Category Archives: Futurism

It's 2015. But sometimes it feels like our futuristic dreams are stuck in the 1950s and 60s. And there's actually a good reason for that.

The period between 1958 and 1963 might be described as a Golden Age of American Futurism, if not the Golden Age of American Futurism. Bookended by the founding of NASA in 1958 and the end of The Jetsons in 1963, these few years were filled with some of the wildest techno-utopian dreams that American futurists had to offer. It also happens to be the exact timespan for the greatest futuristic comic strip to ever grace the Sunday funnies: Closer Than We Think.

Jetpacks, meal pills, flying cars they were all there, beautifully illustrated by Arthur Radebaugh, a commercial artist based in Detroit best known for his work in the auto industry. Radebaugh would help influence countless Baby Boomers and shape their expectations for the future. The influence of Closer Than We Think can still be felt today.

How many of these visions of the future are we still waiting on?

Cars have made tremendous strides in fuel efficiency over the past half century. But we're still waiting for this sunray sedan a solar-powered car that was promised from no less an authority than a vice president at Chrysler.

People of the 1950s and 60s seemed to be obsessed with protecting their homes from the weather. Even if it meant literally living in a bubble, like this suburban utopia, which was protected from the elements by a giant, glass dome.

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42 Visions For Tomorrow From The Golden Age of Futurism

Are we hurtling towards technological dystopia, or a futuristic fantasy world in which our hardware and software innovations provide a human experience that excels in almost every way compared to that which we know today? Thats the basic question at the heart of Peter Nowaks Humans 3.0 , a survey of our technical development, which incorporates some futurism peering forward along the path leading to a potential Kurzweilean Singularity. Nowak deftly guides us to a complex, credible and positive conclusion throughout his book-length inquiry, but I still cant help but wonder if some of the answers he provides along the journey come too readily.

Novak, a Canadian technology journalist with a decades-long career and impressive publishing history, has created in Humans 3.0 something akin to an anti-venom for the kind of fear-mongering technophobic portrayals of robot-controlled, despotic human futures that tend to pervade a lot of sci-fi texts, and that all too-often find their way into news media accounts of developments in AI, robotics and general computing. The book presents a view of techs progress that is much more in keeping with what you might find on blogs like this one, where the audience is more inclined to take for granted that innovation and technological advancement are by definition positive outcomes. But it specifically doesnt take that for granted, and instead sets about building a case, supported by interviews from subject matter experts around the world, as well as information gleaned from a strong collection of studies.

Towards the end of the book, Nowak acknowledges that he set out with an overall optimism about technology and its overall beneficial effects on human progress, but ultimately the positivity of the books message surprises even the author, by his own admission. And as was his goal, Novak has indeed made a case that supports that message, and one that indeed proves useful for the books apparent audience, which struck me as likely a more general reader with an interest in consumer tech, but lacking a deep and pervasive knowledge. The historical survey and scene-setting Novak offers is interesting and useful even if youre already familiar with much of what hes discussing, but its structured such that readers lacking deep context shouldnt ever find themselves lost.

Optimism, in a book that tackles this subject matter that isnt already aimed at the tech faithful comes across as refreshing, genuine and convincing in Humans 3.0 . That convincing bit, though, at times owes more to Novaks skill with prose than to the facts on hand. In these instances, the book can feel a little like the musings of a technofuturistic Dr. Paingloss: All is for the best, after all, in this, the best of all possible evolutions of human scientific and technological progress.

Consider, for instance, Novaks answer to the valid concern regarding what humans will do as robots assume responsibility for more of the labor that once provided them jobs. In lieu of numbers to offer reassurances of newly created roles and opportunities, Novak indeed points to the fact that while The Great Recession has resulted in what qualifies as a recovery according to many economic measures, it still hasnt seen employment rates rise along the lines weve seen with previous recoveries. Novak concludes that this is in part because companies are doubling productivity without resorting to traditional producers, embracing technological solutions in stead.

Humans will eventually get over this setback, which Novak characterizes as temporary, simply by coming up with new things for people to do. Theres a lack of jobs mostly because we arent yet creative enough to come up with new ones. Entrepreneurship as a blanket human enterprise then gets the nod as the eventual source of new, rewarding gigs for those whove seen their old ones disappear.

For me, this point is less well-made than the others Novak brings up. It seems more like hand-waving, especially given the rigor of the rest of the argument made in Humans 3.0 . Which isnt to say its not a valid theory: Rather, it just seems much more like educated guesswork than anything else presented. Likewise, when social media is used toward the end of the book as an example of how we might come to think of humanity as a universal extended family, I couldnt help but want for at least a discussion of how its use can also result in extreme alienation, such as in the most aggressive forms of online trolling and cyber-bullying.

These criticisms dont undermine Novaks larger argument, however, even if I am left more skeptical of the conclusions of Humans 3.0 than Novak himself. The book has a clear bent, but it doesnt make that a secret, nor does it feel as though its purposefully obfuscating anything in order to make its points. Its also an extremely easy and pleasant read, which has clearly been thoroughly researched and which expertly weaves in a good number of well-chosen first-hand sources.

If youre at all interested in Kurzweil, the Singularity, initiatives like Googles Calico or visionary technologists like Elon Musk, Humans 3.0 provides an accessible, enjoyable starting point that avoids some of the fawning and complexity of other futurist texts. Im still not convinced about the certainty of the coming techno utopia, but Im far less sure Ill wind up enslaved to unfeeling robotic overlords.

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Humans 3.0 Paints Our Techno-Future As Very Bright

Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam

Unpredictable Filmic Oddity

Venue International Film Festival Rotterdam (Bright Future), January 29 2015

Director Miguel Llanso

Cast Daniel Tadesse, Selam Tesfaye

Short proves sweet in Spanish writer-director Miguel Llanso's bizarro mid-lengther Crumbs, an outlandish and imaginative sci-fi miniature from Ethiopia whose $225,000 budget probably matches Jupiter Ascending's prosthetic-ear bill. Making potent use of spectacularly extraterrestrial locations in the country's sun-baked far north around the ghost-town Dallol, it takes an exotic and sometimes surreal approach to what's essentially a simple, touching love-story. And while not all of Llanso's flights of fancy get very far off the ground, there's enough going on here to ensure plentiful further festival bookings in the wake of a generally well-received Rotterdam bow.

If the 68-minute running-time proves a headache for programmers, Crumbs has an obvious companion-piece in Fanta Ananas' 11-minute Chigger Ale (2013), a similarly deadpan-berserk slice of lo-fi, Amharic-language Afro-futurism. Llanso is officially only credited as producer on that film, but Crumbs may stoke suspicion that 'Fanta Ananas' is in fact a pseudonym for the Madrileno provocateur.

Both works star the diminutive, charismatic Daniel Tadesse, who's first glimpsed here running through a Martian-desertine landscape clutching an artificial Christmas-tree. Dodging the attentions of a gun-wielding weirdo in Nazi uniform, Tadesse's 'Birdy' hurries hometo an abandoned bowling-alleyand the affectionate embrace of his partner Candy (stunning newcomer Selam Tesfaye).

But Birdy must soon fly his unorthodox nest. A long-dormant spaceship, which has been floating in the sky for decades, has shown signs of reactivation; Birdy, who believes himself of extraterrestrial origin, reckons the clunky-looking UFO is his big chance to get back where he came from. Achieving this goal involves a perilous journey to a long-abandoned city, where he ultimately must negotiate with no less an eminence than Santa Claus.

Set in an unspecified epoch after a "big war" and its consequences have severely depopulated the planet, Crumbs posits a micro-civilization where the mass-produced tat of the late 20th century is revered as valuable, even holy. Working on his biggest canvas to date, Llanso peppers his script with throwaway pop-cultural gags (referencing Michael Jordan, Justin Bieber, Stephen Hawking, Michael Jackson, etc) which yield more in the way of chuckles than belly-laughs.

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'Crumbs': Rotterdam Review

TIME Ideas Innovation When Growing an Ear on Your Arm is Art Getty Images Model reconstruction of Leonardo da Vinci's design for an aerial screw.

Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism.

In 2007, the Australian performance artist Stelarc started growing an extra ear on his left arm through a series of operations that are still ongoing. The ear is actually made up of his own stem cells woven into a biodegradable frame. Eventually a Bluetooth device will be inserted and Stelarc will be able to hear and communicate through it.

Stelarcs work focuses on body enhancement, exploring the radical changes our bodies will undergo in the 21st century. He also created Exoskeleton, a 1,300-pound prosthetic machine with six legs driven by 18 pneumatic actuators. Stelarc climbs into the middle of this huge device and pilots it with arm gestures. It is a harbinger of how technology and humans will increasingly mergea future in which cyborgs (or robotic machines) will be operated by our brains, while the rest of our bodies will become obsolete.

In these experiments, Stelarc creates a brand new art form using science and technology in ways that are artistically pleasing, or aesthetic. Our notions of science and aesthetics are two concepts that have been undergoing redefinition for centuries.

Ive studied the connections between art and science for 30 years, a passion first sparked while I was growing up in New York City as a kid interested in science in a city with some of the greatest art museums in the world. A few years after earning a doctorate in physics, I decided to focus on a question I was constantly asking myself: What is the nature of creativity in science? In studying the original German-language papers in relativity and quantum theory by Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and others, I was struck by the importance of visual imagery and aesthetics in scientists creativity.

In the early 1500s, Leonardo da Vinci made no distinction between art and science. The imaginative submarines and helicopters he designed and drew were as much art to him as the Mona Lisa. A century later, in 1687, Isaac Newtons magisterial laws of motion led to the Age of Reason, in which the search for truth resided in science and art was relegated to mere ornamentation. It was not for another 300 years that art and science began to move closer again. The rise of industries fueled by spectacular developments in science and technologythe electrical dynamo, photography, and cinematographyplus scientific discoveries such as x-rays, radioactivity, and mathematicians explorations of multi-dimensional spaces inspired scientists and artists to new heights of abstraction.

Einstein was inspired to discover special relativity in 1905 by his desire to remove the asymmetries in nature implied by how scientists interpreted equations in the physics of that era. He found these asymmetries unbearable because he believed passionately in a pristine beauty in nature that he thought ought to be reflected in the mathematics of a scientific theory. In fact, Einstein introduced beauty simplicity in explanations, a sense of proportion in equations as a guideline in scientific research.

Developments in technology, science, and mathematics were also of central importance to artists. Pablo Picassos breakthrough 1907 painting, Les Demoiselles dAvignon, contained the seeds of Cubism. Picasso interpreted X-rays, discovered in 1895, as revealing that what you see is not necessarily what you get, a keynote of Cubism in which forms are reduced to geometry.

Picassos Cubism led to Futurism and then to Surrealism. Yet these art movements used only the ideas of science and technology, not the media like actual X-rays or actual cinematography. All this changed in the second half of the 20th century when electronics became readily available. But artists could not use this material without help from scientists, which led to collaboration. The first major collaboration took place in 1966 when the scientist Billy Klver brought together 30 colleagues from Bell Labs and 10 artists from the East Village, among them Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage. This combustible mixture exploded in a series of performances called 9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering. Rauschenbergs performance started with a tennis match in which the lights automatically dimmed when each player hit the ball, while Cage filled the auditorium with a cacophony of sounds collected from various sources such as hotel kitchens and police and marine radio bands piped in from around the city through telephone lines.

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When Growing an Ear on Your Arm is Art

"Greetings. We are from the future. Everything is going to be alright. The future is a beautiful place. But you will need some training in order to get there..."
More: http://WeAreFromTheFuture.com

Cubefield - Retro Futurism
This video if for my college work in unit 5 where i am studying more into retro futurism and thought this would be an example to use as a game that was influ...

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Red.Soul - You #39;re My Hope (PJB Remix)
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T. J. Demos - #39;Gardens Beyond Eden Bio aesthetics Eco futurism and Dystopia at dOCUMENTA (13) #39;
Tuesday Talks at The White Building: T.J. Demos, Gardens Beyond Eden:Bio-aesthetics, Eco-futurism and Dystopia at dOCUMENTA (13) Gardens Beyond Eden 18 June 2013, The White Building ...

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T. J. Demos - 'Gardens Beyond Eden Bio aesthetics Eco futurism and Dystopia at dOCUMENTA (13)' - Video

Ride sharing delivery startup Roadie has launched itself with a series A funding round totaling $10 million. The investors in the round include UPS, Warren Stephens of Stephens Inc., TomorrowVentures and others.

The company was founded by Marc Gorlin, whos the CEO. Gorlin is also a cofounder of Kabbage, which provides working capital to small businesses. Gorlin will remain involved with the company as Chairman of the Board.

The concept for the app, which launches today in iOS and Google Play stores, is pretty simple. If you need something delivered from one city to another, you go to the app to see if there are any drivers making the trip during your time frame. A fee is agreed to and the driver delivers the package.

In addition to the fee, drivers who use Roadie are also entitled to roadside assistance and other benefits, and users are able to track their package along the entire trip.

Theres someone leaving somewhere going somewhere all the time, Gorlin told me. Thus you have Roadie.

The idea, Gorlin continued, is that there are people all over the place making regular commutes or trips on the road. Thats a lot of unused transportation capacity, so why not take advantage of it?

Test screenshot of Roadie gigs. (Credit: Roadie)

These are people who are just taking stuff where they were already going to go, Gorlin said. The first gig was a guy who brought a package of t-shirts to Tampa. He made 64 bucks for the same trip he was going to drive without us.

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Ride Share Delivery Service Roadie Launches With $10 Million In Funding

Jakoban - I Need You
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