Given the options of sitting far, far away in the mezzanine or trying to sneak up to the front with the journalists, I opted to take a shot. You can’t blame me for trying. The result was that I got to hear the first 10 minutes of what sounded like an interesting beginning to Vice President Al Gore talking about “The Future”, the name of his new book. In it, he talks about technology and how the advancements as well as our actions will affect the climate and a bunch of other things. If it sounds ambiguous, it’s because less than ten minutes in, I got tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave the area set aside for…

  The planet Earth has seen its share of crises, from natural disasters to full out war. But among the most frightening are the disasters of the financial sort. Back in 1994, the Tequila Crisis in Mexico brought the peso up from 4 to 7.2 to $1 in just one week, and later in the decade Thailand reached its lowest point of 56 Bahts to $1. So what happens when things like this strike? Exhange rates suffer and the value of local currency goes way down virtually shunting millions of people into poverty in a matter of hours. Even just a few years ago in 2008, Zimbabwe suffered the worst inflation crisis in…

The vast majority of you are probably currently viewing this infographic either while you wait in line at Starbuck’s, or even while you make your daily voyage to the office. It’s hard to believe that around 10 years ago this assumption would be outrageous, but thanks to the innovative minds behind smartphones and tablet PCs, we are finally free to take the interwebs just about anywhere we go. Google has estimated that by 2013, more people will be using mobile phones and tablet PCs to go online than desktop computers. Considering the amount of smartphone and tablet options that we now have to…

The cars of today are costly in more ways than one. In 2010, there were 35,000 deaths due to car crashes in the U.S., and car crashes cost the economy $230 billion every year. Traffic congestion costs the U.S. economy a staggering $87.2 billion a year. As a nation, we waste 4.2 billion hours in traffic each year—that’s one work week for every traveler. The environment takes a beating from the cars of today as well. Twenty-two percent of carbon dioxide emissions come from cars and trucks, and 2.8 billion gallons of fuel are wasted each year due to congestion. Fortunately, self-driving cars figure…

Aircraft landing fields on top of buildings. Zeppelins taking people too and fro. Self-reliant building communities with schools and businesses intermixed with housing. Multiple levels of transportation streets. The vision that Popular Science Monthly posted in their August 1925 issue offered an exceptionally organized view of the future. If only it ended up that way back then. If only it had made it that far by now. Click to enlarge. (Via: Clarksville Chevrolet)…

It’s hard to imagine the world without Facebook right now. Even people who aren’t users are affected by it even if only because they are constantly bombarded with commercials, billboards, and other people telling them to follow this and like that. The site has become the center piece of a company that is expanding beyond the boundaries of social media and influencing the real world. Is it possible that Facebook can fall in the next few years? Yes, Facebook is doomed The brief history of the internet has brought us many companies that were too big to fail. They held the collective attentions of the…

If looking ahead 25 years were easy, we’d have flying cars and hoverboards. Unfortunately, it’s pretty challenging to predict the weather sometimes, let alone the future in a scale of a quarter century. That didn’t stop Popular Science Monthly from taking a stab at it in 1925 with their vision of a metropolis setting in 1950. Many of the ideas in the drawing are strong, including a clever multi-level transportation concept that separated slow and fast cars from pedestrians, trains, and each other. Self-sufficient buildings would keep people centralized with their day-to-day activities,…

When we first covered Ericsson’s Networked Society Project, we called it beautiful and terrifying. Their latest video shows that beauty can prevail when technology inserts itself into our lives with positive motives in mind. The concept centers around Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As cities continue to grow at a rate of 200,000 new people born into or moving to an urban area every day, ITC integration is essential. Thankfully, the technology is growing just as quickly, if not faster. It isn’t just about people having access to information. It’s about the city itself having…

Nearly a year ago, Corning put out a video called “A Day Made of Glass.” In it, they showed a future that was enhanced by the use of touchscreens and other variations of glass products that seems less like “Minority Report” and more like a not-so-distant reality. This week, they’ve added to the video by releasing another titled “A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision.” First, here’s the original video: It was inspiring to see the potential, but didn’t quite take the world to the next level that many of these technologies promise. Now, their most recent video finishes the job with kid-attacking…

Every year, IBM takes a stab at telling the future by examining what they’re working on in their 5in5 series. This year’s list was surprisingly bland compared to past ones as they explored technologies that many would agree aren’t necessarily 5 years away; in two cases, we should see these technologies enter our daily lives within 1 or 2 years. It’s not an insult of what they’re trying to do – they’re the scientists and we’re just bloggers. It’s just that their predictions are a bit conservative. Energy Applying kinetic energy solutions to our lives is something that makes complete sense other than…