Legally blind since age 18, my father missed out on the first digital revolution.
“Is it ‘Electra?’” my father asks, leaning in close to the Amazon Echo my mother has just installed. Leaning in close is his trademark maneuver: Dad has been legally blind since age 18, the result of a horrible car crash in 1954. He has lived, mostly successfully, with limited vision for the 64 years since.
How developers are humanizing their virtual personal assistants.
The virtual personal assistant is romanticized in utopian portrayals of the future from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It’s the cultured, disembodied voice at humanity’s beck and call, eager and willing to do any number of menial tasks.
If the move to make it legal succeeds, entire industries could be revolutionized.
Today, the U.S. is the world’s largest consumer of hemp products. But because of the federal prohibition imposed on cannabis and hemp, the U.S. is importing an estimated $100 million of hemp products each year.
Continue reading… “Hemp is the multibillion-dollar cannabis opportunity few have heard about”
The shipping industry sets sail toward a carbon-free future.
Cargo-shipping regulators have struck a historic deal to set their dirty fuel-burning industry on a low-carbon course.
On Friday, the International Maritime Organization agreed for the first time to limit greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping. The nonbinding deal marks a critical shift for the sector—which, until last week, was the only major industry without a comprehensive climate plan.
Continue reading… “One of the world’s filthiest industries just agreed to clean up its act”
If you live in a US city, car-sharing services like Lyft and Uber might seem omnipresent. However, the ride-sharing economy still has a ways to go, at least according to consumer sentiment.
Children walking to school wearing smog pollution masks in Britain. Residents in many developing countries are exposed to toxic air both outdoors and inside their homes.
More than 95% of the world’s population breathe unsafe air and the burden is falling hardest on the poorest communities, with the gap between the most polluted and least polluted countries rising rapidly, a comprehensive study of global air pollution has found.
Continue reading… “More than 95% of world’s population breathe dangerous air, major study finds”
Basic income will be widespread by the 2030s, according to Google futurist and director of engineering Ray Kurzweil.
Kurzweil is known for making seemingly wild predictions. In 2016, he predicted that by 2029, medical technology will add an extra year to human life expectancies on an annual basis.
A new manufacturing process produces strips of graphene, at large scale, for use in membrane technologies and other applications.
MIT engineers have developed a continuous manufacturing process that produces long strips of high-quality graphene.
The team’s results are the first demonstration of an industrial, scalable method for manufacturing high-quality graphene that is tailored for use in membranes that filter a variety of molecules, including salts, larger ions, proteins, or nanoparticles. Such membranes should be useful for desalination, biological separation, and other applications.
The most common types of 3D printing involve either extruding melted plastic or using a laser to solidify tiny particles, layer by layer, to slowly build up a solid object. But researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a way to radically change that process by 3D printing liquids inside other liquids—and it could mean major advancements in gadget construction.
Continue reading… “A breakthrough in 3D printing liquids could lead to squishy, flexible gadgets”
The Flintstones, a cartoon about life in the Stone Age, has just surpassed The Jetsons, a cartoon about life in the distant future, when it comes to technological innovation. Researchers have successfully trained artificial intelligence to generate new clips of the prehistoric animated series based on nothing but random text descriptions of what’s happening in a scene.
Continue reading… “This AI can automatically animate new Flintstones cartoons”
Tesla is shaking up logistics world with its semiautonomous truck.
Thanks in part to Tesla, the logistics industry is on the road to a transportation transformation.
In November 2017, Tesla rolled out the heavy-duty Semi, an electric-powered, semiautonomous truck that’s already been pre-ordered by the likes of DHL, Anheuser-Busch, J.B. Hunt and Walmart. If all goes as planned, those companies will be among the first to transport goods aboard these sleek, modern vehicles in the not-too-distant future.
Continue reading… “Tesla’s new Semi could change shipping as we know it”
Roads aren’t just for walking or driving anymore. Solar road or pathway projects around the world are showing that streets can both provide firm footing and generate clean energy. Inhabitat rounded up six projects in places as diverse as China and rural Georgia to highlight potentially game-changing technologies in the solar road sphere.
Solar Roadways use modular solar panels covered in tempered glass
Continue reading… “6 solar roads shaking up infrastructure around the world”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.