Hello World: Welcome to 2019 and the beginning of a Blog.

For the past 25 years, my career as a technologist and engineer working in test labs, product development, research development, and innovation has provided me access to a great passion creating new and exciting technology to improve business and human effectiveness.

I've been a part of large corporations and small startups that range from technology-centric to healthcare. Technology and the optimistic future it creates has always been at the core of what I do. I have held leadership roles in startups and established a corporate innovation lab focused on technologies and Human - Centered Design for healthcare. I've fostered innovations that have evolved into products as well as engaged with numerous startups that have both failed and thrived. My work in technology eventually led me to begin speaking publicly on topics ranging from IoT, artificial intelligence, and distributed ledger technology to more abstract topics such as creating an innovative culture in the workforce and bold risk-taking.

However, until now I haven’t taken the time to put my thoughts on paper, let alone present them in a public forum. Thoughts on subjects I feel extremely passionate about, which ultimately all lead to one thing: bettering humanity.

The advancement of our species has always been dependent on technology. Be it language, agriculture, the steam engine or the digital information access of today. The future of our species and the potential empowerment will only be achieved via advanced technologies and intelligent systems. I believe the most important conversations to be part of today are those that focus on the need to understand where we can best utilize technologies as well as the ethical and safety requirements to take into consideration to make optimism viable.

You may already be thinking “Great! - Another technology-centric blog.”After all, there are so many in existence already. And you’re right. There are. But I want to open a more robust dialogue - a forum of sorts, where conversations can be started about the edge that we all sit on as fellow humans.

We are on the verge of a new era of enlightenment, and we must begin thinking long-term and evaluating how we want artificial intelligence and technology to take us into the next 50 and 100 years. We are living in the fastest moving, most abundant time in all of history, and whether you agree with me or not, history shows it to be a time with more accessibility and inclusivity than ever before. While it’s still far from a perfect balance (is anything ever perfectly balanced?), in my optimistic opinion, it’s not all going to shit, as the daily news and social media would lead us to believe. Evolution wired us to focus on the negative. i.e. We’re more alert to that which might hurt us, not that which might enlighten us. To lose sight of all the positive that has come to fruition over the past 10, 50 or 100 years is to simply lose perspective of longitudinal change. We are vastly better off today than our grandparents or distant ancestors were. That coupled with the exponential era we now live in, we have a responsibility to take a hard look at what ‘exponential’ really means and how it applies to technologies empowerment for the human race. While it is unlikely to slow down as some would like, we better damn well look at all of this from a safety and ethical perspective, before ‘what’ we build is beyond correction.

The evolution of technology is outpacing the evolution of the human species. Think about that for a second. We have never had to adapt as fast as we do today. While it’s a moral imperative for our civilization to embrace much of these life-saving rapid advancements, such as autonomous vehicles and disease detection the questions remain: How will we adapt to the long and short-term change? Can we? What is the risk and what are the benefits?

In my career as a technologist and innovation thought-leader in both my community and industry, I have spoken on these subjects at conferences, at academic institutions and the like. From the feedback I’ve received, I somehow inspire and inform. I hope to convey some of that via this blog. Writing the sentiments I usually speak about, will be a new exercise, so bear with me as I continue to find and refine my public voice. My goal is to communicate some of the concepts I have developed over the past two decades as I’ve engaged with some of the top minds. Experts ranging from corporate leadership and academics to public policy leaders.

I’ll share my perspectives and hope to inspire you to engage in dialogue and as we consider our future deeply, together.

Not every post will be strictly on technology but it will always be the undercurrent. Civilization is an advanced state of human society which is a network of cultures, science, industry, and government so another recurring sentiment will be the need to engage leadership in areas that include artists, philosophers, policymakers as well as teachers, scientists, technologists, and futurists.

With that said, here we go.