An electric car charging station.
Electric cars and hybrid cars have gone pretty mainstream. But is the charging infrastructure keeping pace? Especially since there are lots of proposals for how we could transition away from the gas station model.
Continue reading… “The rapid growth of electric car charging stations (Infographic)”
One World Trade Center
Architects will find out if the tallest building in America really is 1,776 feet tall, in a few weeks. One World Trade Center technically soars to that height, but about 408 feet of it isn’t building but “spire.” The arbiter of tall buildings, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, has yet to decide whether that’s going to count.
Continue reading… “How tall will physics allow us to build skyscrapers?”
Companies today are more excited than ever about the Internet of Things thanks to widespread Internet adoption and over 10 billion connected devices around the world. Nearly every business, including those from traditionally low-tech industries, wants to get on the cloud, track a group of devices, and gather data. The question is why would a company is connect a previously “dumb” product to the cloud. Or stated differently, if a company invests in making my toaster talk to my lawnmower, is that really a good business decision and why?
Continue reading… “Is connecting your product to the Internet of Things a good business decision?”
Wind power could generate as much as 18 percent of global electricity by 2050.
Wind energy only accounts for a small percentage of global electricity production even though we have seen more wind farms popping up over the last few years. Wind power generates only 2.6 percent of the world’s electricity, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, but that number is expected to grow significantly over the next few decades.
Continue reading… “Global wind power capacity expected to skyrocket”
Elon Musk and Daryl Oster, competing for what could become
the world’s largest infrastructure project
Futurist Thomas Frey: When Tesla Motors CEO, Elon Musk, mysteriously leaked that he was working on his Hyperloop Project, the combination of secrecy, cryptic details, and his own flair for the dramatic all contributed to the media frenzy that followed.
Some day in the near future, cars will drive themselves.
A study by the ENO center for transportation has been done to see what needs to be done to prepare for a nation where cars will be driving themselves sometime in the near future. (Videos)
Continue reading… “The benefits and barriers of self-driving cars”
High-frequency trading.
Futurist Brian David Johnson describes his job as a “futurehunter” and his fascination with both algorithmic trading and high-frequency trading (HFT) in this excerpt from Humanity in the Machine: What Comes after Greed?. Both methods use computer programs to automate and accelerate the execution of certain financial transactions. Yet heavy reliance on such technology in the finance world can be dangerous—the Flash Crash of 2010 cited by Johnson stands out as a prominent example.
Continue reading… “The dangers of stock trading with highly automated systems”
University of Washington researchers.
The first brain-to-brain communication occurred when a rat pressed a lever, anticipating the tasty reward it’d been trained to expect. An implant in the rat’s brain converted its neural activity into an electronic signal and beamed the impulse to the brain of the second rat, which leaped forward and pressed a lever in its own cage . But rat #2 had never been trained to press the lever. Its movement impulse came not from its own brain, but directly from the brain of rat #1 – despite the fact that the two were separated by thousands of miles.
Continue reading… “The future of brain-to-brain communication”
A bicyclist in Pescara, Italy.
Bicycle are outsold new-cars last year in every one of the European countries, except Belgium and Luxembourg. Car sales reached a low point earlier this year. Recent data shows car sales were recovering. The Millennial generation is more interested in bikes than in cars.
Continue reading… “Bike sales have outpaced car sales in almost every European country”
The number of mobile job seekers will climb to 50% by the end of 2015.
Simply Hired reports in a new survey on job search trends that the use of mobile devices for job seeking continues to increase. Simply Hired found that 30% of its job search traffic came from mobile devices. LinkedIn reported a similar trend in the third quarter of 2013, with mobile accounting for 38% of unique visitors.
Continue reading… “Mobile trends in job searching”
Libraries and librarians need to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.
Neil Gaiman gives The Reading Agency annual lecture on the future of reading and libraries. He explains why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens.
Continue reading… “Our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming: Neil Gaiman”
Vials of genetically engineered life-forms.
For Jack Newman, a scientist, creating a new life-form has become as simple as typing out a DNA sequence on his laptop. He clicks “send.” And a few yards away in the laboratory, robotic arms mix together some compounds to produce the desired cells.
Continue reading… “Companies rush to build ‘bio-factories’ for a wide range of products”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.