Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

APIs – the things that let you pull information from one app to another – are the backbone of the software you use on a daily basis. But there’s no API for live data from satellites.

Axelspace is trying to create just that. The Japanese company has big dreams, and I talked to founder and CEO Yuya Nakamura about his vision for building a space data API anyone can use.In 2008, the company was founded around a different idea — giving companies the opportunity to have a private satellite orbiting the Earth. It started developing their own microsatellites and working together with partners like the Russian space agency to get them up in the air.

For upwards of $35 million in development costs and an additional $2 million to launch it into space, anyone can get their own microsatellite the size of a desktop computer and weighing about 50 kilograms....

Spoiler Alert: The odds are high that a robot/algorithm is going to be better at your job than you are.

The ascendency of the robotic workforce is a complicated issue. On the one hand, millions of human rely on driving to earn a crust. On the other hand, over a million humans die in car accidents every year. Autonomous cars are guaranteed to greatly reduce both of these numbers. It’s hard to know how to feel about that.

If you’re not convinced that self-driving cars would increase road safety all that much, we’ve got an infographic on The Car of the Future that is sure to convince you.

Speaking of autonomous vehicles, I can’t agree that airline pilots are unlikely to be replaced by machines because they practically have been! Autopilot does the majority of the flying already, and it’s a small step from there to obsolescence. I also think it’s much more likely that police patrols get replaced by robots than this graph does, but let’s not dwell on that dystopian possibility....