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...

Blade Runner and the Phillip K. Dick novel that it’s based on have as one of their central themes the philosophically intriguing idea of “implanted” memories. That is, androids “born” days ago could have years and years of memories implanted in them about their lives – lives which...

A new breed of worker, equipped with uber-geek data-capturing tools, are about to usher in a whole new information era Recently I was preparing for a talk on the future of money, a talk I have given many times in the past, and I became absorbed with one singular thought – the relationship...

Richard Branson launches journeys to the centre of the Earth through Virgin Volcanic. Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks to join first expedition. Only 500 people have been to space, only three people have been to the bottom of the ocean, but no one has ever attempted to journey to the...

To those of us who experienced its genesis, the Internet seemed at first to exist apart from an unfortunate status quo; a brave new blueprint for a thriving peer-to-peer society that spurns corporate branding and advertising culture in lieu of actual, genuine human connections. But Isaac...

People usually have no clue about what curation really is or how it could be applied to the real-time world   So, over the past few months I’ve been talking to tons of entrepreneurs about the tools that curators actually need and I’ve identified seven things. First, who does curation?...

Curators: not just for museums anymore? “The promise of the Internet-as-Alexandria is more than the rolling plenitude of information. It’s the ability of individuals to choreograph that information in idiosyncratic ways, the hope that individuals might feel invited by the gravitational...

Location Tägermoos between Steckborn and Hörhausen. The crop circle in this photo is already 15 days old. For visitors the owner made additional paths which disfigure the image somewhat. The shape is just simple, but more than a few circles. It reminds of the double helix of DNA. Aerial shot...

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...

Piotr Czerski is a Polish writer and commentator. Here, he lays out the kind of political/literary manifesto that seems to pop up from time to time, usually in Europe. The essay, as translated by Marta Szreder, was posted to Pastebin under a Creative Commons license. I repost it here with the...

“Bloggers are famous enough to have stalkers, but not famous enough to have bodyguards.” —Danny O’Brien Everyone thinks they want a million Twitter followers and a million pageviews a day on their blog and the incredible high that it must be to walk around in the world...

Using eye-tracking technology, scientists are discovering clues to how we think and learn   As you read these words, try paying attention to something you usually never notice: the movements of your eyes. While you scan these lines of text, or glance at that ad over there or look up from...

Build A New One In Space Supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act, and their corporate backers in the movie and recording industries, are on the war path. They’re easily out-spending their opponents in the internet world and unless something miraculous happens, it’s only a matter of time...

Copyright is not an absolute. Potato chips are absolute. If this is my potato chip, then it’s not yours. You can’t touch it, eat it or use it for any reason whatsoever, not without asking first. Copyright doesn’t work that way. There is a ying to the yang of copyright...

By using optical equipment in a totally unexpected way, MIT researchers have created an imaging system that makes light look slow. Imagine a camera fast enough to capture not just a bullet in motion, but light particles themselves. Now imagine this as a consumer product, a frontier beyond...

A Large Hadron Collider for Human Civilization   As if re-creating the origins of the universe or reverse engineering the human brain weren’t hard enough, European scientists are also launching a brand new video game. The latest project in massive simulation is called the Living Earth...

Mapping data is everywhere now. If you have a smart phone or a Facebook account, you’re already using it all the time. A cornucopia of data streams has become available to the public, information is pouring in through everyone’s gadgets, and platforms like Google Maps allow for clever...

If the year is 2011, you are likely watching the above video on a Mac OS computer or a Windows computer. Those two obvious possibilities represent only the tail end of many not-so-obvious choices, the ones that determine, for better or worse, the direction that technology takes. Some things...

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...

Video surveillance of London’s rioters points to future of facial recognition The presence of cameras was clearly not a deterrent to the London rioters. But will technological advances that seem poised to eliminate anonymity prevent civil unrest in the future? “I don’t think...

As scientists crunch and quantize the world, will they ever reach the end? A hard lesson to learn was the difference between a message and the paper on which it was written. The telegraph was a great teacher. The information had to be divorced from the physical object. It was...

MIT research continues to push the boundaries of the burgeoning technology of 3-D printing. Imagine being able to “print” an entire house. Or a four-course dinner. Or a complete mechanical device such as a cuckoo clock, fully assembled and ready to run. Or a printer capable of printing …...

A sophisticated new camera system can detect lies just by watching our faces as we talk, experts say. The computerised system uses a simple video camera, a high-resolution thermal imaging sensor and a suite of algorithms. Researchers say the system could be a powerful aid to security services....

The relationship between visuals and sound is one that’s growing increasingly intertwined and co-dependent, providing a most welcome synaesthetic experience. But the fusion of music and imagery is quickly becoming the norm, as more and more artists collaborate to provide audiences with...

An effort to encourage the use of strong cryptography and anonymity online When a small group of activists announced the debut of The Crypto Project earlier this year, for many, ahem, mature, security and privacy advocates it brought to mind memories of the original cypherpunk movement that...

Turanor PlanetSolar, the world’s largest boat to cruise the seas on 100% sun power, has just made its way through the China Sea. To the northeast in Japan, however, a different take on solar-powered sea travel is in the works, one focused on even bigger boats. Fukuoka-based company Eco...

The founders of The Pirate Bay, possibly the best-known BitTorrent tracking service in existence, are going legit with a new file-sharing site which they claim will adhere to all copyright rules and takedown requests. BayFiles, as the new service is named, isn’t BitTorrent powered....

Last week saw researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), US, set a new world record for the strongest magnetic field produced by a “non-destructive” magnet. The scientists achieved a field of 92.5 T (tesla) on 18 August, and then surpassed their own achievement the following...

A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the ‘wind lens’ could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power. The International Clean Energy Analysis (ICEA) gateway estimates that the U.S. possesses 2.2 million km2 of...

In a recent TED talk about taking imagination seriously, Janet Echelman, creator of billowing, voluptuous fabric installations the size of buildings, described the unexpected trajectory of her fascinating career. Echelman’s work has evolved from large-scale fishnet sculptures created from...

Because of the potential impact on agriculture and other key human activities, efforts have been dedicated to the local control of precipitation. The most common approach consists of dispersing small particles of dry ice, silver iodide, or other salts in the atmosphere. Here we show, using...

The first nuclear power plant being considered for production of electricity for manned or unmanned bases on the Moon, Mars and other planets “may really look like it came from outer space.” On earth, nuclear reactors are under attack because of concerns over damage caused by natural...

The system could enable detailed simulations of real-world phenomena—or store 24 billion MP3s. A data repository almost 10 times bigger than any made before is being built by researchers at IBM’s Almaden, California, research lab. The 120 petabyte “drive”—that’s 120...

If you want to look at most of the world’s telephone calls, you’ll need a very large screen. Twelve feet high and 250 feet wide, the largest video wall in the world is the centerpiece of AT&T’s Global Network Operations Center, where the company manages a 928,000 fiber-route mile...

In what could certainly be one of the boldest infrastructure developments ever announced, the Russian Government has given the go-ahead to build a transcontinental railway linking Siberia with North America. The massive undertaking would traverse the Bering Strait with the world’s longest...

NASA is in the process of developing a new technology under project Laser Communications Relay Demonstration or LCRD which will allow them to provide faster means of communications from Mars. The Laser Communications Relay demonstration mission will fly and validate a reliable, capable, and...

Giant fly-swats and freight containers may help prevent catastrophic climate change, say engineers. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers has come up with some ideas for what “artificial forests” – technologies that absorb CO2, in a similar way to trees – could look...

Design graduate Patrick Stevenson-Keating’s ‘Quantum Parallelograph’ is a sleek little table-top machine that uses the power of the Internet to give you a split-second glimpse into your life in a possible parallel universe. By randomly selecting from a database of online sources, it...

A kilometer of the tower, the highest in the world, which pierce the clouds Jeddha in Saudi Arabia. Exceed 173 meters of the recent well-Khalifa Burj Dubai, which for now holds the scepter of the world’s tallest building. Designed by Chicago’s Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill...

Cutting out the middleman, or what the Nobel Peace Prize has to do with harnessing the potential of tablets. Depending on whom you ask, these are either the best or the worst of times for the written word. As with every other branch of traditional media, the Internet has pushed the publishing...