Picture this: it’s the near future, and you’re on a first date. You’re at an average restaurant in the suburbs, somewhere in the US. Your date, like half the people in the restaurant, is wearing a flat pin the size of a postage stamp on one lapel. As if you didn’t have enough reasons to … Continue reading »
Imagine you could build the city of the future, from scratch, right now. What would it look like? What would it do? It’s not a hypothetical question. According to this Salon article, software developer Plan IT intends to do exactly that: “Plan IT Valley” will be a new city located in northern Portugal, and is … Continue reading »
Social networks like Facebook and G+ are great, but they all harbor a major bias: they’re restricted to human users only. Robots, tired of the lack of access and the blatant discrimination, have taken matters into their own hands and created a social network of their own. When the machines eventually rise up in revolt, … Continue reading »
Look, here’s a picture of a tiger: A century ago there were about 100,000 of these guys in the wild. Today, that number has dropped more than 95%, meaning tigers might soon be gone forever! And there are thousands of other species in peril too (some estimates range as high as 30% of all species on … Continue reading »
Wired is reporting the debut of a tracking bracelet called the Larklife. It’s a simple wristband with an accelerometer that can tell when you’re sleeping, exercising or neither. It comes with a connected iPhone app that allows you to add information about your meals, then crunches all the data for you and reports back. This … Continue reading »
Do you talk about politics? Do you share opinions on Twitter? If your answer to both questions is “yes”, then your tweets are helping to drive analysis of the political landscape. Twitter is calling their new project the Twitter Political Index, or Twindex. It works by searching out all the public tweets about each candidate, … Continue reading »
I came across a very intriguing post on NPR’s 13.7 blog this week, suggesting that the internet has made us all immortal – sort of. In the post, physicist Marcelo Gleiser describes how he searched the internet for his stepmother after she passed away. He found a lot, including photos of her, activities she liked, … Continue reading »
This is Future Bites, a clearinghouse for bite-sized morsels of future news. Offered every Monday. To get a mix of Future Bites and future-focused essays delivered to your inbox, click “subscribe” at the right. This week, I offer you the latest in navigation apps. This one can not only route you around traffic jams, it … Continue reading »
We’re producing information faster today than ever before. Some studies suggest the amount of data in the world doubles every two years! Certainly between Twitter and Facebook, newsfeeds and friend streams, there’s far more information being thrown at me than I can process. How do we make sense of all this? And what’s the effect … Continue reading »
What makes your neighborhood, a neighborhood? Some might say simple geography. Others would point to the demographics of the residents, or the particular kinds of homes and businesses you can find there. These factors are all important. But remember, a neighborhood isn’t just a collection of people and buildings. If you and your neighbors didn’t … Continue reading »
