Futurist Thomas Frey: In 1997 Reed Hasting returned his copy of “Apollo 13” to the video store and was hit with a late fee so big that he was embarrassed to tell his wife about it. Out of this moment of humiliation the idea for Netflix was born, a business that would eventually take down the entire video rental industry, and its excessive fee-charging practices in the process.
Continue reading… “The Disruptive Underground Vs. the Banking Industry”
Augmented reality will completely change retail.
What is the future of retail? In the next couple of years, customers will be able to try on clothes and products at home with no shipping required. Technology will allow shoppers to virtually wear garments — smelling, hearing and feeling the fabric as if it were real.
Continue reading… “Augmented reality is the future of retail”
Washington State University Professor Grant Norton
Most batteries today are lithium ion batteries, and employ carbon as the anode. Other materials perform much better than carbon, and could substantially increase battery capacity. Tin anodes could potentially triple energy density, and silicon anodes might be able to hold 9 times as much charge as carbon. Such advances could lead to tablet computers and laptops that run for days before battery depletion, and to miniature, battery powered UAVs able to remain aloft for up to an hour.
Futurist Thomas Frey: Every time I drive to the office there are 11 separate stoplights along my route. Based on some cosmic luck-of-the-draw, two thirds of the stoplights will either be red or green, and the time it takes me will vary from 12 to 22 minutes.
Continue reading… “The Curse of Infrastructure”
Tensator Virtual Assistant at Dulles Airport
What comes to mind when you thing of the “display of the future”? Is it the hyper-neon displays of Blade Runner or the holograms from Star Wars? The world of digital display always seems to wiggle its way into the bleeding-edge technology of science fiction, but it’s not unwarranted.(Videos)
Continue reading… “The future of digital display”
Prosthetics of the future may draw their power from juices in the brain.
These days, the most advanced robotic prosthetics take their commands from the brain. And pretty soon, they may be drawing their power from juices in the brain. Cerebrospinal fluid, that is. Electrical engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a novel platinum-coated fuel cell that runs off the glucose found in bodily fluids. Their specific aim is to implant the fuel cells in liquid pockets of the brain and use them to run low powered components in a neural prosthetic. They described a prototype this week in the journal PLoS One.
Continue reading… “Prosthetics of the future will be powered by bodily fluids”
Geopark: Stavanger, Norway
When an entire school building is covered with astroturf it is a lot more fun. Or when an abandoned oil rig is turned into a playground. Architects and educators are finding new ways to engage kids in learning, and the results are out of this world. (Pics)
Continue reading… “8 amazing schools, playgrounds and libraries of the future”
Feature phones are not the future. Of course that verges on tautology; of course everyone will have a smartphone, until everyone has something smaller and better and even more integrated into the fabric of our lives, like Google Glasses or cybernetic jawbone/retinal implants or whatever Charles Stross dreams up next. But when, exactly?
Continue reading… “Most Africans will have smartphones within 5 years”
Futurist Thomas Frey: On May 24th, Gary Connery, a 42 year old stuntman from Oxfordshire, England jumped from a helicopter hovering over one mile in the air over southern England, and glided to the earth using a specially designed wing suit. His runway was comprised of a cobbled-up crash-pad fabricated from 18,000 cardboard boxes to soften the impact.
Continue reading… “56 Future Accomplishments: Waiting for Someone to go First”
The electric light bulb was a failure.
In the early 1800’s, the British chemist Humphry Davy invented the light bulb but it was a failure. The light bulb spent almost 80 years being passed from one researcher to another. Finally, in 1879, Thomas Edison figured out to to make a light bulb that people would buy. But the technology wasn’t an immediate success. Another 40 years later the electric utilities were stable and profitable businesses. The light bulb only happened because the utilities created other reasons to use electricity. They found a lot of uses for electric motors and the electric toaster and electric curling iron were invented. They also built Coney Island. And they installed electric streetcars lines in towns. All of these other gadgets gave us the light bulb.
Continue reading… “32 technological innovations that will change your tomorrow”
Futurist Thomas Frey: In December 2006, Britain made its final payment of $84 million on a $4.34 billion loan from the U.S. that was made all the way back in 1945. Germany wasn’t the only country to go bankrupt after WWII. This money allowed Britain to stave off its total collapse after devoting almost all its resources to the war for over half a decade.
Continue reading… “When Countries Go Bankrupt”
By 2016 we are on pace to generate 1.3 zettabytes of data, about four times more than we create today, according to the latest data out from Cisco. Cisco tells us that’s more than 38 million DVDs streamed in an hour. Or, you can think of it as a 1 followed by 21 zeros.
Continue reading… “What our web addiction will look like in 2016”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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