Tag Archives: Futurists

“Garbage wars” to threaten stability in developing nations, futurists say

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Some states make so much garbage, they’re shipping it to other states.

But now Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Louisiana are limiting how much they will accept from places like New York.

And that trend is about to go global, according to the World Future Society, which predicts protests in the developing countries at risk of becoming garbage heaps for the “rich.”

Trash producers in the developed world will ship much more of their debris to repositories in developing countries. This will inspire protests in the receiving lands. Beyond 2025 or so, the developing countries will close their repositories to foreign waste, forcing producers to develop more waste-to-energy and recycling technologies. Ultimately, it may even be necessary to exhume buried trash for recycling to make more room in closed dump sites for material that cannot be reused. Waste-to-energy programs will make only a small contribution.

via 2011 Top Ten: 4. Will there be garbage wars in the future? | World Future Society.

Pentagon shooter aimed to create synthetic life

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Photo: Zoe/Flickr CC

Mad scientist proposed creating self-assembling nanobots and “smart dust” with DNA.

This week’s anti-government, lone gunman, John Patrick Bedell, is another perfect poster boy for the government’s crackdown on the pro-pot and 9/11 truth movements.

Bedell, who was killed at a subway entrance to the Pentagon, was bent on according to the LA Times,

“revealing the truth behind the 9/11 “demolitions.”

Bedell also bore a grudge against the authorities, who busted him with weed at his California home some time ago.

But the mad scientist’s greatest passion may have been bringing about the Singularity — that future point in human evolution, predicted by Ray Kurzweil and others, when genetics, nanotechnology and robotics become a single science, reality and virtual reality become indistinguishable, and people become immortal.

Bedell, in 2006, proposed blending DNA with standard, integrated circuits, to create self-propagating “smart dust,” tiny, self-propagating — indeed, living — sensors and robots that could provide governments will blanket surveillance capabilities.

And in this way, Bedell shares something with another gun-wielding nerd in the news: UAH shooter, Amy Bishop, designer of a cyborg mechanism, the Neuristor.

Here’s Bedell’s proposal for the DNA-integrated circuit hybrids:

via Pentagon shooter apparently doubted 9/11 facts in Web posting – latimes.com.

Click here for a primer on synthetic biology.

Interested in tech from the Hub? Check out this week’s User Friendly

Theory: CERN & the Large Hadron Collider 'Being Sabotaged from the Future'

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Red Ice’s Henrik Palmgren interviews one of the founders of string theory Holger Bech Nielsen

It hardly gets more out there, than this. Kudos to Red Ice, for bringing us the most challenging esoteric chat in weeks:

We ask why the LHC haven’t been working properly? We further discuss Holger’s claim that he made in an interview with the New York Times that the Large Hadron Collider is being “Sabotaged from the Future”. We talk about “god”, time, history and the future.

via Red Ice Radio – Holger Bech Nielsen – CERN & the Large Hadron Collider ‘Being Sabotaged from the Future’.

Rise of the machines (East Asia edition)

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(Photo: Marshall Astor/Flickr CC

Roomba ain’t gonna cut it, if US engineers have any desire of catching up with the Japanese, who are building the robots that will care for their aging population.

We are, meanwhile, building robots that kill. (It’s all about Darpa.)

From the World Futurist Society last week:

Despite the popularity of the Roomba floor sweeper, the U.S. lags behind Japan in the development of robots for the home. The Japanese are hoping to have a robot in every home by 2015. Korea is following suit and has mandated a robot in every home by 2020.

The WFS also predicts an increased risk of bio-nano-warfare, water wars, and accelerated progress in gene therapies.

via Special Report – 20 Forecasts for 2010-2025.

ETs not part of futurists' vision

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Not in Futurismic's future. (Image: Marcin Wichary/Flickr CC)

Futurismic pays for fiction — $200 for a short story.

But writers with an ET bent (think Romulans, greys, reptilians, and the like) need not apply :

We’re interested in what we can see and develop and control, what’s in front of us and what we need to react to.

The site’s fiction editor doubts we’ve got much to worry about, from beyond the troposhere, or inside our hollow Earth.

via Why we reject stories | Fiction | Futurismic.

Morgue: final resting place for the cash-strapped

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Photo: Pavel Tcholakov/Flickr CC

Photo: Pavel Tcholakov/Flickr CC

A Massachusetts woman can’t afford to give her brother a proper sendoff, the LA Times reports.

She’s just one of many  Americans who can’t even afford to dig a ditch for their departed family members.

This is the kind of story that might one day persuade folks to donate their bodies “to science,” rather than die, horrified, knowing that a hospital might just toss your body in the trash.

Last month, the coroner called his sister, Tarnya Baker, 41, of Amesbury, Mass., to notify her that Agosta, 43, of West Hollywood, had shot himself in the head. Although Baker was her brother’s next of kin, they had not spoken since he left Massachusetts for California 15 years ago. Only after he died did she learn that he was in debt. He shot himself as sheriff’s officials attempted to evict him. He left a note giving his possessions to the local AIDS clinic.

Baker said she wants to claim his ashes, but she and her husband have two children and a struggling glass-glazing business. During the last two years, they have had to lay off their two employees.

via More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs – Los Angeles Times.

In future, GMO foods will be impossible to avoid

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Hope its OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

Hope it's OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

It’s hard to say exactly which foods we will be forced to eat, in Earth’s CO2- and O3-stuffed atmosphere.

But it is likely those foods will be genetically modified to counter the toxic effects of these atmospheric gases, and to maintain their nutritional value.

Global food security in a changing climate depends on the nutritional value and yield of staple food crops. Researchers at Monash University in Victoria, Australia have found an increase in toxic compounds, a decrease in protein content and a decreased yield in plants grown under high CO2 and drought conditions.

via New crops needed for new climate | h+ Magazine.

Top o' the heap: Burning Man worshippers to help us evolve

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Mankinds future. Photo: CC/Ben Piven

Mankind's future. Photo: CC/Ben Piven

The theme at this year’s Burning Man Festival, for artists, is Evolution.

Organizers of this quasi-religious rave party for repressed hipsters claim to be creating culture for a human race that no longer weeds-out its less than ideal candidates for natural selection.

Read the muddleheaded copy, below, from the event’s official website (bonus: includes a kindergarten lesson in natural selection):

The process of trial and error that has made this possible is called Natural Selection. Genetically encoded traits that aid survival tend to spread throughout entire populations. Living entities that bear these genes endure and reproduce, but maladaptive traits are not passed on. This causes species to evolve to better fit the world in which they live. However, this rigorous weeding out of ‘unfit’ individuals has gradually ceased to occur within our species. Medicine and mutual aid assure that nearly anyone is able to survive and reproduce.

Now adrift in our own gene pool, we have encountered a new phase of evolution. We’ve become a conscious breed of culture-bearing animals. Black Rock City is a kind of Petri dish, and Burning Man is an experiment in generating culture. We’ve learned that culture’s a spontaneous phenomenon. It thrives as a result of numberless and unplanned interactions. All that’s really needed is a fitting social vessel to sustain it. This happens best within communities that harbor many different modes of self-expression. We’ve also learned that cultures effloresce when human beings feel free to offer up their gifts.

via 2009 Art Theme: Evolution.

Transhumanists envision a life at sea

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Photo: Cynthia thanks mother ocean. CC/Bettina Neuefeind

Cynthia thanks mother ocean. Photo: CC/Bettina Neuefeind

Some folks are planning for a life at sea–on man-made islands:

The mission of the [Seasteading Institute] is to enable the building of ocean communities, to experiment with innovative political and social systems…The Seasteading Institute | SHARKRIDE!, May 2009

The Seasteading Institute (TSI) is backed by billionaire PayPal founder and transhumanist Peter Thiel.

Seasteading enthusiasts, apparently in no rush for a return on their investements, have contributed more than $500,000 to the institute to-date.

It is not clear whether the poor and the profane will find their way onto these islands. TSI does argue, however, that the islands might help isolate undesirables.

Winning entry. Image: CC/ejacobhansen

Winning entry. Image: CC/ejacobhansen

I’m not sure what is meant by “innovative political and social systems,” in the Seasteaders’ mission, but Aftermath News notes that the Bilderberg gang has been discussing overcoming resistance to depopulation:

The UK newspaper The Times reported that these “leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population,” and that they “discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.”

via Secret Bilderberg Agenda to Restructure Global Political Economy « Aftermath News.