Futurism

A Cybernetic Implant That Repairs Brain Damage

There may be an answer for people suffering from traumatic brain injuries. It’s a device called a brain-machine-brain interface — and it has the potential to revolutionize the way brain damage is treated in humans. As it stands, there is no effective way to treat damage and improve function after someone experiences a traumatic brain…

These genetically-modified bees make concrete instead of honey

Imagine a world where 3D printers aren’t just machines, but are part of our natural environment.

The 10 Rules of Surveillance Dystopia Stories

What do Person of Interest, Hunger Games and Minority Report have in common? They’re all set in a surveillance dystopia, where They are watching your every move and controlling your life with electronic devices. Like all subgenres, these stories have rules. Here are the 10 rules* that define the surveillance dystopia. * Any resemblance to…

Are Singulatarians actually Puritans?

Will we be fucking after we leave our bodies behind for cyber-heaven? Over at Steal this Singularity, futurist gadfly R.U. Sirius has a hilarious and smart essay about people who imagine we will transcend sex and random goofiness after the AIs take over. After returning home from annual futurist conference Singularity Summit last year, Sirius…

Space technology company builds a functioning artificial heart

An artificial heart that took 15 years to develop has been approved for human trials. The device, which was fashioned from biological tissue and parts of miniature satellite equipment, combines the latest advances in medicine, biology, electronics, and materials science. It’s built by the Paris-based company Carmat and it’s the brainchild of French cardiac surgeon…

How Medical Nanotech Will Change Humanity Forever

Futurists have long speculated that nanotechnology — the engineering of materials and devices at the molecular scale — will revolutionize virtually every field it touches, medicine being no exception. Here’s what to expect when you have fleets of molecule-sized robots coursing through your veins. To learn more about the potential for medical nanotech, I contacted…

Here’s how to decorate the house of the future, right now

Today we asked you totell us what was the most futuristic thing about yourself, and you responded by telling us about your jobs, your personal tech, and with an idea about just how to decorate the house of the future, right now, from commenter eideticex: Well my current endeavor with augmented reality using QR codes…

British Think Tank Revives 40-year-old Plan to Build Space Colonies

The esteemed British Interplanetary Society is resurrecting an ambitious idea for creating giant orbiting homes in space. But to make it economically and technically feasible, it will have to rely on a plan devised by Gerard O’Neill back in the 1970s. The BIS, as some of you may know, came up with a plan back…

Americans believe the U.S. is becoming “less powerful” in the world

A recent survey by Pew Research Center reveals that over half of Americans believe that the U.S. is less powerful and prestigious in the world than it was 10 years ago. Is this the beginning of a U.S. decline? Pew explains in a report on their new findings: The survey of the general public, conducted…

12 Real Life Inventions That Science Fiction is Neglecting at its Peril

Science fiction has always commented on the present, and today’s present is very science-fictional. All around, we see inventions that could transform the world within a decade or two. So why don’t more science fiction writers speculate about them? Here are 12 real-life developments science fiction should be plundering. Update: This post isn’t saying that…

What’s the Most Futuristic Thing About You?

“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Writer William Gibson said that about the way the future comes, asymmetrically and not all at once. Today, we want to know what is the most futuristic thing about you. Maybe it’s an area of expertise, interest, or research. Maybe it’s something you’ve…

In the future, mall cops will look like R2-D2

Say hello to the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, a mobile surveillance robot that could soon be prowling malls, schools, and corporation foyers near you. Privacy groups are calling the California-built robot “R2-D2’s evil twin.” William Santana Li founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook. “You are never going to have an armed officer in…

The first person in the world to become a government-recognized cyborg

Neil Harbisson is the first person on the planet to have a passport photo that shows his cyborg nature — in his UK passport, he’s wearing a head-mounted device called an eyeborg. The color-blind artist says the eyeborg allows him to see color, and he wants to help other cyborgs like himself gain more rights.…

These four chimps could soon be legally recognized as people

This morning, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a lawsuit on behalf of four chimpanzees seeking legal personhood status, including Tommy — a chimp who’s being kept in a cage in a shed at a used trailer lot in Gloversville, New York. Above: Tommy the Chimpanzee via NhRP via Unlocking the Cage. It’s the first of…

Why Isaac Asimov’s famous dystopia is still relevant today

There’s a must-read piece at Slate on Isaac Asimov’s classic novel The Caves of Steel, part of a trilogy of novels about societies where everybody lives hundreds of years and relies on robots for everything. After a terrific summary, Konstantin Kakaes explains why it’s all still relevant. In a nutshell, Caves of Steel is a…

Could a cybernetic implant really help you lose weight?

Forget about fad diets and surgery. Researchers from ETH-Zurich have come up with a potential high-tech solution to the ongoing obesity epidemic: An implantable slimming aid that monitors fat in the blood. In response to elevated levels, it produces a substance that tells the body that it’s not hungry. The implantable genetic circuit, which has…

Once we start geohacking, we won’t be able to stop

Desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why geoengineering could save the world from the catastrophic effects of climate change. But a new study suggests that once we get started we won’t be able to stop — and that a sudden halt to our geoengineering efforts could be worse than never doing it in…

Japanese researchers want to get a robot into university by 2021

Computer scientists at Fujitsu Labs have launched the “Todai Robot Project,” an effort to get a robot to pass the University of Tokyo’s very tough entrance exam — and they’re hoping to do it in eight years. In conjunction with Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII), the Fujitsu researchers are striving to develop an AI…

The lineup for Transhuman Visions is taking shape, a one-day conference that’s bringing together extreme futurists, biohackers, immortalists, Singularitarians and others. Speakers include Aubrey de Grey, RU Sirius, Rudy Rucker, Zoltan Istvan, and Rachel Haywire (pictured). The event will be held on February 1, 2014 from 9:30 am to 9:30 pm at the Conference Center,…

Watch Nick Harkaway explain why video games will save the future

Nick Harkaway, author of The Gone Away World and Angelmaker, gives a talk on the future of tech, now that we live in a world of brain implants and surveillance. And he explains why playing video games are the only sort of technology that “make you make hard choices” The title of this talk is…