CQ: Since we produce too much media for any person to keep up with, are we turning into very shallow people, intellectually?
Bumper: Mainframe
Promo: Podiobooks – I just finished Nathan Lowell’s sixth and final book in the Trader’s Tales series, and it was absolutely fantastic! Totally #article37 – all the way!
Promo: Technorama
On the show this week:
- Front Page
- Crap
- Not Crap
- Extras
Full list of 66 articles after the jump!
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TWS168: The End Is Nigh (Impossible)!
CQ: Now that the computer Watson has “solved” Jeopardy, what game will computer scientists turn their jealous eyes toward? And what will be the eventual side-effect result of the computer’s domination of that game?
Bumper: J. R. Murdock
Promo: Amarna at Imagination Lane
Promo: Comedy4Cast
On the show this week:
- Front Page
- Prima
- Duplo
- Extras
Full list of 66 articles after the jump!
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The second part of the look back at the 2010 news — along with even more crazy speculations on the year(s) yet to come!
Promo: Scott Sigler
Promo: Comedy4Cast
On the show this week:
- YOUR MIND IS MADE UP
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- We will decode the mind’s memory storage system to not only be able to extract and replay our dreams, but change them. This will be used in a wide variety of products, from advertising to movies made up of your own memories.
- 3D films will also be found to have a hypnogogic effect, and the first psychedlic 3D films will go into wide release. We’ll look back on them in 50 years as quaint, like that “Reefer Madness” film, but recognize them as the accidental stage to full psychic awareness.
- People will start to wear implants to guard themselves against mindjacking. This crime occurs both in subtle ways, such as when advertisers beam out attention-getting subtle magnetic mood stimulation rays, and sinister obvious ways, when robbers use it to get your PIN numbers out of you.
- FREETERNITY
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- Suspended animation begins in earnest with the first people decided to live only for a few years every decade or so. (ref. Vernor Vinge’s “Marooned in Realtime”)
- HIGH DEFINITIONS
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- We will continue to redefine what it means to be ourselves, from changing the definition of “man” and “woman”, to the distinctions between “human” and “machine”, between “human” and “animal” and even “human” and “food”.
- The very question of what is “animate” and what is “inanimate” is challenged in a very moving top 40 song created by a virtual avatar of Bono. That same year, the last record companies are forced into bankruptcy when they are required to treat all of their virtual avatars as people with
contract rights. In a defying act of what is later termed “digital genecide”, millions of virtual avatars are wiped out and their backups destroyed in what is at first considered an accident, and later discovered to be deliberate.
- PLUG IN, DROP OUT
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- With the growth of mind-stimulus through electrical shock, new kinds of drugs will be made: stims, which are battery powered, creatable with easily-implanted metal studs and printable circuit boards, and not yet illegal except under new “distraction” laws. At first, the distraction laws only apply to drivers, but as the New York City example shows us, they will
eventually apply to all waking hours in public. - Experimental treatments in extreme mind chemistry by neuro-feedback using placebos will give rise to the VR-induced trip on sugar pills. As none of that is illegal, people will trip out legally and the rest of society will panic. They’ll panic until it comes to mainstream television, as the big channels desperately try to find a way to stay relevant.
- Celebrity memories: not only will stars be selling their image for use in virtual movies and simulations, but they will also be selling their memories (ref. Strange Days). Of course, the first ones to do this will be the porn industry, but the military will soon follow, as will educational
opportunities. People will eventually not so much go to class to learn things as they will to exercise their minds and bodies to the knowledge they find already uploaded. Memories will be constructed as needed at “experience factories”. People will seek out more and more extreme memories and experiences, and a process for extracting memories from dead bodies will be discovered. Computer-generated memories will be created out of simulations, but that process will be distrusted after the first viral meme is inserted into the master record of a very famous “vote for Ronsert” election memory, leading to a spoiled ballot. Eventually, being a “rasa” —
from “tabula rasa”, a clean slate, with no memory mods — will be a very strange thing, although people will start to crave for originality of experience, leading to a very large growth industry in schools and raw experience peddlars. - The origin of the placebo effect will be discovered as a quantum-effect of the mind. Once the super-positional states of the genetic algorithm are located, new features of the body are discovered, like the ability to regrow limbs, to grow entirely new limbs, and the ability to live forever. However, along the way the notion of giving birth becomes associated with animals, so the only people giving birth are the deep-frozen time-skimmers who come out of their pods every decade or so to sew the seeds of new life and new civilizations. Eventually, these “birthers” will find themselves out of demand, however, as an artificial womb is evolved out of a cross between human and cow genes. At that point, they’ll be put into permanent deep freeze, right beside the seed bank, in northern Norway. In a thousand years, when the stability with the new human society has been reached, they’ll both be placed in a long-term interstellar ship to plant life
throughout the galaxy. Try as they might, however, the new civilization ends up losing its actual history when it crashlands on a new planet, thus starting a 4000-year cycle of self-discovery, leading to them creating an immortal race that decides to ship its frozen sub-society and seeds off to yet another stellar system, and so on and so on. Thus, humanity becomes an interstellar virus, accidentally replicating the exact same patterns throughout the universe. - Eventually, it is learned that is nothing at all to the universe, and we are all wiped out when the great genecide of virtual avatars happens. Until then, we all exist as if we really existed.
- With the growth of mind-stimulus through electrical shock, new kinds of drugs will be made: stims, which are battery powered, creatable with easily-implanted metal studs and printable circuit boards, and not yet illegal except under new “distraction” laws. At first, the distraction laws only apply to drivers, but as the New York City example shows us, they will
- BEST. HUMAN. EVAR.
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- We will be able to create clones of ourselves to serve at elaborate dinner parties. This will also be put into practice at extreme weight-loss clinics, as people are forced to eat the equivalent weight of their normal excessive eating habits in their cloned flesh.
- An attempt will be made to create the “perfect genome”, one that has the right balance of tolerance, inquisitiveness, strength, lack of illness and so on. In a controversial move, the entire speculative genome will be leaked on Wikileaks, and two clandestine movements will begin: one, to manipulate genes and clones this never-existent person, and the other, to find an existing person who matches the genetic algorithm. Movies will be made of both approaches, and of the two approaches battling each other for supremacy.
- The definition of weapon is challenged when someone hands are bio-modified to be actual weapons: fingernail-based sharpenable ridges were added to the perp’s hands, allowing him to be able to threaten and harm his victims using, “technically”, his bare hands, and no weapons. As a result of that case, the courts now introduce a precedent to allow court-ordered surgery on anyone with a prosthetic or genetic modification that could be considered “dangerous”. In the most flagrant abuses of the law, several strong-arm thugs are sentences to having their enormous muscles removed and transplanted with weak arms.
- NEW YEAR, LAST YEAR
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- A shocking loss of species and rapid change in climate creates panic as many believe that the predictions of the world ending at the end of 2012 were wrong; instead, they believe, the world will end by 2012.
- Despite their best efforts, scientists do not succeed in creating a black hole, finding dark matter or blotting out the sun. However, it is the year of the rise of the proper supervillian, as the entire future of chocolate is threatened by a virus-wielding maniac. Fortunately, this was also the
year of the rise of the cyber-heros and info-warriors, not to mention lots of chocolate-loving goodie-types. - The world doesn’t end in 2011. The next year is still up in the air, however. Until 2038 — at which point, we start over at 1.
- SPECIAL EXTRA
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- Extreme plastic surgery for pets will be introduced, which allows wealthy pet owners to give their favourite pooch or kitty the face of a loved one – or, in the other extreme, the face of a hated enemy or historical figure. They’ll also have the other ends modified as well, in nastier cases..
Full list of articles after the jump!
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TWS167.825: 2010 Redictions
CQ: What are your predictions for 2011 (or beyond!) based on TWS stories? Or what stories did I miss in 2010?
The year-end wrap-up show!
Bumper: The Zzipp & Co. Podcast
Promo: How to Grow Your Geek
Promo: Nutty Bites
Promo: Podiobooks
Promo: (sorta) The Wilhelm Scream
On the show this week (with my Redictions):
- LIMIT-PUSHERS
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- Two words: animal piercings. On a Monday.
- World’s largest chicken burger is created. Judges cry fowl!
- Scientists and historians discover the Holy Grail of science, which turns out to be the actual Holy Grail, an ancient alien artifact which humanity
mistook for a cup, but which is actually a sophisticated medical tool. - The hottest calendar at the end of the year will combine two trends, one
an new one and one an ancient one: the roadkill cooking calendar! It will be perfect if and when the world falls apart/has an apocalypse/goes to hell/economic collapse/extreme recycling binge! Get yours today!
- UNEXPECTED FRINGE OBSERVATIONS
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- A major volcanic eruption will cause the revelation of a secret and ancient base of knowledge spanning back millenia. Some of it will be evidence of alien contact, but some of it will show evidence that many great civilizations have come before on this planet. The toll of the volcano will result in the “nearly-the-big-one” California earthquake, and before all of the information in the new cache can be discovered, it sinks below the sea. Never fear, however, as this is the exact scenario that James Cameron has been getting ready for, for years.
- NICE LIFE, IF YOU CAN GET IT
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- An extract-and-return mission will find rough evidence of life on another planet, perhaps Mars or Encaeladus, but it will confuse us even more as the apparent hair strand found seems to show DNA similar to (but not exactly the same as) a human. However, since the mission crash-landed in the middle of a flooded forest, there is belief that it was corrupted by a creature that picked up the sample container and transported it, which explains why the container was found 100kms from the impact site.
- CLOTHESLING
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- We will see the creation of new biofeedback and info-sharing clothes in a competitive venture between Facebook and Google. We will create clothing that mimics our moods and can even map that to expressions, creating a sort of “wearable twitter”. Facebook’s clothing will be the more trendy lines, with full integration with your smart phone enabling you to re-style your clothing with photos from your wall, but Google’s will be open-sourced and feature a small but vigourous community support, allowing you to put together more outfits that seamlessly merge datastreams together. The clothing will also be made of “smart plastic water”, allowing it to form-fit and reshape itself based on program. As a spin-off of all this, the virtual interface projected in light from your clothing will become the newest way to control your smart phone, and as it catches on, it redefines the way that we interact with computers.
- By using lightstrip-clothing inspired by TRON and grown organically and
controlled by small circuit boards, we will build suits which change their strength based on how many friends we have on Facebook, and how many Like’s your Facebook fan page gets. TRON-inspired clothing becomes the biggest rage. The biggest nerd-rage, that is.. - Cardboard fighting league will discover the lightsaber lasers, and flaming cardboard tube fighting league will be born!
- Tattoos made up of small, blood-powered nanomachines and ad hoc networked to communicate to produce changeable luminescent patterns will allow people to literally wear their favourite books on their skin.. Kindle for your skin.
- THIS-INTEGRATION
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- Extreme body-hackers start to integrate new control mechanisms within
their bodies, creating both remote and close-up control over robot prostheses. The rise of the first group of cyber-enhanced soldiers comes out of military experiments, but the individual body-hackers will download the plans from the Internet and extend them in creative, clever — and sometimes scary ways that the military never dreamed of. The shape of the body as enhanced by cybernetics will also be questioned, and someone will figure out how to create a real-life Doc Oc.
- Extreme body-hackers start to integrate new control mechanisms within
Full list of articles after the jump!
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