Category: futurism – Page 649
Optical Discs Aren’t Dead, as Pioneer’s New Drive Doubles BD Write Speeds
Return of the optical drive.
Despite the year 2022, Pioneer has released a new SATA optical drive that will let you record data or video on high-precision BD-R media at up to 16x, as well as write and play back a very wide gamut of optical discs and media formats. Designed for built-in 5.25 inch drive bays, this drive is priced around $150.
Terranascient Futures Studies & Foresight
The importance of learning, unlearning, and relearning the wisdom in foresight
By Alexandra Whittington and Teresa Inés Cruz
Futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” It is time for the foresight community to take Toffler’s sage advice, starting with one basic assumption of the Western futurist perspective that dates back to the Victorians: progress.
The concepts of learning, unlearning, and relearning belong in every futurist’s repertoire in the sense that we need to learn our bias for progress, unlearn its primacy as a societal objective, and relearn that the human condition is best served by achieving homeostasis–steady equilibrium. Homeostasis can be relearned because it’s inherent to worldviews within many indigenous and ancient societies, including the Law of Origin, which instructs people that living in balance with nature must be the driving force behind our decisions.
Russia accused of using banned ‘vacuum bomb’
Claims that a devastating Thermobaric weapon was used during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have prompted calls for an investigation for violations of the Geneva Convention.
Scientists discover complex bacteria bigger than a fruit fly
Bacteria are the stuff of nightmares but we can take solace in the fact that they tend to be quite small, in fact, invisible to the naked eye.
Not anymore! Scientists have discovered a bacterium that is bigger than a fruit fly, according to a report by Science published on Wednesday.
The researchers also report being amazed by the bacterium’s complexity.
Seismic study reveals key reason why Patagonia is rising as glaciers melt
The icefields that stretch for hundreds of miles atop the Andes mountain range in Chile and Argentina are melting at some of the fastest rates on the planet. The ground that was beneath this ice is also shifting and rising as these glaciers disappear. Geologists have discovered a link between recent ice mass loss, rapid rock uplift and a gap between tectonic plates that underlie Patagonia.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, led by seismologist Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, recently completed one of the first seismic studies of the Patagonian Andes. In a new publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, they describe and map out local subsurface dynamics.
“Variations in the size of glaciers, as they grow and shrink, combined with the mantle structure that we’ve imaged in this study are driving rapid and spatially variable uplift in this region,” said Hannah Mark, a former Steve Fossett postdoctoral fellow in earth and planetary sciences at Washington University, the first author of the publication. Mark is now a postdoctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
