These days, spotting the future requires a different set of tools. There’s an infinite amount of ink and pixels spilled on most any topic. So how do we spot the future—and how might you? The seven rules that follow are not a bad place to start pinpointing the inventions and trends that...

The idea of being a parent should be thought through more carefully. When we assess the idea, it is clear that, given the current conditions of the world, there is no reason to create more children   I proposed this argument in 2010 and received vitriolic replies, which brought more heat...

It started when I was a child and has never stopped since then: the desire to know things and to question. I am in no sense a gifted person; this desire exists in every child in the world. But what stops many from following their natural curiosity is forceful indoctrination from their parents...

What clues to the way we live today will archaeologists unearth in the millennia to come? What will endure, and what will fade away?   When humans in the far future are piecing together a picture of the primitive civilisation of 2012, archaeology will surely be the best way to go about...

If climate change continues along the business-as-usual path, the 24th century’s new world will be in some ways more like the world of Ancient Greece – with what’s left of the world’s inhabitants trading around a single sea. For the Ancient Greeks, it was the Mediterranean Sea. For...

The more optimistic we are about the future of our species the better we can focus on today’s challenges In the 21st century, it can feel as if the future has already arrived. But we’re only getting started. It’s fashionable to be pessimistic about our prospects, yet our...

Stopping the internet isn’t impossible, but it’s unlikely any time soon   In a statement posted online last month, hacker collective Anonymous announced plans to shut down the internet. Yes, you read that right. Operation Global Blackout, planned for March 31, is apparently a protest...

Next supercontinent will form over the Arctic Ocean   Over the next few hundred million years, the Arctic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea will disappear, and Asia will crash into the Americas forming a supercontinent that will stretch across much of the Northern Hemisphere. That’s the...

Andrei Linde, Father of “Eternal Chaotic Inflation”; Professor of Physics, Stanford University   “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” This is one of the most famous quotes from Albert Einstein. “The fact that it is...

The End Is Not Near At least that’s according to a German expert who says his decoding of a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it. The interpretation of the hieroglyphs by Sven Gronemeyer...

Toxo Terror: Or, the Call That’s Coming From Within the House   The sheer ubiquity of microscopic organisms is staggering. Microbiologist Tom Curtis recently compared the size of the microbial population to the size of the universe: The number of microbes in the world is billions of...

Giving the world a chance to become a part of history The Earth Pyramid project was started nearly three years ago with the aim of creating a monument that will get the world looking at the future of our planet and create a platform for discussing the many global issues this generation will be...

It turns out that the current New 7 Wonders of Nature competition reeks of controversy. Until recently I’ve been ignoring the buzz around voting for the New 7 Wonders of Nature. The noise has been getting louder and louder in recent weeks, so I wasn’t surprised to see that the competition...

This year marks the seventh “billion-person” milestone in the planet’s history. On or around Oct. 31, 2011, the world’s 7 billionth person will be born, the United Nation estimates. Even more staggering is that of the 7 billion people on Earth, about 1.4 billion of them...

The Denisovans, mysterious cousins of the Neanderthals, occupied a vast realm stretching from the chill expanse of Siberia to the steamy tropical forests of Indonesia – suggesting the third human of the Pleistocene displayed a level of adaptability previously thought to be unique to...

If at first you don’t succeed, have at least one more go. Early humans did, colonising Asia in two waves. The two migrations have left their mark in the genes of native people in south-east Asia, Polynesia and Australia. Anthropologists have long debated whether there was more than one...

Long before the Nike logo and McDonald’s golden arches straddled the planet, there was a truly global brand. Before the worldwide web, before mass production and even before the first economist, our own species, Homo sapiens, had penetrated every corner of the globe, succeeding in an...

Scientists studying the origins of Australia’s aboriginal population have found no genetic evidence of significant immigration from outside the continent for 45,000 years after humans first arrived. Their research suggests that Australian aborigines share the same common ancestor with...

Rudy Rucker, a mathematician, Computer Scientist; CyberPunk Pioneer; Novelist; Author, Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul offers a concept of emergence consists of irreducibility and unpredictability properties that prevent scientists from concluding certain findings. These properties...

Impending Apocalypses in Our Not Too Rosy, Not Too Distant Future These aren’t about World War III, some nuclear accident, or even the deadly impact of a meteor. If only we were so lucky. No, these apocalypses are the ultimate consequences of our actions, the culmination of decades, even...