Public libraries are shoving books aside to create community-centered coworking spaces

library 2

Dozens of reading rooms have been reincarnated as de facto coworking spaces.

By Anita Hamilton: Jonathan Marino has just arrived at his tech startup in D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood at 9:45 on a Monday morning. Marino is a 30-year-old director of content for Map Story which aims to be the Wikipedia of interactive maps. He greets his two interns with a huge smile, joins them at an open table tucked inside a glass-walled pod, and fires up his laptop. Hunched over their computers, the group looks like any other early-stage startup, with one key distinction–their “office” is merely a meeting area inside Washington, D.C.’s main public library.

 

 

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Google and Facebook go beyond social

facebook_google

It’s important to start back in the fall of 2010 if you want to understand the strange but spectacularly profitable world of Google and Facebook today.  Facebook was a rising start four years ago. They had built the ultimate social walled garden — almost a separate alternative to the Internet at large.

 

 

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The latest crazy prediction for the future by MIT Media Lab founder

Nicholas Negroponte

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab.

In 1984, Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, delivered his first TED talk and, “with surprising accuracy,” made five predictions for the future. Of course, 30 years ago, naysayers argued sensory computing wasn’t the future; people would never use their fingers as some alternative stylus. (Video)

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15 ‘enchanted objects’ with extraordinary functions

ambient orb

David Rose with the Ambient Orb.

David Rose, an Inventor and M.I.T. Media Lab researcher, coined the term “enchanted objects” to describe ordinary objects with extraordinary functions. These objects are not only fun but also may hold the key to a better way for humans to use new technology — as opposed to what Rose considers a bleak future in which every tool will be crammed into a computer screen.

 

 

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America’s massive trucker shortage and why it’s only getting worse

trucker shortage

The biggest issue is a problem of supply and demand.

Drivers don’t like big rigs on the highways because of their intimidating size and slow speed. Semis are absolutely vital to moving goods around the country. But, the US is on the road to a major trucking crisis. A recent analysis from Business Insider finds that we aren’t producing nearly enough new drivers to fill all the needed seats. By 2022, the shortfall could reach 239,000 people.

 

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TrueNorth – A new computer chip that functions like the brain

truenorth

IBM’s new processor, TrueNorth.

Scientists have developed a new kind of computer chip that was inspired by the architecture of the brain.  The chip uses no more power than a hearing aid and may eventually excel at calculations that stump today’s supercomputers.

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Can the body be maintained indefinitely?

body is machine

The body is a machine.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey is cofounder and Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and to him the body is a machine. Just as a restored classic car can celebrate its hundredth birthday in peak condition, in the future, we’ll maintain our bodies’ cellular components to stave off the diseases of old age and live longer, healthier lives.

 

 

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Battery-free WiFi devices that run on radio waves

battery-free-devices

What if devices could pull enough power wirelessly from the air to run themselves and send signals?

Mobile devices have become radically smaller and more powerful in the past 10 year. The list of tech-related tasks that the mobile devices we all carry around has grown longer by the year. The next step in technology’s great disappearing act? Absorption into our clothes, body, and environment.

 

 

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Top 10 innovation predictions for the world in 2025

future predictions

What if these predictions were become realities in 10 years?

Foresight is the human capacity to think ahead, consider and respond to future eventualities. This is usually an unconscious individual thinking process. But in a fast changing environment it is essential for your organization once in a while to broaden it’s perspective, look ahead and consider new paths for the future.

 

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Top 3 reasons why 3D printing will change the world

3D printing

3D printing will change the world.

Orwell’s prophetic year of Big Brother, 1984,  saw the release of the Mac which broke the idea that centralized control could ever be what it was before. The year 1984 also saw the first workable prototype for a 3D printer. Built by Charles Hull, the technology was then known as stereolithography. We know it as 3D printing, and that’s a term that covers a variety of different processes which may revolutionize all stages of the global manufacturing and distributing process.

 

 

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