Doctor Gregory L. Matloff , C Bangs and Keith Comito are today's featured guests. Doctor Gregory L. Matloff is an astronomer, author and professor; C Bangs is a professional artist and author; and Keith Comito is a mathematician, programmer and founder of OmegaSoft which produces games and apps for the iPhone. Topics: The future in general but also, extending human longevity, artificial intelligence, the Singularity, augmenting the human body and mind, the Fermi paradox, iPhone apps (such as Orb...
Nov 25, 2009•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Peter Nygard (the internationally famous fashion designer) is today's featured guest. Topics: how technology has transformed the fashion industry; and the pivotal role he played in the beginning and final negotiation of NAFTA. Also, as I interviewed him, my assistant Peggy Gregory noticed that his leather jacket bore the seal of the president of the United States of America. Asking about this, he explained that President Bush Senior--while visiting him on his island--took it off and gave it to h...
Nov 18, 2009•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ari Kiirikki, Vice President of Knome Inc . (the world's leading provider of personal DNA sequencing) is today's featured guest. Topics: how you can have your entire DNA sequenced; the rate at which this expensive procedure is growing in popularity; how soon it will drop below $1000 (and may even reach $100); the new diagnostic powers general practitioners will gain using personalized DNA sequencing; cases in which the accidental discovery of extreme human genotypes have produced new drug therap...
Nov 11, 2009•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Noel Patton (founder of T.A. Sciences) is today's featured guest. Topic: A product available today which may extend human lives well beyond traditional limits. Specifically what this product is, how it functions within living cells, and some of the scientific and medical research verifying its effectiveness. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the November 4, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 23 minutes] (This interview was recorded on October 4, 2009 at the Singularity Summit...
Nov 04, 2009•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Eliezer Yudkowsky (co-founder and research fellow of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence) is today's featured guest. Topics: the Singularity and the creation of Friendly AI; his estimate of the probability of success in making a Friendly AI; and why achieving AI using evolutionary software might be monumentally dangerous. He also talks about human rationality, such as: the percentage of humans today who can be considered rational; his own efforts to increase that number; how th...
Oct 28, 2009•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Vassar and Michael Anissimov are today's featured guests. (Both are interviewed in their capacity as organizers of the Singularity Summit 2009 held earlier this month in New York City.) Topics: the Singularity and artificial intelligence in general, and this year's Singularity Summit conference in particular. Also: the limits of human reasoning, public resistance to the Singularity, and trends within the transhumanist community. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the October 21, 2009 e...
Oct 21, 2009•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gregory Benford and Aubrey de Grey (who both spoke at the Singularity Summit held earlier this month in New York City) are interviewed, as well as two attendees of this singular event which is so intently focused on the future. Topics: the Singularity and artificial intelligence in general, and this year's Singularity Summit conference in particular. (The goal of this episode, in addition to being informative, is to provide a little of the convention's feel and mood--and if possible--it's energy...
Oct 14, 2009•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nathan P. Butler (a professional educator with eight years of teaching experience) is today's featured guest. Topics: Why teachers are encouraged to give kids about five hours of homework everyday. Ways in which kids are different today thanks to the technologies they've grown up with, and how those same technologies are changing the teaching methods used in the classroom. Ways in which atheism is encouraged in children by public schools since teaching it openly is not allowed. The balancing act...
Oct 07, 2009•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nathan P. Butler (a professional educator with eight years of teaching experience) is today's featured guest. Topics: trends in teaching in public schools; how one problem student can prevent an entire class from learning; whether or not smarter kids are being ignored to help slower kids; as well as trends in teacher's unions, merit pay, voucher systems and No Child Left Behind. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the September 30, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 43 minutes]...
Sep 30, 2009•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Three Biotech Researchers (two geneticists and one agronomist) are today's featured guests. Topics: problems involved in engineering a virus to kill a specific race or sex of human beings; genetics involved in regrowing human limbs for amputees; how we've made corn fields increase their yield ten-fold since the 1940s; exactly why US Stimulus Package money is so slow at get into research; why the Malthusian theory, in which exponential population growth produces mass starvation, has lost its vali...
Sep 23, 2009•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Three Biotech Researchers (two geneticists and one agronomist) are today's featured guests. Dr. Diane Mucci , formerly with the National Institute of Health (NIH), is currently a full time professor of biotechnology and has a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry, and Microbiology. Cathy Smith is an insect molecular geneticist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). And Gary Shelton is an agronomist with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Topics: the future of our food supply; ge...
Sep 16, 2009•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephanie Osborn (author and former NASA payload flight controller) is today's featured guest. Topics: Space Shuttle flights and the International Space Station; her work in astronaut training, and what it is that a payload flight controller does; Space Camp --the actual camp (where she herself taught) and how the real thing differs from the movie of the same name; her friend, the astronaut Kalpana Chawla ; the technical side of what happened to cause seven astronauts to die in the Space Shuttle...
Sep 09, 2009•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Ben Bova (author of more than 115 books about science and science fiction) is today's featured guest. Topics: his work advising Woody Allen for the movie Sleeper ; anecdotes about his friends Arthur C. Clarke, Harlan Ellison, and Gene Roddenberry; his writing an episode of Land of the Lost ; his work with George Lucas ; and the time he was on Good Morning America with Jim Henson, Kermit the frog and (first baseman for the Dodgers) Steve Garvey. He also describes Joseph Stalin's insistence on...
Sep 02, 2009•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Ben Bova (author of more than 115 books about science and science fiction) is today's featured guest. Topics: extreme human longevity, which Dr. Bova expects and endorses; why lasers are the ultimate weapon of defense against incoming missiles, and why the U.S. won't be defended by them until after the Obama Administration is out of office. He also describes his participation in the Vanguard Rocket program just before and just after the Russians shocked the United States out of complacency b...
Aug 26, 2009•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast José Cordeiro (author, researcher, professor, futurist, consultant and world traveler) is today's guest. Topics: José Cordeiro's lectures at World Future 2009; The Singularity University (his involvement, its goals, and plans for its future expansion); his idea that 'Transhumanists are the futurists among the futurists'; the struggle schools all around the world are having trying to keep up with the ongoing information revolution and the success Finland's school system is seeing with a version o...
Aug 19, 2009•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Young-sook Park 박영숙 (South Korean diplomat, author, and futurist) is today's guest. Dr. Young-sook Park is Chair of the United Nation's Millennium Project in Korea, Chair of the Korean Chapter of the World Future Society , President of the Korean Foster Care Association, Senior Advisor for the Australian Embassy in Seoul, and a member of the World Transhumanist Association. She has been a teacher, a lecturer, a freelance journalist, a diplomat, and is the author of more than 22 books. Topics: th...
Aug 12, 2009•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Timothy C. Mack (President of the World Future Society) is today's guest. The World Future Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan scientific and educational association of people interested in how social and technological developments are shaping the future. The society works as a neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future. These ideas include forecasts, recommendations, and alternative scenarios concerning the next 5, 10, or more years. Founded in 1966, the society is chartered as a nonprofi...
Aug 05, 2009•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nathan P. Butler (a professional educator with eight years of classroom teaching experience) is today's featured guest. Topics: now that the flood gates of information are open wide (sometimes referred to as the Internet) we are all swimming in information so deep we can't see the bottom. How this info-flood has changed schools and teaching and students and teachers and homework--even changed what is taught and how it is taught. The struggles teachers face in keeping up with these changes; the s...
Jul 29, 2009•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: why Islamic fundamentalists feel threatened by the dominance of the Internet today, just as Christian fundamentalists felt threatened by the dominance of TV in the 1960s; now that online dating is a highly profitable business, how dating sites may try to change cultural ideas and habits about dating to stretch those dating years into a lifelong lifestyle to maximize their profits; why Inter...
Jul 22, 2009•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: his experience in AI research in the early 1990s; his PhD in sociology and the results of his sociological research inside Second Life; the importance of gender roles in the real world and in virtual worlds; ways to find answers to specific questions online; web page rankings and the google algorithms; and is the Internet is increasing or decreasing global acceptance of diversity? Hosted by...
Jul 15, 2009•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: powerful software which is totally free to download and use (such as: Open Office, Gimp, and Ubuntu); Web 3.0 verses 2.0; the buzzword The Cloud and what it means to users; trends in Microsoft Office and its global popularity; and the overwhelming reason why users have not adopted Linux even though it is excellent and free. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 8, 2009 episode of Th...
Jul 08, 2009•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is our featured guest. Topics: trends in England and Europe compared to the USA especially involving cell phones, Internet connections, and other technologies. Robert also talks about: the lack of national unity in the UK; bigotry and prejudice in Europe against non-European immigrants and against Eastern Europeans; how globalization is changing Europe (for good and bad); why the impact of China and India are large but compl...
Jul 01, 2009•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine ) is our featured guest. Topics: the latest in 3D displays for TV and for video games; self-fueling robots; robots in warfare now and in the near future; robots as smart weapons; robotic fighter jets; educational robots; robotic dance competitions; fighting methods used by TV battle robots; diversity of robotic body styles; and getting started in robotics without much money or without having to build your robot. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is t...
Jun 24, 2009•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine ) is our featured guest. Topics: the astounding progress being made in all areas of robotics such as: how vacuum cleaning robots are getting improved house-mapping abilities; what's happening in artificial intelligence for robots; trends in Japanese robots; the brilliant new way in which robots are being used in physical therapy for post-operative patients; and which needs to advance more to put robots to work in our homes as cooks, house cleaners, g...
Jun 17, 2009•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Atwood (Editor-in-Chief of Robot Magazine ) is our featured guest. Topics: Robots are in a world-wide boom time. Hundreds of thousands of hobbyists are building robots. Competitive robot events draw Rock-Star-sized crowds and are doubling in attendance each year. High schools and colleges are using the building and programing of robots (from scratch and from kits) to get students enthused about science, math, logic, engineering, programming and many other crucial subjects. Open source collab...
Jun 10, 2009•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl) is our featured guest. Topics: trends in medicine and the possibility that cancer may someday become completely curable. Privacy vs life-logging, twitter and the incessant text-messaging some people do about the trivial minutia of their daily lives. James suggests that 'When Orwell wrote in 1984 about people being watched by their TVs, what he didn't understand about the human condition is that a lot of people wanted ...
Jun 03, 2009•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl ) is our featured guest. Topics: the current search for other earths and what effect their discovery might have on people: the demise of circus freaks as professional performers; and (despite James' long-term atheism) his fascination with Angels, both in their original source material and in the popular culture. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 27, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 39 minu...
May 27, 2009•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl ) is our featured guest. Topics: the various ways our modern civilization might come to an end (all the usual suspects along with total economic collapse); disruptive technologies such as the large scale use of cheap solar cells which could lead to the abandonment of the electric power grid; how the differences between men and women may affect their acceptance of the robotic husbands and wives which will become availab...
May 20, 2009•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aliese , a college student, is today's featured guest. Topics: trends in college in general, as well as in classes, dorm life, students and teachers. Also how personal computers and cell phones improve or degrade the learning experience. As well as YouTube, Facebook, Charlie Chaplin and wedding photography. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 13, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 38 minutes] Aliese is studying for a degree in photography and fine arts, and has complete...
May 13, 2009•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Euin Cobb is today's featured guest. (This is the second half of the experiment in which the questions I normally pose to others I ask of myself.) Topics: Why I am an atheist and why I am not an anti-theist; my insistance that there is a rapidly growing need for a new and different kind of tolerance, greater than any this world has ever seen before; how this universe will end, and why I think we will someday engineer other universes; why past predictions of the future have always been so...
May 06, 2009•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast