Blogs

We published a Technology Foresight brief recently about the future civilian applications of UAVs, so it was fortuitous that I happened to meet Rich Goodwyn, a retired Navy captain who works at Prioria Robotics, for lunch last week. Standing by his car, he pulled out a large poster canister and removed the Maveric mini UAV.

originally posted at the Trend and Foresight Blog.

The World Future Society was saddened to learn last week of the death of our longtime volunteer and consultant, Howard F. Didsbury Jr. He died of pneumonia, following a long illness, on March 17, 2012. He was 87.

WorldFuture 2012, the annual conference of the World Future Society, is your opportunity to take part in the biggest discussions of our day.

Register before the price goes up, so you don't miss your chance to meet...

William Halal

For me, 2011 was highlighted by two events. The first was a trip to the global HRD Conference in Mumbai to talk about Leadership and the Long Term Perspective. This was very well received and I came home with a plaque, trophy, video and terrific memories. The second event was in July when I flew to Vancouver for the WFS conference and The APF meeting. A great time with old and new friends in one of my favorite cities.

V. Futurity is a register of freedom, "The Future" another prison-house built to confine it. Futurity is the openness in the present arising out of the ineradicable diversity of calculating, contending, and collaborative stakeholders who struggle to make and remake the shared world, peer to peer.

In the March 2012 Wired, an article on the Jerusalem syndrome, the religion-related psychosis associated with visits to Jerusalem ("The God Complex"). The article doesn't really develop any new angles on this culture-bound syndrome, but its appearance in Wired is important. My thought: while we may never travel to Jerusalem, our future will be the Jerusalem Syndrome. Now that we have crossed the tipping point of urbanization (over 50% of the world's population as of 2007), all of us have an opportunity to be overwhelmed and enraptured by our urban lives: the Baltimore syndrome.

Cruising at 34,000 feet back to DC on Southwest flight 891, I'm taking some time to reflect on my days at SXSW2012. If you've never experienced the conference, let me tell you that it's hard to make it through without feeling drained. And no, that's not from the drinking.

Question (to me): What was the most amazing session you saw at SXSW this year?
I only managed to catch two of the four keynote presentations this year, but both of them were huge highlights for me and many other attendees at SXSW 2012.

If you could improve your body, would you do it? It seems a simple enough question with a simple enough answer.

But what if that improvement meant incorporating a mechanical device into your body? Suddenly the question isn’t so simple, is it? And if that integration required the prior removal of a limb, say an arm or a hand, that decision becomes even more complex and controversial.

The topic of artificial intelligence was front and center at the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive Conference...the result, I suspect, of Apple launching Siri around the time the panels were selected. Amber Case, a self-styled "Cyborg Anthropologist" got us started off right with a keynote Sunday about the recent history of man's merge with machine.