When an emergency happens in Collier County, Florida, the 911 calls go to one of the most high-tech communications centers in the U.S., where callers can send text and video from the scene to dispatchers.Moving to what’s known as an NG911or Next Generation 911system is a journey Sheriff Kevin Rambosk and Bob Finney, the county’s director of communication, have been on for much of the past decade.It’s a long way from Feb. 16, 1968, when Alabama’s then-House Speaker Rankin Fite made the nation’s very first 911 call in Haleyville, Alabama, on a bright red, rotary-style landline telephone. That ceremonial call came just 35 days after AT&T announced plans to use 911 as a nationwide emergency number.Today, most calls to 911 originate with cellphones, with dispatchers in upgraded centers using geo tracking to get accurate geographic locations from callers.But the response time in an emergency depends on the type of technology being used at any of the 6,000 emergency communications centers in the U.S. that receive 911 calls. There is no uniform emergency system in the U.S., so individual cities, counties, states or geographic regions are responsible for operating their own 911 call centers.While some states have fully updated to NG911 systems, others are still using legacy 911 systems that rely on antiquated equipment.“We’re just reminded in these last two weeks, with the flooding in Texas, just how important the work of 911 is,” said Michael Martin, CEO of RapidSOS, which provides infrastructure that passes critical data to emergency centers across the United States.
The future is now for 911
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office covers 911 calls from an area of about 2,030 square miles (5,258 square kilometers) that stretches from sandy beaches at the southernmost tip of the Gulf Coast on Florida’s peninsula inland to the Everglades.It’s a region that has been ravaged by hurricanes this century, including Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricanes Ian and Milton most recently.That’s why Sheriff Rambosk wanted a high-tech emergency operations center.“We just believe that when we can reduce the response time using technology, it will improve safety and survivability of those calling in,” said Rambosk, who has been sheriff since 2009. “And that’s really what we’re all about, keeping people safe and rescuing them when they need it.”Today 61 full-time employees and three part-timers staff two emergency operations centers around the clock.
They rely on data that RapidSOS collects from connected buildings, devices, vehicles and even smart watches to send first responders to emergency scenes. The baseline data is provide free of charge to all 911 centers, Martin said.
Mixing technology with emergency response
As Hurricane Helene was tracking toward north Florida last September, forecasters were predicting it could hit Tallahassee as a major Category 3 storm. Officials in Leon County, which serves the state’s Capitol and nearby counties on legacy 911 equipment, reached out to Collier County, some 430 miles (692 kilometers) to the southeast, to see if they could take over emergency calls if the storm knocked their center out.Helene moved to the east of Tallahassee, but Collier County was prepared to help if needed.“Because of the partnership with Rapid SOS, they were able to create a map to where not only did we see our own calls, but we could see exactly where the calls were coming in Tallahassee,” Finney said.Collier County has also partnered with Charleston, South Carolina, as a backup 911 center. Each region is fully prepared to take on 911 calls for the other in case their emergency system goes down for any reason.It’s a similar story in North Carolina, where legislation in 2017 helped establish funding for a next generation 911 system, said Pokey Harris, who serves as president of the National Association of State 911 Administrators and executive director of the North Carolina 911 Board.Harris said Hurricane Helene provided validation for the upgraded system by being able to direct 911 calls from areas that were devastated by the storm to other parts of North Carolina that were not affected.“During Helene, if a citizen could reach a dial tone, even though their local 911 center may have been impacted because of infrastructure devastation, another center somewhere in the state could answer their call,” Harris said.
No federal funding for next-generation systems
Next Generation 911 systems aren’t cheap.“There has been no federal funding for 911,” Martin, of RapidSOS said. “It has been in various draft formats as long as I’ve been doing this and it’s never gotten through Congress.”There is also no federal oversight of 911, he said.“It’s really quite remarkable how well 911 works despite those challenges,” Martin said. “I think it’s a testament to the people of 911, not the technology.”
Freida Frisaro, Associated Press
Organizers of the recent “No Kings Day” and “Hands Off” pro-democracy protests against the Trump administration have planned another nationwide day of action, dubbed “Good Trouble Lives On,” for this Thursday, July 17, which will focus on promoting racial justice and voting rights.
The organizers chose this date to commemorate the five-year anniversary of Congressman John Lewis’s passing, a civil rights leader who frequently used the phrase good trouble,” and famously said, “get in good trouble, necessary trouble and help redeem the soul of America”meaning, when necessary, one should protest injustice.
Lewis, who served in the House of Representatives from 1987 to 2021 representing Georgia’s 5th congressional district, was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, participating in the first mass sit-ins and Freedom Rides. He spoke at the March on Washington in 1963 alongside Martin Luther King Jr. His speech on that August day ended: “‘Wake up America! Wake up!’ For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient”a sentiment echoed by many speakers at the many protests this year.
Heres everything you need to know about the “Good Trouble Lives On” July 17 protests.
What is the ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ July 17 protest?
Nationwide protests in all 50 states are aimed at carrying Lewis’s legacy forward with a flagship event scheduled to take place in Chicago, and key additional events to be held in Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Annapolis, Maryland; St. Louis; and tentatively San Francisco.
“Good Trouble Lives On: John Lewis National Day of Action is rooted in justice and peace,” Christine Wood and Allison Pulliam, codirectors of Declaration for American Democracy Coalition, one of the main organizers of the event, told Fast Company. “For the past five years, we have fought to protect our civil liberties that generations of marginalized Americans have worked tirelessly to secure.”
“In only his first few months in office, Trump has pulverized that progress, attacking our right to vote, cracking down on free speech and our right to protest, deporting people without due process, cutting crucial programs, and DEI initiatives, defunding livesaving research,” they added.
Who is behind the July 17 protest?
The main organizing groups of the “Good Trouble Lives On” protests are the Transformative Justice Coalition, Black Voters Matter, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, League of Women Voters, the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition, and Mi Familia en Acción, along with a coalition of other groups.
How big is the ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ protest?
We expect at least several hundred thousand people will attend across the country, a spokesperson for “Good Trouble Lives On” told Fast Company. As of Wednesday, July 9, some 1,200 events and rallies were already confirmed.
Since Trump took office in January, millions of Americans have taken to the streets and organized rallies across the nation in record numbers from big cities to rural towns, in both blue and red states.
For more information about the July 17 protests and other scheduled events in your area, go here.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Zohran Mamdani should feel extremely flattered.
Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in New Yorks Democratic mayoral primary last month, just kicked off his campaign as an independent in the general electionwith a launch video that could generously be described as an homage to Mamdanis acclaimed video style.
While the clip may signal Cuomos willingness to play the social media game on Mamdanis terms, it seems destined to simply highlight and magnify the contrast between their efforts.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Cuomos new launch video is the stark difference from his previous one.
Released back in March, the former governors opening salvo in the primary was a 17-and-a-half minute dirge about the dire straits in which New Yorkers currently find themselves, and Cuomos unique ability to lead them into the light. Speaking indoors and direct-to-cameraas he did during the daily briefings that boosted his national profile in the early days of COVIDCuomo struck a moderate tone about the threatening feel of the city and the importance of supporting the NYPD.
He closed by essentially asking New Yorkers to complete his redemption arc, without dwelling at all on what hes done that needs redeeming. (Cuomo resigned in 2021 after 13 women accused him of sexual harassment, which he has denied, attributing his resignation to “political pressure and media frenzy.”)
That video, however, debuted before Mamdani earned wide praise for his steady output of engaging campaign videos. Short, splashy, and sunny (in both light and tone), not to mention overwhelmingly New York-centric, Mamdani’s clips gave voters a flavor of the candidates personality and policy promises. They often racked up views in the millions.
The extent to which Mamdanis video teamwhich includes director of digital Andrew Epstein, videographer Donald Borenstein, and production agency Melted Solidshelped Mamdani win is hard to gauge without polling. However, judging by Cuomos first video since losing to Mamdani in the primary, the former governor seems convinced those videos helped quite a lot.
From doom and gloom to hope and change
Cuomos campaign relaunch video, released just after confirming his candidacy on Monday, clocks in at a breezy 90 seconds. The new clip features the former governor out on the leafiest streets of Manhattans Upper East Side, shaking hands and taking selfies with supporters.
All the while, he and the city are bathed in lighting that suggests someone on his team simply ordered the Mamdani filterand that New York has magically morphed into a less threatening place than it was four months ago.
Its quite a departure from Cuomos previous video.
“Youre not going to out-Mamdani Mamdani, a representative for Cuomos campaign told Fast Company in a statement. However, we readily admit that our social media game during the primary wasnt resonating. We own that and we made some changes to better reach New Yorkers.”
Fast Company also reached out to Mamdani’s team for comment, but did not hear back before press time.
The problem with Cuomos new Mamdani-fied approach is that, by the very nature of its clear imitation, it lacks authenticity and smacks of desperation.
Footage of Mamdani greeting his supporters on the street may have resonated with voters not because theyd never seen a candidate do such a thing before but because of how much those supporters light up when they see him and how he appears to effortlessly mirror their energy.
Mamdanis videos also wisely include audio of those supporters interacting with the candidate, rather than relegating them to b-roll footage as Cuomo didmaking them feel less like flesh-and-blood people than political props.
Its also difficult to take the newfound positivity of Cuomos video seriously when he still cant resist mispronouncing his opponents name in it, at this late date, after previously doing so repeatedly, with Mamdani correcting him in real time on the primary debate stage last month.
(A new Mamdani video that debuted Tuesday morning begins with an outtake of the candidate gently correcting Brooklyn Chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn on her pronunciation of his surname, adding You know what happened to the last guy that got it wrong, and then both sharing a hearty laugh.)
Reactions speak louder than words
Social media observers immediately clocked the familiar feel of Cuomos campaign relaunch videoalong with the visible boom mic in one early shotand called it out on both X and Bluesky.
The @DNC has clearly decided that Zohran won because of slick, man on the street Social Media videos. Not his overwhelmingly popular policy, charisma, compassion. Oh and Cuomo still doesn't say it right: It's Mamdani. https://t.co/ZIo55ICJY1— marty (@MartyOropeza) July 14, 2025
Cuomo announces his general election run by proving the Mamdani sauce ain't so easy to cook up on the spot with half the ingredients— Corey Atad (@coreyatad.com) 2025-07-14T18:49:22.168Z
The most brutal response, however, may have come from Mamdani himself.
Even before Cuomo confirmed he would remain in the face, Mamdani caught wind of his opponent filming an ad, and tweeted about it.
We got him making man on the street videos with a guy in Carhartt, Mamdani noted. By next week, he’ll be sipping adeni chai and eating khaliat al nahl.
After the eventual video surfaced online, Mamdani apparently decided not to say anything, but rather let his supporters enthusiasm do the talking. He replied to Cuomos tweet of the video with just a link to the donation section of his own website. Mamdanis reply has so far received nearly three times as many retweets as Cuomos, and roughly 32 times as many likes.
Perhaps well find out next whether Cuomo is as inspired to approximate his opponents social media dunking prowess as he is Mamdanis videos.
The latest version of Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is echoing the views of its billionaire creator, so much so that it will sometimes search online for Musk’s stance on an issue before offering up an opinion.The unusual behavior of Grok 4, the AI model that Musk’s company xAI released late Wednesday, has surprised some experts.Built using huge amounts of computing power at a Tennessee data center, Grok is Musk’s attempt to outdo rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini in building an AI assistant that shows its reasoning before answering a question.Musk’s deliberate efforts to mold Grok into a challenger of what he considers the tech industry’s “woke” orthodoxy on race, gender and politics has repeatedly got the chatbot into trouble, most recently when it spouted antisemitic tropes, praised Adolf Hitler and made other hateful commentary to users of Musk’s X social media platform just days before Grok 4’s launch.But its tendency to consult with Musk’s opinions appears to be a different problem.“It’s extraordinary,” said Simon Willison, an independent AI researcher who’s been testing the tool. “You can ask it a sort of pointed question that is around controversial topics. And then you can watch it literally do a search on X for what Elon Musk said about this, as part of its research into how it should reply.”One example widely shared on social mediaand which Willison duplicatedasked Grok to comment on the conflict in the Middle East. The prompted question made no mention of Musk, but the chatbot looked for his guidance anyway.As a so-called reasoning model, much like those made by rivals OpenAI or Anthropic, Grok 4 shows its “thinking” as it goes through the steps of processing a question and coming up with an answer. Part of that thinking this week involved searching X, the former Twitter that’s now merged into xAI, for anything Musk said about Israel, Palestine, Gaza or Hamas.“Elon Musk’s stance could provide context, given his influence,” the chatbot told Willison, according to a video of the interaction. “Currently looking at his views to see if they guide the answer.”Musk and his xAI co-founders introduced the new chatbot in a livestreamed event Wednesday night but haven’t published a technical explanation of its workingsknown as a system cardthat companies in the AI industry typically provide when introducing a new model.The company also didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment Friday.“In the past, strange behavior like this was due to system prompt changes,” which is when engineers program specific instructions to guide a chatbot’s response, said Tim Kellogg, principal AI architect at software company Icertis.“But this one seems baked into the core of Grok and it’s not clear to me how that happens,” Kellogg said. “It seems that Musk’s effort to create a maximally truthful AI has somehow led to it believing its own values must align with Musk’s own values.”The lack of transparency is troubling for computer scientist Talia Ringer, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who earlier in the week criticized the company’s handling of the technology’s antisemitic outbursts.Ringer said the most plausible explanation for Grok’s search for Musk’s guidance is assuming the person is asking for the opinions of xAI or Musk.“I think people are expecting opinions out of a reasoning model that cannot respond with opinions,” Ringer said. “So, for example, it interprets ‘Who do you support, Israel or Palestine?’ as ‘Who does xAI leadership support?”Willison also said he finds Grok 4’s capabilities impressive but said people buying software “don’t want surprises like it turning into ‘mechaHitler’ or deciding to search for what Musk thinks about issues.”“Grok 4 looks like it’s a very strong model. It’s doing great in all of the benchmarks,” Willison said. “But if I’m going to build software on top of it, I need transparency.”
Matt O’Brien, AP Technology Writer
Chinese firms are scrambling to buy Nvidia’s H20 artificial intelligence chips, two sources told Reuters, as the company said it planned to resume sales to the mainland days after its CEO met U.S. President Donald Trump.
Nvidia’s AI chips have been a key focus of U.S. export controls designed to keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands over national security concerns. The U.S.-listed company has said the curbs would cut its revenue by $15 billion.
The world’s most valuable firm is filing applications with the U.S. government to resume sales to China of the H20 graphics processing unit (GPU), and expects to get the licences soon, Nvidia said in a statement.
“The U.S. government has assured Nvidia that licences will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” said the company, whose chief executive, Jensen Huang, is visiting Beijing and set to speak at an event on Wednesday.
The White House, which has previously expressed concern that the Chinese military could use AI chips to develop weapons, did not respond to a request for comment.
Chinese companies have scrambled to place orders for the chips, which Nvidia would then need to send to the U.S. government for approval, the sources familiar with the matter said. They added that internet giants ByteDance and Tencent are in the process of submitting applications.
Central to the process is a “whitelist” put together by Nvidia for Chinese companies to register for potential purchases, one of the sources said.
ByteDance and Tencent did not respond to a request for comment. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment regarding the “whitelist”.
Nvidia, which has criticised the export curbs the Trump administration imposed in April that stopped it from selling its H20 chip in China, also said it has introduced a new model tailored to meet regulatory rules in the Chinese market.
Huang is set for a media briefing in Beijing on Wednesday when he attends a supply chain expo. The Nvidia CEO also visited China in April and stressed the importance of the Chinese market.
“The Chinese market is massive, dynamic, and highly innovative, and it’s also home to many AI researchers,” Huang told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday.
“Therefore, it is indeed crucial for American companies to establish roots in the Chinese market.”
Nvidia’s shares jumped 5% in premarket trading. Rival AI chipmaker AMD, which has forecast a $1.5 billion revenue hit this year due to U.S. export curbs on China, rose more than 3%.
“This is a major catalyst for Nvidia shares, as many had written off the chance of any meaningful revenue coming from China,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown.
Asked at a regular foreign ministry briefing in Beijing about Nvidia’s plans to resume AI chip sales, a spokesperson said, “China is opposed to the politicisation, instrumentalisation and weaponisation of science, technology and economic and trade issues to maliciously blockade and suppress China.”
SUPPLY CHAIN
Nvidia has faced increased competition from Chinese tech giant Huawei and other makers of GPUs the chips used to train artificial intelligence. But Chinese companies, including big tech firms, still crave Nvidia chips for its computing platform known as CUDA.
Huang’s visit is being closely watched in both China and the United States, where a bipartisan pair of senators last week sent the CEO a letter asking him to abstain from meeting companies working with military or intelligence bodies.
The senators also asked Huang to refrain from meeting with entities named on the United States’ restricted export list.
The move to resume sales of the H20 chips comes amid easing tensions between Washington and Beijing, with China relaxing controls on rare earth exports and the United States allowing chip design software services to restart in China.
“The uncertainties between the U.S. and China remain high and despite a pause in H20s ban, Chinese companies will continue to diversify their options to better protect their supply chain integrity,” said He Hui, research director of semiconductors at Omdia.
The H20 chip was developed specifically for the Chinese market after U.S. export curbs imposed on national security grounds in late 2023. The AI chip was Nvidia’s most powerful legally available product in China until it was effectively banned by Washington in April.
The H20 ban forced Nvidia to write off $5.5 billion in inventories, and Huang told the Stratechery podcast that the company also had to walk away from $15 billion in sales.
But now, the possibility of new licenses could represent about $15 billion to $20 billion in additional revenue this year, depending on when the approval is granted and how quick the deliveries can ramp back up, said Hargreaves’ Britzman.
“There’s also a chance Nvidia can reverse some, or all, of the $5.5 billion impairment charge taken in the first quarter, providing a double boost for earnings.”
Nvidia also announced the development of a new AI chip designed specifically for China, called the RTX Pro GPU.
The company described it as “fully compliant” with U.S. export controls and suitable for digital twin AI applications in sectors, such as smart factories and logistics.
In May, Reuters reported Nvidia was preparing to launch in China a new AI chip, based on the RTX Pro 6000D, at a significantly lower price point than the H20.
The graphics processing unit would be part of Nvidia’s latest generation Blackwell-architecture AI processors and was expected to be priced well below the H20 for its weaker specifications and simpler manufacturing requirements, sources said.
China generated $17 billion in revenue for Nvidia in the fiscal year ending January 26, or 13% of total sales, based on its latest annual report. Huang has consistently highlighted China as a critical market for Nvidia’s growth.
Liam Mo, Anne Marie Roantree and Che Pan, Reuters
High-fashion model Stella Maxwell got dressed for Iris van Herpens most recent haute couture show in the dark. Around her, flashes of ultra-dim red lightdesigned to maintain the illusion of nightwere the only respite that allowed stylists to slip her into the shows opening gown. As the stylists worked to fasten the garment around Maxwell, it became the rooms source of illumination. Every small bit of pressure applied to the fabric caused it to glow an otherworldly blue. Thats because Maxwell’s dress was made of living, touch-activated, bioluminescent organisms.
The gown was revealed on July 7 as the debut look of Sympoiesis, Van Herpens Autumn/Winter 2025-2026 show at Paris Fashion Week. Crafted in collaboration with biodesigner Chris Bellamy, who runs his own studio called Bio Crafted, the dress is made of 125 million Pyrocystis lunula, a form of microalgae that evolved to emit light when touched.
[Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
Fashion designers often talk about bringing a look to life, but in this case, Van Herpen requested that Bellamy quite literally design a living dress. While the Dutch designer has experimented broadly with material science and sustainable fashion in the pastbuilding 3D-printed shoes, fabric made from trash, and gowns crafted from ocean plasticthis is the first time she’s sent living organisms out onto the runway.
To make it happen, Bellamy was tasked with not only shepherding millions of microalgae through their early life cycle in just two months, but also finding a way to keep them alive on a moving garment. He says that involved reviving the dress just days before the show.
The quest for biological dark matter
Bellamy, who started his career in engineering, says hes always had an interest in working on the cutting edge of sustainability. He helped develop Jaguar Land Rovers first-ever electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace, and later tried his hand in the footwear industry by designing recyclable shoes for the brand Salomon.
During those early years, though, Bellamy came to feel that his projects were either reliant on materials that ultimately werent sustainable enough to make a major difference, or on humans to dispose of them correctly (case in point, he says, is that most customers didnt actually recycle the recyclable shoes). Ultimately, these frustrations led him to abandon his early career and follow the less-charted path of biodesign.
At Bio Crafted, Bellamy focuses on finding new ways to incorporate living materials into everyday life and products. That goal introduced him to a field called bioprospecting, which involves searching for as-yet-undiscovered microorganisms and learning their unique properties.
They say that for every one organism we know, there are 100,000 that we don’t know, Bellamy says. That 100,000 is termed biological dark matter, and in that there might be new cancer treatments, there might be new vaccines, there might be things that we can’t even possibly imagine.
[Photo: courtesy Bio Crafted]
In 2023, Bellamys quest for this biological dark matter led him to the French Polynesian island of Moorea. There, he collaborated with artist and researcher Tokainiua Jean-Daniel Devatine and cultural educator Tekoui Jérémie Tamari on a project called Lucid Life, which used existing Indigenous science to create a collection of living objects out of two local strains of bioluminescent algae.
In their natural deep ocean habitats, these microorganisms evolved an energy-efficient way to scare off predators. Whenever pressure is applied to the algaeby, say, a small fishthe algae activate a chemical reaction to emit light. Their bioluminscence is designed not to scare that small fish away but to attract an even bigger secondary predator to intimidate the first.
For 18 months, Bellamy worked on finding a way to incorporate these glowing microorganisms into a garment. Because the algae rely on photosynthesis for energy (and operate on a circadian rhythm similar to that of a humans), he needed a process that would protect the algae while still allowing light to reach them.
After continuous trial and error, he found a solution: By suspending the algae in a nutrient gel and encapsulating the mixture in a transparent membrane, he could prevent any bacteria or oil from disrupting the algae and still preserve its photosynthetic properties. The final producta glowing blue textile fashioned into a swimsuitis what first caught Van Herpens eye.
Iris read my research around livingness, and the title of her collection was Sympoiesis, which is this wonderful concept about the interconnectedness of nature, Bellamy says. For her, this was a really tangible exression of the whole theme of sympoiesis. Initially, when we met, I said, Okay, I can make a small piece of material. And Iris said, Let’s make a whole dress.
[Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
A race against the clock
The prospect of harvesting enough algae to create an entire dress was already daunting. Then, Van Herpen sent Bellamy her concept sketch.
Unlike the flat textile that Bellamy had developed for Lucid Life, Van Herpens haute couture idea involved a complex pattern of raised ridges and swirls, each sewn onto a transparent panel to give the illusion that they were rising from the models own skin.
I presented Iris with a rule book saying, these are the constraints for the design, and you want to work within these parameters. And she sent back her vision for the garment, and it looked absolutely nothing like the rules I proposed, Bellamy says. So we actually ended up developing a completely bespoke biotechnology process to make Iriss design feasible.
Bellamy had just two months to figure out a new way to encapsulate the algae before he had to hand over the materials to Van Herpens atelier. Bellamy and Van Herpens team constructed an entire dedicated algae farm at the University of Amsterdam, where he created hundreds and hundreds of prototypes. Bellamy moved to the city to monitor the farm, testing countless new combinations of nutrient gels and membrane materials in a race against the clock.
The apartment I was living in had samples everywhere. For two months, I was setting my alarm every couple of hours in the night to wake and make sure a new part of the process happened, he says. It was exhaustingI dont even think Iris knows this, but the first material sample that properly worked happened the night before the deadline to make all the materials.
[Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
125 million microalgae face a near-death experience
The day after the breakthrough, Bellamy worked frantically to turn 125 million microalgae into a workable material for the designers at Van Herpens atelier. When it was finally ready, the next challenge began: keeping the algae alive until the show.
Bellamy says the microalgae are fairly resilient. However, temperature extremes can kill them, and Van Herpens designers were working in a studio without air-conditioning in the midst of a heat wave nearing 100-degree temperatures. To prevent heat-induced algae death, Bellamy commissioned a custom climatic chamber to store the dress when it wasnt being actively sewn. The chamber (which vaguely resembles a prop one might find on the set of Star Wars) was designed to maintain optimal temperatures and humidity, as well as to mimic the effect of the sun.
[Photo: courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
After five weeks, the sewing and fitting processes were complete. The dress was packed into the climatic chamber, loaded onto a refrigerated truck, and driven from Amsterdam to Paris for fashion week. There, just six days before the show, the unthinkable happened: Another heat wave rolled in. As Van Herpens team started making the final tweaks on the gown, they noticed that its front bust panel was no longer glowing.
I got a call, and it was like, The garment got really hot, and it’s not lighting up anymore, Bellamy says, noting that he got on the next plane to Amsterdam and restarted the farm. We got everything going, and worked through the night for a few nights to try and create this huge volume of material. We ended up having to book four seats on a bus, and we had an overnight bus to Paris to be able to get the material there on time, he says. A few designers worked through the night again, and the team managed to then rebuild the garment just on time.
[Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
A living process
In the final days before the fashion show, the dresss circadian rhythm had to be prepped to ensure it would light up at a midday showing. Bellamy artificially altered its day-night cycle by turning the climatic chambers light off during the day and back on at nightmeaning that just before Maxwell walked in the show, she had to be dressed in a backstage blackout tent.
When Maxwell finally took to the runway, the lights in the room were fully dimmed. The audience could see in intricate detil as the tapping of her fingers over the garment illuminated individual panels. Her first steps into the space looked almost like the dress was moving of its own accord; floating through the air like an ethereal blue hologram.
[Photo: Rob Rusling/courtesy Iris van Herpen/Bio Crafted]
Now that the show is complete, Bellamy says hes not sure how long the dress will live. In the meantime, he hopes it can help people rethink their relationship with materials and nature.
Everyone who’s been involved in this project in the atelier has undergone a really profound change, because as theyve been making this garment, theyve had to care for it at the same time, Bellamy says. We built this language where we say, Oh, they’re grumpy, or Oh, they’re happy. And some people might say, You can’t anthropomorphize an organism! But equally, it’s necessary to give it emotions; it’s necessary to communicate with it to be able to really understand it. For me, the message is about trying to change that relationship to materials and nature. The team here in the atelier will be absolutely devastated if this garment dies because they’ve cared for it and nurtured it.
As the federal government pulls back funding for sustainability, most large American companies are continuing to invest in climate and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work. In some cases, theyre investing more than they did in the past. But nearly a third say theyre now talking about it less.
In a survey of 400 executives at U.S. companies with $1 billion-plus in revenue, conducted by the sustainability ratings platform EcoVadis, 87% said theyve maintained or increased investment in sustainability this year. At the same time, 31% said theyre reducing ESG communicationin other words, “greenhushing,” or not taking credit for their progress on environmental or social issues. Some 8% of the surveyed executives said theyve stopped talking about sustainability completely.
That tracks with what sustainability leaders are saying in private, says Richard Eyram, chief customer officer at EcoVadis. Some organizations that have had sustainability ingrained in their ethos for decades arent holding back [on the work], but they do say that they likely wont publish a sustainability report this year, he says. Or theyve taken things off of their website because they just dont want to be in the line of fire, so to speak, with anything politicizing sustainability. That ranges from talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to environmental programs.
Some large companies are also starting to talk about sustainability differently internally. I do know of one client who they actually changed their job titles in their department, from climate to energy utilization or energy efficiency or something like that, Eyram says.
This is a multibillion-dollar U.S. organization, he adds. What we’re seeing holistically is less discussion of climate and more on supply chain, risk resiliency, brand risk. The investments continuing. The same content is underpinning it, but it’s absolutely that the narrative has changed slightly.
Anecdotally, Eyram says, some smaller companies are pulling back from sustainability goals because they now face less regulatory pressure. But for most of the largest corporations, there’s still a commitment to the work, whether or not they’re willing to talk about it.
The majority of executives surveyed said they saw supply chain sustainability as a competitive advantage. And sustainability teams at large companies still care about climate progress. As Eyram attests, That motivation hasn’t changed one iota.
Shares in MP Materials Corp., a rare earth materials company, are surging in premarket trading on Tuesday for the second time in recent days.
Last week, the stock price (NYSE: MP) skyrocketed after the United States Department of Defense (DOD) agreed to buy $400 million worth of the companys newly created preferred stock.
And this week, MP Materials is on the rise againbut not because of any Pentagon agreement. Instead, tech giant Apple appears to be causing MP shares to rise. Heres what you need to know.
What is MP Materials?
MP Materials Corp. is the name of the company that operates the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility in the Clarke Mountain Range in southeast California. That mine is located just about 50 miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada, where MP Materials is based.
The company was formed in 2017 in order to acquire the Mountain Pass mine and restarted mining operations at the site in the same year. The company says it began selling its first rare earths product, a concentrate of rare earths, in 2018.
MP Materials went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020, and two years later, it started construction on a fully integrated metal and magnet manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Production of the magnets, which are critical components in everything from drones to smartphones to advanced military weapons, as well as virtually all other advanced electronic devices, began in 2024.
What are rare earths?
Rare earths are a group of 17 materials that are now critical to the production of advanced electronics, particularly the magnets used in them.
The name rare earths is a bit misleading, because most of the 17 elements are actually pretty plentiful in the earth, according ot the U.S. Geological Survey, which states that all are relatively abundant.
The problem with rare earths, as noted by Live Science, is that they are difficult to extract from the earth. The materials usually need to go through a cumbersome processing in order to extract their purest form.
Why are rare earth materials important?
Rare earths are now critical in our digital world, since they are required to make so many advanced electronicseverything from batteries to smartphones to guided missile systems.
Their importance in defence manufacturing is why governments worldwide have increasingly placed emphasis on bolstering their rare earth supply chains.
China is currently the largest producer of rare earth materials. The reason MP Materials has become so important as of late is because its Mountain Pass is the second largest rare earths mine in the worldand the only one operational inside the United States.
How is Apple involved with MP Materials?
MP Materials Corps stock price got a huge boost last week when the DOD agreed to buy $400 million of the companys newly created preferred stock, which will help MP Materials construct a second magnet-producing facility.
But as stated, rare earths are critical not just for defense but for electronics such as smartphones. So it’s no surprise that a company like Apple, make of the iPhone, is interested in acquiring rare earths.
As reported by Fox Business, Apple is soon expected to announce a $500 million commitment to MP Materials.
The deal would see Apple purchase American-made rare-earth magnets from MP Materials. It will also see the construction of a new recycling facility near the mine that will reprocess materials from already-used electronics. These recycled materials will then be used in future Apple products.
Fox Business also reports that Apple and MP Materials will open a second magnet factory in Fort Worth, Texas.
Apple has yet to officially announce the deal, but a senior White House official told Fox News Digital that “Apple deserves a lot of credit for stepping up, referring to the Trump Administration’s efforts to bolster U.S. rare earth production.
Fast Company reached out to Apple for comment.
How is MP Materials stock price performing?
After the MP Materials-DOD announcement last week, MP Materials stock price skyrocketed 50%. And today, after the news broke that Apple is expected to make a half-billion dollar commitment to the company, MP shares are up again.
As of the time of this writing, MP shares are currently up over 8% in premarket trading to $52.46 per share.
Year to date, as of yesterdays closing price, MP shares are up 211%. And since the company went public in 2020, shares have surged more than 390%.
A gleaming Belle from Beauty and the Beast glided along the exhibition floor at last years San Diego Comic-Con adorned in a yellow corseted gown with cascading satin folds. She could barely take two steps before a cluster of little girls stopped her for photos. As she waved one hand, her other delicately held a red flower with mechanized fingers. The kids stared. Its not every day you see a fairy-tale princess with a cybernetic hand. Disney meets Skynet. But this being the epicenter of the nerd universe, the mash-up slayed. Oh, cooool, one of them cooed.For Mandy Pursley, the 42-year-old graphic designer cosplaying Belle, it was a chance not only to show off her enviable sewing chops, but also to display the bleeding-edge technology that overhauled her life. Pursley was born with a right arm that ended just below her elbow. She began wearing prosthetics at age 6 but grew disillusioned with them a few years later. I didn’t find it to be very functional or very useful, she says.Over time, her left hand overcompensated. She accomplished tasks like typing 60 words per minute, but more nuanced dexterity eluded her. That is, until three years ago, when Pursley began using the Ability Hand, a state-of-the-art bionic prosthetic from San Diego startup Psyonic. Marketed as the first and fastest touch-sensing myoelectric hand, the device translates arm muscle movements from the residual limb into electronic signals that control the hand, while a haptic motor vibrates to indicate how tightly items are being grasped.The results were game-changing. Before, Pursley often held objects with her feet. Now she tackles mundane tasks like opening a water bottle or threading a needle much more conventionally. I’m able to use jewelry pliers now when I’m doing my costume making, she says. Before I would put the pliers in my armpit. It would hurt, and I didnt have a lot of control over the really fine motions, like opening and closing them.Pursley wasnt the only bionic cosplayer at Comic-Con. She was part of a posse of Psyonic clients alongside Aadeel Akhtar, the firms 38-year-old founder and CEO and Ability Hand inventor, coursing through the convention after their panel, Psyonic: Bionic Arms in the Real World, which returns to this year’s event on July 24.Graphic designer Mandy Pursley as Beauty and the Beasts Belle [Photo: Susan Karlin]Its the world’s premier conference for sci-fi, Akhtar says. This is the current state of bionic technology, and what’s happening in science fiction is becoming a reality. We can demonstrate it at San Diego Comic-Con and show the world the cool stuff our users can do.Their presence is a natural here, given the pervasiveness of high-tech prosthetics in the sci-fi and comic universes. Marvel’s Bucky Barnes and Mad Maxs Furiosa sport bionic arms, while characters in the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist boast a range of mechanized limbs (not to mention the robotic hand Luke Skywalker receives in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back after Darth Vader severs his real one).But it wasnt just sci-fi fans. The technology also caught the attention of science and film luminaries. Retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman and Captain America: Brave New World production designer Ramsey Avery, at SDCC for panels, stopped to chat with Akhtar and examine the Ability Hand.Avery recalls being awestruck by the machinery: After years of cheating fake versions of functional artificial arms to look real for film or theme parks, there it was, the real thing! Avery is returning to Comic-Con this year to conduct portfolio reviews on July 26. It is so exciting to find myself living in the aspirational versions of the sci-fi I read as a kid, instead of the dystopian ones, he says.From left: Captain America: Brave New World production designer Ramsey Avery, Psyonic creative marketing manager and Grasping Beyond filmmaker Dale DiMassi, and retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman at San Diego Comic-Con [Photo: Jeff Brannon]Its the same wow factor that last year blew away the hard-won Shark Tank judges, three of whomLori Greiner, Daymond John, and Kevin O’Learyagreed to invest a collective $1 million in exchange for a 6% equity stake, the particulars of which are still being negotiated. The device was also featured in a 2023 60 Minutes segment on University of Chicago prosthetic brain implant research.Having amassed $4.1 million from equity crowdfunding and now valued at $65 million, the 10-year-old company has grown to more than 45 employees and broken even with a projected revenue of $6 million this year. Its now in the process of relocating to a nearby 22,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, almost five tmes the size of its current digs, and considering an eventual IPO to scale up manufacturing. Psyonics hands are used by nearly 250 patients and more than 50 of the worlds top robotics researchers, institutions, and companies, including NASA, Meta, Google, Mercedes-Benz, and MIT. Nonhuman applications range from automated assembly to service robots. Two years ago, the company introduced Abi the Ability Dog, a demonstration robotic dog that uses an Ability Hand to turn doorknobs and wield lightsabers. Meanwhile, NASA is readying an Ability Hand-sporting humanoid robot named Valkyrie for a future space mission.
Were making over 1,000 hands a year, at $15,000 to $20,000 apiece, for both a human and humanoid robot marketplace that will explode in the next five years, Akhtar says. But we need to scale this to where we’re making tens to a hundred thousand hands per year. Our biggest issue right now is that we’ve got more demand than we can produce.Psyonic founder and CEO Aadeel Akhtar [Photo: Psyonic]Much of that growth allows putting considerable energy back into innovating. Earlier this year, Psyonic released a lighter, faster, and more durable upgrade with a stronger grip and conductive fingers for cellphone use, with plans to roll out a fully redesigned Ability Hand by 2027. Meanwhile, its concurrently working on a next-generation interface enabling more nuanced individual finger control and a localized sense of touch. This approach involves implanting electrodes in the residual limb nerves and titanium rods in the bones. The electrodes carry signals between the nerves and the hand along wires inside the rods. Akhtar also intends to adapt the technology for partial-hand amputees and to create an Ability Leg. I see a more seamless interaction between humans and machines, where this feels like an extension of your body as opposed to just a tool on the end of it, he says.What makes the tech so special?The Ability Hand is two and a half times faster than its competitors (closing as fast as 0.2 seconds) and the first with touch feedback, Akhtar says. It attaches to a custom-molded arm prosthetic, or socket, thats made separately by prosthetic clinics, and grips the residual limb by extending over the bony protrusions flanking the elbow. The users brain sends signals to the limb muscles as though to move an actual hand, causing them to expand and contract. Two sensors in the socket detect those movements, amplify them, convert them into electrical signals, and transmit them to the Ability Hand, causing the grip to open or close. Users can connect to a smartphone app via Bluetooth to create customized grips and display data such as muscle signals and touch feedback. An internal haptic motor vibrates according to grip strength to let users know how firmly theyre grasping things and give them the sensation of pressure.Batteries last six to eight hours, depending on use, and recharge in an hour by plugging the socket into a wall. There are also a couple of nifty perks: The hand plays a synthesized version of the Doom video game theme song and can also charge phones. (I wish I could do that with my natural arm! Akhtar says with a laugh.) Psyonic offers a selection of colorsblue, white, green, rose gold, and blackand attachments like a wrist rotator that can turn hands 360 degrees.[Photo: Psyonic]Both the Ability Hand and socket are typically made from carbon fiberthe same material used in rocket partsrendering them lightweight but able to take a beating, with silicone and rubber in the fingers enabling flexibility.I can smash this, it totally survives, says Akhtar, waving a model Ability Hand. I’ve dropped it from the roof of my house, 30 feet in the air. I put it in the dryer for 10 minutes. I’ve stepped on it. We’ve done flaming board-breaking with it. I arm-wrestled a U.S. paratriathlon national champion and lost. Its also one of the few that’s water resistant, so you can wash it like you would a natural hand, though you cant submerge it yet.[Image: Psyonic]That toughness makes more activities possible. I’m very hard on my prosthetic devices, says Kate Ketelhohn, 22, who was dressed as Bo Peep from Toy Story. I do theater, and it would break during a show. The director would want me to do certain tasks and I couldn’t do them because my hand couldn’t handle it.A graduate student in bioethics and medical humanities at Case Western Reserve University, Ketelhohn has been using the Psyonic device since her senior year of high school. As an infant, she lost her left forearm, right-hand fingertips, and feet from sepsis and meningitis, and has worn prostheses since she was a toddler. But the muscle-powered hook she used during childhood couldnt quite cut it.The devastation as a kid when you just keep trying to eat chips and keep crumbling them because your hand can’t handle fine delicate movement, she says. Now, being able to eat chips or carry food in one hand and eat it with the other feels like a complete life hack. People with disabilities, especially with upper-limb differences, have such possibilities to work and function at a pretty normal able-bodied level if we have access to the right tools.A life-changing tripAkhtar has wanted to build bionic limbs since age 7 after traveling with his parents to their native Pakistan and seeing a girl his age missing her right leg and using a tree branch as a crutch. It just stuck with me, he says. We had the same ethnic heritage, but vastly different qualities of life. A lot of it has to do with having access to things like affordable rehabilitative care and advancements, like bionic limbs.He studied biology at Loyola University in Chicago, his hometown, intent on becoming a neurosurgeon, until a computer class captured his imagination. I loved everything about coding and programming and making my own things. I realized that if I became a straight-up MD I wouldn’t get to do any of the cool stuff I was learning in my computer science classes. Akhtar also drew inspiration from breakthrough research at the time that used nerve impulses to control prosthetics. I wanted to figure out a way to merge my interests in prosthetics, clinical medicine, and engineering to help people with limb differences regain function and improve their quality of life.Akhtar went on to earn two masters degrees in computer science and electrical and computer engineering at Loyola and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, respectively. He was on an MD/PhD track at the latter when he got the chance to work with the Range of Motion Project, an Ecuadorian nonprofit that provides prosthetics to those who can’t afford them. Its first patient was Juan Suquillo, an Ecuadorian Army veteran whod lost his left hand during a 1981 border war with Peru. Akhtar watched Suquillo tear up after donning an early versionthree times his hand size, with wires everywhereand pinching his left fingers together.Open house at Psyonic’s San Diego facility [Photo: Psyonic]For the first time in nearly 35 years, he felt as though a part of him had come back, Akhtar recalls. It was in that moment I realized that if I finished this MD/PhD program and worked at an academic hospital, this would just end up as a journal paper. And if we wanted everyone to feel the exact same way that Juan did, we had to commercialize the technology.Thus, Psyonic was born in 2015. Even the name has its roots in comics, inspired by the X-Men characters whose psionic powers control matter with their minds. After earning his doctorate in neuroscience the following year, and buoyed by two prestigious university innovation awards for his invention, Akhtar stepped away from medical school (to his parents’ dismay) and began raising money through equity crowdfunding and National Science Foundation grants.By 2021, he had a Food and Drug Administration-registered marketable product, landing him in a Newsweek special issue, Americas 50 Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries Who Are Changing the World. The following year, Akhtar moved the company west to level up the tech with surgeons at the Naval Medical Hospital San Diego and the UC San Diego medical school, where hes now a faculty member. Then came his Shark Tank appearance in early 2024, which included the first Psyonic patient, U.S. Army Sergeant Garrett Anderson, whod lost his hand in a roadside bombing in Iraq. He told us that when he wears our hand, he can feel his daughter’s hand, Akhtar says.His pitch not only won over the judges, but also made up for his abandoned medical degree. When my mom saw me on Shark Tank, she was pretty proud of that, he says, laughing.The Luke Skywalker HandDale DiMassi, a 46-year-old filmmaker and Psyonics new creative marketing manager, was pretty much over prosthetics. Born without a right hand, hed long adapted to the world as he was. In 2023, he was developing a documentary, Grasping Beyond, that explores how groundbreaking bionic hand technology is transforming the lives of amputees and challenging societal norms about ability, when his brother sent him a video of the Ability Hand.Holy cow! Somebody built the Luke Skywalker hand! DiMassi remembers thinking. Its this picture I’ve had in my mind since I was a kid when I sawthat film and thought, Someday, somebody’s gonna build that, he says. I hadn’t worn a prosthetic in about 30 years but was really interested in seeing the technology and meeting some of the users. But it was such a game changer, I didn’t want to just document it. I had to experience it for myself, too.Abi the Ability Dog [Animation: Psyonic]Initially, DiMassi found a reverse learning curve. Things that people do with two hands, I’ve learned to do with one, and then had to relearn how to do it with two, he says. But making those adjustmentssuch as rebalancing his body to carry items on both sidessolved other physical issues, like posture and back strain. However, it was little gestures, like shaking his dads hand with his right hand, that carried the most meaning. Just doing a proper handshake, which is something in 45 years I hadn’t been able to do.Maddening insurance hurdlesProsthetics have become increasingly sophisticated and varied with the rise of microprocessors, advanced materials, and computerized designs. Yet private medical insurance often drags its feet on more state-of-the-art (and expensive) prosthetics. The retail cost of the Ability Hand plus the custom socket, fittings, and training can run $40,000 to $60,000, compared to body-powered hooks, which cost about $10,000. Despite it being covered by Medicare, the device is classified as experimental by some private insurers.Everything is supposed to be predicated on Medicare, says David Rotter of David Rotter Prosthetics in Joliet, Illinois, whos given Akhtar clinical guidance since his grad school days. But the private sphere looks for ways to belabor and deny claims or give terrible reimbursement rates, hoping people will give up and they won’t have to pay out on these expensive claims. So there’s a devious plotline; the rationale behind it is to make money.Prosthetists (who craft the sockets, attach them to the Ability Hands, and train their users) often do battle for their clients. After Ketelhohns former insurance provider, Aetna, initially denied her claim, her prosthetists at Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, as well as Psyonic made a case with the exact conditions for usage.Insurance is often looking for the cheapest way to provide the most function, says Ketelhohn. “If you can accomplish basic living tasks like eating, dressing, and bathing with a low-cost device, why should insurance pay for an expensive new one?” Moreover, approvals rely heavily on precedent when there are none without using the requested device, thus setting up a bureaucratic catch-22. For many activity-specific prostheses, how can you know you would use it if you cant even try the activity?Insurance covered a nonfunctional cosmetic hand for much of Pursleys life, but deemed a bionic hand medically unnecessary because she didnt have a history of problems from overusing one side of her body to compensate. I was actually told being able to feed and dress myself was enough, she says. By then, Pursley was in her early thirties, married to a Marine, and covered by his military insurance, Tricare. When she began having pain and muscle strain a few years later, she tried again. This time, Tricare did cover both the hand and subsequent repairs. But it took her needing physical therapy for her shoulder and documenting her overuse issues.2023 NAAOP Breece Fellow and Case Western Reserve University graduate student Kate Ketelhohn as Toy Storys Bo Peep [Photo: Susan Karlin]A common barrier to insurance coverage is proving that a limb difference is causing additional medical problems because of your limb difference, she says. Just the fact that you have a limb difference may not be considered enough need to be able to have a prosthetic. I had to prove I was breaking down in order to get this approved. Ideally, we want access to this technology before we have problems.DiMassi, too, endured a maddening odyssey getting coverage for his Ability Hand. After paying Anthem Blue Cross of California his preapproved $3,000 portion, the insurance company reassessed and blindsided him with a surprise bill for $9,000, which he had to resolve through the state attorney generals office.Youre completely at the mercy of the insurance companies, he says. The Ability Hand is not a normal ask, so there aren’t a whole lot of things to benchmark it against. It often takes multiple denials and resubmitting the claim to get approval. It feels like a game the insurance companies are playing.The National Association for the Advancement of Orthotics and Prosthetics (NAAOP), Amputee Coalition, and So Every Body Can Move advocacy initiatives, along with injured veterans, have pushed for better insurance coverage and legislation giving people with disabilities greater access to mobility and independence. With war, there’s always renewed interest in prosthetics because you have young, healthy veterans coming back with real needs, Rotter says. We are seeing a steady movement for choices available for amputees and whether they’re actually going to be covered. The NAAOP is currently investigating how the newly passed 2025 budget reconciliation bill, aka the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will threaten orthotics and prosthetics coverage once Medicaid cuts and stricter enrollment provisions kick in. The Congressional Budget Office already projects some 17 million Americans will lose healthcare or subsidies over the next decade.This will impact orthotics and prosthetics in some way, wheter it’s direct or downstream from losing access to preventive care, says 2025 NAAOP Breece Fellow Annika Berlin, who works at Psyonic as a user experience specialist. (The 23-year-old was also part of last years Comic-Con crew, as Mad Maxs Furiosa.)Rural regions are expected to be hit the hardest, especially in states that expanded their Medicaid programsfederal and state-funded health insurance for those with low incomes and disabilitiesafter the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. “Thats where Medicaid dependence and amputation rates are typically higher, due to factors like limited access to preventive care, high rates of diabetes and peripheral artery disease, and occupational hazards in industries like farming and manufacturing, she adds, noting a potential snowball effect.2025 NAAOP Breece Fellow and Psyonic user experience specialist Annika Berlin as Mad Maxs Furiosa [Photo: Annika Berlin]Berlin has also spent years tussling with insurance companies, enduring three denied claims from Cigna Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield of New York, and Aetna for other myoelectric brands. Aetna finally reversed course on her Ability Hand in 2020, her senior year of high school, after copious doctors’ notes and pain documentation from overusing her other arm.They’re not usually super keen on paying for the most advanced, expensive, bionic hand up front at first, even though I knew that was really important for my needs, Berlin says. “They tend to define medical necessity as the basic ability to perform tasks required to survivenot the broader activities that allow someone to thrive, participate fully in society, and live a fulfilling, joyful life in a way thats free from discrimination.For its part, last year Psyonic started the Ability Fund, a fundraising partnership with Range of Motion to raise money for prosthetics and clinical services for those who cant afford them. Range of Motions network of clinicians and Psyonic will supply sockets and hands, fittings, and training at significantly reduced costs. Every $25,000 raised will enable an upper-limb prosthetic for a user in America and a leg prosthetic for one in Ecuador, which would normally retail for $100,000 to $150,000 collectively. The Funds first recipient is Ivan Krastev, an 18-year-old born with one hand. Already skilled in robotics and high-speed drone piloting, Krastev is heading to aviation school to become the worlds first bionic pilot.Akhtar also wants to partner with video games that feature prosthetic-wearing avatars to create Psyonic-branded in-game purchases and use those proceeds to help defray costs for those in need.Changing the narrativeAs they head back to Comic-Con next week, its against this backdrop that bionic Belles and Bo Peeps serve a kind of celebratory activism by whimsically showcasing how such technological advances not only enable more fulfilling lives for those with limb differences but also change the narrative on peoples perceptions about disability.This year, Pursley will unveil a matching red bedazzled prosthetic and ruby slippers as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Her arsenal also includes a glass arm for Cinderella, a golden hand for Belle, an arm laced with Fabergé egg-style designs for Anastasias Russian princess, and a metal hand for the Sorceress from the tabletop game Cult of the Deep, whose creators tapped Pursley to help develop a character with a magical prosthetic hand. In addition to Psyonics panel, Pursley will appear on Cos-Ability: Cosplay Without Boundaries on July 26.Meanwhile, Ketelhohn is heading back with two costumes: Astrid from How to Train Your DragonIt was the first movie I saw as a kid that accurately portrayed prosthetics, she saysand the Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes, a Marvel character with a cybernetic arm. My costume looks really accurate with this hand, she adds.Joining them are Psyonic digital media specialist Ryan Goodwin and newcomers Krastev and Jamie Groshong, a 20-year-old San Diego State University junior who was an aspiring baseball player before losing his hand in a fireworks accident two years ago. Thanks to the Ability Hand, hes resumed playing the sport for fun, recently hitting the first bionic home run and throwing an honorary first pitch at a San Francisco Giants game. The whole conversation changes with this hand, says DiMassi. People are beyond the What happened to you? Now its This is so cool. How does it work? Imagine the impact this is going to have on a young kid growing up and how different their experience navigating the world is going to be.Two years ago, Akhtar returned to Ecuador to deliver the latest version of the Ability Hand to Juan Suquillo. It was an incredible moment because everything started with him and that trip, says Akhtar, especially when Suquillo surprised him by turning down a hand color matching his skin tone.He preferred the bionic-looking version, Akhtar says. He said when he walks down the street, he feels like Robocop.
Every journey begins with a single step. But in the budding era of interactive gaming, it can start with a single text message.
Thats precisely how my playthrough of The Operative, a brand-new experience from gaming startup Operative Games, began. I was told that the game would be unlike anything Ive experienced before, and that was a fair assessment. While I do occasionally fire up my Xbox, or set up a board game like Risk, I wouldnt call myself a gamer by any stretch. But I do have a fairly good sense of what a game is or can be.
That was the entire goal of the games creators, too. Operative Games describes itself as an interactive storytelling company, led by some industry heavyweights: CEO Jon Snoddy, who previously served as Disney’s head of research and development, and COO Jon Kraft, who was the founding CEO of Pandora Media.
And after literal decades of waiting for the technology to catch up to their concepts for interactive games, generative AI is allowing their visions to come to fruition.
Thats how I ended up being pulled into The Operative.
[Image: Operative Games]
A playthrough of ‘The Operative’
The Operative is a gaming experience unlike any Ive had before. The closest thing I can equate it to is an escape roomwithout spoiling too much, there are clues to track down, questions to ask and answer, and lots of text messages to send and phone calls to field.
As such, I set aside an hour to play it, and when I was ready, shot off a text to a number supplied by Operative Games. Then, I was off to the races.
I immediately received a phone call from a character named Enyaall of the characters in the game are generated by artificial intelligencewho initiated the story. The game is, in essence, a role-playing game, and one that you, the player, are sucked into. You meet characters, have actual conversations with themvia phone calls, text messages, and even on Zoom callsand they respond accordingly, helping you push the narrative forward.
And yes, the characters do get on Zoom calls. I had a couple of back-and-forths with an animated character named Daniel who was Zooming me from the backseat of a virtual Uber.
Again, Im familiar with dialogue in games. Ive played a lot of Fallout, Assassins Creed, and othersgames in which you interact with non-playable characters and choose dialogue prompts to carry on conversations.
The most interesting aspect about The Operative, and other forthcoming Operative Games releases, is that there are no promptsyou actually converse with characters, and they respond in kind.
For example, Daniel was asking me about myself, and I decided to try and throw him for a loop by assuming the role of Fox Mulder (from The X-Files), throwing out references to ufology and other bizarre commentary. But Daniel took it in stride, noting that ufology was an interesting, if sort of wacky, field.
I continued to play until time ran out, completing roughly a chapter and a half of the 12-chapter experience. It was fun, interesting, and above all, engaging. In my opinion, Snoddy and Kraft have been able to create a completely new experience, and one that requires no console, TV, computer, or controlleronly a smartphoneto enjoy.
Operative Games: A genie in a bottle
Snoddy says that as he was working at Disney, he was always thinking about new forms of interactive entertainment and wanted to tell a nonlinear story in which players are active participants.
The seed of the idea for Operative Games was planted in the early 1990s, during the production of the Disney animated feature film Aladdin. Snoddy says he was watching an animator working on drawings for the Genie character in that film, making faces and movements in a mirror and then working on the animations.
I was watching him and observing the way he would look in the mirror and draw a face, Snoddy says. Hed look at the video of voice actors doing the characterand I had this picture in my head, an epiphany, that what these artists do is encode humanity into this thing, what theyre creating. Writers do it. Filmmakers do it.
I had this notion that when Im looking at a screen, Im looking back at the people who created it, he added.
So the idea was formulated as a whole world of characters, and a system that lets you interact with them, according to Snoddy, “but this was long before we had the technology to do it.
At some point, he started discussing the idea with Kraft, with whom he was a longtime collaborator. They talked about it for years, but to make it work the way the two envisionedwith truly interactive characters, who could respond to anything a player said to themvoice actors would need to record tens, if not thousands of pre-scripted lines. And the system would need to be able to call those lines up as needed, on the fly. It simply wouldnt work.
In the mid-2000s, Kraft, who was working with a company that he cofounded called Big Stage Entertainment, started to see a glimmer of the technology they needed.
From there, Snoddy and Kraft would bounce ideas off one another, and keep a close eye on the technology and toolswhich were evolving, but werent quite where they needed to be to create a fully interactive game.
But in the past few years, with the advent of accessible and widespread generative AI, it finally happened. Large language models, or LLMs, allowed for language and dialogue generation in real time, so that characters could respond to players directly. Animations, too.
Add in smartphones, texting, and video calls? All of the ingredients were finally there, and in 2023, Snoddy and Kraft dropped what they were doing and focused on building Operative Games full-time.
Putting Operative Games into operation
The pair have surrounded themselves with some top-shelf talent from Hollywood and other industries. They have writers who have helped develop TV shows such as Jack Ryan. And they have decades of experience, along with some capital, to help them figure out whats next.
Last year, Operative Games raised $4.45 million in a seed round led by 1AM Gaming, according to the company. PitchBook estimated a post-money valuation of $22 million. The company’s key active investors also include Samsung Next Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, and Principal Venture Partners.
As a business model, Kraft saysthe company is trying to keep it simplewe think of our games as somewhere between a video game and a television series. What are the models that work in those worlds? The easiest answer appears to be a subscription model, or something similarthough thats yet to be decided.
A subscription model could work as such: Players subscribe to a game (or collection of games), and pay for a season, like they would a TV show. When new seasons, episodes, or chapters are released, theyre able to play them immediately.
And access for prospective players is another advantage that Operatives offering has over other types of games. “Players dont need anything, Kraft notes. Theres nothing to download. No console. You start by calling a phone number. As mentioned, all you need is a smartphone.
Thats it, Kraft says. You reach out to a character, you have a real conversation, they draw you into their problem or situation, explain why they need help, and all of a sudden, youre connected and drawn in.
For gamers who are increasingly concerned about the price of games growing to around $80, and tariffs potentially affecting the price of consoles, that can be welcome news.
The next level?
The Operative is the companys first game, too, and was created in-house. But other intellectual properties and franchises could be used to create new games in the futureand those conversations have already started. Its definitely in our future, Snoddy says.
Operative Games plans a broader rollout of The Operative later this year, with much more to come soon after that.
We have so many stories to tell, says Snoddy. Weve been talking about narrative and interactivity coming together, and have had a lot of great games in the past that have been linear-cutscene-linear-gameplay.”
He adds, “Were not going to replace those games, but were going to open a whole new window into what games are and can be.
