Futures studies is an interdisciplinary field that aggregates and analyzes trends, with both lay and professional methods, to compose possible futures. It includes analyzing the sources, patterns, and causes of change and stability in an attempt to develop foresight. Around the world the field is variously referred to as futures studies, strategic foresight, futuristics, futures thinking, futuring, and futurology. Futures studies and strategic […]

Source: Melanie Swan Philosophy and Economic Theory, New School University, New York NY m@melanieswan.com Journal of Evolution and Technology – Vol. 26 Issue 2 – October 2016 – pgs 60-81 1. Brain-computer interfaces Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are any manner of technology that might link the human brain to communications networks such as the Internet. In […]

All techno-hype aside, it is striking how recent many of the events are that define what we take to be the modern human condition. If compress the time scale such that the Earth formed one year ago, then Homo sapiens evolved less than 12 minutes ago, agriculture began a little over one minute ago, the […]

here’s my list of the 10 hottest AI technologies: Natural Language Generation: Producing text from computer data. Currently used in customer service, report generation, and summarizing business intelligence insights. Sample vendors: Attivio, Automated Insights, Cambridge Semantics, Digital Reasoning, Lucidworks, Narrative Science, SAS, Yseop. Speech Recognition: Transcribe and transform human speech into format useful for computer […]

1: Geoengineered safety Population 9 billion Global energy use 8 × 1020 joules CO2 concentration 400 ppm, dropping We acted early in the 21st century, invested aggressively in renewable energies and crucially, geoengineering It wasn’t easy, but by investing heavily in R&D, we have built systems for sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and […]

Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we’re becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the […]