Daily Archives: February 20, 2020

Futurism is worklessas explosion of smart technologies will eventually remove all laborious-routineworking manpower and exclusively seek out creatively tactical maneuveringhumanpower the new global-ageworkers worthy of special and advanced assignments demanding creative and critical thinking, complexproblem solving, and global age understanding of collaborations, withdiversity, tolerance and mental endurance to manage all such tactically as anentrepreneurial warrior The rest leftover manpower may be hired asslaves to robots. Currently, the rapid advancing power of technology not tabulatedagainst critical lack of skills of working citizenry created only calls for trade-warsand conflicts as proof of lack of productivity and required competence to matchglobal standards.

Technology is neverto blame; political leadership in most developed nation addicted to oil andhype of globalization forget the human inter-phase with cyber-electro-ergonomics;human-performance advancements on higher plateaus with support of technologies butnot replaced by dumb-down education absence of tactical training surrounded byfake media, therefore today, depression, stress and mental-health tops as majorproblem at work in Western economies, a perfect storm appears.

The March of Billion:

Come next 1000 daysthe global economic stress levels may force the march of the billions. Workless,jobless, and officeless, tired they marchnever ever in the history of mankind assembledsuch number of once mighty, highly skilled, educated and experienced subjected toreplacements by their own technological advances.

The power of artificial intelligence centric block-chaintechnologies over-taking most general office-routines and complex-procedural-decision-makingoptions transform into split second clicks and blinks and slowly replacing somebillion white collar workers, charted decade ago but now flooding skyscrapers,floor by floor. Billion horses ran on green pastures with advent of cars, nowbillion workers headed the same. However, in this chaos, lies some of the greatopportunities to create healthy sound communities to bring in local grassrootsprosperity.

Mankind has alwayssurvived; this is not the end this is a new beginning

Upskilling nation fast tracks- blueprint: small medium enterprise revolutions: Nations canavoid restless citizenry and blowing winds of populism;futurism of creating local grassroots prosperity divides intotwo distinct national mobilizations.Firstly, creating skilled citizenry capable to swing with global-agedemands and secondly, creating massive digitization of midsize economy toenable global-speed-performance to match trading with 100-200 nations. Nationswith acquired mastery will thrive and lead; generational transformation atmagical speed with full deployments of platform economy is a prerequisite.

Three Keys:

The Collaborative Microcosms;where economic progress comes around locally to ensure grassrootsprosperity in shapes of fertilizing regional SME to their fullest potentialswith massive use of free technologies.

The Population-Rich-Nations;once considered poor due to hungry mouths now each pair of legs with a mobiledevice is a potential enterprise center. Knowledge-Rich Nations have a toughclimb unless they adapt global collaborative thinking and understand diversityand tolerance.

The NationalMobilization of Entrepreneurialism; a world class global age strategy, as itstime to awaken to digital platform economies and mobilize national SME undermaster plans. This new thinking has serious opposition on old blocks

Three Gatekeepers:

The EnterprisesGroups: every nation is blessed with all sorts of founders, owners andentrepreneurs including senior management and therefore to thrive leadershipmust demonstrate expertise on digital platform economy because without beingsavvy how will they grow? This is where small and medium sizebusinesses stuck with internal digitization of operations challenges pushingdecade old methods to expansion.

The Trade Groups:TradeAssociations and Chambers of Commerce helping vertical sectors in theirown traditional ways spanning over decades but are such vertical trade groupsable to showcase their membership in a grand way across the nation and globalmarkets?

The Public SectorGroups: how government agencies not only fully digitized internally butalso offering to all sectors of vertical businesses and exporting communitieslarge scale options on Platform Economy thinking. If local governments wereactive and aggressive leaders they will not only boost national economies butalso calm restless citizenry and avoid windy storms of populism.

Imagine Upskillingand Reskilling of billion working citizenry of the world, in next 1000 days

Identify 1000 to1,000,000 SME in a region or nation need of global exposure or exportabilityStart national mobilization of entrepreneurialism on digital platforms toexpand globally Start a high level in-depth debate and discussion with authoritative knowledgeand solutionsThese are not new funding dependent, they are new-thinking hungry and executionstarved So whats stopping this?

More:
Futurism Is Workless - Thrive Global

An international team of neuroscientists scanned the brains of lifelong bullies and found something grim: Bullies brains appear to be physically smaller than other brains.

Our findings support the idea that, for the small proportion of individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behaviour, there may be differences in their brain structure that make it difficult for them to develop social skills that prevent them from engaging in antisocial behaviour, said lead author Christina Carlisi, a researcher at the University College London.

For the study, published in prestigious journal The Lancet, the team used an MRI machine to examine the brains of 652 participants.

The study found that the brains of people with lifelong patterns of stealing, aggression and violence, bullying, lying, or repeated failure to take care of work or school responsibilities were different, physically, from those of the other participants.

To wit, bullies cortexes were substantially thinner and their entire brains had less surface area than the non-bully brains scanned by the scientists. Inverses concise summary: bullies have smaller brains.

A key exception: The brains of people who exhibited anti-social behavior as teenagers but not as adults showed no such abnormalities. Thats good news for reformed bullies, but bad news for the lifers.

Most people who exhibit antisocial behaviour primarily do so only in adolescence, likely as a result of navigating socially difficult years, and these individuals do not display structural brain differences, Carlisi said. It is also these individuals who are generally capable of reform and go on to become valuable members of society.

What remains hazy is the question of causation are the brains of bullies small because theyre bullies, or do they become bullies because of their small brains?

Read the original here:
Scientists Scanned Brains of Bullies and Found Something Grim - Futurism

PORTLAND, Ore. When you look a decade into the future, what do you see? Futurist Steve Brown sees a whole lot of change by 2030. And he makes a bold prediction.

"My expectation is that we're going to see more change in the workplace and more change in our lives in the next ten years than in the last forty. It's a bold statement to make, but I think it's accurate," said Brown.

Brown worked for 30 years with a small team of people at Intel, predicting the future of the world related to computer processing chips. He learned that the most important element to look at is the human one.

"I spent quite a bit of time in Intel's labs working for a cultural anthropologist and she taught me that everything starts with people. So I was looking at the world through the lens of people first, and that enables you to figure out how will technology through businesses help improve people's lives in the future."

Now Brown has his own consulting company, advising government entities, businesses and universities see what's coming ten or 15 years from now. He has a brand new book out on the subject called The Innovation Ultimatum. In it, Brown says dramatic change will happen in the 2020's due to six main technologies.

"And those technologies are artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, the internet of things and sensors, 5G networking and satellite networks, autonomous machines, and then ultimately augmented reality when we start to blend holograms into our field of view and see digital information in new ways," said Brown.

We'll let Brown explain exactly what those are later in this story.

All this week we will be featuring certain areas of interest in our look to the future. From Portland's skyline and urban infrastructure, to transportation, health care and even food.

Imagine autonomous air transports that move you from one city rooftop to another, or out to the airport. Or 3D printers creating your dinner and cooking it with laser technology, all with the touch of a button. Hang on, it's going to be a wild ride!

There are upsides and downsides to anything. One of the obvious examples: some jobs will become obsolete while others are created. But Brown says the changes coming in the future will be very positive, on balance.

"Think how exciting it's going to be when the way that we interact with doctors, the way that we shop, the way that we get educated, the way that we experience entertainment, the way we experience news, is transformed in the next decade," said Brown, who added that the future looks bright, especially if people embrace it.

"Think about the future that you want and then figure out how you can participate in that and get the future that you want to build because we build it together."

Here is his breakdown of the changes coming.

5G and Satellite networks

New fifth-generation cell networks, known as 5G, will speed our connection to the internet by between 10 and 100 times over current 4G LTE connections. Perhaps more importantly, 5G is the first cellular network designed to connect more than just mobile devices. Parking meters, traffic signals, connected cars, factory equipment, and billions of other machines will be connected with 5G. 5G will also start to compete with cable and fiber wired internet connections, providing consumers with an alternative to their cable companies for internet services. 5G technology is being rolled out now and will be available in all major cities around the world within the next few years.

For people living in rural or remote areas where cellular connections are poor or non-existent, there will soon be an alternative. Several companies are racing to build high-speed networks using constellations of low-earth-orbit satellites. The networks will bring high-speed internet to every corner of the earth by the end of the decade. The internet will become accessible to the next four billion people, and it will be possible to connect everyone and everything, everywhere.

Artificial intelligence

The term artificial intelligence (AI) was first coined in the 1950s, but it was in the early 2010s that AI took a giant leap forward with the advent of techniques known as machine learning, and deep learning. Rather than being programmed in the traditional way, these machines are able to learn by being trained with many, many examples. This has led to incredible breakthroughs in speech recognition, machine vision, self-driving cars, prediction, and many other fields. AI is a powerful tool that can help us to solve problems we dont know how to solve ourselves. AI will power a whole new generation of robot helpers, safely drive our cars, and may help researchers to discover new medicines that could save millions of lives.

Autonomous machines

Autonomous machines include smart robots, drones, self-driving cars, autonomous trucks, and even autonomous ships. These machines use sensors and AI to make their own decisions, based on rules that we have given them. Smart robots will help to build our homes, park our cars, and tend crops in our fields. Autonomous drones will help to replant forests and run detailed surveys of construction sites. Autonomous vehicles will change the way we get from A to B, allowing us to do other things while in transit, and turning many vehicles from a product we own into a shared service that we use. Globally, over 1.25 million people are killed in car accidents each year, with 93% of those accidents being caused by human error. With autonomous vehicles we may be able to save the lives of many millions of people in the coming decades.

Blockchain technology

Blockchain is a tricky technology to explain and to understand. Think of it as a fancy databasea place to store informationthat makes it impossible to change that information once its been entered. This fancy database can be used to record transactions, write smart contracts, and build trust digitally. The main uses of blockchains are to remove intermediaries from transactions, and make supply chains more transparent. For consumers, the benefits should be lower cost financial transactions (think the mortgage and house sale of the future), and a better understanding of where the things we buy come from, how they were made, how much energy and other resources were used to make them, so we can make more informed buying decisions.

Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) is really cool. You slip on a VR headset and you are immersed in a totally different world. Great for gaming, simulations, and some types of training, but VR has its limitationsUsers are disconnected from the physical world when they are inside VR. Enter AR, or augmented reality. An AR headset blends digital objects and information into your view of the world. This makes it far more useful, particularly for use in the workplace. Think surgeons, construction workers, or retail workers that are either highly mobile or work with their hands. When its ready, AR is likely to become as big of a breakthrough as smartphones were before it. With AR, your next 150 television may not come on the back of a truck from CostCo; Instead it might be a 99-cent download from the app store for your AR glasses.

Internet of Things

Computers continue to get smaller and smaller, and cheaper and cheaper. The Internet of Things is the idea that objects and infrastructure become intelligent and connected to the internet. Connected traffic signals, wearable devices, smart toothbrushes and so on. By the end of this decade, the world could be filled with as many as 100 trillion sensors, and 100 billion connected devices. Sensors are used to measure whats happening in the physical worldtemperature, moisture, pollution, trafficand make that information available as data that can be used to make decisions. This will enable us to make better use of precious resources, and to make the world more responsive to human needs. A sprinkler would turn off once the soil has enough moisture, and a traffic signal will optimize the flow of traffic at a busy junction.

RELATED: Transportation in 2030: Flying cars maybe, but mainstream electric and shared ones for sure, some possibly self-driving

RELATED: Portland in 2030: Passenger drone pads atop skyscrapers, sensors citywide to make us more efficient with our lives

RELATED: Intel-owned company leading the way in driverless technology

RELATED: New China bullet train goes 217 mph with no driver

RELATED: What is 5G? The next generation of wireless, explained

RELATED: Worms, fish farms, hydroponics, aeroponics help fuel Oregon hotel

Go here to read the rest:
Oregon futurist: More changes coming in next 10 years than the last 40 - KGW.com

Space Tourism 2021

SpaceX announced a partnership this week with space tourism Space Adventures to start launchingpassengers to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft starting as early as 2021, TechCrunch reports.

SpaceX says it will send four privately-paying space tourists to orbit the Earth for five days in its Crew Dragon capsule between late-2021 and mid-2022, according to CNBC.

This historic mission will forge a path to making spaceflight possible for all people who dream of it, and we are pleased to work with the Space Adventures team on the mission, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.

Space Adventures already sells seats on Russian Soyuz rockets.

SpaceXs passenger-carrying Crew Dragon capsule, developed as part of NASAs Commercial Crew Program, has so far completed a successful test trip and docking maneuver to the International Space Station last year, but has yet to make the journey with any passengers on board.

Earlier this year, SpaceX tested its space taxis emergency abort system in dramatic fashion, intentionally blowing up a Falcon 9 rocket in the process.

READ MORE: SpaceX and new partner announce space tourism launches on Dragon starting as early as 2021 [TechCrunch]

More on SpaceX: Watch a SpaceX Rocket Explode in Mid-Flight

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SpaceX Says It Will Launch Space Tourists as Soon as Next Year - Futurism

Angry Sun

Before it finally goes out, scientists say, our Sun will abruptly become so bright, itll grind the entire asteroid belt down into dust obliterating it with the ferociously bright light of a dying star.

Not only will our own asteroid belt be destroyed, but it will be done quickly and violently, said University of Warwick researcher Dimitri Veras, a lead author of the new research. And due solely to the light from our Sun.

Veras new paper in the prestigious journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, spotted by ScienceAlert, explores the fate of the solar system.

The effect wont be pronounced enough to disintegrate planets but it will herald the end for our dying system.

Fortunately, he says, we have about six billion years to prepare.

READ MORE: Just Before Our Sun Dies, Its Light Will Shatter The Asteroid Belt to Dust [ScienceAlert]

More on the asteroid belt: Scientists Detect the Smallest Dwarf Planet in Our Solar System

See original here:
In Its Dying Gasp, Our Sun Will Obliterate the Asteroid Belt - Futurism

Digging In

In central Italy, a team of scientists dug a well two miles deep in search of a functionally-unlimited supply of clean energy.

If the group of Italian and Swiss geologists manages to get a little bit deeper and reach the K horizon the depth at which they expect to find reservoirs of highly-pressurized fluids they would be able to tap into what Wired describes as one of the most energy-dense forms of renewable power in the world.

The trick, however, is digging that deep without triggering a massive earthquake along the way.

The scientists are optimistic that they can reach the K horizon without causing an earthquake they published research in the journal JGR Solid Earth last month that suggests its possible.

But tapping the energy source beneath known as supercritical fluid because it has properties of both liquid and gas will prove to be tricky in its own right.

The fluids are very corrosive and dissolve a lot of stuff out of the rock that you need to deal with, said Susan Petty, cofounder of the geothermal company Alta Rock Energy, told Wired. Its scary stuff.

Scientists also need to make sure theyve actually found a reservoir before beginning such an ambitious digging project.

Supercritical fluids are fairly uncommon, Wired reports, so even if this particular project succeeds, other parts of the globe may be out of luck. But the areas near these hotspots, if they tap in, could find themselves with access to unlimited clean power.

READ MORE: Want Unlimited Clean Energy? Just Drill the Worlds Hottest Well [Wired]

More on energy: Iceland is Using Extreme Tech to Harvest Clean Energy From Volcanoes

See more here:
This Team Wants to Capture Unlimited Energy From Inside the Earth - Futurism

Clean Energy Storage

Swiss startup Energy Vault wants to overcome the limitations of lithium-ion batteries by storing green wind and solar energy by stacking massive towers made up of 35-ton bricks, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In August, the startup locked down $110 million from SoftBanks Vision Fund. The company already constructed a 400-foot demonstration tower and is planning to eventually build cranes up to 500 feet in height.

The concept relies on gravity alone.

A pre-programmed crane on top of a massive tower lifts and stacks colossal bricks on top of each using excess power from wind and solar plants. When demand exceeds electricity production, the crane reverses the process, recouping energy by unstacking the tower of bricks.

Just 20 cranes could provide enough power for 40,000 households over a 24 hour period, according to the WSJ.

Lithium-ion batteries rely on rare-Earth metals, the extraction of which is steeped in environmental and humanitarian problems, and tend to lose their capacity over time.

The concept is similar to pumped hydro systems,which use bodies of water instead of heavy bricks and a hill instead of a tower,and have been around for at least a century.

READ MORE: To Store the Wind and Sun, Energy Startups Look to Gravity [The Wall Street Journal]

More on the startup: Giant Hanging Bricks Could Store Energy Better Than Batteries

Continue reading here:
Heres How to Store Wind and Solar Energy Using Just Gravity - Futurism

The deadly COVID-19 virus has killed more than a thousand over the past month, and scientists across the world are racing to understand the novel pathogen.

Now, researchers at the Montana-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Rocky Mountain Laboratories have released a gallery of stunning images of the virus that they took with a variety of scanning and transmission electron microscopes.

The haunting shots that remind you that your body is a microcosmic battleground of trillions of cells, many of them fighting off invaders that can range from the COVID-19 to the common cold.

Dont believe us? A scanning electron microscope caught this cluster of the viruses nestled in the folds of a human cell from a patient in the US:

In this shot, from a transmission electron microscope, the viruses look almost like celestial objects:

Okay, one more. This scanning electron microscope shot shows the viruses living on the surface of cave-like cells cultured in a lab:

Read the rest here:
What Does the Coronavirus Look Like? This. - Futurism

Whip It

A newly-published patent dating back to 2017 lays out plans for a ship-based launch system that whips payloads into orbit using a miles-long whip that is being guided by a whole bunch of drones, according to GeekWire. The goals to increase energy efficiency by reducing the fuel needed to get to altitude.

The system, dreamed up by Amazon Air VP Gur Kimchi and (winningly-named) senior Amazon inventor Louis LeRoi LeGrand III is surprisingly detailed in its patent application.

Its an unusual concept: a miles-long whip is attached to a boat on one end, and a drone carrying the payload on the other end. A series of additional drones attached to the length of the whip fly up and down to generate a whip waveform. The end with the payload then cracks like a whip, sending the payload flying.

The system could be scaled down to even fling smaller packages attached to aerial vehicles into the air as well. Payloads could even be flung from planes mid-air. But the main focus of the application is on space-based applications think satellites.

Its not the first (and likely, is far from the last) crazy concept dreamed up by Amazon. Theres the patent for a system that would place warehouse workers in metal cages to protect them from robots, flying warehouses filled with delivery drones, and even tracking wristbands that spy on warehouse workers.

Will we ever see giant satellite whips in action in the future? Unlikely.

Patents take multiple years to receive and do not necessarily reflect our current product roadmap, an Amazon spokesperson told GeekWire in an email.

READ MORE: Whip it good! Amazon patents a launch system for snapping payloads into the air or even into orbit [GeekWire]

More on Amazon patents: A New Amazon Camera Patent Is Straight Out of 1984

See the article here:
Amazon Patented a System That Literally Whips Stuff Into Orbit - Futurism

The Quote

Via TechCrunch, Elon Musk, Monday night, on Twitter (of course):

Musk was responding to a massive feature story published in the MIT Technology Review about OpenAI, the AI research lab founded in partby Elon Musk, alongside others.

The lab operates with the mission of developing safe and ethical AI thatll be good for the world. But MIT Techs reporting tells of how Open AI went from being a transparent organization to a relatively opaque one (hence Musks preceding Tweet about OpenAI needing to be more open).

Musks ability to self-aggrandize or self-flagellate is usually surprising in equal measure, but never shocking: Industries often argue for their own regulation as a way to keep government regulators off their backs.

Though credit where its due: Musk has been, as in the case of when he argued in favor of regulating autonomous weapons, more substantially and more effectively vocal than most when it comes to regulating AI. Whether or not this will have any substantial effects on other companies (statements from CEOs, regulatory commission efforts, etc) let alone Tesla or OpenAI will be nothing if not a compelling plot to watch.

READ MORE: The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAIs bid to save the world[MIT Technology Review]

More on OpenAI: OpenAI Just Released The Ai It Said It Was Too Dangerous To Share

Originally posted here:
Elon Musk: Everyone, Including Tesla, Needs AI Regulation - Futurism