In 1987, before I was a professional futurist — or professional anything — I jotted down a list of what I wanted the world of the future to deliver. I happened to look at that list yesterday, and the future isn’t doing too badly: “cheap ties to library-size databases” — which we would now call…
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The not-yet launched social rating app Peeple recently caught the attention of the Internet, and the reaction was not kind. By the admission of its founders, Peeple seeks to be “the Yelp for people,” a succinct tagline that detractors immediately seized upon. According to its creators, Peeple seeks to consolidate reviews of ordinary people. Have…
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Last year I suggested that someone will be killed by robot car technology relatively soon, indirectly: a driver would attribute autonomous capabilities to a car before they were truly in place. Some Tesla drivers seem bent on proving me right sooner rather than later. Technology Review reports that as soon as Tesla upgraded its Model…
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Back in April I had a chance to visit MetroCrops, an urban high-density indoor farm started by two of my friends here in Connecticut. Steve and Nancy Domyan and a small staff grow lettuce in 2,200 square feet of converted factory space in Bridgeport. Hydroponics, LED lights, and a controlled climate allow them to produce…
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Occasionally I pitch in as part of the crowd in the crowdsourced mapping site Tomnod. The site has periodic campaigns in which one contributes to a humanitarian task such as looking for hurricane damage in Vanuatu or signs of poachers in Africa. Recently, a new campaign type has appeared: volunteers training the site’s algorithms…
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