Wind and solar have grown seemingly unstoppable. While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels. One reason is that renewable energy […]
Tag Archives: future
Flying Saucer Concept
A mechanical engineer and a member of the family whose aerospace and transportation company builds trains, planes, and more, Bombardier’s at his best when he ignores pesky things like budgets, timelines, and contemporary physics. Since 2013, he’s run a blog cataloging more than 200 concepts, each a fantastic, farfetched new way for people to travel […]
New Basic Income Project Set to Launch in January
Income for All Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been gaining a lot of traction as of late with various industry experts, government officials, and financial experts expressing the need to explore the possibilities of implementing a basic income program. UBI is a lump sum of money given periodically to individuals unconditionally. There are no tests […]
Sweden is paying people to fix their belongings instead of throwing them away
To combat its”throwaway consumer culture’, Sweden has announced tax breaks on repairs to clothes, bicycles, fridges and washing machines. On bikes and clothes, VAT has been reduced from 25% to 12% and on white goods consumers can claim back income tax due on the person doing the work. The incentives are intended to reduce the […]
The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence
The year 1995 was heralded as the beginning of the “New Economy.” Digital communication was set to upend markets and change everything. But economists by and large didn’t buy into the hype. It wasn’t that we didn’t recognize that something changed. It was that we recognized that the old economics lens remained useful for looking […]
‘Nanobionic’ spinach plants detect explosives, pollution, drought | KurzweilAI
By embedding spinach leaves with carbon nanotubes, MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone. (credit: Christine Daniloff/MIT) MIT engineers have implanted spinach leaves with carbon nanotubes, resulting in a hybrid electronic system that they call “plant nanobionics” […]
A Material From Shapeshifting Planes Could Heal Human Flesh
What generates voltage when you warm it up, push on it, or blow on it? Get your mind out of the gutter. The correct answer is polyvinylidene fluoride, a material NASA researchers have refined for use in morphing aircraft that shapeshift in response to their environment. But wait! There’s more: It can also kickstart the […]
128 Things that will disappear in the driverless car era
There’s a significant difference between a driverless car and a fully autonomous vehicle. We already have a number of vehicles on the road today with driverless features, but that’s only a small step towards the no-steering-wheel type of driverless car many are imagining. As we move further into the fully autonomous car era, we also […]
President Barack Obama Says, “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like”
There are a lot of tough aspects to being President. But there are some perks too. Meeting extraordinary people across the country. Holding an office where you get to make a difference in the life of our nation. Air Force One. But perhaps the greatest unexpected gift of this job has been living above the […]
This Is Your Brain on Quantum Computers
Machines enrich and enhance our lives, whether it’s the smartphones that allow us to stay connected or the supercomputers that solve our toughest computational problems. Imagine how much more productive and innovative our world will be when computers become infinitely more powerful. Indeed, the growing field of quantum computing may make our current technological capacities […]