The consumer electronics show was virtual this year, and the WIRED Gear crew watched all the Zooms to bring you this list of nearly 80 products, trends, musings, and photos.
Category: futurism – Page 783
Nuclear fusion tech developer General Fusion now has Shopify and Amazon founders backing it
In a brief announcement today, the Canadian nuclear fusion technology developer General Fusion announced that the investment firm created by Shopify founder Tobias Lütke has joined the company’s cap table.
The size of the investment made by Lütke’s Thistledown Capital was not disclosed, but with the addition, General Fusion has the founders of the two biggest e-commerce companies in the Western world on its cap table.
Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, first invested in the company nearly a decade ago and General Fusion has been steadily raising cash since that time. In 2019, the company hauled in $100 million. That capital commitment is part of a haul totaling at least, $192 million, according to Crunchbase although the real figure is likely higher.
An Online Conference Focused on “THE GREATER RESET” will be held from January 25th-29th 2021
The Greater Reset, a conference being held online from January 25th — 29th, 2021, is the world’s collective response to the World Economic Forum’s Initiative: The Great Reset.
We offer an alternative to the WEF’s top-down, centralized, authoritarian vision. Our desire is to help all people find community and liberty by providing practical steps and knowledge for co-creating a world that respects individual liberty, bodily autonomy, and choice.
We invite you to join us for 5 days of online discussion about the diverse opportunities available for those who seek to live in harmony with humanity and the planet, while respecting our innate freedom.
Carcopter is a flying hydrogen-powered formula 1 car conceived
is it a car? is it a helicopter? no, it’s carcopter. conceived by french start-up, MACA, this hydrogen-powered concept aims to revolutionize the way we travel. with its aerodynamic body and theoretical top speed of 153 mph (246 kph), this prototype in question is designed for a racing scenario. it intends to be the first (manned) flying hydrogen formula 1 car. the highly-futuristic vehicle is set to be shown at annual tech event, CES 2021.
Can sodium-ion batteries replace trusty lithium-ion ones?
Sodium-ion batteries are a potential replacement for lithium batteries, but the anodes—positively charged electrodes—that work well for lithium-ion batteries don’t provide the same level of performance for sodium-ion batteries.
Amorphous carbon, which lacks a crystalline structure, is known to be a useful anode, because it has defects and voids that can be used to store sodium ions. Nitrogen/phosphorus-doped carbon also offers appealing electrical properties.
In Applied Physics Reviews, researchers in China from Zhejiang University, Ningbo University, and Dongguan University of Technology describe how they applied basic physical concepts of atomic scale to build high-performance anodes for sodium-ion batteries.
Artificial Flesh
Review: Meat Planet (2019) by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft
In the words of the book’s author, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food (2019) is “not an attempt at prediction but rather a study of cultured meat as a special case of speculation on the future of food, and as a lens through which to view the predictions we make about how technology changes the world.” While not serving as some crystal ball to tell us the future of food, Wurgaft’s book certainly does serve as a kind of lens.
Our very appetites are questioned quite a bit in the book. Wondering about the ever-changing history of food, the author asks, “Will it be an effort to reproduce the industrial meat forms we know, albeit on a novel, and more ethical and sustainable, foundation?” Questioning why hamburgers are automatically the default goal, he points out cultured meat advocates should carefully consider “the question of which human appetite for meat, in historical terms, they wish to satisfy.”
Wurgaft’s question of “which human appetite” – past, present, or future – is an excellent one. If we use his book as a lens to observe other emerging technologies, the question extends well beyond our choices of food. It could even have direct implications for such endeavours as radical life extension. Will we, if we extend our lifetimes, be satisfactory to future people? We already know the kind of clash that persists between different generations, and the blame we often place on previous generations for current social ills, without there also being a group of people who simply refuse to die. We should be wary of basing our future on the present – of attempting to preserve present tastes as somehow immutable and deserving immortality. This may be a problem such futurists as Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near (2005) need to respond to.
