July 03 2008 / by jcchan
Category: Culture Year: General Rating: 5 Hot New
By JC Chan
In the next eight seconds 34 babies will be born to the world.
Of these five will be from India and four will be from China. In
ten years China will be the dominant English speaking country in
the world. With world population exploding and shifting so
dramatically, it’s easy to envision a future with billions more
humans inhabiting Earth than do today. But that may not be the
case. 
Consider the scenario presented in the sci-fi film Children
of Men (2006), a bleak vision of Earth in 2027 where humans
have mysteriously lost fertility and the ability to procreate. In
one scene, a scruffy-faced man named Theo, played by Clive Owen,
and a woman named Miriam walk across the dreary rust of an
abandoned school playground. Sitting on the squeaky swing set is
the African woman they are protecting, miraculously nursing in her
hands the first newborn the Earth has seen in over a decade. Miriam
recalls her days as a nurse delivering births. She notes that over
time fewer births were recorded until the day they ceased
altogether.
“As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very
odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices,” she grimly
states.
The backdrop for the film is a future England that has adopted a
survivalist policy as it attempts to police millions of incoming
immigrants into concentration camps to preserve the little
remaining natural resources they have left. When I first watched
Children of Men, the idea of humanity wiped out by
widespread infertility seemed a little far-fetched. Certainly there
are many other, more viable ways for us to go: nuclear weapons,
terrorism, a nanotechnology nightmare, a super-resistant bacteria
strain, asteroids, global warming.
Growing up in the 90’s, schools and media have always drilled
into my head the post-war baby boom, exponential growth, limited
allocation of resources, and recycling, oh lots of talk about
recycling. (Note: I am an avid recycler.) Still, though we can and
should do something about issues like global warming and runaway
population growth, scenarios like the reality of the 2027 in
Children of Men remind us that there may well be other
formidable challenges on the horizon that may not be so much in our
control.
Case in point, a recent NYTimes Sunday Magazine article
by Russell Shorto entitled “No Babies?” addresses the very
real possibility of population decline. Shorto examines the sleepy
Italian town of Laviano in Southern Italy, a spectacular sight with
magnificent steep slopes and wild poppies adorning medieval
fortress ruins of a fortress, in which a population of 3,000 has
fallen to just 1,600 and still dropping.
This has caused such alarm that the Laviano’s mayor has created
a new fund to give any woman that would rear a child in the
village, a sum of 10,000 euros ($15,000). Though the plan has
resulted in a slight uptick in residents, Laviano is still steadily
losing population. (cont.)
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July 03 2008 / by Alvis
Category: Economics Year: General Rating: 5 Hot New
Are we due for a massive cyclical U.S. crisis that finally
spurs institutional change? A regular revolution not tied to the
accelerating curves driving so much growth and innovation?
In large nations big spurts of institutional change tend to
occur every four generations (roughly every 88 years, 1 generation
= 22 years) when economic resources trapped by out-dated,
inefficient systems are shifted over to efficient new systems once
societies reach a cyclical tipping point for change. 
Generational theorists Strauss and Howe
call this tipping point a fourth
turning, a point in time where social power shifts to the
generations too young to have witnessed the previous correction.
They liken this pattern to a forest growth cycle: 1) new saplings
take root, 2) the forest grows tall, 3) dead branches fall and
choke off new species, 4) lightning strikes, the brambles burn and
new saplings are free to grow—repeat.
As seen widely in biology, this sort of change is called
Punctuated
Equilibrium, which contrasts with the gradual evolution that
many scientists intuitively believed to be true but ultimately was
not supported by research nor the fossil record. Similarly, the
historical record shows that the United States has regularly
experienced punctuated social crises, aka fourth turnings,
stretching all the way back to its roots in England. And just like
all of the scientists that deny punctuated evolution/development,
there is a huge % of the population that does not intuitively
believe another fourth turning will occur because they have not
encountered the historical evidence and are used to a relatively
stable socio-economic situation. (Ironically, this blindness seems
to be built into the very fabric of our social system and may
result in more efficient growth when looked at from the broader
context of inter-meshed life systems on our planet.)
Like it or not, cyclical crises pegged to
human generations are real and
should be considered when evaluating the future, right
alongside accelerating change. So the questions we need to ask are
1) “When will the next fourth turning begin?”, 2) “Are there any
dynamics that might break or trump the pattern of punctuated
national change every 88 years?”
A Likely Fourth Turning Scenario
79 years ago, on October 24, 1929, the Great Wall
Street Crash sparked the Great Depression and the last U.S.
fourth
turning. What followed was the New Deal Era, WWII, the transformation of most U.S. socio-economic
sectors and ultimately the birth of what we now refer to as “The
American Dream”.
79 years later the U.S. economy is facing a variety of problems
that could spark a down-turn and a new fourth turning. (cont.)
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July 03 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 8 Hot New
A glance at what life may be like ten millennia from now, by
Dick Pelletier
Of course, nobody can predict exactly how the future will unfold
in 10,000 years, but by tracking technology advances expected in
the coming centuries, we see changes that will transform humanity
into super-intelligent beings focused on developing space,
exploring universes, and traveling through time. 
Imagine if you could peek in on the dinosaurs’ first-hand, enjoy
an exotic vacation thousands of light years from Earth, or jump
into a parallel universe where another you is living a far more
exciting life than yours – and you could stay there if you
like.
For years, scientists around the world have bandied about the
revolutionary idea that future humans could zip across the universe
using wormholes as high-speed portals enabling faster-than-light
travel to explore space, enter other universes, and witness the
past and future.
Wormholes enable travel between its two openings. One end of the
wormhole stays home while the other is carted away at sub-light
velocities to the destination, connecting the two locations through
a tunnel in warped space-time. A person enters the wormhole, and
depending on the connection, exits to a remote destination in
space, another time in the past or future, or into a parallel
universe.
Consensus among most scientists has been that wormholes are so
destructive; people would be torn to subatomic bits if they tried
such a thing. However, a new paper by University of Utah physicist
Lior Burko now raises the possibility that wormholes may not
annihilate all matter, and the potential for hyperspace travel
could one day be realized. (cont.)
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July 04 2008 / by juldrich
Category: Business & Work Year: General Rating: 4 Hot New
By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
Last week, I explained how humans might soon be learning things from
robots. 
Today, I’d like to explain why robots might become a more
integral part of our lives faster than most people expect.
Yesterday, Technology Review published an interesting article
entitled: “Robots Learns to Use Tools.” What
is really intriguing about the article, which describes a new robot
called the UMass Mobile Manipulator or
UMan for short, is that the robot is employing sophisticated
algorithms to teach itself how to deal with unfamiliar objects.
One of the major barriers to date with robotics is that
programmers have had to write complicated software code to help
robots deal with almost every contingency that it might encounter.
For example, for a household robot to be effective, it needs to
recognize every item that might conceivably be in someone house –
everything from a pair of scissors to a flower vase. This is no
easy chore.
In the near future, however, robots need not necessarily know
how to handle every object; they merely need to learn how to deal
with that object in an appropriate fashion. Using the scissors as
example, UMan can study the device and then can tinker with the
blades until it understands how they are connected and how the
object operates. Presumably, the robot will then know that it would
be inappropriate to “run with scissors.” (cont.)
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July 04 2008 / by Marisa Vitols
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 2 New
The Future Scanner Daily Top 5 serves to highlight 5 of the
best scans submitted to the Future Scanner during
the last 24 hours.
July 03 2008 / by mycophage
Category: Health & Medicine Year: General Rating: 4 Hot New
(cross-posted from
Ouroboros: Research in the biology of aging) 
Prominent biogerontologist and evolutionary biologist Michael Rose
(recently named the
chief scientific officer of the Biogerontology Research Foundation)
has reviewed the decades-old interplay between evolutionary
theories of aging and efforts to extend animal lifespans.
In the article, Rose critically evaluates several of the
assumptions underlying
SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence)
as formulated by anti-aging activist Aubrey de Grey,
placing them in the context of demographic and
population-biological observations. Ultimately, Rose concludes that
life-extension therapeutics must address the issue of age-specific
adaptation in order to be effective (link;
emphasis below is mine):
Making SENSE: Strategies for
Engineering Negligible Senescence Evolutionarily
Thirty years ago, in 1977, few biologists thought that it would
be possible to increase the maximum life span characteristic of
each species over the variety of environmental conditions in which
they live, whether in nature or in the laboratory. But the
evolutionary theory of aging suggested otherwise. Accordingly,
experiments were performed with fruit flies, Drosophila
melanogaster, which showed that manipulation of the forces of
natural selection over a number of generations could substantially
slow the rate of aging, both demographically and physiologically.
After this first transgression of the supposedly absolute limits to
life extension, it was suggested that mammals too could be
experimentally evolved to have greater life spans and slower aging.
And further, it was argued that such postponed-aging mammals could
be used to reverse-engineer a slowing of human aging. The
subsequent discovery and theoretical explanation of mortality-rate
plateaus revealed that aging was not due to the progressive
physiological accumulation of damage. Instead, aging is now
understood by evolutionary biologists to arise from a transient
fall in age-specific adaptation, a fall that does not necessarily
proceed toward ineluctable death. This implies that SENS must be based on re-tuning adaptation, not
repairing damage. As evolutionary manipulation of model
organisms shows us how adaptation can be focused on engineering
negligible senescence, there are thus both scientific and practical
reasons for making SENS evolutionary;
that is making SENSE.
(cont.)
Read More
July 03 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Communication Year: General Rating: 8 Hot New
By Dick Pelletier
Futurist Ray Kurzweil, in his book “The Singularity is near”,
offers the possibility that computers will one day become
self-aware, which will result in the melding of humans and
machines. He sees this process well underway by 2025, as nanobots
begin to surf bloodstreams to combat disease and alter our brains
to increase intelligence. 
In a recent article appearing in The Futurist, “Cybercrime in
the year 2025,” criminal-justice expert Gene Stephens predicts that
computer and Internet use will become seamless, as hands-free,
voice-activated data entry and retrieval becomes commonplace
between 2010 and 2015. By 2020, nanotech will increasingly impact
cyberspace; and as we try to gain the most advantages possible from
our new “wonder-net,” dangerous security gaps will emerge that
could turn into nightmares if not handled carefully.
For example, in 2025, as databots are implanted in users’
brains, secure firewalls must be developed to keep intruders from
hacking into the ‘bots and terrorizing recipients. “Could there be
a more frightening crime than having your brain-stored knowledge
erased or scrambled,” Stephens asks, “or hearing voices threatening
to destroy your memory unless you pay blackmail? Welcome to the
world of mindstalking.”
This brings us to the long-ignored issues of who owns the
Internet, manages it, and has jurisdiction over it. The answer now
is: nobody. Can this powerful socio-politico-economic network
continue to operate at random, open to all, and thus be vulnerable
to bad guys? Attempts to restrict or police the web are met with
idealists who believe that the Internet should always be free from
“big brother’s” interference. (cont.)
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July 03 2008 / by Marisa Vitols
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 3 New
The Future Scanner Daily Top 5 serves to highlight 5 of the
best scans submitted to the Future Scanner during
the last 24 hours.
July 02 2008 / by juldrich
Category: Biotechnology Year: General Rating: 10 Hot New
By Jack Uldrich
Cross-posted from www.jumpthecurve.net
I speak to a great many student groups and I am often struck by
how few of them appreciate the difference between one million, one
billion and one trillion. (In the name of fairness, the same is
true of many adults). 
Perhaps, it is because the three figures are all large
numbers that most people don’t think there is an appreciable
difference. Perhaps, it is because the words – million, billion,
and trillion – the rhyme; or maybe it’s just because they’re
dumb—or have had poor teachers. I really don’t know.
One way I have tried to convey the difference between the
numbers is by explaining the figures in a different way. To
wit:
One million seconds was 12 days ago; One billion seconds was
roughly 30 years ago; One trillion seconds was approximately 30,000
years ago – 28,000 B.C.!
My point with the analogy is that one trillion of anything is a
really BIG number, and it is much, much
different than one billion. This analogy is important because on
January 17, 2006 the Wellcome Sanger Institute announced it had
archived it’s one billionth DNA sequence. It was an impressive
accomplishment.
Well, today, Wired magazine reported that
the prominent genetics institute sequenced its trillionth base of
DNA. This is a one thousand-fold
improvement in just over two years. (cont.)
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July 01 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Health & Medicine Year: General Rating: 6 Hot New
By Dick Pelletier
Northwestern University’s Dr. Richard Burt has treated 170
patients with stem cells, and increasingly, others are following
his lead. There are now more than 1,000 stem-cell therapies in
early human trials around the world. 
The majority use cells from patients’ own bone marrow, but some
also use cells from healthy adults, and last year the first patient
was treated with embryonic cells, which have triggered debate in
the U.S. After working its way out of science fiction, stem-cell
therapies are finally becoming scientific fact.
Burt has treated patients with lupus, arthritis and a host of
other disorders. He’s just written up the results of a stem-cell
trial for type-1 diabetes. Three years after treatment, some
patients now have normal blood sugar and do not require insulin.
Trials for Lou Gehrig’s disease and autism are next.
The FDA is fast-tracking stem-cell
therapy for leukemia which could hit the market later this year.
And an approach that has helped congestive heart failure patients
abroad is coming to America. Amit Patel, at the University of
Pittsburgh, has injected 10 patients’ own stem cells into their
hearts and has consulted on 2,000 similar operations worldwide.
Stem cells help the heart by forming new blood vessels.
By the end of the next decade, researchers predict this wonder
technology will create new heart muscle – and even a complete heart
– but this may require the use of embryonic stem cells, which
regulations currently deny government funding. (cont.)
Read More
July 02 2008 / by Marisa Vitols
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 2 New
The Future Scanner Daily Top 5 serves to highlight 5 of the
best scans submitted to the Future Scanner during
the last 24 hours.
July 01 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Space Year: General Rating: 12 Hot New
By Dick Pelletier
Space tourism has come a long way in a short time. The idea was
just a dream in the 1990s, but recently, tourists have shelled out
mega-bucks for a glimpse of the wild blue yonder. 
Though only the rich can afford space travel today, experts
predict prices will drop with new systems under development. Later
this year, Virgin Galactic’s returnable Space-Ship-Two hopes to
provide orbital round-trips for $200,000, and one-day, take
vacationers to the moon.
By 2030, the Space Elevator, a revolutionary system under
development now would climb up a nanotech-ribbon extending 62,000
miles from Earth to space and could transport passengers into the
wild blue yonder for as low as $20,000 initially, then prices could
drop to the $2,000-per-person range when multiple elevators become
available.
As more people become space travelers, they will need a place to
stay. Budget Suites of America owner Robert Bigelow has launched
the first phase of a human-rated habitat module dubbed Sundancer,
to an altitude of 250 nautical miles at an orbital inclination of
40 degrees. Once Sundancer is in position and verified safe,
Bigelow will add more sections creating a full-scale
lodging/industrial complex as early as the middle of next
decade.
Satellite Industry Association President Richard Dalbello says,
“Once hotel companies start to build and operate orbital
accommodations, they will be endlessly improving them and competing
to build more exotic facilities”. We will see hotels that provide
normal gravity for rooms, bars, and restaurants; and gravity-free
areas for recreation and sports activities. (cont.)
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