Futurism

Scientists Found An Algorithm To Turn All Of Us Into Sheeple

The sheepdog is truly a superhero. Somehow, it manages to convince a group of uncooperative sheep to move in a particular direction. It sounds simple, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. What the sheepdog appears to do intuitively has baffled mathematicians. Most attempts to understand optimal sheepdog behavior start from a theoretical perspective…

Is Dyson About To Unveil A Robot Vacuum Cleaner With Computer Vision?

British appliance company Dyson has released an intriguing teaser video to promote its latest product. We’re not entirely sure what it is, but this RoboCop-inspired ad has us thinking it’s a robotic vacuum cleaner equipped with computer vision. A Roomba-like vacuum cleaner is probably a good guess. Earlier this year, Dyson poured £5 million (USD$8.2…

8 of the World’s Coolest Skyscrapers Rendered Like 1980s Futurist Art

An increasing number of skyscrapers that line our horizons these days resemble the future we were promised: twisting pillars of glass and steel that stretch up into the clouds. When you glaze those buildings with some 1980s-inspired French futurism, however, they look simply surreal Arcueil-based illustrator Romain Trystram is highlighting some of the world’s most…

In the Future, Your Clothes Will Be Cleaned By Schools Of Robotic Fish

Inspired by ‘doctor fish’ who feed off human skin, a South Korean industrial designer has conceived of a radical new way of cleaning clothes. Instead of using a traditional washing machine, fleets of robotic fish will clean your clothes in a water tank — and without detergent. The system is called Pacera, and it was…

A Photograph Of The Future, Taken 100 Years Ago

While filing photographs at the Library of Congress, Barbara Orbach Natanson was momentarily startled by a 1920 picture that looked as if Portland, Oregon was being attacked from above. “How frightening would it have been to be on the streets,” she asked herself, “when these airplanes swooped overhead?” The answer, she tells us, is not…

9 Failed Designs That Would Have Changed Times Square Forever

Times Square is one big, incredible machine that has the sweet caress of capitalism to thank for its success as much as it does careful city planning. However, when the area was famously filthy in 1984, New York City contemplated a major intervention that would’ve changed the landscape of Midtown profoundly. The intervention itself never…

The First College in the U.S. to Open Without Any Books in its Library

Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland has just opened, with 550 students attending the first day of classes this week. The newly-built campus has a gorgeous library building, but no plans to stock it with books. Instead, it will be the nation’s first all-digital college library. But it gets weirder than that. It’s a scenario that…

In California, we are bracing ourselves for the water wars. An investigative article from the Washington Post explains why the current drought, the worst in recorded history, could change the state forever.

The Robots Are Coming For Your Job

“Humans Need Not Apply” is a mini-documentary by C.G.P. Grey that explores the consequences of an increasingly automated workforce. “History is filled with [instances of] workers who fought technology that would replace them,” notes Grey, “and the workers always lose.” https://observationdeck.kinja.com/something-worth-pondering-1622782801

How Will Self-Driving Cars Change Teenage Culture?

The introduction of the family car in the 20th century led to unexpected consequences, including a rise in teenage pregnancies. The emergence of the driverless car in the 21st century also portends major changes in adolescent culture, ranging from the legal drinking age to patterns of school attendance. Michael Petrilli, an award-winning writer and the…

Giant Chinese Bitcoin Mines Are the Foundation of the Next Economy

The digital currency Bitcoin has fluctuated in value, but it seems unlikely to go away in the immediate future. And part of its ongoing strength depends on Bitcoin farms, where virtual value is mined in enormous factories Writing for the Coinsmith, a Bitcoin news site, a writer named Bitsmith describes a trip he took to…

Should Robotics Companies Help The Workers They Displace?

The Pew Research Internet Project has just published a major survey of tech experts, asking whether they thought robotic devices would displace significant numbers of blue- and white-collar workers. Opinions are divided, with 52% saying no, and 48% warning that we could see a new underclass of unemployable people. What’s striking about this study is…

Sometimes The Future Seems Closer To Fantasy Than Science Fiction

We’ve all heard Clarke’s aphorism that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But sometimes, it seems like we’re already living it, as our tech acts more like sorcery. Full Fathom Five author Max Gladstone explores our fantastical relationship with gadgets. I live in a low fidelity version of the magic castle from Beauty…

Rotating Rooms Let You Redesign This House Whenever You Feel Like It

Normally, the phrase “push-button home” evokes images of a Jetson-esque lifestyle filled with futuristic gadgets and shiny automatons just waiting to do our bidding. But this house turns that concept on its head, allowing you to transform your home into a simple, quiet retreat in the midst of a bustling city. The Iranian architecture firm…

The Radical Plan To Phase Out Earth’s Predatory Species

Should animals be permitted to hunt and kill other animals? Some futurists believe that humans should intervene, and solve the “problem” of predator vs. prey once and for all. We talked to the man who wants to use radical ecoengineering to put an end to the carnage. A world without predators certainly sounds extreme, and…

Could This New Competition Replace The Turing Test?

Nuance Communications has announced a new annual competition to develop artificially intelligent agents capable of solving the “Winograd Schema Challenge”, a possible alternative to the Turing Test — and one that’s intended to provide a more accurate measure of genuine machine intelligence. Indeed, the recent proclamation that the “Eugene Goostman” chatbot had passed the Turing…

The Claws Of This Cyborg Scorpion Can Be Controlled Remotely

Because smartphone-controlled cyborg cockroaches are apparently not enough, Michigan-based Backyard Brains has turned their attention to predatory arthropods — this time using an electrical current to remotely induce a scorpion to strike with its claws and tail. https://gizmodo.com/now-you-can-control-living-cockroaches-with-a-mobile-ap-1442243456 These new scorpion experiments are an extension of Backyard Brains’ s cockroach work. Their “RoboRoach” is an…

hitchBOT’s Epic 3,800 Mile Journey Across Canada Has Officially Begun

And so it begins: A child-sized robot named hitchBOT is currently making its way across Canada. Alone and immobile, hitchBOT will have to reach the West Coast by relying on others to get it there. Here’s how you can follow hitchBOT’s adventures. https://gizmodo.com/this-robot-is-going-to-hitchhike-across-canada-by-itsel-1591363499 This past Sunday, a couple from Nova Scotia became the first to…

This Conceptual Skyscraper Rises Like A Giant Coil

Called “The Endless City in Height,” this gorgeous design does away with traditional stacking floors, replacing them with two street-sized ramps that rise and coil vertically into the London skyline. SURE Architecture recently took top prize at the Skyscrapers and SuperSkyscrapers Competition with this design. The building’s pedestrian-friendly and intertwining ramps would be connected to…

Researchers Test A Prototype Of An Alien-Hunting Robotic Ice Drill

Recent discoveries of active under-ice oceans on Europa and Enceladus have kindled speculation that life may exist at the outer reaches of our solar system. But to prove it, we’re going to have to employ devices like the one recently tested by Stone Aerospace researchers in Alaska. https://gizmodo.com/massive-plumes-of-water-are-erupting-from-europas-icy-1481376874 https://gizmodo.com/weve-found-a-hidden-ocean-on-enceladus-that-may-harbor-1557622077 Called VALKYRIE, the Stone Aeorospace cryobot…