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.
10 Unanswerable Questions that Neither Science nor Religion can Answer
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.
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Kickstarter’s massive leap into forefront of indie innovation
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…
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Seven thought-provoking questions you will ask at the end of your life
A while ago, Marc Chernoff shared the wisdom his grandmother had left behind for him after she passed away. The twelve pieces of wisdom were in her old leather-bound journal and it was named “Inspiration Journal.” On her last entry she had written seven questions. She never wrote the answers to these questions but they are very thought provoking questions. Here Marc shares his thoughts on the questions and he hopes that what he shares will inspire everyone who reads this and that you will be able to answer each question one day with a sense of peace and fulfillment.
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Should We Revive Extinct Species?
Futurist Thomas Frey: Like many others, I’m a fan of TED Talks and a Feb 2013 talk by Stuart Brand titled “The dawn of de-extinction. Are you ready?” has caught much of the world off guard.
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Rich Burlew’s Comic Book Business Success Story
A remarkable Empire of One business
Rich Burlew created the first The Order of the Stick, a hilarious webcomic that celebrates and satirizes tabletop role-playing games and medieval fantasy, on September 29, 2003. The strip was originally produced to entertain people who came to his website for gaming articles, but it quickly became the most popular feature, leading Burlew to eventually abandon writing articles almost entirely.
The entire comic strip is drawn with simple stick characters, hence the name.
On September 30, 2005, The Order of the Stick began appearing in Dragon, the long-running official D&D magazine, and the strip became profitable enough for him to quit his job as a freelance graphic designer and concentrate on cartooning.
Rich also started self-publishing his comics in book form in 2005, but it became hard for him to keep all of the older books in stock. So in 2012 he decided to do a Kickstarter project with a goal of $57,750. Instead, he raised $1,254,120 from 14,952 backers…
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6 inventors who changed the world but got little credit for it
Just because you worked hard and your perseverance led you to create something that changed the world, it doesn’t mean that you’ll get fame, fortune, or the slightest bit of recognition out of it. Some inventors get so little credit that we completely forget about them. Here are six of them.
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The Billion Dollar Hero Battle
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…)
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Silicon Valley entrepreneurs announce Breakthrough Prize
Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner created the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.
Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, have jointly established the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science to reward research into curing diseases and extending human life.
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Happy Birthday! The futurist movement turns 104
The futurist … Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
Don’t forget to wish any futurists you see today a happy anniversary. February 20th is the movement’s birthday. On this date in 1909 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet, technophile, and promoter of the arts, had his The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism published on the front page of Le Figaro.
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‘Growing Jewelry’ – a wearable urban farm
“Growing Jewelry”
What would happen to our city gardens if space ever became scarce? Hafsteinn Juliusso, a jewelry designer, has shrunk these gardens and made them wearable. Juliusson’s line of “Growing Jewelry” holds active living plants.
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Researchers analyzing New York Times archives to predict the future
Researchers are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict the future.
Microsoft and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict future disease outbreaks, riots and deaths — and hopefully prevent them.
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