futurism

Nail watch: The future of telling time?

In the year 2154, no one will want to wear wristwatches anymore. They'll probably be out of fashion or too bulky for our hands. The in thing will be the nail watch, known as the TX54. Well, that's what Timex and design site Core77 think will be the future, according to the global design competition Timex 2154: The Future of Time." The two held the contest to mark the watch maker's 150th anniversary.

TX54, the runner-up in the event, is a concept watch by three Americans designers: Napoleon Merana, Steffen Schubert, and David Takacs. The nail … Read more

Welcome to the kitchen of the future

This weekend I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and I was reminded of how wildly exaggerated our predictions of the twentieth century were. When the movie was made forty years ago, 2001 was seen as a year where interplanetary travel is common and computers are advanced enough to be passable as human companions.

Our predictions of the modern kitchen were just as far out in left field, and in some cases, bordered on comical. I don't have to tell you that we were wrong about everyone having rooftop helipads, automatic laundry-folding washers, and food machines that create entire composed … Read more

'Future combat' cannon makes D.C. road trip

For components of the Army's $160 billion Future Combat Systems program, two key rites of passage are field trials at a military base in the West and a field trip back East to Capitol Hill.

Next week, the Army will bring prototype 1 of the Non Line of Sight Cannon, or NLOS-C, to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., just in front of the Capitol, for its public debut. The NLOS-C is one of eight different manned vehicles in the still evolving FCS plan. All of them will share a common (if not identical) chassis.

The FCS vehicles … Read more

Where $1.8 Billion is a lot to pay for The 404

Listen now: Download today's podcast To most 404 listeners, it was a regular day. To us, it's the day two of our favorite things changed forever. Thing 1? Randall Bennett is now dead to us. Thing 2? We now can claim Charlie Sheen in our six degrees of separation. That's right, CBS has acquired The 404 for $1.8 billion dollars.... through the subsequent acquisition of CNET. We wax poetically on what it'll be like when Randall is relaxing in his Jackson Heights Jampad, free of the strains of The 404, and how we're planning … Read more

Google sets sights on IPv6

Google announced Wednesday on its official blog that Google search is now available over an IPv6 connection. What?

Right now, much of the world relies on the fourth iteration of the Internet Protocol, also known as IPv4, for its Web connections. The problem is, IPv4 facilitates only about 4 billion IP addresses, not enough for every person in the world to have one.

Google and others estimate that the IPv4 capacity will be "exhausted" sometime in 2011, which means that IPv6--which will enable each individual person on Earth to have nearly 3 billion networks--will potentially take over.

"… Read more

Imagining the tech world in 2050

At a kickoff event for collaboration between IBM and the University of Southern California to explore the intersection of creative arts and science and technology, five IBM scientists offered their best guesses on how life would be different in 2050.

In keeping with the Hollywood theme, the moderator of the panel, Bill Pulleyblank, noted that the Mini Cooper automobile has more computing power than Apollo 13--the space capsule that "almost got Tom Hanks killed," he said, referring to the 1995 movie of that name.

Pulleybank led the development of IBM's Blue Gene systems, which account for 4 … Read more

Zittrain's 'U.S. 1.0' advice for Web 2.5

SAN FRANCISCO--Jonathan Zittrain recently published a terrific book with the suggestive title The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It. But as I settled into my seat to report on his talk at the Web 2.0 Expo here Thursday, the Internet stopped me.

Dead in my tracks.

It was a confluence of events. In a switcheroo, what we witnessed was actually "virtual Zittrain." The good professor--he teaches Internet governance and regulation at Oxford University and is the co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society--appeared on the big screen in a … Read more

WWW2008 - Social media in 2020 to be pervasive, ambient

A panel of social media experts believe that in 2020, social media will be far more pervasive, interlinked, and location-aware than they are now. Here are my comments as published on Twitter, with some comments following. (Reverse chronological order)

David Shamma brings up what I've been wondering: What about security? Questioner answers vegetarian question by calling for show of hands. Old tech, hurrah! Marc Davis thinks in 2020, we'll have ambient data about stuff like who around us is vegetarian when we travel And David Shamma thinks it's more problematic: we need to manage different audiences. Marc … Read more

Reality check for the Army's high-tech makeover

The Pentagon is no stranger to overpriced equipment and cost overruns, but it may never have seen a program quite like the U.S. Army's long-running and hugely ambitious Future Combat Systems initiative.

For this fiscal year alone, Congress has allocated some $3.5 billion in funding for FCS, en route to what is expected to be a total tab of $160 billion or so by the middle of the next decade. But $160 billion doesn't buy what it used to: the Government Accountability Office has been lamenting recently that the overall estimated FCS tab remains at that … Read more