It’s always pleasant when scientists affirm beliefs you’ve held for a long long time. I, for one, will be looking forward to the worldwide replacement of middle-management pen-pushers and desk-jockeys by computers that will inevitably do their jobs far more effectively – not to mention logically, and without hogging the best desk space.

That carbon dioxide stuff – what a bummer. We have so much of it, and urgently need to get rid of it somewhere other than into the atmosphere…what’s that you say? We could just store it in caves and cavities underground? Well, that’s a fine idea you have there, but what if it just starts leaking back out?

As beneficial as it generally is, modern medical surgery is well seasoned with horror stories of patients who have pieces of medical apparatus left inside them after an operation, sometimes leading to unpleasant or even lethal complications. A way of making it easier for surgeons to avoid such blunders would be handy – which sounds like another job for RFID, the little technology that could.

How the hell do you define a ‘futurismist’, anyway?

“We overexpect dramatic developments early, and underexpect them in the longer term.”

Ah, OK. Centauri Dreams cuts a slice from a new book by Stewart Brand, ‘The Clock of the Long Now’ – a slice in praise of science fiction readers, no less.

Nothing brings back memories like a photograph. But Hewlett Packard think that having the ability to stream back audio or video to a digital device by waving at a photo would enhance your nostalgia trip immensely. Hence their development of the Memory Spot, a shirt-button sized device that can store documents, pictures, audio and more, designed to be stuck onto ‘meatspace’ documents to enhance their content. It’s basically ‘RFID plus’…though hopefully not so easy to hack.