Our society has made incredible advancements in technology, resulting in pivotal discoveries and accomplishments. We are lucky to be living in a time when science and innovation are proceeding at an increasingly rapid pace. The things we see as commonplace today were simply science-fiction just 10-20 years ago. Looking to the next decade, here are some marvelous technological advancements we can expect.
Continue reading… “Futuristic advancements we can expect within the next decade”
Our society has made incredible advancements in technology, resulting in pivotal discoveries and accomplishments. We are lucky to be living in a time when science and innovation are proceeding at an increasingly rapid pace. The things we see as commonplace today were simply science-fiction just 10-20 years ago. Looking to the next decade, here are some marvelous technological advancements we can expect.
Continue reading… “Futuristic advancements we can expect within the next decade”
The “Father of Artificial Intelligence” Says Singularity Is 30 Years Away
All evidence points to the fact that the singularity is coming (regardless of which futurist you believe).
You’ve probably been told that the singularity is coming. It is that long-awaited point in time — likely, a point in our very near future — when advances in artificial intelligence lead to the creation of a machine (a technological form of life?) smarter than humans.
If Ray Kurzweil is to be believed, the singularity will happen in 2045. If we throw our hats in with Louis Rosenberg, then the day will be arriving a little sooner, likely sometime in 2030. MIT’s Patrick Winston would have you believe that it will likely be a little closer to Kurzweil’s prediction, though he puts the date at 2040, specifically.
Continue reading… ““Father of Artificial Intelligence” Predicts Singularity is 30 Years Away”
Imagine making fuel, plastics, and concrete out of “thin air.” That’s the promise of Direct Air Capture (DAC), a technology that fundamentally disrupts our contemporary oil economy.
Mimicking what already occurs in nature, DAC essentially involves industrial photosynthesis, harnessing the power of the sun to draw carbon directly out of the atmosphere.
This captured carbon can then be turned into numerous consumer goods, spanning fuels, plastics, aggregates and concrete (as I write this blog, I’m even wearing shoes 3D-printed from carbon).
A vital component of every life form on Earth, carbon stands at the core of our manufacturing, energy, transportation, among the world’s highest-valued industries.
And in the coming 10 years, sourcing carbon out of the air will become more cost-effective than carbon sourced from the ground (oil).
Continue reading… “Building from thin air & the carbon revolution”
Edward S. Cornish, journalist and futurist association founder, dies at 91
Edward Seymour Cornish, founder and first president of the World Future Society and editor of its magazine, The Futurist, died August 14, 2019. He was 91. A longtime Maryland resident (Bethesda and Rockville), Cornish had been living at Olney Assisted Living in Olney, Md., during his battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Cornish was born in New York City August 31, 1927, the son of George Anthony Cornish, an editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and Elizabeth Furniss (McLeod) Cornish. He attended New York schools and Harvard College, where he majored in social psychology. Following his graduation in 1950, he joined the staff of the Evening Star newspaper in Washington, D.C., as a copy boy, later becoming a dictationist and part-time reporter.
Continue reading… “The remarkable legacy of Edward Cornish, founder of the World Future Society”
Futurist Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute told InfoAg attendees that agriculture is “soon to become the coolest profession on Earth.”
ST. LOUIS — Futurist Thomas Frey says we’re entering a period of unprecedented opportunity.
Why?
“Because humanity is going to change more in the next 20 years than in all history,” he told the audience at InfoAg, an agriculture technology conference in St. Louis.
Certainly, 2019 is a down economic year for agriculture, but the InfoAg organizers wanted to offer a glimpse into brighter future for the industry. That’s why they invited Frey of the DaVinci Institute to the conference.
“We want you to sit back, think about the future and maybe think about things a little bit differently than you have before — think about a brighter future and maybe some interesting things you haven’t thought of before, said Paul Schrimpf, PrecisionAg editor.
Continue reading… “Brighter future for ag: Vertical underground farms, driverless tractors”
Convergence is accelerating disruption… everywhere!
Exponential technologies are colliding into each other, reinventing products, services and industries.
In this third installment of our Convergence Catalyzer series, I’ll be synthesizing key insights from my annual entrepreneurs’ mastermind event, Abundance 360, which takes place every January in Beverly Hills. This five-blog series looks at 3D Printing, Artificial Intelligence, VR/AR, Energy & Transportation, and Blockchain.
Today, let’s dive into Virtual and Augmented Reality…
Continue reading… “Top 5 Predictions for VR/AR Breakthroughs”
A vehicle and person recognition system for use by law enforcement is demonstrated at last year’s GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., which highlights new uses for artificial intelligence and deep learning.
Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will.
Digital life is augmenting human capacities and disrupting eons-old human activities. Code-driven systems have spread to more than half of the world’s inhabitants in ambient information and connectivity, offering previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are today?
Some 979 technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists answered this question in a canvassing of experts conducted in the summer of 2018.
Continue reading… “Artificial Intelligence and the future of humans”
Online learning taught by robots could be widespread by 2030. Thirty years ago, it was a big deal when schools got their first computers. Today, it’s a big deal when students get their own laptops.
According to futurist Thomas Frey, in 14 years it’ll be a big deal when students learn from robot teachers over the internet.
It’s not just because the technology will be that sophisticated, Frey says, but because the company responsible for it will be the largest of its kind.
“I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.
Continue reading… “Awaiting the Advent of a Sleeping Giant in Edtech”
We predicted cell phones, but not women in the workplace
In early 1999, during the halftime of a University of Washington basketball game, a time capsule from 1927 was opened. Among the contents of this portal to the past were some yellowing newspapers, a Mercury dime, a student handbook, and a building permit. The crowd promptly erupted into boos. One student declared the items “dumb.”
Such disappointment in time capsules seems to run endemic, suggests William E. Jarvis in his book Time Capsules: A Cultural History. A headline from The Onion, he notes, sums it up: “Newly unearthed time capsule just full of useless old crap.” Time capsules, after all, exude a kind of pathos: They show us that the future was not quite as advanced as we thought it would be, nor did it come as quickly. The past, meanwhile, turns out to not be as radically distinct as we thought.
In his book Predicting the Future, Nicholas Rescher writes that “we incline to view the future through a telescope, as it were, thereby magnifying and bringing nearer what we can manage to see.” So too do we view the past through the other end of the telescope, making things look farther away than they actually were, or losing sight of some things altogether.
Continue reading… “Why Futurism has a cultural blind spot”
Futurist to GLI: Millions of new industries will spin from technology
In the next decade or two, Thomas Frey predicts we’ll build our houses from 3D printers, shop at mobile convenient stores brought to our doorsteps and wear “smart” clothes that track our movements and guide us through the day.
Frey is a futurist who founded the Colorado-based DaVinci Institute. He’s also a sought-after speaker on the topic of how technological innovation will transform our lives.
He told 1,000 business people and community leaders gathered Monday night for Greater Louisville Inc.’s annual meeting at the Kentucky International Convention Center that while there are dire predictions of massive job losses from advances in artificial intelligence and automation, thousands of new industries will sprout from what’s right on the horizon.
Continue reading… “Futurist to GLI: Millions of new industries will spin from technology”
His forecasts turned out to be eerily prescient.
In 1999, Bill Gates wrote a book titled Business @ the Speed of Thought.
In the book, Gates made 15 bold predictions that at the time might have sounded outrageous.
But as Markus Kirjonen, a business student, once noted on his blog, Gates’ forecasts turned out to be eerily prescient.
Here are the 15 predictions Gates made just about 20 years ago — and how close they’ve come to being true.
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.