Futurist

There are 396 posts filed in Futurist (this is page 31 of 40).

Paul Allen funds studies of the brain

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is putting $500 million of his fortune into looking for the “essence of humanity” in our brains.

I sent him an email explaining that, while the brain is indeed fascinating and worthy of study, it is nothing but the hardware. The software (what makes us who we are) is the mind. You ain’t gonna find the “essence of humanity” in the jumbled nerves of the brain.

If Mr. Allen really wants to find what makes us human, he’ll fund some studies of consciousness.

I’ve always been fascinated by the workings of the human brain. I’m awed by its enormous complexity. Our brains are many magnitudes more advanced in the way they work than any computer software ever invented. Think about this: We can teach students to program computers in a couple of years of school. But even with a lifetime of learning, at present we are far away from fully understanding the brain.

via Billionaire Paul Allen Pours $500 Million Into Quest To Find The Essence Of Humanity In The Brain – Forbes.

Digiboo DVD download kiosks

Movie Booth DVD download kiosk


Remember last year when I spied that intriguing DVD download kiosk in the Seattle airport? Looks like it is similar to the kiosk service put together by a startup company called Digiboo, according to a news story today.

The rental service, from Santa Monica, Calif.-based Digiboo, is being introduced at a time when consumers are shifting away from movie rentals to online movie streaming. Whether the Digiboo kiosks mark the next evolution in watching video, or just another dead end like the Betamax VCR, they illustrate the enduring allure of the movies even as technology morphs them into new forms.

[snip]

The first kiosks were installed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Next up: the Seattle and Portland airports, Thomas said. If the concept is successful, thousands of kiosks will be put in a variety of public places, he said.

I thought initially today that the booth I saw might have been a Digiboo booth but the article seems to indicate that Digiboo hasn’t been installed at the Seattle airport after all.

I guess the mystery remains as to who owns the DVD download kiosk at SEATAC.

Update 12:10 PM: I did a little Google sleuthing and believe the “Movie Booth” kiosk I saw was from a company called LightSpeed Cinema in Los Angeles. I found one press release from December 2008 that mentions that LightSpeed Cinema is Santa Monica-based, as is Digiboo. Are these companies one and the same? I’m guessing they are and the DVD kiosk I saw in Seattle is an early Digiboo model.

Here’s Digiboo’s website. Also, this press release offers more details on the company.

Why the world is running out of helium

My friends at N.C. Nearspace are aghast at the skyrocketing cost of helium used to fill their balloons. One of the planet’s most irreplaceable resources, helium may vanish completely from Earth within 30 years, and the primary cause is a 1996 law passed by Congress. Read more about this crisis from the Independent (UK):

It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons. But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world’s reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

Scientists have warned that the world’s most commonly used inert gas is being depleted at an astonishing rate because of a law passed in the United States in 1996 which has effectively made helium too cheap to recycle.

The law stipulates that the US National Helium Reserve, which is kept in a disused underground gas field near Amarillo, Texas – by far the biggest store of helium in the world – must all be sold off by 2015, irrespective of the market price.

The experts warn that the world could run out of helium within 25 to 30 years, potentially spelling disaster for hospitals, whose MRI scanners are cooled by the gas in liquid form, and anti-terrorist authorities who rely on helium for their radiation monitors, as well as the millions of children who love to watch their helium-filled balloons float into the sky.

via Why the world is running out of helium – Science – News – The Independent.

Update: Looks like I posted about this before, but it bears mentioning again.

Cheap Thoughts: phone numbers

Alex didn't need no numbers


This week’s reminder that 10-digit dialing is coming to the Triangle made me wonder why we even use phone numbers anymore. With all the smartphones, voice dialing, and Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) systems in place, having to remember a 10-digit number to call someone seems … quaint.

The VoIP system I have at home can easily handle phone numbers made of digits, of course, but it can also handle calling using a SIP address that looks more like an email address (sip:phone@pbx.markturner.net). In fact, my phone calls can be routed entirely over the Internet, never touching a traditional phone switch (or as they’re known by phone geeks, the “public switched telephone network”).

Imagine having to remember the “dotted quad” IP addresses of all the Internet sites you want to surf. It would be pretty futile, wouldn’t it? Smart people like Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris dreamed up the Domain Name System (DNS) years ago so humans could remember words (www.markturner.net) instead of numbers (67.217.170.39). Why haven’t we applied the same thinking to phones by now?

Back in the day, one “dialed” phones by picking up and telling the human operator at your local phone company office who you wanted to talk to (“Ruth, get me Pennsylvania 65000“). There’s no reason now why one couldn’t simply do the same now, only talking to a computer operator. In fact, AT&T actually has some of the best voice-recognition technology of anyone.

It is 2012, almost a hundred and forty years since Alexander Graham Bell patented the first telephone. In this day and age we should be creating fewer phone numbers, not more!

NC Medical marijuana backers try to make their cause heard

I hope more people speak out favorably on this cause.

Margaret Wakefield is not a college student nor does she sport dreadlocks and Birkenstocks while chatting about how the world should focus more on peace and love.

Despite her clean-cut appearance, Wakefield is a vocal leader for, what some may find, a surprising cause — medical marijuana.

Wakefield’s mother died from cancer a year ago, and the life-changing event has made her very open and passionate about allowing people suffering from chronic illnesses to use cannabis as a form of treatment.

“If I had known then what I know now … (my mother) would have had some to smoke everyday,” said Wakefield, a member of the North Carolina Cannabis Patients Network.

via Medical marijuana backers try to make their cause heard.

Encouraging volunteerism

On my way out of the municipal building yesterday, I passed Cindy Trumbower, volunteer coordinator of the city’s Parks and Rec program. She told me she just got back from a volunteer event where a bunch of students from Michigan State University had painted a city gymnasium as part of their Spring Break service. These kids didn’t hit the beach and stay drunk and rowdy for a week (even being from a chilly place like Michigan) but instead gave their time to help others. How cool is that? I thought that was just awesome and asked if she could provide the Parks board details at our next meeting.
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Three trillion in change

As I was contemplating the $5-per-gallon gasoline price forecast by the end of the year, my mind turned to the three trillion dollars America has squandered over the past decade fighting two Middle Eastern wars.

What if America had invested that $3,000,000,000,000 in making our country more energy-independent rather than in blowing people up? What if this enormous nation of ours had used that money to build a first-class, high-speed passenger rail system that would keep us globally competitive as fuel prices continue to skyrocket?

Instead, we have thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers (kids, really), hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed, two battle-scarred countries of questionable stability, and a huge mountain of debt with little to show for it.

It has not been America’s finest moment.

Water system bills, revisited

Remember how I said that John Carman, Raleigh’s Public Utilities Director, has been going around telling anyone who’ll listen that Raleigh’s water infrastructure is aging rapidly and will soon need major maintenance? The Raleigh Public Record looked at the report put out by the city’s Water Utility Transition Advisory Task Force (WUTAT):

Raleigh’s underground water infrastructure, mainly pipes in the ground, needs more than $7 billion in repairs, according to City Public Utilities Director John Carman. These are not immediate costs, he said, but now is when Raleigh should be planning to replace pipes that will age out during the coming decades.

Carman told the Record the current financial model for the system does not put away any money to pay for replacing pipes that have a lifespan of anywhere from 60 to 100 years.

“We have $500 million worth of pipe that was installed before World War II,” Carman said.

Kudos to the Raleigh Public Record for raising awareness about this issue.

Cheap Thoughts: Time for Car 2.0?

Google's driverless car


As I was driving on the I-40 interstate the other day, I noticed how of the 12 feet of concrete devoted to a travel lane, the typical car or truck only touches two, one-foot-wide strips where the tires are. What a waste of the other 10 feet of concrete.

It made me realize how little the car has changed since it was first introduced. Oh, sure, plenty of progress has been made to the inside of the car, but what about the rest of what it takes to make a car go: the infrastructure? There are so many things we could be doing with cars but haven’t yet tried.

Why do we still build roads? All that impervious, land-hogging, surface, and only a fraction of it is useful to any vehicle. Well, the Romans did it, some might say, but thats because stones were all they had.
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