Dr Ian Pearson warns ‘electronic immortality’ will require careful planning. It could mean we live on after death in an ‘upgraded body’ — but could also mean we no longer own our own minds.
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Category: futurism – Page 1,013
Amazon’s Echo lineup, like some smart speakers, uses proximity detection to decide which device is best-suited to responding to your voice commands. It’s a clever way to prevent multiple devices from waking up at the same time. There’s just one problem: support in non-Amazon devices has been inconsistent at best, creating a mess if you have third-party gear that doesn’t use the feature. Thankfully, that shouldn’t be an issue from here on out. Amazon has moved its Echo Spatial Perception technology to the cloud, ensuring that all devices can use it.
The ESP upgrade is automatic and doesn’t require any changes on the part of hardware makers. It’s also more accurate, according to Amazon, and can change over time as Alexa receives upgrades.
This doesn’t change some limitations for multi-device households. Many commands still apply specifically to the device where they’re set, such as reminders and timers. Even so, this could be a crucial update for Amazon. If it’s going to bring Alexa to virtually every device it can, it has to create a harmonious ecosystem.
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A series of earthquakes have shaken a region of ocean off the west coast of the UScientists have detected a cluster of 11 earthquakes, ranging in magnitude from 2.8 to 5.6 on the Richter scale. The cluster occurred on the seabed at the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, around six miles (10km) underwater. This plate forms part of the Cascadia subduction zone, which runs from Northern California to British Columbia. Previous studies have warned this geological spot of weakness has the potential to deliver an earthquake much stronger than the infamous San Andreas fault. Seismologists say a full rupture along the 650-mile-long (1,000 km) …→
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LONDON — An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life.
Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future — a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development.
The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain’s Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow.
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Choose Your Own Story
Posted in futurism, robotics/AI
Which future are you going to pick?
Today, I would like to tell you two short stories describing what your far future might look like, depending on the choices that you though not only you will make in the near future. Feel free to leave a comment to let others know which one you’d rather have as your real future.
Story 1: A day in 2140
The blinds in your bedroom slowly whirr open, as a gentle melody gradually fills the environment. Ferdinand your AI assistant, to whom you decided to give a far less extravagant name than most other people do informs you that it’s 7:30, your bath is ready, and so will be your usual breakfast once you’re done in the bathroom. Getting up that early is never too easy, but your morning walk in the park is always worth it, because it puts you in a good mood.
“The Future: A Very Short Introduction” (OUP, 2017) by Dr. Jennifer M Gidley.
Oxford University Press has just released a wonderful little animation video centring on my book “The Future: A Very Short Introduction” published in 2017. In an entertaining way it shows how the concept of the future or futures is central to so many other concepts — many of which are the subject of other OUP Very Short Introductions. The VSI Series now has well over 500 titles, with ‘The Future’ being number 516.
To watch the video click here.
You can read a full sample chapter of the Introduction. The abstracts can be read for all of the other chapters at the links below.
Contents
List of Illustrations
1 Three Thousand Years of Futures
3 The Evolving Scholarship of Futures Studies
4 Crystal Balls, Flying Cars and Robots
5 Technotopian or Human-Centred Futures?
6 Grand Global Futures Challenges
References
Further Reading & Websites
Appendix: Global Futures Timeline
Index
The book is available to purchase at OUP.
‘The Future’ has been very well received globally and an Arabic translation has recently been released by the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquity.
The Arabic translation of ‘The Future’ will be available in all book fairs in the Arab region and the distributor covers the important libraries in all Arab countries and Saqi books/UK and Jarir book store/USA . It can also be purchased through the following:
A Chinese translation has been licensed and is underway, and discussions are in process for translations into German, Turkish, Italian and French.
Along with Aubrey de Grey, Stephen L. Sorgner, Rob van Genderen, Paul Nemitz of the European Commission, William Echikson of Center for European Studies, Professor Emeritus Chapel Hill U. Woodrow Barfield, and Anne Zeiter of Ebay, I’ve joined the Editorial board of a new interdisciplinary technology journal called Delphi, published by Lexxion Publisher. They’re looking for papers and abstracts. Give it a read and submit if you like. Here’s the link: http://www.lexxion.de/pdf/delphi/Call_for_Papers_Delphi.pdf
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