A great big enthusiastic “Hola!” from Juan Valdez, welcoming you all to the 17th edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow. Each little glimpse into the future in this edition is like one of those ripe, red, perfect coffee beans that Juan picks at exactly the right time. So pour yourselves a steaming hot cup of whatever suits you, sit back, and join us as we drink in all the wonders in store.

We want to start the first Carnival of the year 2006 with a bold (and somewhat self-fulfilling) predicition. So here it is:

In the future, words of wisdom and hot beverages will not be at odds with one another. What a wonderful world that will be!

UPDATE (01/06/06 at 9:02 PM): The future has arrived. I just got a tall Americano from my neighborhood Starbuck’s, and on the cup were the following words, not blocked by any kind of sleeve or other impediment:

The most successful innovations are the ones we stop noticing almost immediately. We often don’t appreciate the things we’d least like to give up.

– Virginia Postrel

Author of The Substance of Style and a columnist for The New York Times.

The future is wonderful indeed.

Reason at Fight Aging! provides some inspirational words for starting a new year:

The future is what we make of it, and there’s nothing special or reserved in the act of making a difference….[N]othing stops any one of us from taking a single step towards a better future. Those steps will add up. If you don’t like the present state of affairs insofar as the future of your health and lifespan is concerned, there’s a simple solution: stand up and join those who are doing something about it!

Hear, hear! And taking his own advice to heart, Reason then proceeds to outline a by-the-bootstraps approach to funding aging research.

What color is the future? James Waterton of the Daily Constitutational says that it may well be saffron, and that India is perhaps the player to watch in the East. This is an older post recently linked by James Bennett at Albion’s Seedlings.

Waterton also has a more recent post at Samizdata explaining his skepticism of the Chinese economy – at least in its “current nominally Communist incarnation.”

If you enjoy Waterton’s analysis as much as we did, keep an eye on Samizdata, where word has it he will be doing all his blogging from now on.

While we’re picking up interesting materials from the archives, check out this Classical Values entry from last June in which Justin introduces us to the Ray Kurzweil of 1627 (and of 1733.)

Mark at Curmugeons Corner pointed us to this article about how the U.S. Marines are developing a low-cost space vehicle.

[T]he Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) concept that, if successful, will give the US a “…heretofore unimaginable assault support speed, range, altitude and strategic surprise” capability. SUSTAIN is an RLV that will carry a squad (13 men) into space and land it anywhere on Earth within two hours with, among other requirements, “flexible launch on demand… to any orbital inclination.”

The fuzzy dice of the future, available today. GeekPress has details.

Mike Treder at Responsible Nanotechnology has a neat piece on the house of the future. Yes, it pretty much is a nanohouse. How did you guess?

Jack William Bell says that golf may be on the decline as the in-game for business executives and would-be executive ladder-climbers. So what’s the back nine of the future? You may be surprised.

Sure, wind power is great, but what about all those defenseless birds? Genetically engineering birds to be smarter and not fly into windmills is one possible solution. Al Fin presents another.

Speaking of alternate energy sources, (one of our favorite subjects at the Carnival of Tomorrow, right up there with brains) Jay Manifold at A Voyage to Arcturus” directs us to speculation about a truly alternative energy source.

Last month, Jay directed us to an explanation for the baffling lack of flying cars here in the 21st century.

Anemaat said cars had not flown yet because “in the past there has always been a compromise made, and they built a bad plane and a bad car. But now, with new materials, technology and electronics, we think we can build a better vehicle that is a good car and a good plane.”

Don’t miss the computer animation of their proposed model.

Getting back to beverages (Remember? We started this thing talking about beverages), Øyvind Arnesen details what must be the most useful Geek Project to date. (Hat-tip: Triticale.)

It’s kind of like tying a string to your finger, only more…emphatic. Randall Parker reports on the (extreme?) new solution for those who are sometimes forgetful with their personal belongings.

Rand Simberg explains that regulation of space tourism is not necessarily something to get all worked up about.

Tony Arcieri at Singularity Now has issued a challenge for Singularitarians: let’s start planning how we want to make this thing happen right. Coincidentally, The Speculist has started a series on God and the Singularity which commences with some thoughts on how we convey an idea of goodness to the coming new intelligences. Dean Esmay has also had some interesting recent thoughts on the subject.

Finally, is it the end of the world, or not? Chris Hall has thoughts. But Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality is pretty sure that he’s on to an answer to the question.

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Carnival of Tomorrow #17 will be hosted back here at The Speculist.

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From
the fevered swamps of Skull Island to the dazzling skyscrapers of Manhattan,
and all points in between, everybody’s talking about exactly one thing: the
controversial new gay cowboy flick, Brokeback Mountain.

Naw, just kidding. They’re all talking about Kong! Kong is King! Kong
rules! So in honor of everyone’s favorite giant gorilla — and in no way
as some kind of cynical attempt to cash in on a fad — we have asked the big
ape to be our host in this week’s journey into the future. So, let the journey
begin!

Recently Stephen wrote about Gigantopithecus
blackii – a ten foot tall ape that once roamed the Pleistocene. 
Stephen suggested that legends of this animal might have have inspired the American
Sasquatch myths even if the animal never made it to this continent.

Since methods to clone animals from that era are
being perfected, will we one day see a real Kong up close and personal? 
We’re hopeful…just not too close or too personal…please.

Risk-taking aviators need not ponder buzzing the world’s tallest building while
being swatted at by a giant simian: Jay
Manifold reports that attempting to land at Chicago Midway is plenty dangerous
enough, and he’s got numbers to back it up.

We all know ’twas beauty killed the beast, but had Kong hooked up with a Girl
Geek rather than your garden-variety
blonde hottie,
said alternative S.O. might just have figured out a way to avoid that whole tragic
Empire State Building/buzzing biplanes/nasty fall scenario. Melody
tells us all about the women of the future, the aforementioned Girl Geeks, both
at her own blog and at Multiple
Mentality .

Speaking of women of the future, Virginia
Postrel is recommeding a book on the subject of urban
sprawl. The book deals with the evolution and adpation that takes place
in city design over time; reading it we might well find some clues as to what
we can expect cities to look like in the future:

But Bruegmann’s book is grounded in a history lesson–one that finds the
roots of present-day Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles in Augustan Rome or
Restoration London. People of means, he writes, have always tried to get some
distance from urban centers, often inhabiting villas outside city walls.”

I’m sure you would have found it in the very first city ever established,”
he says. “Living in cities has almost always been unpleasant and unhealthy–not
something most people wanted. If you were in imperial Rome, crowded into dark,
dingy, polluted apartment buildings, it would have been a nightmare. Most
cities I looked at had just crushing density until about the 18th century.”

So cities will probably continue to spread out into clean, safe, sprawling suburbs
that provide everything the residents need. And that are free, we might add,
from those tempting and dangerous skyscrapers.

Whether Kong decides to go for a Geek Girl or stick with the supermodel type,
he needs to focus on getting along okay, especially leading such a high-risk
life. Joshua
Zader at Mudita Journal
has the latest on new research indicating that a marital spat can significantly
reduce the body’s ability to heal :

The Big Guy must down an awful lot of bananas to keep his huge frame moving.
This puts us in mind of the exciting Second
Generation Biofuels recently reported on by Green
Car Congress.

As Kong gets older, he may be concerned, as many of us are, about the loss
of muscle mass. Sci-Tech
Daily points us to some new information indicating that part of the answer
may be to lay off the bananas in
favor of meat .

While we’re on the subject of life extension (sort of) Fight
Aging! reports that our good friend Aubrey
de Grey will be appearing on 60 Minutes in January.

MattG at “Press the buttons”
recalls his childhood love of all things Donkey
Kong.  Lately the character has had cameo appearances in other games,
but…

For all his moonlighting, however, I continue to look forward to his next
traditional adventure.

Mike at TechDirt warns
of a new software trend that may slow the introduction of new Kong adventures,
as well as innovation generally — copy
protection. Meanwhile, BoingBoing
directs us to a report detailing how Congress is working to build copy protection
in at the hardware
level. On the other hand, Lawrence Lessig reports that Sun is trying to
open things up at the hardware level. Open-source
hardware? Apparently.

FuturePundit
reports that power plant operators have decided to take a serious look at nuclear
energy.

[Please redo. Need Kong angle.-- Ed.]

FuturePundit
reports that power plant operators have decided to stop monkeying
around and take a serious look at nuclear energy.

GeekPress directs
us to this New
Scientist article about how neural networks are being used to determine
whether new movies will be a hit.

While the crime rate overall seems to be going down, some crimes are getting
bigger. A lot bigger. The Minstry
of Minor Perfidy , who will be hosting next week’s carnival, reports on
a brazen criminal act of King Kong proportions: grain
silo theft. Could this be the future of crime?

Mark at Curmudgeon’s
Corner , while not explicitly addressing the issue of cloning a gigantopithecus,
directs us to commentary from a noted paleontologist who raises serious questions
about whether a creature such as Kong could ever exist. Then Rand Simberg of
Transterrestrial
Musings joins the fray with these pertinent thoughts:

Even if he could get enough to eat, for a body with that much mass to move
that fast, the heat generated would be much greater than could be radiated
out through the skin (mass goes up as the cube of the major dimension, whereas
surface area only goes up as the square), particularly through that fur coat,
so he’d cook from the inside if he maintained the kind of activity levels
presumably depicted. Also, he wouldn’t be able to maintain his own weight
on those (relatively) spindly legs, once scaled up to that size–they’d splinter
like toothpicks.

No point in seeing the movie, folks–it’s just not realistic…

A devastating analysis. For those who will now skip the Kong movie as it has been
thoroughly debunked, might we recommend a more plausible hit
film from last summer, recently out on DVD?

Carnival of Tomorrow #16 will be hosted by The Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

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Carnival of Tomorrow #15 will be hosted back here at The Speculist.

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UPDATE: Phil reminds me that #16 will be hosted by The Ministry of Minor Perfidy.

If you would like to host a future carnival, let us know early.

But the future looks bright, so we’re feeling pretty lucky. Read on if you dare!

J Random American at Multiple Mentality points out that news coverage has changed drastically in the past few years, but more change is on the way:

“The Future of Media, Not Now But Soon”

Ironman at Political Calculations looks at the myriad ways that several major inventions have come into being and points to how today’s technology will affect future development around the world.

Eric at Eric Grumbles Before the Grave has details on NASA’s first annual Space Elevator Games.

Eric’s post inspired Stephen to write more generally about “Push Prizes” – prizes, like the X-prize, that seek to push the development of technology.

Jack William Bell asks “Is There a Future in Futurism?”

Our answer to that question would have to be an emphatic YES.

The host of the last edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow, Micah Glasser wrote that “Google Resumes Construction of ‘Turing’s Cathedral.’”

Google employee quote:

“We are not scanning all those books to be read by people… We are scanning them to be read by an AI.”

Stephen reports that Google Print is now open in beta form.

In fact, Micah has been on fire lately: writing on automatic speech translation, the hydrogen economy (a response of sorts to our post on the Israeli car), and the large binocular telescope. Go to his blog and start scrolling.

Speaking of vehicles and fuel and that sort of thing, Glenn Reynolds has had some thoughts about hybrids and energy efficiency both on his own blog and at SinceSlicedBread.  And CNET covers the 12th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems including BMW smart cars that operate in packs to assess the road and travel conditions.

Paul Hsieh has the latest on research towards allowing the US military to set phasers on stun (second item).

Fingers upon fingers upon fingers: Technovelgy describes amazing downwardly cascading waldoes. Scroll down for the creepy picture/video. Also on Technovelgy, a report on the new shopper’s best friend:

TMSUK has created a new shopping assistant robot. This service bot will follow you around autonomously, carrying your heavy bags full of purchases. The robot will be tested at a shopping mall located in the Fukuoka airport in February of 2006. It turns out that British science fiction writer John Brunner wrote about a robot with a similar purpose in his 1975 masterpiece Shockwave Rider…

Of course, shopping bags aren’t the only things that machines are helping out with these days. Rand Simberg reports that we can’t do math without them anymore.

Mike at DistracTech provides us a map of North America ca 3005. Looks like a very wet place.

Regine at We Make Money Not Art reports on a new robot being developed at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California which has a brain with 20,000 electronic brain cells.

Darwin VII is a trashcan-shaped robot that has just 20,000 brain cells.

It crawls across a floor strewn with blocks, grabbing and tasting as it goes, its malleable mind impressionable and hungry to learn. It is adapting, discovering that the striped blocks are yummy and the spotted ones taste bad.

This does raise the question of how we could possibly know what tastes good to a robot, but maybe we have to take Darwin’e creator’s word for it.

Sam Dinkin at Transterrestrial Musings dismisses those who worry about China’s new entry into the space race:

I think the interesting story that no one is telling is why the Chinese mimic the dead end space programs of the US and the USSR. It’s some kind of misguided nostalgia or timewarped hero worship.

We’d worry less if our nation wasn’t also still committed to the old expensive model.  It certainly helps that NASA is beginning to look at alternatives, but that’s a tiny, tiny percentage of the NASA budget.

For more future-related news, don’t miss our recent “Better All The Time” feature.

This week’s Carnival was put together by Phil, Stephen, and Michael.

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1. Alternate fuels/energy sources

2. New discoveries and technologies related to the brain

3. Both of these

4. Neither of them

(That last option is just to show that, hey — we may have a theme going, but we’re not married to it, for crying out loud.)

So what’s the point in looking at futuristic blog posts about two seemingly unrelated topics? Well, first off, it gives us twice as many posts to find than we would have if we were looking at just one topic. So that would be a practical consideration. But beyond that, it’s a test. So many forecasts and predictions focus in on a single area of interest. That is arguably the most logical way to approach the future — one topic at a time. But maybe it’s a liitle flat.

What can we learn about the future by adding a dimension, triangulating our view just a bit?

We thought it would be interesting to give it a try. Let’s find out.

J. Random American, host of Carnival of Tomorrow #10, enters the alternate energy sweepstakes with his piece on cat diesel. When you hear that phrase “cat diesel” you immediately think that the word “cat” must be an acronym or possibly an abbreviation for “catalyzed” or something along those lines, but alas…no.

As J explains it:

Back on Sept. 13th I linked to a news article about a German group that invented a way to turn dead cats into diesel fuel. The article reports being able to get 2.5 liters (0.016 bbl) of diesel per cat at a cost of only $0.30 per liter ($1.14/gal). Since we use about 1 billion barrels of diesel* a year, that means we’d need 62.5 billion cats a year to meet our present rate of diesel consumption. There are only about 70 million cats in the United States.

This is an excellent start. Certainly better than our own feeble KFC diesel idea. Still, we’re disappointed that J didn’t come right out with a way of making an alternate fuel source out of cat brains, thus hitting both themes at once.

Vlerian at Health Life, Articles and Tips has the scoop on a new molecular brain cancer treatment:

The drugs themselves are highly selective in that they target only the cancer cells. IL13-PE38QQR contains a tumor-targeting molecule called IL-13 that docks on the surface of cancer cells. Then the drug releases a toxin (Pseudomonas Exotoxin or PE) inside the cell. The toxin interferes with the cancer cell’s protein production and immediately causes its demise.

Green Car Congress has the scoop on DaimlerChrysler’s new hydrogen fuel-cell hybrid.

Reason at Fight Aging! provides an important disclaimer that should be attached to any warning about the inevitable failure of our brains (and bodies!) predicated on a linear extrapolation of data.

Mark at Curmudgeons Corner points us to an article about Water Mills, the aquatic counterpart to windmills:

Just as wind mills tap the power of wind currents to generate electricity, there is a kind of water mill technology under development that promises to tap the flow of water in rivers, streams, and tidal basins with the same amount of efficiency. It could be a new form of clean, renewable, and unobtrusive energy.

Mark also links to a detailed backgrounder on nuclear fusion energy. Finally, he points us to an article on cryonics, which at core is really the art of freezing and carefully thawing out brains.

FuturePundit Randall Parker has a couple recent pieces on energy. First there was the observation that energy prices are making conservation “cool” again. Then there was this surprising development: Tony Blair Privately For More Nuclear Plants In UK. But will he go public?

Randall also featured two very interesting recent pieces about the human brain. First, how eating fish helps the brain. Next, how liars’ brains are different from everyone else’s. Randall makes some chilling observations:

A significant portion of the human race are predatory liars and con artists. On top of that there are rapists, murders, and assorted other criminals and psychopaths as well. Think about that next time someone speaks about humanity and the human future in lofty terms.

One of the reasons why I’m not particularly sanguine about our transhumanist future is that human ethical constraints are in large part a product of genetic coding. I do not buy the argument that rational self interest by itself provides enough basis to maintain a civilized society. Well, once biotechnology provides ways to enhance the ability to lie and the ability to feel less remorse or guilt won’t some people opt to use this technology? Mightn’t there even be a sort of mental arms race where people find it necessary to enhance their ability to deceive in order to protect themselves from other deceivers?

Scary stuff.

Paul Hsieh of GeekPress directs us to an article about an unexpected (to say the least) energy source.

On the subject of self-induced brain damage, Paul directs us to the Mind Molester. (Actually, after further reading that looks more like deliberately induced brain damage on others, you know — friends, loved ones, that sort of thing.)

Speaking of fiddling with brains, Good Morning Silicon Valley links to the story of a dolphin which has had something…really unusual impressed upon it’s no-doubt otherwise highly functional cetacean brain.

Could teaching defenseless animals catchy themes songs from bad 1960′s TV shows be considered abusive? Possibly. But it’s not nearly as bad as what was done to the brains of these (possibly apocryphal) dolphins.

In addition to providing an assessment as to whether the armed dolphin story is true, Technovelgy directs us to yet another offbeat energy source.

Jon Goff of Selenian Boondocks has some thoughts on nano-particle-enhanced rocket fuel.

Harry Chen’s Homepage directs us to The Whole Brain Atlas, “a web site that shows a collection of comprehensive neuroimages,” assembled by two doctors at the Harvard Medical School. Cool!

Boing Boing links to a story that raises an interesting question: will we ever get alternate fuels from someplace as cool as this?

Mike treder of Responsible Nanotechnology links to a Slashdot entry recommending that we give our brains a rewind.

By the way, big Carnival of Tomorrow congratulations to Mike and the whole CRN gang for making the Blog 100. Way to go!

Energy Outlook reports that Europe is switching to diesel fuel of the…er, non-feline variety.

When we finally get alternative fuels for our cars, will human brains steer? We have doubts.

Herbie: coming soon to your driveway.

Brain Sprinkles notes that a debate is brewing as to whether Homo Florensis (popularly known as the Indonesian Hobbits)were a separate species or simply ancient dwarfs. The determining factor may be the size of their tiny brains.

Beth at Wide-Eyed and Laughing suggests we all take the Brain Pattern Test. One of the Speculists’ results are shown below.

Your Brain’s Pattern

You have a dreamy mind, full of fancy and fantasy. You have the ability to stay forever entertained with your thoughts. People may say you’re hard to read, but that’s because you’re so internally focused. But when you do share what you’re thinking, people are impressed with your imagination.

Finally, a story about neither alternate energy sources nor brain technology, but something much simpler and more humble: the flying car. Classical Values gives us The Other Flying Car.

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Live to see it!

J. sampled the latest the blogosphere has to offer in space exploration, the Singularity, machines, convenience, science, warfare, nanotech, and energy.

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We open the Carnival this week with this image entitled “Home” from 3-D passion.

J. Random American explains that fan films hint at the ways we will spend our free time in the future.

If Aubrey de Grey holds SENS II, and the media ignores it, did it make a sound? I exaggerate, but not by much. I’m aware of only one MSM article on the conference.

[SENS stands for Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence - this was a conference on the science of human life extension - ed.]

So Blogger Kevin Perrott performed an invaluable service by blogging the event. He promises more on the subject after he recovers from the marathon conference, but his first impressions were very, very positive:

…the feeling of the eclectic and high-level group of individuals who attended was electric. The conversations at the final evening were filled with the sound of the positive connections and exchanges which one hears at the beginning of something. We all knew that underneath the data, below the hard science, that something is moving and that the fields represented there were in the ascendant.

One thing shared by ALL of us which was amazingly apparent as we broke up to return to our respective lab benches, computers and studies, was the renewed vigor to pursue our research knowing that although the search for truth is ever at the base of scientific pursuit, the application of that research for the alleviation of suffering is becoming more possible than ever, and we are in the vanguard of this increasingly evident army that is assaulting ancient biological challenges.

Will we achieve these goals within my lifetime? Will ‘negligible senescence’ be realized, perhaps even for my parent? If the trajectory we saw at SENS II is maintained, there is no doubt in my mind these goals will be reached and that the chance for near term anti-aging is high.

Metacool writes that “Nano is the new Turbo,” saying basically that the term jumped the shark with the new Ipod Nano.

…nano is the new turbo, another technical term appropriated by marketing people and applied in so many ways as to make it meaningless.

This is part of the “fake nanotech” Phil mentioned awhile back. I’m sure that this new iPod has circuitry that could arguably be called nanotech, but it’s hardly “spooky.”

Howard Lovy started a new job, but we lost an outstanding nanoblogger. Read all about it.

Godspeed Howard.

It appears that embryonic stem cell lines have an expiration date.

FuturePundit has the story.

Google Blog Search beta is out!

Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality sounds resigned to high gas prices, but he offers some suggestions.

And Engineer Poet comments.

Speaking of Engineer Poet, don’t miss his energy article at The Ergosphere, “A Lever and a Place to Stand.”

Michael Kanellos reports that the Dartmouth’s new small robot measures 60 microns wide and 250 microns long. This is not quite a nanobot yet, a micron is 1000 nanometers.

Here’s the original Dartmouth press release.

Andrian Bowyer continues to make remarkable progress on his RepRap project.

When completed the RepRap will be a fab lab that is capable of reproducing most of its own parts. The promise this holds for wealth creation and unleashing creativity is staggering.

Pictured at the right is the newly completed extruder head – analogous to a printer head for 3-D products.

Make sure to visit the RepRap blog to keep up to date.

If you think fabbing your own products is still years away, think again. Writer Clive Thompson recounts for Wired his experience fabbing an electric guitar via eMachineShop.

If that’s not enough great future blogging, stick around here for more:

The Age of Choice

Ecological Twofer

Innovation in Delcine?

And, of course, our Second Blogiversary post.

If the Carnival seemed a little less polished this week, blame me. Phil is traveling today.

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But who could have foreseen that robot hands would be made of legos?

Via GeekPress.

Howard Lovy wrote an article for Wired magazine about Dr. James Baker and how his branch of study, nanotechnology, went from science fiction to respected science in a decade.

Wired readers got the cut-down version. Lovy’s blog readers get the “writer’s cut.”

James Clark of Electronic Advances has a fascinating story about how NASA designed for the future…in the past.

J Random American of Ideas in Progress thinks our soldiers should telecommute.

No doubt it would be much safer.

It’s not a new idea (check out the picture attached to this post), and the idea has already been deployed in the air, but we agree that the ground is the next logical step for automated/remote warfare.

Mike of Mike’s Noise explains why overblown environmental concerns may have doomed the Columbia.

The latest shuttle mission has demonstrated that the problem has not been corrected.

Reason at Fight Aging points to a fascinating editorial at MIT Technology Review. The editor, who is not pro-life extension at all, nevertheless wonders why scientists have remained so quiet about Aubrey de Grey’s radical life extension ideas.

If he’s wrong, why not say so?

We can understand not wanting to be that distinguished scientist who said it couldn’t be done – immediately before it is done. Don’t laugh, it happened with airplanes.

On the other hand, scientists also seem to be afraid to risk their reputations to suggest Aubrey might be right. It’s a catch-22, but only for the timid.

Longevity First has more on the call for discussion at MIT Technology Review.

Virginia Postrel of the Dynamist thinks its irresponsible for Apple to be discounting (to children!) the importance of paper books.

We agree, but only because its premature. Let’s perfect electronic paper that’s as easy on the eyes as the real thing, get publishers to use the stuff for all their publications, THEN we’ll talk about reclaiming that shelf space.

Randall Parker critiques the newly passed energy bill at FuturePundit.

Green Car Congress has more.

The honeymoon’s over. Bill Frist breaks with the President on stem cell research.

Good.

Why, when it comes to space, are the Russians the capitalists, and we Americans are the big central-government-types?

Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality has some thoughts.

Well…American entrepreneurs are developing a private Space Program.

Richard Branson and Burt Rutan announced the creation of a spacecraft building company this week.

The Center for Responsible Nanotech has some more thoughts on the future of NASA.

Meanwhile, Rand Simberg comments on NASA’s grounding of the shuttle fleet. With more thoughts here.

Are you a glutton for future-blogging? Stick around!

• The future of gene therapy took a huge leap forward recently with the success of ORMOSIL – a man-made gene delivery molecule. It’s a big deal, trust us.

• What will the world be like when computers become as powerful as the human mind? We’ll know in six years.

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See you in the future!

For the most part, the kinds of selection that have been operating in the recent past cannot be shown to be effective today. How many people in Northern Europe are currently dying because of the inability to digest milk effectively as adults? How many Britons does smallpox kill each year? Even trends that currently exist in human health, such as the persistence of malaria and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, are active targets of medical research and public health efforts.

Today, with 6 billion humans, every one-off mutation from the human consensus genome sequence occurs in dozens of people. Many multiple-off mutations occur in some people. In a larger population, selection is more potent, because genetic drift is weaker. This means that the advantageous variants of the next fifty millennia are already appearing in the world today, and may inevitably be selected. The global population is exploring the entire mutational space, many times over, and novel mutations are no longer likely to disappear so rapidly due to genetic drift.

Sounds like evolution may be speeding up. Of course, a system that’s easy on mutations across the board may allow many more bad mutations into the genome than good ones. Could we be looking at the beginning of de-evolution?

Let’s see what our friends in the forward-looking blogosphere have to say.

Of course, there’s more to the ongoing story of human evolution than that which comes from mutation and natural selection. Many of us see evolution as a major do-it-yourself project. The whole life extension movement is really an effort to evolve us into longer-lived beings.

With that in mind, FuturePundit Randall Parker comments on a recent essay by biogerenotolgist Aubrey de Grey which essentially tells us to stop apologizing for wanting to increase human lifespan:

…the purpose of biogerontology is, and should be declared to be, to defeat ageing. …Hastening that advance, therefore, is a legitimate and honourable goal of which we have been ashamed for too long.

Randall sums up the argument thusly:

The desire to live is not dishonorable. The desire for youthfulness is not decadent. We should pursue the goal of full rejuvenation and defeat all human diseases in the process.

Well said, FP.

Glenn Reynolds also had some reflections on Aubrey’s essay, as did Reason from Fight Aging!

Speaking of Reason, he has a bona fide scoop on mitochondrial protofection, which sounds technical but is actually…pretty darn technical! But it’s definitely worth reading about. Reason provides links to some background information on mitochondrial research as well as to an explanation as to why mitochondria are essential to the war on aging.

So come on, don’t be intimidated by the subject matter. Think of this as your big chance to evolve in a slightly geekier direction.

While we’re on the subject of Geeks, Paul Hsieh has been very busy recently pointing out all kinds of evolutionary trends. Let’s begin with the evolution of transportation, with the latest on teleportation research. Then there’s the evolution of human society, being driven by — of all things — the mobile phone (second item). Finally, there’s the evolution of food production, exemplified by meat that doesn’t require killing any animals. (Something we discussed ourselves recently.)

For years there has been talk of using satellites to collect solar energy which could then be microwaved to earth, but the logistical problems in putting such a system in place seemed insurmountable. Now Ironman at Political Calculations has an evolved idea of how such a system could be implemented…on the moon.

In a similar vein, Eric (grumbling as he always does, before the grave) suggests that its time for space exploration to evolve beyond its dependency on the huge NASA bureaucracy.

He recommends a series of publicly funded X-prizes to energize the private sector.

Sam Dinkin observes a major milestone in humanity’s evolution as a spacefaring species: the approval of a new spaceport (you’ve got to love that word) in — where else? — Oklahoma.

This comes just a couple weeks after another evolutionary milestone. Humanity has gone from being a species that cowers (or panics) at the site of a comet to one that smashes space probes into them.

And not that it’s related at all, but we are also apparently evolving from being a species that swims with dolphins in the wild to being one that rides inside mechanical dolphins at great speeds.

Oh, and also one that stores information on its fingernails.

So all the available evidence would seem to indicate that evolution is going in the right direction. And here’s the clincher: what else could possibly account for Virginia Postrel describing the new version of one of the cheesiest TV shows * from the 70′s in such glowing terms?

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Big news: Speculist.com has returned. And FastForward Radio now has it’s own home page. Set those bookmarks, friends.

See you in the future!

* I just know that’s going to get us in trouble. Frack!

What we really want is time travel of the practical variety. Some kind of do-it-yourself approach.

However, we have to watch out for shoddy substitutes that the unscrupulous will try to pass off to the unsuspecting:

Uncle Rico: Kip, I reckon… you know a lot about… cyberspace? You ever come across anything… like time travel?

Kip: Easy, I’ve already looked into it for myself.

Uncle Rico: Right on… right on.

…

Kip: So are you ready?

Napoleon: Yeah. Hold on. I forgot to put in the crystals. OK, turn it on. Ow! Ow! Ow! Kill it! Turn it off! Turn it off Kip! It’s a piece of crap! It doesn’t work!

Uncle Rico: I coulda told ya that.

Don’t let that happen to you. If you want to travel to the future, right now the only way to get there is to live to see it. But it’s definitely going to be worth the trip.

Here are some previews of what you’ll find when you arrive.

On our list of favorite accessory items of the future, solar-sail-spacecraft would have to be right up there with time machines. Emily Lakdawalla has been dutifully reporting the ups and downs of the launch of Cosmos 1, the first space vehicle ever to be powered by solar sail. The story ends on a poignant note:

With failure of Cosmos 1 virtually certain, the team members that have been staffing Project Operations Pasadena have elected to return to their homes. Thanks to the Internet, if our spacecraft miraculously reappears, each of us will still be able to keep watch over the mission from our individual remote locations. Greg returns to Berkeley, Jim and Brent to Utah, and Paul to his usual life at the Jet Propulsion Lab, just up the valley from Pasadena. Lou will be returning from Moscow in a couple of days. I took off for home a couple of hours ago in order to begin to catch up on sleep.

The team may be scattering, but it’s not over. The search for the spacecraft continues. The search continues in the present, as several observatories have offered to try to look for a signal from the spacecraft. (If you, too, have a spare observatory, feel free to search at a frequency of 401.5275 Hz, but I am afraid that I can’t offer any advice on where to point your antenna.) The search also continues into the past, as Strategic Command is working through its “unknown objects bucket” (as Jim called it this morning) to find where the spacecraft and its launch vehicle ended up.

Too bad. Even if they never find Cosmos (and it hardly seems possible that they will) we can hope that the investigation reveals what went wrong and that we’re better prepared next time.

Some say it’s our mortality that makes us human. Reason from Fight Aging! counters that it’s our mortality that makes us dead.

Want a smart baby? Eat fish. But go easy on the mercury. FuturePundit explains.

Curmudgeons Corner has the scoop on an intriguing scenario (one we’ve explored here recently): the moon as the Persian Gulf of the future.

Hmmmmm…

Well, if that’s the case, maybe this isn’t such a hot idea after all.

Rand Simberg directs us to an article about anti-hurricane technology. Sounds like a good idea.

In the future, we won’t have time for lengthy IQ tests. (We aren’t sure precisely why this is the case, but work with us, here.) Eric of Eric’s Grumbles Before the Grave directs us to a “quick and dirty” IQ Test. Can you guess which member of the Speculist team’s results are shown below?

Your IQ Is 135

Your Logical Intelligence is Genius Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

W.E.C.: Obviously, this is Phil — seeing as his general knowledge is only “exceptional.”

Allow me to present my card:

Chris Phoenix of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has some thoughts on the new roadmaps for nanotechnology recently published by the Foresight Nanotech Institute.

Speaking of nanotechnology, Howard Lovy has taken a hiatus from his nanobot site while he continues his job hunt. Here’s hoping it’s a short hiatus.

Best wishes, Howard.

Meanwhile, let’s get a six degrees of separation thing going, here. If you need the services of the USA’s leading nanotechnology journalist, the “the best documentor of the nanotech political scene” (per this impeccable source), then you need to get in touch with Howard.

Moreover, if you know someone who needs such services

Or if you know someone who knows someone who does

Or if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who does…

Etc.

Then you know what to do, right?

Virginia Postrel on the relationship between technology, science, and art:

The burgeoning demand for aesthetic expertise overturns the cultural assumptions we’ve inherited from the romantics, who opposed art to technology and feeling to rationality; from the modernists, who treated ornament as crime and commerce as corruption; and from the efficiency experts, who equated function with value and variety with waste. In the age of look and feel, technology and art cooperate

Oh, yeah. She has pictures to back it up, too.

Paul Hsieh directs us to an article on the amazing Japanese plans to build a full-scale lunar colony where all the colonists are robots. Diana Mertz Hsieh of Noodlefood comments:

Overlord master robots, I hope? I mean, if it’s not with overlord master robots, it’s not worth doing…

We couldn’t agree more. We offer a hearty welcome to our new lunar robotic overlords.

Speaking of Robotic overlords, Project Nothing! points us to this article about real-life Robocops in Japan.

Equipped with a camera and sensors, the “Guardrobo D1,” developed by Japanese security firm Sohgo Security Services Co., is designed to patrol along pre-programmed paths and keep an eye out for signs of trouble.

The 109-cm tall robot will alert human guards via radio and by sending camera footage if it detects intruders, fires, or even water leaks.

This is less an issue of taking human jobs than filling jobs that there are insufficient people around to do. Read the whole thing.

Apparently we weren’t the only ones inspired by the latest Batman movie. For all of you who would like to be a super-hero in the future, the Winds of Change points to a must-read Forbes article on the cost of Being Batman.

In our Forbes Fictional Fifteen, we estimated [Bruce Wayne's] net worth at $6.3 billion. If he were a real guy, he’d be the 28th richest person in America, right behind News Corp.’s (nyse: NWS – news – people ) Rupert Murdoch…

But you don’t have to be a billionaire to become a caped crusader. Using commercially available training, technology and domestic help, the average guy could conceivably equip himself to become a real-world superhero, provided he’s got at least a couple million to spare.

And we thought they had no fun over at Forbes.

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Don’t forget to check out the all-new (and unplugged) edition of FastForward Radio.

See you in the future!

We’ll kick off another foray into the Fabulous World of Tomorrow with these words from Howard Lovy:

This is the assumption I wake up with every day — that there is a crucial need for as many people as possible to understand that we all, in our lifetimes, will experience vast technological changes that will forever alter the way we interact with our environment, with one another and with our own bodies. It will not be too long before we rub our eyes, look around and wonder what happened to the world in which we were born.

So here, then, is a sneak preview of some of what we’ll be rubbing our eyes at.

Paul Hsieh of GeekPress tells us that, in the future, we can all be like the greatest of the superheroes. No, not Superman.

Aquaman!

FuturePundit Randall Parker reports on using gene activation to make adult stem cells divide rapidly. Quoth Randall:

I have repeatedly argued that it is just a matter of time before scientists find ways to turn adult stem cells into cells that can become any other cell type. This latest research from MIT is certainly a step in that direction. Note that these scientists used existing knowledge that the gene Oct4 is known to be active in embryonic stem cells. They turned that same gene on in adult stem cells. So this research is a clear step in the direction of making adult stem cells more like embryonic stem cells.

InstaPundit, meanwhile, did an entry on this subject that grew so large it practically became the first edition of the Carnival of the Stem Cells. Bottom line: non-embryonic embryonic stem cells are a great idea, but they won’t be the end of the controversy.

Seeing as Glenn’s site is so often overlooked, we’ll go ahead and mention that he also had some interesting observations about The Singularity. Glenn doesn’t think we need necessarily fear the Singularity. as he explains it:

The bigger danger won’t be the creation of a godlike artificial intelligence. It will be the creation of many millions (and eventually billions) of individuals with powers that would have been until recently regarded as godlike, in the rather small space that humanity currently inhabits. That problem will be reduced, however, if we expand beyond the earth beforehand.

TallDave at SemiRandom Ramblings has some additional thoughts on how likely the Singularity scenario really is. Meanwhile, John Kaye at Centerfield is handicapping the race for superintelligence. Who will get there first — humans or machines?

If you’d like a primer on the subject of the Singularity, have a listen to what these two guys have to say about it.

Rand Simberg reflects on the delayed apocalypse (as well as the inadvisability of having a name unsuitable to one’s gender.)

At Multiple Mentality, Josh wonders why we don’t have just one password for everything at work. Good question!

Jay at Longevity First asks whether money spent on the new anti-aging supplement, Protandim, is really well spent. He has some thoughts on alternative destinations for our hard-earned anti-aging dollars.

Mike Treder has the scoop on a movie that we won’t be seeing any time soon, and why that’s okay.

At Political Calculations, Ironman argues that most of today’s cities have the wrong shape to support viable public transportation systems. In the future, we can expect cities to be much more streamlined.

Lucas at Green Car Congress expounds of DaimlerChrysler’s “Bionic” Diesel Concept vehicle. Yeah, it looks a little strange, but it gets 70 mpg.

It’s called “bionic” because the design was inspired by nature, specifically the box fish. Obviously the marketing department wasn’t in on the choice of animals. What’s the matter guys, had the mole already signed a deal with Ford?

Virginia Postrel is looking for breakthroughs that have occured this year or last. We think a truly efficient harvesting of solar power qualifies.

Virginia says she’ll explain later why she’s asking for these submissions. New book? A carnival? We’ll see…

You know.

In the future.

Thanks to Sven Geier for creating the hauntingly futuristic image that graces this edition of the Carnival.

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See you in the future!

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you…in the future.

The biggest news of the past couple of weeks (not to mention decades) was the announcement that Korean scientists have created individual stem cell lines for patients, usherng in the age of therapeutic cloning. Glenn Reynolds was among the first to link to Ronald Bailey’s TechCentralStation piece that outlined the breakthrough; Glenn also followed up with some additional thoughts here.

Reason from Fight Aging! had some rather pointed comments on the subject of how politics prevents the US from taking the lead in this field, summarized with this money quote:

The bottom line: politicized medical research is slower, less effective, less efficient medical research. The slower it goes, the more likely you are to suffer and die from an age-related condition that might otherwise have been cured.

Another pretty darned good blog had further commentary (here and here).

Meanwhile, Rich at Blinne Blog had a very different take on the matter:

The researcher denies that these are fertilized eggs. Now the question becomes whether blastocysts created by somatic cell nuclear transfer (popularly known as cloning) is life or not. I am now less concerned but the fact that Dolly became a real sheep still troubles me. Reading the reactions that people have to this issue it seems I am the only one on the planet that feels better that this is cloning rather than IVF. This is still an ethical dilemma — just not as profound as when I originally posted this.

Jim Davila had some thoughts on why the MIT Time Traveler Convention had no time travelers…or did they?

Speaking of time travel, and the closely related topic of faster-than-light space travel, Zac Hanley of Ortholog checks in on the disappointing news about wormholes.

FuturePundit had a short piece on a development that sounds ghoulish, but will likely prove imminently practical in an age of implanted nano-scale biosensors — a fuel cell that runs on blood.

Rand Simberg notes an interesting parallel between the end of the age of suspicious wires and the disappearance of the last vestiges of privacy.

Meanwhile, Tim at Hypotheses Non Fingo observes that the right of adults in this country to disappear without telling anyone is still intact — for now — rhetoric concerning the “Runaway Bride” case notwithstanding.

Howard Lovy (with some help from his readers) is doling out advice for those seeking a career in nanotechnology.

Paul Hsieh of GeekPress directs us to the news of the world’s first light gun capabale of firing individual photons. No, it isn’t a weapon; au contraire, it may represent a major breakthrough in communications.

Finally, the past couple of weeks saw the end (or at least so we are told) of the two biggest science fiction movie and television franchises: Star Trek and Star Wars.

James Lileks was one of the few bloggers who thought the passing of Star Trek sufficiently noteworthy to write something about it, providing both an extended Bleat and an article on the subject in (appropriately enough) the American Enterprise Online. Lileks concluded:

I watched the first “Star Trek” episode as it was broadcast, sitting in my grandfather’s living room in Harwood, North Dakota. I will watch the last one in my own home and feel a sense of relief: I don’t have to worry whether it’s good or bad. Now it’s just done.

By way of contrast, there was no shortage of blog entries on the new Star Wars movie (Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, for anyone just emerging from a very long coma). One reason there was so much splash in the blogosphere is that it would appear that there are two (or more) versions of this film floating around. Will Collier of VodkaPundit saw a movie that was “thoroughly satisfying, credible, and deeply enjoyable.” Mack Zulkifli of Brand New Malaysian, on the other hand, saw a film that “tanked and stank to high heaven.” However, Mack lays some hints that his review may be the product of Jedi mind tricks, so maybe they are the same film after all.

We have no review to offer up, but we did manage to catch a nice still image from the new Star Wars movie…or was it from the final episode of Enterprise? Either way, it follows our plug for the next go-round of the Carnival of Tomorrow.

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See you in the future!

And now, the promised screen capture.