Practical gene therapy treatment emerges. Prosthetics that feel. Circumventing paralysis with brain implants.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Oct 25, 2009 - 15 comments

Extropy
How did life arise? What is information? In his recent dispatches from The Technium, Kevin Kelly would say extropy (cf. negentropy & Prigogine). [previously 1|2]
posted by kliuless on Sep 20, 2009 - 70 comments

The practical possiblility of augmented reality contact lenses. Contact lenses that reshape the eye. Bone-anchored hearing aids. Voice box transplant plans.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Sep 7, 2009 - 22 comments

Peak Oil, 1925. In 2000, 20% of new buildings will be solar equipped. By the late 1990s, 90% of the world's energy will be nuclear-generated. These and other erroneous projections are being collected as part of the Forecast Project on the website Inventing Green: The Lost History of Alternative Energy in America.
posted by Miko on Jul 27, 2009 - 65 comments

Predicting the Future WSJ - "We look ahead 10 years, and imagine a whole different world." Plus, review of predictions from 1998 -
posted by sjjh on Jan 31, 2008 - 42 comments

Bots've come a long way, baby. So everybody knows about Honda's flashy ASIMO, and the sadly canceled QRIO, but now Wakamaru, Mitsubishi's entry into the field, seems to have been first among semi-autonomous humanoid robots to find a job. I wish it luck, but it might need to grow up a little. Maybe it can learn from Domo, son of Cog, robot of yore.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Jul 17, 2007 - 15 comments

Jeff Han, shows advances in his multitouch interfaces a year later. YT video 1. YT video 2.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 14, 2007 - 36 comments

Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years (Feb, 1950)
Some more up-to-date predictions: science, invention, space travel, colonisation, immortality, water shortage, flooding, nanotech, techno-apocalypse, extinction, mental health, smart machines, robots, mind uploading, AI, Asia, economics, demographics, goverance, cities. What is your prediction?
posted by MetaMonkey on Oct 5, 2006 - 54 comments

Timeline of Trends and Events (1750 to 2100). Large image, lots of info. Via digg
posted by sourwookie on May 27, 2006 - 51 comments

As the Pentagon ousts plans to turn insects into cyber war machines you'd be forgiven for asking the question: Where does the real digital end and the faked life begin? Are we simulating life synthetically? or just speeding up an entirely natural process? Technologically engineered life is here to stay. Its not far fetched to speculate that simulacra may become all there is.
posted by 0bvious on Mar 15, 2006 - 13 comments

The first Transhuman Conference On the Law of Transhuman Persons: Whether or not you believe humans are set to evolve into gods, or AI is destined to achieve self-awareness the idea of the Transhuman is a thought provoking concept. Philosophers have debated the nature of the self, of the human for millennia. Is it time to start drafting new laws to govern all possible sentient beings on this planet? or is it all just a science of fiction? a comfortable humanist illusion?
posted by 0bvious on Dec 13, 2005 - 37 comments

Flexgrid. A flexible LED display developed to be imbedded on a dress for the Milan Triennial 2005.
posted by Hands of Manos on Dec 22, 2004 - 27 comments

the world's first personal DNA storage & sampling kit ~ Save, share, and celebrate your DNA. ”Your very being, saved on a swab, for all eternity”
posted by crunchland on Sep 1, 2003 - 9 comments

Robots vs. bunnies! Dust bunnies, that is. Roboticist Rodney Brooks, who you should know because you should have seen Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, co-founded iRobot, which is releasing its first consumer model this week: Roomba, the vacuuming robot. Even once you've seen it in action (which, of course, I haven't), it's probably not going to convince that the future has arrived or get you thinking about the moral rights of robots, but every consumer tech movement has its watershed, and maybe this will turn out to have been a Big Step for getting robots in our daily lives. The author notes that iRobot "hopes that one day Roomba will do for vacuuming what dishwashers did for dishwashing."
posted by blueshammer on Sep 16, 2002 - 18 comments

The emerging internet operating system. Tim O'Reilly has seen the future. "It's just not evenly distributed yet." Alpha Geeks know things we'll all be learning soon: the Internet is an operating system. And they're busy building applications for it. Bonus:the article is heavily annotated for further reading!
Yes, he's talking to Apple developers, and applauds OS X, but this is not an Apple post. If you prefer, he makes the same points and applauds Sun in a speech to their developers.
posted by putzface_dickman on Aug 23, 2002 - 4 comments

Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce sponsored a workshop in 2001 December and released a 405 page document recently. Several journalists then commented on the report. Recently What utopia can technology deliver? on zdnet, earlier When brains meet computer brawn on cnet and Unfogging the Future on techcentralstation. Was there any public debate following these predictions or was it too much to absorb?
posted by neu on Aug 17, 2002 - 2 comments

I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so Someday, the cell phone will be the only contraption I use. (Hopefully in this century.)
posted by Voyageman on Jan 29, 2002 - 30 comments

Anyone else remember Wired's theory of The Long Boom from 1997? I guess they were wrong.
posted by endquote on Sep 30, 2001 - 20 comments

Miracles of the Next Fifty Years -- a reprint of an article from the February 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics. At times laughably naive, other times pretty accurate (the author predicts that cancer won't be cured by 2000, but it won't be far off), it's a fun piece of George-Jetson-meets-Ozzie-and-Harriet gee-whizness.
posted by RylandDotNet on Jun 2, 2001 - 14 comments

Critical review of the U.S. military. As someone with an interest in the military (my brother is a fire-controlman on the guided missile cruiser Vella Gulf), I like to see someone taking a serious look at what the future will bring on the warfare front. Maybe it'll help us avoid things like this(1) and this(1).

(1): Mogadishu, Somalia
(2): Sinking of H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse
posted by CRS on Mar 30, 2001 - 2 comments

Human Evolution Will the next significant steps be biological, technical or both?
posted by PaperCut on Jun 6, 2000 - 12 comments