Blogs

Africa is Rising! Technology, like cell phones, is aiding Africa’s fantastic leap forward.

Immortality is a primary goal of many transhumanists, but not all. How many do or don’t want eternal life, and why? I recently conducted a survey - funded by Terasem Movement Inc., and fiscally sponsored by World Future Society - that queried hundreds of transhumanists on this question.

Last weekend, I attended the Association of Professional Futurists (APF), ProDev Seminar, July 27, 2012, and other APF events in Toronto, and part of the World Future 2012 conference. The APF ProDev day was our best ever: tight, focused, yet exploratory. There were no negative spirits in the room and I had a chance to learn about and try some new things, then muse with colleagues over what I could take from them, use or discard, etc. in my work.

JC Penney's CEO Ron Johnson has made a bold statement regarding the future of the company - that it plans to move all of its inventory onto an advanced RFID system and obviate the need for human cashiers.

While the idea of FREE isn't new, we continue to see it gain traction, and this has surely accelerated since the dawn of the web, as this article from today's Fast Company reminds us...

originally posted at the Trend and Foresight Blog.

In the past, the vast majority of our layoffs were caused by economic downturns. As we move into the future, the tide will shift, and the majority of our layoffs will be caused by automation and technology. With all the chaos and uncertainty of a workerless world looming, I’d like to step you through some of the reasons why it will not be as bad as the doomsayers are predicting.

I am excited to begin a project this year on bringing jobs to a county in Northern New England, my home stomping ground. I have worked on economic development projects for years as a futurist, from the state of South Dakota to the Prince of Monaco. This year, in 2012, something is different: many people accept that the old methods no longer work.

It sounded like one of the craziest tasks anybody ever dreamed up: Def Leppard is in the process of re-recording, in painstaking detail, its monster-selling albums from the 80s, specifically Pyromania and Hysteria.

The Society's recently concluded WorldFuture 2012 conference lived up to its billing as a gathering of futurists from around the world, an expo for cutting-edge start-ups, and an international media event. The list of speakers this year included Intel futurist Brian David Johnson; Lee Rainie, director and founder of the Pew Internet and American Life Project; Geordie Rose, creator of the world's first commercial quantum computer, the D-Wave One; world-renowned consultant Edie Weiner; representatives from the Silicon Valley and Toronto venture capital communities; as well as inventors, scientists, and public policy experts from all over the world. Here's a small sampling of the standout coverage the we received.

With the arrival of the 2012 Olympic Games, we find ourselves focused on the extremes of human performance. But what happens when we reach the natural limits of human ability? What happens when the last record has been broken?