Robert V. Aldrich (author and public speaker) is today's featured guest. Topics: we are in a wonderful boom-time for books, comics and movies, making this a great time to be a fan; and yet how the fans of anime are killing their beloved industry. He also gives commentary on Cowboy Bebop, Studio Ghibli, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro , the new Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek movies; and he talks about bit torrent and other methods of illegal downloading. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the ...
Jul 07, 2010•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Edmund R. Schubert , Rich Sigfrit , Gail Z. Martin and one of ConCarolinas' venerable volunteers are today's featured guests. Topics: last week's relaunch of the redesigned Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show online magazine; the recent explosion in the popularity of online magazines; the few ways in which online magazines are actually better that paper magazines; and how Amazon is confusing the magazine publishers they hope will publish their magazines in electronic format on the Ki...
Jun 30, 2010•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl ) is today's featured guest. Topics: scientific efforts in creating artificial life; computer displays built into the lenses of eyeglasses; the Google Goggles iPhone app; microbes designed to produce crude oil and diesel fuel; hard numbers on peak oil and peak coal; BP's Deepwater Horizon oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the robots being used to seal the leak; as well as cheap solar cells and new battery technologie...
Jun 23, 2010•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Maxey (author of the Dragon Age fantasy series and Nobody Gets the Girl ) is our featured guest. Topics: an attractive new female android built in Japan; soccer playing robots; life in antarctic lakes; the increasing practicality of building an elevator to earth orbit; the matter/anti-matter balance of the universe; massively parallel processing in popular game computers; fresh new craters on Mars; how computers are now playing the stock market even more than human beings; and a new nano-...
Jun 16, 2010•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: artificial intelligence; how and when conversational AI may appear in our lives; the semantic web as an AI platform; AI for Internet search; the money to be made in AI; simulating AI with a brute force program which is not intelligent at all; Wolfram Alpha; a new solution to the Fermi Paradox; the massive power of the social web; companies that try (and usually fail) to profit by crowd so...
Jun 09, 2010•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: why Twitter is better than Facebook; examples of how Twitter has helped Robert promote his work; differences between the virtual world of Second Life and its new competitor Blue Mars; big and costly mistakes being made by those who own and operate both virtual worlds; and other assorted topics and trends. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the June 2, 2010 episode of The Future And You . ...
Jun 02, 2010•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics: a first-hand account of trends developing in England and Europe; the good and bad effects the Iceland volcano's ash cloud has had to business and to people as it spread across Europe; social trends which are specific to London (where iPad availability is still limited); why Apple's iPad is so popular and how this popularity will spawn a wave of similar pad-style computers from Apple's ever...
May 26, 2010•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert Hooker (an Information Technology professional living in London) is today's featured guest. Topics : An explanation of Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0; how Google's failure at Web 2.0 is forcing the search giant to leapfrog from Web 1.0 straight into Web 3.0; the huge demand amongst businesses playing catchup, as they scramble to get into Web 2.0; the rise of smart phones and the attraction of the iPad; new trends in England, Europe, China, India, Greece and Poland; why the European Union will not f...
May 19, 2010•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) is today's featured guest. Topics: The Glossary for Futurists and Trend Watchers . Your host reads a few selections from this (free to download) publication written by the consulting firm of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc . (In order to stay within fair-use laws only one tenth or less of the glossary was read into the show. If you enjoy the selections you may read the entire glossary for free by downloading it pdf format.) Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 12...
May 12, 2010•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Euin Cobb (your host) is today's featured guest. Topics : The debut of the first ever Robot Girlfriend. (In this case a sex doll that is only slightly robotic.) Why sex robots (as they become more numerous and more human-like over the next few years) will produce an emotional firestorm of outrage from both the far left and far right which will fill every corner of the media. Also: news that the ebook market is about to turn into a fight between three giants: Amazon, Apple and beginning t...
May 05, 2010•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sara M. Harvey (fantasy author, costume designer, teacher and historian) is today's featured guest. Topics: how the mixing of literary genres is one way that new genres evolve spontaneously out of old ones; her first-hand experiences with a publisher that went bankrupt and very nearly dragged her first novel into oblivion with them; a few tidbits of how fantasy novels are marketed; unusual ways a writer can promote their work; as well as Wikipedia, book covers, word choice, sentence structure an...
Apr 28, 2010•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Kristen Bury (Business & Project Management Consultant) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 21, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time:24 minutes] Topics: the academic teaching of future studies; right-brain, left-brain and whole-brain thinking; creativity and problem solving; and other aspects of the future. This interview was recorded the evening after she'd opened the panel discussion on creativity at the World Future convention held at the Ch...
Apr 21, 2010•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ted Stalets (Vice President of Vote World Government ) and Bob French (CEO of Vote World Government) are today's featured guests. These two gentlemen feel that some of the problems of this world are too big to be solved by individual nations or even by nations trying to act together. They have taken to heart the concept that -- Global problems require global solutions . They seek a democratically elected representative government which is completely global. Literally, a parliament for the Earth....
Apr 14, 2010•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan Chabalowski and Christopher Breedlove (Journalists helping Web 1.0 transition into Web 2.0) are our featured guests. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 31, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 42 minutes] Topics: how Twitter can help people get more work (such as building credibility and reputation with clients and potential clients by letting them know what you are working on, or verifying that you are working on projects similar to their own); how the technica...
Mar 31, 2010•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 24, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] Part three of three with Dr. Sandberg. Topics: changes he expects in the next two decades; technical difficulties of emulating a full human brain in a computer; what people should do differently if they expect to live for centuries; and his vision of how the Singularity will ...
Mar 24, 2010•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 10, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 33 minutes] Part two of three with Dr. Sandberg. Topics: obvious problems with autonomous robots attempting to decide which humans to kill during warfare; the ethics of military and law enforcement use of non-lethal weapons; the ethics of greatly extending human lives; how human memory ...
Mar 10, 2010•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author ) is our featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 3, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 35 minutes] Part one of three with Dr. Sandberg. Topics: benefits we may get with our first neural implants; augmentations we already have and some we may have soon; the IQ enhancing drugs in widespread use on campuses today; the good and bad and political ramifications of the far more ...
Mar 03, 2010•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Speakers and attendees from the World Future Convention '09 held in Chicago. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 24, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 29 minutes] These interviews were recorded July 18-19, 2009. Topics: A dozen college students from Student Pugwash describe the mission of this international organization, as well as what worries them about the future and what gives them the most hope. These students include: Jessica Holsinger , Nick Lilovich , Autu...
Feb 24, 2010•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Frederik Pohl (author of Gateway --the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 17, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the second half of this interview, which was recorded on January 30, 2010. Topics: How he and Arthur C. Clarke became friends many decades ago; and how in Arthur's declining years Arthur asked Fred to finish a book that he ...
Feb 17, 2010•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Frederik Pohl (author of Gateway --the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 10, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the first half of this interview, which was recorded on January 30, 2010. Topics: predicting the future using the Delphi Method; his co-founding of The Futurians ; his nonfiction books: The Way the Future Was , Our Angry Ea...
Feb 10, 2010•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gregory Benford (Nebula Award winning author, physicist and professor) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 3, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the second half of the interview recorded on January 16, 2010. Topics: the Neanderthal Genome Project and the two teams working on bringing back the Woolly Mammoth; his impression of the 3D movie Avatar ; why he became an atheist and the growing cultural bias he sees toward th...
Feb 03, 2010•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gregory Benford (Nebula Award winning author, physicist and professor) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 27, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 37 minutes] This interview was recorded on January 16, 2010. Topics: A new life extension product he is involved with ( Genescient ) which will be available in the summer of 2010; life extension in general and his vision of its possibilities; how global warming might be mitigated using geoenginee...
Jan 27, 2010•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast J.C. Hutchins (the award-winning novelist of the 7th Son technothriller trilogy) is today's featured guest. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 20, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 47 minutes] Topics: his innovative approaches to marketing his fiction through the Internet such as his viral videos ( vlerbs he calls them) as well as free ebook-downloads and free audio book-downloads and, of course, the results he has been seeing. We also talk about innovative method...
Jan 20, 2010•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Celebrating the new decade with Part Two of the summary of the changes your host expects we will see during the next ten years . Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the January 13, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 31 minutes] This was recorded on January 2, 2010. Topics: By the end of this decade a wide variety of nanomaterials will be in almost all consumer products, and nanomaterials will become a mature field of engineering. Molecular manufacturing, however, will probably ...
Jan 13, 2010•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Celebrating the new decade with a summary of the changes your host expects we will see during the next ten years . Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb , this is the January 6, 2010 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 35 minutes] This was recorded on January 2, 2010. Topics: All human knowledge will be available online; the brilliant new movie Avatar (and why my friends Extropia DaSilva and Khannea Suntzu insisted I watch it in 3D on an IMAX); free-roaming surgical robots smaller than insects ...
Jan 06, 2010•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Five engineers and scientists experienced in large scale electrical energy production are today's featured guests. Topics: how California's energy follies have damaged Oregon and Washington State; why making fuel out of food may be the dumbest idea the US has ever pursued; why the US has not been building nuclear power plants even though France now uses them to generate almost 80% of its electricity, so much that France frequently exports electricity to its neighboring nations; potential problem...
Dec 30, 2009•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Five engineers and scientists experienced in large scale electrical energy production are today's featured guests. Topics: The many struggles, controversies, incidents and allegations, as well as the political and financial problems facing America's power plants and electrical grid. Also: rolling blackouts, why California has more energy problems than any other state, environmentalism's impact, work-a-rounds and fail-safes, the selling of byproducts, and a wide variety of behind the scene facts ...
Dec 23, 2009•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Fourth Anniversary Episode ; featuring a year in review, behind the scene tidbits, and miscellaneous commentary by the host. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 16, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running time: 37 minutes] (For the third time in four years, the host is also the guest.) News Item: Stephen Euin Cobb was given a tiny cameo in Stuart Gibbon's first professional short story sale. Inspired by discussions about Second Life and Digital People which occurred on The Fu...
Dec 16, 2009•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Andrew Hessel (biologist, author and co-founder of the Pink Army Cooperative) is today's featured guest. Topics: how new drugs have been developed during the last few decades; why these processes cost so much; and how it may be possible to use open source techniques to develop new drugs faster, cheaper, better, and targeted for patients individually. This is the focus of the Pink Army Cooperative . Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 9, 2009 episode of The Future And You . [Running...
Dec 09, 2009•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Aaron Franz and Carlos A. Mejia (a documentary film-making team) are today's featured guests. Aaron and Carlos are anti-transhumanism activists who have joined forces to create a documentary explaining the potential negative effects of transhumanism on the future of civilization in general, and on our individual lives in particular. Topics: Artificial Intelligence and The Singularity, Human Augmentation (especially the augmentation of connecting the Internet directly to the human mind), and thei...
Dec 02, 2009•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast