Episode description

Chris Phoenix (futurist, nanotechnologist and software engineer) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Examples of major disasters and how they can be categorized using The Phoenix Scale; the current helium shortage; the singularity and artificial intelligence; general AI; conversational AI; and The AI named Watson which won on Jeopardy.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 4, 2012 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 32 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on June 23, 2012. 

Chris Phoenix is a tech geek and software engineer currently working on projects including a CubeSat, health-related electronic devices, and astronomy hardware and software. From Stanford University, he obtained his BS in Symbolic Systems and MS in Computer Science. Previous careers have included dyslexia correction and co-founding the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. In his spare time, he sings in an internationally competitive barbershop chorus, pursues extreme sports, and theorizes on major world problems.

News Items: 

[1] MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again.

[2] To make identification possible, whotube.com provides a youtube-like website accessible to the general public which allows merchants to post their store camera video footage of shoplifters, thieves and vandals. It also gives merchants the opportunity to promote their store by attaching an advertisement to each piece of footage uploaded.

[3] Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science is a new nonfiction article by Stephen Euin Cobb available in a Kindle Edition. This 27-page article--written by an experienced futurist who has interviewed over 300 people for their opinion about the future--describes several of the far future scientific and technological innovations which will transform our civilization from what it is now into an exponentially larger, faster, stronger and more dynamic civilization than can be contained on this planet, or in this solar system, or within this universe. These technologies will allow us to expand through those boundaries and find new unimagined boundaries beyond them to break through. (Article: 7,498 Words) Chapter Titles -- We Will Transmute the Elements; We Will Develop Many Completely New Physics; My Father's Watch; Hidden-Life May be More Common on Planets than Non-Hidden: And Earth May be No Exception; The Universal Diagram; Engineering Space: Altering This Universe and Making New Ones.

[4] A Brief History of Predicting the Future is a new nonfiction article by Stephen Euin Cobb available in a Kindle Edition. This 21-page article--written by an experienced futurist who has interviewed over 300 people for their opinion about the future--describes how predicting the future has changed many times through the centuries: from magic to science, and from science fiction to computation. This is a quick and lively romp designed to give the reader a taste of what futurology today is all about, and a feel for the long uphill climb it has made from its humble beginnings in the dawn of antiquity. (Article: 5,600 Words) Sections include: The Future is Deep; The Far Future; The Near Future; From Ancient Magic to Scientific Causality; Science Fiction made the Future Fun; But then the Future Got Serious; Yes, the Future does Compute; The Future may get Weird; Just before it becomes Unimaginable; Transhumanists want you to be Better than Healthy; Virtual Living; End of the World; But not all Futures are Deadly, or even Weird.