The concept plane designed by Airbus.
Although, it may not seem like the best way to fly, an aircraft with a lace-like structure is one of a range of radical ideas about how we may travel in the future.
Continue reading… “Visions of the future of flying at the TEDGlobal conference”
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/54938027[/vimeo]
Generally, you go to a library to read book, it’s usually not where you go to write a book. This is an old assumption that Librii — a concept for a community-based, digitally-enhanced series of libraries in the developing world — would like to flip on its head. TED speaker Jane McGonigal has given this ambitious project a big thumbs up.
Continue reading… “Libri – a library revolution”
Traffic can be a huge burden on economic development, and just overall quality of life.
Sometimes when entrepreneurs are just fed up with something that is when they come up with the most innovative ideas. Their ability to make people’s lives just a little easier, whether through a solution to a dangerous social problem or an easy tool that helps people shop from their home, entrepreneurs can fill in gaps across sectors.
Continue reading… “How entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative ideas to tackle traffic”
“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it” – Albert Einstein
Futurist Thomas Frey: As a futurist, I’ve always been interested in our relationship with the future. But lately I’ve become obsessed with understanding more about the dividing line between the present and the future.
Continue reading… “Piercing the Field of Knowability”
Futurist Thomas Frey: A couple years ago I was on a weekend outing in Vail, Colorado and ended up attending a kayaking tournament taking place on the Gore Creek in the heart of town.
Futurist Thomas Frey: A few years ago I was taking a tour of a dome shaped house, and the architect explained to me that domes are an optical illusion. Whenever someone enters a room, their eyes inadvertently glance up at the corners of the room to give them the contextual dimensions of the space they’re in.
Continue reading… “10 Unanswerable Questions that Neither Science nor Religion can Answer”
Like YouTube, Facebook, or blogging platforms, it’s almost hard to believe there was an Internet without Kickstarter, which may be the greatest testament to its success. In 2009, the site generated about $23 million for its projects–an impressive figure by all accounts–but in 2012, Kickstarter pulled in roughly 10 times that, leapfrogging the grant budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. You can find all those facts and many more in the following masterful infographic (broken apart here) created for Fast Company by Catalogtree and reported by Skylar Bergl, Jeffrey Cattel, and Lindsey Kratochwill…
Continue reading… “Kickstarter’s massive leap into forefront of indie innovation”
Recently, someone in the office came across the home that inspired Tony Stark’s house in the Iron Man movies (it’s real, but not quite as extravagantly located). Instead of talking about that actual home, we launched into a debate about Stark’s fictional palace and the many, many expensive things he’d keep inside. Debating his home lead us to another fictional character with billions of dollars and penchant for fighting crime: Batman.
It’s a little outside of what we normally post here, but come on, who hasn’t wondered this? After you review all the financials, it comes out that it’s cheaper to be Batman. He’s a bit more frugal, and seems to take better care of his stuff. He also doesn’t require the power of flight. Tony Stark is a little more cavalier with his equipment, but perhaps he recycles all those suits he trashes?
(See the infographic after the jump…)
Continue reading… “The Billion Dollar Hero Battle”
Bitcoins are completely digital, so you can’t spend actual ones like these (non-digital ones) at a digital casino.
As various tech companies report their fourth-quarter 2012 earnings numbers this week, so are two gray-market, Bitcoin-based casinos—and one is turning profits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars after only six months of being in business
Recently, both SatoshiDice and bitZino released their financials. If these self-reported earnings are to be trusted (and the companies say they are, given that a Bitcoin block chain can be read by anyone), then running a Bitcoin-based casino yields a tidy profit.
“These tiny startups are hitting some major online casino pain points, they’re crushing it on those fronts and as an entrepreneur, I think that’s rad—they are leveraging a disruptive technology to try and kick a large-scale industry in the balls,” said Peter Vessenes, the CEO of CoinLab, a Bitcoin-based business, which got $500,000 of venture capital last year.
Continue reading… “Bitcoin-based casino rakes in more than $500,000 profit in six months”
Nicknamed “Blade Runner,” South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius competed in the Olympic Games in 2012.
Just how futuristic did things become in 2012? at the Olympic Games we watched a cyborg compete. We marveled at the news that NASA was actually working on a faster-than-light warp drive. 2012 also featured the planet’s first superstorm, the development of an artificial retina — and primates who had their intelligence enhanced with a chip. Here are 16 predictions that came true in 2012.
Futurist Thomas Frey: How many extra shavers, bars of soap, or cans of soup do you currently have on your shelves at home? How much money do you currently have tied up in “inventory” of typical household items? What if you could get by without any?
Continue reading… “Moving from Just-in-Case to Just-in-Time Living”
Futurist Thomas Frey: When you buy a stock, you place a bet on how that stock will perform in the future. In a perfect world, where market insiders and manipulators are removed from the equation, the market is a terrific tool for determining the true value of companies being invested in.
Continue reading… “Will Big Data Destroy the Stock Market?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.