Lifeboat Foundation

2017 only just arrived, but one manufacturing company is already looking 45 years into the future.

Arconic, a materials science company, has envisioned a 3-mile-high (4.8-km) skyscraper built from materials that are either in-development or have already been brought to market, including smog-eating surfaces and retractable balconies.

The tower was concocted as part of the company’s larger campaign known as The Jetsons, an homage to the 1962 cartoon set in 2062. Arconic’s engineers worked alongside futurists to imagine the technologies that will be most useful several decades from now.

Continue reading “Engineers Have Released Plans for a 5-Km-High Skyscraper That Eats Smog” »

“Jia Jia” can hold a simple conversation and make specific facial expressions when asked, and her creator believes the eerily life-like robot heralds a future of cyborg labour in China.

Billed as China’s first human-like robot, Jia Jia was first trotted out last year by a team of engineers at the University of Science and Technology of China.

Team leader Chen Xiaoping sounded like a proud father as he and his prototype appeared Monday at an economic conference organised by banking giant UBS in Shanghai’s futuristic financial centre.

For the vampire lovers out there. Very scary situation.

The bats should only consume bird blood, but as humans have started to move into the forests of northeastern Brazil, they’ve turned to new sources of food.

Christopher Mims looks at the electronic vehicles that could end car ownership as we know it, from Swagtron’s Swagger-1 electric scooter to Mahindra Group’s GenZe 2.0 to the three-wheeled Arcimoto SRK.

Introducing a drone that can take a colossal beating and won’t break. Via our friends at Vocativ Video.

Not unless it gets a little smarter and more lethal.

In the 1960s, most research on computers centered on how to ease daily tasks, but RAND was also exploring how to develop both hardware and software capable of self-direction and of learning. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) represents an exciting area of technology development that has promise to fundamentally change the way that humans live, work, and interact with one another.

In this Events @ RAND podcast, our panel of experts discuss the role AI is playing in society, including the incredible promise and pressing concerns. Bill Welser and Osonde Osoba talk about the unintentional biases due to data and design practices affecting AI systems in use today and why caution must be used in designing AI systems for the future. Dave Baiocchi moderates.

Food trends change all the time, and not just dependent on where you live, but also when. For example, 100 years ago they were not eating most of the stuff we have today. Pop Tarts, Cheetos, and Gatorade would certainly not have existed, and if you were to go back in time now and try and introduce these things, they would probably get thrown at you. But, the point is that sometimes you just can’t help what food is introduced around you and accepted as the norm, and over the next 30 years, we will see odder but edible manifestations are coming our way. Below are eight future foods that are not a million miles away from being introduced into society and are being worked on now:

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