz.

In addition to a slew of investments made into various game development studios, the company has also backed Spatial, which creates interactive audio environments; Network Next, a developer of private optimized high speed networks for gaming; and Lofelt, a haptic technology developers.

“Games are the driver of technological innovation and games have prepared us for human machine interaction,” says Baier-Lentz. “We see games and gaming content as the driver of a broader wave of synthetic reality. That would span gaming, sports, and interactive media. [But] we don’t only see it as entertainment… There are economic and social benefits here that are opened up once we transcend between the physical and the digital. I almost see it as the evolution of the internet.”

Amaze VR, the Los Angeles-based virtual reality entertainment distribution service, is taking its first steps into the world of location-based virtual reality experiences with an installation in Seoul’s Incheon International Airport.

The company, which also scored an additional $2.5 million commitment to expand its total funding to around $9 million made the announcement last week.

The company, which launched last May with backing from the Korean hardware manufacturer LG, has added Partners Investment and YG Investment, the financing arm of YG Entertainment, which manages a stable of Korean pop artists and owns a record label, talent agency, production company and events management and concert production company.

Founded by a cadre of seasoned Korean technology executives, AmazeVR soft opened an 11,000 square foot entertainment hub in Incheon’s airtrain station on the way to Terminal 1. It’s a mix of meditation areas and relaxation-focused VR videos, the company said.

There’s also a performance stage to display immersive performances from popular musicians (hence the YG investment) and an indoor playground for kids and the kids-at-heart.

“As leaders in the online VR consumer market, one of our key objectives is to broaden our distribution and expand capabilities towards immersive experiences offline as well,” said Steve Lee, AmazeVR’s chief executive, in a statement. “Through this location-based hub at Incheon International Airport, we can expose an untapped market not just to the great content that AmazeVR produces, but also to the wonders of VR in general. Our investors recognize this and have deep connections within the music and entertainment industries, which will help us develop unique VR experiences with even more incredible content that will extend VR adoption globally.”

The company has inked partnerships with two of the last remaining immersive entertainment studios, Atlas V and Felix & Paul Studios.

“Our mission, is that we believe in the consumer market,” says Earnest Lee, AmazeVR’s chief content officer. “We have seen the VR market is still fairly nascent and we’re moving forward with location based entertainment. This is a start to get into the location-based industry.”

Mike Rothenberg, the once high-flying VC bent on bringing the party to Silicon Valley, must now pay a whopping $31.4 million to settle a California federal court ruling in favor of Security and Exchange Commission allegations.

TechCrunch deemed Rothenberg a ‘virtual gatsby’ back in 2016, when we first broke the news about the downfall of his venture capital firm, Rothenberg Ventures. It seemed he took it as a compliment, changing his instagram handle to @virtualgatsby. Indeed, the name seemed appropriate for a man who seemingly lived a party boy lifestyle and spent lavishly to woo startup founders — including going on Napa Valley wine tours, holding an annual ‘founder field day’ where he rented out the whole San Francisco Giants’ baseball stadium and spending unsparingly to executive produce a video for Coldplay.

But the party life came to a halt when top leadership jumped ship and the SEC started looking into the books. The SEC formally charged Rothenberg in August of 2018 for misappropriating millions of dollars of his investors’ capital and funneling that money into his own bank account. Rothenberg settled with the SEC at the time and, as part of the settlement, was barred from the brokerage and investment advisory business for five years.

Rothenberg was later caught up in several lawsuits, including one from Transcend VR for fraud and breach of contract, which ended in a settlement. Another suit between Rothenberg and his former CFO, David Haase, ended with Rothenberg being ordered to pay $166,000 in damages.

But there was more to come from the SEC, following a forensic audit in partnership with the firm Deloitte showing the misuse or misappropriation of $18.8 million in investor funding. Under that examination, Deloitte showed Rothenberg had used the money either personally, to float his flashy lifestyle, or for other extravagances such as building a race car team and a virtual reality studio. Rothenberg has now been ordered to pay back the $18.8 million he took from investors, another $9 million in civil penalties, plus $3.7 million in interest.

Neither the SEC nor Rothenberg have responded for comment. It’s also important to note none of the charges so far have been criminal but were handled in civil court, as the SEC does not handle criminal cases. 

Through all of it, Rothenberg never admitted any guilt for his actions and it is important to note that, because of this in admission of any wrongdoing, he will be able to practice again after the bar is lifted in five years. He’s also made some decent early investments in startups like Robinhood and many investor sources TechCrunch spoke to over the years seemed quite loyal to him as an investor, despite the charges, employee mass exodus and fund implosion that followed. 

And it seems this saga is not over yet. Rothenberg told MarketWatch in a recent interview that he thought the ruling was, “historically excessive and vindictively punitive,” that he planned to appeal it and would be suing Silicon Valley Bank, which Rothenberg used to funnel several investments, over the matter. 

Rothenberg Ventures already filed suit against Silicon Valley Bank in August of 2018, the same day the SEC filed formal charges against Rothenberg himself. In that suit, Rothenberg alleged negligence, fraud and deceit on the part of the bank and sought a trial before jury. Silicon Valley Bank said it would defend against the case at the time.

We’ve reached out to Silicon Valley Bank and are waiting to hear back. The real question is, if Rothenberg were to come back to investing in Silicon Valley, would anyone still trust him?