A whole conference devoted to failure, FailCon, may be a first, but it’s looking like a success, with the likes of PayPal co-founder Max Levchin talking about how he failed repeatedly before making billions making the payment platform for the web.
via A Silicon Valley Conference About Failing is Big Success | Epicenter | Wired.com.
Looking for a market to innovate in? Well here you are….
“We’re still at a pretty rudimentary stage,” Garrett said, noting educators rarely employ video, unique links, or other technological innovations.
“Will it be games? Will it be simulations? Will it be social networking? Will it be something we haven’t yet come across?” he said.
via Online education expanding, awaits innovation | Technology | Reuters.
…this year, the limelight will be on the era that is to come — and a movement called Transhumanism, which supports the use of technology to improve the human condition.
via Spotlight – Woodstock – In Film Festival, Woodstock Looks to the Future – NYTimes.com.
The next phase of human evolution, IMHO, is us using technology we have developed in order to augment ourselves. Why wait for real evolution when we can evolve ourselves right now. We are already cyborgs in some sense anyways…
By 2015 more than 12 billion devices will be capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content, says chip giant Intel.
via BBC NEWS | Technology | Future is TV-shaped, says Intel.
A new exhibition at London’s Royal College of Surgeons called “Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots” has displays ranging from the “da Vinci” system to prototype microbots designed to be swallowed and self-assembled in the human body.
Disruptive innovation is often fraught with unknowns and assumptions. But that doesn’t mean it has to be “risky business.” By utilizing a different type of approach–an approach that systematically attacks the most critical unknowns with tailored, low-cost experiments–innovators can systematically “de-risk” their strategies and thereby increase their chances of success while lowering the associated investment cost.
You too can forecast the future!
via Futures Thinking: The Basics | Open The Future | Fast Company.
wheres is the future of independence day? well, when this country was founded, things were very very different, but the founding principles of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” where the ultimate statement of vision of humanity as being ultimately responsible for its own happiness. The individual, not the state, would determine the course of that individuals life.
My, how times have changed. There is more and more government intervention into our lives. We are basically living under the same, or an even more tyrannical regime than the one we left. And the future of freedom looks bleak: less and lees freedom to speak, and less and less freedom to live ones life as the founders intended it.
Is this a good future or a bad future? On the one hand, people in general have never “felt” more free, but that freedom is a chimera, its not bestowed naturally, but by government. And government can decide to take that freedom away any time it wants. We are now governed not by “the people” but a government. And I don’t see that getting better.
One can argue that the core of humanity, the greed that drives evolution, is an outdated concept. I say it is the core of what makes us great. We need to put systems in place that feed the greed. Systems which assume egalitarianism always always fail.
So with that – we turn to the future. Will Independence Day go away? No, but it will lose its meaning. We need to continue to remind ourselves of why we fought that distant war, and what it really all means. We need to work to keep the system from turning into what we fought against.
Why you ask? What does this have to do with innovation and the future? Plenty. Innovation THRIVES under freedom and is choked under tyranny. Obama promised a new freedom for innovation, for science, for technology, but then turns around and props up old dying industries. Where is the freedom for innovation, Mr. President? Where is the stimulus money for small, innovative startups to invent the next wave of consumer products in order to help jumpstart the economy. Where is the INNOVATION STIMULUS?
Innovation is stimulated by robust free speech and free markets. The less free our speech is and the less free our markets are, the less innovative we will be. I say: unleash the free market, unleash innovation, and things will turn around sooner and opposed to later.
now this is not rocket science. some people say that thinking about the future is very difficult. i think its really easy. of course if you are a fan of science fiction (and admit it, most of us geeks are) that its easy to think about the future. why? well, the future is RIGHT THERE. right in that sf novel, story, tv show or movie you are watching. if its good sf, and believe me there is a TON of crappy sf out there. in good and great sf, you see the future, the real future. and then all you have to do is trace back to today. its like going through a maze backwards. super super easy. so one of the ways in which i invent the future is to consume a lot of good sf, then figure out how the stuff in the book came about. reel it back enough and you can envision the near future.
FREEDOM BUNKER / THINKFUTURE 