FuturesForum

FutureWorld is a global network of business practitioners. We help organizations understand their future business context, choose their ideal future and fast-track its creation.

Join the conversation
Home page swoosh

Doug Vining

Eric Schmidt is optimistic about the future

Posted: 23 June 2017

'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 ...

Google's Eric Schmidt: We need critical thinking now more than ever

The Alphabet boss says the world is entering an age of abundance, driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning

MindBullets Editors

SOLAR PAINT MAKES ITS DEBUT

Published on: 22 June 2017

Just paint that wall for instant solar fuel

Dateline: 23 June 2022

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 ...

Complete story...

Doug Vining

Free cross-border payments with blockchain

Posted: 21 June 2017

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 ...

Circle Launched Free Cross-Border Payments on Blockchain — When Will FIs Follow?

Person-to-person payments have gained traction among banks and other financial institutions recently. Many of the incumbents, like Bank of America, Wells ...

BLOCKCHAIN TRADING DISRUPTS CURRENCY EXCHANGES

Say goodbye to forex spreads and broker commission

Dateline: 27 July 2019

The new Blockchain Equitable Spread Trading system or BEST has banks and brokers in a tizzy. They've effectively been disintermediated, which is probably ...

Doug Vining

China's sharing economy

Posted: 20 June 2017

Sharing cars, bikes, power banks, basketballs, even umbrellas - China's sharing economy is going crazy!

China’s sharing economy charges, pedals and bounces into overdrive

30 bike-sharing apps launched already, with a dozen players fighting it out in the smartphone power bank sharing market, and six more dedicated solely to ...

CYCLING ON A RECYCLED CYCLE

There are 29 million bicycles in Beijing - and that's a problem

Dateline: 29 October 2019

The craze for 'dockless' share bikes in China and elsewhere soon led to a massive problem; piles of discarded bikes all over big cities, clogging up ...

Neil Jacobsohn

Solar ready to surpass coal

Posted: 19 June 2017 1 Comment

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.

As Cost Plunges, Solar Power is Ready to Surpass Coal

Within the next four years, solar power will finally be cheaper than coal nearly everywhere, aligning economic and environmental interests.

COAL HITS US$10 PER TON AS SOLAR POWER SHINES

Nano solar films bring cheap energy to sunshine states

Dateline: 5 May 2018

It's hard to believe that a mere decade ago fossil fuels were at a premium, and everyone talked of 'peak oil' and the high prices of natural gas and coal. ...

Doug Vining

Stratolaunch megaplane for orbital rocket launches

Posted: 20 June 2017

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 ...

Meet the Stratolaunch Megaplane Taking Satellites Into Orbit

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen rolls out the Stratolaunch, a 385 ft. plane designed to carry satellites into low Earth orbit.

THE FINAL (BUSINESS) FRONTIER

Space tourism and satellite launches compete for profits

Dateline: 27 September 2015

The race to launch a successful private space business has been won - and the victor, surprisingly, is not Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, but a 40-year-old ...