What is the future of edge computing in the space age? In this episode, Bill sits down with Elizebeth Varghese, Partner / Principal, Space Economy Acceleration Leader at Deloitte to discuss her work on bitcoin and the spacefaring economy, and how it relates to the future of edge computing.
What is the future of edge computing in the space age? In this episode, Bill sits down with Elizebeth Varghese, Partner / Principal, Space Economy Acceleration Leader at Deloitte to discuss her work on bitcoin and the spacefaring economy, and how it relates to the future of edge computing. They dive into space as the ultimate edge computing use case and how space technologies will change society.
Key Quotes:
“In combining that aspect of edge computing and the blockchain aspect, you can manage digital identities. Individuals can have control and self sovereign control over their individual identities because they can control what's shared, they can control how it's shared, and that's not something that they need to rely on a third party.”
“Lots of IT folk are going to have to understand the non-terrestrial aspect of data management... I think IT leaders and technologists are going to have to understand this intersection with data that gets piped from somewhere else.”
“I'd expect edge computing to decentralize space data marketplace where users could buy and sell data directly from satellites.”
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(01:15) Elizabeth’s work and background
(05:56) The human side of blockchain
(16:56) What is the space economy?
(20:16) Primary non-terrestrial use cases
(23:30) Managing space-based data
(28:59) What comes next?
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Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko and Eric Platenyk.
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Connect with Elizebeth Varghese on LinkedIn
Narrator 1: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Over the Edge. This episode features an interview between Bill Pfeiffer and Elizabeth Varghese, the Partner Principal Space Economy Acceleration Leader at Deloitte. Elizabeth is an expert in Bitcoin and the future of the spacefaring economy. In this episode, she and Bill discuss how Bitcoin technologies and edge computing can support digital identification efforts.
They then dive into space as the ultimate edge computing use case and how both space technologies and edge computing will change society. But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsors.
Narrator 2: Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions.
From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi cloud environment, we're here to help you simplify your edge so that you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell. com Slash Edge for more information [00:01:00] or click on the link in the show notes.
Narrator 1: And now please enjoy this interview between Bill Piper and Elizabeth Varghese, the partner principal Space Economy Acceleration leader at Deloitte.
Bill Pfeifer: So Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. We've been talking kind of in the background for a while now, and you've got just a fascinating background not to jump. too deep into it, but I know you've written three different books, one on women in leadership, one on blockchain and one on the spacefaring economy.
So of course I immediately logically drew a straight line through that and connected them all to the common thread of their topics. I'm not sure. How did you go from one to the next to the next?
Elizebeth Varghese: Oh, that's a really good question. You know, the, the truth is that the book on leadership was really the first thing that I was asked.
to think about and being a woman in the global business arena, I've worked in the area of tech at the intersection [00:02:00] of people and it was just totally serendipitous that I kind of started with that. It was interesting also because, you know, I'd been writing more about the other topics before. A lot of the work I'd been doing around the use case of blockchain and the talent ecosystem had really preceded the, the book on leadership.
So I think it was just, you know, happenstance. But when I was starting to think about the books, you know, both were topics I was very interested in. I was writing about, I'd been working in that arena for a while. It just so happened that, you know, we decided to go with one topic before the other, but both of them are really looking at the impact of emerging technologies on, you know, our economy, on the application of those technologies and how they'll transform how business gets done.
And, you know, both of them take a slightly different lens, obviously, you know, through the lens of. the space economy in one and the specific use case of blockchain in the talent ecosystem. But, you know, again, both of them really tried to resolve [00:03:00] some of the challenges and issues we have as we operate as a global business community.
And
Bill Pfeifer: I kind of jumped ahead with that question, but I'm just, I'm just fascinated by, that's a phenomenal corpus of work. It's such a broad set of topics. I just, I love it. And I want to dig a little bit into your brain to find out more. So this will be a super fun conversation. Our usual Kind of kickoff question.
We'll jump back to that. How did you get started in technology? What brought you here? So
Elizebeth Varghese: I think really technology came to me the way it came to all of us, right? So, you know, I, I grew up in India and I write about this in my book. We had one television channel, black and white, you know, well into the 80s.
We, you know, I started doing work in the consulting space with process re engineering and all the cool stuff that we did. And then the, you know, the world of the internet impinged, not just through the email channels that we were used to, but very practically in terms of how work was getting delivered at my client organizations.
And, you know, that's when I started realizing and leaning into [00:04:00] technology. Um, almost as a, as a tool of enablement of work and of business operations. So over time, we've obviously seen different flavors that have been, you know, different flavors of the month with the kinds of technologies or the conversations around technology that have, you know, captured the new cycle or imagination, but the theme has continued to be that technology is going to evolve and.
How we understand and use technology has the power to profoundly change how we do work. It also has, you know, the ability to profoundly impact how we can use it for good to really address some of the disparities, some of the socioeconomic challenges that we see in our global community. And growing up in India, you know, my parents were scientists.
I grew up in an, you know, in a household that was very oriented towards science and technology and, you know, just understanding some of the societal Disparities you live with and realizing that you can use science and technology to eliminate or transform some [00:05:00] of them are really what made me passionate about really leaning into not just technology for itself, but its utility and its utility in a positive, collaborative way.
Bill Pfeifer: Very, very cool. It's a lot about making technology approachable and personal, right? How it affects the people. So your book on blockchain focused pretty heavily on digital identity, which as we think about it, you know, we tend to think about blockchain as crypto trading and cold chain tracking and relatively advanced use cases.
But when we look at. Digital identity tracking that takes us into the world of the unbanked, folks who just don't have any sort of savings because they don't have a place to access that savings. They don't have access to mega accounts and problems with refugees and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about the human side of, of what blockchain can do in a practical application?
You've gone so much deeper into this space than most of us [00:06:00] have. And it's a really Fascinating space that reaches well beyond the normal bounds of where we typically talk about hedge computing.
Elizebeth Varghese: Absolutely. And you know, it's interesting, you mentioned cryptocurrency, which captured the imagination of, you know, the entire world.
And I won't go into all those stories that we are seeing, but that's just one use case, right? And blockchain is just technology. It's not crypto. Crypto is not blockchain. Neither is blockchain a distributed ledger. It's a kind of a distributed ledger, right? So when you think about. The utility of blockchain technology and how it can transform individual interactions with work and the world at large.
I think there are three things, and I won't go into the qualities of blockchain, the provenance and immutability aspects, but you know, there are really three use cases that blockchain can help with. One is the decentralized identity management. The second is, you know, secure and private payments, and the third is trusted data sharing.
And I'll go into all three of these in a second, but I [00:07:00] think what we're observing As a global trend, anyway, is this decentralization of, you know, usage of technology. Decentralization of control over choices we are making on the content we want, or the books we read, or the music we want. Or, you know, how we're choosing what routes we might take to drive.
You're not the Rand McNally, which we used in the past, but you know, your own GPS. Decisions, which are made based on data that is piped to you. So the decentralization of decision making by the enablement of technology is really what we're seeing. So in that context, blockchain can really help us provide that decentralized identity management, which I, you know, it is kind of one of the first things we think is really important.
Now, when you kind of combine that with edge, right? And, you know, edge is basically computing, but it's the location we're changing. We're moving away from that centralized aspect of all the data has to be piped to a data center, processed there, and then sent back, right? We're basically changing the location of the computation to the, [00:08:00] in this case, you know, the user, it could be, of course, you know, somewhere in the middle, in the fog.
Sometimes people like to use, but in combining that aspect of edge computing and, you know, the blockchain aspect, you can manage digital identities and individuals can have control and self sovereign control over their individual identities because they can control what's shared, they can control how it's shared, and, you know, that's not something that they need to rely on a third party.
When it comes to secure and private payments, again, using blockchain to make some of those payments can really eliminate the need for a third party intermediary, and that can reduce fraud. And then when you look at trusted data sharing, you know, in the, in the context of even these edge devices or the IOT devices, you can share data in a much more secure and trusted, trusted manner, which can then help increase collaboration.
Because when you have security, you have guardrails. But actually it makes people trust the technology more and helps us share information and, you know, data more, more freely. So the [00:09:00] aspect of blockchain in general in our decentralized world is It's pretty significant and, you know, when you kind of layer on these other trends of edge computing and in this broader arena of space or new space or outer space, you know, so many ways we call it or things we call it, it really becomes a potential way to help us make sense of how we navigate and how we operate.
Bill Pfeifer: This idea of consistent digital identity of using blockchain to track digital identity is just, it's kind of gotten lodged in my brain. It's a fascinating thing. And do you think we have the potential to get to Real use of that? First world, third world, anyplace? I mean, is it in use today, practically speaking?
It would be so cool not to have to carry multiple forms of ID and just flash up your phone or some other device or have facial recognition say, Oh, that's you. Okay. So, you know, you could go through immigration or you can buy [00:10:00] a thing or you can drive your car. I can't get my head wrapped around how that would happen either within a nation or even globally.
Right. How do you cross national boundaries of that? Do you think we're actually getting close to that? Have you seen implementations that are practical?
Elizebeth Varghese: Yes. And that's a great question because, you know, again, we, the narrative around blockchain as a technology was hijacked a little bit by, you know, other use cases, which you touched upon before.
But, you know, as early as 2017, we've been using blockchain to distribute. Cash for food aid for refugees in the Middle East. And, you know, that has been in operation at several of the UN agencies. So that is, you know, a use case that we, we know exists. It has been used. And, you know, these are folks who have been displaced by war or natural disasters, you know, really have no forms of paper identity or formal identity.
This use case of using blockchain to help refugees obtain [00:11:00] digital documents is very much in play. It's very much in use. It's been used to transact, as I said, the cash for food program, it can be used to provide cryptocurrency vouchers in some cases, which has been actually done as well. You can provide cryptographically unique coupons, which can be used in shops, across refugee camps with the combination of eye scanning hardware, you know, blockchain technology can be used to redeem those vouchers.
So that's a use case that has been in place. And then, you know, when you think about any kind of smart contract that could be, you know, deployed, governments could create blockchain work permits for refugees or displaced people. It can help them set up, you know, real time tax payments. So it actually is of most utility to the people who have the least or, you know, who have lost the most.
And I think that's why it can help us bring the global South forward, you know, bring some of these displaced people forward, help them with the data and support that they need. [00:12:00] Now the other aspect of it is in this use case, we've been talking about blockchain supporting identity. Now there's two. Two kind of aspects to it.
I mean, there's this idea of digital identity or self sovereign identity. You know, blockchain is just one technology that can enable it, right? There may be others that come out in the future. But when you think about digital identity, many countries outside North America have used digital identity for payments, you know, linking that to the national security, the national identity number.
So we definitely are seeing use cases of that across the board. We're seeing that In countries who have been traditionally, you know, in the global South, some of those countries and nations have skipped forward without using terrestrial networks or infrastructure bandwidth installations. And they've moved to mobile payments using satellite data or, you know, just a mobile network.
So we're definitely seeing the confluence of, you know, some of that happening and leapfrogging some of what we're seeing in, you know, [00:13:00] some of the nations who've more forward in terms of how they've achieved network connectivity. Now the, and the other thing, just, you know, quickly just to wrap that up too, I mean, so I think there is great potential for the utility for digital identity and self sovereign identity across the board, right?
It's, I mean, people in the global South, displaced individuals need it, but you know, all of us can benefit from what you're describing, right? And we are seeing some of that with the COVID vaccine that blockchain was used to in some states in North America to actually track those vaccines and applications that could be used.
And then, you know, I do believe that, you know, with. The decentralization and the authentication using blockchain, we can definitely help some of the unbanked populations. We can make it easier to transfer currency in ways that are more accessible to people who may not be as comfortable or used to.
technology. So there is definitely the ease of use, right? Just making it easy by having digital [00:14:00] identity and using blockchain. But I think equally or more importantly, we can reduce inequality, the payments and the, you know, identity aspect apart. What I write about You know, in my book extensively is around the use case of using blockchain to validate identity and skills.
And when that's combined with the disaggregation of skills that are required in jobs, and the decentralization of, you know, access to job postings or job opportunities, I believe that that has the biggest potential to, you know, not just bring. People forward who didn't have those opportunities, but really to help us progress much more as a global community because we'll have more people participating in the formal workforce.
We leave, you know, very large swaths of human potential behind. They just cannot participate for a variety of reasons. So if everybody's potential was tapped into, we would go so much further.
Bill Pfeifer: So you were talking about blockchain as a way to reduce inequalities, which is [00:15:00] very cool. But then also, it sounds like a lot of the use cases right now are refugees and Global South, which is Also, kind of mind blowing, right, like, that we're doing this cutting edge digital identity in places that are less privileged.
So then, is there a way, you had mentioned skills tracking, and I'm kind of trying to put this all together just to see, is there a way that we could start to think in terms of, an international skills tracking type identity so that we really can leverage that as a means to reduce inequality, right? If it stays in the global South with people who have lost so much, then that's not really helping pull them into the best jobs and the, their next place to live and things like that, right?
They have to leave that digital identity behind again, [00:16:00] because I know it's not something we use heavily in the United States. I don't know, I can't speak for other countries, but is there a way to help that, that we can. Consciously support pulling that into a larger context.
Elizebeth Varghese: Absolutely. Love that. Love that.
And, you know, that's what I wrote the book about, the idea of a universal talent exchange, which really helps individuals around the world exchange their skills, right? And participate in the formal economy. And I think that's something that, you know, will eventually happen. The book looks ahead for this idea that right now, you know, we have many of these things operational with gig workers and gig working platforms, right?
So people can come together, validate who they are in some way, in some trusted geographical location. When I say that it could be, you know, in one particular country or it might be number of countries, or, you know, countries where business, a company might have [00:17:00] operations, right? So there is that disaggregation of jobs, which we're observing because we've become more cognizant that jobs have become much more complex.
Now, when you make that disaggregation available to people, that's how the gig economy is working, right? You can be a scientist and still, you know, drive a car as a taxi, or you could have a second gig on the side. So that aspect of gig work is also emerging. What is missing is a platform or a way to verify credentials.
That's the first. The second is, you know, a way to verify identity. So, you know, can you really work on a PowerPoint the way you claim to? And the third part we're missing is Access to those disaggregated jobs is limited to those communities and those individuals who can participate in that gig conversation.
So, and that kind of brings us back to, you know, all the work we're doing, everything we're achieving as a global community is less than what we could [00:18:00] achieve if more people participated, right? So, we can bring more countries into the mix, we can bring more communities into the mix, if we have a way of Authenticating and validating their credentials and their identities.
And we trust each other to, you know, compensate for the work that was done, or we trust each other to actually share information to give them jobs.
Bill Pfeifer: So that was the second book. But I know a lot of your passion right now is in space. You're focused heavily on the space economy. What is the space economy Today, and then what is it going to be?
What do you see coming in terms of where does that go in the relatively near term?
Elizebeth Varghese: Yeah. So my book, Stellar Singularity is on the space economy and navigating the space economy. And you know, there are a couple of. ideas and things I discuss in the book. One primarily being that, [00:19:00] um, you know, every company will be a space company.
Many of us are already space consumers. You know, we're using data that's beamed up at us on, you know, through satellites. We're using GPS, we're using tracking devices. So the aspect of How space technology is utilized is not visible to us. The aspect of how companies will need to use space in their business is not as visible to us.
People are just starting to think about it. It's kind of like the days of the internet economy, back in the day, you know, you had the, the brick and mortar stores, and then you had this division that did something with the internet. And then eventually, you know, companies realized that in order to be successful, you kind of.
have to meld them. You have to use the internet to run your business, to optimize your supply chain, to use the cloud, to ensure that you have low latency with your calculations of data, right? So it became more clear and visible as time went by. I think we're in a similar situation with the space economy.[00:20:00]
The utility of Space technology, the potential of things we can find and do in outer space, the use of satellites and the data, you know, at the consumer level, all of that is going to transform how business will get done. And what we're finding is that this space economy is expected. To grow, it's, you know, already around 469 billion.
This was, you know, last year, the, the calculations from last year. Morgan Stanley has actually said that, you know, it's going to get to about a trillion by 2040. Whereas Bank of America is saying that that growth to over a trillion will happen by 2030. They're expecting a significant amount of growth in the space economy.
But then that begs the question, right? So what is the space economy? Which is, you know, kind of what you asked around, right? It is more than satellites. It's more than a couple of companies launching satellites or spacecraft. It's the entire ecosystem of what it takes to obviously, you know. Get things off the earth into space, a [00:21:00] sports infrastructure, satellites, obviously edge computing, which will need to operate on satellites already does a whole value stream, which I write about in the book.
I write about the, you know, the four value streams of space. Space, which one of which includes the direct to consumer utility. Because individuals, and you know, we'll all be using space more and more. It might be data, it might be, you know, for navigation, all of those things are going to become pretty significant and you're gonna see much more growth in that arena.
So a lot
Bill Pfeifer: of those use cases are still terrestrial, right? Using space-based communication, using space-based assets for navigation and. Things like that. As we get closer into that 2030, 2040, whenever we hit that trillion dollars, that's still a pretty significant growth curve. What do you see being the primary non terrestrial use cases?
Elizebeth Varghese: So there's going to be literally in every industry, every [00:22:00] industry is going to learn to harness space and there may be, you know, many terrestrial uses like the use of data for mining companies to, you know, understand an image, how far they have to dig or what kind of equipment they need. Across the board, you know, we, we will see use cases of more and more pharmaceutical research happening in microgravity.
You know, we're already seeing the proliferation of private. Space stations. I mean, they're not all up there, but they're being built. Many nation states are, you know, starting to build their own space stations and that public, private progress, you know, providing a location in space. will help us use it for different things for material, you know, research, right?
Pharmaceutical research, of course, the, the growth of biologics and microgravity is different, you know, it'll help us do more research on just the physiology of the human body. So that, so, you know, we're going to see research happening in space or in these [00:23:00] locations in space. There are lots of other organizations which are looking at, and some of this is kind of the blend of terrestrial and Non terrestrial, right?
We have organizations and companies that are looking at mining asteroids, companies that are looking at putting, mining the moon, the lunar surface. There was a, you know, a private company that had actually sent a container up to the moon, which crashed and, which is a whole different story. But, you know, we're seeing that happen.
It's not in the distant future. It's very real, right? We are looking at the actual creation of lunar stations on the South.
So, those things are pretty real, they, you know, they obviously want to teach us more about ourselves, about our universe, but equally importantly, they will change how we do business on the earth, both in terms of data, in terms of materials, in terms of research, and also in terms of, you know, how we finance.
Some of those, because sometimes people ask me, what's the implication of space on the financial services sector? And apart from venture capital and, you know, banks raising money and [00:24:00] insurers have to insure satellites, they have to insure spaceports. We have to understand the implications of all of that.
So every, every industry, every industry is going to be impacted or I would lean into, you know, how we use space as a canvas.
Bill Pfeifer: It's kind of fascinating that I hadn't, in all of the conversations about edge computing, I hadn't thought about space. And that's sort of the ultimate edge computing use case, isn't it?
Even terrestrial communications, you want to pre process everything so that your communication is as efficient and as latency insensitive as possible. Or you get satellite mapping where you want to pre process it on the satellite so that you're only sending down the right information and you're not.
clogging up. Bandwidth at that point gets pretty expensive and pretty limited, I would imagine, or just high latency. But then you start to think about going out to the moon or mining asteroids, and yes, you're going to use edge computing because the cloud is far [00:25:00] away. That's a whole different sort of conversation.
Have you given thought to What you do with space based data, you can't just push that to the cloud and store it in an S3 disk. Not so easily anyway, unless Amazon really expands quite a lot. So deciding what's valuable and what you store and how you store it, because you have to Launch disks and install them somehow.
Data management becomes much more of a thing. Data processing, planning becomes much more of a thing. How do you run your data management type operations and your logistics operations when they're not terrestrial?
Elizebeth Varghese: Yeah, you know, you're so right in that space is the ultimate use case for edge computing and how far do we want to go?
So, I mean, latency is a real technical aspect of it. There's also, I think, the human expectation or patience around it. So, that's a whole different, [00:26:00] you know, point, but I think that the consumerization of Space data and information that, you know, we don't really see as space data. It's just data, my GPS information or tracking how far I've walked.
That's data that gets, you know, piped up to the satellite and beamed back up. So I think that's going to drive some of these requirements to lower latency. When you think about just the applications of edge computing, obviously there's satellite imaging, all the satellite imagery that is being collected can actually be processed on board a satellite instead of sending it to the earth, processing it.
And then, you know, this is actually really critical if you're doing disaster monitoring or, you know, tracking ships, et cetera, satellite navigation is also important. You use edge computing on satellites to process satellite navigation signals on board rather than sending them down. You know, space is a pretty crowded place now with the number of satellites there, different countries setting it up.
So satellite navigation is a need. The whole field of satellite. Servicing and [00:27:00] maintenance also would require edge computing, right? Because satellites, they are shut down or sundown. They may need to be, there may be refueling required in space. There may be repairs needed in space. So all of that will require edge computing.
And then, you know, any kind of spacecraft autonomy, if, you know, the higher up we go, you, you know, we'll need to use edge computing to run autonomous control algorithms on spacecraft. And, you know, that that's going to be really important. And then satellite communication. Between each other, you're going to have to need edge computing to make some of that happen to enable direct communication between satellites without actually having to send it back down to the earth.
Quite a few reasons for us to really think about edge computing as a real need that's need, you know, that has to be in place. We can also potentially, you know, I'd expect edge computing to decentralize space data marketplace, where users could buy and sell data directly from satellites, because satellites, they track all kinds of data.
You have companies [00:28:00] who are, you know. Setting up satellites and providing data feeds. There's a whole ecosystem, a subculture around the usage of satellite data. So, you know, some of those things are all, you know, again, real and limited and critical. Obviously, you know, spacecraft have limited storage capacity.
Weight constraints, power constraints, payload costs go up with the cost of with the weight of what it's carrying to, you know, take up there. And there are also, you know, cyber and very real security threats, right? Many countries have ASAT missiles. Some of the countries have tested them. And so data needs to be encrypted and processed.
So there are some real considerations as we think about edge computing and. You asked around, how do we decide what stays, what goes? Lots of IT folk are going to have to understand the non terrestrial aspect of data management. It's not just about running your van in your land. I think IT leaders and technologists are going to have to understand this intersection [00:29:00] with data that gets piped from somewhere else.
For that, obviously there is a data prioritization aspect. That needs to be done based on its importance and timeliness, right? You have to decide when does data get sent down. Many organizations look at the transmission of data at times, you know, in the, in the dark hours. So when, you know, they're not, satellites are not actually, when they're orbiting, if they're, you know.
it over the night sky, they're recording different things. Those are times there is an aspect of data prioritization, data compression, because data has to be compressed because, you know, the amounts of data we're capturing and sending back and forth are pretty critical. Data needs to be filtered because you, again, you don't want to send.
information, which is not useful, right? So satellite captures lots of different data. It could be images, could be telemetry data. You have to kind of prioritize and filter it out. And then you have to, you know, cache it and really ensure that, you know, you're picking certain data sets that are. Kept on the spacecraft so that it can be accessed quickly [00:30:00] and then also encrypted.
So the whole aspect of data management in the real edge, there are some certain considerations and satellite operators have to use a number of different tools to automate the data collection, do the processing, and then, you know, so for the security and accessibility issues. So very interesting topic.
And I think, you know, it's going to become more front and center as time goes by.
Bill Pfeifer: Good stuff. So. Looking forward on most of our episodes, this is really close to the wrap up because, you know, like, Hey, what do you think comes next? But you've done so much work with future thinking and future leaning topics.
There's a whole lot of meat to talk about right there, and it's really cool. So I know. Like the initial space race drove so much technological advancement in the world. It was this massive burst like we had never seen before as we learned just how to get to the moon. And now we're talking practically about [00:31:00] private companies having a presence in space and an entire economy that's based around space, which it introduced a whole.
New set of constraints and requires a whole new set of technologies and new ways of thinking, what do you think moving toward a larger spacefaring economy will do to the global economy and technology? Terrestrially.
Elizebeth Varghese: I think what we're going to see is, you know, we are actually seeing the democratization of space.
So, you know, historically there were some countries who had the resources, right? And the research capability to explore space, to go out there, to have a space station. So it was a different pool of stakeholders or players. Now what we're seeing is that, you know, with. The ubiquitousness of technology.
There is a demo, there is one, the democratization of technology, right? More people have mobile phones, they're able to access the internet. [00:32:00] Similarly, the aspect of space is also getting democratized. Many countries, you know, it's not just the few who are landing on the moon. Some of that is all. You know, they have spacecraft, they have a human exploration being activated.
All of that is linked to a certain amount to the cost arbitrage. A certain amount of it is linked to the spread of technology. So I think what we're going to see increasingly is that more and more countries are going to participate. More and more companies are going to be using. We tend to forget sometimes that there's a very large retailer that we all probably shopped at at some time or the other, who've had their own private satellite network since 1987.
And that was a big factor in helping them really track data across their different stores and distribution centers, so that if you pulled detergent off the shelf in one store, The data was being transmitted back to the stocking centers. So I think we're going to see more and more companies realizing the potential of using data and using space [00:33:00] technology.
And that's going to fundamentally accelerate our progress, how we use information, how we analyze data, how we understand our universe. So I think there are very good times that lie ahead. All of these things, however, definitely. come with aspects of working and being in a global community that make things more interesting.
So this requires us to look at the geopolitical aspects of the implications of space travel, space launches, space debris, the ownership of celestial bodies, right, very differently. We do have to take a different lens at how we under, you know, how we look at the landscape of Society and community going forward because, you know, we're going to be operating in what I believe, you know, we should be looking at space as global common.
So I think all of that comes with, you know, a different way of collaborating and requires us to operate in a different fashion that we might have traditionally.
Bill Pfeifer: How democratized do you see this getting? You were talking about the democratization. I mean, [00:34:00] today we have this idea of space tourism, which is really basically go up, come down, go up, yay, we're in space, come down.
And that's a million dollars or whatever, right? Some ridiculous amount for just, technically I was in space, yay, go me. But again, now we're talking about companies having a footprint and Presumably as this becomes more common, it becomes more cost effective and the price of everything over time drops pretty dramatically and the technological advancement increases and makes things more approachable.
You know, in the 90s it was cool to have your own website. In the 2030s will it be cool to have your own CubeSat? What would you do with one? I don't know. But as this becomes more democratized, more common, how far do you see that going?
Elizebeth Varghese: So I do believe that this aspect of direct to consumer or, you know, so I, I write about the four value streams of space.
There's primary space research, there's launch and logistics, data and applications, and direct consumer. [00:35:00] So I think what we've seen in literally every industry, what has driven business change, the way businesses operate, technology needs to respond, it's all driven by the individual consumer, the expectations of ease, access.
Knowledge has transformed how companies have had to respond, both in their supply chain, in their manufacturing, in their marketing and branding, even in how they think about society and how they talk about things. So I think that aspect of, you know, the The consumer, the individual, is really going to drive a lot of what we're going to see.
And with that, you know, we'll come to the requirement of agency over individual data, individual sovereignty, and enough security from a cyber perspective to make the individual comfortable to operate in that new world of, you know, all these emerging technologies, it's gen AI or quantum computing. So to that extent, I do see an increasing need for companies and [00:36:00] organizations to understand that and to really anchor to the ultimate consumer, to the ultimate user of their services, because that's what we're increasingly going to have to respond to.
The second part of it is with this democratization of technology and access and self sovereign identity, we will see more and more. Groups of individuals come together to work in organizations. You will have, you know, what we call DAOs, distributed autonomous organizations, that was quite talked about when, you know, even the days of the blockchain conversation, essentially that's, you know, groups of individuals coming together to either buy something, use your.
Common purchasing power because you trust each other using technology, or it could be groups of individuals coming together to, you know, run a nonprofit or start a company. So I think they're definitely going to see some of that also happening, which will change how we think about traditional organizations, how we think about centralization of.
Data, how we think about technology used by individuals or corporations and how they need to be managed. [00:37:00]
Bill Pfeifer: And that's probably something that we could talk about for a long time and that's going to take a long time to come to fruition. So probably a good time to wrap before we start going down more, more conversational paths.
Elizabeth, thank you so much for all the perspective, for the deep thinking, terrestrial and space based. How can people find you online and keep up with the latest of what you're doing?
Elizebeth Varghese: So you can find me on LinkedIn. I do have a website and you can find some information about my books. You can find me online and reach out
Bill Pfeifer: anytime.
Fantastic. Elizabeth, thank you again so much. This was a lovely conversation and I look forward to seeing what comes next.
Elizebeth Varghese: Thank you so much, Bill. I really appreciate being included and this was a wonderful, delightful conversation. Thank you.
Narrator 2: That does it for this episode of Over the Edge. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating and a review, and tell a friend.
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