Month: May 2023

Jenn Mullen,  CONTRIBUTOR

Over the course of its ten-episode inaugural season, Source De[Code]’s mission was to deconstruct the myths surrounding today’s most buzz-worthy technologies—artificial intelligence, digital twins, and big data. In the season finale, host Ben Coffin talks to three guests from previous episodes—Sarah Laselva, Jonathan Wright, and Dr. Silviu Torin– and an incredibly special new guest—Emmy award winner and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Alan Bovik– to explore the place where these three technologies intersect: The Metaverse.

The Metaverse: The point between physical and digital is human

I In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s Meta rebrand and ushered in a tsunami of press speculation about the Metaverse, a term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 dystopian sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Despite what Mark Zuckerberg might have us believe, the concept of a technology-immersive reality was first introduced to the world by The Chamber of Life, a story published in 1929 by pulp sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories. In the story, the narrator is invited to enter the Chamber of Life by its inventor who sees in the young narrator his own youthful ambition and passion for progress. While there, the narrator meets a host of people who introduce him to marvels of technology that augment every aspect of daily life. Considering the prescience of his prose, Wertenbaker and his short list of published works deserve a modern revival.

Even before the pandemic, contactless alternatives to traditionally physical interactions were on the rise. Debates about screen time and the merits of virtual work and school have replaced prime-time queries from evening newscasters asking parents if they know where their children are. We can work, shop, work out, and connect with friends without ever needing to put pants or shoes on. Technology has offered so many new and wonderful forms of convenience and entertainment that we have only recently realized how thirsty we have become for authentic human connections. As with all things, the absence of human connection during the pandemic has ignited a new appreciation for it. This appreciation is, surprisingly, tempered with most people desirous of a middle ground where the contactless conveniences of Covid and the magic spark intrinsic to real-world dynamics meet.

Charting a Course to the Metaverse

Like a pendulum, every new breakthrough is polarizing, with some rejecting new ideas out of hand and others jumping in with both feet. Eventually, innovation breakthroughs occur that appease everyone so we eventually land somewhere in the middle. The Metaverse’s seamless immersive marriage of the physical and digital acts like gravity pulling this pendulum towards the center. Neither Stephenson nor Wertenbaker—nor any of the countless other visionary creators—were able to succinctly describe the intertwining of our physical and digital realities. The reason for this—and your middle school language arts teacher would back me up on this—is that you cannot write with succinct authority about something you have not experienced.

Neither Stephenson, Wertenbaker, nor any of the countless future-gazing visionaries who have given readers a glimpse into their view of a world where the digital and physical worlds are unified would have satisfied the demands of a language arts teacher. While they may be able to answer the ‘5 W’s’—who, what, where, when, and why— of the metaverse adequately enough, the ‘how’ would evade them. Ben’s panel of experts, on the other hand, understands the complexities behind realizing the full and as-yet-undiscovered potential of the Metaverse.

Hazards and Roadblocks Ahead

“I don’t think anyone can predict at this point what it’s going to look like,” says Sarah Laselva about the Metaverse, “but I think everyone would be foolish to say it’s not going to be very different—and a huge opportunity.” Realizing something completely new on the magnitude of the Metaverse will require a different sort of visionary thinking than that of the sci-fi futurists who painted portraits of a future defined by a tech-immersive human experience.

To revolutionize digital experiences requires revolutionary new testing methods. By definition, the Metaverse is a revolution. It’s “really focusing on collaboration,” says Jonathan Wright. But it “completely changes the dynamic of how we test everything. We have to test how we’re actually viewing the content in stereo.” Creating a truly connected digital experience requires app developers to properly convey the full spectrum of human communication—both spoken and body language. Doing this requires a deeper understanding of biometrics—body tracking, gesture tracking, and gaze—, and adds new layers of complexity to the testing workflows.

The Metaverse represents a novel new revenue generation channel. Brands like Gucci and Nike see how consumers have responded to the ability to customize their avatars in apps like Roblox and Fortnite. The rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) also reflects this rising desire for exclusivity and digital individualism. But this is a limited view of how technology immersion will impact the human world. The testing process that Jonathan discussed will benefit from simulated realities, as well. Dr. Silviu Torin explains that simulation software “can provide the virtual environment whereby a lot of tier-one automakers can validate and verify their algorithms and a lot of their components.”

The simulation capabilities predicted in this wider lens view of the Metaverse will improve road safety These types of simulations aggregate greater volumes of better-defined data that would otherwise be unwieldy and cost-prohibitive to collect manually. Rapidly changing weather conditions and unpredictable pedestrian and cyclist movements are difficult to bake into testing algorithms right now. Dr. Torin expects that simulation technology will enable better machine learning algorithms that “identify these corner cases from different sources and generate the scenarios. This is much more efficient.”

Putting the Metaverse to Good Use

Intimacy is required for any simulated interaction to be truly realistic, and this intimacy is going to be difficult to experience if you are connected to the Metaverse isolated in your home. We say things in online interactions that we would never say to someone we were standing in front of. Face-to-face interactions are indeed intimate and make it far more difficult to utter words that seem acceptable online. It is also what dystopian sci-fi leans into. The sterile, cold digital environment grants permission for equally cold, cruel interactions. When we are outside, squinting in the sunlight and chatting with neighbors, these same interactions would be deemed intolerable. This disparity in social behavior is one of the clearest indicators of the boundary between the physical and digital worlds.

Despite being more connected to each other than ever before, we are also more isolated. We create echo chambers online that allow us to block out the beautiful, messy chaos of the real world. In turn, we are seeing more people acting on the shared sentiments of their echo chambers. Dr. Alan Bovik hopes that the Metaverse can bring that aspect of intimacy to online interactions. “I want the Metaverse to be something where you’re experiencing the world. And it is augmented.” The Metaverse will be a dramatic paradigm shift in how we interact with our world. By giving people the ability to experience people, places, cultures, and wonders they would otherwise never be able to destigmatize the “other” and humanizes things we would otherwise fear.

“I want you outside,” Dr. Bovik says on the show, inciting riotous cheers from every parent tuning in. He envisions the Metaverse as something that allows us to bring our online community with us as we explore the world. In the Metaverse, he sees wearable devices like glasses having the ability to let you interact with true digital twins of your network as opposed to the cartoonish avatars we currently think of. “You can create a model of that person at your receiver, hopefully inside those glasses,” he explains. You would be able to see the physical micro-expressions that communicate so much more than words alone can convey. Simulations that allow us to literally see the world through others’ eyes has world-changing potential. It creates a new opportunity for global empathy and increased compassion that inspires action in ways that words and pictures never can.

About the Guest: Dr. Alan Bovik

Dr. Alan Bovik is a vision scientist, engineer, and educator. He holds the Cockrell Family Regents Endowed Chair at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also the director of the Laboratory for Image and Video Engineering (LIVE). Dr. Bovik is also a faculty member in University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Machine Learning Laboratory, the Institute for Neuroscience, and the Wireless Networking Communications Group.

In addition to these esteemed positions, Dr. Bovik is also a two-time Emmy Award winner. In 2015, Dr. Bovik earned a Primetime Emmy Award in recognition of the perception-based video quality measurement tools he developed that have now become the industry standard in television. In 2021, he won a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for developing perceptual metrics for video encoding optimization.

Catch Up on Season 1 of Source De[Code]

Before you dive into the Metaverse, catch up on all that season 1 of Source De[Code] has to offer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Google Podcasts. Visit Source De[Code] online to learn more about the show, its host, and guests, and to access resources that will deepen your understanding of the technologies discussed throughout the season. Can’t get enough technology podcast content? Get updates on upcoming seasons and other Keysight podcasts by subscribing to the Source De[Code] mailing list.

Contact:

Lisa Lilienthal, 404-661-3679 
lisa@dialogue.marketing

ATEHNS, Ga., May 15, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Georgia’s overall greenhouse gas emissions are declining, experts and researchers from the Drawdown Georgia Research Team announced. The researchers report that, while the Covid-19 pandemic may have been the impetus for some of the emission decline measured from 2017 to 2021, most emission reductions come from the use of cleaner fuels to generate electricity in the state. Researchers also posit that the opportunity to more quickly deploy Georgia’s most effective climate solutions is supported by investments that are newly available under recent federal policy, such as the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Despite strong economic and population growth, Georgia’s GHG emissions declined by 5% between 2017 and 2021,” said Dr. Marilyn A. Brown, Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. “While some numbers are trending in the right direction, our data analysis also tells us that segments of our economy have an expanding carbon footprint. This helps us understand how to focus climate solutions work in Georgia where it is most needed.”

“The Drawdown Georgia Research Team reports that the Georgia story is beginning to trend to a positive one, and that the carbon footprint of our “average” citizen has declined from 22,092 to 20,253 pounds,” said John Lanier, executive director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation, a primary funder of Drawdown Georgia. “That’s an 8% decline. Based on the collaborations we’re a part of, we’re confident this is only the beginning of Georgia’s carbon reduction trend.”

Drawdown Georgia is a statewide research-based initiative launched in 2020 that was born from a multi-university collaboration, localizing the climate solutions work done by Project Drawdown to identify the 20 highest impact solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state in five sectors: Electricity, Transportation, Land Sinks, Food and Agriculture, and Buildings and Materials. The organization tracks these metrics through its one-of-a-kind Greenhouse Gas Emissions Tracker.

Exploring Emissions in Georgia by Sector

Electricity Sector

“The Electricity sector has offered the greatest opportunity for emissions reduction, historically, and can also be a big source of emissions” said Dr. Brown. “And, the numbers are different for residential and commercial consumers.”

Carbon emissions from Georgia’s electric power plants declined by more than 15% between 2017 and 2021. This was primarily driven by the retirement of coal plants, the shift to natural gas, and large-scale solar. These trends were supported by the increasing efficiency of our homes and businesses.The reduction in emissions has varied across end users. The residential sector has the largest demand for electricity, and home heating in Georgia depends primarily on natural gas. In contrast, commercial buildings almost exclusively depend on electricity, so the carbon footprint of offices and businesses has decreased as the power sector has cleaned up. Offices have also been dialing back in occupancy levels due to Covid, and as a result, office buildings have seen a larger decline in GHG emissions compared to homes, apartment complexes, and industry.

Land Sinks

The “steady state” contributor that has kept Georgia’s carbon footprint in check has been its natural carbon sinks, called “land sinks” by the Drawdown Georgia team. Over the four year period, Georgia’s forests, soil, and wood products provided a reliable and significant offset to some of the state’s carbon emissions.

“Georgia’s forests and soils, which absorb carbon dioxide, offset nearly a third of Georgia’s emissions,” said Dr. Brown. “And an even more positive story can be told by the state’s wood products that offer an expanding carbon sink.”

Georgia’s carbon sinks overall declined by only 1.6% between 2017 and 2021: while forest carbon uptake decreased by 2.9%, the carbon stored in wood products increased by 3.5%.

Transportation

“The decarbonization of electricity has moved Transportation into the driver’s seat as Georgia’s largest source of carbon emissions,” said Dr. Brown. “And while emissions from commuters declined during the pandemic, emissions from diesel-fueled medium and heavy-duty trucks grew due to increased deliveries during Covid.”

Transportation emissions surpassed pre-pandemic (2017) levels in 2021, emitting nearly 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MMtCO2) in 2021, 4% more than its 57.3 MMtCO2 in 2017.While gasoline-powered cars, pick-ups, and SUVs returned to pre-COVID levels, emissions from diesel-fueled medium and heavy-duty trucks and buses grew by 16.1%. This was driven by a boom in online retailing, accounting for nearly all of the sector’s growth in emissions.

Food and Agriculture

Carbon emissions from food and agriculture decreased by 7.1% from 10.1 in 2017 to 9.4 million tonnes in 2021.

Agriculture soil management and electricity used in the agriculture industry are large contributors to the sector’s emissions and are also the main driver of the sector’s emission reduction, followed by the decline in GHG emissions from electricity.Manure management was the only sub-sector that increased its emissions (5.9%).

Drawdown Georgia by the Numbers Updates Available

County-level quarterly emissions updates are now available from Drawdown Georgia. You can also find state- and county-level emissions data on the Drawdown Georgia GHG Emissions Tracker, a one-of-its-kind dashboard and tool that aggregates information from monthly data published by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation, as well as from annual data published in the State Inventory Tool and FLIGHT large facility emissions database, both created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The GHG Tracker was created by a team of data scientists led by Dr. William Drummond at Georgia Tech to aid municipal and elected officials, climate scientists, researchers, and advocates to better understand trends in emissions at a local level in Georgia.

About Drawdown Georgia

Drawdown Georgia is a statewide research-based initiative launched in 2020 that was born from a multi-university collaboration, funded by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation. Taking inspiration from Project Drawdown®, the world’s leading resource for taking action on climate change, Drawdown Georgia localized that work by identifying the 20 highest-impact solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in our state over the next decade.

This framework focuses on climate solutions in five sectors: transportation, buildings & materials, food & agriculture, electricity, and land sinks. It considers how these solutions can reduce emissions and advance “beyond carbon” priorities, including equity, economic development, public health, and nurturing the larger environment.

Drawdown Georgia has grown into a “leader-full” movement, bringing together many organizations, universities, companies, leaders, and funders who are working to advance climate solutions in Georgia, including members of the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, Drawdown Congregations, and Drawdown Higher Education. Learn more at drawdownga.org.

Trane Technologies has clear ambitions—to reduce our customers’ carbon footprint by one gigaton (that’s 2% of global emissions); to lead by example in the way we approach carbon, waste, water and energy in our own operations; and to create opportunity for all by removing barriers for our people and investing in our communities. We’ve been intentional in setting these goals. We’ve rigorously aligned them with internationally recognized frameworks. And our enterprise and strategy are firmly grounded in these commitments.

But ambition alone is not enough to limit global temperature rise.

Every day, we take action to enhance our positive impact, delivering climate technology to decarbonize the built environment and the cold chain and reduce the use of fossil fuels. And to hold ourselves accountable to the goals we’ve set, we track, measure and report on our results. This focus grounds our culture and guides how we view innovation, engagement and our role in solving some of the world’s biggest challenges. This is what differentiates us. We are, as they say, the oldest climate tech startup in the industry.

Action and outcomes

Each year, we release our ESG report as the accounting of the actions we’re taking and the impact it is having for all our stakeholders.

Our biggest opportunity to reduce carbon emissions lies within our commitment to help customers improve their sustainability. I’m pleased to report that we are making steady and significant progress toward our Gigaton Challenge. As of 2022, we’ve reduced 93 million metric tons of CO2e from our customers’ carbon footprint since 2019. To give that metric another perspective, that’s the equivalent CO2e of the amount of gasoline consumed in Australia in two years or Norway over an entire decade.

In our own operations, we are accelerating toward a more sustainable future, with significant reductions in carbon emissions, improvements in our total energy efficiency – including energy demand met with renewables – and great progress in our efforts to decrease water use in water-stressed regions where we operate.

We’ve continued to increase the diversity of our workforce and acknowledge we have more to do to be reflective of the communities we work in. We are stepping up our investment in our corporate citizenship strategy and deploying more and more employee volunteers to uplift their communities.

And so much more.

Staying our course

The shorthand that has arisen among the investor and NGO community to describe the efforts of companies like ours to align our business with positive social and environmental impact is “ESG,” environmental, social and governance. Andrew Winston, a renowned expert on business and sustainability and a member of Trane Technologies Advisory Council on Sustainability, recently wrote an article about pushback on ESG in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “Why Business Leaders Must Resist the Anti-ESG Movement.” Andrew wisely counsels, “Don’t let loud voices keep you from doing what your business is meant to do.”

Our business is meant to boldly challenge what’s possible for a sustainable world. Customer demand for our sustainable climate solutions is strong and growing, as reflected in record bookings of $17.5 billion, organic revenue growth of 15 percent, and unprecedented backlog in 2022. With optimism and pragmatism, we will continue to deliver for them, for our investors and for our communities.

And we’ll continue to share the details of our actions and outcomes in our ESG report so that others can learn and follow suit.

See the results of the actions we’ve taken so far in our 2022 ESG Report.