Patrick Tucker's blog

Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. The forecasts are meant as conversation starters, not absolute predictions about the future. We hope that this report--covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology--inspires you to tackle the challenges, and seize the opportunities, of the coming decade. Here are our top ten.

This infographic, provided by Cisco, shows just how quickly the Internet of things has grown since 1988, when Xerox PARC chief technologist Marc D. Weiser first conceived of ubiquitous computing. Weiser saw a future populated by smart objects, a web of sensors on everyday items better connecting us to our environment and our environment to the Internet. Today, Cisco says that more than 13 billion devices are net-connected and there will be 50 billion by 2020.

This is what the Internet of Things looks like today.

What is a futurist? Every self-described futurist you ask will likely give you a different answer. A more interesting question is what do these people say about the future? Brian Bethune from Maclean's magazine recently put that query to a grab bag of inventors, technologists, geneticists, business consultants, and writers he encountered at WorldFuture 2012, the Society's recently concluded conference in Toronto, Canada.

Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. The forecasts are meant as conversation starters, not absolute predictions about the future. We hope that this report--covering developments in business and economics, demography, energy, the environment, health and medicine, resources, society and values, and technology--inspires you to tackle the challenges, and seize the opportunities, of the coming decade. Here are our top ten.

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.

Print, apparently, is not only still alive but even more animated than we thought. A group of researchers have demonstrated a "specular microgeometic" paper that makes printed images respond to light source changes as though they were 3-D objects. The effect is very magic mirror.

Oli Archibald, ‏@FutureSelfOli, sent this interesting infographic my way on bioprinting human beings. Thought I would share. What's your take?

Okay. You got me. I can’t really tell you everything you need to know about big data. The one thing I discovered last week – as I joined more than 2,500 data junkies from around the world for the O’Reilly Strata conference in rainy Santa Clara California—is that nobody can, not Google, not Intel, not even IBM.

In the new book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler offer a vision of the future that’s truly awesome in both the most traditional and modern understandings of the word; it’s as big as it is awe-inspiring.

The international Consumer Electronics Show is just winding down in Las Vegas and I wanted to share my picks for the most innovative, impressive, best-designed, or most future relevant of the gadgets that I saw. More than 20,000 products were scheduled to debut at the show this week. Not all of them will be making it into the future. Here are a few that might be around in 2030.