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Emergent technology for 2008

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Cars like the Tesla Roadster will be run on electric batteriesGlen Hiemstra of Futurist.com has a video on his home page called ‘Outlook 2008′ in which he discusses his five big stories for the coming year, plus a wild card. He talks about oil prices, the economy and the political changes (or non changes with the presidential elections so close to the end of the year) of 2008. Two more technological comments caught my eye.

He mentioned both Solar and Nano technologies as big movers in the coming year. In particular he highlighted NanoSolar, whose thin-film solar cells have just started reaching commercial grade at potentially cheaper prices than coal. The other company on his watch list was Altairnano, which uses ceramic nanomaterials to create long-living batteries that should see the market in a number of forms in 2008, including in electric cars such as the pictured Tesla Roadster.

His most interesting comment was in the ‘population’ section, talking about young entrepreneurs:

“The leading edge of the digital native generation is now 18-25 or so. The first generation to grow up in the personal computing and internet age is now at work. The venture capital world increasingly focuses on this generation, the very young creatives, for the breakthrough ideas. Thus 2008 marks a change-over to the next generation for innovation leadership.”

It will be interesting to see if these predictions come true. Other turn of the year predictions include a pessimistic James Kunstler and an optimistic 50-year prediction by Climate Progress.

[via Futurist.com, image by Jurvetson]

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The banks are shutting down!

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Ginko ATM in Second Life Well, they are in Second Life, at least; Linden Lab, creators of the anarchic virtual world, have stepped in with a major change to the terms of service that bans individuals and organisations from running finance operations that offer “unsustainable interest”:

“Usually, we don’t step in the middle of Resident-to-Resident conduct – letting Residents decide how to act, live, or play in Second Life.

But these “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy.”

This move is doubtless triggered by the final collapse of SL Ponzi scheme bank Ginko Financial – though the threat of lawsuits from people who lose significant amounts of real-world money probably has a part to play as well.

Economist Robert Bloomfield is a little disappointed, as he saw the SL economy as an experimental control group for learning how real-world markets operate, and he wonders whether some of the stock exchanges will continue to operate – if the Linden Lab rules provide sufficient loopholes for them to do so.

Meanwhile, Ian Betteridge wonders if we’ll see real banks stepping into the breach. [Image by ChikaWatanabe]

[tags]metaverse, Second Life, banking, economics[/tags]
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The personal food analyzer: one step closer to a tricorder

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Tricorder Philips has come up with a design for a tiny food analyzer, something that small food companies could afford: and something that raises the distinct possibility the day may not be far off when you’ll be able to carry your own personal food analyzer around with you to make sure you really are eating steak and not soy, or drinking Guinness and not somebody’s backyard brew with a load of food coloring in it (although if you can’t tell if you’re drinking real Guinness, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to drink it, anyway).

It’s all being made possible by “lab-on-a-chip” technology which puts the components for this kind of analysis on a single computer chip–just like in a Star Trek tricorder. (Via New Scientist, which made the Star Trek comparison first, so don’t blame me!)

Read the complete patent application.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

[tags]food, technology, Star Trek[/tags]

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Bruce Sterling’s annual State of the World, 2008

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Every year at The WELL, legendary author Bruce Sterling discusses his thoughts on the year just gone and the year to come. This year he talked with members of the WELL plus Jon Lebkowsky, who writes interesting articles himself for Worldchanging and Webblogsky. Among the highlights mentioned in the ‘State of The World, 2008’ talk are Pakistan, getting closer to a worldwide consensus, Sterling’s opinions of Europe (where he now lives) and the future of nation-states versus cities:

‘Well, there’s nothing inherent about nations as an organizing principle. Nations could go away. Global government, that’s never existed. It’s a sci-fi idea. It’s kinda hard to imagine *cities* going away, though, short of a massive population crash. All the major cities in the Balkans are still there, even though the “nations” they conjure up have changed their flags, passports and currencies five or six times. New York has a future. Chicago has a future. San Francisco is dynamic. Any place called a ‘creative class city” is very attractive’

Bruce Sterling has always been a fascinating writer and futurist and this is a thought-provoking discussion on the future of our world. Another great writer, Kim Stanley Robinson, also had a great interview recently on BLDGBLOG which is worth checking out too. As one of the commentators says,

“One of the things I’ve long admired about (Bruce Sterling) is his rejection of apocaphilia (ed- the love of thinking about the world ending) — not in the sense of being a cyberpollyanna sunshine thinker, but in recognizing that options exist and choices matter, even in the bleakest of landscapes.”

I think that’s an important point to make and one that I’m attempting to take on with my posts here at Futurismic. It’s essential to be aware of possible dangers to our world but we need to think about them constructively, not wallow in the prospect of something out of John Joseph Adams’ ‘Wastelands’ anthology. When I and others talk of the potential pitfalls of peak resources or climate change it’s not to glorify the threat but because the solutions are exciting.


	

	
	




	
	

				

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How to be a successful science fiction writer

		

			 		

	


		

		
Besides actually sitting down and, you know, writing (which is the bit I always struggle with), there’s no precise science to getting science fiction stories published. over at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Carol Pinchefsky asks how much value networking has in the tight-knit international community of sf writers and editors.


Meanwhile, Jeff VanderMeer has the inside dope – all the successful genre writers are on drugs!*


[* In case it isn’t absolutely clear, both Mr VanderMeer and I are joking, OK? Joking. No lawsuits required. KTHXBAI.]


[tags]science fiction, writing, publishing, humour[/tags]

	

	
	

		
			
		

	

	




		
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