NEWS, COMMENTARY, DEBATE AND ACCESS TO FUTUREWORLD'S COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE BASE
It's common cause that the meat industry is not very kind to animals, and intensive cattle farming is not very good for the environment in general. What's more, more than enough food is grown globally to adequately feed the world's growing population, but a large part of crop production goes to feeding cows, so that affluent people can enjoy nice juicy steaks. All this while the poor go hungry and survive on foreign aid in times of drought. In the interests of social justice and animal humanity, ...
In January, China announced it was closing down 103 coal plants as the price of renewables continues to tumble. And now, India has announced it is shutting down 37 coal mines for the same reason.In May, India's solar company was able to sell power generated by solar at 2.44 rupees per kWh. Power produced from coal-powered plants is selling at 3.20 rupees per kWh. There's no contest!The ...
Another milestone in the unstoppable march of alternative energies - and another nail in the coffin of hydrocarbon fuel sources. And unexpectedly, from China.
Expect your phone to evolve into a voice controlled set of wearables. Just as we suggested in our MindBullet.
SpaceX has successfully recovered eight of their first stage boosters, and has also reflown, and recovered again, the rocket known as Core 1021. Now Elon Musk says they want to be able to recover the second stage as well, and reuse almost 100% of the rocket. His vision for human space flight includes landing the crew capsule under power for reuse too!Soon space tourism will be a regular ...
Eric Schmidt shares his predictions for the future in this concise and well-articulated video.(Updated with new video link) ...
The attributes and skills of CEO's and senior executives, actually all leaders, will shift fundamentally in a world of AI, machine learning, quantum computing etc. What makes humans relevant today will not guarantee long term relevance. Are we preparing ourselves fast enough for tomorrow's world?
Looks like our MindBullets scenario from August 2012 was spot on (see alongside). China is indeed set to become the first country in the world to launch a cryptocurrency based on blockchain.
Will demand for oil continue to rise indefinitely, or will exponential technologies hasten a peak in demand, and a shift to alternative fuel and energy sources? Bloomberg gives us a view of what the demise of oil could look like.
The relentless drive of alternative energies, from solar to wind to hydro and now, as well, fusion, is unstoppable. The fossil fuel industry days are truly limited.
'Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc (Google’s parent company), is optimistic about the future. “We’re entering what I call the age of abundance,” he says. “And during the age of abundance, we’re going to see a new age … the age of intelligence.“By 2020, most human beings will have access to the internet. When you have everyone harnessed with this information, the world gets more ...
It's taken five years to come to fruition, but the magic of solar paint is finally something every building owner can benefit from. Why pay for costly 3D printed solar panels and film, when you can just slap it on like paint - literally. Discovered back in 2017, solar paint is a special mixture of synthetic molecules and titanium oxide, which has been used in paint for decades. It turns out the oxide helps the paint absorb the sun's energy, while the molybdenum molecules act as a catalyst, splitting ...
Circle is now a payments company that doesn’t make money from payments. Using blockchain technology, Circle has launched a fee-free ethereum-powered cross-border person-to-person payments capability.That sounds like a mouthful, and it is, but it's exactly the sort of development that we 'predicted' in our MindBullet from last year! When will banks wise up? ...
Sharing cars, bikes, power banks, basketballs, even umbrellas - China's sharing economy is going crazy!
The combination of increasingly cheap solar power and new-age batteries is rewriting the rules of energy worldwide. And this means that the days of coal's decades-long supremacy are numbered. That's what we wrote in our MindBullet back in April 2008. And now it is happening.
We've been saying for years that space is the next big business frontier, and Elon Musk has been dominating the news in that area. But another entrepreneur, Paul Allen, has been behind building the world's biggest plane to launch space rockets from the stratosphere into orbit. After four years it has emerged from its hanger for testing and could demonstrate launch capability by 2019. Will ...
What a revolution is happening in the world of retail! Earlier this year Amazon launched its new "Amazon Go!" technology - no lines, no checkout, just take what you want and go! The really clever part of this technology is that it places Amazon, through your Amazon account, at the heart of the transaction.Then last week Amazon announced it was buying Whole Foods for a staggering ...
It was Microsoft founder Bill Gates who famously said in 1994 that we need banking, but we don't need banks. It's taken nearly 30 years, but he was dead right. Worldwide, financial services have moved out of the hands of traditional banks and into an array of mobile, FinTech and data companies. Some forward-thinking banks grasped the new world of collaboration and entered into early partnerships and have survived, albeit in a different form. Others have failed or, at best, become simply the ...
We have published a number of MindBullets over the years, that examine the potential for cyber criminals or hackers to damage or destroy physical infrastructure, like the power grid. It seems the Russians or someone may have tested this capability against the Ukraine last year, with powerful malware known as 'Crash override' or 'Industroyer'. Remember Stuxnet? This is a lot scarier!
In this TED interview, Elon Musk defends his boring idea, saying that they will make tunneling so much cheaper that there could be an 'arbitrary' number of tunnels to absorb any level of demand. He also has some interesting views of the future.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwLWfaAg-8 ...
