Future

In 2012, Google hired Ray Kurzweil to build a computer capable of thinking as powerfully as a human. It would require at least one hundred trillion calculations per second — a feat already accomplished by the fastest supercomputers in existence. The more difficult challenge is creating a computer that has a hierarchy similar to the Continue Reading →

What might the future of the Internet be? What can it be? How empowering can it be for Capitalism and Democracy in the 21st century? What must we do to maximize the positive possibilities the Internet provides humanity as we stand at the fork in the road Buckminster Fuller foresaw decades ago: – Utopia or Continue Reading →

Perhaps the most significant event in global health care in 2014 occurred on February 25, when Health City Cayman Islands had its grand opening. Health City is a new way to think of health care and health care delivery. It has the power to change – or at the least openly challenge – the way Continue Reading →

This post contains big spoilers for Her. Spike Jonze’s Her raised many questions on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone more qualified to discuss the technology that permeates through the movie than the renowned futurist Ray Kurzweil. In a blog post, the author, who joined Google in 2012 Continue Reading →

This is the third (and final) column that looks at the forecasts I have made on events through 2013. As pointed out in the first two columns, the purpose of these columns is to analyze why forecasts were correct and, if not, what they might mean looking forward. As stated in the first column: “… Continue Reading →

In the 2004 film, “I, Robot”, Will Smith played a techno-phobic cop in the year 2035. In the film, robots and automation dominated every aspect of human life. “I, Robot” was based on a work of fiction, and the speed of technological progression in the film seems like a stretch. However, advanced safety features designed Continue Reading →

This is my second of three columns covering a look back at the forecasts I made about things that might happen through the end of 2013. As I wrote in the first column, this is not an exercise in self-congratulation, but rather an opportunity to look back on forecast accuracy and analyze why or why Continue Reading →

Eight years ago, I first began to write and speak about the future full-time. Then, as always, I was asked about what accurate forecasts I had made. This told me that my legitimacy (to some degree) would be based upon this. I started to make forecasts. The second thing I realized was that most people Continue Reading →

Burning Man has become a meme. A fast moving, rapidly expanding, global meme. That was my take away from being at Burning Man this year. It has moved beyond the San Francisco Bay-area word of mouth, organic growth of the 1990s and the 2000s, and blown up into a phenomenon. I first became aware of Continue Reading →

The Turing test is one of the oldest ideas for imagining machine intelligence. Dreamed-up by computing legend Alan Turing, the idea is genius in its simplicity — if the average person can’t distinguish a particular machine from a real person through conversation, then that machine is said to possess thought. Each year, chat bots are Continue Reading →