Why is there a need for an organization like GO?
The rapid pace of technological innovation is driving monumental change around the world. As we enter what some call the Fourth Industrial Revolution, our energy and logistics systems are undergoing a radical transformation. Renewable energy systems, the Internet of Things (IoT), and autonomous vehicles are examples of technologies that have the power to fundamentally change the way we live and the way we do business. Emerging technologies today have the potential to mitigate environmental degradation, counteract climate change, and promote social equity and quality of life. Economic decision-making that takes an ethical and community-based approach helps to guide innovation for the benefit of society and the environment.
GO is a way to make this happen. GO aims to foster and support innovation that is environmentally responsible, promotes quality of life, and embodies high ethical standards.
The GO Technology Foundation is an umbrella organization for high-tech best-practice businesses. GO directs resources from profitable revenue streams back into the community, reinvesting in high-tech infrastructure and enabling future technologies and industries. Building valuable partnerships with other community organizations, businesses, government agencies, and academic institutions, GO aims to facilitate advanced technical jobs and training opportunities. Our goal is to foster creative innovation and support the transition to an inventive knowledge-based economy.
Technologies for LIFE, Health and Community
For one of the first times, we can clearly see how our economies and societies will transform in the near future. One could argue that if you were to go back to the mid-1800s and look forward, it would have been very difficult to anticipate what would be the outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, if you stood out in the late ’90s at the advent of the Internet and looked towards the future, it was hard to imagine technologies like Google, PayPal, eBay, and smartphones. If we look forward from this point, we can clearly see how things will transform:
Logistics: We know that our logistics systems will be transforming towards automated and, with high probability electric, self-driving vehicles.
Information: We know that our information systems are transforming towards the Internet of Things, a trillion connected sensors and devices, and the high bandwidth networks required to support them.
Food: We know that to address global food issues, we need to move towards industrialized automated food production with urban vertical farms and lab-grown meat.
Energy: We know that our energy systems are transforming towards renewables, energy storage to address their intermittency, and smart grids.
Interestingly, the acronym for the first 4 programs, logistics, information, food, and energy is LIFE. These are the things that we need to be human beings in our social societies. We use these things in everything that we do: to live, work, play, learn, have fun, be creative. The key to the first three things is energy – to charge electric vehicles, power devices and cool server rooms, to grow food, we need clean, cheap and abundant energy.
Health: We also know that we’re moving towards individualized, automated health solutions with technologies like CRISPR-Cas9. In the future, you will contract a disease or an illness and you’ll go to a clinic. That clinic will sequence the genetic information of the disease or illness, and send that data to a highly automated laboratory. The laboratory will develop a personalized solution for you that will be sent back to your clinic, to be administered by your doctor in a form similar to a flu shot. The genetic therapy will edit the genetic information in the disease to, for instance, get rid of HIV, defects due to cancer, etc. This approach to health care is much different than what we’ve done in the past, historically drugs are developed to treat broad populations in general ways. With automation, we can create personalized health solutions.
Community: In the past, GO has held monthly Tech & Social Impact Meetings – a collaborative effort between GO and Skunkworks, to discuss community and global issues and potential innovative solutions. GO plans to hold periodic presentations for local innovators to present their work.
Businesses with Traditional, Emerging and Future Technologies:
GO utilizes an economic model similar to that used by the car manufacturer Tesla when they first created the Roadster, and then used revenues from that to fund future vehicles and ventures. We recognize that traditional businesses are generally low-cost capital to start and can have a high initial return, businesses based on emerging technologies require medium cost capital to start and typically have a medium initial return, and those developing and utilizing future technologies are high-cost capital to start and, at least in the near future, generate low return. GO is developing traditional, emerging tech and future tech businesses for each of the program areas above, and will use revenues from all ventures to invest in the future in the best interests of everyone in our communities.