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What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

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Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#41

Post by m0llusk »

teddyh wrote: post #24
onthecanposting wrote: post #19

Construction technology. Design software for horizontal construction is astonishingly bad. The PDF is still the "product" in am era where GPS and automated machine guidance are the norm. We're decades overdue on rethinking project delivery from first principles in the context of modern practices and The inefficiency costs billions. A single bill or FHWA policy memo on open data standards for digital project delivery…

All that could very well be true. The important question is: Is there anyone who is prepared to spend money to fix any of this? Put another way: It doesn’t matter if you have a product which would help people and save them money, if people, for whatever reason, aren’t inclined to buy your product.

Current owners, operators, and tenants. Buildings need to work for the occupants. Even in the best scenarios this takes ongoing upgrades and maintenance. In some cases buildings need to be significantly designed to provide for the needs of current tenants. This means that the whole construction sector needs the hardware equivalent of continuous integration based on the idea that construction is only the start of a process of keeping a building operational for its service lifetime.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#42

Post by reacharavindh »

1. Genetics and Genomics. The researchers I have worked with closely in the past have been outstanding scientists who have highlighted a huge room for computer engineers to step in and reap the benefits of applying software engineering and to a large extent - algorithms to solve large scale problems in the quantitative aspects of genetics and genomics. To give you a broad example, such methods are used in the breeding industry to find suitable mating bulls for cows to achieve a certain goal/feature - milk production, beef, even reduction in methane in their offsprings. I can only imagine the need for such methods in food and medicine which are huge industries.

2. spatial computing : If Apple’s foray into it has validated anything, it is that it is just getting started and it holds a lot of unrealized potential.

3. Robotics - it has been important for a long while, but its trajectory is still upwards and reach very promising.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#43

Post by sfblah »

hiddencost wrote: post #37

Drones drones drones drones drones. The war in Ukraine has transformed drone tech. Ukraine alone is burning 20k to 30k drones a month. The military applications are leading to huge investments; economies of scale are leading to rapid improvements in tech and reduction in costs.

What are the most promising commercial startups in the space in your opinion?

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#44

Post by aothms »

onthecanposting wrote: post #19

Construction technology. Design software for horizontal construction is astonishingly bad. The PDF is still the "product" in am era where GPS and automated machine guidance are the norm. We're decades overdue on rethinking project delivery from first principles in the context of modern practices and The inefficiency costs billions. A single bill or FHWA policy memo on open data standards for digital project delivery…

It's also quite fun! There's a lot of computational geometry involved and you have a chance to positively affect the built environment around you.

We're quite close now to delivering the final version of IFC4.3: the open standard for BIM (building information modelling), now including semantic modelling of long linear infra https://ifc43-docs.standards.buildingsmart.org/ Eagerly awaiting to replace your PDF.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#45

Post by hiddencost »

sfblah wrote: post #43
hiddencost wrote: post #37

Drones drones drones drones drones. The war in Ukraine has transformed drone tech. Ukraine alone is burning 20k to 30k drones a month. The military applications are leading to huge investments; economies of scale are leading to rapid improvements in tech and reduction in costs.

What are the most promising commercial startups in the space in your opinion?

Not really answering the question, I'm most interested in mine clearing drones:

https://nitter.net/Tatarigami_UA/status/1692962111675138074#...

A drone with a FLIR can do a great job of sweeping for UXO and mines. Which will be big business (it would take every mine clearing team on the planet 750 years to clear Ukraine given current non-drone tech).

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#46

Post by richk449 »

vidanay wrote: post #29

My son (15) has expressed interest in studying materials science. While he's still years away from a firm decision, it doesn't seem like a bad path to me.

Seems like most true technology breakthroughs come from materials science. It is much harder to get the benefits of those advances though, since the path from materials science to product can be long and complicated.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#47

Post by richk449 »

lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #9

Manufacturing MRP. Every other manufacturing company has their own way of doing things and none of the MRP solutions on the market are flexible enough to work for these companies.

Anything revolutionary you are aware of? Knowing that we will need one soon, and dreading the usual options, I’m ready for a revolution.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#48

Post by capableweb »

richk449 wrote: post #46
vidanay wrote: post #29

My son (15) has expressed interest in studying materials science. While he's still years away from a firm decision, it doesn't seem like a bad path to me.

Seems like most true technology breakthroughs come from materials science. It is much harder to get the benefits of those advances though, since the path from materials science to product can be long and complicated.

What is a "true" technology breakthrough compared to a "not true" technology breakthrough?

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#49

Post by onthecanposting »

teddyh wrote: post #24
onthecanposting wrote: post #19

Construction technology. Design software for horizontal construction is astonishingly bad. The PDF is still the "product" in am era where GPS and automated machine guidance are the norm. We're decades overdue on rethinking project delivery from first principles in the context of modern practices and The inefficiency costs billions. A single bill or FHWA policy memo on open data standards for digital project delivery…

All that could very well be true. The important question is: Is there anyone who is prepared to spend money to fix any of this? Put another way: It doesn’t matter if you have a product which would help people and save them money, if people, for whatever reason, aren’t inclined to buy your product.

Bentley has a market cap of around $15B. It's worth something to somebody. Their only serious market is DOT work and their position is attributable to administrative inertia and aggressive vendor lock-in.

The biggest problem isn't making better software, which already exists, but getting DOTs to stop making Bentley's proprietary file type a requirement for deliverables. The second problem is realizing that the CAD approach of imitating a paper process from last century isn't actually necessary.

Re: What are emerging/promising areas of tech to get into today?

#50

Post by onthecanposting »

aothms wrote: post #44
onthecanposting wrote: post #19

Construction technology. Design software for horizontal construction is astonishingly bad. The PDF is still the "product" in am era where GPS and automated machine guidance are the norm. We're decades overdue on rethinking project delivery from first principles in the context of modern practices and The inefficiency costs billions. A single bill or FHWA policy memo on open data standards for digital project delivery…

It's also quite fun! There's a lot of computational geometry involved and you have a chance to positively affect the built environment around you. We're quite close now to delivering the final version of IFC4.3: the open standard for BIM (building information modelling), now including semantic modelling of long linear infra https://ifc43-docs.standards.buildingsmart.org/ Eagerly awaiting to replace your PDF.

Since you are an insider, would you please shed some light on a personal question I've had for a while? Is the reason the IFC specification is so extremely complicated because they're trying to map nicely to an object model that's already in Autodesk products?

I read a proposal a while ago to simplify an open BIM spec down to meshes for solids and a generic dictionary for attaching property data. That struck me as very sane and very easy to implement. You could have a free product like Blender spit out BIM compliant deliverable at minimal cost. Apparently some high ups at Autodesk talked to the author and he came to understand the error of his ways.

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