Lack of nutrients is the cause of 3.5 million avoidable deaths annually and the greatest cause of poverty. Leave it to a technology innovators' conference to frame the relief of global malnutrition as a business opportunity.

Together the Lyle brothers, 19 and 21 years old, who both have poor vision, started a nonprofit called ReSight while still in high school. Their idea: "Democratize eyecare services by empowering the very people who needed them most to direct their distribution."

Who's your biggest competition for that new job? Turns out, it could be a robot named Baxter.

Just weeks after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the east coast, climate change was on the forefront of everyone's minds at Techonomy 2012.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple: four Internet companies that are, arguably, the best of the best -- global goliaths that leave little room for competitors. But the big question is whether they are too big, sucking out the competition from smaller players.

In the opening session of Techonomy 2012 today, Techonomy founder David Kirkpatrick interviewed Ray Kurzweil, the futurist and transhumanist who has developed a cult following for his prediction of the merging of humans and computers.