Futurism

Can Google’s new conference really save the world?

Google already most likely controls your email, your personal calendar and your web searches, but can the internet giant also create a conference that comes up with real solutions to the world’s problems? Google just launched a new conference, Solve for X, which will bring together experts to discuss “radical technology ideas for solving global…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

How will the new Pentagon strategy affect future military tech?

In early January, President Obama announced a new strategic direction for the U.S. military, slowing defense budget growth and shifting the military’s focus to new threats. The novel strategy will shape military spending for years to come. How will it change the shape of future defense technologies? The new strategic initiative, titled, “Sustaining U.S. Global…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

Further evidence that Twitter will not liberate the world

Though optimistic pundits have declared Twitter largely responsible for social uprisings like Arab Spring, the microblogging network is hardly going to usher in a more liberated future. It’s a business, after all, and it bends to the law like every other business does. Over at Foreign Policy’s Passport, Uri Friedman counts the ways that Twitter…

io9 Annalee Newitz

This self-guided bullet can chase you down from over a mile away

There was a time when increasing the distance between yourself and a sharp shooter bent on your extermination would significantly improve your chances of survival. But that time is coming to an end. Government engineers have designed a bullet that can aim itself, correcting its own path mid-flight in order to connect with targets over…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Get ready for the sexapocalypse – some say it’s already here

We are living through the golden years of apocalyptic storytelling, and nothing is immune from dystopia fever – even sex. In fact, the sexapocalypse has been with us since at least the days of Hieronymous Bosch, a 15th century Dutch painter famous for depicting the end of days in vast canvasses packed with tiny figures…

io9 Annalee Newitz

Charles Stross’ latest novel is coming true over on The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is one of the most famous BitTorrent trackers online. Their political agenda and staff have changed a lot over the years, but they’ve continued to provide a terrific online resource for sharing media files. And now they’re taking the first step in the direction of a future that Charles Stross rendered vividly…

io9 Annalee Newitz

10 Ways Big Data is Creating the Science Fiction Future

Sometimes, it already seems like the websites you visit know more about you than you know about yourself — but this is just the beginning. Every day you’re helping to generate masses more data, which computers are getting better and better at crunching. How long will it be before the predictive power of these systems…

io9 Kelly Faircloth

Is it time to do away with leap seconds?

For decades, the world has relied on incredibly accurate atomic clocks to keep time; but atomic clocks are much more consistant than the rotation of the Earth, which varies in speed ever-so-slightly as it spins about its axis. Consequently, every few years, the time based on the Earth’s rotation falls out of sync with time…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Why Cyborgs and Mutants are More Likely to Kill Us than Robots

We’re all bracing for a robot uprising. Any moment now, a computer could become self-aware and decide to wipe us out. Like Skynet. But really, you should be more scared of posthumans — like mutants or cyborgs. People whose direct ancestors are humans, but they’ve developed into… something else. Because when it comes right down…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: coming soon to a sky near you

The last decade of global conflict has seen the dawning of the age of the robot plane. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been around for decades, but today they’re ubiquitous war machines with unmatched endurance and lethal combat capabilities. Find out more about these increasingly high-tech pilotless aircraft. Drones were developed in the early days…

io9 Ed Grabianowski

Yup, it’s time to start drinking urine

That’s the recommendation from a new report by the US National Research Council, who say reclaimed waste water is needed as a necessary substitute for the dwindling supply of freshwater. What’s more, reprocessed urine might actually be cleaner than freshwater. As we consider the “Kevin Costner in Waterworld” school of water management, let’s look at…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Charles Stross predicts the state of technology, prejudice, and sex in the year 2032

Author Charles Stross has given the world many a flight of futuristic fancy — post-human worlds where androids carry on our legacy, bank robberies committed inside online games, and god-like meddlers — but what does he think the world will really be like in the next 20 years? On his blog, Stross has been posting…

io9 Lauren Davis

Will our popular culture survive into the future?

Many works of science fiction agree that we’ll all be reading Shakespeare until the heat death of the universe. But what about the works of Isaac Asimov, George Lucas, JK Rowling, and Steven Moffat? What, if any, cultural legacy will we leave to people the who come after us, and will we like the way…

io9 Lauren Davis

10 Technologies That Congress Tried to Kill

Next week, the Senate could be meeting to vote on the Protect IP Act (PIPA), the bill that many people are warning could damage the Internet. It’s a horrible prospect — but this isn’t the first time that Congress has tried to sacrifice a technology at the behest of corporate lobbyists. Here are 10 other…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

In Holland, they’re building computer games for adorable, edible pigs

While waiting around in their pens, swine can get ornery and restless. To placate the porkers, a group of Dutch designers are devising a basic video game that allows humans to square off against pigs (and vice versa). It’s an extremely cute idea until you realize your porcine opponents are bacon-bound. This game, “Pig Chase,”…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar

Is Facebook really doomed to die?

Everybody seems to expect Facebook to die in the next few years. But there’s a good chance it could outlast you. Could your “Facebook timeline” one day include decades of status updates, and love letters from the boyfriend you dumped 20 years ago? We asked some futurists and experts to speculate on the future of…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

Doomsday clock moves one minute closer to our planet’s complete destruction

Back in January 2010, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that they were moving their “Doomsday Clock” from five to six minutes to midnight, a sign of cautious optimism and renewed hope for Earth’s nuclear safety. http://io9.com/5448431/armageddon-slightly-delayed-say-keepers-of-the-doomsday-clock Yeah, about that… This symbolic clock was introduced back in 1947 as a way for atomic scientists…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Amber Case: Technology has reversed the isolation we experienced from the Industrial Revolution

Core77 has a nice interview with “cyborg anthropoloigst” Amber Case, who claims that “Good technology should make you superhuman.” She makes an interesting case (no pun intended) that the Industrial Revolution disconnected people from each other, when “everyone was distributed by highways and cars and stretched out into the suburbs.” But now, newer technology has…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders

You have an excellent supply of stem cells right behind your eye

As we age, vision problems are unavoidable. Age-related macular degeneration breaks down a thin layer of cells in the back of your eye — the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) — on the way to causing vision loss. Recently published research from the Neural Stem Cell Institute in Rensselaer, New York, shows the RPE to have…

io9 Keith Veronese

An Optimistic History of the Next 40 Years

It’s 2012, which means you’ll be hearing more than your fair share of apocalyptic and gloomy scenarios soon. To help counteract the tide of misery, Tau Zero Foundation founder Marc Millis writes an optimistic future history of the next four decades. Top image: NASA/JPL “If we have learned one thing from the history of invention…

io9 Marc Millis - Centauri Dreams

Can Google’s new conference really save the world?

How will the new Pentagon strategy affect future military tech?

Further evidence that Twitter will not liberate the world

This self-guided bullet can chase you down from over a mile away

Get ready for the sexapocalypse – some say it’s already here

Charles Stross’ latest novel is coming true over on The Pirate Bay

10 Ways Big Data is Creating the Science Fiction Future

Is it time to do away with leap seconds?

Why Cyborgs and Mutants are More Likely to Kill Us than Robots

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: coming soon to a sky near you

Yup, it’s time to start drinking urine

Charles Stross predicts the state of technology, prejudice, and sex in the year 2032

Will our popular culture survive into the future?

10 Technologies That Congress Tried to Kill

In Holland, they’re building computer games for adorable, edible pigs

Is Facebook really doomed to die?

Doomsday clock moves one minute closer to our planet’s complete destruction

Amber Case: Technology has reversed the isolation we experienced from the Industrial Revolution

You have an excellent supply of stem cells right behind your eye

An Optimistic History of the Next 40 Years

Trump Says He’ll Sign Order to Pay TSA

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Apple’s Siri Isn’t Just Going to Use One Chatbot. It’s Going to Use All of Them

Why ‘For All Mankind’ Season 5 Is the Key to the Rest of the Series

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Attorney Hit With Historic Fine for Citing AI-Generated Cases

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