JL's Profile

This is a great article – thanks for sharing. From your article, it definitely seems that the 3-D printing of buildings will revolutionize the construction industry – reducing labor costs, increasing productivity, and as a result, extending the market for homes to millions of homeless people around the globe – it’s incredibly inspiring!

To Julien’s point above, while construction is absolutely a highly-regulated industry, I argue that 3D printing will provide more precision and higher quality in construction. In fact, the Army has recently begun experiments in using 3D printing to “print” barracks and other buildings for forward troops – implying that they are just as safe, durable, and generally cheaper (62% reduction in required materials) than conventional buildings [1].

[1] Troy Carter, TechLink https://techlinkcenter.org/3d-printer-house-army/, accessed November 2018.

N, this is a great article and was well-worth the read. As I read, I couldn’t help but think how machine learning is enabling modern lenders to be more like the lenders of the past in making loan decisions. From the Handelsbanken case, we learned how the local banker would only make positive lending decisions to people that he/she personally knew would pay the loan back. I would wager that much of the lending choice boiled down to where the lessee went to school, whether or not they were upstanding citizens in the town, and the personal relationship between both parties. As banks continue to scale, and the competition to reduce costs drives them to reduce their brick and mortar footprint in towns (thus reducing their ability to personally know their customer), I can see how the banks would use the data outlined above to make more informed lending decisions.

I completely agree with this article – thanks for sharing. The DoD must do better at managing the telecommunications of its Soldiers in the battlespace – mostly by beefing up its current communication structure to be more useful for the troops on the ground. I remember vividly how many convoys, airdrops, and other logistics missions were coordinated via WhatsApp in the theater that I operated in – simply because our issued equipment was far inferior and it was easier to communicate over the phone. This was nerve-wracking for senior leadership as potential adversaries had the ability to listen in to many of our communications. We need to ensure that our own equipment is a more viable alternative.

Also – another interesting story on geotagging – in the early days of the War in Ukraine, it was widely known that Russian soldiers were operating in Ukraine (contrary to what their government was suggesting) based on multiple Instagram geotags of Russian artillery soldiers, who were bored in their vehicles posting on social media!

This is a great and well-written article, thanks for sharing! As urban populations continue to grow, the population becomes better off, and the design of cities becomes more and more complex, I absolutely see the move to source ideas from a city’s citizenry as instrumental to building the cities of the future. I remember that New York incorporated a similar outreach program in its effort to rebuild the Brooklyn Bridge Park. By relying on the input of local artists and experts, the park is a much more exciting location than it could have been. I don’t know, but I would imagine that the park was significantly more expensive than conventional city-planning would suggest. Do you think that this model of open innovation can be translated for use in less economically advantaged areas of the world than New York and Toronto?

Thanks for the insightful article and great insight. I too worry about the long-term implementation of ADS-B to further take tasks from human pilots, particularly in commercial aviation. I think it comes down to the question about trust that you pose in the second to last paragraph – that is, that consumers would be comfortable sitting in an autonomous aircraft. Given the significant PR issues surrounding recent incidents in autonomous driving – which have brought with them stringent regulations and public unease, one such issue in air travel could render this technology obsolete for years to come. Regulators would be very careful about approving this project, if at all.

This is a great article – thanks for sharing your thoughts on this interesting topic. I wonder, however, how sustainable 3D printing is for high-volume, low-margin foods like pasta. Why would Barilla experiment in this space – a space that requires very significant capital investments – when it is able to conventionally produce huge amounts of pasta (even gluten-free options!) as is? Seems like this is a novelty case as of now, and may not create value for Barilla in the long-term.