We’re in the middle of a very special moment in history, though we’ve perhaps been slow to recognize it. I don’t even think we’ve come up with a name for it yet, but the moment is defined by the brilliant technologists, researchers, and inventors who are on the cusp of simultaneously launching revolutionary new technologies and industries around the world.
We’ve all read the breathless headlines about these coming revolutions; in connectivity, computing power, data analysis, manufacturing, transportation, health technology, artificial intelligence, and so on. The world is going to look very different, very quickly.
We’ll let the historians figure out what to name this moment, but it’s happening now, and it’s being driven by inventors and inventions. We developed Qualcomm Spark to tell their stories, and to challenge people to think about their own capacity as inventors and creators of things.
From its beginning, Qualcomm has been a company of inventors, with a culture that is built around engineering and R&D. You’ll see that culture come through in the articles and videos on Qualcomm Spark. In our first video, Chairman and CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs addresses this topic directly and tells the story of invention on a large scale.
Big companies with big R&D budgets drive much of that invention today. But they’re joined by partners, designers, developers, and tinkerers coming up with their own breakthroughs.
We’ve tapped some of our favorite people from that ecosystem. In the video, you’ll meet Dr. Dave Albert and the company he helped found, AliveCor, which has built an amazing new “smartphone ECG.” He talks with us about the struggles and triumphs of creating something new. Qualcomm is such a fan of Dr. Albert’s work in wireless health technology that we’re an investor in his company.
At the other end of the ecosystem is Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist who is breaking new ground in geolocation with her new company, Geoloqi. Case will share some of her ideas both in the video episode and in the Spark Salon (and as a keynote speaker at SXSW this year). Qualcomm is not an official partner of Case’s or Geoloqi’s—or with many of the thought leaders and inventors you’ll see on Qualcomm Spark—but she is working alongside Qualcomm and many others to push the boundaries of mobile computing.
In this and future episodes, our experienced team of journalists and documentary filmmakers will tell real stories of invention and creation. We are thrilled to be working together, to be a part of this emerging form of publishing, and to be sharing these discoveries with you.
We hope Spark will be a place where our collective enthusiasm and intellectual rigor can come through—one Spark Salon article, one documentary, and one blog post at a time. Obviously, this revolutionary moment in time doesn’t belong to Qualcomm alone—it belongs to all of us. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it!
