I ran into a page reminding us how our kids won't know how many of the things we grew up with were. Videocassettes, blowing into a video game to get it to work, and many other analog media are simply a way of the past. It may be our job to remind our kids of the innovations that have been made to made them more technologically savvy. This learning will make them better able to navigate our future.
It is also important for us to stay on top of modern technology so we don't forget how to program the "name futuristic machine here". I know my grandfather blatantly refused to learn anything with a digital dial and stuck to his old wind-up watch. While I respect that, learning more of the old while keeping an eye towards the new makes us more childlike and keeps the fires of learning burning.
So, never stop learning and keep your head up, your powder dry, and your steam powered with the positronic brain working. ;)

I wanted to refer my readers to another blog of failed predictions through movies.
The problem is the Challenger disaster and lack of government funding, I guess. While some of these are dystopian novels, and it's good that they didn't happen, the fact that they couldn't happen is still there. In '69, we went to the moon. It looked like we'd be on Mars in a matter of Years. Forty years later, we're still on Earth and have returned to the Moon since the end of the Apollo program. I don't understand why we don't use Apollo-like technology to return to the Moon. Instead we're using a more expensive new program for our grand return. I wonder if it will ever happen.

The cost of sequencing of the human genome is now down to around $48,000. I find that to be revolutionary when it's not been terribly long since the Dawn of the Human Genome Project itself.

This is a dramatic fall. James Watson's Genome was sequenced in 2007, at the cost of $2,000,000. There are also services only for academics for sequencing of the genome at $5,000.

Find more about this, and more links at this website.

I loved the Long Now Foundation since I first heard of it. I almost think of it with the authority and reverence of "The Church of the Long Now". ;) Well, they are working on several major projects. One: To build a ten thousand year clock that will remain accurate for ten thousand years. Two: To build spheres that can be viewed with microscopes to view the Chapters 1-3 of Genesis (The Bible). Three: To add 0 to the beginning of all 4-digit years (ex: 02009). This is to allow for the bug that will be in future computers that are not ready for the decamillinium. Check them out. And keep your eyes out for the future.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is putting out its newest version (DSM-V) by May 2012. I am a mental health consumer, and I think this could finally bring some resolution to many of the problems that are going on in Mental Health at the moment. A paradigm change, if you will. Is homosexuality nature or nurture? Or a disease? It was in the DSM at one version or the other. This is a very important book and will define many of our buzzwords for the next 20 years or so. It may not be a big change, but the Talking Heads and the Newspapers will have to change their tunes. This is very exciting and could lead to more (or less) disabiity payouts. More or less medication perscriptions. And more or less people called "jerks" instead of "ill".
You can find out more at http://www.psych.org/dsmv.asp

I found Ten Forecasts by the World Future Society and thought I'd add a bit of commentary to them. Here goes nothing:

1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025. According to FORBES magazine, there are 691 Billionaires in the world. With inflation driving down the value of the Dollar and the Euro in the future, I could fully see this happening. The WFS also points out that Globalization and Technological innovation (such as the internet) are making this possible. This aligns with my thoughts, such as e-commerce being some 75% of total business by 2025.

2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry. While researching for this project, I ran into glow-in-the-dark paints in crayola-16 colors. Also, there is Make Magazine inspiring wearable computers and Arduino Microcontrollers that sew into shirts and other fabrics. With the Arduino-Ethernet Shield this is entirely possible as well. The Arduino is open source and open source will take over the electronics market in the wearable field.

3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States. The War on Terror is hardly talked about under the Obama Administration. The threats in between the US and North Korea and China and their "Hacker State" will lead us ino a Cold War with China. Russia is a wild card. It could go either way, but Russia will be innovating and leading the way in technology soon.

4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society. I believe the counterfeiting of money will lead us to Japanese style Credit-Over-Cellphone systems. Either that, or we will use Credit styl cards entirely.

5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event. I don't know about this one. Possibly a mass genocidal event in terms of flu. But that goes against technology and number 7.

6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century. If they mean costing 1.27 a quart at Wal-Mart and being 50bucks a barrel, it probably already is.

7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that by 2040 or so, we'll have figured out vast long-life or immortality. He also says that the first millenarian is already about 60.

8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080. With the Rainforests being cut down, we're on the way to this in South America as well.

9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic. This could also lead to us developing other worlds as fast as possible. Or at least two way rovers to bring back as much resources as possible.

10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities. Game theory will vastly control our lives. Supercomputers will be commercially available to me and you at a desktop size once quantum computers are properly developed, so I can see this happening by 2030.

I saw THIS and decided it had to be posted. It's super cool, fits like a.... glove(?). And uses leds to light. The best we had was the little lights that hung onto our buttonholes in the Army. They put out a lot of light when squeezed. Shined in different colors. These would be good because the light would be just where you need it, but a good headlamp is always appreciated for when you need to touch something.
Those GloveLED things would be great worn while carrying an M4 into a crowded house. You point your fireteam where you want them to go, and there is no confusion because of the light. Get them in IR for ultimate effectiveness with night-vision goggles (NVGs).
I'm ready to sign the contract now, are you?

If there's one positive thing that has come out of the entire Zeitgeist, Loose Change, 9/11 Truth Movement, it has been The Venus Project. The Project calls for a total realignment of our culture. A new paradigm if you will.
It operates out of a 21.5 acre research park in Venus, Florida. It believes that social reforms and think tanks can get together and make big decisions to change our culture. But it will take our whole world.
It seems to involve no ownership. From the projects Essay site:

"One of the basic premises of The Venus Project is that we work towards having all of the Earth's resources as the common heritage of all the world's people. Anything less will simply result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in the present system. "

Are we ready? Are you ready? I don't believe we are.

The future is NOW.

And if you need proof of it, there is a site called http://www.longbets.org/ that specializes in futuristic bets. Some of them, already have came to be claimed. All of them go to charity. There is a 200 US Dollar minimum and the charity has to be Federally recognized. My favorite was Ray Kurzweil and Mitchell Kapor betting whether by 2029 the (in)famous Turing Test will have been beaten. The stakes are a donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Kurzweil Foundation. I like those odds. Two of my favorite charities. You can even make your own bets of challenge someone else who made a wager to the air. Check it out....

The AR-15 Rifle (being used as the M-16 rifle and the M-4 Carbine) has been used as the primary combat and service rifle since before Vietnam. Well, being a former Army Infantryman, I've used the M-4 Carbine in Combat. It's an effective weapon, except for all the damned cleaning. I've heard of tests with weapons based on the AK-47 where they were buried in the sand removed, dusted off and fired without fail.
Well, the XM-29 was the newest improvement, made to not fire with failure so often (like the M-16/4). It was deemed to be too heavy for combat, so it was split into the XM-25 and the XM-8.
The XM-8 was pulled out of testing before fielding. I really cannot find out why.
The XM-25 is ready for combat testing later this year and it is the future of combat if it doesn't meet the same fate as the XM-8. It is made to fire around corners with a round that explodes in air. Read more about it here: http://strategypage.com/dls/articles2005/2005560144.asp

Well, what do you think of the possibility of Strong AI taking us all over? I think it highly unlikely as long as inventors remembering the three laws of robotics. I think it more likely that a insect-like nanobot form some kind of "Grey-Goo". But still, as long as we remember Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics in our engineering, we should be fine.

I found an article today that says scientist believe we should have nothing to fear, and I will end by quoting the entire thing here. It seems to talk some about the Terminator: Salvation movie. I haven't seen it, but the previews looked awesome. Anyway, here you go:

Despite 'Terminator,' machines still on our side: Scientists say AI will be humanity's 'Salvation'

By Ethan Sacks
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/05/26/2009-05-26_despite_terminator_machines_still_on_our_side_scientists_say_a
i_will_be_humanity.html#ixzz0GwSZrgNC&B

The post-apocalyptic "Terminator Salvation" depicts a world in which a computer becomes self-aware - and promptly makes the logical decision to wipe out the humans that made it. It's a scenario that's gotten a lot eerier in the 25 years since the pre-Internet days of the first "Terminator" movie.

But there's no reason banish the BlackBerry to the basement ...just yet, say computer scientists.

"We live in a world today where this is no longer science fiction," says McG, the director of "Terminator Salvation." "Artificial intelligence is absolutely everywhere, from the ABS brakes in your car to your BlackBerry, spelling the word you misspelled correctly on your behalf.

"It's here."

Not so fast.

While the most powerful supercomputer - the IBM Roadrunner at the Los Alamos National Laboratory - can do about a thousand trillion calculations per second, experts say machines still can't come close to a real-life Arnold Schwarzenegger when it comes to recognizing patterns and solving problems.

"At this point, the technology is not to the point where it's self aware," said professor Reid Simmons of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "So they're not going to make decisions such as, 'Oh, I'm getting tired of dropping bombs on Afghanistan, I think I'll fly over to Germany and I'll drop bombs there instead.' That's not going to happen."

If and when computers do become sentient, Simmons believes their human creators won't be that stupid: We will have engineered in basic safeguards.

"We'll still have control of the off plug," he says.

Noted futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, author of the book "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology," believes computers will be able to pass the so-called Turing test - when a computer shows an intelligence that is indistinguishable from a human - by the late 2020s.

Sound a little too science fiction? Take a note of Kurzweil's track record: in the 1980s, he predicted a computer would beat a human grandmaster at chess by 1998. He was a year late, since Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in 1997.

"This technology is growing exponentially," says Kurzweil. "What used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket. What used to fit in your pocket will fit inside a blood cell 25 years from now."

But rather than an adversarial war between man and machines envisioned in the "Terminator" series, Kurzweil believes the technical advancement of the next few decades will herald a literal rewiring of the human brain. Given the shrinking costs of nanotechnology, it's a matter of time before humans can turn themselves into supercomputers.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/05/26/2009-05-26_despite_terminator_machines_still_on_our_side_scientists_say_ai_will_be_humanity.html#ixzz0GwSm9fSq&B

"It's not going to be a clear distinction where you can walk in a room and say humans on the left side of the room and AIs, computers on the right side," says Kurzweil. "We're all going to be deeply integrated with these technologies."

McG isn't so sure. He points to the splitting of the atom as proof that the human race is at its most inventive when it's thinking up new ways to potentially destroy itself. What logical, free-thinking computer would want to share the planet with us?

"Not only do I think it's possible [that computers would want to terminate us,] I'm not certain humanity will be around in 50 to 100 years," he says.

Science fiction has certainly mined those fears over the years, whether it's been "2001's" homicidal computer, Hal 9000, or the computer that almost obliterated the world in a nuclear holocaust in "War Games." (In a case of life imitating art, the Roadrunner supercomputer at Los Alamos is used for nuclear simulations.)

But Andrew Ng, a computer science professor at Stanford University, says artificial intelligence will breed machines that are more R2-D2 than T-800s. In fact, he adds, there may be more legitimate worry that the future will resemble "Mad Max" or "The Day After Tomorrow" than the one predicted by "Terminator Salvation."

"I think humanity faces many doomsday scenarios today, such as those posed by global warming, possible nuclear war, maybe even asteroid strikes," he says. "AI is much more likely to see us through these problems than to cause them."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/2009/05/26/2009-05-26_despite_terminator_machines_still_on_our_side_scientists_say_ai_will_be_humanity.html?page=1#ixzz0GwSzP0NP&B

As the Editor-in-Chief and publisher of Cheer10s.com, I scour through a lot of computer and technology news. It is important to me to convey to the Hacker world what is going on so they can be better prepared for the future.
This helps me to be the best Futurist that I can be.
Basically, I see more restrictions coming our way. Australia and Iraq, as well as China see large Censorship "walls", such as the Great Firewall of China.
This should be fought tooth and nail by everyone that believe in Human Rights.
Big Brother is watching us all and wants to take our internet.

Just think about setting up a Tor relay for the poor guys in China, Australia, Iran, and elsewhere that cannot use the Internet for legitimate reasons.
Protest to your Congressman and Senator.
You can make a difference.

So, Eugenics is a path that is being talked widely about with the study of Human Cloning for traits to the study of Human Cloning for health. So, what is Eugenics? Wikipedia says the word eugenics derives from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genēs (born), and was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, who defined it as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations".^{[22]
That sounds like it even includes the study of plant "unnatural selection", as in breeding for traits like more vitamins or different colors that lead to a higher quantity of carotenes inside. Monsanto has been a company that I have long supported. I even wrote a eZine article supported by Biotechnology Organizations a few years back, which can be read at the bottom here: http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=2534
I see nothing wrong with Eugenics. As long as we aren't killing babies or hurting people that choose not to be under other traits. I believe that people's "desired" traits will be so varied that there variety will remain.}

I bought a book, solely based on the cover and its use of the word 'AI' on the cover. It was Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. I read this two years ago, but it has been a book that seems to have impacted a lot of techies, including the readers of Wired Magazine.
The Vingean Singularity is the idea that technology has progressed at the rate of Moore's Law since the beginning of history. It continues that it will continue that way until technology increases exponentially instantaneously. This will be the Technological Singularity.
Ray Kurzweill and Victor Vinge are the biggest proponents of this "law". I can truly see this happening, though I believe that Moore's Law is slowing down because of Heat Transfer.
Proponents believe that the first person to live to be one thousand years is about 60 today.
What do you think of this? I think that it could truly happen and will lead us to the Gibsonian world of Cyberpunk.

It's been said (and I believe it was Andy Warhol), that in the future, we'd all have our fifteen minutes of fame. The future is now. And with Web2.0, we can grab it. My son just started early. I'll relate the story.
My son left a message on my cellphone (and I quote): "Dad, Can you make me a web page just like iCarly. I love you, bye." I couldn't help but laugh. 1) I am only an elementary web scripter and programmer and 2) I am not that dedicated.
So, we compromised. And made him "just a website". And his googlepage began. Here's what I've made for him so far. He found a couple of errors. One spelling and one a image link went down (since I have locally hosted the image).
I submit it for your approval and wonder what you think about the nature of our fifteen minutes and the nature of my son wanting his at seven. ;)

Well, since I defined that our theme was links and pics that show we're going down the road to a Cyberpunk world, I guess (for some of you) I need to define what Cyberpunk is.

From Answers.com the definition of Cyberpunk is Fast-paced science fiction involving futuristic computer-based societies. That is the definition of Cyberpunk world that I am working with.

There are other definitions as to what a Cyberpunk is. For example, A futuristic, online delinquent: breaking into computer systems; surviving by high-tech wits. The term comes from science fiction novels such as "Neuromancer" and "Shockwave Rider." See steampunk. I have heard of "never trusting anyone that describes themselves as a Cyberpunk". That just makes me think of never trusting anyone that describes themselves as a hacker. Hackers are not all bad people, and I am a self-(and other)described hacker.

I would read the rest of the page at Answers.com and follow some of the links for a good read. It describes Japan and Sony Center in Berlin as Real Life Cyberpunk.

I hope we have ironed out some of our definition and can get more to the meat and taters, but we could spend the rest of our life deciding what Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Clockpunk mean.

I've always been a fan of constructed languages. I got into the whole Klingon(ese) kick when I was in middle school. Yeah, I can still say "What are you doing?" (A greeting) and "Revenge is a dish which is best served cold!" in Klingon. I even am trying to learn Esperanto, which is an English-Portuguese mix or sorts.
Well, today, I ran into Engrish. It's when people who natively speak Japanese use signage in English. It turns into a clusterf*$&. Believe me. It's bad. I'll just refer you to the site. http://www.syberpunk.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=signs1
Well, how was that? It's so William Gibson, that I can't stand myself. It's like the whole world moved to Greater Hong Kong. This is exactly the reason I love reading fortune cookies.

Hi. My name is Jeremiah Grymstone. That is a pseudonym. I don't mind being known by my real name, but just to give me a shade of privacy, I prefer to go by Grym, Jeremy, or Grymstone. If you want to know my real name, we'll work on that. I am Web2.0 conscious, so I twitter under the name Grymstone, my MySpace is http://www.myspace.com/grymstone, I Digg under Cheer10sadmin, and my facebook will remain on my real name, William Tarbush.
Anyway, there isn't much to be known about me. I am a disabled United States Army Infantryman. I don't work, but am a full time patient at the Veterans Hospital in Tucson.
Anything else??? We'll get to that, too.
This blog will mainly be a link and photo blog about the future. I see it mainly leaning toward Cyberpunk fiction (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc.), but others will be welcome.
I hope to post often, but I'm also the administrator of http://www.cheer10s.com where I blog and post news links, so if I get busy, don't worry your pretty little heads. There's more coming.
Thanks, and keep reading.