Auto driving refrigerator

"What if you were to give up one of these two; sex or smartphone?" The strange question designed by Boston Consulting Group was asked to 7,500 people of Koreans, North Americans, Germans, Brazilians, Chinese and Indians. In total, an average 38 percent of respondents answered that they would give up sex. While this proves the global addiction to the mobile device, a whopping 60 percent of Koreans opted not to turn off their smartphones while quitting physical intimacy cold turkey. Indeed, it seems that smartphone was one of those triggers, which dragged down the Korean birthrate to the world's lowest.

The addiction to smartphones can also be interpreted as a closely intertwined world. The founders of Airbnb that linked rooms across the world with the worldwide web showed how fast they had forecasted the rapidly rising interdependency in this era of extreme individualism. Therefore, it can be said that business ideas come from insights. The recent sexual assaults committed to Airbnb users also prove the frustration of the shared economy in its nascent stage, which shows a stark difference compared to the existing capitalism depicted by mass production and consumption.

On its opening day on Friday, the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (IFA) proved that autonomous driving technology can be applied to not only cars, but also home appliances. The autonomous driving refrigerator by Panasonic stands still as a built-in appliance, but approaches to the arms length when called by a user who is watching TV. Samsung Electronics has also introduced a smart refrigerator, which lets users glance inside their fridges on their smartphones while at office and order groceries. Furthermore, LG Electronics' lawnmowing robot gives you a real-time information on how the grass is growing.

The ever-evolving Artificial Intelligence (AI) sheds both a silver lining and a gloomy outlook for businesses and individuals. All analog services such as house rentals or taxi sharing initially undergo a confusion during the process of digitization by innovative companies. Once the cloud is clear, the next common step in the era of the fourth industrialization would be a rapid popularization in the mass market. Just like America author Thomas Friedman said, the "age of average" has ended and the "age of acceleration" arrived, constantly pushing us to innovate to survive.