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MindBullets is a part of the global FutureWorld Network, constantly sensitive to changes in the technological, economic, social, political and business landscape for clues about possible future trends.

The MindBullets Contributors scan the technological, economic, social, political and business environment for clues about possible future trends.

The results of this synthesis are combined by our contributors into an on-going series of MindBullets: News from the Future - with a summary emailed to you every Thursday and the complete MindBullets data base available on-line to explore each scenario in more detail.

Exciting scenarios of alternative futures based on breakthrough thinking today.

A powerful tool to help you learn from the future - a new MindBullet every week!

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INSTANT DNA SCANNING NOW AS EASY AS PIE
Published on: 23 May 2013  
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Consumers simply refuse to stomach food companies' lies any longer
Dateline: 6 December 2016
Esther Rabinovitz is visiting her student brother in Boston. They have just entered an American diner where she has ordered a good old hamburger and fries. The waiter now arrives with their plates. Esther thanks him and starts rummaging in her handbag. After a few seconds, it emerges: The Instant DNA Scanner (IDS). Her brother thinks it's hilarious, but Esther does not share his sentiment. "We can all do with a little peace of mind," she says. In 2013, when investigators found horse or donkey and ...
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WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR DAD?
Published on: 16 May 2013  
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Digital conflict has changed the rules of engagement
Dateline: 12 December 2050
My grandson was asking about my personal experience in the Vietnam War. He simply cannot understand how we could possibly have lived (and fought) with those primitive technologies. Face-to-face fighting is really a thing of history now, even as conflicts spread alarmingly. Warfare and conflict will never be the same again - digital technologies have permeated every aspect. Drones have replaced piloted aircraft, tanks and all forms of military vehicles. Ever since human drivers were banned from ...
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THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY IS HERE
Published on: 9 May 2013   1 Comment
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Hydrogen will be the dominant fuel of the future
Dateline: 15 July 2017
After two decades of disappointment, hydrogen is finally becoming a viable fuel and source of energy for the world economy. The breakthroughs in innovation that have allowed hydrogen to come into its own both rely on nano-catalysts and solar power. The first source of cheap hydrogen is the FireWater Electrolyzer, an efficient and effective device that uses ordinary solar panels to turn water into its two base elements - hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is collected and put through a fuel cell to ...
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TRUST ME, I'M A ROCKSTAR ONLINE
Published on: 2 May 2013  
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Résumé fraudsters are reinventing their game
Dateline: 8 December 2014
Last week Amandi Naicker applied for a Systems Analyst job in Bangalore. During the interview at the SystemsSana offices, she realized that she was literally competing against... herself! The top two candidates' CVs contained almost exactly the same information with only a twist here and there. It turns out her competition, Fauxmandi, is just another résumé fraudster. Career credibility across the globe is taking a huge knock as desperate job seekers are trying old and new tricks in order to get ...
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ROTARY ENGINE SENDS SHOCK WAVES THROUGH AUTO INDUSTRY
Published on: 25 April 2013  
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The new wave disk power plant will change the way hybrid autos are designed and fueled. Is this a Black Swan approaching?
Dateline: 6 May 2015
The first commercial application of the Shockwave Engine has been piloted by Ford in their latest hybrid SUV. The brainchild of Norbert Mueller of Michigan State University, this innovative rotary engine uses a fraction of the fuel consumed by a normal piston engine, for the same power output. A cross between the Wankel rotary engine and a jet turbine, the Mueller engine is best suited to generating electric power at fairly constant speed, rather than driving a mechanical transmission. It runs on a ...
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STOP THE WORLD, WE'RE HAVING A MIDLIFE CRISIS
Published on: 18 April 2013   3 Comments
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The West deflates, China stagnates, and the rest of the world watches and worries
Dateline: 1 May 2040
As the 21st Century approaches middle age, prices are falling alarmingly. In real terms, everything from coal to electronics is cheaper than it was four decades ago, and steel is at its lowest price in 100 years. Deflation is the norm in the Old World, and the so-called Dynamic Markets are no longer so dynamic. Over the past century, we have seen global growth on an unprecedented scale, and average income per capita, worldwide, has never been higher. The economic superpowers of the previous century, ...
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WE'RE ALL SLAVES TO BIG DATA
Published on: 11 April 2013   3 Comments
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Information overload and too much choice lead to anxiety and depression
Dateline: 22 April 2016
Three years ago, in 2013, the world was trying to estimate what the true size and impact of 'Big Data' would be. It seems like we got much more than we bargained for. The latest studies on mental health presented by the World Health Organization report that one in every three individuals in the United States, France and Germany suffers from some type of mental illness that stems from anxiety. In South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria and India the statistic is one in five. Professor Michaela Benotti from ...
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JUSTIN BIEBER'S DIGITAL DEMISE
Published on: 4 April 2013   1 Comment
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"I ain't dead" claims the pop idol, but nobody believes him
Dateline: 1 April 2017
It all started when The Bieb began wearing the new Nike LIFE+ bracelet. It's more than a sensor device; it's a 'whole life' application too. LIFE+ monitors your every movement, what you eat and when you sleep. It knows what you're doing at all times, from wildly gyrating on stage to bedroom antics. Justin's mistake was selecting maximum exposure. Now every move he made was reported in real time on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere else. No need to manually update your lifestream. What a ...
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INSURANCE BECOMES REAL-TIME
Published on: 28 March 2013   1 Comment
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As risk increases, so does your cover - automatically and effortlessly
Dateline: 27 March 2016
Taking out insurance cover has always been a pain. Bureaucracy and boring paperwork were the order of the day - but no more. The networked world and ubiquitous data are radically reshaping yet another industry. Now insurance is linked in real-time to what you're doing, with the level of cover changing dynamically to match your activity. So if you're skiing down a steep and dangerous black slope, your cover is seamlessly hiked. But when you're sitting in the pub having a beer afterwards, the cost ...
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THE NEW MEXICAN REVOLUTION
Published on: 21 March 2013   2 Comments
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The Mexican Wave becomes a tsunami
Dateline: 7 July 2018
In five years Mexico has doubled its GDP and has overtaken Latin American rival Brazil as the largest economy in the region. At Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) Mexico is bigger than the UK and France, and closing in on Germany. The biggest reason for this rapid rise is the upsurge in demand from Mexico's gorilla neighbour, the United States. Coupled with labour costs lower than China and an investor-friendly democratic regime, Mexico has proven to be the perfect place for advanced manufacturing ...
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IT KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE THINKING
Published on: 14 March 2013  
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Now we can communicate with our thoughts - and technology
Dateline: 13 June 2019
For generations, people have dreamed of communicating with their thoughts. Now, thanks to the first commercial device that successfully reads brainwaves and converts them into speech, telepathy is becoming a reality. "We're still short of the idea of being able to read someone's mind, but theoretically that's possible," says Vincent Chang, who has worked with scientists at Stanford University and a range of neuroscience companies to commercialize the technology. It works by scanning brain activity ...
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BABY, WHO IS CLONING YOU NOW?
Published on: 7 March 2013   1 Comment
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Celebrities outraged at pirate body features, demand royalties for their DNA
Dateline: 21 March 2026
Remember the recording industry outrage at pirated music and the file-sharing sub-culture? It was soon eclipsed by wide-scale copying of movies and TV series, easily spread by torrents and mega downloads. Then came the 3D printing revolution, and it wasn't long before geeks were pirating real things - simply scan them and print out a replica. And if you had one of the fancier machines, you could clone fully-functional electronic gadgets, once you had downloaded the 'maker' file. But pirating ...
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THE SMART FACE OF HEALTHCARE
Published on: 28 February 2013   3 Comments
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Virtual hospitals are reinventing medicine
Dateline: 14 January 2018
Yessirree, things sure ain't what they used to be! Just take the new hospital in town...not a patient in sight! That's because the new high-tech hospitals don't have patients. Instead, they have a small but highly-skilled medical team, backed by top-class technicians, and a bewildering array of technology. And they can be anywhere in the world. The patients are right where they ought to be - at home, or at worst, when serious medical intervention is required, in a nearby specialized clinic for a ...
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THE APP ECONOMY GOES BUST
Published on: 21 February 2013   4 Comments
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Millions of apps, and they're all free
Dateline: 17 February 2021
Who remembers the Dotcom boom of 20 years ago? Which was followed by the 'Dotbomb' crash, as the bubble burst. Well, the 'App Economy' is proving to be a repeat of that episode. That's the thing about apps. They're just useful websites, content or services, packaged in a convenient, device-friendly way. Most apps need the web to work, but that's what it's all about, isn't it? The network is the computer. The big problem was when app developers began to see all those dollar signs flashing before ...
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WORLD POPULATION IN FREE-FALL
Published on: 14 February 2013   1 Comment
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Fertility rates and life expectancy down
Dateline: 1 June 2200
Since its peak at just over 8 billion in 2050, world population has been in decline; but the rate has showed signs of dropping even faster in the last century. Average fertility rates had declined from 4.95 children per woman in 1950 to 2.47 in 2000, and these have now dropped to below 1.8 - not sufficient by a long way to keep the global population stable. A century of high economic growth and personal wealth in the East has been noted as the key factor behind these plummeting birth rates. ...
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NOW WE ALL TALK WITH OUR HANDS
Published on: 7 February 2013  
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Sensor technology changes social behavior
Dateline: 30 July 2016
Once we used to tease Italians for talking with their hands. Now we're all doing it! This is a classic example of how technology can change social behavior. Just as touch-screen devices introduced a whole new range of hand movements into our world (like spreading your fingers to make something bigger), so the latest generation of 3D motion control devices are making communication much more physical. Writing in the air with our hands, wearing a stylish 3D glove, or even via sensors built into rings ...
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FACEBOOK IDENTITIES FOR SALE
Published on: 31 January 2013   2 Comments
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Trade in 220 million fake IDs worth $2.3 billion
Dateline: 21 April 2015
Police in Berlin thought they had tracked down a notorious hacker responsible for stealing US$ 18 billion from Deutsche Bank. "The hacker wasn't as good at covering his tracks as he thought. We managed to trace him back and capture a Facebook cookie. We've investigated the account and forces are on their way," said Phillippe Mauer, the lead detective on the case. But it turns out the Facebook account was a careful forgery. Seven years of social activity, and the illusion of a network of ...
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CHINA IS TOP OF THE FLOPS
Published on: 24 January 2013   2 Comments
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Supercomputer breaks the exaflop barrier
Dateline: 27 January 2019
China's Tianhe-9B has trumped America's Oak Ridge Labs in the race to exascale computing, with a full 1,000 petaflop record. Despite all their tweaking, Zeus, the Oak Ridge supercomputer, was able to clock only 887 petaflops. But this is already a quantum leap beyond the 33 petaflop benchmark of Trinity, which held the trophy as world's fastest computer just five years ago. This type of exponential increase in speed required a completely different base architecture, as well as the latest multicore ...
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CENSUS RESULTS CONFIRM THE NEW SOCIAL REALITY
Published on: 17 January 2013  
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Married couples are the exception rather than the rule - and the kids love it
Dateline: 1 July 2017
How often have you heard politicians bleating about "hard-working middle-class families?" Well, the UK census results released last week confirm that 'families' are not what they used to be. Married-couple households are now in a significant minority at 35%, (down from 47% in 2010 and 51% in 2001) while the number of single adults heading up the family has risen by six million. The traditional family unit is increasingly an anachronism, especially in cities. Another survey, also released last ...
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MANUFACTURING? WHAT'S THAT?
Published on: 10 January 2013   2 Comments
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China no longer center of the manufacturing universe as the paradigm shifts
Dateline: 9 June 2025
Just as BT announces that it will no longer supply or support fixed-line phones, a report issued by the United Nations confirms two major paradigm shifts in manufacturing and logistics. The first paradigm shift: China is no longer the world's #1 choice for low-cost manufacturing - everywhere is. The rapid advance of cheap intelligent robotics has meant that this approach to manufacturing has become cheaper than the cheapest labour on the planet. Economy of scale has become irrelevant as one-off ...
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