Maia Szalavitz, time.com
Fear short circuits the brain, especially when it hits close to home, experts say— making coping with events like the bombings at the Boston Marathon especially tricky. “When people are terrorized, the smartest parts of our brain tend to shut down…
This is a case for building mental infrastructures at an individual level rather than trying to stop terrorism at a systems level which is becoming increasingly futile because of the continuously rising power of the individuals to have impact on their environment.
The World Needs 1.8 Billion Jobs—But What If They Already Exist?
BY ALVIS BRIGIS, fastcoexist.comWhat if we were able to monetize the information we put on the Internet? A revolution in which people are paid by the networks they use could herald a new economy for the world’s jobless.
Editor’s Note
This is part of our Futurist Forum serie…futur
Bitcoin really is a tiny market in the scheme of things, and its recent gyrations mean that the dollar, euro and yen have nothing to fear from the competition. If a currency can lose 75 percent of its buying power in two days, it may not be the best store of value. But it also an important window into the strange and uncomfortable mystery of “What is money,” which is a harder question to answer than one might think.
(via Bitcoin is ludicrous, but it tells us something important about the nature of money)
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The Design-Fiction Slider-Bar of Disbelief
********************************************* *10. Holy relics, attributes of sainthood and divinity; transubstantiated Hosts, Arks of Covenant, teeth of Buddha
9.5 Supernatural objects and services associated with elves, vampires, fairies; magical charms, garlic, silver bullets etc
9.4 New age crystals, lucky charms, protective pendants, mojo hands, voodoo dolls, magic wands
9.3 Quack devices, medical hoaxes
9.3 Fantasy “objects” in fantasy cinema and computer-games
9.2 Physically impossible sci-fi literary devices: time machines, humanoid robots
9.2 Perpetual motion machines; free-energy gizmos, other physically impossible engineering fantasies
9.0 State libels, black propaganda, military ruses; missile gaps, vengeance weapons, Star Wars SDI
8.9 “Realplay” services, “experiential futurism” encounters, military and emergency training drills, props and immersive set-design, scripted personas
8.8 Online roleplaying scenario games
8.7 Net.art interventions, diegetic performance art, provocative device-art scandals
8.6 Guerrilla street-theater; costumes, puppets, banners, songs, lynchings-in-effigy, mock trials, mass set-designed Nuremberg rallies, propaganda trains
8.5 Fake products, product forgeries, theft-of-services, con-schemes, 419 frauds
8.0. For-profit frauds and false commercial advertising
7.9 Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson devices, chindogu “unuseless objects”, parodies, whimsies and comical contraptions; Albert Robida satirical prognostications
7.0 Vaporware; “Fear Uncertainty and Doubt” campaigns
6.0 “Design Fiction” diegetic prototypes from sci-fi media, “concept cars,” “conversation pieces,” provocative laboratory curiosities
5.9 Blue-skying Internet-based “theory objects” and congealed techie pundit scuttlebutt; socially-generated rumor and tech speculation; crowdsourced speculative objects and services; Kickstarter projects
5.0 “Brand Management” by design
4.9 Design pitches to the board of directors; untested business-models
4.8 The plans and schematics for as-yet-unborn yet genuine objects and services
4.0 Real-life product descriptions and users instruction manuals
3.5 Product reviews and opinions; user feedback, public assessments
3.0 Design criticism; material-culture assessments; scholarly studies
2.0 Legal regulations and government protocols concerning objects and services
1.0 Engineering specifications, software code
0.5 Historical tech assessment of extinct technologies, the “judgement of history’
0.0 The ideal and unobtainable “objective truth” about objects and services
Source: brucesterling
The All-Electric Car You Never Plug In
Seungyoung Ahn, Nam Pyo Suh & Dong-Ho Cho, ieee.orgWireless power transmission would let EVs draw their power from the road
‘Ogooglebar’ … and 14 Other Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English Immediately
Megan Garber, theatlantic.comToday brought the news that Google has officially objected to one of the best words that has ever graced this planet: ogooglebar, which translates — if such a glorious word must be subjugated to the indignities of translatio…
A Brief Introduction to Uncertainty in Business - Innovation for Growth
Tim Kastelle, timkastelle.orgRisk versus Uncertainty
What are the odds that your new idea will succeed? If it does, what will the return to you be?
One of the problems that we have in business (and life!) is that we often can’t …
Important aspects of risk vs uncertainty in business, but I would argue in many more situations. I agree on that we seems to overreact when we perceive a situation as certain or at least as a calculable risk vs a situation we perceive as completely uncertain. Our current completely irrational but huge interest in strange stories, artifacts or images of the future, when we at the same time forcefully claim that the future is impossible to predict is signalling that we as a humanity seems to have lost it… A least for a while until we will see some kind of rational framework through which we can start to see through the fog of the current.
With Big Data, we are creating artificial intelligences that no human can understand
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, qz.comExcerpted from BIG DATA: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Kenneth Cukier.
Computer systems currently base their decisions on rules they have been explicitly…
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P A Martin Börjesson
To be able to see the future emerge we have to throw a wide net to catch the weak signals. In this tumble I collect things I find valuable for my work as scenario planner, strategist and futurist - for more info about me go to www.futuramb.se.
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Time magazine examining Millenials.
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Tiny implant can transmit realtime blood data...
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“The Most Detailed Picture of the Internet Ever”
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“If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the...”
