Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- The goal of the Digital Olfaction Society, which just held its first world congress, is to “digitize, transmit, reproduce and recapture smells, flavors and fragrances.” The Society’s founder imagines a “digiscented” future world in which smells are digitally detected and transmitted. Many technical hurdles will have to be surmounted to realize this vision; technology to identify and reproduce arbitrary smells is likely many years away.
- A senior Chinese auditor is no longer signing off on the bond underwriting of Chinese counties and municipalities. The municipal bond market in China has the potential to fail catastrophically with global financial effects equal to or exceeding the meltdown in the US mortgage market.
- Korean appliance maker LG is reportedly developing a washing machine that does not require water. The manufacturer already has a feature on some of its high-end models that “freshens” clothes waterlessly.
- A recent story in The Economist highlights just one issue facing Japan’s agricultural sector: The average age of Japanese farmers (in 2010) was 70.
- In a piece in Business Insider, computer scientist and writer Ramez Naam refutes the view of investor Jeremy Grantham who argued the world was heading for “a disaster of Biblical proportions.” Naam cites data (and provides charts) that show population stabilizing and falling, food production increasing, and agricultural energy inputs falling.