The future continues to get better for most of the world, but a series of tipping points could drastically alter global prospects, according to the 2008 State of the Future, a report due to be published late this month, and obtained by KurzweilAI.net Sunday.
Half the world is vulnerable to social instability and violence due to rising food and energy prices, failing states, falling water tables, climate change, decreasing… read more
IBM’s 3-D chip stacks, “physmatics” (the blurry line between math and physics), and high-resolution imaging satellites will be part of 2008′s biggest science stories, predicts Popular Science.
The H+ Summit, a two- day event that explores how humanity will be radically changed by technology in the near future, is scheduled for June 12-13 at Harvard University.
Speakers include Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey (“Hype and anti-hype in academic biogerontology research: a call to action”), Alex Lightman (“The Rise of Citizen-Scientists in the Eversmarter World”), David Orban (“Intelligence Augmentation, Decision Power, And The Emerging Data… read more
Craig Venter hopes to unveil a living bacterial cell carrying a genome made from scratch in the lab.
George Church of Harvard University expects to get synthetic ribosomes to self-replicate.
A completely synthetic cell remains a distant goal, however.
Sonitus Medical has created a device that might restore hearing to people with single-sided deafness to improve stereo sound and speech intelligibility in noisy surroundings.
A small device that wraps around the teeth picks up the sounds detected from a tiny microphone in the deaf ear and transforms them into mechanical vibrations that can be sensed by the cochlea in the working ear.
Communicating with people who seem to be in a vegetative state, optogenetics, and an electronic implant for the blind are among the key biomedical technologies introduced in 2010.
IDG News Service has produced a video review of the year’s robot news, covering home, business, sports, and space uses.
This could be the year when we quit dragging ourselves to work and send remote-controlled robot avatars instead. Firms in the US and Japan are already selling robot avatars that allow office workers to be in two places at once.
The Millennium Project’s 2011 State of the Future Report, due out August 1, finds that while people are getting richer, healthier, better educated, and living longer, and the world is more peaceful and better connected, half of the world is potentially unstable.
“Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime is increasing, environmental viability for life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity… read more
2011 was an amazing year of accelerating developments in science and technology. These articles offer a good summary. – Ed.
Gen9, Inc. has announced that it has underwritten the first annual G-Prize to celebrate and support innovation in synthetic biology.
The prize is intended to foster creative and innovative approaches for using synthetic DNA constructs (gene fragments) to advance industries including chemical and enzyme production, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and even data storage.
“Synthetic biology represents perhaps the greatest opportunity to modernize industry at ‘Moore’s law’ scale since… read more
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2012 to Serge Haroche, Collège de France and Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France and David J. Wineland, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA ”for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.”
Quantum mechanics, the study of how matter interacts with energy at the scale… read more
Experts are making predictions for 2012 in a wide variety of technology, business, and economics areas. Here’s our pick of the most interesting. – Ed.
Marc Andreessen: Predictions for 2012 (and beyond), CNET
5 gadget predictions for 2012, ComputerWeekly
The World in 2012 Festival predicts the future ahead, The Economist
Gartner Predicts 2012, Gartner, Inc.… read more
Amid the hype — including a viral marketing campaign for 2012, the disaster movie opening Friday, with bogus scientific organizations, press releases, and 2012 whistle-blowers –some people are developing “end times” anxiety that has experts seriously concerned.
NASA’s Nibiru and Doomsday 2012: Questions and Answers and 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End? web pages seek to debunk stories about the… read more