NEWS FROM THE FUTURE
MindBullets is a part of the global FutureWorld Network, constantly sensitive to changes in the technological, economic, social, political and business landscape. The MindBullets Contributors scan this rapidly changing 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 online 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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Now that solar power has become so ubiquitous and abundant that it's almost free, energy companies are turning to the most efficient and harmless way of storing excess electricity for later use - hydrogen. It's over 30 years since Jeremy Rifkin predicted the hydrogen economy, but it's finally in full swing. The beauty of hydrogen is that it's easily manufactured from water if you have lots of spare power, can be stored and transported, burnt as ultra-clean fuel, or simply converted back into ...
Your driverless car does have a driver, but it's not human, it's a machine; or rather, a system, including bits of hardware and software, and things to make them operate independently and together. If it sounds pretty complicated, that's because modern automated systems are. In fact, if it wasn't for the sophistication of electronic components and their advanced programmability, we wouldn't have reusable space rockets or driverless cars at all. Assuming you've used a laptop computer for many years, ...
Who remembers disaster recovery plans and business continuity strategies? Big companies, especially banks and financial services, that owned and managed their own servers and corporate networks, had to have a complete physical backup site from which they could operate, if their headquarters suffered a major disaster. Then came the cloud, virtual datacenters, and working from anywhere, as long as you were connected. The internet couldn't collapse, not with giants like Google and Microsoft and Amazon, ...
In the last couple of decades, air traffic has rocketed. Annual air passenger numbers have shot up from less than 8 billion in 2018 to over 20 billion today. That's almost three times the world population, every year! Bearing in mind that hardly any flights exceed 24 hours, that means that, on average, 60 million people are boarding flights, somewhere, every day. And that doesn't include drone taxis and private planes. The only way major air terminals can cope with the hordes is increased reliance ...
FinTech, MarTech, InsurTech, LegTech, AgTech, EnerTech - they're all dead. A decade ago, news feeds and timelines were swamped with the latest entrant into one of these sub-sectors. Thousands of startups proudly adopted an 'xTech' descriptor, as they tried to carve a superniche for themselves from the digital supercycle. But the fever of digital transformation of business has cooled; the era of digitalization of industry is all but over. The fact is, any business enterprise that has not incorporated ...
It's finally here, and 5G mobile broadband isn't just a quicker internet - it's going to save us from the future! You'll forgive me for being a bit cynical, but we all remember the hype surrounding 4G wireless broadband, how it would solve all our congestion problems, and allow us to watch live-streamed video on our phones. Then finally the LTE (Long Term Evolution) demos began, and it looked so cool. And then another wait, while the handset makers caught up, until Bingo! you could get an iPhone ...
We wanted flying cars. All we got were passenger drones, eventually. We were hoping for limitless fusion energy; instead we got solar panels. Everybody did. The future doesn't always deliver on our hopes and dreams. We dreamed about cheating death, an elixir from the fountain of youth, that would keep us forever young. Instead we have developed CRISPR and stem cells that keep us healthier in old age, but we still get old. That's the thing about the future. Our sci-fi fantasies and high tech ...
For decades scientists have speculated about the nature of black holes, but their existence has never been proven - yet. The theory says supermassive stars that have collapsed on themselves exert such powerful gravitational force, that even light can't escape; hence the name 'black holes'. We know that light and other forms of electromagnetic waves like radio and X-rays travel at constant speeds, depending in their wavelength. But what travels faster than light? Perhaps gravitational waves. Gravity ...
It's exhilarating, it's dangerous, and it's happening. Contrary to common sense and good advice, young geeks are taking part in a dangerous game, racing against each other in real life, flying machines. Passenger Optimized Drones, or PODs are the nearest thing we have to flying cars. The problem is, they don't have wheels, so they're not cars, and the batteries don't last long enough for a serious journey, so they're not really useful for travel; and with only one passenger (or pilot) they're more ...
There's a strange problem with stock exchange investing - the primary, and often only, motive is to make money. But we all know that the best businesses, those that flourish, survive the bad times, and outperform the rest in the good times, are businesses that have a real sense of purpose; that resonate with their customers and community. When Steve Jobs started Apple, it wasn't to seek corporate profits and become a billionaire. No, he wanted to change the world. The profits and riches were a ...
I know we were promised the first humans on Mars by now, but it turns out, making the seven-month journey is pretty rough on people, and we're not ready to risk it yet. Our robots and rovers have been busy on Mars, building landing zones and habitats, and preparing the soil for the first plants. Now we're ready to send a small organism to be cultivated on Mars, to see if it will survive. Sending a mothership all that way, just for a microbe, would be a costly waste, if the experiment fails. But ...
As we approach the UK summer holidays and air traffic rises to its seasonal peak over South East England, aviation authorities have announced that only autopiloted flights will be allowed at airports servicing London and surrounds. "Automated take-off and landing is just so much more efficient," says Juliet Kennedy, Ops chief for NATS. "Humans can't deal with the pressure of 14-second gaps between planes!" Without this blanket ban on human-piloted craft and reliance on digital systems, the area ...
Rocket Lab has gone fully commercial, offering launches for small satellites at a tenth of the cost of SpaceX. The 3D printed rockets are less than three stories tall, but they still make it to orbit, in just a few minutes. It's like Uber for space launches. You book your slot on the app, and get a real-time quote on your phone, which varies with the size and weight of your satellite. Most popular are cubesats, only slightly larger than a smartphone, and controlled by users on the ground. The ...
FutureWorld started talking about the impact of the 'Youth-Tech' factor many years ago - that fearless, entrepreneurial and smart young people, empowered by easy access to radical technologies, were working to reinvent the world. In so many ways, the science fiction of our past is becoming a daily reality. Just a few weeks ago the first 'Willy Wonka' elevators were installed in a Dubai high-rise (much of which, incidentally, was 3D printed). Remember the movie based on the Roald Dahl story 'Charlie ...
A few years ago, all the tech gurus talked about amazing new technologies that would disrupt businesses in all industries. One common theme was that these technologies all relied on digital processing power, and the advances being made in computing and communications were behind the explosion of innovation on all fronts. Looking at internet-of-things, massive data analysis, deep learning and artificial intelligence, all the way through to 3D printing and self-driving cars; even blockchain and the ...
Knowing how someone is feeling, or reading the mood of a crowd at a political rally, just got a whole lot easier with SensUbot - a small drone that scans people with a multi-spectral camera. The intelligent agent controlling the drone provides a real-time evaluation of your mood, sentiment towards a situation or proposal, or even your neural state. Are you bored, frustrated, angry, joyful or content? SensUbot can tell. Now there's no excuse for a public speaker to lose the crowd. A surreptitious ...
It's a dream come true for gadget geeks and Bond-aficionados alike: tech toys that self-destruct and leave no trace. That's not always a good thing. Initial research conducted by the US military lead to the development of VAPR (Vanishing Programmable Resources) systems. Labelled "Snapchat for hardware," VAPR aimed to develop an electronic system that could literally disappear into thin air when triggered. This made 'object evaporation' possible - systems would not be of any value beyond enemy ...
Forget fireworks; they're so last century! This year's Independence Day celebrations included a multicolor shower of shooting stars - in glorious red, white and blue; and gold. Commissioned by POTUS, but launched from a private micro-satellite, the meteor shower filled the skies above Washington DC, where Independence Day parades and celebrations went on long into the night. "Traditional fireworks are noisy and dangerous; they scare pets and create fire hazards," said Katy Chang of SkyBurst. ...
You might be forgiven for thinking that they were filming a new episode of that old movie series, Star Wars. But the drone attack in Los Angeles yesterday wasn't staged by movie moguls. It was a local attempt at urban terror. Police and FBI are still investigating, but it appears to have been the work of a lone wolf, possibly an ordinary embittered citizen who has gone 'dronal'. The attack was launched with 76 home-printed quadcopter drones fitted with improvised explosive and chemical weapons. ...
Imagine a stable, solid metal that is made of pure hydrogen - the ultimate solid fuel and lightweight material. That is now within our grasp, as scientists perfect a new method of 'growing' hydrogen crystals and nano-wires. Twenty years ago, scientists saw the first signs that achieving metallic hydrogen was possible. By compressing microscopic amounts of hydrogen between two diamonds with massive force, the gas was observed to partially solidify, proving the theory that, with sufficient force, ...
