Future Salon

Resources and Tools - ATimes Jun 30 2005

Beyond Wi-Fi, David Pogue, New York Times, 6.23.05
[Commentary by John Smart] Great article about Verizon's EV-DO Wireless Broadband. A $70 Kyocera KPC650 card (the best option) plus $80/month to Verizon will get you wireless cellular broadband for your laptop, with 400-700 Kbps download (cable modem speed), and 100 Kpbs upload (crippled to keep you from using it as a wireless server). Fortunately, Skype will work on a minimum of 34 Kbps, so you can now use your EV-DO-equipped laptop for unlimited-length free calls to PC users anywhere with Skype, or super low-cost calls (see SkypeOut global rates, often just 3 cents/minute) to any standard or mobile phone in the world.

Verizon's $1 billion, true 3G network presently covers 32 major U.S. cities, and will cover half the country by December. Fortunately, Sprint will also offer EV-DO by the end of this year, so the $80/month corporate-level rate may fall to a consumer level as early as 2006. This is a very empowering development!

Philips Sonicare IntelliClean Toothbrush and Decapinol Oral Rinse
Here are two great new tools for healthy teeth. The first is the $120 Philips Sonicare toothbrush, whose sonic technology and liquid toothpaste dispensing system is "one step closer to daily flossing," for those millions who don't floss regularly as there is as yet no convenient way to do it.

The second is a new oral rinse for combating one of the most common diseases of aging, gingivitis, or inflamed and shrinking gumlines. Rather than killing natural oral bacteria, delmopinol hydrochloride (Decapinol) takes away their ability to stick to teeth, gums, and each other, reducing bacterial plaque and the toxins they release at the gumline. Decapinol has just been approved by the FDA, so expect it in U.S. stores soon. In the meantime, you can call your friends in the United Kingdom who have had it for years and have them mail you some. Decapinol also doesn't interact with toothpaste, unlike anti-gingivitis treatments like chlorhexidine, so with luck we may even see it added to liquid toothpaste in these sonic systems a few years hence. Sounds like intelligent cleaning to me! Thanks to Bryan Hall for the Decapinol link.

Affiliates - ATimes Jun 30 2005

Institute for the Future @ Anne Arundel Community College (Arnold, Maryland)
Director Steve Steele describes IF & AACC (http://www.aacc.edu/future) as "a growing vehicle to deliver future thinking by acting locally." It is a great model for building a futures network at the community college level. At IF, Professor Steele has collected a range of AACC professors with interest in the future into a speakers bureau available for anyone seeking a talk on present trends and future "P's and a W": possible, plausible, positive, preferable, preventable, and wildcard future scenarios within their field of study.

Some one-question interviews with futurists at: http://www.aacc.edu/future/qandaarchives.cfm
Browse their online ezine, Future Portal, at http://www.aacc.edu/future/futureportalarch.cfm
Sign up at http://www.aacc.edu/future/form/interested.cfm

The Acceleration Story in Five Spaces - ATimes Jun 30 2005

ATimes covers world news and insight in five "spaces," giving one to three briefs in each space. The story of accelerating change, the most fascinating story of our time, appears to be one of movement from outer, to human, to inner, to cyber, and ultimately, to hyper space, the world beyond the present. Each of these deserves understanding for a multidisciplinary perspective on the future:

Outer Space (the world around us: science, the natural and built environment, universal systems theory)
Human Space (the human world: our bodies, behavior, minds, human systems theory)
Inner Space (the world below: energy, small tech, computer "bodies", inner systems theory)
Cyber Space (the virtual world: computer "behavior", computer "minds", cyber systems theory)
Hyper Space (the world beyond: new paradigms, phase transitions, hyperphysics, hyper systems theory)

If you have important stories to share with our 3,100 acceleration-aware readers, we'd love to hear from you at mail(at)accelerating.org.

 

Human Space: Education - ATimes Jun 30 2005

Human Space
bodies (biology, health, neuroscience), behavior (business, education, foresight, governance, innovation, pre-digital technology, society), minds (psychology, spirituality), human systems theory (ecological psychology, memetics)

Education
A Visit to the University of Advancing Technology's Tech Forum 2008
[Commentary by Iveta Brigis] Last week, John Smart and I traveled to Phoenix for UAT's Tech Forum 2008 (they say they are three years ahead of the curve). Twice a year, the university flies in industry leaders to speak to and network with their students at a three-day conference. The ASF was privileged to have John present How to Be a Tech Futurist (slides available here).

UAT is a haven for teenage techies whose parents want them to have a solid liberal arts education along with their CS, video game design, and network securities classes. And the administration really cares about preparing their students for jobs in the real world, which is why they bring in experts from companies like Microsoft, Red Storm Entertainment, and Security Horizon. I sat in on some very informative sessions, like Anna Sweet's presentation on Women in Gaming and Evan Robinson's Software Development Practices: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Anna shared some personal experiences being one of the few women at Microsoft Game Studios and recommended that all the students, not just the women, jump on the chance to work on games tailored for women because it is such a large potential market. Evan shared some practical management tools and tips for working in software development.

UAT's balance of hard-core techi-ness and liberal arts is a boon for young adults growing up in this time of accelerating change. We applaud UAT for their work and look forward to seeing where they go next.

Human Space: World Security - Jun 30 2005

The End of War?: Explaining 15 Years of Diminishing Violence, Gregg Easterbrook, The New Republic, 05.24.2005
[JS] Excellent coverage of a worldwide trend that seems a direct result of our increasingly interdependent, media-saturated environment. Synopsizes the recent findings of Monty Marshall of George Mason University and Ted Robert Gurr of the University of Maryland. Unfortunately, TNR doesn't have an option for you to buy this without a subscription, but you can read the first paragraph. Fortunately, another recent piece, "Warfare Waning Across the World," by David Sands, Washington Times, 06.27.2005, synopses the same findings and is freely available.

In fact, there are a host of developmental processes we can statistically predict today with increasing accuracy given past history, such as more globalization, higher GDP's and per capita incomes, more democracy, transparency, less warfare, faster and smarter computers, etc. ASF believes futurists need to be making that special class of things much more obvious to the general public, and we will do our part in coming years to advocate for statistically-backed prediction as a core futurist methodology. Thanks to Jerry Paffendorf for the link.

Human Space: Online Collaboration; The Voluntary Economy - ATimes Jun 30 2005

The Power of Us, Business Week, 06.20.2005
[JS] Concise coverage of the way the positive sum opportunities of easy collaboration have turned our online lives into a cornucopia of the commons. They discuss the radical disruption of free P2P VoIP systems like Skype, the 180,000 (and counting) new independent service businesses created by eBay, the way Microsoft is losing global ground to Linux in servers, commodity OS environments, and in emerging nations (China, Brazil), the vast value of Amazon's millions of freely-created product reviews, the advancement of collective online innovation communities like InnoCentive, the continuing wonders of Google, the creativity of 3D worlds like Linden Lab's Second Life, and the emerging sophistication of free open source platforms like SugarCRM, a tool that will redefine the lower end of the market for large customer relationship management companies like Siebel Systems and Salesforce.com

Bottom line: The easier and more powerful collaboration becomes, the more stunning the new products and services we will see. What's more, we are still only at the beginning of what we might call the "Voluntary Economy." Business visionary Gary Hoover, in his excellent online article, "Beyond the Corporation," summarizes the work of Nobel-prize-winning economist Robert Fogel (The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, 2000) who tells us that the lifetime discretionary hours of first world residents has risen from 43,800 in 1880 to 176,100 in 1995, and will reach 246,000 in 2040. The longer people are able to live, and the less total lifetime hours they need to work to support a voluntary lifestyle, the more freely-given, nonprofit, and other creative projects the world will see. Our life in the voluntary commons is just beginning.

The more we all become digital activists, the faster we improve the quality of these products. How do you keep track of all the cool stuff? You can't, but you can have fun trying. Pick of the month: deli.ciou.us, an open source tool for managing and collaboratively sharing bookmarks. This lets us all continually discover the current most popular sites, by consensus.

Inner Space - ATimes Jun 30 2005

energy, small tech (nanoengineering, miniaturization), computer "bodies" (automation, computer hardware, nanotech, robotics), inner systems theory (acceleration, efficiency, miniaturization, reductionism)

Desalination
GE's Water-Treatment Group to Unveil Its First Major Project, Kathryn Kranhold, Wall Street Journal, 6.24.2005
[IB] General Electric has announced plans to build what will be Africa's largest seawater desalination plant in Algeria. The Hamma Water Desalination SpA will produce 53 million gallons of potable water each day, enough to supply 25% of the capital city Algiers' population. Due to relentless advances in nanotech, today desalination is a $5 billion market, growing between 10% and 15% annually, according to the WSJ.

It's very exciting to see that desalination costs have declined sharply (see this interesting piece on desalination in Israel by Dr. Pinhas Glueckstern) because of accelerated progress in desalination technologies. GE has plans to build and run water treatment plants all around the world and accordingly expects to earn 60% of its desalination revenue growth in emerging markets in the next decade. By providing a consistent, inexpensive source of drinking water for people all around the world, desalination really has the potential to increase quality of life for many individuals. One pioneering industry group that is working on the desalination solution is the International Desalination Association.

Cyber Space - ATimes Jun 30 2005

computer "behavior" (co-evolution, automation, symbiosis), computer "minds" (computer software, simulation), cyber systems theory (holism, information, intelligence, interdependence, immunity)

Datacosm
Digital Newspapers: Today's Front Pages and NewspaperDirect.com
[JS] The Newseum's exhibit of front page PDFs of 300 English language newspapers is an interesting design idea. Just mouseover the mini pictures and click, and a popup (turn your popup blocker off) will give you a readable PDF of the daily front page, as well as a link to the paper's homepage, where you can often read the rest of that day's stories for free. Their "list by region" interface is very slow for finding papers, but this is a free site, and they were the first to do this kind of aggregation, beginning back in 2001, so give them credit where due.

Newstran is a newspaper portal site with free access to an astonishing selection of American and autotranslated international newspapers. It's also worth a look, but the time lag between click and view will be an issue for some.

For those wanting the best commercial solution, for $10/month, Press Display/NewspaperDirect will electronically download thirty one newspapers to your regular or Tablet PC. They now have 200 papers from 50 countries available. Their web display updates with the top half of front page pictures every day, and is quite fast. The ability to bookmark is limited, and text search is currently restricted to only one of your subscribed papers, but this is an excellent next step for scanning multiple papers daily.

For the future? Imagine your favorite story subjects, culled from every participating newspaper globally, all autotranslated and downloaded to the Media Servers that connect to our Tablet PCs, lightning-quick, annotatable and searchable using Google desktop. Major new subscriber base! Reader heaven! Thanks to Clive Pearce, and to Harland Harris of Newseum.

Hyper Space - ATimes Jun 30 2005

new paradigms, phase transitions, hyperphysics (black holes, multiverse, string theory, supersymmetry), hyper systems theory (computational limits, emergence, phase transitions, technological singularity hypothesis, developmental singularity hypothesis)

Ethics in a Voluntary Economy
Only the Ethical Need Apply, Susan Llewelyn Leach, Christian Science Monitor, 03.30.2005
[JS] How will the first world workforce transform over the next two generations, as people increasingly work as they choose, on ever more abstract, "high-touch," service-based jobs? Leach cleverly outlines the position of Dick Samson, Tom Malone and others that as automation replaces our more rote cognitive and behavioral tasks, workers will transition into an increasingly transparent, highly connected society. In that environment our ability to be fair, responsible, dependable, trustable, and credible (doing what we promise), as well as our ability to empower and help others, as determined by their public feedback, will become the primary propositions differentiating our value to the system.

These are excellent insights into a world where technology will increasingly replace even many of today's knowledge worker jobs, pushing us all into ever-more-abstract sectors of the service economy. The basic liberal arts education that stresses good communications skills, civics, and a broad understanding and valuing of diversity will never have been more valuable. The more things change, the more some things stay the same.

Ethics are game theories for successful conflict resolution, and as the change of pace increases successful conflict resolution will continue to increase in importance, even as they get more refined. Looking for good books to guide you in your increasingly high-stakes, high-value interactions? Joseph Grenny and Kerry Patterson's books, Crucial Conversations 2002, and Crucial Confrontations, 2004, are excelent places to start. For corporate interpersonal skills training, see also the VitalSmarts website.

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Fun - ATimes Jun 30 2005

Fun
We all deserve a little fun every day. Send your entries for the next ATimes!

Websites
The Onion in 2056. If you like this online humor site, you'll enjoy their parody of our mid-century future. A few precious bits, like "Million Robot March Attended by Exactly 1,000,000 Robots." Hilarious! Thanks to Brent Bushnell.

Nearly Hairless Club
Another example of the amazing variety that evolution hides in reserve. The Chinese Crested Hairless toy dog (more crazy pictures) is pictured here. More

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Call for Submissions
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