City of Sound‘s Dan Hill – former head of interactive technology and design at the BBC and currently director of web and broadcast at Tyler Brûlé’s Monocle – reflects on the street of the future and sees the Street as a platform.
The author projects himself into a street of the future and describes what he sees and experiences. Visibly the street is still much recognizable, yet some of the biggest changes are invisible. The air is thick with the manifold of data streams & clouds logging and interacting with human behaviour (individual & group). Current-day mostly off-the-shelf technologies have entered the mainstream, they have become incorporated into the lives of people and society’s ubiquitous systems.
“This somewhat banal sketch of an average high street is very deliberately based on the here and now; none of the technology lurking in the background behind this passage is R&D. Most of it is in use in our streets, one way or another, and the technology that isn’t could be deployed tomorrow. As such, given the time from lab to street, it represents the research thinking of over a decade ago.”
Dan’s view is interestingly lifelike as it also hints at system failures, rough-around-the-edges technologies, wear and tear, friction as old and more recent tech mixes etc.
Be sure to read not just the storyline but also Dan’s remarks, explanations and open-ended questions at the end of the article. They add a deeper, critical & knowledgeable dimension to his storyline. For example, Dan also adds a bifurcation to his story, two directions in which systems could shape the future street : locked down street, open source street.
The story reads a bit like a near-future (meets today), walk-by, narrative version of Tom & Irene’s map, yet for the smarttech-assisted common men and women on the streets.
Lack of space? Go down underground (see also here). With the AMFORA project – Dutch acronym for Alternative Multifunctional Underground Space Amsterdam – Strukton and architectural office Zwarts & Jansmaenvisions a second cityspace below Amsterdam’s canals. Pricetag: around 10bn €.
“Through a system of underground spaces with entry and exit points along Amsterdam’s A10 ring road, a range of underground facilities can be created at various levels below the city. To name but a few of the many options, these could include parking garages, sports facilities, cinemas, cables and ducts, and supply facilities. The plan devotes a great deal of attention to the underground experience and architecture. Space, safety and sound orientation are central elements. [...] It is both feasible and sustainable. Creating a city beneath the city is not futuristic, it is a necessity in this day and age.”
Alex and Dominic Michaelis and several researchers from the University of Southampton are working on a proof of concept prototype of their energy island.
The structure is an all-in-one solution featuring (open cycle) Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, i.e. making use of the temperature difference of water at different depths in the ocean to generate electricity via a turbine. The process desalinates water, providing drinkable water as well. But there is more, the modular energy islands would also feature energytech to generate power from sun, wind, waves and underwater currents. Furthermore, vegetable farms could grow food.
“Each energy island would operate in a similar way to an oil rig, with about 25 people living there to operate the energy systems and food farms,” said Alex Michaelis. ‘Teams of workers would spend six weeks on the island and six weeks off. The islands can be linked together so if you wanted a bigger power output you could simply build a bigger settlement. In the future these energy islands could be linked together to become eco-tourism attractions.’”
The energy island is also in the running for Branson’s Virgin Earth Prize. Especially the way in which the concept tackles several challenges (food production, energy, drinkable water) in a combined fashion, is fascinating.
The New York Times runs a fascinating article on how people in 1908 imagined New York in 2008, how they were not afraid to think big.
“The point of such predictions was not necessarily that they were accurate but that people cared enough about the future to bother thinking about it. ”
They now rerun the ‘experiment’ and invite ten New Yorkers to reflect upon possible 2108′s.
Images of the future are littered with multi-layered (mega)cityscapes, highways in the sky, across buildings, underground pipelines for transport of people, data and goods. The main driver? As population increases, people expect space for living, for mobility etc. to decrease below acceptable levels. In other words, the savanna in which our human species grew up and shaped its senses and being, made room for an urban jungle about to suffocate us. If we are not careful and do not start thinking in terms of more sustainable and flexible designs, the fragile balance between ‘the city advantage’ vs. ‘our innate and societal need for space’ risks to tip towards the deep end.
When you lack space you try to compress the things you need the space for, get rid of them entirely or look for space elsewhere as in in the sky, in space, or … underground. According to some, it is one of the only areas of refuge and salvation for sustainable cities in the future. Think: underground construction sites, geothermal energy, groundwater-management, transport, waste-recycling and -upcycling, etc.
As the impact of robotics on everyday life is about to increase visibly, visions of a robots-populated society are no longer but a dream. With a robotics industry growing at the staggering rate of about 40% each year since 2003, the South Korean government recently announced that they are drawing up a Robot Ethics Charter, a code of ethics to prevent people from abusing robots and vice versa. The Charter …
“will cover standards for robotics users and manufacturers, as well as guidelines on ethical standards to be programmed into robots, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy. Perhaps there is a need for all this as the country’s Ministry of Information and Communication is working on plans to put a robot in every South Korean household by 2020. The new charter is part of an effort to establish ground rules for human interaction with robots in the future.”
South Korea also plans to open two robot theme parks by 2013, a 1.6bn$ project.
“The parks will feature a number of attractions that let visitors interact with robots and test new products. ‘The two cities will be developed as meccas for the country’s robot industry, while having amusement park areas, exhibition halls and stadiums where robots can compete in various events,’ the ministry said.”
Forget images of the robot as an enhanced vacuum cleaner or tin-man butler, and make room for the extended family, i.e. including robots. Societal change because of humans and robots living side by side, are even more fascinating than the vast range of technological advances within the field of robotics itself.
For example, Dr. José Halloy and his colleagues at the Free University of Brussels have succeeded in having a cockroach robot adopted by a cockroach colony, being fully assimilated in cockroach society and even taking leadership (also see BBC News video).
Furthermore, researchers at the University of California San Diego found that toddlers do not differentiate between human and robot ‘friends’ in play, accepting robots as peers.
“when QRIO laid down on the floor as its batteries ran down, a toddler would put a blanket over his silver-colored ‘friend’ and say ‘night-night.’”
To artificial intelligence researcher David Levy, the signs are clear: the first human-robot marriage is upon us, i.e. in 2050.
It must be the end-of-year spirit setting in and motivating people to look forward, far ahead, into the future. Several television networks jump on the bandwagon and launch future-related shows and documentaries these days.
BBC Four is currently broadcasting a three-part series titled Visions of the Future, hosted by theoretical physicist and futurist Dr. Michio Kaku, who explores the cutting edge of science to look into the future.
“He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the ‘Age of Discovery’ to the ‘Age of Mastery’, a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities.”
Part one of the series looks into the intelligence revolution, or how artificial intelligences and cybernetics will change our lives. Part two takes a closer look at the biotech revolution, or what good genetherapy, lab-grown spare body parts and true anti-ageing can bring us. Part three dives into the infinite world of physics and takes a look at the quantum revolution, think: space elevator, metamaterials, quantum energy etc.
CNN takes the airwaves and wonders what life might be like in 2020 with Just Imagine (update: videos are online now). The show features the wonderful Ross Lovegrove: unequaled organic, evolutionary designer on the future of transport, our friend and worldchanger Alex Steffen on the future of community, Gerhard Knies of TREC on the future of energy, Ken Yeang on the future of living spaces, Sakyo Yasuaki of Shibuya University Network on the future of learning, Naomi Halas on the future of health.
The ever-inspiring design firm IDEO put together a nice concept video of a UMPC (UltraMobilePC) future for Intel. Focus is clearly on the possibilities and enabling factors of the technology and a tiny bit on its impact on some aspects of social life (e.g. headphone parties). It shows much less how ‘the future’ (or futures) as a new context influences the design, features or usage of the technology. Yet the video does show once more how strong the impact is of making the future (products and services) tangible. As such the video is definitely a springboard for discussion.
In an eloquent way Peter Lunenfeld, professor in the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design, describes what he calls the vision deficit, i.e. people’s lack of or decreasing ability to generate ‘positive, society-inspiring’ images and imaginations concerning the future(s).
“One reason we have so little faith in the future is that the shape of things to come has never been so inadequately imagined. We tend to see utopia as relentlessly personal, while the apocalypse is one of the few shared universals. In other words, while we can posit a future for ourselves as individuals (and even as members of a family) we have little in the way of positive imagination for the realm of the social, much less the political.”
The World Future Society recently released their Futurist Outlook 2008report, sketching some major trendlines concerning times ahead, as seen through the eyes of their futurist memberbase. In an article titled “The Good Old-fashioned World Future Society”, Bruce Sterling distilled some of the most significant trends covered in the report (see also here for more info on the freely available top ten):
a million billionaires by 2025
technologies will revolutionize the textile and fashion industries
war with China and/or Russia might become a bigger threat to US foreign policy than terrorism
counterfeiting pressure on traditional currency might speed up the move to a cashless society
our planet is on the verge of a major extinction event (cf. strong decrease of biodiversity)
water will be to the 21st century what oil was for the 20th
healthier and longer-living people might lead to larger world population growth than expected (by 2050)
Africans threatened by floods likely to increase 70-fold by 2080
the Arctic becomes a new focal point in the rush to exploit natural resources, as prices rise and availability decreases
more decisions will be made by non-human entities (cf. networks, robots, AI etc.)
With new genotype-phenotype correlations being discovered almost every week, it is but a small step to start wondering about possibilities of directed reproduction. Eliminating gene-related diseases is an opportunity that immediately pops up in people’s minds, but other ‘applications’ such as intelligence (and other) enhancement also trigger some what-if trains of thought.
James D. Miller, professor of economics at Smith College, recently published an article on embryo screening and intelligence enhancement, featuring the following thought experiment :
“Imagine that in ten years China forces all its college students to get genetic tests. Students with intelligence genes in the top 1% of the top 1% of humankind are then forced to donate sperm or eggs. China then uses the sperm and eggs to create a billion embryos each year. The genetic intellectual potential of all these embryos is checked. Those in the top 10,000 are implanted into women. Each of these embryos has the intellectual potential to be in the top one-billionth of humankind.
Now because of environmental factors many of these embryos won’t turn into intellectual titans. But let’s say that one in ten does. This means that each year 1,000 people with the scientific ability of Einstein will be born. By 2035 they will become adults and start doing scientific research. I imagine these Einsteins will be rather helpful to China’s economy and military.”
With (access to) energy-related resources such as oil and gas serving as major weapons on the geopolitical battlefield (also other scarce resources btw, e.g. cobalt, coltan, copper, gum arabic etc.), what if in a true-knowledge economy ruled world, countries (not necessarily China) would turn to the powers of genetics/eugenics to get their competitive advantage? What if not governments and research labs, but also self-organized citizen groups and large private companies would enter this picture and move in the same direction? What about issues of biodiversity, societal equilibria, other threats and opportunities, etc. ?
Enough fascinating food for futures-thought …
Via Accelerating Future(do check out some of the interesting comments made, regarding both implications as well as scientific criticisms)
Recent developments in the area of nanotechnology show another example of converging insights and techniques from multiple disciplines such as biochemistry and micro-engineering. The following example features the results of multi/transdisciplinary collaboration between chemists and engineers, initiated and encouraged by the Pratt School’s Center for Biologically Inspired Materials and Materials Systems.
A group of researchers at Duke University, led by Robert Clark, have developed Biocatalytic Microcontact Printing, a technique using biological catalysts to construct microdevices (e.g. labs on chips). Their inkless technique uses enzymes of escherichia coli bacteria and enables microcontact printing with an astonishing accuracy of less than 2 nanometres. The building of nifty nanodevices by future generations of their techniques can easily be envisioned. The research group is already experimenting with non-enzymatic catalysts as well.
“Soft lithography has really revolutionized the field of surface science over the last 30 years [and] I honestly believe that using catalysts instead of diffusive processes is going to become the way that soft lithography is done in the future.”
Note how it is again a printing metaphor leading to new ways of constructing, assembling, creating ‘things’.
The future of agriculture is a much debated issue: eco-footprint, spatial footprint, bio-mass and bio-fuel production, …
A recent BBC article relaunched the idea of vertical farming. Think: skyscrapers built to grow and process food on location, e.g. downtown Manhattan (instead of importing it by land, sea or air). Columbia University Professor Dickson Despommier sees several advantages:
Year round crop production in a controlled environment
All produce would be organic as there would be no exposure to wild parasites and bugs
Elimination of environmentally damaging agricultural runoff
Food being produced locally to where it is consumed
[...] vertical farming would allow some existing traditional farms to be returned to natural forests. Good news in a time of global warming.
Many people in the low countries will experience it as a kind of déjà-vu. The idea is reminiscent of the Dutch architectural firm Maas-van Rijs-de Vries’ (better known as MVRDV) pig cities.
Few fields are as stimulating as medicine in terms of potential nanotechnology applications. Aside from being a strong dream-stimulant, several scientific and technological breakthroughs are pushing the nanofields into a future of real-life applications coming true. Check out for example the following video featuring research progress in several EU research projects, such as nanoimplants in teeth to dose medication, preventive disease detection systems, spoiled-food detection etc.
Researchers in the US and Italy succeeded in making significant progress for the development of nanoscale memory devices by looking into the interactions between organic and inorganic materials. They attached individual viruses to tiny specks of semiconducting material also known as quantum dots. Thinking in terms of potential applications, cheaper high-density hybrid memorychips but also medical nanorobots are only a step away:
such a system could eventually perhaps be used to record its journey through sites of interest in the human body – for example, diseased tissue or arteries. “In Star Trek terms, the hybrids could act like nanomachines or nanorobots built for treating disease”
On another front, advances in nanophotonics at Berkeley lead to the development of a tunable nanowire nonlinear optical probe. Besides a plethora of possible applications in telecommunication, computing and sensing, it open up medical potential for single cell endoscopy (in an estimated 10 years).
“Bio-imaging may be the field in which this nanowire light source technology has its biggest impact. Optical or visible light microscopy remains at the forefront of biological research because it allows scientists to study living cells and tissues.”
Also at Berkeley, research is taking place on a nanoscale injector that allows to inject a nanoscale cargo directly into cell tissue.
With extensions of the hand and the eye moving into the nanoscale spectrum, the dream of surgery-less medical intervention comes closer. But, Christine Peterson over at the Foresight Nanotech Institute is right when she says to be careful and temper future-oriented optimism with realism (e.g. nanorobotics and clinical trials). In every ‘visionary’ description of a plausible future, the danger lurks that early enthusiasm backfires and leads to reactions of disbelief and discouragement: ‘yeah right! another one of those …’ or ‘you promised us five years ago and still we are not even close’, etc.
Physicist Lowell Wood (formerly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and long-time Visiting Fellow of Stanford University’s right-wing think tank, the Hoover Institution) launched a plan to terraform Mars at the Aspen Institute‘s Flight School on June 20-22, 2007.
“I suggest that the near-term outlook is that Mars will be terraformed,” Wood said, and seriously underway by the middle of this century and essentially complete by the end of the 21st century. Wood defined terraforming as “the purposeful alteration of the physical environment to increase its habitability for humans.” He noted that we homo sapiens are a terraforming species, pointing to our own planet’s alteration over time.
While experimenting with the planetary system might be considered an option to be tried out on far away planets rather than our own, terraforming has been explored also as a solution to some of our own planet’s challenges. A while ago, Wood – both revered and feared for his outside-the-box thinking and radical ideas – suggested to create a global thermostat by spraying sulfate particles into the stratosphere as a countermeasure to global warming (an idea also uttered by Nobel Prize Winner Paul Crutzen)
City of Sound‘s Dan Hill – former head of interactive technology and design at the BBC and currently director of web and broadcast at Tyler Brûlé’s Monocle – reflects on the street of the future and sees the Street as a platform.
Lack of space? Go down underground (see also 
Alex and Dominic Michaelis and several researchers from the University of Southampton are working on a proof of concept prototype of their 
The New York Times runs a fascinating 
Images of the future are littered with multi-layered (mega)cityscapes, highways in the sky, across buildings, underground pipelines for transport of people, data and goods. The main driver? As population increases, people expect space for living, for mobility etc. to decrease below acceptable levels. In other words, the savanna in which our human species grew up and shaped its senses and being, made room for an urban jungle about to suffocate us. If we are not careful and do not start thinking in terms of more sustainable and flexible designs, the fragile balance between ‘the city advantage’ vs. ‘our innate and societal need for space’ risks to tip towards the deep end.
As the impact of robotics on everyday life is about to increase visibly, visions of a robots-populated society are no longer but a dream. With a robotics industry growing at the staggering rate of about 40% each year since 2003, the South Korean government recently announced that they are drawing up a Robot Ethics Charter, a code of ethics to prevent people from abusing robots and vice versa. The Charter …
It must be the end-of-year spirit setting in and motivating people to look forward, far ahead, into the future. Several television networks jump on the bandwagon and launch future-related shows and documentaries these days.
The ever-inspiring design firm 
In an eloquent way 
The 
With new genotype-phenotype correlations being discovered almost every week, it is but a small step to start wondering about possibilities of directed reproduction. Eliminating gene-related diseases is an opportunity that immediately pops up in people’s minds, but other ‘applications’ such as intelligence (and other) enhancement also trigger some what-if trains of thought.
Recent developments in the area of nanotechnology show another example of converging insights and techniques from multiple disciplines such as biochemistry and micro-engineering. The following example features the results of multi/transdisciplinary collaboration between chemists and engineers, initiated and encouraged by the 
The future of agriculture is a much debated issue: eco-footprint, spatial footprint, bio-mass and bio-fuel production, …
Few fields are as stimulating as medicine in terms of potential nanotechnology applications. Aside from being a strong dream-stimulant, several scientific and technological breakthroughs are pushing the nanofields into a future of real-life applications coming true. Check out for example the following 
Physicist Lowell Wood (formerly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and long-time Visiting Fellow of Stanford University’s right-wing think tank, the Hoover Institution) launched a plan to terraform Mars at the 