10.10.17
Trains, Planes, And Driverless Automobiles
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to anticipate trends, rather than react to them. What forces are influencing our work? In this bi-weekly series, T3 strategists, Kaitlyn Hieb and Anna Gilligan, share the trends and tidbits we’re paying attention to.
Transportation and Delivery:
While Amazon has transformed the retail industry, they are still relying on third-party delivery partners like UPS and FedEx for the last mile. This may be changing. Amazon is testing a new service that would open up more space in their warehouses and provide two day shipping on more products.
Walmart Making Moves: Walmart has acquired Parcel, a logistics startup, to begin launching same-day delivery in New York City.

More Drones: DelivAir is a service that is able to deliver products directly to consumers’ hands with the help of GPS and drones, no address necessary.
Not Ready: Pew Research Center has quantified what we all knew – people are more worried than excited over robotics and self driving vehicles. “In fact, nearly six in 10 said they would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle, citing lack of trust, a fear of losing control and/or general safety concerns as the main reasons for not wanting to use this technology.”
Sounds Familiar: Cubic, a San Diego based technology company, is testing a “fastrack gateless gateline” concept that allows commuters to pay for their train transportation via facial recognition.

Chariot: Ford-owned shuttle service, Chariot, is launching its first crowdsourced routes in New York City in which customers can petition custom routes.
Things we have our eye on:
Shorter is Better?: P&G is trying its hand at two-second ads, which is a huge deviation from the current trend of the 6 second ad. The idea is that consumers will register these ads similar to how they process billboards.
Edible Trash: One solution to minimizing consumer goods waste is to make the packaging edible. At least that’s what this waffle vendor is doing with packaging that is made out of seaweed.

#AR
Must-Have: AR has been deemed a “must-have” in retail after a report by DigitalBridge showed that 20% of consumers expect retailers to have an AR tool, and 49% of consumers expect retailers to launch AR features within the next six months.
AR Takes on a Classic: ‘Parker‘ is the world’s first AR teddy bear set to be sold at Apple stores in select countries. Parker is a normal teddy bear, but what sets him apart is the AR-fueled app counterpart that allows kids to interact with him in new, technologically exciting, ways.

#PlatformUpdates
ICYMI: You’ve probably heard that Google announced a ton of new stuff this week, but if you missed the details, you can read a summary of everything they released, here.
End of an Era: AIM is set to die on Dec. 15th and we can’t think of a worse way for a service to celebrate its 20th birthday. RIP to all of our angsty away messages.

#AI
7 Deadly Sins of AI: AI is causing a lot of predictions about the future both of technology and of society in general. This article helps breakdown exactly how to keep those predictions in check.
Interesting: DeepMind, a UK AI company, has just unveiled an ethics research lab to study how AI influences, and is influenced by, the following six themes: privacy, transparency, fairness, economic impact, inclusion, and equality.
Great Read: This interview with IBM’s CEO, Ginni Rometty, focuses on the future of AI at IBM and how it will impact the future of programming.
