Laurent Haug (co-founder of the LIFT conferences) wrote a fabulous post recently called “Eight Things I Think I Think”  - an intriguing list of things he knows, but isn’t sure why. A few years ago Edge co-founder John Brockman published a great book on a similar topic, a compilation of answers to the question: “What do you believe is true even though you can’t prove it?”

It’s a perfect exercise for a futurist who is asked on a regular basis “what do you think will happen in the future?” (the problem with that question being that I always feel compelled to provide an answer that is what I call provokacredible - that is, thought-provoking enough to earn my stripes as a futurist, but credible enough to keep me gainfully employed).

But sometimes, like tonight, as I approach the almost-end of the week I realize that my brain cells are numb from too much email and I’m listing too far towards the present and not enough into the future. And so I found Laurent’s post - and a fabulous Oregon Coast Pinot Noir - a welcome antidote, reminding me that sometimes, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, it’s better to blink, not think.  And so in the spirit of great blog posts that make you think (kudos, Laurent) here’s my own list of things I think I think:

Privacy is an antiquated notion. Our current arguments about both online and offline privacy will be seen by future generations at best as quaint and naive, at worst, as narrow-minded and ignorant.

Cybership will become more important than citizenship.

In the next five years bottled water-drinkers will be as socially marginalized as cigarette smokers (ok, this is one I actually hope for).

Both Malcolm Gladwell and Duncan Watts are wrong: ideas propagate because of platforms, not people. The social media sphere has become the primary means for disseminating information and ideas throughout society.

In the next decade we will develop a pharmacological cure for sleep.  And maybe - just maybe - that’s a good thing.

Breakthroughs in genomics and neuroscience will spark a widespread debate about “what it means to be human” that will become the primary focus of public discourse over the next two decades, fracturing religions and spurring geo-political conflicts.

DNA and social capital will become primary currencies in the future, complete with their own markets, traders and fluctuating value indexes.

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p.s. -   Laurent: deepest apologies for stealing your idea, but many thanks for the inspiration and mental nudge.  I owe you a beer at LIFT.  Or an Oregon Pinot.

I step off the plane and the first thing I think about is getting some juice. My blood sugar is fine, it’s the energy levels on my cell phone and laptop I’m worried about. As I search not-so-inconspicuously behind rows of plastic chairs, it occurs to me that I’ve turned into some sort of airport addict, wandering from gate to gate at metropolitan hubs, sniffing out electrical outlets like a crackhead looking for my next hit.  And I’m not alone: at JFK last month I saw a fistfight break out between two middle-aged suits, brawling over whose turn it was to plug in their cell phone.  

Despite all evidence to the contrary (including the fashion lovefest for Ugg boots and the inexplicable fact that there are eight full seasons of the television show Big Brother) we’re not, in fact, living in a free and democratic society. We may enjoy political freedom, but we‘re victims of a more insidious tyrant: the energy grid.  This is not some hippie/Greener rant: we’re shackled to the energy grid like a modern day Matrix.  Human beings can survive for more than a month without food and for five days without water, but the average man, it is said, can’t live more than six hours without plugging in.

Now fast forward to the future, say ten years from now.  Imagine a world in which energy is abundant, portable and ultimately, personal.  In this future electricity is disconnected from the power grid: no more sockets, no more wires. I was introduced to the concept of “personal energy” by my friend and futurist colleague Garry Golden, who loves to talk about two things: the future of energy and the Green Bay Packers.  Ok, make that one thing. ;-)  In this FringeHog podcast, Garry presents a compelling vision for the future in which “micro-packets” of electricity fuel our devices, our homes, our cars.  This week’s Friday Five takes a look at five technologies that could make an era of personal energy a reality.

Radio “free” Power

Question: how many chargers do you own for your so-called wireless devices?  If you’re like me, the ratio is about 2.4 plugs for every gadget. I have drawers full of orphaned chargers, little tangled ghosts from gadgets past.  Which makes Powercast the first in line to be My New Best (Tech) Friend.   It works like this: a transmitter plugs into your wall and sends out radio frequency signals which are picked up by receivers in a device (cell phone, iPod, etc) and converted to DC electricity - essentially, using the radio signals to power and charge your devices, sans wires. Check out this Podtech video interview with CEO John Shearer, who explains this potentially game-changing technology. 

DIY Solar Cells

The future looks bright for photovoltaics: Science Daily reports that researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. According to lead researcher Dr. Somenath Mitra, “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.”

Human body network

Energy doesn’t get much more personal than this: in the future, your body could become its own computer network. The idea behind so-called “human body networks” is to tap into the body’s natural electrical field to carry data to personal devices, such as an iPod or cell phone.  Instead of using a cable to connect your camera to your computer, you could transfer pictures just by touching the PC while the camera is around your neck. Other useful scenarios: exchanging electronic business cards by shaking hands or swaping phone numbers just by kissing.  A handful of companies are pursuing the idea: in 2004 Microsoft was awarded a patent for a “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body.” Although the technology hasn’t hit the mainstream market, this Guardian article provides an intriguing overview of future commercial applications featuring NTT’s “Red Tacton” technology.

Flick my cell phone

Smoking may be socially taboo these days, but Bic lighters - those neon-colored plastic icons of the ‘70s - are finding a new path in a politically-correct world. Bic, the undisputed king of disposable consumer goods, is reinventing its most famous product line: the company is designing disposable cartridges for fuel cells, which can be used to recharge personal devices like cell phones and media players. This Business Week article describes the innovative marriage of a new technology and an old brand.

Dancing Fuel

As humans, every movement we make generates energy.  What if that energy could be captured and used as a clean source of electricity?  That’s the idea behind Amsterdam’s Sustainable Dance Club which features an electricity-generating dance floor. The club’s floor is designed to capture the kinetic energy of dancing people and use it power the club’s music and lights, turning it into a giant (human-powered) generator.  

The sky is still pitch black when the alarm starts beeping.  It’s Monday morning, 3:00 a.m.  You awake after just three hours of sleep, refreshed, relaxed and ready to jump-start the day.  No, this isn’t a dream: in the not-so-distant future scientists may finally break the sleep barrier, allowing humans to function on just a few hours of sleep per day.  For anyone who considers caffeine an essential nutrient, that’s great news.

Today, the sleep business is big business.  According to the National Sleep Foundation over 126 million Americans have difficulty sleeping at least once a week and many in the health care industry are sounding the alarm of an impending “sleep epidemic.”  Americans are gobbling up sleeping pills like breath mints; the prescription sleep aid market is expected to grow to over $5.5 billion as new drugs are released to treat insomnia and other sleep disorders.

But what if the answer turns out to be that we don’t need more sleep, but less?

In the U.K, Ministry of Defense researchers have been able to reset soldier’s body clocks so they can go without sleep for up to 36 hours.  Tiny optical fibers embedded in special glasses project a ring of bright white light around the edge of a soldier’s retina, fooling him into thinking he just woke up. It’s an interesting concept for soldiers in combat situations, but as anyone who has ever pulled an all-nighter knows, staying awake is only half the battle.  Sleep deprivation causes significant cognitive impairment, including slower reaction times and decreased memory function.

Enter the sleep scientists at Wake Forest University who have been studying a drug that could reverse the effects of sleep loss, in effect a sort of “hang over pill” for a bad night’s sleep. The drug, known as Ampakine, has been shown to reverse memory loss and psychomotor degradation after 30 hours of sleep deprivation.

What’s this all mean for the future?  What if researchers could develop a prophylactic against the effects of sleep loss that would allow us to function - effectively and efficiently - on just a few hours of sleep a night?  Breaking the sleep barrier could fundamentally change the routine of daily life.  In 2020 imagine that a 17-hour work day is the norm: business, home life, school and recreation all blend together in seamless shifts of just a few hours each.  The sleep patterns of knowledge workers could be mapped, networked and optimized to create a truly 24/7 company.  Gone are excuses that we simply “don’t have the time” to work out, or read, or learn another language. Freed from the biological mandate of sleep, could we become a more creative society?

(Note: This was originally written for this FringeHog podcast.  I found it this morning about 2am while I was cleaning out old computer files because I couldn’t sleep).

Switzerland.
Fondue.
Chocolate.
Wicked cool people and ideas.

What’s not to love?

I go to my share of conferences (well, truth be told, more than my share) and as a result I’m turning into what could be politely described as a conference snob.  It takes a bit to get me revved up for a conference these days, but one of my absolute favorites is coming up in a couple of weeks: LIFT.

Held in Geneva, Switzerland (reason for going #1), LIFT describes itself as “three day event to explore the social impact of new technologies.” What makes it different is a thoughtfully designed program and a hip but relaxed vibe (think designers and techies, minus the black turtlenecks and the awkward geekiness).  Yes, there are traditional keynotes and panels, but in the spirit of user-generated content the program also features a number of workshops and “open stage talks” that are proposed and selected by LIFT attendees.  Accompanying all of this is “LIFT+”, a set of artistic activities, many of which are interactive (last year included gaming, a digital orchestra and a wall-sized conference ‘book’ designed by attendees).  And of course, there’s the fondue party.

Registration is here.

Technology roadmaps are like a GPS for the future: done well, they provide a theoretical and visual geography of the terrain of possible developments and a big-picture view of how a particular technology (or industry) might evolve. Taken together, these five roadmaps offer an interesting perspective on the futures to come.  Because this is the “Friday Five” the following is an abbreivated list of roadmaps. Are there others we should add to the list? Let us know!

Metaverse Roadmap

Because I couldn’t have said it better myself, this comes straight from the website: “The Metaverse Roadmap (MVR) is the first public ten-year forecast and visioning survey of 3D Web technologies, applications, markets, and potential social impacts. Areas of exploration include the convergence of Web applications with networked computer games and virtual worlds, the use of 3D creation and animation tools in virtual environments, digital mapping, artificial life, and the underlying trends in hardware, software, connectivity, business innovation and social adoption that will drive the transformation of the World Wide Web in the coming decade.” The overview is written by three of FringeHog’s favorite metaverse friends: John Smart, Jerry Paffendorf and Jamais Cascio. Even if you think you know something about the future of the 3D web, read this.

DARPA Tech 2007

For those with an appetite for the real fringe, DARPA Tech 2007 is for you.  In case you’re not up on your military acronyms, DARPA stands for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; it’s the central R&D organization for the U.S. Department of Defense. In a nutshell, what DARPA does is “mine the Far Side” - the high-risk, high-reward areas of research and technology that only the military budget of the world’s largest superpower could support. What this means in practical terms, is that the scientists at DARPA get to go to work every day and play with some really freakin’ cool ideas. Things like Programmable Matter and Inner Armor. Why should you care? Because many military technologies eventually make it to market : think ARPAnet, the precursor to the Internet, or MIMICS, the essence of our cell phones and miniature GPS devices. It may not look like a traditional technology roadmap, but collectively the presentations from this annual gathering of DARPA hotshots is the closest (unclassified) look at the long-term future you can find.

EURON Roboethics Roadmap

As a follow-up to last week’s Friday Five on the future of robots, this week we offer up the EURON Roboethics Roadmap.  Developed by the European Robotics Research Network (EURON) the roadmap provides a systematic assessment of the ethical issues involved in robotics R&D. According to the report, the first version is concerned with the ethics of human beings involved in the design, manufacturing and use of robots. It covers a broad array of issues, including anthromorphization of machines, technology addition and the humanization of the human/machine relationship. (Note: the South Korean government is also working on Robot Ethics Charter).

Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems

Amidst the oft-reported hype about nanotechnology - somewhere between wrinkle free khakis and drug-delivering implantable nanobots - lies the future. The Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems aims to identify the gap between the basic nanostructured materials of today, and the potential of “productive nanosystems”, bridging the differences of expert opinion regarding when we can expect to see widespread commercial applications. According to the Roadmap, some near-term applications include sensors, metrology standards and quantum computing. Warning: it’s a dense document, chock full of tech jargon.  The two pages of abbreviations for terms such as Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube (SWNT) helps, but not much.

Microsoft’s Toward 2020 Science

Bill Gates may have left the building, but his fingerprints remain on Microsoft Research’s Toward 2020 Science, a 2005 report which sets out to produce a roadmap of the evolution, challenges and potential of computer science and research in the next fifteen years.  With characteristic Microsoft attitude, the report states that “it is, to our knowledge, the first to articulate a comprehensive vision of science towards 2020, the impact of the convergence of computer science and the other sciences, and to identify specifically what the science community and policy makers can do to ensure the vision we outline becomes a reality.” Uh-huh.  Hyperbole aside, this is a good read, the main thesis being that science-based innovation will eclipse technology-based innovation in a number of emerging fields. A wall-size poster of the map (suitable for framing, we’re told) can be found here.

It’s been hailed as the world’s greatest repository of open source knowledge and the arch nemesis of research librarians.  It’s one the most popular sites on the Internet, with over 30 million visits per day. Open-source pioneer Eric Raymond has called it “a disaster… that’s infested with moonbats.”  

Love it or hate it, this week marks seven years since the launch of Wikipedia, the Paris Hilton of reference works. You know Wikipedia as the place to go for everything from Sudoku strategies to a history of the Austro-Prussian war, but here are a few things you may not know about the world’s highest-profile encyclopedia:

- There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on some 9 million articles in over 250 languages;

- A year after its launch in 2001, Wikipedia was home to 20,000 articles; currently, the English Wikipedia alone has over 2,176,820 articles and in 2005 it more than doubled in size;

- According to web research firm Alexa, Wikipedia is the 9th-most-popular site on the Internet, generating more daily traffic than eBay, Amazon and CNN.

- Wikimedia (the parent foundation of Wikipedia) has an operating budget of $4.6 million USD; all revenue is by donation. As an incentive to donors during the last fundraiser, people who donated between $10,000 and $24,999 were offered a personal phone call from founder Jimmy Wales; those who donated $25,000 or more got dinner with him.

- It’s much more than an encyclopedia: current projects of Wikimedia include Wikiquote (a repository of quotations); Wikibooks (creating a library of free textbooks anyone can edit); Wikinews (aimed at reporting the news on a wide variety of subjects); and Wikispecies (a centralized species database for taxonomy).

Wikipedia is a symbol of one the 21^st century’s greatest achievements to date: the mass democratization of knowledge.  For thousands of years, knowledge has been held, tight-fisted, by the most elite classes, the most enlightened oracles, the wealthiest merchants.  In a sense, Wikipedia embodies the essence of our democratic ideals. Its greatest strength: that anyone with Internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit an existing one. Its greatest weakness: that anyone with Internet access can create a Wikipedia entry or edit an existing one.  Contributors represent a new breed of amateur-experts, and the site itself is a reflection of what Stacy Schiff termed “our newly casual relationship to truth.”  Wikipedia is the epitome of truthiness, that what we know about the world today is relative, malleable and subject to rapid change.

Wikipedia isn’t so much an encyclopedia as it is a cultural compass. The sheer breadth of articles (from Venus Williams to Sumatran Rhinoceros to the Iraq war) make it one of the most important social artifacts of the information age, chronicling in real time not only our experiences but also our sometimes dissonant interpretations of them.  And unlike any other reference work, Wikipedia fractures the time-space continuum by providing not only a sense of the past, but of what’s to come.  I call this “Futurepedia”, the ever-increasing collection of articles that chronicle future events: the development of New Songdo City in Korea, future car technologies, trends in the year 2020. This could be Wikipedia’s greatest legacy: harnessing the wisdom of crowds to create the world’s largest and most democratically designed knowledgebase not of the past, but of the future.

David Letterman has the Top 10 list; Billboard counts down the most popular songs of the week. So we at FringeHog, being compulsive list-makers ourselves, created the FringeHog Friday Five, an almost-regular weekly feature in which we showcase five links (websites, blogs, videos, etc) that offer different perspectives on “the future of” a particular topic.  Some topics are serious; others are things we just think are cool. We like to think of it as a weekly starter-kit to the future.  Enjoy.

FringeHog Friday Five: The Future of Robots

For nearly fifty years, robots have captured our collective imagination.  From Rosie, the arthritic robo-housekeeper in the Jetson’s to Robin William’s emotionally available Bicennential Man to every guy’s favorite cyborg assassin, the media has played to our fascination with all things humanoid.

Yet despite early predictions of a robotic assistant in every home, today the closest you can get to an electronic maid is a stubby vacuum cleaner that bumps into furniture.  But that hasn’t stopped us from pursuing the idea - and the ideal - of perfecting a robot made in man’s image (but with batteries).

Can we make the leap from dust-sucking dials to sentient citizen?  ABI Research predicts that in the next decade people will be willing to spend as much for a multitasking humanoid robot as they would for a new car and that the personal robot market could balloon to $15 billion by 2015.

Most of that growth is happening in the east. There are nearly 950,000 robots in operation worldwide; almost 50% of these are in Asia, a third in Europe, and 16% in North America. Japan is investing upwards of $37 million in the Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP) which aims to bring to market robots that can operate power shovels, assist construction workers and care for the elderly. In South Korea, the robotics industry has grown about 40% a year since 2003; officials are building two robot theme parks at a cost of $1.6 billion as well as developing a robot ethics charter to govern the ethical treatment of robots.  The US, for its part, has a robotics caucus in Congress with um, two members.  You do the math.

But the future of the industry hinges not only how much money is being spent, but how.  Cultural values will play as big a role as the available technology in developing future robots. While the US and Europe have focused on using robots for automotive and military purposes, Asian countries are comfortable - even eager - to adopt robots as an integral part of daily life, opening the door for machines to play an increasingly social role in society.

What role will robots play in business and society? From violin-playing androids to sexbots, this week’s Friday Five takes a look at the future of man’s new best friend.

Love, Sex and, uh, Robots

The title pretty much says it all: in this thought-provoking book author David Levy tackles a ménage à trois of topics: the future of machines, the future of sex, and the future of sex with machines.  In Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships Levy proposes that in the coming decades love with robots will be as normal as with other humans.  Before you roll your eyes at the suggestion of “sexbots”, consider the depth of love - and lust - we have for our cars, iPods and other gadgets. While Levy’s ideas might seem absurd today, considering the revolutionary rate of advances in artificial intelligence, he asks questions that may need to be answered sooner than we think.  

Toyota’s Violin Virtuoso

This charming (yes, charming) video showcases Toyota’s plans to take its expertise with factory robots to new heights via a 5-foot robot playing a flawless rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” on a violin. Toyota has said it wants to draw on its knowledge and innovation in the field of automobiles to accelerate the development of robots that “make a contribution to society”, aiming to put robots capable of assisting humans into use by the early 2010s. 

Because otherwise, it’s just a naked vacuum

Given our anthropomorphic attachments to our devices, it’s no surprise that MyRoomBud, a company that designs costumes for the Roomba vacuum cleaner, is a hit.  The company sells a range of outfits designed to dress up your Roomba, from lady bugs to leopards to the $10,000 Snowy the Polar Bear outfit.  MyRoomBud’s website boasts that the company was “started by kids, built by kids, and is run by kids” - a generational distinction which also explains why it created SLoomba, a virtual Second Life version of a Roomba.  Welcome to the new Barbie.

Android Science

Last year Hiroshi Ishiguro made headlines when he built a robot twin of himself.  Dubbed “Geminoid HI-1″, the silicon-based replica of the professor is regarded as one of the most realistic humanoid robots ever created.  In this New Scientist interview Ishiguro discusses the benefits of a robotic twin (he can teach classes remotely using his twin and can smoke cigarettes without anyone knowing) and the emerging field of “android science.”  (Note: New Scientist requires registration; this Scientific American article also discusses Ishiguro’s work.)

The Robots Among Us

This article in the San Francisco Chronicle asks the question: if robotics technology now stands where computing did in the ’70s, what can we expect in the future?  While I’m not sure it gets around to answering the question with any degree of imagination, it does provide a good overview of the business and science behind the robotics industry.

As an update to this Friday Five post, two more interesting links about the future of cities:

Lagos La Vida Loca

Lagos La Vida Loca is a 15-minute video by Current TV about Lagos, Nigeria which provides a graphic glimpse into life in the one of the world’s largest megacities. In 1950 Lagos was home to 300,000 people; today it is the world’s largest megacity with somewhere between 12 - 20 million residents (there are no official population statistics) and an estimated 6,000 people arriving every day.  Often dubbed the “New York of Africa” Lagos provides a glimpse into the future when by the year 2030 two of every three people on the planet will live in an urban environment.  If you want to know what the future looks like, watch this.

Hub2 - Virtual Urban Design

One of the more interesting questions about the future of cities is where (and how) virtual worlds and real worlds will intersect.  I recently met up with Emerson College professor Eric Gordon to talk about the future of urban design and what role virtual worlds will play in it. Gordon is the co-brainchild of Hub2, a project that’s using Second Life to help Boston residents to articulate visions of public spaces.  Earlier this year Gordon’s students created 3D immersive models of Boston’s Government Center, an urban space that is the absolute epitome of soulless city architecture.  (note: the above screen shot is from the press event where Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino received the keys to the virtual city).

The prototypes are the test case of a methodology Gordon’s calls “rapid urban prototyping”.  Traditional urban planning is two-dimensional and cumbersome at best: intelligible blue-prints are drawn up, groups respond to them, plans are redrawn again.  Gordon’s idea is to use virtual worlds as a platform to allow community stakeholders to interact in real time to collaboratively design an urban space.  Using a virtual world space as a blank canvass, for example, a community wishing to design a park can bring together planners, architects, engineers and citizens to decide how the park should be laid out simply by moving around virtual objects - a swing set, some benches, a water fountain. The three-dimensional virtual space not only creates  an enhanced sense of the design options, but also should also significantly reduce planning time and costs.   Read more about Gordon’s work on his blog, The Place of Social Media.