Digital goods have costs.
IT professionals are finding real problems with the idea that storing and distributing digital goods is a trivial, simple matter, adds nothing to their cost, and can be effectively done by amateurs.
Continue reading… “The storing and delivery of digital goods not easy and not free”
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”
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”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtjT95YqKkw&hd=1[/youtube]
The potential of government making health information as useful as weather data felt like an abstraction two years ago. Healthcare data could give citizens the same “blue dot” for navigating health and illness akin to the one GPS data fuels on the glowing map of geolocated mobile devices that are in more and more hands.
Continue reading… “Mobile health apps just the beginning of the disruption in healthcare”
The GoGoLink app for the Chevrolet Spark links a smartphone to the touch screen in the dash.
General Motors will soon be making a novel offer to please it’s customers who are clamoring for more features in their cars by giving them less.
Continue reading… “Merging drivers smartphones and dashboards”
The explosion in the use of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other services has resulted in the generation of some 2.5 quintillion bytes each day.
Paul Hawtin monitors more than 340 million Twitter posts flying around the world each day from his trading desk in London. He tries to assess the collective mood of the populace.
Continue reading… “‘Big data’ redefines trend-watching online”
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”
United Nations
U.S. officials testified on Thursday before the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology saying several emerging countries are rallying behind a campaign to have the International Telecommunications Union, the U.N.’s global standards body for telecommunications, declare the Internet a global telecommunications system. Led by China, Russia, India and now Egypt, which recently launched its own proposal, such a move would allow state-owned telephone networks to expand into VoIP. It would also give them the opportunity to charge fees for Internet service – and put the Internet at the mercy of international politics.
Continue reading… “U.S. officials warn that United Nations could seize the internet”
Twitter and other tech start-ups are gravitating toward San Francisco.
Twitter will be moving into its new headquarters in downtown San Francisco this month. It will occupy three floors of an 11-story 1937 Art Deco building that has sat shuttered for five years. Outside, its blue bird logo will replace the former main tenant’s sign, whose analog clocks remain frozen at 9:18, 4:33 and other times past.
Continue reading… “New tech boom in San Francisco brings jobs but also worries”
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”
First-time, full-time graduate enrollment in STEM programs registering a 50% increase over the decade.
A new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF) finds that the number of Americans pursuing advanced degrees in science and engineering has risen sharply over the past decade and stands at an all-time high.
Continue reading… “Enrollment in U.S. graduate STEM programs increased 50% over last decade”
Apple’s supply chain is ranked best in the world.
Apple’s supply chain is ranked best in the world by the technology research firm Gartner. According to a new report by Gartner. part of the reason is Apple turns over its inventory once every five days. If you think about that’s pretty amazing. Apple ells hundreds of millions of hardware gadgets all over the world and yet it doesn’t actually need to stockpile its goods.
Continue reading… “Apple turns over its entire inventory once every 5 days”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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