vivid shining brands

I attended an event at Swissnex the other night where robotics researchers Oussama Khatib from Stanford AI Labs and Aude Billard from the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Féderalé de Lausanne displayed the latest in their research into reactive robotics. I came away convinced that once our machines are able to learn and respond to changes in their environments, it will be us who will have to learn to adapt to a whole new world in which certain brands that we rely on for affirmation or association may disappear as they lose relevance in a reactive robotic world. I'm talking about our machines: Our cars, our appliances, and our tools. The things we currently command but which are going to be literally taken out of our hands. The Google self-driving car is perhaps the most obvious. Almost every automaker is heavily invested in developing highly sophisticated, reactive vehicles. California lawmakers just passed a bill making driverless cars...

From the Economist today : WHY can’t Britain hang on to ownership of iconic brands such as Jaguar, Land Rover, the Mini, Rowntree, the  Times  and now Cadbury, purveyor of chocolate to children of the British empire? On January 19th, after a four-month battle, Roger Carr, chairman of Cadbury, said his board was recommending to shareholders a £11.9 billion ($19.5 billion) takeover bid by Kraft Foods, of Northfield, Illinois. Somehow, despite the blustering of politicians and the protests of organised labour, great companies like this one have been slipping out of British control. The British "Brand" has been losing steam for a while now, but things have really accelerated in the past decade, with the loss, as noted above, of all the great British motoring brands with the exception Rolls Royce. So what does the British Brand stand for, anymore? Tea is perhaps one immortal British icon (Twinings, PG Tips), and maybe the Queen. Bass Ale, and within the U.K. fold also Guine...