NEWS FROM THE FUTURE: Printing a Michelin Star

Futureworld brings you Mindbullets: News from the Future, to spark thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional attitudes and promote an understanding of the context for business. 

Dateline: November 11 2024

In the trendy New York City neighbourhood of Tribeca, up-and-coming international chef Felix Beaux has opened a new pop-up restaurant featuring 3D printed food. The rising star of the food world has served under culinary greats such as Heston Blumenthal and Yoshihiro Murata. Beaux opened his aptly named Beaux at the Roxy at the popular Roxy Hotel New York this week where diners can choose from a specifically curated menu and have their meals printed without leaving the table.

3D printing has come a long waysince its development in the 1980s. From décor items and jet engines, to organs and neurons, the list of 3D printed items has grown almost daily.

The technology in the early 2000s, when 3D printed food was first explored, was limited to a single material. To understand whether a printer could combine materials to print components such as batteries, a research team at Columbia University used food ingredients, including dough and chocolate, because they are easier to work with and share many of the properties with the materials required to print machine components.

What started out almost accidentally has become a massive global industry. Many of the early advancements in edible 3D printing came from Israeli start-ups seeking new ways to ensure food security amid climate change and crop failures. Though the impact of climate change is still a driving force behind industrial-scale 3D printed food, the technology can also be applied to fine dining.

Beaux, 29, earned his first Michelin Star three years ago, as head chef at Mélisse in Los Angeles. He has earned two more stars since and looks set to continue making waves in the culinary industry. Though it’s unlikely you’ll find a 3D printer at your local Burger King, for the more discerning restaurant-goer 3D printed cuisine seems to be earning its stars.

• First published on Mindbullets 10 November 2022

Physical needs, digital solutions

Food, shelter and clothing — they’re all IT

Dateline: November 3 2022

We’re all familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which states that basic needs such as food, shelter and personal comfort always come first. But information technology, that enabling force for modern civilisation, is focused pretty far up the scale  — think education, entertainment, and research and, of course, finance.

Now the world of smart robotics and nanotech production has turned basic businesses into digital technologies. Energy, now solid-state solar and batteries, is traded like information on the internet. Customised clothes are 3D-printed on demand; buildings are digitally designed by the end user and digitally constructed by robots.

Food is nothing but IT converted to cuisine by bioprinters and autochefs. You can subscribe to CloudEats for access to an almost infinite number of “recipes” — digital programs for the automated kitchen. MyChef is even easier — it’s an app that will scan what’s available in your home and offer a choice of menus for the week, filtered by nutrition, taste, calories or whatever.

Food became IT back in 2016 or thereabouts with the launch of UberEats. By simply tapping on your smartphone screen you could have any one of a number of meals delivered to your door; a virtual restaurant, if you will.

Adidas started the trend towards personalised footwear five years ago with customised 3D-printed sports shoes in selected markets. Now you can have a range of clothing, designed with augmented reality, and printed on demand. Digital fashion? For sure!

As for buildings, it was a simple journey from computer-aided design to drone scans of the terrain and RoboBuilder with real-time site progress on your mobile.

The breakthrough for the energy internet wasn’t solar, though that was a catalyst. It was the Ether blockchain, which made net debits and credits among neighbours, and between power producers and consumers an affordable system, without costly banking intermediaries or human accountants.

With food, clothes, buildings and electricity are all digitalised, what’s next for IT? Perhaps life itself?

• First published on Mindbullets 2 November 2017

• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.