Humans 2.0

Replacing the Mind and Body Recent breakthroughs in bionics and lab-grown body parts — along with news last month that a Swiss research team aims to recreate the intricacies of the human brain within a decade — show science is rapidly creating many of the parts needed to build a fully functional human almost from … Read more

Eye Trackings

3M Visual Attention Service After decades’ worth of vision research, Minnesota-based conglomerate 3M has tuned up its Visual Attention Service, an algorithm that can scan all types of content to determine exactly where the average human eye is most likely to be drawn. That’s the question that advertisers and designers alike have tried to figure … Read more

Fake computer generated pop-star, Japan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGYTWBrtR14

Ciudad Grupo Santander, Madrid

Interactive Visitors Center Interactive wall, swarm robots, augmented reality environment all in one commercial space. Project done by YDreams

Placing Landmarks on the Genome Map

Supercomputers and next-generation gene sequencers allow researchers to explore DNA and heredity. Since 2001, the cost of DNA sequencing a human genome has dropped from billions to tens of thousands of dollars, enabling more focused investigations of gene expression. This has greatly improved scientists’ ability to understand biological systems and their relation to illness. Many … Read more

An On-Off Switch for Memory?

For the first time, scientists have recreated the brain’s learning process and can restore long-forgotten memories. Scientists have developed an on-off memory switch that helped laboratory rats remember a behavior that they had forgotten. The brain prosthesis marks the first time that researchers have been able to duplicate the brain’s learning process, restoring memories that … Read more

Flexible Surfaces

Thinfilm phone that will make current smartphone obsolete in 5 to 10 years. The world’s first interactive paper computer is set to revolutionize the world of interactive computing. The smartphone prototype, called PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone – it does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone … Read more

Hubble Telescope images and color

Pages from NASA’s Hubble telescope website demonstrate how they assign colors within their amazing images. They use three approaches: natural color (what human eyes can see); representative color (using color to code portions of the image); and enhanced color. Of course the “images” are captured using filters that detect wavelengths invisible to the human eye … Read more

Tools for research

Zotero Omeka ScholarPress Digital History THATCamp Scribe ECHO H-Bot

Futuring Practices: Tools, Terms, and Perspectives

While approaches to futuring vary from institution to institution, a multitude of continuities, themes, and terms transcend. These elements consist of a series of tools, terms and perspectives that work together to guide the envisioning process. While my own research has sustained a primary focus on the research and processes of institutions and individuals, I … Read more