Stories of the future - science fiction, foresight and the future

Ever wanted to know what future predictions about our time were written in newspapers fifty years ago? This site is dedicated to this. I particularly like ‘Foolproof Weatherman of 1989′ (from 1939) or how about ‘The Mechanical Man of The Future’ (from 1928).

Paleo Future: http://www.paleofuture.com/

A new study by Oxford scientists explores the basis for parallel universes.

In Everett’s “many worlds” universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.

A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

View the full article here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paUniverse_sun14_parallel_universes&show_article=1&cat=0

The Space Telescope Science Institute announced the results of their cooperative effort with Google, Inc., to incorporate astronomical data into a browsable utility. It’s a start! And a pretty good one.

The latest version of the free Google Earth has a Sky function. Select “Switch to Sky” in the View pull down menu and Earth will disappear and become a celestial globe. All the commands and layers transform from geographical to celestial, allowing you to search for NGC objects, slew to coordinates, click to display Hubble images, and much more.

The above quote is sourced from ‘Sky & Telescope’. Read the whole article at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/astronomyonline/9308836.html

Oh My News is a first of its kind website dedicated to ‘citizen journalism’. It is entirely written by members of the community. This represents a radical step away from conventional journalism. It’s yet another way the internet is democratizing the process of writing, editing and publishing content on line. The emergence of these types of applications is sure to shake up business. News organisations are feeling it presently, but these applications will have far reaching affects, and will shake the world’s of small and Fortune 500 companies alike.

Visit the Oh My News International site here http://english.ohmynews.com/

Visit the Wiki Entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OhmyNews

Aubrey de Grey’s talk on ‘Why we age and how we can avoid it’.

Whether we agree with Grey’s hypothesis or not, this topic is one that fundamentally questions what it means to live a human life. Grey argues that the first person who lives to 1000 years old may already have been born. That’s an idea from the edge.

The Ted.com website, upon which this presentation is shown, presents some of the greatest ideas about the future from some of the greatest and most controversial minds. It’s well worth browsing.

View Grey’s talk (and the TED site in general) at this link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/39

Okay…I found the timing of this slightly uncanny.

This week I was finishing off a uni assignment for my Masters in Futures Study. The assignment looks at research techniques (environmental scanning) that can be used to build conceptual models about the future so as to improve decision making.

The same night I was handing it in, a PhD student (Andreas) emailed me to let me know about a new website that’s been launched in Germany, TechForX.

TechForX is like a virtual trading system for people to participate in ‘grading the likelihood’ of possible future outcomes. A fantastic and unique idea, I thought, to create a highly accessible system that permits widespread social participation in building expectations about the future.

Here’s some information about the intent of the program…

In line with the European foresight project EPIS run by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, which aims at predicting long-term developments in the content industry, the non-commercial play-money prediction market TechForX has been launched parallel to a Delphi study.

While in the Delphi a small number of selected experts are asked to judge predefined theses, it is the goal of TechForX to enhance traditional foresight activities by involving a preferably broad public. Thus, TechForX invites every internet user to participate by revealing his / her opinion on a subset of the same theses that are asked in the Delphi. The results will be incorporated in EPIS to improve strategic decision-making of European policy makers. Thus, for the first time really everybody has the possibility to participate in foresight studies and shape the future.

To get an impression on the discussed topics, here are some of the theses that are currently traded on TechForX:

• More money is spent on internet advertising in search engines and navigation tools than on television advertising.
• On average, users spend more time watching personalized TV on demand than fixed programs.
• A value added tax (VAT) for transactions within virtual worlds (like Second Life) is raised.
• Online self-publication of books (without involving publishing houses) is the predominant way of commercial distribution, even for established authors.
• Virtual visits to museums over the internet are more popular than physical visits.

On TechForX you reveal your information by trading virtual stocks whose market price can be interpreted as the probability for the underlying claim to come true in the future. The stock price reflects the aggregated opinion of all traders in the market and can be interpreted as a forecast of future developments.

For more information visit the site at http://www.techforx.org

This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by authors of other papers. Links (curved black lines) were made between the paradigms that shared papers, then treated as rubber bands, holding similar paradigms nearer one another when a physical simulation forced every paradigm to repel every other; thus the layout derives directly from the data. Larger paradigms have more papers; node proximity and darker links indicate how many papers are shared between two paradigms. Flowing labels list common words unique to each paradigm, large labels general areas of scientific inquiry.

The above quote is from the SeedMagazine.com website.

Download the map at http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/03/scientific_method_relationship.php

The world is a complex place. As humans, we struggle with the complexity of it, seeking often for new ways to help us synthesize the vast array of data that’s out there into cogent and meaningful patterns.

A friend of mine, Chris Lynch, sent me a link to this amazing map of scientific enquiry. It’s enough to blow your mind. It goes to show what’s possible with visual mapping systems and the ways in which such systems can help us conceptualise the world out there.

Just think, if we can only map story plots in the same way….well, maybe that’s a bit much.

This is a must see for a 4.5 minute snapshot of how the Web is changing our world.

Sky Harbor International Airport in the US will test a new federal screening system that takes X-rays of passenger’s bodies to detect concealed explosives and other weapons. The technology, called backscatter, has been around for several years but has not been widely used in the US as an anti-terrorism tool because of privacy concerns.

View Artcile - http://www.livescience.com/technology/061201_ap_airport_xray.html