Reading the CNN future forum I came across two interesting articles. Interesting because they present an opposite, yet reasonable vision of what might be the future of transportation:
Is pubblic transport necessary?
Does the privately-owned car have a place in the cities of the future?
Polls are open: how do you think the future city will be? Full of rentable cars, organized through a new, more advanced subway or still trapped in a cloak of traffic? Maybe we'll see the Futurama pipes. Let's hope the suicide cabinets don't show up too.
It seems that nobody has yet taken seriously the flying car thing tho.
I'm a little bit pissed about it.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Eight hours of sleep in three. Guess I'll have more time to waste.
A marvellous invention might radically change our sleep cicles: the TSC.
This magnetic device apparently gives your brain a full night of rest in just three hours.
Other than a cure for insomniac and a solution for those of us who love nocturnal life this little gizmo might have greater repercussion than it appears... assuming of course it works as smoothly as the old eight hours of sleep we are abitued to.
Sleep isn't only necessary to the brain: our muscles need it to rest and to rebuild themselves, so I guess natural sleep will never be completely substituted... beside the human body is an incredibly complex machine; who knows what messing whit a not so little thing as sleep can cause?
An interesting view of the thing is given in Nancy Kress's sleepless trilogy...
What if this technology becomes accessible only to the wealthy? will those capable of affording such machine receive an unfair advantage over those unable to purchase it? Think about it: five more hours to work, to study, to train in sports... more than one fifth of a day of life per day.
Not to mention the catastrophic crush in the assumption of coffee.
Here is a link to the story.
I'm curious to hear your opinions on the matter. The crazier, the best.
Bye!
This magnetic device apparently gives your brain a full night of rest in just three hours.
Other than a cure for insomniac and a solution for those of us who love nocturnal life this little gizmo might have greater repercussion than it appears... assuming of course it works as smoothly as the old eight hours of sleep we are abitued to.
Sleep isn't only necessary to the brain: our muscles need it to rest and to rebuild themselves, so I guess natural sleep will never be completely substituted... beside the human body is an incredibly complex machine; who knows what messing whit a not so little thing as sleep can cause?
An interesting view of the thing is given in Nancy Kress's sleepless trilogy...
What if this technology becomes accessible only to the wealthy? will those capable of affording such machine receive an unfair advantage over those unable to purchase it? Think about it: five more hours to work, to study, to train in sports... more than one fifth of a day of life per day.
Not to mention the catastrophic crush in the assumption of coffee.
Here is a link to the story.
I'm curious to hear your opinions on the matter. The crazier, the best.
Bye!
We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster.
Too bad we are talking about mice... nonetheless, the research that are been made on our small rodent cousin could, in a not too distant future, change the very idea of fitness:
I'm referring in particular to two experiments, the so called "marathon mice" and the "Swarznegger mice". Let's hope those two mighy mice don't free themselves, because if they meet each other and they reproduce, humanity is pretty much doomed... great way to go, exterminated by rodent versions of the Hulk.
Anyway, how those lovely disease carrier will influence our lives?
First, they will make it possible to observe and understand the mechanism of muscular aging and growth and then they will make it possible to develop gene therapies aimed to control age related and methabolical diseases. A big worry is that once those therapies are developped they could be used by professional athlets to gain an edge on their opponents... and a rather dark side of me hopes so.
Think of it: with the incredible resources that professional sport can gather, if those technology were to interest professionals they could receive huge foundings, helping this way people who really needs them...
Rather cynic, I know, but after all medicine had its greatest advancements thanks to rather umpleasent stuff, such as experimenting on corpses and fluffy animals... one of the greatest push to the growth of medical science was the hundred years war: it was more convenient to patch up a soldier than to find a new one... and so the first medical schools were born! Rather gross, I know, but so is life. Before surgery was performed by barbers... I mean , I trust my barber, but not THAT much!
Anyway, as allways, curious to know your opinion.
Bye!
I'm referring in particular to two experiments, the so called "marathon mice" and the "Swarznegger mice". Let's hope those two mighy mice don't free themselves, because if they meet each other and they reproduce, humanity is pretty much doomed... great way to go, exterminated by rodent versions of the Hulk.
Anyway, how those lovely disease carrier will influence our lives?
First, they will make it possible to observe and understand the mechanism of muscular aging and growth and then they will make it possible to develop gene therapies aimed to control age related and methabolical diseases. A big worry is that once those therapies are developped they could be used by professional athlets to gain an edge on their opponents... and a rather dark side of me hopes so.
Think of it: with the incredible resources that professional sport can gather, if those technology were to interest professionals they could receive huge foundings, helping this way people who really needs them...
Rather cynic, I know, but after all medicine had its greatest advancements thanks to rather umpleasent stuff, such as experimenting on corpses and fluffy animals... one of the greatest push to the growth of medical science was the hundred years war: it was more convenient to patch up a soldier than to find a new one... and so the first medical schools were born! Rather gross, I know, but so is life. Before surgery was performed by barbers... I mean , I trust my barber, but not THAT much!
Anyway, as allways, curious to know your opinion.
Bye!
If you are here, you probably lost your way. You are on the good way to lose some time too.
Welcome everybody. This little blog here is meant to do two-thigs-two:
first, talking of where this world is going, second how to make the ride enjoyable.
Let me explain: since after the scientific revolution technology has started evolving exponentially,
a thing that some see as a blessing, some see as a curse.
I'm currently 22.
As anybody who was born in the 80's, when the clock stricked midnight the 31 december 1999,
a question popped in to my head:
WHERE THE HECK IS MY FLYING CAR?
Well, I probably shouldn't have screamed that aloud...
But that's not the point: everybody has expectations from the future, makes projects and suppositions. Somebody wants a serene life, somebody wants to make history...
point is, we don't know what's going to happen to us, let alone to the rest of the world.
And unless you believe Nostradamus mambo-jambo, you probably agree with me on one thing:
nobody does.
And another thing: the world isn't getting any simpler.
Every day, things that just a couple years ago were dimed impossible become reality.
We are now capable of travelling outside our athmosphere, we reached a couple days ago the goal of one billion computers sold around the world and cellphones are nearly everywhere...
Which is interesting, considering that experts on the respective fields seemed to think those tasks impossible:
"Man will never reach the moon, regardless of all future scientific advances”
by Dr Lee DeForest, inventor of the television.
(Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corp, 1977)
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
(Popular Mechanics, 1949)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
(IBM's Thomas Watson, 1943)
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
(Western Union internal memo, 1876)
...
And that's a huge assumption.
first, talking of where this world is going, second how to make the ride enjoyable.
Let me explain: since after the scientific revolution technology has started evolving exponentially,
a thing that some see as a blessing, some see as a curse.
I'm currently 22.
As anybody who was born in the 80's, when the clock stricked midnight the 31 december 1999,
a question popped in to my head:
WHERE THE HECK IS MY FLYING CAR?
Well, I probably shouldn't have screamed that aloud...
But that's not the point: everybody has expectations from the future, makes projects and suppositions. Somebody wants a serene life, somebody wants to make history...
point is, we don't know what's going to happen to us, let alone to the rest of the world.
And unless you believe Nostradamus mambo-jambo, you probably agree with me on one thing:
nobody does.
And another thing: the world isn't getting any simpler.
Every day, things that just a couple years ago were dimed impossible become reality.
We are now capable of travelling outside our athmosphere, we reached a couple days ago the goal of one billion computers sold around the world and cellphones are nearly everywhere...
Which is interesting, considering that experts on the respective fields seemed to think those tasks impossible:
"Man will never reach the moon, regardless of all future scientific advances”
by Dr Lee DeForest, inventor of the television.
“ I think there is in the world market for maybe five computers” by Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM in 1943.
“ 640k ought to be enough for anybody” by Bill Gates in 1981.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."(Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corp, 1977)
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
(Popular Mechanics, 1949)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
(IBM's Thomas Watson, 1943)
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
(Western Union internal memo, 1876)
...
And they were all super-duper sure, mind you.
What I'm trying to say by those quotes (outragiously stolen from other sites) is not that you have to believe to any pseudoscientific crap you hear. or that experts have no idea of what's going on around them: they do, too bad smart people too often become a little bit too sure of themselves.
What I mean is that, in my humble opinion, if given enought time humanity can reach any goal.
...assuming we don't kill each other first, mind you.And that's a huge assumption.
My aim with this blog is to report the most interesting technologies and theories and discussing on their potential and of the dangers they pose , trying to evite dogmatism and technobabble... to get maybe a glimpse of tomorrow.
A tomorrow where, I hope, there will be my frigging flying car!
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