What Drives Innovation?

In the IT industry, major advances in data transmission speeds happen about every five to seven years. In the past 13 years we have made jumps from 100Mb/s to 1Gb/s to 10Gb/s to today’s jump to 40 and 100Gb/s. These jumps have been driven by technologists trying to stay ahead of the annual 50% growth rate of the digital universe.

I recently saw the movie “Ironman 2” with my son. While the movie was very entertaining, Mr. Stark’s ability to instantly devise amazing new technology was a bit hard to accept. Having worked alongside some of the most intelligent “mad” scientists at Bell Labs and CommScope Labs, my experience tells me that such breakthroughs are possible but take longer than “five minutes of movie time” to accomplish. But they can be accomplished with vision and dedication.

In the IT industry, major advances in data transmission speeds happen about every five to seven years. In the past 13 years we have made jumps from 100Mb/s to 1Gb/s to 10Gb/s to today’s jump to 40 and 100Gb/s. These jumps have been driven by technologists trying to stay ahead of the annual 50% growth rate of the digital universe. And with the desire of people to communicate where, when and how they choose, these technologists have their work cut out for them to stay ahead of the coming digital data flood.

Technology continues its push forward beyond what many can imagine possible.

In the world of entertainment the Ironman character is a big hit but is a functioning human exoskeleton even possible?

It turns out the answer is “yes.” Companies like Berkley Bionics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are actually developing exoskeleton technology now to help the disabled and the military.

Click on the name of each company to see their recent announcements on YouTube. Simply amazing technology.

Berkeley Bionics: Introducing eLEGS

Lockheed Martin HULC Exoskeleton

Ratheyon Unveils 2nd Generation Exoskeleton Robotic Suit

So which comes first, the need or the technology?