J. M. Ledgard | |
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| Born | 1968 (age 54–55) |
| Occupation(s) | Novelist, technologist, foreign and war correspondent |
| Notable work | Giraffe (novel), Submergence (novel) |
J. M. Ledgard (born 1968) is a British born novelist and an expert in advanced technology, nature, and risk in emerging markets. [1] He also works with conceptual artists.
Ledgard was born in the Shetland Islands, off the north coast of Scotland, [2] in 1968.
After reporting on the Romanian revolution for The Scotsman as a student, [1] he worked as a foreign political and war correspondent for two decades. He reported lead stories from 60 countries for The Economist, including stints in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa. [2] His emphasis was on security, natural resources, and macroeconomics. He reported on several conflicts and is a founder member of The Frontline Club. He was a contributing writer to 1843, The Economist's sister magazine. He writes occasional long pieces for The Atlantic and other publications. [3]
Ledgard is the author of two novels, Giraffe (2006) [4] [5] and Submergence (2013), [6] [7] which was made into a film in 2017 of the same name by Wim Wenders. [8] His work has been compared to W.G. Sebald and John Le Carré. [9] Submergence was a New York Times Book of the Year and a pick of the year by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, NPR, and New York. [10] Giraffe is considered a cult novel in the animal rights movement. [11] A book of essays, Terra Firma, concerned Africa and technology. [12]
He was a fellow and director at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne since 2012, [1] and has been involved in promoting super advanced technology in Africa. [13] He works with leading artificial intelligence scientists and roboticists to improve outcomes in often very poor communities and for nature. He was an early proponent of drone technology. [14] [15] He invented the concept of blood delivery by drone, introducing the American startup Zipline into Rwanda. [16] He advanced the idea of droneports across the tropics, realising together with the architect Lord Norman Foster [17] a droneport prototype at the 2016 Venice Biennale. His cargo drone work has been taken up and scaled by the World Bank, the UN and commercial partners. [18] He supports digital self-sovereignty and was involved in early mobile money. [19] Since 2018, he has been focused on how artificial intelligence will perceive nature. [20] He was a visiting professor in AI and Nature at the Czech Technical University. [21] He is presently developing a prototype for interspecies money, by which rare non-human life forms may revalue themselves to improve their chance of survival. [22] He is an early proponent of the interspecies, an attempt to better comprehend other species using new technologies. [23] He is a fellow of the Linnean Society and was a visiting fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
He collaborates with major artists on nature based projects, including on the deep ocean and digital futures with Olafur Eliasson, [24] on the interspecies with Tomas Saraceno, [25] and Federico Diaz [26] on nature based projects.
The giraffe is a large African hoofed mammal belonging to the genus Giraffa. It is the tallest living terrestrial animal and the largest ruminant on Earth. Traditionally, giraffes were thought to be one species, Giraffa camelopardalis, with nine subspecies. Most recently, researchers proposed dividing them into up to eight extant species due to new research into their mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, as well as morphological measurements. Seven other extinct species of Giraffa are known from the fossil record.
An unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), also known as a combat drone, colloquially shortened as drone or battlefield UAV, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance and carries aircraft ordnance such as missiles, ATGMs, and/or bombs in hardpoints for drone strikes. These drones are usually under real-time human control, with varying levels of autonomy. Unlike unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aerial vehicles, UCAVs are used for both drone strikes and battlefield intelligence.
Guy Hands is an English financier and investor. He is most notable as the founder and chairman of Terra Firma Capital Partners, one of the largest private equity firms in Europe. Hands also served as chairman of the UK music company EMI.
In politics, diplomacy and export control, dual-use items refer to goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications.
The Masai giraffe, also spelled Maasai giraffe, and sometimes called the Kilimanjaro giraffe, is a species or subspecies of giraffe. It is native to East Africa. The Masai giraffe can be found in central and southern Kenya and in Tanzania. It has distinctive jagged, irregular leaf-like blotches that extend from the hooves to its head. The Masai giraffe is currently the national animal of Tanzania.
The northern giraffe, also known as three-horned giraffe, is the type species of giraffe, G. camelopardalis, and is native to North Africa, although alternative taxonomic hypotheses have proposed the northern giraffe as a separate species.
Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience.
A deep-submergence rescue vehicle (DSRV) is a type of deep-submergence vehicle used for rescue of downed submarines and clandestine missions. While DSRV is the term most often used by the United States Navy, other nations have different designations for their vehicles.
Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. (TFCP) is a UK-based private equity firm. Financier Guy Hands founded the firm in 2002 through the spin-off of Nomura Principal Finance Group. The firm, which traces its roots to the formation of its predecessor in 1994, has invested over €14 billion since inception.
There are several approaches to defining the substance and scope of technology policy.
David Rothenberg is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a special interest in animal sounds as music. He is also a composer and jazz musician whose books and recordings reflect a longtime interest in understanding other species such as singing insects by making music with them.
The MCA Stage is the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s performing arts program. Founded in 1996 with the opening of the MCA’s new building in Chicago, Illinois.
Kouré is a rural community located 60 kilometres (37 mi) east of Niamey, the capital of Niger. The town lies on both sides of the road from Niamey to Dallol Bosso.
Arts Catalyst is a visual arts organisation and charity based in Sheffield, UK. They commission artists and use art to explore social and environmental issues, provoke debate, and test out alternative ways of learning, frequently working in non-traditional arts spaces, often within a particular landscape.
SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. or Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd. or DJI is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, backed by several state-owned entities. DJI manufactures commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) for aerial photography and videography. It also designs and manufactures camera systems, gimbal stabilizers, propulsion systems, enterprise software, aerial agriculture equipment, and flight control systems.
Submergence is a 2017 romantic thriller film directed by Wim Wenders, based on the novel with the same name by J. M. Ledgard. The film stars Alicia Vikander and James McAvoy. The film premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. The story revolves around the characters' individual professional missions and flashbacks to their romance on the coast of Normandy.
Tomás Saraceno is an Argentine contemporary artist whose projects, consisting of floating sculptures, international collaborations, and interactive installations, propose and dialogue with forms of inhabiting and sensing the environment that have been suppressed in the Capitalocene era.
Wingcopter GmbH is a German aerospace company that designs and manufactures unmanned eVTOL delivery drones capable of providing last-mile delivery as well as mapping, surveying, and inspection. Their flagship drone, Wingcopter 178 Heavy Lift (HL), set the Guinness world speed record for remote-controlled tilt-rotor aircraft in 2018, flying at an average speed of 240.6 km/h. To date, the company has partnered with commercial and humanitarian organizations to perform drone delivery of critical supplies in Africa, the South Pacific, Ireland, and Scotland. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wingcopter partnered with Thales, Skyports, and the NHS to provide beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) delivery of medical test samples and other supplies to a hospital on a remote Scottish island. The company has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as "2020 Technology Pioneer". The company is amongst ten other drone companies to be selected by FAA to participate in a type certification program for delivery drones.
Luise Faurschou is a Copenhagen-based Danish curator, art advisor, cultural entrepreneur, thought leader and former art gallerist.
Dedrone Holdings is a US-based company which develops counter-drone and counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) technology.
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