Sci/Tech

Here are some recent future-related titles from the Center for Strategic International Studies, Yale, Georgetown Press and some other organizations that produce exceptional material for the futurist who insists on the best possible material. Happy reading.

I’m back from the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

A large, diverse audience packed Washington, D.C.’s Sidney Harman Hall this past Friday for the independently organized TED event TEDx MidAtlantic. “TED” stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and over the decades, that focus has broadened to include pretty much every imaginable field.

Drought-resistant agriculture, medical scanning machines that diagnose patients with human-like expertise, microscopic factories that construct products nanometer by nanometer—these and other innovations will markedly raise the quality of human life in the next two decades, according to the three authors of 2030: Technology That Will Change the World.

I just returned from the annual American Magazine Conference, or AMC, this year in Chicago, where I got a front row view of the future of my industry. In one presentation after the next, the heads of such giants as Hearst, Condé Nast, and Time (along with Oprah Winfrey) reassured one another that the future was increasingly bright.

Innovative new technologies will transform the home by creating what will approximate an intelligent organism, a living, breathing life form. Not only will the smart home become a key interface for electric power, there will be more sophisticated monitors and controls for water, sewer, trash, air, entertainment, work, security, transportation, and more.