The Future Will Be Personalized When my partners and I joined MySpace, we were lucky enough to be at the leading edge of the social revolution that changed how we use the Internet. A new groundswell is coming, transforming the web once again: the personal revolution. Information Overload Today, we live in a world where we’re constantly overwhelmed by information. The rampant proliferation of information isn’t a new phenomenon. Their Web: The Early Days of The Internet In the early days, content was created and organized by professionals. Our Web: Present Day In 2003, user-generated content hit the mainstream via sites like MySpace and YouTube, and the volume of information being created increased dramatically. “Every two days, we create as much information as we did up to 2003.” Search engines weren’t designed to effectively organize this social and real-time data. Many of you reading this are avid users of social technology. Your Web: The Future Music followed a similar evolutionary path.
The Newsonomics of news anywhere [Each week, our friend Ken Doctor — author of Newsonomics and longtime watcher of the business side of digital news — writes about the economics of the news business for the Lab.] Facebook isn’t trying to replace Gmail or Yahoo Mail — it’s just trying to bring a little order to our world, right? This week’s Facebook Messages announcement is stunningly simple, and in line with the next phase of the web, both overall and for news. Take MSNBC’s description of Facebook Messages: Instead of dealing with the dilemma of reaching people via e-mail or direct message or SMS, all of these will be combined, so that you’ll be able to reach someone the way they prefer to be reached, without you having to think about it. That’s the next web (r)evolution in a nutshell. Make a few substitutions, and you’ve got “All you need is a person and a movie,” or “All you need is a person and a shopping list” or “All you need is a person and the news.” Facebook Messages says: We get it. Where are the news promises?
What Will Threaten Us in 2040? TAU (Tel Aviv University) leads an international project to predict and prepare for threats from future technologies Could terrorists of the future use a swarm of tiny robots — less an a quarter-inch high — to attack their targets? Will new bio materials be able to target individuals carrying specific genetic markers? As head of a pan-European project called FESTOS (Foresight of Evolving Security Threats Posed by Emerging Technologies: Dr. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator, or Reddit, or StumbleUpon. Featured articles Ocean Floor Gold and Copper Ocean Floor Mining Company
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Maria Popova Ecopragmatism, or how to stop doing what we’re doing in order to avoid going where we’re going. Between 1968 and 1972, author and activist Stewart Brand, who helped start the environmental movement in the 60′s, published the highly acclaimed Whole Earth Catalog — an iconic counterculture compendium of tools, texts and miscellaneous information, which Steve Jobs went on to describe as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web. Today, appropriately coinciding with Blog Action Day, Brand releases his long-awaited new book — Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, a sharp and compelling vision for engineering our collective future. Brand, who has always approached environmental and technological challenges as a solvable design problems, offers radical yet viable ideas for managing Earth’s global-scale natural infrastructure in the least intrusive, most respectful but efficient manner possible. Donating = Loving Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter.
"Building blocks" containing gels turn cells into different types of tissue 1) Khademhosseini begins by seeding a patterned slide with heart muscle cells 2) Guided by the pattern, the cells elongate until they resemble the cells in a living heart 3) After six days, the cells have formed “organoids” that beat on their own and may be removed from the slide 4) The organoids are embedded into blocks of gel that can be molded into any shape needed–and combined like tissue-engineering “Legos” Researchers at MIT have come up with a way to make “building blocks” containing different kinds of tissue that can be put together. The MIT group, led by Ali Khademhosseini, an assistant professor in the Harvard-MIT division of Health Sciences and Technology and a recipient of a TR35 award in 2007, put embryonic stem cells into “building blocks” containing gel that encouraged the cells to turn into certain types of cell. The team first puts embryoid bodies into microscale wells, which causes the cells to clump together to form spheres. Featured articles
The Emergence of a Global “She-conomy” | World Future Society Yul Anderson is founder and president of Yul Anderson Consulting, he is also working with African leaders, historians, and the U.S. Census Department to develop economic indicators for African American and African Future economic and social development. Miami, Florida, USA. Gilbert Raiford is a university professor, mental health consultant, and expert on social issues affecting African Americans. Lesley Gist is a high school teacher, historian, and author. Derek Hankerson (@DBHFL500) is a director, writer and producer of Freedom Roads Productions. Marilyn Stephens is the Data Dissemination Specialist for the United States Census Bureau, Atlanta Region.
Asia Pacific Will Have 120 Million LTE Connections in 2015: Tech News « There will be nearly 120 million LTE connections in the Asia-Pacific region, driven by four major markets — China, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia — according to research group Wireless Intelligence, which released a new study earlier this morning. The race begins with the December 2010 launch of Xi, a new LTE service from Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo. Here are some findings from the Wireless Intelligence research study: 20 percent of the Japanese mobile market will have migrated to LTE networks by 2015.China will have 57.9 million LTE connections by 2015.In South Korea, 17 percent of mobile users will be on LTE networks by 2015.Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines will account for a combined 11 percent of total LTE connections in 2015.SingTel is currently trialing LTE in four markets: Singapore, Australia (Optus), Indonesia (Telkomsel) and the Philippines (Globe Telecom) and developing a regionally compatible LTE network.
The personal blog of Futurist Thomas Frey » Blog Archive » City of the Future – Part 2 City of the Future – Part 2 Building Culture, Striving for “Divine Context” As we start to understand the way people connect with their local communities in the future, we begin to see a growing need for central gathering places to help drive person-to-person activities. Ironically, at a time when cities are very strapped for cash and there is a growing push to decrease the number of city-run facilities, our ongoing city-to-city competition for attracting talent will cause exactly the opposite to happen. Rather than counting on existing businesses and organizations to organize and manage activities as an adjunct to their core mission, like shopping centers hiring entertainment to drive traffic on weekends, cities will begin to take a more hands-on role in forming the local culture. Tournament Centers The complete range of contests that take place within a city each year can be truly impressive, and the overall economic impact of these ventures has not been overlooked. Participatory Parks
Kiss your install goodbye: The paradigm shift of applications is here. The discussion has come up time and again, but it only really struck me because of a roundabout fashion. I was having a talk the other day about the success of Call of Duty‘s newest release, Black Ops. It struck me as strange that the game would use the older Infinity Ward engine, but the more that I thought about it the more that it made sense. Not only for the profitability of the game but also as a testament to the apps ecosystem as a whole. It wasn’t long ago that we’d have to upgrade our computer to run the newest software or games. When Quake 3 came out, I expressly remember setting aside not only the $65 for the game but extra money for the inevitable hardware upgrade that it would require. The market has shifted. At least for the most part. While cloud-based isn’t perfect, it’s getting a lot closer every day. Think that there’s no truth in this? The entire system has changed. As a case in point, I nearly choked the other day when I reviewed an HTML5 typing tutor.
Antimatter atom trapped for first time, say scientists 17 November 2010Last updated at 13:07 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News Flashes of light were detected as the antimatter "annihilated" with matter Antimatter atoms have been trapped for the first time, scientists say. Researchers at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have held 38 antihydrogen atoms in place, each for a fraction of a second. Antihydrogen has been produced before but it was instantly destroyed when it encountered normal matter. The team, reporting in Nature, says the ability to study such antimatter atoms will allow previously impossible tests of fundamental tenets of physics. The current "standard model" of physics holds that each particle - protons, electrons, neutrons and a zoo of more exotic particles - has its mirror image antiparticle. The antiparticle of the electron, for example, is the positron, and is used in an imaging technique of growing popularity known as positron emission tomography. Slowing anti-atoms “Start Quote Early days