N.A. Drescher

Let's be honest. The Jetsons and Star Wars make robots a ridiculous concept. Those are characters created for pure entertainment purposes. The reality, however, is much different. The future of robots is more akin to 'Blade Runner' or 'Better Than Us.' Robot technology is advancing exponentially. But we don't have to wait that long to get there. Robots are already a reality, and you can implement them in your life today. Here are five robots you need in your life right now. Robot companions It's no secret that people today love company. Friends can help keep us grounded and provide unconditional love. However, having a friend in the age of COVID and busy lives can be downright impossible. That's why it's so important to have robots as friends. It's the perfect solution to our busy, siloed lives. In addition, some robots can be programmed to do a host of tasks, including: Feed your pet Take care of your home by cleaning up messes, cooking food, wa

Films love predicting the future. Books have been imagining the future for a hundred years. H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley tried to envision the real world of tomorrow. So did James Cameron. Are these highly creative minds considered futurists? If not, then what is a futurist?   The answer, like most of futurism, is complex.  Let's dive right in. What Is Futurism? According to the dictionary, futurism has a couple of meanings. a) An adherence to the future; b) The study of the future and predictions about the future Both definitions are a little vague but that's the dictionary for you. They're also not entirely correct.  You see, futurism is more than movies and sci-fi books. It affects every major discipline, particularly in the sciences, but also in economics, politics, design, and even law.  Futurism is indeed the study of the future, but real futurists avoid making predictions. They look for trends and attempt to follow those trends through to their logical development. 

During a summer of intense global heatwaves, this particular day stood out.  It was hot. Really hot. Here in Ottawa, Canada's capital city of 1.1 million people, the thermometer surpassed 41 degrees centigrade with the humidex. That's hot. So it was on this scorching August day that I thought I would take my three-year-old daughter on a transit trip to the Rideau Centre. It's a large mall in the downtown core. After all, the buses, subway, and mall were all nicely air-conditioned. OC Transpo, Ottawa's transit authority, had different ideas. I quickly realized that Canada has a serious transit crisis. Because it's summer, my kids are out of school. We took my daughter out of daycare because face it, that's too expensive (a completely different issue I'll tackle another time). Thankfully we put our son in a day camp for two weeks. My wife was working full-time for the feds. It was just my daughter and I. Daddy and daughter time!  We spent the week hanging out.

 The COVID pandemic revealed that many workers can work from anywhere. Are cities ready to attract them? The future of cities and the future of work are intimately connected. They always have been. During the industrial age, rural farmers flocked to the urban centers, and the cities we know today were born. Now those workers, many of whom are so-called 'knowledge workers' are completely mobile, untethered from the offices that kept them in urban cores. Most cities are not ready for this new reality. The Current State of Work The COVID pandemic is winding down in most of the developed world, and economies are returning to normal. Are they really, though? After all, during the pandemic, nearly 80% of companies switched to at-home work. That's millions of experienced and educated people working from home. Furthermore, 47% of company CEOs have said they will make work-from-home permanent. This not only saves the company a lot of money that would otherwise go to real estate, o