Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do, and I gave the common-sensible reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, woman's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
~Gloria Steinem~
Computer chips made of plastic. Artificial limbs that receive messages directly from the brain. Robots that build more powerful robots.
Until now the problem has been that robots have been costly and difficult to design. One approach that the magazine highlights is the work of Brandeis University researcher Jordan Pollack, who builds robots that can build other robots.
Natural-language processing is another area that the magazine sees as poised to soon fulfill its potential. While the most powerful speech recognition available commercially is only capable of taking dictation or processing simple commands, researchers are making progress on machines capable of handling extended conversations spoken in the language and tone that people normally use.
What will the future hold if. Arctic glaciers continue to melt at an accelerating rate?
Five years ago this great wall of ice of Jakobshavn,, which had moved at a stately 65 feet per day for half a century, suddenly quickened its slide towards the sea. Today, Jakobshavn moves 130 feet, or nearly half a football field, per day. Other Greenland glaciers, including two as large as Jakobshavn, have also doubled their speed, and no one knows exactly why.
Today’s measurably warmer climate, producing tepid ocean temperatures that gnaw at the bottom of big, tidewater outlet glaciers like Jakobshavn, would seem to be the obvious reason for this mad retreat. But perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, Fahnestock postulates, Jakobshavn was behaving this very same way. “Maybe what we’re seeing now is the glacier continuing to respond to the end of the ice age.”
People will travel less in the future. With the rapidly depleting stocks of oil and the rapidly increasing use of oil, the price is sure to rise to a point where travelling will become very expensive.
Terrorism will not just be dependent on religion for its fuel, it will acquire technological and other dimensions. It will be become an academic subject in schools/colleges/universities.
Maybe the people fear the future since they know the lifestyle they are leading is selfish, unnecessary,
Humankind has come a long way in understanding the complex inner workings of our home planet. At the same time, we ourselves have become a geologic force.
