Category: The future
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Bots on the Ground
Check out this article in the Washington Post on the use of robots in war. It will make you laugh and startle you at the same time. The emotions that the robot evoked from the Colonel will only magnify as Bots become more human like. HT (i.e Hat Tip) to Tony Sheng who pointed us […]
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The Advent of the Post-Human
Welcome back. You belong here. The issue of the “emerging church” is picayune compared to the advent of the “post-human”. Since I use the term “post-human” in my writing quite a bit, I thought I would offer a brief piece on what I mean when I use this term. Besides the obvious influence of too […]
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The Day the Wall Talked Back
Welcome back. You belong here. Dean and I were working at his dining room table last week in between spurts of conversation about the future. Erica walks in, listens for a sec and then contributes a thought that went something like this: In the past computers were large and the goal was to make them […]
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The Next 50 years: the birth of human machines
Welcome back. You belong here. Enjoy. The Birth of Human Machines Rodney Brooks, professor of computer science and director of the Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT, writes that within the next fifty years, we will adopt robot technology, silicon and steel into our bodies not to fix something but to improve it. This is a […]
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The Next 50 years: What Is to Come and How to Predict It.
. Welcome back. You belong here. I’ve been writing a series called “The Next Fifty Years” based on my readings in a book by the same title. Recently, I delivered a speech on the topic of how to think about the future. I suggested three windows through which we could peer into possible tomorrows: the […]
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The Next Fifty Years– was there a second genesis?
Welcome back. You belong here. Paul Davies, theoretical physicist and a visiting professor at Imperial College London, suggests that within 50 years manned trips to Mars will answer the question: is there life and, if so, did life begin separately on the red planet? In other words, was there a second genesis of life emerging […]
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The Next 50 years: A theory of moral development
Welcome back. “What we need is theory of moral development,” writes Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University. He predicts that within the next fifty years, however, psychology will still NOT be able to explain moral development. That’s right. Not. Naturalist Charles Darwin suggested that moral development was a function of evolved intelligence. Psychologist […]
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The Next 50 years: the rise of the X-Men
Welcome back. Within the next fifty years we’ll be able to “swap minds” across species and experience what animals feel, according to Marc Hauser, cognitive neuroscientist and professor in the department of Psychology and the Program in neurosciences at Harvard. He offers two current oddities. A chicken with a shred of quail brain acts like […]
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The Next 50 years: Knowing our natural end
Welcome back. By 2050, a typical medical exam will provide for us the full text of our genetic structure including a precise prediction of our natural end. That’s right, we will be able to know the “when” and “how” of our natural deaths (i.e. barring accidents). What do you think? Is this information you would […]
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