If there’s one thing that unites the good guys in movies and TV shows, it’s a hatred of “procedure”—those legal niceties that get the bad guys out of jail and […]
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The Beam is a remote presence device that bridges the gap between in-person attendance and videoconferencing. It was one of the hits at this year’s South by Southwest trade show.
When I was a teen-age consumer of cheap paperbacks about worlds more interesting than this one, I noticed a clear and sharp split between readers who loved SF (spaceships, time […]
Our robotic emissaries are probing space, not humans. Nonetheless, Neil deGrasse Tyson says he is content with living vicariously through the robots for now.
You’ve got to listen to your gut.
Does the rise of the robots doom us all to unemployment? The answer is most certainly no. Provocative claims that the United States has reached “peak jobs” and will soon […]
Engineers have improved on the original and groundbreaking brain-computer interface by creating a wireless device that has successfully been implanted into the brains of monkeys and pigs.
No longer a curse of the low-skilled worker, automation is coming to professions like teaching, medicine and law. But machines could give us more leisure time, if profits are shared evenly.
Ray Kurzweil is the author of the recent book How to Create a Mind. The first question we have for him is “why create a mind?”
A study of U.S. Air Force drone operators has found they experience post-traumatic stress and other mental-health troubles at the same rate as pilots who are actually flying aircraft in […]
Do we think it is possible for kids to learn to read on their own? A dispatch from a big bold idea in progress.
One mining company speculates it’s in the low nine figures; astronomers think that’s a stretch. There’s no way to be sure, of course, but its Friday fly-by has both groups thinking about future close encounters.
So BIG THINK published a sensible little essay by the distinguished public intellectual John Gray. He says don’t think about immortality as something you can achieve through your own efforts. […]
This is becoming the central paradox of the Information Age: the easier it is for humans to create content and information on their digital devices, the more likely it is […]
3-D printers are currently capable of producing usable car parts, cat-scanned reproductions of ancient Sumerian clay envelopes with letters inside, and cool-looking geometric desktop toys. That’s very exciting indeed. But […]
1. Every Big Idea Was First A Crazy Idea Fred Guterl, executive editor of Scientific American, does a nice job of highlighting some of the crazy ideas presented at this year’s TED […]
Futurist and soon-to-be director of engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil has made a habit of making predictions about future technology as accurate as they are bold. Now he wants to live longer.
Our displays of techno-freedom are turning more and more of us into dependents: Apart from specific job categories, technological advances in products and services, along with greater outsourcing opportunities and […]
Google Glass. Life Extension. Life Extinction. These are among the brainiest memes included in the inaugural post of our new blog, Mind Memes, which offers quick reads on the Internet […]
By providing an accurate roadmap for anyone from CEO to sales superstar to auto mechanic who wishes to increase their personal career relevancy in a world of transformative change, you now have a new tool you can use to make career and education decisions with confidence.
This brings me to an ancient Greek, the master himself, Socrates of Athens. In a segment of Gorgias that foresees decades of modern psychological research, the erudite interlocutor observes that […]
Researchers used simulations to measure physicians against high school- and college-age gamers. In all tests involving robot assistance, the gamers’ skills were equal or better.
Preliminary results from a study done at a UK primary school with two humanoid robots show that these children respond better to the robots than to adults or to other children.
Last month’s report from the National Research Council suggests that some objectives set by the Obama administration should be reevaluated in light of “national consensus” about space research and exploration.
Brain-computer interfacing has allowed quadriplegics to move robotic arms and hands with impressive dexterity. Researchers hope the technology will allow them increased autonomy in life.
As machines become more productive, the people who own them may be keeping a larger share of the profits.
Planetary Resources isn’t the first company formed around the mission of extracting valuable metals from the asteroid belt, but it may be the first one with some real investor belief and funding behind it.
NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover. Big Data Predicts the Oscars. These are among the brainiest memes included in today’s Mind Memes.
Georgia Tech spinoff company TechJect has created an unmanned aerial vehicle that, in size, appearance and actions, resembles a dragonfly. Applications for its use range from gaming to military intelligence.
Honda’s Miimo, recently released in the UK, is only the latest version to appear on the market, but despite the appeal of an outdoor equivalent of the Roomba, sales have been slow.