Future is Now

Displaying 1 - 8 of 8

Biblioklept • Sat 2016 Aug 6, 11:13am

Stuart McMillen’s webcomic does a marvelous job of adapting (and updating!) Neil Postman’s famous book-length essay, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which argues that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future in Brave New World was ultimately more accurate than the one proposed by George Orwell in 1984.

Future Shocker Dies at 87

Hillel Italie, Wash Post / AP • Thu 2016 Jun 30, 2:51pm

Alvin Toffler, a guru of the post-industrial age whose million-selling “Future Shock” and other books anticipated the disruptions and transformations brought about by the rise of digital technology, has died. He was 87.

He died late Monday in his sleep at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, said Yvonne Merkel, a spokeswoman for his Reston, Virginia-based consulting firm, Toffler Associates.…

What the 1964 World's Fair Got Right and Wrong

Daily Mail • Sat 2014 Jun 14, 2:21pm

Colonies on the moon, underwater and in Antarctica…

To Whom the Future Belongs

sistrum at Ace of Spades • Thu 2012 Sep 27, 12:11pm

The future must not belong to people who say things like "'The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam'"

The Pentagon's Vision: Drones Everywhere

Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic • Sat 2012 Jul 14, 6:05pm

Did you know that "small unmanned undersea vehicles were considered the main workhorses of the mine clearing effort during Operation Iraqi Freedom," or that submarine drones were "used in support of Hurricane Katrina recovery operations in 2005"? Debate on unmanned vehicles is focused on airplanes. But they're already operating on land and beneath the surface of the ocean.

The Pentagon intends for the trend to continue.

Sleepbox gives weary travelers a place to rest their heads

Jeff Salton at GizMag • Wed 2012 Jul 11, 2:23pmequipped with a desk, a built-in LCD TV, WiFi, wall-sockets for laptops and recharging cell phones, etc, ventilation and has storage space for luggage. There’s even a drink dispenser for re-hydration. And don’t worry about dirty sheets and pillows. The room automatically changes the bed when the occupant exits. Visitors can sleep on a flexible strip of foamed polymer with a surface of pulp tissue that is rewound from one shaft to another, like hand towels in a bathroom. Proper bed linen costs you more. Clients could purchase time inside the Sleepbox from 15 minutes to several hours. [What could possibly go wrong? On the other hand, if this could be made truly automatedly mobile, you might have the camper home of the future!]

Jack Fletcher’s House of the Future

Alex at Weird Universe • Sat 2012 Jul 7, 5:54pm

In 1954, 23-year-old Jack Fletcher showed off his new home to the media. Reporters called it the "house of the future" because of all the unique features he had designed into it. The windows closed by themselves when sensors felt rain. Lights came on automatically when someone entered a room. The phone had a speed-dial feature. The lamps didn't need cords. Instead you just placed them over induction coils installed in the floor. And strangest of all, electromagnets caused pots and pans to float over the stove (which also used induction coils to heat the food).

Freedom, Science Fiction and the Singularity-A Conversation with Author Vernor Vinge

biggovernment.com • Fri 2011 Sep 2, 10:08am

Vernor Vinge is a former San Diego State University math professor and a Hugo award-winning science fiction novelist. In Vinge's 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity" Vinge wrote, "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." [video]