“The fundamental unit of the new economy
is not the corporation, but the individual.”
- Thomas Malone & Robert Laubacher
Running a solo business in the past meant that you had a one-person practice, most often offering a professional service, well suited for lawyers, accountants, and doctors. However, a new breed of solo business has emerged that allows people to leverage the power of the Internet and control a vast empire from their home office or wherever they happen to be. Across the world thousands of people are giving birth to what is being called an “Empire of One”.
Invisible to the human eye, nano diameter needles will be shot like clusters of bullets
from great distances to “pin” people to a wall or freeze their physical movement.
Nano needles, because of their incredibly tiny diameter, will be the ultimate
non-lethal weapon, leaving no visible wounds and causing no permanent damage.
I would like to begin by saying that I am not a fan of using nanotechnology for weapons or in any way, shape or form as tools of war. However, since the military is one of the key drivers of nanotechnology, and its use in warfare will be an inevitable outcome, our awareness of the possibilities will be a first line of defense against their proliferation.
On the optimistic side, I have high hopes for nano-weapons to offer precise solutions for the bigger conflicts, eliminating some of the causes for war, and generally contributing to a safer and more stable global environment. With precision comes less loss of life, not more.
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 »
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?
October 2007
By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute
“Science never solves a problem without
creating ten more.”- George Bernard Shaw
The concept of smart dust has been around for several years now. Smartdust is a hypothetical network of tiny wireless microelectromechanical systems including sensors, robots, or other devices, installed with wireless communications, that can detect anything from light, to temperature, to vibrations, to chemical composition, etc.
The smartdust concept was introduced by Kristofer S. J. Pister at the University of California in 2001, although similar ideas existed in science fiction before then.
As an extension of this idea, I’ve become very intrigued with the concept of floating particles that emit signals, and some of the legal implications of who actually owns the particles and the information that
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.
This is a blog produced by Thomas Frey, Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, and Google's top rated futurist speaker. Unlike most speakers, Tom works closely with his Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies, which enables him to speak on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities.
