People laughed when ThyssenKrupp, a company synonymous with elevators, announced it was developing one that goes every which way. Who’d ever heard of such a thing? Everyone knows elevators go just two directions: Up and down. Some took to calling it the Wonkavator, after Willy Wonka’s wacky lift that goes sideways, slantways, and longways.
Continue reading… “The sideways elevator of the future is here, and it’s wild”
Even those of us fortunate enough to have good health insurance will often put off seeing a doctor when we probably should. Often it’s simply a matter of logistics. We feel like we can’t take the time off work, or arrange transportation, or get childcare to make the trip.
But what if the doctor just comes you? In a self-driving car.
Continue reading… “Self-driving doctor brings the doctor to you”
For expecting parents, 24 weeks is an important milestone. It’s a little more than halfway through pregnancy, and it’s at this age that the fetus has at least a fighting chance of surviving outside its mother’s body. The odds of survival aren’t great—only about half of babies birthed at this age survive—but it’s possible.
Continue reading… “Scientists built an external womb to help premature infants survive”
This past summer, a plane went into a stomach-churning ascent and plunge 30,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico. The goal was not thrill-seeking, but something more genuinely daring: for about 25 seconds at a time, the parabolic flight lifted the occupants into a state of simulated weightlessness, allowing a high-tech printer to spit out cardiac stem cells into a two-chambered, simplified structure of an infant’s heart.
Continue reading… “The factories of the future could float in space”
Some worry artificial intelligence will steal human jobs — but one startup is betting that its AI will actually help you get a job.
San Francisco-based Mya Systems has developed an AI recruiter that can evaluate resumes, schedule and conduct applicant screenings, and even congratulate you on your first day of work.
Continue reading… “Your next job interview could be with a recruiter bot”
It’s no secret that chatbots are growing in popularity. From Facebook’s ecommerce bots for consumers to a plethora of customer service tools that now rely on chatbots to interface with customers, it’s clear that consumer chatbots have hit mainstream. Even Apple is expanding its commitment to chat technology with the release of Business Chat at a recent WWDC, allowing consumers to interact with businesses through iMessage.
Continue reading… “Chatbots are losing steam, think instead about workbots”
Razer is taking the bold step of not just doubling, but outright tripling the number of screens on a laptop. This is Project Valerie, a super bizarre concept from a company known for making very nice, very expensive gaming hardware.
Continue reading… “Razer’s three-screen laptop is paradigm-shifting”
The initial construction of the massive airplane Paul Allen has been quietly building in the California desert is complete, and the vehicle, which would be the world’s largest airplane with a wingspan wider than Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose, was wheeled out of its hangar for the first time on Wednesday.
Called Stratolaunch, the plane has some impressive stats: a wingspan of 385 feet, or longer than a football field, a height of 50 feet. Unfueled, it weighs 500,000 pounds. But it can carry 250,000 pounds of fuel, and its total weight can reach as high as 1.3 million pounds.
Continue reading… “Paul Allen’s new mega-plane is the world’s largest”
The Kitty Hawk Flyer is a sort of a flying car except it’s not a car at all – it’s much more like a flying ATV, which is probably more legitimately all-terrain than most. Linguistics aside, it’s a very cool piece of tech that’s backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, and it’s already in the ‘working prototype’ phase of development.
Continue reading… “Introducing Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk Flyer”
There’s a revolution happening in biology, and its name is CRISPR.
CRISPR (pronounced “crisper”) is a powerful technique for editing DNA. It has received an enormous amount of attention in the scientific and popular press, largely based on the promise of what this powerful gene editing technology will someday do.
Continue reading… “We’re beginning to see the medical revolution CRISPR had promised”
Space. The final frontier, and quite possibly your family’s next March Break vacation.
Experts say 2018 will be the year space tourism takes off. But while great leaps are being made at what seems like warp speed, it’s a venture that’s still fraught with issues that go far beyond its out-of-this-world price tag.
Continue reading… “Space Race: Experts say 2018 is the year space tourism takes off”
Elon Musk’s new Boring Company tunnels look pretty, well, not boring.
The company on Friday published an animated concept video on YouTube that shows how tunnels underneath a city could work. In the video, a car drives onto a metal platform that then lowers itself underground. The platform, with the car on top of it, speeds along at 124 mph, while other platforms carrying cars do the same. When the car reaches its destination, the platform lifts it back to the earth’s surface.
Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s boring tunnels don’t look boring at all”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.