Lifeboat Foundation

James Vincent — The Independent

In a quiet announcement that has sent shockwaves through the scientific world, Nasa has cautiously given its seal of approval to a new type of “impossible” engine that could revolutionize space travel.

In a paper published by the agency’s experimental Eagleworks Laboratories, Nasa engineers confirmed that they had produced tiny amounts of thrust from an engine without propellant – an apparent violation of the conservation of momentum; the law of physics that states that every action must have an equal and opposite reaction.

Read more

By Joe Miller Technology reporter — BBC News

Communications regulator Ofcom said UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, compared with the average night’s sleep of eight hours and 21 minutes.

Almost four hours a day are spent watching TV according to Ofcom’s survey of 2,800 UK adults and children.

Read more

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 24, 2014)

FORBES: Three Industries Going Through Dramatic Supply Chain Transformations http://lnkd.in/drBaPhW

GEEKWIRE: Google leads $542M Magic Leap deal, betting on augmented reality http://www.geekwire.com/2014/google-leads-542m-magic-leap-in…d-reality/

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Google Invests Heavily in Magic Leap’s Effort to Blend Illusion and Reality http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/google-invests-in-mag…lity-firm/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 24, 2014)” »

This archive file was compiled from an interview conducted at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, 2013.

As late as the 1980s and the 1990s, the common person seeking stored knowledge would likely be faced with using an 18th century technology — the library index card catalogue — in order to find something on the topic he or she was looking for. Fifteen years later, most people would be able to search, at any time and any place, a collection of information that dwarfed that of any library. And unlike the experience with a library card catalogue, this new technology rarely left the user empty-handed.

Information retrieval had been a core technology of humanity since written language — but as an actual area of research it was so niche that before the 1950s, nobody had bothered to give the field a name. From a superficial perspective, the pioneering work in the area during the 1940s and 50s seemed to suggest it would be monumentally important to the future — but only behind the scenes. Information retrieval was to be the secret tool of the nation at war, or of the elite scientist compiling massive amounts of data. Increasingly however, a visionary group of thinkers dreamed of combining information retrieval and the ‘thinking machine’ to create something which would be far more revolutionary for society.

Continue reading “Who is Amit Singhal (at Google)?” »

By Chris Baraniuk — BBC Future

The internet is one big experiment, and you’re part of it. Every day, millions of trials are manipulating what you see when you browse online, to find out how to keep your attention, make you click more links – and spend more money. And these experiments are often secret. You’ll probably never know you were part of them.

This is all thanks to something now well-known in the tech industry, called A/B testing. It means that the web pages served to you are not necessarily the same as those shown to the next person – they might have slightly different colours, an alternate headline or, on social networks, you could be shown different personal information about your friends and family.

Read More

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)

FINANCIAL TIMES: Insurers ‘unready’ for climate change http://on.ft.com/1CWVHWM

HUFF POST: Amelia: IPsoft’s New Artificial Intelligence Can Think Like A Human, And Wants Your Job http://lnkd.in/daZCHqx

CIO: Lufthansa leaves the computing to IBM http://trib.al/JPKogpE

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 23, 2014)” »

Nafeez Ahmed — The Guardian

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

Read more

FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)

INFOWORLD: General Electric lays out big plans for big data http://www.infoworld.com/article/2616433/big-data/general-el…-data.html

THE TELEGRAPH: The Real Cyborgs http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/the-future-is-android/index.html

FUTURE OBSERVATORY: Who Has a Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap? Guess! http://www.21stcentech.com/climate-change-adaptation-roadmap-guess/

Continue reading “FUTURISM UPDATE (October 22, 2014)” »