- My Take on "The Future" and related topics, and highlighted posts
- The Future - Technology, Society and Economics
- Star Trek Technology is So 20th Century
The Future: Hope, Fear, and Common Sense
There are technophiles and technophobes: people who are either attracted to, or frightened by, technology. I'm a bit of a technophile. It runs in the family. Arba Zeri Campbell was the first person with a telephone in his part of the world: and had to wait a long time before it rang.But I don't buy into the old 19th-20th century idea that science and technology will solve all our problems: or the more recent one that science and technology are bad and will kill us all.
My take on humanity and technology is reflected in a really old joke:
"Hundreds of thousands of years ago, man learned how to make fire.
"Generations later, man learned how to put out fires."
Posts about
- My Take on "The Future" and related topics, and highlighted posts:
- "Lemming Tracks: Toxic Light Bulbs For a Brighter Future"
(January 16, 2012) - "A 21st Century Look at 19th Century Visions of the 20th Century"
(January 4, 2012) - " 'Cancer Causes Cell Phones!' - or, not"
(July 18, 2011) - "Ray Guns, Electric Cannons, and the Mind of the Lemming"
(June 20, 2011) - "Boeing 747-8: Big Can be 'Green' "
(February 12, 2011) - "Nine Decades of Robots Turning on Their Masters"
(January 25, 2011) - "Moore's Law, or Observation, Or Whatever: 45 Years Later"
(January 9, 2011) - "The Pill That Listens: And Wait'll You See What's Next"
(November 9, 2010) - "HP: Memristors on the Shelves in Maybe Three Years"
(September 1, 2010) - "Social Media and - Old Web Habits?!"
(August 2, 2010) - "Lemming Tracks: Erin Andrews, Policing the Internet, and Power to the People"
(July 29, 2010) - "The Web Rewires Your Brain: Ain't That Great?"
(July 2, 2010) - "Brain Scans and Marketing: This Isn't Science Fiction"
(June 24, 2010) - "Facebook, Privacy, Small Town America and a Village of 6,830,000,000 people"
(May 31, 2010) - "Never Heard of a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface)? You Will"
(April 20, 2010) - "Tomorrow's Job Opportunities? Look Up - Literally"
(April 8, 2010) - "Over Four Dozen Space Agencies (and Growing?)"
(February 28, 2010) - "3D Gesture-Recognition Technology: I Remember When the Clapper Was New"
(February 18, 2010) - "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???' "
(January 27, 2010) - "Spaceport America: More Progress"
(January 29, 2010) - "America's Seventh Spaceport"
(January 19, 2010) - "Robovie-II and Robovie-IV: Robot Assistants for Store and Office"
(January 7, 2010) - "Architects, City Planning, Le Corbusier, Pulp Fiction, The Masses, The City of the Future, and Me"
(December 16, 2009) - "Power Stations in Space: No Panacea; But No Kidding, Either"
(December 2, 2009) - "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
(December 2, 2009)
Ultra-summarized:- Evil Technology? Ain't No Such Thing
- Old-Fashioned and Simple doesn't Necessarily Mean "Good"
- Will Brain Implants Be Misused?
- Of course they'll be misused
- They'll also be put to good uses
- "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
(November 14, 2009) - "Leon Theremin, Inventor of the Theremin: a Weird-Sounding Instrument"
(November 3, 2009) - "Northwest Flight 188 Overshoots MSP - Time to Reconsider Humans on Flight Crews?"
(October 23, 2009)- Repeated in Artificial intelligence, robots (and waldos), and "Future" technology, below
- "NASA's X-37 Project, New Technologies, and - EEEK! the Military!!
(October 23, 2009) - "When it's Time to Build Spaceships, People Will Build Spaceships"
(October 4, 2009) - "A Freighter Unloads its Cargo: What's the Big Deal?"
(September 20, 2009) - "Masdar City Video - Looks Cool"
(September 9, 2009) - "'Perfect Solar Storm' 150 Years Ago Today: Good News; Bad News"
(September 2, 2009) - "NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts: Time to Re-Start?"
(August 11, 2009) - "Alan Stern and Space Tourism"
(July 18, 2009) - "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
(July 11, 2009) - "Power Stations in Space: California Caught On"
(April 20, 2009) - "More About the Marvelous Memristor"
(May 1, 2008)
Back to top
- "Lemming Tracks: Toxic Light Bulbs For a Brighter Future"
- The Future - Technology, Society and Economics:
- "Ray Guns, Electric Cannons, and the Mind of the Lemming"
(June 20, 2011) - "Boeing 747-8: Big Can be 'Green' "
(February 12, 2011) - "1938 World's Fair: A Fleischer Cartoon Take on 'The Future'"
(February 12, 2011) - "Social Media and - Old Web Habits?!"
(August 2, 2010) - "Lemming Tracks: Erin Andrews, Policing the Internet, and Power to the People"
(July 29, 2010) - "The Web Rewires Your Brain: Ain't That Great?"
(July 2, 2010) - "The Sentient Cities are Coming: Park Benches With Attitude Coming"
(October 24, 2009) - "Really Cool Ideas for 'the Bathroom of the Future' - Some Might Actually Work"
(October 8, 2009) - " 'The future ain't what it used to be.' Probably Just as Well"
(August 30, 2009) - "Tokyo Motor Show, 2007: Cars of the Future"
(June 26, 2009) - "Chevy Volt Electric Car: Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, According to Chevrolet"
(July 31, 2010) - "Flying Car Invented: Again"
(July 1, 2010) - "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
(June 26, 2009)
- " 'House of the Future' - Another One, this Time in Brussels"
(June 7, 2008) - "Urban Chairlift: No Kidding"
(May 14, 2010) - "Bigelow Aerospace Space Habitat Prototype Passes Milestone"
(May 12, 2008) - "Interstellar Travel: Difficult, yes; Impossible; No - NASA"
(April 30, 2008) - "Futurist Fashion Designers of the 1930s"
(April 4, 2008) - "It Bends! It Cleans Itself! It's Solar Powered! Meet the Cell Phone of the Future! Maybe"
(March 3, 2008) - "A World Without Trucks: A Pipe Dream (Literally!)"
(February 25, 2008) - "The Home Computer of 2004: As Imagined in 1954"
(February 7, 2008) - " 'Book of the Future' - 2000 as seen from 1979"
(February 4, 2008) - "The House of the Future: Ecofuture, This Time"
(January 29, 2008) - "Future Truck: Catching Up to the Sixties"
(January 3, 2010) - "Brain Backups: Coming Soon?"
(November 14, 2007) - "Futurists Through the Centuries"
(November 1, 2007) - "Agriculture as a Mistake"
(October 29, 2007) - "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be"
(October 4, 2007) - " 'The Future Isn't What it Used To Be' "
(August 22, 2007)
Back to top
- "Ray Guns, Electric Cannons, and the Mind of the Lemming"
- Star Trek Technology is So 20th Century
- Artificial intelligence
- "Galaxy-Sorting Artificial Intelligence"
(June 5, 2010) - "Robovie-II and Robovie-IV: Robot Assistants for Store and Office"
(January 7, 2010) - "Northwest Flight 188 Overshoots MSP - Time to Reconsider Humans on Flight Crews?"
(October 23, 2009) - "What Next? Robot Doctors? (Don't Hold Your Breath)"
(September 12, 2009) - "Sudoku-Solving Robot: with Video"
(September 8, 2009) - "Asimov's 3 Laws, Real Robots, and Common Sense"
(August 20, 2009) - "Cool Robots (One Robot, Many Waldos), a PC World List"
(April 25, 2009) - "Indus Valley Script: Artificial Intelligence Says It's a Language"
(April 23, 2009) - "Better Ideas From Japan: 'Robocop' Rolled Out"
(January 24, 2009) - "The Robot With a Rat's Brain"
(August 14, 2008) - "Winglet: Just Like Segway, Except Slower and Not Available"
(August 2, 2008) - "WALL-E: 'It's the Seven Hundredth Anniversary of
Our Five-Year Cruise' "
(June 29, 2008) - "Japanese Robot Girlfriend: No Joke, EMA is Here"
(June 18, 2008) - "A Beauty is in the Eye of the - Computer?!"
(April 7, 2008) - "Rubix Cube Meets Robot"
(March 29, 2008) - "Little Yellow Robot: Artificial Intelligence of a Sort"
(March 28, 2008) - "Coming Soon: Glasses That are Smarter Than You Are! (More Observant, Anyway)"
(March 16, 2008) - "Domo, O Roboto"
(March 3, 2008) - "C3PO Will Have to Wait: Artificial Intelligence Today"
(February 9, 2008) - "Big Brother is Watching: Microsoft Applies for Spookware Patent"
(January 16, 2008) - "Lucky, or Loser? Chatroom Bot Lets You Be Both"
(December 12, 2007) - "Robo-Kid Fits in with Toddlers"
(November 5, 2007) - "Face Recognition: Teaching the Machine"
(October 11, 2007) - "Fascinating AI Text Analysis, or Weird PC Project? Either Way, Looks Interesting"
(September 25, 2007) - "Ten Top Bots: Robots for the Future"
(August 22, 2007)
Back to top
- "Galaxy-Sorting Artificial Intelligence"
- Robots (and waldos)
- " 'While Strolling Through the Park One Day - - -' "
(April 12, 2013) - "Curiosity: Landing Video; and Settling In"
(August 24, 2012) - "Roomba Review, and Dancing Robots"
(August 17, 2012) - "There's Nickle in Them There Asteroids"
(April 23, 2012) - "Robot Cheetah: No Head, but Really Fast"
(April 2, 2012) - "Mars Rover Spirit: Not Bad for a Limited-Warranty Robot"
(May 26, 2011) - "Flying Mechanical Penguins"
(February 12, 2011) - "Nine Decades of Robots Turning on Their Masters"
(January 25, 2011) - "Space Shuttle Discovery: Last Launch, First Robot"
(October 29, 2010) - "Driverless Van: Nifty Concept; Apparently Works"
(October 28, 2010) - "What Next: Robot Lifeguards?"
(October 25, 2010) - "Meet Fenway the Robot, Hospital Helper"
(September 21, 2010) - "What do Robots do on the Weekend?"
(June 2, 2010) - "Penguin Robot? Roller Skates? You Decide"
(February 11, 2010) - "Robovie-II and Robovie-IV: Robot Assistants for Store and Office"
(January 7, 2010) - "The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming!"
(November 4, 2009) - "Asimov's 3 Laws, Real Robots, and Common Sense"
(August 20, 2009) - "Japanese Dwarf Flying Squirrels: And Dancing Robots"
(August 18, 2009) - "Robot Hands: Fast Ones"
(August 7, 2009) - "R & D & Rovers: Back to the Moon and Mars"
(May 18, 2009) - "Hordes of Italian Robots on the Moon: It Could Happen"
(May 14, 2009) - "Mars Robot Spirit Rebooted Itself - Twice"
(April 15, 2009) - "Tweenbots - Cute, Cybernetic, a Bit Kitschy"
(April 13, 2009) - " 'Kittens Meet Roomba' - the Video"
(January 30, 2009) - "Riding With Robots on the High Frontier: A Blog Worth Return Visits"
(August 12, 2008) - "A Robot Gets a Robot to Help Clean Up the Lab"
(May 1, 2008) - "Beer Robot: the Video"
(April 25, 2008) - "Run, Robot: Run"
(April 13, 2008) - "Better Ideas From Japan: A Robot Snowplow"
(January 1, 2008) - "Bristlebot: Technology Doesn't Have to Be Practical"
(December 30, 2007) - "And Now, for Something Completely Different: Hong Kong's Robot Kitchen"
(December 13, 2007)
Back to top
- " 'While Strolling Through the Park One Day - - -' "
- "Future" technology
- "Driverless Cars: Keep an Eye on Nevada"
(June 24, 2011) - "Quantum Entanglement, Diamonds, and New Information Storage Tech"
(March 28, 2011) - "Hands off Driving, Driving With Your Brain, and All That"
(March 4, 2011) - "Femtosecond Transient Imaging, Seeing Around Corners: Available in About Two Years"
(November 22, 2010) - "3-D Printer in Space: Seems to Make Sense"
(November 11, 2010) - "Yves Rossy and His Flying Backpack"
(October 30, 2010) - "Coming Soon: Touchy Aircraft"
(September 24, 2010) - "Tractor Beam Developed at Australian National University"
(September 9, 2010) - "Programmable Matter: Today, Robotic Origami; Tomorrow, Claytronics"
(June 29, 2010) - "X-37B / Orbital Test Vehicle Robot Spaceplane Now an Air Force Project"
(April 5, 2010) - "X-51 Waverider, Bullet Trains: Change Happens"
(March 11, 2010) - "Bullet Trains in America: United States Transportation Enters the 20th Century (It's About Time) "
(January 28, 2010) - "Bigelow Aerospace: Space to Rent or Lease, in Orbit"
(January 20, 2010) - "Worlds First Bionic Fingers? Could Be"
(December 8, 2009) - "They're Birds! They're Planes! No, It's the SWAT Team!"
(December 4, 2009) - "Glow-in-the-Dark Flashing Tattoos? Prosthetics With Neural Interfaces? They're Coming"
(November 20, 2009) - "Sailing on Sunlight"
(November 11, 2009) - "Hypersonic Vehicles: Waveriders to Space"
(November 2, 2009) - "NASA's X-37 Project, New Technologies, and - EEEK! the Military!!"
(October 23, 2009) - "New Rocket Fuel: Aluminum and - - - Water?!"
(October 21, 2009) - "Coming Soon: The Man With the Heart of a Cockroach"
(October 3, 2009) - "20 Years of Building Stuff One Atom at a Time"
(October 2, 2009) - "This Electric Motorcycle is No Wimpmobile"
(September 15, 2009) - "Solar Trees Top (Some) California Parking Lots"
(August 29, 2009) - "Dolphin with a Rubber Tail, Tortoise on Wheels - Animals with Prosthetics"
(August 17, 2009) - "Walking, Running, the 'Apollo Number' and Lunar Exploration"
(August 15, 2009) - "Hot New Technologies of Yesteryear"
(July 22, 2009) - "ViRob: Tiny 'Robot' Travels Through Body"
(June 27, 2009) - "Programmable Matter: Next-Generation Morphing Technologies"
(June 8, 2009) - "Seeing With Your Tongue? This isn't Science Fiction, Folks"
(May 20, 2009) - " 'You Will Forget' - The Doctor Will Fix You Now?"
(April 13, 2009) - "Plutonium Powered Pacemakers: Americans with Atomic Hearts"
(March 22, 2009) - "Skylon: Spaceplane for 2019"
(March 12, 2009) - "Protesting Against New Technology - the Early Days"
(February 23, 2009) - "Set PHASERs on Stun: Koloc's Kugelblitz Research is For Real"
(February 20, 2009) - "Smart Speed Bumps: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?"
(January 13, 2009) - "Nanotechnolgy and Electronics: Atom-Sized Transistors ('Nanotronics'??)"
(February 20, 2009) - "Slick Idea from MIT: Nanotech Oil Spill Blotter-Upper"
(July 10, 2008) - "The Chembots Are Coming"
(July 1, 2008) - "Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package"
(June 20, 2008) - "Neural Interface for Stroke Victims: New Medical Technology"
(May 22, 2008) - "One More Worry: Hackers and Pacemakers"
(March 12, 2008) - "Artificial Skin: New Technologies Coming"
(February 12, 2008) - "Murphy's Laws of Technology - Another Take on the Information Age"
(December 31, 2008) - "Magic Walls and the Information Age"
(May 19, 2008) - "Memristor: Cool New Technology from HP Labs"
(April 30, 2008) - "Next-Generation Tabletop"
(April 28, 2008) - "Spiderman Suit: From CGI to R & D"
(March 31, 2008) - "Nanosieves: Energy-Efficient Filters"
(March 5, 2008) - "Nanotech Solar Collector: Revolutionary, With a Big Catch"
(January 16, 2008) - "Nanobot Designed for Clearing Arteries"
(November 21, 2007) - "Robotic Go-Karts for Crippled Kids"
(December 20, 2007) - "Nanotech Batteries in Clothing"
(October 19, 2007) - "Something New that Water Can Do"
(October 19, 2007)
- "Driverless Cars: Keep an Eye on Nevada"
- Artificial intelligence
1 comment:
The future is scary but it has made some great advances. What would your visions of the future be? Post them on The Tomorrow Mural.
http://tomorrowmural.intel.com/en-uk/mural.aspx?iid=Tomorrow_Mural_SOT_UK
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