Futurist Thomas Frey: What does it mean to “own” something?
I’m sure there are legal definitions, but most of us believe that once we purchase an item, we own it. Our relationship with that object shifts from ogler to owner in the blink of a cash register transaction.
Continue reading… “The End of Theft”
Learn-to-code programs bent on teaching anyone, even children, programming skills are on the upswing.
Meaningful education was all about learning your ABCs in the 20th Century. Today, it’s centered on Alphas, Betas and C++. Programming skills are becoming ever more important, quickly turning into the core competency for all kinds of 21st Century workers.
Continue reading… “Programming is the core skill of the 21st Century”
We are at the point right now where faster-than-light travel is still theoretical, but possible.
Currently, NASA is working on the first practical field test toward the possibility of faster than light travel.Traveling faster than light has always been attributed to science fiction, but that all changed when Harold White and his team at NASA started to work on and tweak the Alcubierre Drive.
Continue reading… “NASA working on faster than the speed of light travel”
Wikipedia Nearby
Wikipedia, the encyclopedia-of-everything, has launched a new Nearby page for the web and mobile devices that shows information about locales that are close to you.
Continue reading… “Wikipedia launches Nearby feature for mobile & web to discover places around you”
The world is speeding up.
Grant McCracken, a research affiliate at MIT and the author of Chief Culture Officer was recently asked by a client to comment crisply on the future. He came up with these observations.
Continue reading… “Grant McCracken says the corporation is at odds with the future”
iTunes
Asymco analyst Horace Dediu has a very smart point regarding the real impact of shifting media consumption patterns on legacy gatekeepers.He estimates that iTunes’ average revenue per user (ARPU) has fallen from over $100 in the fourth quarter of 2007 to about $39 by the fourth quarter of 2012. Over that same time, the number of total iTunes accounts has roughly doubled, from around 250 million to roughly 500 million.
Continue reading… “Emerging trends inside iTunes”
Women who regularly consumed probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function.
Researchers from UCLA now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. They found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task, in an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women.
Continue reading… “Probiotics found in yogurt affects brain function”
Kickstarter founders Charles Adler, Perry Chen, and Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, has hit a major milestone. It finally passed over 100,000 campaigns, according to statistics released by the company. In the three years since it launched, Kickstarter has made otherwise nontraditional crowdfunding a legitimate form of project financing.
Continue reading… “Kickstarter hits 100,000 funded projects, $631 million in total pledges”
“The future of learning is blended learning for the majority of students.”
Will brick-and-mortar schools as we know them be on their way out? It’s easy to think they will when you hear disruptive economics guru Clayton Christensen’s prediction that by 2019 half of all K-12 classes will be taught online.
Continue reading… “Clay Christensen looks at how online learning will shape the future of education”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVyLGQUmXcg[/youtube]
Homemade bullets are now part of the growing arsenal of 3D printed weapons. A Tennessee man recently posted a YouTube video demonstrating what kind of damage can be done (hint: a lot) by the plastic shell, created by 3-D-printing enthusiast Tony Griffy, as highlighted by the Daily Dot.
Continue reading… “World’s first 3D printed bullets fired in YouTube test”
Graffiti is reported to cost Deutsche Bahn about $10m a year.
The Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway company, plans to test small drones to try to reduce the amount of graffiti being sprayed on its property.
Continue reading… “Germany’s national railway to test anti-graffiti drones”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZAR7hbcBsA[/youtube]
When a bridge falls in America, like this one near Seattle last week, infrastructure spending has a way of transforming into a national obsession. Fortunately, falling bridges in America are still a rarity. But, infrastructure spending is being squeezed at the very moment that infrastructure spending is a historic bargain for the federal government.
Continue reading… “Falling bridges and the decline of U.S. infrastructure spending”