Disposable housing will blindside the real estate industry
in virtually every country on earth
Futurist Thomas Frey: When it comes to doing something first, and winning the technology race, there are typically no official forms to fill out, no rulebooks, no judges, and certainly no deadlines.
Popular culture tends to turn to the fantastical, providing an escape from the harsh realities of life during times of economic and political crisis. However, what is usually represented as Utopian in mainstream science fiction is often culturally European with a story that frequently revolves around a white male character. Even when depicting “multiracial” future societies, culturally the tropes of that imagined culture are regularly not representative of the races seen. If we accept that all humanity will be present in the future, why is it that non-European cultures seem to disappear once we get through the Earth’s atmosphere?
Boston Dynamics, a Google-owned robotics company, makes a number of stunning robots, perhaps most notably its Atlas humanoid and the “Big Dog” cargo-carrying robot. (Video)
No Business as usual with libraries, taking control of your destiny by a better understanding of the future and just in case vs. just in time scenarios. Erik Boekesteijn of This Week in Libraries interviews Futurist Thomas Frey on the future of libraries. (Video)
Older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.
Debbie Rohr, her husband, and twin teenage sons live in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas. The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It’s a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.
Palcohol is essentially Capri Suns for adults. A large, booze-filled pouch designed to turn every trip to Chuck E. Cheese into a party. This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky, wacky idea. This stuff has been approved!
Americans surveyed believe that the next fifty years we’ll see the custom creation of transplantable organs, and computer-developed art, music and novels rivaling human talent.
Over the past 50 years, Americans have witnessed the first man walk on the moon, the birth of the Internet and cellphones, large and small and large again. What will the future of technology and science hold in the next 50 years?
The Mayo Clinic is offering unlimited access to the famed hospital’s nurses through a smartphone app for about $50 a month. The Mayo Clinic partnered with Better, a California-based health technology startup, to launch the new subscription-based app. The app is not covered by insurance but offers real-time, 24/7 health care assistance. Think of it as a mobile WebMD. (Video)
Old-fashioned casts for broken bones can smell and cause itching. But 3D printed casts can take care of those issues. Deniz Karasahin has designed the next step: a custom cast with an ultrasound device to speed up bone healing.
Criminals use drones and infrared cameras to find cannabis farms.
Some criminals in the U.K. are borrowing a tactic from the police, they are using drones equipped with infrared cameras to steal or extort from marijuana grow operations.
Governor Perry wants public universities to craft four-year degrees costing no more than $10,000 in tuition, fees, and books.
Bill Ayers did not have in mind any endeavors of conservative Texas governor Rick Perry when he observed that “every revolution is impossible until it happens, and then, looking backwards, every revolution appears inevitable.” But Perry may have launched a revolution of his own with his 2011 state of the state address. Perry challenged Texas’s public universities to craft four-year degrees costing no more than $10,000 in tuition, fees, and books, and to achieve the necessary cost reductions by teaching students online and awarding degrees based on competency.
According to futurist Thomas Frey, sixty percent of the best jobs in the next 10 years haven’t been invented yet. This is great news because lots of good, new jobs will be needed in order for Africa to reverse staggering youth unemployment rates.