Yep, it’s true: Samsung is planning to release a phone that’s completely bendable. And rumor has it you can get your hands on it as early as next year! Flexible e-ink displays have been in development for nearly half a decade, but it’s only recently that researchers for companies like Samsung and Nokia have turned … 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
iCoolhunt is a social, location-based game that encourages people to seek out blossoming trends around them. These “coolhunters” can then capture, share, analyze and discuss their discoveries on the website. It’s certainly a novel way to think about the future. I especially like the way it creates a community focused on discovering – or even … Continue reading
Let’s admit one thing up front: genetic mutations are a good thing! They’re evolution’s way of experimenting, so we should thank them for bringing forth lobster claws, orchid petals, and human brains. In fact, without mutations, life on earth would have died out as soon as the environment changed in any way. But from a … Continue reading
As the future unfolds, more and more experiences are moving from the real world to the virtual. There may one day be an equilibrium between the two worlds, but for now, the virtual side is so unexplored that the flow is almost exclusively in that direction, like a modern-day gold rush. Recently, two more everyday, … 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’s the most complicated thing you’ve ever folded? Paper airplane? Road map, perhaps? I’ve folded my fair share of origami cranes in my day. Then there’s this guy, whose ornate paper dragons and hermit crabs beggar belief. But here’s something on a whole other level: a fully-functional, self-folding, flying robot inspired by pop-up books. Harvard’s … Continue reading
Don’t look now, but you’re surrounded by hidden messages. Colorful arrows line the sidewalk, menus hover over the diner down the street, and a grand star map looms overhead – even when it’s the middle of the day and overcast. They’re all written out in invisible digital ink, and you can see them all – … Continue reading
If you’ve got the latest iPhone (or if you’ve seen an ad for it), you know what Siri is. To whit: it’s a speech recognition interface that lets you control your phone by talking to it. You can tell it to set reminders, find songs, or look up nearby pizza places; it listens to, and … Continue reading
We’re discussing the world-changing potential of effectively infinite data storage. If you’re just joining us, start with Part 1 to see how we got here. Here’s the question: Supposing we have a hard drive with enough capacity for anything we can imagine – what should we plug it into? There are many incredible possibilities; here … Continue reading
Cosmic Revolutions 