The Future is Now

Sometimes you read a book so powerful, so wise that you feel the duty of spreading the author's words and contribute to a better world.  Michio Kaku's Physics of the Future is a must-read in the night stand of every leader in the planet, every decision maker, everyone with power to influence societies with high decisions.  Actually, I will rephrase this: it should be part of every school curriculum.

If we talk about the future, we talk about the next generation which is going to inherit the very complicated mission of bringing mankind from a Type 0 civilization to a Type I civilization.  A type I civilization is planetary, it controls all sources of energy of the planet and might be able to tame and modify the weather.  This civilization has an incredible life span and enjoys technologies that we could only dream about when we were kids.

We will live in a world where energy is cheap and abundant, where computers are everywhere to assist us in our daily duties, from our clothing to the walls of our houses.  Information will not be only at the palm of your hands, but in front of your eyes.

Nowadays, we are in the transition from Type 0 to Type I and this is the most dangerous moment in history of humanity.  This is because we still have all the savagery, all the fundamentalism, racism and intolerance that marked us through our barbaric stage, yet we have enough destructive power to eradicate ourselves from Earth, thanks to the same advances in technology that have brought us to the top of this planet's evolutionary table.  If knowledge is power, information is the currency and we live in an age where it can be accessed immediately and anywhere.  Anyone can access online data about how to build a nuclear weapon, or where to find all materials needed for it.  In these upcoming times where information will be abundant, the only force that oppose the chaos is wisdom.

Kaku defines wisdom as the ability to identify the crucial issues of our time, analyze them from many different points of view and perspectives, and then choose the one that carries out some noble goal and principle.  As he points, unlike information, wisdom cannot be dispersed via blogs and internet chatter.  It comes from reasoned and informed democratic debate from opposing sides.

George Bernard Shaw once said: "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."  The Internet is an ally of democratic freedom, allowing people to access information that centuries ago would be controlled by some local government in order to keep their dictatorship's hegemony.  Now, youngsters have the power and responsibility of choosing wisely, of deciding how far to take this technology that can change the world, and in what directions it must develop.  This promising generation must be educated overall, must be an informed electorate, but we run into one problem.  How to do that with a dysfunctional and outmoded educational system?

Sir Ken Robinson warned us with a short question on his memorable speech at TED's conference in 2006: "Do Schools kill creativity?"  If the leaders of tomorrow must have common sense, ability of thinking creatively and be problem-solvers, how to develop them in times like these?  Why are we leveling our kids by the bottom and rewarding mediocrity when the great work should be done in those years prior to their academic life?  Let's not be complacent with a wasteful attitude; let's not try to tell them what to do, but help them to develop their way.  We all are responsible for changing the present, we all are parents of the kids of the future; we are the role models of the men and women who will set the destiny our species.  Thousands of generations have lived and died to pass their genes so you could be here today, and you have this weight on your shoulders.

Robinson also said: " I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won’t serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children."

. . . . .

What are you going to do today?

Lighting Our Way

Universities and institutions all around the world are researching about different aspects and applications for something so common, but so necessary in our lives that most of the people would not even notice it’s there: light.  With all the advances in science and technology, light is being used in vary fields, such as medicine, communications and weaponry, and it may be a crucial factor in bringing us to a quick start into the future.  We are unleashing the power of light.

Scientists and engineers at the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal are developing a Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) weapon to take out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them.  This future-like laser machine would guide a lightning bolt via laser beam to hit the target with the possible power of 50 billion watts, more power than a larger city needs.

"If a laser beam is intense enough, its electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, creating plasma," said Fischer. "This plasma is located along the path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a mirror."

Meanwhile, researchers of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a procedure to focus light inside biological tissue which allows doctors to perform surgery without having to cut through your skin, or diagnose cancer by seeing tumors inside the body.

Such a less invasive technique of diagnosing and treating diseases enables scientists to research and develop promising applications for this ultrasound based method, and the benefits for patients are easily recognizable.  

Ok; we are developing weapons and medical technology.  That doesn’t sound so futuristic, right?  What else?

Think about history; think about nowadays.  What is one of the most important factors for human development, for learning and progressing into a more advanced society and going beyond our physical limitations?  Communication, I would say.

Without communication, knowledge would be lost in time and space and we would never be able to reach our potential.  Today, we live in a globalized era where we can share and learn with each other, doesn’t matter where in the world you live.  Computers, internet, cell phones; technology bring us together and it’s the key for our evolution.

The advances in computer technology are widely defined by the amount and speed of data we can storage and share, and microchips and processors nowadays have a great power comparing to, let’s say, last year.  The Moore’s Law isn’t dead yet and new supercomputers – funny term as they always get old – are being developed right now.  But, wait – aren’t you talking about light?  Let’s talk briefly about something else first: superconductors.

Superconductivity can be defined as a phenomenon of no resistance for an electric current with the expulsion of magnetic fields occurring in certain materials when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature, and superconductors are materials which allow these phenomena to occur, with no energy loss.  Superconductors can be used in defense, transportation, energy generation, communication and research, just to summarize a few applications.

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford Department of Physics, Japan and Germany were able to transform a non-superconducting insulator into a superconductor by the use of light.  An infrared laser pulse was used to perturb the positions of some of the atoms in the material, and the compound, held at a temperature just 20 degrees above absolute zero, almost instantaneously became a superconductor for a fraction of a second, before relaxing back to its normal state.

The researchers are hopeful that it could offer a new route to obtaining superconductivity at higher temperatures.  If superconductors that work at room temperature could be achieved, it would open up many more technological applications. 

The applications of these materials are wide and they may even hold the key for the next step in the evolution of processors.  Maybe, in the near future, superconductors can be used to manufacture real quantum computers as first coined by Richard Feynman in 1982; who knows?  The good thing about the future is that it keeps turning into present. 

Smart Cities, Smart Life

After smart phones, now come Smart Cities.

We are so used to have technology in our daily lives, either in form of comfort appliances or security measures. Internet is something so intrinsically connected to our professional and personal life that it is inevitable its use in research, monitoring and control of people - according to Mindflash.com, roughly 45% of employers now reportedly use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to screen potential employees (and, of course, keep monitoring them); The Telegraph says that Britons spend an average of 15 hours a week online, and the average American spent 32 hours per month in 2010 (note that by average there’s no distinction of online activity by age group or gender).

Both the Shetland Islands Council and Corby Borough Council - among the smallest local authorities in the UK - have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department. The borough of Wandsworth has the highest number of CCTV cameras in London, with just under four cameras per 1,000 people. Its total number of cameras - 1,113 - is more than the police departments of Boston [USA], Johannesburg and Dublin City Council combined.

Ok; the Big Brother is watching us, but what else?

Cities tend to reach for progress and the use of technology is inexorable in the pace for the future.

Vehicle-interlock systems that disable automobiles when sensors detect an inebriated driver have been around for some years now and, because people cheat the system (of course they do), a face recognition program is being developed by engineers of the University of Windsor with the use of biometrics.

In Paris, three years ago, 100 people volunteered under the Citypulse project to monitor ozone and noise levels of different areas in order to gather data to prevent and solve present and future problems, making the city a better place to live.

In U.S.A., a new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2015 on, for recording data before, during, or after a crash.

Everything seems wonderful so far; what’s the matter?

As Amara Angelica eloquently explained on her article about these black boxes, “Maybe the black box in the future will eventually monitor everything happening in the car, with real-time feeds to Homeland Security?” That’s when I ask: where is the limit between security monitoring and privacy invasion? I remember the airport full-body X-ray scanners polemic – I still travel by plane and, every time, it is still uncomfortable.

I am a big fan of science fiction predictions of the future, and there are two that come to mind about that: one is Spielberg’s film Minority Report and the police division of Pre-Crime and the other is the book 1984 by George Orwell which coined the so common term Big Brother (which I have even used on this very article).

Am I going too far by making a link here?

Smart Cities will collect data of all kinds - cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines etc - and use it to connect and control every aspect of life with massive operating systems that will run these cities in their entirety; now, who’s gonna provide all this apparatus and withdraw its benefits? The market is estimated to be worth $16 billion by the end of the decade and big companies like IBM and Cisco are already on it. Yep; the future is going to be owned by monopolies – not breaking news in any society, either capitalist or socialist.

So, technology came to help us to live a better life, I agree; everyone wants some degree of comfort and to be at ease. The problem comes when you get too dependent on it, or when it controls you. How smart are You?

You know you're in the future when...

Today I heard someone saying: “I got an appointment to replace my left knee…” and I thought to myself, “That’s how you know you’re in the future. Then, it occurred to me…

You know you're in the future when parallel parking can occur automatically.

You know you’re in the future when your cell phone has more processing power than your computer, more mega pixels than your camera and you can talk to it.

You know you're in the future when it only costs $15.50 to get corporate secrets, but a bottle of water costs $40.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy a high resolution plasma TV of 59” -- which also happens to be 3D -- for $2.000, but the warranty is for only one year, and it probably won’t last for two.

You know you’re in the future when you read about electronics made of nanomaterials that can rewire themselves on the fly, when a high-school student finds a possible cure for cancer, but you turn on the TV and they are showing “Keeping up with the Kardashians” (sorry, I refuse to link that).

You know you’re in the future when people want to build a space elevator, but there are still people dying by starvation in the world.

You know you’re in the future – and getting older – when kids don’t know the connection between a pencil and a tape.

You know you’re in the future when people go for a break and do nothing but texting, unaware of the world that surrounds them.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy online a personal submarine with over 250hp that looks like a killer whale.

You know you’re in the future when you can buy a car with over 130hp that runs 50mpg.

You know you’re the future when scientists trap antimatter for over 15 minutes and the majority of the world doesn’t give a damn about it.

And what about you? How do you know you’re in the future?

21st Century Life

I have been talking about the future, about how we are evolving at a fast pace, and how that implicitly boosts our ability to good and evil et cetera; so, here is a song about a man who realizes that; it is also a criticism of how mankind still faces so many social problems, despite all its advances.  The song is 21st Century Life by Sam Sparro, and I'm not gonna say I agree with all of what has been suggested here, but for the bass players, check out that bass line – Dave Wilder did a very good job of almost forcing the audience to play air bass.

21st Century Life by Sam Sparro

Songwriters: ROGG, JESSE / FALSON, SAM

When I was a little boy living in the last century

I thought about living in the future then it occurred to me

I turned around the future was now, the future was all around me

Nothing like I had imagined, it was totally confounding

21st century life, I got swept away

I got 21,000 things that I gotta do today

21st century life, well what can I say?

The new world's got me feeling so dirty

Think I need to get down and play

Well, now I turned on the TV just in time enough to hear

What the Pope said, the Pope said

And just a few tiny words later somebody wants the man dead

What about famine and disease, well they said it's too bad, oops

Because I'm never alone, it's not just a phone, it's a stereo

21st century life, I got swept away

I got 21,000 things that I gotta do today

21st century life, well what can I say?

The new world's got me feeling so dirty

Think I need to get down and play

Now I'm not a little boy, I'm in the 21st century

Well, you might think we've come a really long way

But there's still no equality

I watched the news on my computer screen

Talking about buying my weed out of a vending machine

You tell me I'm free but how can it be

When you're always watching me on the CCTV

21st century life, I got swept away

I got 21,000 things that I gotta do today

21st century life, well what can I say?

The new world's got me feeling so dirty

Think I need to get down and play

21, 21, 21

I'm talking about 21, 21

Love Books

There’s nothing better for killing time in a constructive way than reading a good book.  Books expand our horizons, fill us up with knowledge, make us laugh and cry and sharp our minds. 

Here are 10 must-read books of different genres for people whose tastes are eclectic – have fun on your journey!

As a disclaimer, the websites chosen for describing the books are merely illustrative, and I do not endorse, nor am I affiliated with any party.

1 - When We Were Gods – Falconer, Colin

Cleopatra VII of Egypt was barely more than a teenager when she inherited the richest empire in the world, fifty-one years before the birth of Jesus Christ.  Colin Falconer did a great job telling her story.

Colin Falconer was born in North London.  He is a former journalist and the author of three previous historical novels, which have been published in many languages throughout the world.  He travels widely to research his novels but now lives in a small coastal town in Western Australia.

2 – The Bourne Identity – Ludlum, Robert

The Bourne Identity was named the second best spy novel of all-time, and the novel was adapted into a 1988 television movie starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith, and a 2002 movie starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente and Chris Cooper.

Robert Ludlum (May 25, 1927 – March 12, 2001) was an American author of 23 thriller novels.  The number of his books in print is estimated between 290–500 million copies.  They have been published in 33 languages and 40 countries.  Ludlum also published books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.

3 – East of Eden – Steinbeck, John

The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley.  Follow the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer.  He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937).  He was an author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories; Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

4 – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Larsson, Stieg

Larsson's regret of not helping a young girl named Lisbeth, whom he saw being raped when he was 15, manifested in his character of the same name, also a rape victim.  Larsson writes within the crime novel, in Chapter 12, "It's actually a fascinating case. What I believe is known as a locked room mystery, on an island. And nothing in the investigation seems to follow normal logic. Every question remains unanswered, every clue leads to a dead end."

Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" (15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish journalist and writer. He is best known for writing the "Millennium series" of crime novels, which were published posthumously.  Larsson lived and worked much of his life in Stockholm, in the field of journalism and as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.  He was the second best-selling author in the world for 2008.

5 – Sophie’s World – Gaarder, Jostein

Sophie's World is a novel about philosophy by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated into English (1995) and many other languages.  It sold more than 30 million copies and is one of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway.  The book has been adapted into a film and a PC game.

Jostein Gaarder  is a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world.

6 – Insomnia – King, Stephen

Old Ralph Roberts hasn't been sleeping well lately. Every night he wakes just a little bit earlier, and pretty soon, he thinks, he won't get any sleep at all. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the strange hallucinations he's been having. Or, at least, he hopes they are hallucinations.  For fans of horror books, this one is a masterpiece.

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books.  Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

7 – The Universe in a Nutshell – Hawking, Stephen

If you are an inquisitive person, that’s a must-read.  Hawking exceeds his teaching abilities in this book, where he explains with mastery very difficult concepts of theoretical physics to normal-brained people.

Stephen William Hawking (born January 8, 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. His key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).  He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.  Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.  Subsequently, he became research director at the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.

8 – A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bryson, Bill

Bryson, who’s best known for his travel writing (the both amazing A Walk in the woods and Neither Here, Nor There), entertain and enlighten us through this, sometimes funny, but surely captivating, popular science book; a highly recommendable good read that will sure give you smiles.

William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science.  Born an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before returning to the US in 1995.  In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University.

9 – The Lost Symbol – Brown, Dan

This thriller is set in Washington, D.C. and is the follow-up of the world’s best seller The Da Vinci Code; and Brown did it again.  He mixes history, religion, science and art in this electrifying book that is going to keep you up for hours.

Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.  Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories.  His books have been translated into over 40 languages, and as of 2009, sold over 80 million copies.  Two of them, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, have been adapted into feature films.

10 – The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology – Kurzweil, Ray

In the future of Ray Kuzweil’s prediction, technology will play a role in our lives much more important than we think: it will enable us to reverse aging, boost our cerebral power and fix DNA errors.  The next step in our evolutionary process will be the union of human and machine in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil  (born February 12, 1948) is an American author, scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, technological singularity, and futurism.

Gadgets of the Future, Today

A Bed that floats in the air on magnets; an electric car with over 2,000hp that is ready with technology for hovering in electromagnetic highways; a cell phone made with nanotechnology that folds into a wrist-watch and stretches into a keyboard; piano-gloves to play in the air; a Segway-like dicycle that pops a third wheel on the fly and transforms into a motorcycle.

If you think that I’m talking about some new Steven Spielberg film, think again.  Most of those gadgets are already being produced for sale, for the happiness of millions of future enthusiasts around the world.

According to Moore’s law the advances in technology are growing in such an exponential rate that these improvements have dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy, allowing all kinds of new inventions. But let’s talk about the cool stuff!

The magnetic floating bed designed by Janjaap Ruijssenaars is astonishing, but so is its price: it’s expected to cost “merely” $1,200,000. If you are familiar with magnets and are asking yourself how they prevent the bed from floating away, it is held by four very thin wires.

http://hight3ch.com/magnetic-floating-bed/

As a car lover, I was taken by its design, but knowing that the Mithos is a zero-emissions car that goes up to 247mph and has so many other future-focused features made it a must in the list. Designed by the Portuguese designer Tiago Miguel Inacio, this electromagnetic monster is supposed to have specifications such as teleportation, quantum boost, scratch-resistant body material and others.

http://technabob.com/blog/2012/02/15/mithos-electromagnetic-concept-car/

Nokia’s innovation comes with the help of nanotechnology in the Nokia Morph concept. This cell phone fibril protein material makes it flexible, stretchable, transparent and remarkably strong giving you a good hint of what the future of telecommunication technology is going to look like.

http://research.nokia.com/morph

Another interesting device that is probably going to be improved with time is the eletronic piano-gloves by the Chinese manufacturer Thanko; the idea of playing piano in the air sounds fascinating and I am sure it is going to have further applications in other gizmos.

http://www.amazon.com/Thanko-Musical-Instrument-Fingers-Electronic/dp/B0078XE2OC

The sensational Uno 3 scooter is definitely a must-have if you’re tired of finding parking places in big cities.  This little transformer goes from an elaborated Segway into a scooter in about one second as you drive it in the streets, and it is also eco-friendly.  How many people fit in the elevator with their vehicles?

http://www.techi.com/2011/05/your-personal-uno-transformer-can-now-be-pre-ordered/