January-February 2011, Vol. 45, No. 1
Order a printed copy of the January-February 2011 issue
The World Is My School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning
By Maria H. Andersen
Future learning will become both more social and more personal, says an educational technology expert.
Tomorrow in Brief
- Can Handedness Be Altered?
- El Niño Events Gain Strength
- Stress and Cancer
- Clean-Energy Innovations
- Artificial Leaf Mimics Solar Cells
Book Reviews
Human Civilization Migrates Northward
A book review by Rick Docksai
In The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, geologist Laurence C. Smith notes world-changing population and economic shifts.
Books in Brief
- Bottled and Sold
- Climatopolis
- How to Catch a Robot Rat
- Outrageous Fortunes
- Packing for Mars
- Rethinking Risk
World Trends & Forecasts
As Tweeted: You Know You’re a Futurist If …
Recently on Twitter, a few of us were reflecting on what makes futurists special.
Pleasure, Beauty, and Wonder: Educating for the Knowledge Age
By John M. Eger
The future workforce will need to be more innovative, argues a communications and public policy scholar. While math and science are important, they need to be infused with the creative spark that comes from the arts.
The Future of Medicine: Are Custom-Printed Organs on the Horizon?
By Vladimir Mironov
Medical researchers are creating robots that can bioprint new tissue and organs directly into patients’ bodies while performing surgery—without assistance from doctors.
A Convenient Truth about Clean Energy
By Carl E. Schoder
The earth is awash in energy; we just need new infrastructure to tap it. A chemical engineer shows how we could break free of fossil fuels by deploying the power of ammonia and hydrogen.
Special Section: 70 Jobs for 2030
“Job creation” starts with innovative thinking, so we invited some of the best futurist minds to envision where the ground may be most fertile for future opportunities.
- Emerging Careers and How to Create Them By Cynthia G. Wagner
- A Clash of Ideas and Ideals on the Jobs Front By Patrick Tucker
- The Coming of the Terabyters: Lifelogging for a Living By Thomas Frey
- Careers for a More Personal Corporation By Jim Ware
- Unmanned Cargo Vehicle Operator: A Scenario By Karen W. Currie
- Managing Our Feelings By Joyce Gioia
- Careers Inspired by Nanotech Trends By Anne Gordon
- Online Community Organizer By Seth Godin
- Digital Identity Planner: A Scenario By Timothy Ferriss
- Fixing Our Machines and Ourselves By Charles Grantham
- Personal Care Coordinator By Alexandra Levit
- Future World Shapers By Alireza Hejazi
Future View: Future, Fantasy, And Positive Volition
By Matthew Colborn
When futurists choose to be optimistic, it is sometimes mistaken for mindless fantasy. But a psychologist argues that optimism is vital for effective futuring, because it allows us to face reality with the fortitude to make things better.
Future Scope
- Tipping Point in National Debt
- Who’s High Now?
- Men, Women, and Cognitive Impairment
- Reducing Military’s Resource Consumption
- WordBuzz: Halfalogue
World Trends & Forecasts
- Smart Banknotes
By Ignacio Mas - Saving Bangladesh
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Blogs
THE FUTURIST Magazine Releases Its Top 10 Forecasts for 2013 and Beyond (With Video)
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.
Why the Future Will Almost Certainly Be Better than the Present
Five hundred years ago there was no telephone. No telegraph, for that matter. There was only a postal system that took weeks to deliver a letter. Communication was only possible in any fluent manner between people living in the same neighborhood. And neighborhoods were smaller, too. There were no cars allowing us to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. So the world was a bunch of disjointed groups of individuals who evolved pretty much oblivious to what happened around them.
Headlines at 21st Century Tech for January 11, 2013
Welcome to our second weekly headlines for 2013. This week's stories include:
- A Science Rendezvous to Inspire the Next Generation
- Next Steps for the Mars One Project
- Feeding the Planet Would Be Easier if We Didn't Waste Half of What We Produce
Where is the future?
Like the road you can see ahead of you as you drive on a journey, I suggest the future is embedded in emerging, continuous space-time. Although you’re not there yet, you can see the road in front of you. In the rear-view mirror stretches the landscape of the past, the world you have been through and still remember.
Transparency 2013: Good and bad news about banking, guns, freedom and all that
“Bank secrecy is essentially eroding before our eyes,” says a recent NPR article. ”I think the combination of the fear factor that has kicked in for not only Americans with money offshore, countries that don’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue and the legislative weight of FATCA means that within three to five years it will be exceptionally difficult for any American to hide money in any financial institution.”
The Internet of Things and Smartphones are Breaking the Internet
I have written several articles on network communications on this blog site as well as on other sites, describing its e
BiFi, Biology, Engineering and Artifical Life
BiFi is to biology as WiFi is to computers. It's a technology being pioneered by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions, looking at bioengineering techniques for creating complex biological communities working together to accomplish specific tasks. In a sense every organ and every system of coordinated activity within our bodies runs as a BiFi network.