Blogs

Bird flu has been making news headlines lately, but it’s certainly not the only new disease that the world’s health experts worry about.

In a sociological tradition stretching back to Durkheim, the city represents the apogee of alienated life, with residents adopting a variety of strategies to cope with their anonymity and to preserve their privacy amidst multitudes of other residents.

We usually think about difficult problems of future and alternative strategies for coping with them, but we rarely find effective solutions.

This article is not intended as a contribution to the debate on "geo-engineering." I insist on that because it seems to me the more important point to make about "geo-engineering" is that it is, strictly speaking, non-debatable. More specifically, I think the principal work of "geo-engineering" discourse is to displace debate, not to have it, in the first place.

Where in the brain is intelligence? Why, anatomically, are some individuals “smarter” than others? What does a wise brain look like? Dr. Richard J. Haier of the University of California at Irvine has been using neuro-imaging technology for over two decades in his search to determine the anatomy of neuro-intelligence. I interviewed him recently on the progress and potential of his research:

All the way back in March of 2004, working in his laboratory at the University of Southern California in San Diego, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis, was working with a new process he had invented called Contour Crafting to construct the world’s first 3D printed wall.

They customarily fly over war zones, but they could soon make their way to a neighborhood near you. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), remote-controlled aircraft that operate with no on-board human pilot, are foraying into civilian airspace as law-enforcement agencies and private citizens obtain these machines and fly them.

On March 24th, surveillance cameras at the Taylor Made Jewelry store in Akron, Ohio captured the startling image of a red SUV crashing through the front windows with two masked men jumping out, smashing display cases, and stealing over $100,000 of jewelry in less than 2 minutes.

Both men are seen grabbing what they can from the cases, jumping back into the SUV, and speeding away.

Since the beginning of my studies on Strategic Foresight, I’ve been compiling a list of mind-challenging questions that can be raised as research topics and may be addressed by the students of foresight or futures studies at MA and PhD levels.

One: Enjoying science fiction is not the same thing as doing science or making science policy.

Two: Indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasies is not the same thing as analysis.

Three: Extrapolating from speculations and stipulations mistreated as factual data will yield serially failed predictions, few of which amount to foresight.