Friday Futures: long-range iris scanning, personal drones follow you, more
The need for strategic foresight
- “Strategic foresight: a new horizon for innovation in ministry.” Derek Seipp, Lausanne Global Analysis 4:3 (March 2015)
Toward 2025:
1960s: companies/computer
70s: computers/company
80s: /office
90s: /home
2000s: internet/home
10s: smartphones/person
20s: chips/garment
@benedictevans
Artificial Intelligence
- “In the future, every decision that mankind makes is going to be informed by a cognitive system like Watson.” Gianni Roomette, chairman/CEO of IBM.
Automated Automotive
- Are Google’s Cars ready to Roll Out? Cute little bubble thing. Some day Google may be known as the former search engine that changed the world’s transportation. If widely adopted, could intersect with surveillance issues.
- Self-driving cars aren’t completely autonomous. This article suggests 5 problems that would need solutions, to do that.
- What it’s like to be driven by a robot truck. BBC. This type of thing is where automotive automation will really shine.
- Editor’s question: when do we get drones + automated cars = drone tanks? (maybe never. A walking drone may be as powerful as a tank.)
Economy
- Global inequality falling, income rising. Economist.
Social Photography
- Instagram users rising to 111.6m by 2019. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, there’s a whole lot of talking going on.
Surveillance
- Long Range Iris Scanning: technology that can identify someone across the room.
- China’s Baidu has an AI supercomputer that beats Google at image recognition.
- Body cameras for police are not necessarily ‘silver bullets’ for all problems.
Drones
- The Lily Camera: throw this drone into the air and it flies itself, following you.
- Robot cleaners can empty trash cans, sweep floors. Who’s being displaced by cleaning robots?
3D Printing
Virtual Reality
- Simulated worlds will soon be indistinguishable from reality. Vice, on the “simulation singularity”: when a simulated world cannot be differentiated. (Now, intersect this with AI and computer-body interfaces and you can imagine all sorts of places that can go.)