Artificial intelligence in the past has been a top-down exercise of simulating the actions and behaviors of people. Given the wide range of decision-making processes that the average person uses in their day to day activities, the problem-sets that needed to be solved in order to replicate all of the possibilities became staggeringly impossible.

However, the online world has given us insight into some new approaches for developing artificial thought, and these new approaches center around the concept of capturing real pieces of human intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »

Complexity is a Very-Real, Very-Destructive Disease
that Destroys Human-Based Systems

By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute

Often time we hear about some new disease that sounds kind of phony and quickly discard it because it sounds like some made-up name for a common personality quirk. So, when I talk about the “complexity disease”, your first inclination will probably be to say “yeah right!”

But here’s the difference. Complexity is not a disease that affects humans. Complexity is a disease that affects systems. And even though it has never been labeled as such before now, it becomes a very useful frame of reference for people involved in building, operating, or managing a system. Complexity is a very-real, very-destructive disease.

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Roman Numerals were a Numbering System that
Prevented an Entire Civilization from Doing Any Higher Math

By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute

During the time of the ancient Greek civilization several mathematicians became famous for their work. People like Archimedes, Pythagoras, Euclid, Hipparchus, Posidonius and Ptolemy all brought new elements of thinking to society, furthering the field of math, building on the earlier work of Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians

A few generations later the Romans became the dominant society on earth, and the one aspect of Roman society that was remarkably absent was the lack of Roman mathematicians. Rest assured, the scholarly members of Roman society came from a good gene pool and they were every bit as gifted and talented as the Greeks. But Roman society was being held hostage by its own systems. One of the primary culprit for the lack of Roman mathematicians was their numbering system – Roman Numerals and its lack of numeric positioning Read the rest of this entry »

Artwork by Patrick Turner

From Futurama to Prey, our view of the world ahead has become tainted with dismal prospects for a positive future

By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute

Few of the science fiction buffs watching reruns of Matt Groening’s now-defunct cartoon classic Futurama have any idea the name of the show was coined half a century earlier for a wildly-popular ride at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.
That Futurama – the original Futurama which is viewable on YouTube – was an unforgettable trip into the brave new world of 1960. Yes, the fabulous 1960s. Who can forget the thrill of exiting off a highway at 50 miles per hour Read the rest of this entry »

Will people in the future sell real estate “information rights” as a separate property right?

“Science never solves a problem without
creating ten more.” - George Bernard Shaw

A new generation of freedom-loving entrepreneurs
have made it their mission to circumvent gatekeepers

By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute

Recently a decision was made to allow people in 12 South American nations to travel from country to country without visas. Much like the efficiencies gained from a similar decision in the European Union, these countries are beginning to realize that life can exist without all the gatekeepers.

In the not-too-distant past, every creative work, whether it was a song, a movie, artwork, poetry, or an article for publication, had to be approved by at least one other person before the public could see it. Often times the work had to be screened by layer upon layer of reviewers so only the very best accomplishments would rise to the top.

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