http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/futurism http://io9.com/tag/futurism

We've been hearing a lot about how the future of electronics will involve stretchy circuit boards, or circuits you can glue to your skin. In this video, you can see one crucial ingredient in bendy electronics — stretchable, electrically-conductive gold that can bend with the rubber it's printed on. University of Cambridge engineering researcher Ingrid Graz has been working on creating this type of gold, and here she shows us what this gold looks like on a microscopic level. It's both beautiful and fascinating. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5883765&view=rss&microfeed=true

Neuroscientists have made huge breakthroughs in our understanding of the inner workings of the mind, particularly how various regions of the brain are linked to specific cognitive processes. This is powerful knowledge... and it could be headed to the battlefield. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5883210&view=rss&microfeed=true

Google already most likely controls your email, your personal calendar and your web searches, but can the internet giant also create a conference that comes up with real solutions to the world's problems? Google just launched a new conference, Solve for X, which will bring together experts to discuss "radical technology ideas for solving global problems." The new video above mentions cancer and global climate change — because why start small? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882719&view=rss&microfeed=true

In early January, President Obama announced a new strategic direction for the U.S. military, slowing defense budget growth and shifting the military's focus to new threats. The novel strategy will shape military spending for years to come. How will it change the shape of future defense technologies? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5882168&view=rss&microfeed=true

Though optimistic pundits have declared Twitter largely responsible for social uprisings like Arab Spring, the microblogging network is hardly going to usher in a more liberated future. It's a business, after all, and it bends to the law like every other business does. Over at Foreign Policy's Passport, Uri Friedman counts the ways that Twitter looks more like a tool of the present than a harbinger of better tomorrows. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5881903&view=rss&microfeed=true

There was a time when increasing the distance between yourself and a sharp shooter bent on your extermination would significantly improve your chances of survival. But that time is coming to an end. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880884&view=rss&microfeed=true

We are living through the golden years of apocalyptic storytelling, and nothing is immune from dystopia fever - even sex. In fact, the sexapocalypse has been with us since at least the days of Hieronymous Bosch, a 15th century Dutch painter famous for depicting the end of days in vast canvasses packed with tiny figures enjoying bizarre sexual scenarios. More recently, novels like The Handmaids Tale and comic Y the Last Man suggest that horrific gender scenarios will play a major role in our dark future. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880611&view=rss&microfeed=true The Pirate Bay is one of the most famous BitTorrent trackers online. Their political agenda and staff have changed a lot over the years, but they've continued to provide a terrific online resource for sharing media files. And now they're taking the first step in the direction of a future that Charles Stross rendered vividly in his recent novel Rule 34, where pirates, makers, and spammers use 3D printers to trade forbidden objects through the ether. That's right - they're getting ready to set up ways for you to share your favorite shoes and devices online, along with your favorite TV and movies. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5878633&view=rss&microfeed=true

Sometimes, it already seems like the websites you visit know more about you than you know about yourself — but this is just the beginning. Every day you're helping to generate masses more data, which computers are getting better and better at crunching. How long will it be before the predictive power of these systems becomes so powerful, they're almost magical? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877560&view=rss&microfeed=true

For decades, the world has relied on incredibly accurate atomic clocks to keep time; but atomic clocks are much more consistant than the rotation of the Earth, which varies in speed ever-so-slightly as it spins about its axis. Consequently, every few years, the time based on the Earth's rotation falls out of sync with time kept by atomic clocks. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5877403&view=rss&microfeed=true

We're all bracing for a robot uprising. Any moment now, a computer could become self-aware and decide to wipe us out. Like Skynet. But really, you should be more scared of posthumans — like mutants or cyborgs. People whose direct ancestors are humans, but they've developed into... something else. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5875405&view=rss&microfeed=true

The last decade of global conflict has seen the dawning of the age of the robot plane. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been around for decades, but today they're ubiquitous war machines with unmatched endurance and lethal combat capabilities. Find out more about these increasingly high-tech pilotless aircraft.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876952&view=rss&microfeed=true

That's the recommendation from a new report by the US National Research Council, who say reclaimed waste water is needed as a necessary substitute for the dwindling supply of freshwater. What's more, reprocessed urine might actually be cleaner than freshwater. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876614&view=rss&microfeed=true

Author Charles Stross has given the world many a flight of futuristic fancy — post-human worlds where androids carry on our legacy, bank robberies committed inside online games, and god-like meddlers — but what does he think the world will really be like in the next 20 years? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876247&view=rss&microfeed=true

Many works of science fiction agree that we'll all be reading Shakespeare until the heat death of the universe. But what about the works of Isaac Asimov, George Lucas, JK Rowling, and Steven Moffat? What, if any, cultural legacy will we leave to people the who come after us, and will we like the way that legacy looks? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5876114&view=rss&microfeed=true

Next week, the Senate could be meeting to vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA), the bill that many people are warning could damage the Internet. It's a horrible prospect — but this isn't the first time that Congress has tried to sacrifice a technology at the behest of corporate lobbyists. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5874655&view=rss&microfeed=true

While waiting around in their pens, swine can get ornery and restless. To placate the porkers, a group of Dutch designers are devising a basic video game that allows humans to square off against pigs (and vice versa). It's an extremely cute idea until you realize your porcine opponents are bacon-bound.

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5875259&view=rss&microfeed=true

Everybody seems to expect Facebook to die in the next few years. But there's a good chance it could outlast you. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5875270&view=rss&microfeed=true

Back in January 2010, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that they were moving their "Doomsday Clock" from five to six minutes to midnight, a sign of cautious optimism and renewed hope for Earth's nuclear safety. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5874987&view=rss&microfeed=true

Core77 has a nice interview with "cyborg anthropoloigst" Amber Case, who claims that "Good technology should make you superhuman." She makes an interesting case (no pun intended) that the Industrial Revolution disconnected people from each other, when "everyone was distributed by highways and cars and stretched out into the suburbs." But now, newer technology has "stitched all of that reality together so that you no longer have to worry about being geographically separate. It's giving us back a tremendous part of our humanity." The whole thing is worth checking out. [Core77] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5874973&view=rss&microfeed=true

As we age, vision problems are unavoidable. Age-related macular degeneration breaks down a thin layer of cells in the back of your eye — the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) — on the way to causing vision loss. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5872992&view=rss&microfeed=true

It's 2012, which means you'll be hearing more than your fair share of apocalyptic and gloomy scenarios soon. To help counteract the tide of misery, Tau Zero Foundation founder Marc Millis writes an optimistic future history of the next four decades. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873485&view=rss&microfeed=true

Over at Boing Boing, vN author Madeline Ashby has a great discussion of the difference between creating Strategic Foresight (attempting to predict variables for a strategic outlook) and writing science fiction. It's a really useful, quick primer in how to think about the future. Including not just identifying trends, but figuring out the underlying factors that drive those trends and the shape they could take in the future. And creating a "critical uncertainties matrix," or a list of unpredictable factors that could change your scenario. It's pretty helpful stuff, if you're planning on writing an SF story, or doing a forecast for someone. [Boing Boing] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873462&view=rss&microfeed=true

Is predicting the future difficult? Obviously. But that shouldn't keep any of us from giving it our best shot. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5873017&view=rss&microfeed=true

Did you know that there's a not unsubstantial corner of YouTube devoted to pornographic videos that aren't pornographic? And did you know that thousands of people click these painfully unsexy clips daily? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5872715&view=rss&microfeed=true

Scientists at UC San Diego have made a bioluminescent bacterial billboard. They call it a "living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs." Making it all work "involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison." These are referred to as biopixels. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5872265&view=rss&microfeed=true

Sure, it may not have been the vigilante Yale graduate we've all come to know and love, but a Batman (and his squadron of Bat-Men) did join the California State Guard for a blip in history. Pictured here in this Mechanix Illustrated article from January 1942 is Mickey Morgan, who made his career testing awesome wingsuits. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5872175&view=rss&microfeed=true

It is the year 2251. All is well on Earth – food is plentiful, climate ills are cured, and war is nonexistent. Humanity left its home decades ago, with the United Nations of Earth currently on the 20th round of colonization. How would you go about convincing a new round of colonists to brave the hazards of space? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871866&view=rss&microfeed=true

H.G. Wells gave us many of our most beloved science fiction conceits — but did he also foresee how war would develop in the era of airplanes and advanced weaponry? And were his predictions more prescient than some of the Pentagon's attempts to forecast the changing nature of war have been? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871754&view=rss&microfeed=true

Brain implantation and manipulation is a mainstay of science fiction. Often, characters can gain extra memory or get smarter, by having chips placed within the brain. (Or you can wind up mind-controlled by a psychopath. It's a mixed bag.) More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871598&view=rss&microfeed=true Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, is known for his extreme views on everything from taxes (there shouldn't be any) and women's suffrage (it never should have happened). He's also a starry-eyed libertarian futurist who has invested heavily in the seasteader movement, which wants to create floating cities in the ocean outside national boundaries. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871067&view=rss&microfeed=true

In the February 1952 issue of Galaxy magazine, Robert Heinlein offered his verdict on the conclusion of the twentieth century. He would later revisit these predictions in the 1966 short story collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein and discuss the challenges of predicting the future. Here's what the author gathered, six decades ago: More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871053&view=rss&microfeed=true

Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour uses science fictional imagery to discuss her people's stateless condition, so her work was always bound to cause some controversy. She's done a host of short films playing with science fiction movie themes, and commenting on Middle Eastern politics. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870651&view=rss&microfeed=true

Cars have been outfitted with biometric readers like fingerprint scanners and voice recognition for years, but chances are you've never seen an anti-theft system quite like this: we now have car seat that can actually identify you by the subtle curves of your hindparts. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5870484&view=rss&microfeed=true

Bradley Manning is an Army intelligence analyst accused of leaking thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. Depending on your perspective, he's become a symbol for high tech whistleblowing, or dangerous cyber-crime. Either way, you should be paying attention to his pre-trial hearing, which unfolded this week. Manning's case represents a convergence of issues that shed light on the future of lawbreaking and punishment. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5869209&view=rss&microfeed=true

Glad they don't do lobotomies anymore? Weirded out by the idea of giving kids cough syrup made with heroin? These medical practices, which were common in the twentieth century, scare the hell out of us now. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5869912&view=rss&microfeed=true

Lawyers and policy wonks with a futurist bent are advised to take note. The University of Miami School of Law is organizing a conference called "We Robot: Inaugural Conference on Legal and Policy Issues Relating to Robotics." They're seeking scholars, lawyers, and roboticists who want to discuss a topic that will probably be making headlines in a decade: How the law will regulate robots. The school bills the event as one of the first conferences of its kind. Attendees will "examine how the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield disrupts existing legal regimes or requires rethinking of various policy issues." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5869982&view=rss&microfeed=true

Put away your grandpa-style indie rock sweaters and salute the year's most futuristic music. By that I don't just mean music that sounds like it comes from the future (though there's quite a bit of that); I also mean music that is indicative of larger future trends. Shall we begin?

More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868576&view=rss&microfeed=true

The UN's latest Climate Change Conference recently concluded after two weeks of intense negotiations in Durban, South Africa. There's going to be a new agreement to address climate change, but does that really mean anything? Let's break down what happened. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868551&view=rss&microfeed=true

There's a slim (but not insignificant) chance that an asteroid will hit the Earth some time in the next 100 years, causing an extinction-level event. But we're not willing to invest the relatively modest sums needed for a detection and deflection system. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5868147&view=rss&microfeed=true