The Final Frontier

"Does Virgin Galactic herald a new era of space tourism?"

"The news that Sir Richard Branson has signed a deal to take paying passengers into space suggests the Ansari X-Prize has achieved its goal of bringing space tourism closer to the masses."

What's next? The Moon, Mars or space colonies?

Link
Source: BBC News
See also:
Space.com
Space Travel - Google News
Space colonization - Wikipedia
Space science news - Moreover
X-Prize - Google Images
Space - Slashdot
Space - About.com
How Space Tourism Works - Howstuffworks
Richard Branson - Google Search
Richard Branson - Google News
Space elevator - Wikipedia
Interstellar travel - Wikipedia
Aeronautics and Astronautics - MIT OpenCourseWare

Discuss:
Space Travel - Tribe.net

The Future of Media

"Imagine today is September 8, 2014, a Monday. Your tasks today are to self-publish your new e-book, Really Bad 3-D PowerPoint 2015, and to find and purchase a book or article about the music of the Canary Islands from an authoritative source. Both tasks will be relatively easy."

Link
Source: Clickz
See also:
Dissecting the Media: Trust and Transactions - Due Diligence
Smart Mobs
Media - Slashdot
Many-to-Many
John Battelle's Searchblog
Media - Wikipedia
Online Journalism Review
Columbia Journalism Review
We the Media
Napsterization
CyberJournalist
Poynter
PaidContent.org
Media Diet
Media Giants - PBS
Rushkoff's NYU Class
MIT Media Lab
Comparative Media Studies - MIT OpenCourseWare

Discuss:
Media Junkies - Tribe.net

The Social Future

"Cory Doctorow, Pat Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Sterling, and Ken Wharton address the environment, copyright, social trends, terrorism, war, world government, and the upcoming Presidential election."

"But Bruce Sterling's thinking that the leading trends are coming from outside North America: 'I used to think that the USA, being an innovative, high-tech polity, would be inventing and promulgating a lot of tomorrow's social change. I don't believe that any more. These days I spend a lot of time looking at Brazil, China, India, and Europe. Japan and Russia, interestingly, are even more moribund than the USA.' "

Link
Source: Locus
See also:
Socked Between the Eyes with an Ice-Cold Futurist Scenario - Bruce Sterling's blog
Asia's Growth
Brazil is Hackers Nirvana
The Metrosexual Superpower
Brazil in Orkut - Smart Mobs
Brazil Switches from Microsoft to 'Open Source' Software - NPR

The Quantum Nightmare

"We must awaken to the threat of a quantum computer getting into malicious hands."

"Computing the risk: 'I have developed a fear of what a quantum computer could do in the hands of evildoers with wealth and resources,' says Stephen Page. 'We must start building safeguards now.' "
Link
Source: Betterhumans

Transcending Moore's Law with Molecular Electronics and Nanotechnology
Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has an interesting point of view:

"Once quantum computers become available, engineers working at the nano-scale will be able to use them to model and design nano-scale systems just like today’s aerospace engineers model and design airplanes—completely virtually—with no wind tunnels (or their chemical analogues).

This may seem strange, but really it’s not. Think of it like this: conventional computers are really good at modeling conventional (that is, non-quantum) stuff—like automobiles and airplanes. Quantum computers are really good at modeling quantum stuff. Each type of computer speaks a different language.

Based in Vancouver, Canada, D-Wave is building a quantum computer using aluminumbased circuits. The company projects that by 2008 it will be building thumbnail-sized chips with more computing power than the aggregate total of all computers on the planet today and ever built in history, when applied to simulating the behavior and predicting the properties of nano-scale systems – highlighting the vast difference in capabilities of quantum and conventional computers. This would be of great value to the development of the nanotechnology industry. And it's a jaw-dropping claim. Professor David Deutsch of Oxford summarized: ‘Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that would take a classical computer longer than the age of the universe.’

While any physical experiment can be regarded as a complex computation, we will need
quantum computers to transcend Moore’s law into the quantum domain to make this equivalence realizable."

Link
Source: Draper Fisher Jurvetson
[via Northwest VC]

See also:
Quantum computer - Wikipedia
How Quantum Computers Will Work - Howstuffworks
Centre for Quantum Computation
Quantum Computers - Google News
Quantum Internet Search

Top 10 Trends in Innovation

"Thomas Frey: As part of preparing for the upcoming Colorado Innovation Summit, the research team at the DaVinci Institute has spent the past few months reviewing hundreds of factors influencing innovations in the US. Using a scoring system designed to assess the overall impact of each of these factors; a group of the Institute’s staff and advisors weighed in.

The effects of globalization are clearly evident as R&D money begins to shift to China and India. And the baby boom demographic is also creating havoc both in the areas of retiring scientists and engineers and our country's ability to backfill these vacancies with competent new hires.

The proliferation of new technologies is also evident in the sheer volume of patent filing and the vast number of products in the marketplace.

Three categories of technology made the list as being the most promising areas for innovation. These areas include mobile and wireless, biotech, and entertainment. It was felt that these areas would be dominated by U.S. innovations for many years to come."

Highlights:

1. The Age of 100 Million Products
2. Patent Filings Reach All-Time High
3. The Next Big Thing was Invented Over 25 Years Ago
4. R&D Investment Shifts to China and India
5. The Great Talent Gap Continues to Grow
6. Time Compression Driving Consumer Behavior
7. Aging Marketplace Driving Biotech
8. Transition to Mobile and Wireless Driven by Desire for Freedom
9. Entertainment: A Hotbed for Innovation
10. Politics Trumps Technology & Business

Link
Source: DaVinci Institute
[via Impact Lab]

See also:
Innovation Watch
Battelle - Technology Forecasts

Future Humans

"The corporate culture issues surrounding the arrival of a new application can be daunting. The ethical dilemmas around RFID can be polarizing. But within the next few decades, CIOs are going to face something that will make such problems seem juvenile—the issues surrounding human enhancement.

A new book, Citizen Cyborg (Basic Books, October 2004), by Dr. James Hughes raises serious questions about how society must come to grips with technologies that can improve human senses, intelligence and life spans. As a result of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, new pharmaceuticals and high-tech implants, CIOs will be faced with quandaries they'd have trouble imagining today."

Link
Source: CIO
[via AlwaysON]

See also:
Transvision 2004
Betterhumans
Sentient Developments
Anders Sandberg's blog

The Agents are coming

"Autonomous agents could one day play a key role in everything from setting market prices to creating more resilient networks."

"Over the past year, NASA has been uploading software into the Earth Observing-1 satellite, turning it into a testbed for autonomous agents. The agents -- software programs that are able to learn and can function independently -- are used to manage experiments and operate the spacecraft.

The effort is part of a technology initiative that researchers say will reshape IT over the course of many years. Autonomous agents have the potential to become an extraordinarily powerful technology, with the capacity to learn, experiment and act independent of human control. Agents could ultimately improve productivity, increase software reliability and change the operation of markets, particularly supply chains."

Link
Source: Computerworld
[via KurzweilAI.net]

See also:
Agents of Change
Autonomous Agents - Future Now
Software Agents - Google News
Virtual tourists in Switzerland - Economist
Software Agents - Yahoo News
Agents - AI in the news
Software Agents - MIT Media Lab
Virtual Worlds
Robotic Nation Evidence

The Future of the Car

"Mind-reading cars. An end to traffic jams. Big Brother behind the wheel. A live-aboard 'recreational-utility vehicle.' The tinkerer who’s going to save the world. Upside-down racing."

Link
Source: Popular Science
See also:
Tomorrow's Safer Cars - BusinessWeek
Dan Neil and the Cars of the Future - NPR
Why Hybrids Are Hot - Wired
Robotic mobility - Robotic Nation Evidence
Automobile - Wikipedia
Car - Google News
Auto News Categories - Topix.net
Automobiles - Yahoo News
Automotive industry news - Moreover
Cars - About.com
Future Car - Google Images
Concept Auto Design - Tribe.net
The Future of Aviation
The Future of Travel

The Nanotech Report 2004

"The Nanotech Report 2004 (TNR 2004) is the premier research guide for nanotechnology. The TNR 2004 profiles more than 1,000 companies and features new investment frameworks and strategies, company and academic profiles, patent licensing opportunities and trends, competitive data, interviews with Nobel laureates and industry experts, profiles of the most influential players in nanotechnology, and a technical primer."

Highlights:

• Forecasts the impact of nanotechnology on the Chemical, Textile, Computing, Transportation, Energy, Healthcare, and Homeland Security industries
• Provides a nanotechnology roadmap
• Identifies the potential winners and losers in the emerging nanotechnology industry
• Explores the research initiatives at leading government laboratories
• Presents compelling interviews of academic researchers at the forefront of Nanotechnology
• Ranks the most influential people in the field
• Highlights venture capital and worldwide government funding trends
• Identifies the top private nanotechnology companies most likely to IPO

Link
Source: Lux Research
[via del.icio.us]

See also:
Nanotechnology - Google News
Nanotechnology News - Topix.net
Nanotechnology - Yahoo News
Nanotechnology news - Moreover
Foresight Institute
Responsible Nanotechnology

The Future of Marketing

Five trends to watch:

1. Internet Data Mining: The Big Dig
2. Virtual Worlds: Focus Group Fantasy
3. Decision Markets: Place Your Bets
4. Neuromarketing: The Ultimate Brain Dump
   
5. Automated Behavior Recognition: Watch and Learn
   

Link
Source: CMO Magazine
[via Brain Waves]

See also:
Marketing - Wikipedia
Marketing - Google News
Marketing news - Moreover
Marketing - Topix.net
Advertising and Marketing - Yahoo News
Clickz
Advertising Age
BtoBonline.com
The Marketing World - WebmasterWorld
Seth Godin
Marketing - About.com