Futurism

An Illustrated History of the Hovercraft

If you’ve ever wanted to master English by using the phrase “My hovercraft is full of eels,” then it’s time you learned about the history of the strange vehicle known as the hovercraft. Here is a photographic history of this legendary piece of technology. The first hovercraft design, looks like an upside down boat, by…

Is America becoming the new Russia?

Yesterday, whistleblower Edward Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia, after revealing how the US government was spying on its citizens. Meanwhile, some of the most idealistic Americans on television are the Soviet spies in FX series The Americans. Have the 1980s superpowers swapped positions in the 2010s? https://gizmodo.com/edward-snowden-the-nsa-whistleblower-explains-why-he-512212147 They haven’t swapped in real life,…

This new molecule could be guided through your body with a magnet

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University have created a large hollow magnetic-cage molecule that could someday administer drugs directly inside the body. Back in the 1980s, scientists discovered the C60 fullerene — more commonly known as the Buckminster Fullerene — a molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms that forms a hollow cage. It’s a structure that…

Could We Move The Sun?

At some point in the far future, our descendants may want to relocate the Sun — a hypothetical megascale project referred to as stellar engineering. But as crazy as that sounds, the physics says it could work. Here’s how we’ll do it. A Type I Kardashev civilization would use the power of its entire planet.…

A map showing where violence is most likely to break out in the future

Here’s today’s disturbing statistic about human behavior. It appears that there’s a strong correlation between hot, dry weather and high levels of violent human conflict. With temperatures heating up on Earth right now, that could mean we’ve got the biggest pre-crime map you’ve ever seen. The Smithsonian’s Joseph Stromberg has the story: The team, led…

Warren Ellis is publishing a book in 2014 called Spirit Tracks about “the future of the city,” based on this talk. He wants us to get back to talking about “the city as haunted space” and “the present as haunted by the future.”

This court ruling could wreck the future of realistic science fiction

A ruling issued today in an obscure lawsuit against Electronic Arts could have wide-ranging implications for movies, television, and even books — especially if they strive for realism. In fact, alarm bells should be going off for anyone interested in depicting the future realistically in their work. The court determined that creators cannot “realistically” depict…

Human teleportation is far more impractical than we thought

Physics students from the University of Leicester have calculated the time and energy required to beam a complete person from the Earth’s surface to a location in space. Their results were discouraging, to say the least. Teleportation, or beaming, has long been a staple of science fiction. As anyone who’s seen Star Trek or The…

Stephen King once wrote that “perfect paranoia is perfect awareness”

King might have been describing how Americans are reacting to today’s new revelations about just how much the NSA has been reading our email, chat logs, and more. Leaked documents released today offer more evidence that you are being watched, for no good reason.

Computer chips in your mouth will know what you’re saying

Tiny computer chips installed on your teeth could one day allow you to monitor everything from the chemical composition of what you’re eating, to your ratio of talking to chewing. This technology could be part of your “quantified self” regimen, or a whole new system of surveillance. According to Jon M. Chang at ABC News,…

What science fiction author best describes the world we live in now?

The world has moved so fast, our nightmares and fantasies can barely keep up. Science fiction becomes alternate history, or just plain history, at the blink of an eye. But which science fiction author really captures the world we live in today? Please include a book cover or some other illustration, so we can see…

Is Hollywood’s glut of big-budget blockbusters doomed to failure?

This summer has been pretty brutal for huge-budget movies. Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, R.I.P.D., After Earth and White House Down all fizzled in the United States, while several other movies underperformed. Steven Spielberg has predicted an “implosion” of the movie business — could it be coming sooner than you expect? As recently as 2000, it…

Manning Found Not Guilty Of Aiding The Enemy

Wikileaks source Bradly Manning has been found guilty of five counts of espionage, but he managed to avoid the most serious charge, that of aiding the enemy. Combined, the charges could add up to 154 years imprisonment — a sentence that will be determined tomorrow. The 25-year old former intelligence analyst was working in Iraq…

Gary Shteyngart tries Google Glasses, and the results are Super Sad

In his novel Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart writes about a society, five minutes into the future, that has a weird neurotic relationship with gadgets and social media, as focused through a device called an “äppärät.” Now, Shteyngart has tried the Google Glass, and in many ways the future he wrote about seems…

This futuristic-looking mass transit system is really happening

Tel Aviv is set to begin construction on the world’s first magnetically levitating skyTran system of mass transit. Which is awesome because it’s fine time that our cities started to look the way scifi says they’re supposed to. As Design Bloom reports, Tel Aviv just appointed US consultancy firm Jenkins Gales & Martinez to oversee…

This substance will let you turn your skin into a computer

Scientists have created “electronic foils” that will allow circuits to conform to any surface — or get stretched, bent, and crumpled. The electronics may someday become as common as plastic wrap, researchers say. In recent years, we’ve seen a number of breakthroughs in softer, flexible electronics. Much of the work is spearheaded by the uber-productive…

Behold the incredible places where we’ll build cities in space

People always forget about radiation when they imagine space colonies. Out there, on other worlds, humans won’t be shielded from cosmic radiation the way we are by Earth’s magnetic field. That’s why cities on other worlds are likely to be underground. Here are few places we might build them. Above you can see a HiRISE…

Televisions are sending thousands of kids to the E.R. every year

Today in weirdly specific statistics, a recent study concludes more than 17,000 children are treated every year for TV-related injuries. That’s about one every half hour, and roughly double the number seen in the early ’90s. The reason? Televisions have become too skinny. Ah, the scourge of technological progress! “Lighter weights coupled with a less…

The Greatest Libertarian Novel of the Year… and of All Time?

Cory Doctorow has managed to win the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction for a second time, with his novel Pirate Cinema. He also won this award in 2009 for Little Brother. Meanwhile, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon won a special “Hall of Fame” award. Here’s the full press release: Cory Doctorow won the…

The Best Guess at How Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Transit Fantasy Might Work

Earlier this week, Elon Muskannounced that he would publish an alpha design for his crazy-sounding “Hyperloop” by August 12. According to Musk, the diagram above is as close as anyone has gotten to figuring out how the super-fast transit technology might work. And it seems bonkers. For those of you who have been out of…