The way people communicate has evolved and diversified dramatically over the last two years. Gone are the days when email and phone calls were the primary forms of communication for many. In both personal and professional settings, people increasingly rely on messaging apps, social media and video conferencing. Meanwhile, many federal agencies are just beginning to address digitizing their paper records. M-19-21 compels all federal agencies to make their records fully electronic by December 2022.

Oliver Letwin's strange and somewhat alarming new book begins at midnight on Thursday 31 December 2037. In Swindon – stay with me! – a man called Aameen Patel is working the graveyard shift at Highways England's traffic HQ when his computer screen goes blank, and the room is plunged into darkness. He tries to report these things to his superiors, but can get no signal on his mobile. Looking at the motorway from the viewing window by his desk, he observes, not an orderly stream of traffic, but a dramatic pile-up of crashed cars and lorries – at which point he realises something is seriously amiss. In the Britain of 2037, everything, or almost everything, is controlled by 7G wireless technology, from the national grid to the traffic (not only are cars driverless; a vehicle cannot even join a motorway without logging into an "on-route guidance system"). There is, then, only one possible explanation: the entire 7G network must have gone down. It sounds like I'm describing a novel – and it's true that Aameen Patel will soon be joined by another fictional creation in the form of Bill Donoghue, who works at the Bank of England, and whose job it will be to tell the prime minister that the country is about to pay a heavy price for its cashless economy, given that even essential purchases will not be possible until the network is back up (Bill's mother-in-law is also one of thousands of vulnerable people whose carers will soon be unable to get to them, the batteries in their electric cars having gone flat).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ripe for development and investment for health information management (HIM). The major initiatives towards Interoperability and AI is just beginning in the US. The National Institute of Health has invested $1.5B into the All of Us Research Program, which invites participants across the country to share their biology, lifestyle and environment. Aggregated data sources like this one promise to enable AI technologies to improve diagnostic accuracy, clinical and operational efficiency and the overall patient experience.1 While these innovations are promising, they are also in a preliminary phase for HIM applications from an accuracy and reliability or practical use perspective.

There's no doubt that the digital transformation of manufacturing is changing the face of the industry, and many companies are feeling pressure to evolve into a "factory of the future." It's an exciting time that promises significant efficiency and productivity gains, yet the prospect of transitioning to digital records, tools and processes is daunting for many manufacturing businesses. That's why the best place to start might be surprising: paper. To improve your records management process, begin with your paper records. It might seem counterintuitive to start a digital transformation by getting a better handle on paper records, but the approach makes good business sense.

Real estate makes for great gossip. Go to any dinner party, family gathering, or neighborhood barbeque, and you'll find at least one group talking real estate shop. From homeowners and renters to investors, there will be a steady buzz of opinions on the local market trends, the price of "the home that just sold in my neighborhood," or how "that new kitchen will increase the value of my house." Real estate is crucial to the American economy, touching literally every person in the country. Still, despite being an $30 Trillion asset class, information transparency, innovation, and ease of buying or selling have lagged behind other industries.

Two rhinos at the Kuzikus Nature Reserve in Namibia, photographed by drone. When the U.S. military needed to identify mines in a dangerous valley in Afghanistan, aerial-imagery specialist Tudor Thomas helped build a plane-based system to map it. Back in 2013, similar systems cost the military and its contractors one to five million dollars, Thomas says--and that didn't even include the cost of the plane. "It's hard to comprehend how much was getting spent just to make a simple aerial image," he says. The experience sparked an idea for a business: mapping by drone.

Reports this week of Russian intrusions into U.S. election systems have startled many voters, but computer experts are not surprised. They have long warned that Americans vote in a way that's so insecure that hackers could change the outcome of races at the local, state and even national level. Multibillion-dollar investments in better election technology after the troubled 2000 presidential election count prompted widespread abandonment of flawed paper-based systems, such as punch ballots. But the rush to embrace electronic voting technology -- and leave old-fashioned paper tallies behind -- created new sets of vulnerabilities that have taken years to fix. "There are computers used in all points of the election process, and they can all be hacked," said Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel, an expert in voting technologies.