September Futurist Update

New potential threats in the Gulf of Mexico may come from sea-level rises, but researchers are now developing models to help coastal communities predict and plan for these and other forces. … Robots may offer a handy solution for trash collection in densely built cities. … Why are pets good for the economy? Because no matter how tight the budget is, Sparky's and Fluffy's health always matters to us. These stories plus news from the futurist community from New Zealand to Virginia, wrap-up of conference coverage, editor's query, and more in the September issue of Futurist Update.

Interviews

The Futurist Interviews Ray Kurzweil

World Future Review: What does it mean to build “new and improved” human intelligence? And where are we in terms of bringing this to reality?

Kurzweil: There are two components must be achieved to create a human-level artificial intelligence.

Conference News : 2011 Conference Volume Submission Guidelines

The World Future Society is planning to publish a volume of essays in conjunction with WorldFuture 2011: Moving from Vision to Action, to be held July 8-10, 2011, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

This volume will be distributed free to all conference registrants.

Deadline for completed papers is Monday, February 21, 2011.

Manuscript Submission:

Tomorrow in Brief

Coming soon to billboards near you: posters you can see in 3-D without special glasses....A new social-search engine promises to identify popular places in the same way that Twitter identifies popular, or “trending,” topics.... If you’re choosing a mentor, it may be better to choose one who is still relatively early in his or her career. Doing so increases the likelihood that you, too, will become a productive mentor in the future.... Fabrics with sensors could give musicians a simple way to carry their instruments with them: in their clothes....Loss of sea ice in the Arctic region is likely to yield colder and snowier winters in other parts of the world. These are some of the stories in the September-October edition of Tomorrow in Brief.

Designing Buildings for Climate Change

Scientists at the University of Exeter have created an online database called Prometheus to show how increasing temperatures will affect future weather patterns in the United Kingdom. The creators hope that their projections will help architects design structures that are better suited to the hotter climate of the 2050s and 2080s. “Buildings are modeled using historic weather. As the climate warms, this means estimates of overheating and energy use will be wrong. As peak temperatures are predicted to change by much more than means, this error will be substantial,” Exeter physicist David Coley told THE FUTURIST.


Futurist Update: August 2010

Business start-up activity plummeted in the first half of 2010 in the United States, reports the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Researchers at Michigan Tech and Penn State report discovering a way to capture and route rays of visible light around objects, rendering the objects invisible. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is currently higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years. The migratory patterns of birds can give scientists data on future avian flu outbreaks.

Remaking the Car, Remaking the City


Ryan C. C. Chin of the MIT Media lab discusses MIT's much-remarked upon CityCar concept. The car itself presents a radical—and welcome—break from driver-vehicle interaction to which we're accustomed, but the real genius is how it integrates into a larger organism of city life. In the Media Lab's Smart Cities model, the car of the future is one component in a broader and more sane transportation system reflecting the way people actually interact with the urban environment, and with one another.

Read more.

The Future Then and Now: Electronic Newspapers

When futurists were first outlining scenarios for electronic news delivery, they didn’t foresee the overwhelming demand for interactivity, nor the consequences of multitudes of competing information sources.The Internet has so transformed our lives that we may forget how recently it came about. Interestingly, one of the industries it’s transformed most radically—journalism—was in the process of changing anyway.

“Futurists have long speculated that newspapers would someday be delivered electronically to people’s homes. In Britain, electronic newspapers are already a reality,” THE FUTURIST reported in “The Electronic Newspaper,” April 1978. Read more

What Quantum Computing Means for National Security

If cyberwarfare is the Cold War of the new millennium, quantum computation may be the hydrogen bomb.

Researchers with Google, D-Wave (a Canadian computer hardware company), and the U.S. government are looking to quantum physics to make vastly more-capable computers. They may also find the key to making certain networks, pages, or computers nearly invincible to cyberattacks, or render certain Internet security systems completely defenseless. Read more




WFS Remembers Susan Echard

It is with deep sadness that we report the death on July 29 of Susan Echard, longtime membership and conference director. News of Sue’s death has provoked much sadness throughout the World Future Society community.
Sue’s strength and dedication were an inspiration to those who worked with her. She will truly be missed.

Welcome to the New World Future Society Site

Welcome to the World Future Society’s new Web site. We’re glad you’re here! We’re seeking new and better ways to serve our members and the general public. We hope you’ll use this site to find resources and information about the major trends shaping the future and the practice of foresight.

First, if this Web site isn't displaying correctly on your Internet Explorer 7 browser, we recommend upgrading for free to Internet Explorer 8. You’ll use this site differently depending on whether you’re a member of the World Future Society or just a casual surfer interested in learning more about the future. We hope to offer something of value to everyone.