At Cape Fear Community College’s Humanities and Fine Arts Center last week, futurist Thomas Frey told the audience of library supporters, “A library is a library … until it isn’t.”
Futurist Thomas Frey predicts by 2030 people will rely on billions of drones and sensors to live
Thomas Frey, a futurist from the DaVinci Institute in the United States predicts that by 2030 people will rely on billions of drones and sensors to live.
Reality of 2015 more radically altered than portrayed in Back to the Future
Marty McFly and “Doc” Brown encountered a brave new world of garbage-fueled flying cars, self-tying shoes and robot waiters when they burst into 2015 in a time machine, straight from the year 1985.
Continue reading… “Reality of 2015 more radically altered than portrayed in Back to the Future”
The future of recruiting, with top futurist Thomas Frey
The DaVinci Institute’s senior futurist and executive director, Thomas Frey, shares a glimpse at how current workplace trends – from freelancing to coworking – are shaping the future of recruitment.
Continue reading… “The future of recruiting, with top futurist Thomas Frey”
Toyota plans to have self-driving cars on the road by 2020
Japanese car maker Toyota announced this month that it has planned to have self-driving cars commercially available by 2020 — the same year Nissan, General Motors and Google plan to have autonomous vehicles on the road.
Continue reading… “Toyota plans to have self-driving cars on the road by 2020”
Five-Part Sharing-Economy Solution to the Refugee Crisis
Futurist Thomas Frey: A few weeks ago I was asked to appear on CCTV, the Chinese-American television channel for an interview about the topic of border walls.
With the crisis in Syria deepening, affecting bordering countries and virtually all of the European Union, the show’s moderator asked me a series of tough questions about immigration trends and whether border walls, like the one proposed in Hungary, would become a growing trend.
In retrospect, the thoughts I conveyed on-air to this complex situation were not as crystallized as they could have been, forcing me to rethink my responses.
Continue reading… “Five-Part Sharing-Economy Solution to the Refugee Crisis”
The Perfection Quandary
Futurist Thomas Frey: I often wake up in the middle of the night with a big idea, something I’ve dubbed the grand epiphany. But as it turns out, very few actually fit into the “grand” category.
Whenever they do, big ideas carries with them a heavy responsibility, the responsibility of either moving them forward or allowing them to die in the silent echo chambers of our own grey matter.
For this reason, I’ve often equated my eureka moments to that of being tortured by my own ideas. Yes, grand ideas are a wonderful playground where you can dream about starting a new company, solving some of the world’s biggest problems, and constructing visions of wealth and influence, all in the time it takes most people to get ready for work.
Continue reading… “The Perfection Quandary”
The Future of the Darknet: 9 Critically Important Predictions
Futurist Thomas Frey: Have you ever run across a situation so frustrating that you wished you could hire a “fixer?”
Maybe it has to do with gangs moving into your neighborhood, or the local slumlord not willing to repair a dangerous situation, or a local politician taking bribes, or finding out that your husband is also married to someone else in another state.
My guess is that we’ve all run into problems that are outside of our ability to deal with and we need help. But the help we need is not the normal kind. We don’t have millions to throw at lawyers and we don’t have the time, patience, or resources to go though official channels. Continue reading… “The Future of the Darknet: 9 Critically Important Predictions”
The Day the Banking Industry Died
Futurist Thomas Frey: It was rather anticlimactic when it finally happened, but the front door simply failed to open.
Continue reading… “The Day the Banking Industry Died”
Our Emerging Superhero Culture
Futurist Thomas Frey: When my oldest son Darby was 8 years old, he looked at his 3-year old sister, Shandra, and pointedly said, “She’s worthless! She couldn’t save anyone!”
Continue reading… “Our Emerging Superhero Culture”
Teaching Robots to Fight Wars
Futurist Thomas Frey: A robot does not kill someone out of fear, anger, or desperation. They kill because someone told them to do it. At least that the way it works with our current generation of robots. What comes next may be a different story.
Normally, when we think about war, it has to do with countries using their armies to fight other countries, or in the case of a civil war, countries torn apart by internal rival factions.
But that line of thinking is far too narrow for the conflicts in our future as our choice of weaponry and choice of battlefront continues to expand.
From my perspective, the traditional country vs. country war tends to be far more about political theater, a theater that plays out on the world stage in full view of the public, than the subversive battles being fought over countless levels of minutia in the background.
Continue reading… “Teaching Robots to Fight Wars”
Future of the Internet – 8 Expanding Dimensions
Futurist Thomas Frey: In March of 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first online message that would eventually lead to the World Wide Web, it was similar to the first car leaving an inventor’s workshop.
The highway system for cars started on horse and buggy trails and the Internet was born on switching networks designed for telephones. With roads turning into sophisticated highways and phone lines morphing into fiber and wireless networks, we begin to get a sense as to where we’ve come from.
Continue reading… “Future of the Internet – 8 Expanding Dimensions”
