Where great ideas happen, and people have the tools to act on them

Ten years ago, many in the tech elite were predicting the demise of the public library. Little did they understand that libraries are living, breathing organisms. Much like plants that flourish with good dirt, water and sunshine, libraries have begun to thrive in our information-rich environment.

Libraries are going through an age of rebirth, with cities investing heavily in their central libraries as the crown jewel of their community. Opulent multi-story glass buildings have been erected, attracting many new categories of library users. But the question remains - Where do libraries go from here?

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The Precautionary Principal and the shifting onus of responsibility

The future will be neither as good as some would lead us to believe, or as bad as other would have us think. But it is the onus of responsibility that becomes the industry’s “hot potato”, with innovators squaring off against product safety experts and consumer advocates over who should bear the ultimate cost and responsibility of insuring compliance with the ever-increasing safety standards. 

With technology growing in complexity on a daily basis, it is no longer reasonable to live in a “buyer beware” society.  The Precautionary Principal, as a foundational underpinning of the sustainability movement, places the burden of protection on shoulders of those creating the products.

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The coming demise of the retail storefront

Last week my wife Deb and I were relaxing at a new shopping center in the Denver area. Along the sidewalks a series of speakers cast a rather pleasant musical backdrop to the shopping experience.

At one point an interesting song began playing. I reached for my iPhone, and used a program called Shazam to “listen” to the music, revealing the name of the song and the artist. I was then able to purchase the song on my iPhone and download it directly to the phone for later use.

The nature of this transaction is quite revealing in that it gives us clues as to what our shopping experiences will be like in the future.

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Cryonics and our ongoing effort to build the ultimate life-extension toolbox

No person should ever die…. EVER!

Is that the direction we’re headed?

There are many reasons why people die, yet these reasons may all disappear as we develop fixes and cures for everything that ails us.

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Future games will become the ultimate playground for our minds

In 1977 when famed mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot uttered the phrase, “as a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also to seduce,” little did he know that his brainchild, fractal geometry, would become seductive to the point of being addictive.

Over the past decade, fractal geometry, the science that reduces the patterns found in nature to mathematical formulas and also enables us to create artificial forms of nature using the same math, has become the numerical engine driving much of the gaming industry, and more specifically, the hottest technique in gaming - procedural generation. Placing key creative elements in the hands of the player, procedural generation means the game doesn’t store millions of characters and background images, just the methods by which they can be built, leaving the gamers free to focus on creating the worlds in which their next adventures occur.

Where brilliant thinkers like da Vinci, H. G. Wells, and Mandelbrot inspired much of the world around us today, the world of tomorrow, the very world where we will be spending the later years of our lives, is now being imagined inside the young minds of today’s gamers as they learn to harness the awesome power hiding in each gamer’s toolbox.

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Next Generation Gaming is Not for the Faint of Heart

Life is a game. Every day we find ourselves in the middle of the game, involving the work we do, the people we hang out with, and the social structures that surround us.

But who exactly created this game? Each day we live our lives as animated playing pieces, playing by rules that others created. Conformity is a constant force, imposing a lifestyle that most of us were born into, saddled with goals that often go cross-grain with our personal strengths. All of this, however, is about to change.

In the future, the very near future, nothing we hold dear today will remain sacred. Not even the rules for our own game of life.

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Nanotechnology is a science riddled with paradoxes

Over the past year I have been eating, sleeping, and breathing nanotechnology, but feel like I have only scratched a little behind the ears of this enormous science. I had been following the industry, keeping up on the science for some time, but writing a book required total immersion.

The terminology is the toughest part. As I listen to the scientists talk, they seem very conversant with the difficult to pronounce “ology” and “ecular” words and the even more difficult concepts behind the words. But this is not the language of “average” people, or for that matter, the language of most of the “far above average” people that I know.

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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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