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Scan™ Featured Content

Scan Featured Content highlights selected commercially relevant developments in the external environment and exemplifies Scan's process.


2023

  • November 2023:

    Mass-Market Humanoid Robots
    Some signs suggest that humanoid robots could soon see more meaningful commercialization. Several firms even hope to deliver humanoid robots to the mass market.

  • October 2023:

    The Meaning of Life is Changing
    Consumers are rejecting old definitions of purpose and security—and seeking new sources of meaning.

  • September 2023:

    Next-Generation Computing Enablers
    A combination of materials science advances, AI tools, and low-cost hybrid quantum computers could dramatically accelerate the computational power for the next several generations of computer and Internet gear.

  • August 2023:

    Web3 Infrastructures for Carbon Tracking
    Emerging Web3 technologies could help the voluntary carbon market address challenges, but they also have many challenges of their own that they must overcome to find widespread use in this application.

  • July 2023:

    The Future of Cities
    The world's cities need to transform to become places where societies can thrive in the face of significant challenges.

  • June 2023:

    Reality Customization as a Service
    Software-enabled services for customizing physical reality are beginning to move into new market spaces.

  • May 2023:

    Reconsidering the Age of Abundance
    Techno-optimists have long claimed that a forthcoming age of abundance will solve many of society's problems. But in many areas, technological progress has failed to lead to abundance.

  • April 2023:

    Democratization of the Cutting Edge
    Cutting-edge innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence and gene editing are increasingly accessible to the general public. Public accessibility is democratic and can boost innovation, but also brings risks of misuse and significant harm.

  • March 2023:

    Raw-Materials Protectionism
    The world's clean-energy transition is sending companies scrambling to access and control supplies of raw materials that are critical for future economies.

  • February 2023:

    The Metaverse and the Internet of Abilities
    Although aspects of the Internet of Abilities vision have existed in research labs for decades, research interest in the IoA began to increase dramatically once advanced VR headsets began becoming widely available to consumers.

  • January 2023:

    The Evolving Supply-Chain Crisis
    Although the pandemic's effects have subsequently eased across most major economies, the supply-chain crisis has continued to develop because of multiple factors that are interacting with one another in complex ways.

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