Discover Australia's Tech Underground

this is my happy place and it has been for a long long time it's the ferry that goes from my parents house near manly beach to downtown Sydney there's nothing magical about the boat itself tourists and locals ride this thing every day but really that's what makes this very so special no commuter ride on the planet offers up more amazing city views it's routine made spectacular now you won't know it from my accent but I spent a lot of time here as a kid my Aussie grandfather helped build the Sydney Harbour Bridge and my Aussie mum helped build the Opera House I know I know the goatee it was a phase cut me some slack the point is I grew up eating things like this and worshipping these folks my hope is that the Aussie cred will buy me some forgiveness for what comes next this country which punches far above its weight in so many areas has underachieved terribly when it comes to technology for years talented Aussie coders have escaped to Silicon Valley to make their livings and recent Australian government policies have underfunded science and tech as my PAP would say Ozzy Tec is crook there are signs though that Australia has turned on and started to retain some of its homegrown tech talent this then is an odyssey to find the country's rising stars my journey goes from the beaches of Sydney to the artsy cosmopolitan streets of Melbourne along the way I get lost in a cave with only glowworms to guide me go diving in the ocean with a robot and make friends with some dinosaurs all in this episode of hello world Silicon Valley may be home to some of the biggest tech giants in the world but it's being challenged like never before crazy tech geniuses have popped up all over the planet making things that will blow your mind my name is Ashley Vance I'm an author and journalist and I'm on a quest to find the most innovative tech creations and meet the beautiful freaks behind them check any survey of the best places to live and you'll find Sydney near the top it's a sprawling gorgeous city of about four million good spirited people who love to be outdoors to party and to enjoy life but there's a strong case to be made that Sydneysiders may be too content at least when it comes to the city's taxi well big companies like Google and Microsoft have offices here Sydney can only point to a couple of smash startups that have made it big overseas that famous Aussie pluck has gone missing there is however a tech revolution building and it's being led by young ambitious scientists they've left their fancy University labs and migrated to Sydney's tech underground and no one proves this point more than the free radical I'll meet first okay this spot doesn't exactly use tech it's an artist warehouse in a Sydney suburb but move deeper through the creative commune and you'll find a makeshift side slab and this guy one of its founders the transhumanist polyamorous biohacker you all know the type welcome to why foundry Australia's first open access molecular biology lab Sinister's it can sometimes sound biohacking has turned into an exciting new field its do-it-yourself meddling with DNA on the cheap to tweak nature and this is Australia's first biohacker lab open to anyone willing to pay a membership fee let's get into it in the name of this biohacking pioneer meow meow do you prefer to be a mr. meow mr. meow now meows meows fine meow hit up generous friends for a lot of the scientific gear and he hopes the lab will inspire people of all stripes to give biotech a try it's about pulling people in with hands-on experiments like extracting DNA from the strawberry if you stir or where the alcohol touches the strawberries you be able to pull out some stringy stuff and that's the DNA so that's the instructions to make a strawberry this is the first step in a bio hack lab pretty much anything we're doing with molecular biology we're gonna need to get that DNA out the flavor genes the pigment genes we can take these genes out and put them in other things so you might want to make an apple that tastes like a strawberry you might be able to take the pigment genes out make a new type of paint so you kind of take the most interesting properties of some organism extract it out and then maybe chuck it into something else and give it some new superpowers and that's it yeah nice everything blar the molecular biologist by training Miao has put the lab to work on real projects ranging from auntie mold paint and take home STD tests to phosphorescent alcohol cool damn straight it is now insisted that my next tutorial take place in nature we set out for the newness State Forest located in the famed Blue Mountains about five hours west of Sydney it's there that we hope to find the tiny creature at the heart of Meow's make everything feel like a rave dreams sorry we're about to go to the glowworm tunnel it used to be a railway tunnel they used in mining and now it's been a decommissioned and the glowworms have come back and Riaan habited the tunnel I've waited this long and now I have to ask you how did you get the name yeah yeah I'd want to change my name since I was like 15 my friends and I just sat down and we just wrote down a huge list of names and then we pick the one that sounded the best what's your full name now now Ludo disco camera meow meow with the formalities out of the way the time had come to meet one of Australia's lesser known biological attractions glowworms a nocturnal they are generally less sensitive to red wavelengths of light than they are white or blue light I guess to see them best we've got to turn this off now talks a lot about a lot of things sometimes he's hyping a mango that's been altered to do your laundry and other times he's promoting hallucinogen aided orgies to each his own but without question meows biohacking enthusiasm has worked with labs modeled on this spot popping up all around the country prepare yourself Australia for the phosphorescent revolution has begun up next I head from the mountains back to Sydney's beautiful beaches for a good old-fashioned swim with an underwater drone my vision would be to make the underwater more accessible to people and eventually maybe even living underwater I would love to do that San Francisco is nice at all but if you're a techie looking for somewhere good to live why not pick this it's not cold and foggy with rivers of urine cascading down hilly streets its sunshine and beaches real amazing beaches intertwined throughout Sydney suburbs and just about everyone at the beaches is beautiful because the Sharks only eat the ugly paint some Aussies are even lucky enough to work out here and that's why I've turned up in the eastern suburbs of Sydney at Clovelly Beach to meet with the company called abyss solutions I just had this gut feeling that you know this is where things are gonna be going the underwater world hasn't been explored and exploration is my passion the best solutions is a young startup founded in 2014 by a mix of australians and immigrants the company's CEO Nasir asan grew up in Pakistan and his co-founder Massoud Naqshbandi came from Afghanistan together the young men have advanced degrees in fields like machine learning and material science now they're looking to combine the latest in underwater drones mapping software and data analysis hoping to learn more about bodies of water huge progress has been made already with this type of drone technology when it comes to analyzing the earth the work being done by abyss though March the first stage of a similar undersea journey this is an aquatic drone this has got 100 meter depth rating yeah there's a battery chambers pan tilt zoom camera so you can move up and down it's got a bunch of lasers when I think of like you see Jacques Cousteau or whoever leaked like exploring underwater I mean it's like some crazy submarine contraption or it's these divers yeah staying on it for a long time it seemed like this would be a low-cost way to do a lot of that type work there's a human cost of it as well because these divers when they're going to work they're going to really dangerous environments like sometimes they go into sewage elegans which is really nasty and it smells and horrible and then really put their lives at risk so this is a perfect example of robotic solutions where a simple robot can do the job just equally as well well the electronics are relatively straightforward the software needed to clean up images analyze surfaces and map otherwise invisible terrain proves tricky to build the key to a business technology is the way in which they blend thousands of images together and then precisely spot something like a crack in a bridge you can see like 3d models of the ship hall or the dam wall so we can say hey at this location there's a little crack in the hall the abyss engineers have to direct the drone today next up they want to make it fully autonomous and rig the device with a bevy of sensors deep-sea is a bit away but that's what I'm really interested in that's where my passion is I want to be able to develop sensors that will help us explore the ocean my vision would be you know beyond robotics to make the underwater world more accessible to people and eventually maybe even living underwater you know possibilities are endless are you gonna live underwater I would love to do that the bise's received help from tech incubators funded by local companies and universities which is an example of Australia starting to mimic Silicon Valley in a successful way with a bit of luck and some more hard work Aquaman over here may soon get to live out his dreams as you can tell I'm not one of those six pack AB types of Australians so after a long day of getting skin cancer with robots I needed to cool off with a snack there you go oh man thanks for watch for Megan okay give it a go this is um chocolate hazelnut creme brulee okay give it a break it's got the crunchy top Wow it's delicious given that this is a tech show I couldn't go to any old ice cream shop I'm a 10-2 extreme gelato whereas our more savvy viewers will already have figured out they use liquid nitrogen to freeze their sweet sweet cream is there a reason for using nitric Island a lot of people think is just for show but it's not it gives us a flexibility make our gelato fresh so instead of having your gelato sitting in a freezer for don't know however long you can make it fresh on order making it this way means that we can control the temperature we serve it to you ad so what you're having here is actually very warm you're looking at minus six minus eight degrees Celsius which means that your palate can taste the flavor better whereas if you take say an ice cream or gelato Alfa freezer you're talking about minus eighteen your tongue receptors are not able to get the flavors as how it should be pumped full of nitrogen it was time to leave Sydney and head south to the bustling city of Melbourne Melbourne lacks the surf culture of Sydney but has plenty going on in a sport mad country Melbourne is considered the athletic capital thanks to its massive venues for cricket rugby and tennis it's also something of a cultural capital the elegant city gives off a European charm if it's huge Greek and Italian communities a tram system and it takes great pride in its lane ways which are alleys packed full of street graffiti and world-class restaurants one after the end if you're looking to eat your way through Australia this is a good place to start the artsy up-and-comer vibe - Melbourne has had an impact on its tech scene people here have needed to think a bit different to get attention and it's paid off there's an argument to be made that Melbourne may be Australia's most promising tech hub at least in terms of raw creativity the undisputed king of melbourne taxine bears this thesis out he's Ruslan Kogan the founder and CEO of Cogan calm an online retailer that has changed the way Australian shop we do about three times more revenue per employee than Amazon he's a rich flamboyant controversial workaholic who finds an escape now and again at the Melbourne pier alright let's go catch some snapper okay you must have been around like eight years old when you moved here from from Belarus or six years old communism is falling apart my parents decided to leave which I'm so thankful for and came here with $90 in their pockets kögel grew up in melbourne housing projects and showed an entrepreneur spirit right from the stone as a kid he ran a golf ball cleaning business a car wash and then a tech consulting operation by the time he was 23 Kogan had become consumed with another quest man's eternal hunt for an affordable flat screen TV I thought you know I can't afford it from the shops but let me email some factories and I thought I'd tell them that I want to order a hundred thousand TVs and they'll get back to me and then I'll ask for a sample and that sample was going to be my TV but when they started replying with all of their quotes I saw very quickly that there's a brilliant market opportunity here the big idea Cogan hit on was to go direct to Chinese manufacturers to buy TVs for a fraction of the going price to get the first batch of TVs Kogan maxed out a few credit cards and had to borrow money from his friends you're on this leg to just get a cheap TV and it turns into a business idea yeah Australians had been slow to hop online and local retailers had largely ignored the web Kogan dragged the entire country online and helped ignite an Internet retail boom today Kogan sells about 250 million dollars of products per year and rustling wants to expand the brand overseas and make Kogan a household name sure a check if we still have a let's have a look yeah not a single bot what do you think should we keep trying or should we drink beer thanks man you people keep telling me they feel like Australia was a little bit late to protect us this but now it's turning this corner you're kind of famous for being outspoken and telling the truth on things you know I can't tell if I'm getting spun or if they're really as good of a quarter B turn look we went through a time in Australia where our business leaders and politicians we're talking about how bad online retail is because it's going to it's going to cost a lot of jobs in the retail industry I'm surprised they've already stopped talking about how bad cars are because everybody who used to make false carriages has gone out of business luckily we're at a point now where they're starting to realize that innovation is the future there's only a certain amount of stuff you can dig out of the ground our brainpower and our ideas are an unlimited resource and if you can harness that one then you're going to be a very rich nation up next I meet with some other Melbourne locals do also think different and have their own takes on what's next protect our underneath if you're a hip city on the move what you need is a giant Ferris wheel the Melbourne star opened in 2008 and is said to be the southern hemisphere's only giant observation wheel whatever that means as far as big technology and big science goes Melbourne can lay claim to some stunning achievements scientists here did pioneering work on in-vitro fertilisation heart valve replacement and cochlear implants and the big science journey into our bodies continues on at a place known as the Australian synchrotron the synchrotron cost 150 million dollars to build and opened in 2007 in this Melbourne suburb the building basically functions like a giant x-ray machine slash microscope it propels electrons at incredible speeds and that manipulates them with magnetic fields to produce a brilliant form of light known a synchrotron light this light can end up being a million times brighter than the Sun and can be tweaked by the building to peer into a wide variety of objects so far the synchrotron has been used to examine plants and animals in fine detail and to peer through the layers of objects like old paintings soon it may be used to treat diseases to get Andrew actually how you doing nice to meet you nice to meet ed repeal is a physicist and the director of the synchrotron he agreed to give me what's known as the Greg Norman tour of the place that's a sweet ride come aboard they do some of these beam lines that were driving past there are researchers using these to do things like trying to cure cancer different forms of disease a lot of it's a bit like imagining a lock and a key if you can understand which locks fit which keys you can turn diseases on and off you can stop cancer in its tracks recent anti science Australian governments have threatened to slash funding for labs like this as a result many top scientists have left the country but in 2015 the synchrotron lucked out and receive 500 million dollars in funding over the next 10 years the hope is that this facility can make money on its own by doing commercial work yay science to get a closer look at this machine while avoiding having my guts burned away hello Daniel hello I spoke with Daniel Houser me a scientist here who's looking at how the synchrotron can diagnose and treat cancer we use x-ray beam that are billion times brighter then you would in the hospital so in those people he's safe you put your chest in a second you get a chest x-ray if you do a second without beam here you burn you could smoke there's a hole in your chest because of its unique construction the Australian synchrotron can make large beams 50 centimeters wide or about the width of a human body this means that the machine could be ideal for turbocharged radiotherapy of tumors we found that you can deliver doses which are a thousand times higher for more targeted more targeted and less damage to the healthy tissues okay so you could say that thousand gray would kill a human being if it was delivered in a single shot broad area when you make it in micro beams it doesn't it actually destroy tumors much better and spares healthy tissue it's not ready for human trials yet but Daniel thinks people may soon be able to make an appointment and have this building go to work on your innards it will be several years before we can apply to actually a patient therefore that the caveat is anyone watches your show and then call us and say you I want to bring you my granddad because they can treat these cancer unfortunately with size sorry we can't do it right now for maybe one day but maybe in three or five years yeah these optimistic notes reflect just how hard Australian scientists must work these days to justify their jobs and provide the government with the it's that these types of facilities may one day pay for themselves but you know it's more fun than anti-science bureaucrats that would be dinosaurs welcome to Jurassic warehouse this is stegosaur stegosaur is for a jurassic world exhibition this is our t-rex she tends to steal the show and dominate the workshop I can't think one of these things is gonna eat me yeah Sonny Childers hails from Melbourne and co-founded creature technology since its birth in 2006 the company is specialized in making giant robotic animals and has ended up as one of the biggest animatronics companies around the creature team is made up of movies special effects artists who needed work during down periods and their first project was a live show called Walking with Dinosaurs that ended up as the highest-grossing touring event in the world in 2010 they've been on high demand ever since making rideable dragons a full-size King Kong and cuddlier creations like these giant stuffed animals for the Sochi Olympics Vladimir Putin still likes to cuddle the bunny rabbit on the right we didn't know where this is gonna go we thought we'd all go back to filming TV but it grew out of this one show and we realized that there was something in this to bring that sort of film level animatronics to a live audience this is the indominus rex at the moment where I'm skinning the creature and the girls are putting in some scales each one of these creatures takes about a year to create every detail of the anatomy is built from scratch including the eyeballs the hydraulic skeleton and the life like fabric skin so it's very similar to a real creature it's got bones he's got muscles that's got skin until they work together is it's the trick really to make the creatures seem more lifelike the company's coders program nuanced movement routines but I'm not here to watch a computer play with Dinosaurs I'm here to take a dino out for a spin so this is a Buddha wreak so I'm actually controlling the neck of this Parasaurolophus now so this is all homegrown it's a like that yeah I mean we built these for our first live show ten years ago and this is our rusty workshop model whenever go yes okay he is designed to be intuitive and smooth and so you can take him through his whole range and he will go where you want to take him have your little pet dinosaur yeah it's a lot of fun there were a couple of new creations coming to life in the creature workshop that we weren't allowed to show you secrecy remains paramount in the vicious world of animatronics it's safe to say though that the next time a dinosaur giant plush bear or say an alien creature at an amusement park then it came from this place on the other side of the world Australia's done well for itself in recent years its minds have churned out natural resources that China has welcomed with open wallets there's the whole awkward thing and the local soap operas have kept the rest of the world well-stocked with attractive entertainers as protect it remains a mixed story meow meow for example has decided to form a start-up in San Francisco because it proved easier to raise money there that said Australia still teams with well educated and motivated engineers coders and scientists there are plenty of success stories now for these youngsters to follow there's also an undeniable urge for Australians to make a go of it at home and prove what they're capable of and if you fail the worst thing that can happen is that you end up here looking for another dash of courage in a beer coming up next on hello world I head to England to learn about the start of the computing revolution freedom to every watch of the world and to get all gussied up with the world's most advanced hair dryer

Channel: Bloomberg Originals

Views: 226,853

Keywords: Bloomberg, Hello World, Australia, Tech, robotic dinosaurs, underwater drones, biohacker, ashlee vance

Id: UtpkXDQIMTE

Length: 29min 54sec (1794 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 25 2016