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From the “future rock stars” files, we’re psyched to announce that FringeHog’s very own house band, 2Adam12 has just released its latest CD. A recent reviewer of the CD said the band “produces the kind of music you’d expect if the Red Hot Chili Peppers took a long Caribbean vacation.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Look for more 2Adam12 songs to be featured on upcoming episodes of FringeHog. But if you don’t want to wait (and why would you?) you can check out more of lead vocalist Adam Payne and the band here.

As I scroll through the 700 emails in my inbox, I mumble the prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of missing things.

I’m giving a speech next month and the organizers need my picture to include in the conference program. I’m positive that the photo, a mid-life version of my high school yearbook picture - is in here, buried under an avalanche of emails. I’ve realized that Gmail has become my personal bunker - the endless vault where I greedily stockpile thousands of emails and files, rationalizing my electronic hoarding with the Just In Case theory. That is, “just in case I spill diet coke on my laptop again”… or “just in case my dog chews up my memory key”… or “just in case planetary sunspots cause freak electrical storms and my hard drive is fried like an egg”. Given any of these scenarios, thanks to Gmail’s unlimited storage space, I’ll be able to recover all of the emails, files and digital photos which make up the electronic anthology of my life. Such as picture I’m looking for.

Which I still can’t find. I’ve searched dozens of keywords - “picture” “michele” “speeches”. Nothing. Thirty-two agonizing minutes later I find it. Of course, it’s not labeled something simple, something obvious - Michele’s Picture, for example. Instead, in a fit of fuzzy logic, I apparently chose to name this particular file “MB Headshot.”

So goes the paradox of the ?information’ age. To effectively navigate the web, I have to name what I’m looking for, which is a little like saying “I could find the sweater I lost if I just remembered where I put it.” Despite Google’s ability to searchthree gazillion websites before I can finish typing the query; in spite of the plethora of social media tagging sites such as digg.comand del.icio.us, search is still somewhat of a crap shoot. This is because the underlying search function works on the assumption that my mental filing system makes sense, which often it does not.

When it comes to searching effectively, we’re still stuck in the Middle Ages, that is, the purgatory between Web 1.0 and 2.0. Search today is conceptual and one-dimensional, it relies on abstract concepts and clumsy language constructs; do a search for “toast” and you’ll likely get as many hits for clever wedding speeches as you do for breakfast food.

And the problem will only get worse. The most prominent language in the world today isn’t English or Spanish or even Mandarin - it’s binary code. The language of 1s and 0s is dematerializing our world. Physical objects are increasingly transmogrified from atoms to bits. Who needs Blockbuster when you can get the streaming bits - minus the plastic packaging, the late fees and the obsolete DVD player - from YouTube??

As we overpopulate the planet with bits and bytes, the ability to understand and explore our world will depend on new approaches to search and rescue (or search and destroy, as the case may be). Current strategies to improving search have centered on inventing increasingly complex algorithms, but a simpler answer might (literally) be right under our nose.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have created a computer program which allows users to attach distinctive smells to digital photos. Called Olfoto, the program uses an array of cube-shaped capsules, similar to an ink jet printer cartridge, each of which contain a unique smell - the scent of an open wood fire, for example, or the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. The capsules release a different fragrance when activated electronically so that when a particular image appears on-screen a user can “tag” it with a scent. They can then sort through their image collections simply by sniffing.

The idea - pardon the pun - a potent one. Humans can smell approximately 10,000 odors. Scents are powerful memory tags. While I remember next to nothing from 3 years of Japanese classes, one whiff of Jagermeister triggers a gag reflex that instantly reminds me of the most important lesson I learned in college (which is of course, that one should never, ever drink Jagermeister).

In the future, we’ll need a multi-sensory approach to navigate the dematerialized world. In this way, Olfoto may ultimately become an important social and business tool, adding another dimension to our ability to communicate. Emails from your ex may smell like skunk. The quarterly finance reports might exude the aroma of champagne or sour milk, depending on the market results. And just so you know, if you want me to read your email, make it smell like freshly baked cookies.

Homaro Cantu has been called many things over the years: “techno-chef”, “mad scientist”, “a modern-day Willy Wonka” - to name just a few. But now he can add another epithet to his resume: Champion.

Last night in the culinary equivalent of the gridiron known as the “Kitchen Stadium”, Cantu narrowly edged out famed Japanese Iron Chef Masuharu Morimoto to capture a 52- 51 point victory on the Iron Chef America. (If you’ve never seen the Iron Chef before, it’s a “cooking battle” show in which two chefs - an incumbent Iron Chef and a Challenger - must each cook a meal in less than an hour including in each course a specific ingredient.)

To secure a win against veteran Iron Chef Morimoto, Cantu and his team (including sous chef Ben Roche) pulled out the big guns: liquid nitrogen, an ink jet printer, and of course, a class IV laser. After filling several balloons with beet juice (the “ingredient of the day” for the competition) he rolled them in a bath of liquid nitrogen to create beautiful frozen orbs. Next he fired up the laser to a scorching 2800 degrees to caramelize some cellulose-based packing peanuts (yes, the kind that are used in shipping boxes). And while Iron Chef Morimoto delicately sliced beets to make sushi rolls, Cantu simply printed out pictures of maki onto edible paper using an HP printer and soy-based ink.

Cantu, owner of the Chicago-based Moto restaurant, has been hailed as an innovator in the emerging field of “molecular gastronomy“. I’ve been salivating over his work from afar for the last few years, but in October I had the chance to catch up with him at PopTech!. The following is an edited excerpt from our chat (the full version will be featured in the Big Idea Interview on the next episode of FringeHog).

MB: Tell me how Moto is different than other restaurants.

HC: Moto is the tool by which my design company, Cantu Designs, test markets all of its ideas and innovations. Cantu Designs is an idea factory revolving around what I call food delivery systems or consumable products. These can be the inventions that deliver the food to you or the actual food product itself.

MB: Give me a couple of examples…

HC: For instance, if you’re not able to digest a steak we can print one up for you that will dissolve on your tongue. MB: How do you ?print up a steak’?HC: Well, it’s patent pending… but in short, you press a button [on a desktop printer] and out comes your edible substrate [aka, edible paper] and you can eat it. We can alter the texture, the flavor, we can print text on it to communicate with you. We’re also working on a 3D food printer with the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)…We’re dissecting, for example, the ingredients in an apple -pectin, water, chlorophyll, sugars, acids, etc. and after we dissect those, we place them into say, ink-jet cartridges, and we can reformulate it with a 3-dimensional printer. [The result is] a direct replication of the original product that looks and tastes just like it, but has an indefinite shelf life.

MB: Reformulating apples aside, what are some other applications of this technology?

HC: I think this could be used for famine relief. We want to take it a step further so we print up edible substrates that can be shipped over to developing nations and can be sort of patch for something that is far too costly for us to deal with right now. People need food to exist. If we don’t eat food, we die. If we have nations that have this crisis of starvation - of energy - we’re never going to evolve as a human society. This is the first step toward answering it from a technological point of view.

MB: In 25 years, what do you think the future of food will look like?

HC: I think we’re going see a lot of things grown in a lab. I use the word “lab” but I call it a food replication factory. We’re tired of watching cows get slaughtered… so we’re growing to grow meat in a Petri dish. When beef is grown in a Petri dish we can alter the caloric value, the good cholesterol that you ingest and maybe make super foods. So we become more healthy, physically which then directly affects our mental health, which directly affects us as a society.

If you missed last night’s competition, you can catch the recap of the sushi smackdown when the show re-airs on the Food Network at the following times.

January 25, 2007 9:00 PM ET/PT
January 26, 2007 12:00 AM ET/PT
January 27, 2007 7:00 PM ET/PT
January 27, 2007 11:00 PM ET/PT
January 28, 2007 2:00 AM ET/PT

“PERSONS PRETENDING TO FORECAST THE FUTURE SHALL BE CONSIDERED DISORDERLY UNDER SUBDIVISION 3, SECTION 901 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE AND LIABLE TO A FINE OF $250 AND/OR SIX MONTHS IN PRISON.”

New York State Code of Criminal Procedure

This New York state law, which dates back to the turn of the century, was originally applied to fortune tellers, astrologers and palm readers. Interestingly, the courts have defined a fortune teller as “one who attempts to foretell or predict the future” or as “one who claims to have some professed means of calling up the secrets of the future.” But while any reputable futurist will tell you that she doesn’t predict the future, science is helping us get one step closer to understanding how people “see” future events.

In particular, a recent study by researchers at Washington University used MRI imaging to identify specific areas of the brain that are active in helping people develop images of future events. The study, Neural Substrates of Envisioning the Future, looked at one of the qualities researchers believe is unique to humans - the ability to create a mental picture of events that have not yet happened.?

The BBC reports that “the researchers placed 21 volunteers into the MRI machine, then contrasted the scan results when they were asked to imagine vividly future events and recollect past memories. The resulting images showed clear differences between a birthday already experienced, and a birthday yet to come. When looking ahead, three particular areas of the brain were activated - the left lateral premotor cortex, the left precuneus and the right posterior cerebellum. These brain areas are already known to be involved in the imagining of body movements, suggesting that when the human brain is thinking about the future, it does so in terms of distinct movements and actions that will happen at that point.”

Reading the study, my brain was in overdrive considering the implications - will scientists be able to develop anphysical metric for quantifying a person’s future-thinking abilityWill we one day be able to electrochemically enhance that ability?

My good friend and colleague, renowned futurist Wendy Shultz, suggests that our knowledge about the future comes from:

our understanding and interpretation of past experience;

our observation of the trends and emerging issues occurring in the present, particularly those in the social and technological arenas;

our assumptions - our ideas and beliefs - about what will happen

I agree with Wendy and would argue that our ideas about what could - and should - happen is the most important factor in expanding (or diminishing) our knowledge of the future. In other words, our ability to “know” the future is directly proportional to our capability - as individuals, organizations and societies - to see and accept change, and to imagine different possibilities.

With advances in the rapidly emerging field of brain imaging - and an open mind - perhaps soon we’ll be able to “see” the future a lot more clearly.