Australian’s rank fifth globally in future orientation

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

Global Risk Assessment

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

27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

We may never have our flying cars, but the future is here. From creating fully functioning artificial leaves to hacking the human brain, science made a lot of breakthroughs in 2012. Find a fascinating list of these breakthroughs here:https://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2

5 Ways Social Media Will Change The Way You Work in 2013

In the nine short years since Mark Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com, social media has evolved from dorm room toy to boardroom tool. Last year, 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies were active on Twitter, while more than 80 percent of executives believed social media engagement led to increased … Continued

A Carbon Microthread That Makes Contact with the Mind

Connecting a human brain to a computer is as much a materials science problem as a biology one. What kind of interface is delicate enough not to damage nerve tissue, but resilient enough to last decades? Researchers have come up … Continued

Scientists simulate human brain inside a supercomputer

The Human Brain Project, with its billion-dollar plan to recreate the human mind inside a supercomputer, sounds like a science fiction nightmare. But those involved hope their ambitious goal of simulating the tangle of neurons and synapses that power our … Continued

Now you can live without breathing

A team of scientists at the Boston Children’s Hospital have invented what is being considered one the greatest medical breakthroughs in recent years. They have designed a microparticle that can be injected into a person’s bloodstream that can quickly oxygenate … Continued

Timeline to the twenty second century

The impending edition of The Futurist magazine contains some thoughts about how our collective future might evolve, written by Dick Pelletier who is a science and technology columnist and futurist, and editor of the Positive Futurist weekly newsletter and Web site, www.positivefuturist.com/about.html “What … Continued

Explaining the Higgs Boson

You may be as amazed as I am that there is a website called PhD comics, and the good folks there have produced an eight minute video explaining what the search for the Higgs Boson is all about.  It is … Continued

Solar power world record set

German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours of a Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank … Continued

Open Source Academic Journal range expanded

Springer, the largest publisher of academic journals has expanded its range of open access peer-reviewed journals to include titles such as: Human Centric Computing and Information Sciences, and Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship The full list of open access journals … Continued

Lateral thinking is a rare commodity

One difficulty faced by conservationists is getting hold of reliable statistics on the animals they are looking after.  For good reasion, many species of predators are rather shy. In a paper just published in Current Biology a small group of … Continued

Website analysing new global foresight books

Michael Marien, long time editor of Future Search for the World Fuiture Society has created a new website summarising and analysing books focusing on the future.  Those who register at the wrebsite can receive a monthly email listing new books.  … Continued

The fastest growing bank in the US is Facebook

The first thing to realize is that Facebook is in fact a bank. It doesn’t have a charter and its not regulated*, but it accepts deposits from consumers, and provides means for payment using those deposits. In my book, thats … Continued

Embracing the future – preserving rare languages

An article in this week’s Economist magazine discusses the creation by a Doctor in Pennslyvania of an electronic dictionary designed to easily allow speakers of rare languages to preserve their language.  Many, many ethnic languages are under threat and would … Continued

Eight grand challenges for human achievement

In an article in the Jan 2012 edition of The Futurist Magazine, the CEO of the DaVinci Institute poses 8 grand challenges which he reckons would change the world if they were achieved.  To give some idea of the scope … Continued

5 Newsworthy Teaching Tools For The Future Of Education

There is a generation gap between children and teachers that can make it hard for them to relate to each other. Teachers are used to paperback books and abacuses, while the youth understand e-readers and Justin Bieber. That is why … Continued

What is consciousness?

IN A 1992 issue of The Times Literary Supplement, the philosopher Jerry Fodor famously complained that: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how … Continued

Reading minds

If you think the art of mind-reading is a conjuring trick, think again.  Over the past few years, the ability to connect first monkeys and then men to machines in ways that allow brain signals to tell those machines what … Continued

Taking advantage of otherwise wasted energy

From the vibrations filling the air when jets to take off to the waves generated by radio and television transmitters, our environment is full of largely wasted energy.   Now, Align Full (Alt + Shift + J)researchers are seeking ways to capture … Continued