Laura Colomban speaks with the disruptive technologist John Collins, founder of Innovation Foundry, a company which support business and individuals to identify new technology trends and create opportunities for collaborative innovation.
John has a fast and exceptional intelligence, he is PhD in Nuclear Physics and microelectronics besides having a passion for dance performances, theatre and cultural events, where you would probably meet him when he is not working.

Today I let you enter right in the mist of our conversation, which started talking about vibrating materials, sound waves and vibrating bodies.

We talked about bodies as mass of photons, vibrations of sound and light are absorbed into the environment, they transform but do not disappear.
We are all connected with some wave form and are connected to environments and animals like a huge microchip and doing less as human beings is necessary now. We need to take into consideration the feedback from the planet to increase the design of how we operate, being more constructive about how we use resources on the earth, to balance the process of taking and giving back to earth.

Then the question is: how can we interfere constructively in the environment?
I was struck by his sentence: 'data is the new plastic'.
The amount of energy involved in shooting and editing a IG picture is equal as the energy involved in creating a plastic bottle.
We started to imagine a software that could recycle data back to electricity, to balance the production of data everyone is responsible for. We talked about Cybernomics (cryptocurrencies and how much energy is involved in exchanging and creating them), remote working and the use of resources used during the lockdown period. Electricity and power utilised to be in a Zoom calls are overstimulating the system, the amount of resources we are utilising is unbalanced compared to the resources we return to the earth.

Lockdown and the distancing has created a sort of geometrical order in the world, less people spread apart, ordered in space like a crystal lattice: the geometry of it, goes towards order, low energy state can be seen as a new hyper normal.

If we go on this way, by 2050 half of the energy of the world will be used on streaming if we go at the current rate.


What are the ethical considerations of streamed events and compulsive usage of data?

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Bios:
Until recently John was Operations & Commercial Director of the UK National Centre for commercialising Engineering Biology - SynbiCITE - at Imperial College London. SynbiCITE is growing industry based on using the engineering of biology to ‘do useful things & make useful stuff to heal us, feed us, fuel us & most imperatively, sustain us’.
John helps turn ‘upstarts into start-ups and start-ups to become grown ups’ through business incubation & acceleration programmes, the one John is most proud to have ensured funding for Synthetic Biology – the technology that will grow a new industry solving global challenges. He mentors and advises a considerable number of businesses and company founders across a range of technologies and business areas, and is a part of the Royal Academy of Engineering LIF Mentoring Scheme.
Throughout his careers John has run his own ‘Disruptive Technologies and Innovations Management’ consultancy – Innovation Foundry Ltd. – and continues to work with a diverse spread of technologies, services and creative industry. He is an advisor to the government’s Digital Catapult, advising on ethics and AI, Blockchain (DLT) and tech in general. John also teaches the IP for Entrepreneurs module at Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS) and supervises a number of students there.
He’s an active advisor on UK government Programme Expert Groups covering the National Measurement Service for digital, chemical, biological, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and environmental metrology & standards, shaping the future impact of measurement science on these thematic areas, in particular with advancing solutions to reduce GHG emissions.
John is also Chair of the Real Time Club – the world’s oldest technology networking club, running 54 years – working with leading philosophers, scientists & technologists promoting ‘technology for all, technology for good’ and community building, the RTC network is now more than 6300 members and growing daily!