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
Last week, we looked at some reasons why even the most rational individual might feel a touch of dread at the thought of a car that drives itself. This week, let’s zoom out a bit, and imagine a future society where driverless cars are the norm. I think this is a very plausible scenario, but … Continue reading
The music industry, as you’ve probably noticed, is in the midst of a cosmic shift. As with books and movies, the arrival of the digital era has demolished the old ways of doing business. MP3 sales recently beat CD sales for the first time ever, and it won’t be long ’til all music is digital. … Continue reading
California just became the third state to legalize autonomous cars. They’re not available to consumers yet, but test vehicles can now operate in public there, just as they can in Nevada and Florida. I reacted to this news with delight, while others had a more sober appraisal: I’ve written about the implications of driverless cars … Continue reading
Here’s some heartening sustainability news to file under this week’s Future Bites: Co.exist is reporting that grocery store giant Safeway is boosting the sustainable fishing industry in a big way. This is good because sustainable fishing (like sustainable agriculture) reduces pollution and resource depletion, ensuring that future generations will be able to access the same … Continue reading
Last week I looked at why bicycles should have a privileged place in future planning. Today I take the other angle: What’s the future of bicycles themselves? Curious, I dug around a bit looking for current trends in bicycle design, as well as new innovations that might take off. I found quite a few, and … Continue reading
Here’s a tasty morsel of future news: The first 3-D scanning apps are making their way to an iPhone near you. 3-D modeling software has been around for years, but it’s generally been complicated, and expensive, enough that only professionals ever bothered. Now that design firm Autodesk is making their “123D Catch” app available for … Continue reading
This may come as a surprise, but the future of transportation has been around for two centuries already. Of course, back when ol’ Baron Karl first put two wheels together and rode them around 1817 Mannheim, he just thought he’d made a kind of a re-usable horse. He certainly had no idea his invention would … 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
Cosmic Revolutions 