Brain-Based Strategic Foresight: Enhancing the Capability and Capacity to Think about the Future (PART 1)

EVERY BRAIN THINKS ABOUT THE FUTURE…BUT SOME BRAINS DO IT BETTER THAN OTHERS. From a neuroscience or brain-based perspective, foresight can be understood as the ability of the brain to imagine and anticipate possible future scenarios. The future thinking brain … Continued

A new material called a mechanical neural network can learn and change its physical properties

The big idea A new type of material can learn and improve its ability to deal with unexpected forces thanks to a unique lattice structure with connections of variable stiffness, as described in a new paper by my colleagues and me … Continued

Best futurists ever: How Isaac Asimov shaped robotics and space exploration and predicted the Internet

Some futurists try to foresee the future. Others attempt to shape it. Yet prolific science-fiction author and biochemist Isaac Asimov did both. Asimov not only invented the word “robotics,” his “Three Laws of Robotics,” first written as part of a … Continued

The Swedish philosophy of lagom: how “just enough” is all you need

The idea that human desires are insatiable and that craving leads to misery is not new wisdom. It has ancient Hindu, Buddhist, and Greek roots and forms a keystone of most religions.  Lagom is the modern, Swedish twist on an … Continued

Humans will achieve immortality in 7 years, says futurist

Ray Kurzweil is famous for making predictions that have actually become true. There’s no denying that we live in an era of rapid technological changes. New inventions are taking place in AI, machine learning, and nanotechnology. Over the last decade … Continued

Inside the Global Race to Turn Water Into Fuel

Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in a high-tech gamble to make hydrogen clean, cheap and widely available. In Australia’s Outback, that starts with 10 million new solar panels. For eons this has been a quiet, unremarkable place. … Continued

The world’s in a ‘polycrisis’ — and these countries want to quash it by looking beyond GDP

For a small but growing network of countries, the world’s go-to metric of economic health is no longer fit for purpose. Mostly led by women, Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand are all members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership. … Continued

Food Trends 2023: The Future of Food and Eating

Over the past ten years, food trends have become the basic tool for many actors in the food industry: in executive offices as well as in departments of product development and innovation, in international corporations, SMEs and start-ups, in the gastronomy … Continued

AI Allows Dead Woman to Talk to People Who Showed Up at Her Funeral

“Mom answered questions from grieving relatives after they had watched her cremation.”   Marina Smith, a 87-year-old woman who passed away in June, was able to address the mourners at her own funeral in the UK — sort of, at … Continued

An AI lawyer is set to appear in court in a world first. Does it spell the end for costly legal fees?

In what is set to be a world first, a robot lawyer will appear in a United States court next month, representing a client facing traffic charges. The artificial intelligence (AI) tool uses machine learning to match text and voice recognition … Continued

The next and most profound industrial revolution in human history is underway in Low Earth Orbit

Riding on the shoulders of the Apollo generation, the Artemis missions will pave the way for humans to return to the moon, begin human exploration of Mars, and someday for humanity to reach the edges of our solar system and … Continued

In 11 Words, Jeff Bezos Just Gave Some of the Best Advice You’ll Get This Year

Those words are: “You can’t predict the future, but you can weigh the probabilities.” Bezos’ financial advice was offered when he counseled his Twitter followers that it’s time to prepare for possible economic turmoil. The probabilities in this economy tell … Continued

Our Conscious Experience of the World Is But a Memory, Says New Theory

Sitting on the Marine Atlantic ferry, I’m watching the Newfoundland skyline disappear on the horizon as I type away. I see the rocking of the ocean waves, inhale its salty breeze, feel and hear the buzz of the ship’s rumbling … Continued

MIT Just Created Living Plants That Glow Like A Lamp, And Could Grow Glowing Trees To Replace Streetlights

Roads of the future could be lit by glowing trees instead of streetlamps, thanks to a breakthrough in creating bioluminescent plants. Experts injected specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, which caused it to give off a dim … Continued

Decarbonizing the Energy Sector by 2050 Could Save the World $12 Trillion

One of the main arguments against a rapid transition to renewable energy is the potentially enormous cost. But a new study shows that moving quickly could actually save us huge amounts of money compared to taking things slowly or doing … Continued

California installing huge solar panels over canals to combat drought – it just might work

California is spending $20 million on a pilot project that will install more than a mile of solar panels over sections of important water sources, including canals — a futuristic effort to fight a devastating drought hitting California this summer with green … Continued

Researchers teach human brain cells in a dish to play “pong”

Scientists have successfully taught a collection of human brain cells in a petri dish how to play the video game “Pong” — kind of. Researchers at the biotechnology startup Cortical Labs have created “mini-brains” consisting of 800,000 to one million living … Continued

Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct – Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse

Cast your mind back, if you will, to 1965, when Tom Lehrer recorded his live album That Was the Year That Was. Lehrer prefaced a song called “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)” by saying that “if there’s … Continued

A New Theory in Physics Claims to Solve the Mystery of Consciousness

How do 1.4 kg of brain tissue create thoughts, feelings, mental images, and an inner world? The ability of the brain to create consciousness has baffled some for millennia. The mystery of consciousness lies in the fact that each of … Continued

Can artificial intelligence really help us talk to the animals?

 A California-based organisation wants to harness the power of machine learning to decode communication across the entire animal kingdom. But the project has its doubters A dolphin handler makes the signal for “together” with her hands, followed by “create”. The … Continued