We already boost our intelligence with external resources, including other people, books, and the Internet. How long before we can start boosting our intelligence inside our brains using implants? If your brain could be made to operate 10-20% faster, if you could completely eliminate mental fatigue or a tendency to become distracted, if you could […]
Is analyzing big data more fun than eating? Well, it might just be. For some, at least. Anyway, that is one of the premises of Platfora’s recent Soylent giveaway promotion. For those who need catching up: Platfora is a Hadoop-native big data analytics platform. Soylent is an instant meal replacement, designed to provide 100% of […]
The relentless wave of change that is transforming our world from being one made primarily out of stuff to one made primarily out of data has a name. It’s called datafication. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed the datafication of business, of society, and of everyday life. There appear to be three major […]
Virginia Postrel has written an intriguing piece at Bloomberg that some dill-weed of an editor gave a really unfortunate, and misleading, headline. Her piece suggests that quality of life, in this instance measured by something as seemingly trivial as entertainment options, is increasing even as other standard economic markers of well-being stay flat or dip […]
Check out this wonderful video from Jason Silva. I love what Jason says about changing perspectives. Right now I am standing at a desk, but I am also standing on the surface of a planet. (Actually, I’m standing a bit below the surface, seeing as I’m in the basement.) I’m also hurtling through space, following […]
On this week’s podcast we talked about disturbing futures — future worlds that aren’t necessarily dystopias, but that nonetheless don’t look terribly appealing to us back here in the past. I focused mainly on futures in which the population has abandoned some traditional aspect of the human experience. It isn’t always a bad idea to […]
Ten years ago, in the early primordial days of The Speculist, I came up with a list of 7 questions that I thought could help us shape an ongoing conversation about the future. Whenever I did a Speculist interview, it would include these seven questions. (A shortened version of these questions were later used in […]
So did you hear about this guy who rode a balloon out into space — more than 100,000 feet up! — and jumped from it, hurtling towards the earth at hundreds of miles per hour before safely parachuting to the ground? His name is Joseph Kittinger. He made his astounding leap from the US Air […]
Phil and Stephen welcome futurist and transhumanist Giulio Prisco to FastForward Radio to discuss his new magazine Turing Church, which is all about the convergence of science, technology, religion, and spirituality. Topics to be explored: Technology Meets Spirituality — Why Is This Important? What’s a Cosmist? What do they believe? (More here.) The physics of […]
Saw this headline on Kurzweil this morning: The world’s first 3D-printed gun is a terrifying thing (The full story is here.) Are printable guns “terrifying?” At first glance, I would have to say no. At least not based on the fact that they are printed out. There are millions of guns out there and I […]