This summer in the Bahamas, researchers will test new technology that helps humans get one step closer to communicating with dolphins using a series of whistles that dolphins can easily reproduce. An underwater computer called the CHAT interface will broadcast artificial whistles … Continued
Technology is changing at a rapid pace, so much so that it’s challenging to grasp. While there is little uniformity in technology, there are some trends worth noting that have spurred tangent innovation, including speed (a shift from dial-up top … Continued
The use of wood in multi-storey buildings is an art form almost completely buried a hundred years ago. Reinforced concrete structures became the norm worldwide. In recent years, however, the sustainability debate has brought a renaissance to wood and an … Continued
Some of the most famous cities in history were never built. These 10 Utopian cities may have been failures, but they expressed our ideas about what the future of human civilization could look like. And many ideas contained in them … Continued
The University of Southern California is testing a giant 3D printer that could be used to build a whole house in under 24 hours. Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has designed the giant robot that replaces construction workers with a nozzle on … Continued
Scientists have created a molecular communications system for the transmission of messages and data in challenging environments where electromagnetic waves cannot be used — such as tunnels, pipelines, underwater, within the body, and in biomedical nanorobots. “We believe we have sent … Continued
BM just unveiled its annual 5 in 5 — five predictions about technology innovations that IBM expects will change the way we work, live and play within the next five years. This year’s IBM 5 in 5 explores the idea that everything will learn … Continued
Our current trajectory suggests that the world system will realise a decline in living standards. There needs to be a shift in the global economy that moves away from wellbeing measures based on GDP, and which embraces new meaningful measures … Continued
he advent of 3-D printing brought on a number of innovations worthy of news coverage. Printers have created prosthetic hands, action figures, food, even blood vessels, simply by depositing layer after layer of different kinds of ink. Now a handful of … Continued
Australia has been listed in the top two countries best prepared to handle an uncertain future in a new report published in Fast Company. The detailed report can be found here: https://www.fastcoexist.com/3016024/the-59-countries-that-are-most-prepared-to-handle-an-uncertain-future
NESTA, a charitable foundation in London has collaborated with a number of other partners to explore how those who live in London in 10 years will actually live. They created 25 “imaginary Londoners” whom they describe in some detail here: … Continued
The 21 September 2013 Economist contains an article exploring just how serendipitous science research can be. A group of scientists at Michigan Technological University lead by Lyon King were exploring how to create fuel for very small rockets (details of … Continued
The World Future Society (with whom the futures foundation will have much closer links from 2014 – watch this space) has just published a list of 20 predictions for trends and breakthroughs likely to impact your work, your investments and … Continued
This week’s Economist magazine has a fascinating article about the increasingly sophisticated ways in which scientists are attempting to both understand how the human brain actually works and to simulate this in a computer. The entire article can be accessed … Continued
— In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3-D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. Because of a birth defect, … Continued
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown layer lurking in the human eye. The newfound body part, dubbed Dua’s layer, is a skinny but tough structure measuring just 15 microns thick, where one micron is one-millionth of a meter and more … Continued
When constructing computer circuits, most folks start with silicon and metal, but not the researchers at Stanford. The boffins in Palo Alto want to build computers out of living tissue, and to that end they’ve created a biological transistor, called … Continued
New techniques in making a sprayable liquid that works like a solar panel will make them both easier to install and cheaper to produce. The new method is currently in development at a lab at the University of Sheffield in … Continued
British researchers have introduced a future orientation index to quantify the degree to which Internet users worldwide seek more information about years in the future than years in the past. They analyse Google logs and find a striking correlation between the country’s GDP and the predisposition … Continued
For the eighth time the organisers of the World Economic Form have produced a report examining various global risks which human civilization faces. The 80 page report looks in detail at economic, environmental, geopolitical, techinical, and social risks and how these have changed since … Continued