Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- Wired’s Clive Thompson calls for supplementing the Maker movement with a Fixer movement that would promote the skills needed to fix “broken” goods and pressure manufacturers to improve the repairability of their products.
- Bank analysts are warning that China may be reaching a “Minsky Moment” where the accumulation of private sector debt rises to the point where the Chinese economy will forcibly and rapidly contract.
- Apple has added mental health information to Siri to aid those who may be suicidal. If a users states to Siri that he wants to kill himself, Siri responds with local mental health resources.
- The developers of genetically modified crops were the winners of this year’s World Food Prize, often called the “Nobel prize for food.”
- Approval for animals to grow human organs for transplant is expected within in a year in Japan, according to Japanese lawyers and scientists crafting rules about such research. Researchers said the likely first organ would be a pig-grown pancreas, as that organ is relatively easy to produce.’