About IGF

CBS' 60 Minutes on Climate Change

In case anyone was out, Sunday's 60 Minutes had a devastating first-person view of what climate change means - NOW. Vice President Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was a wake-up call for many about the dangers that face us sooner, then later. 60 Minutes' point that glacier meltdowns and rising seas will effect fresh water supplies in the third world the most over the next few decades, was startling evidence that we must act now to avert future crises. In my book, The Extreme Future, and here Amazon I made the point that vast issues will affect both personal and national security due to climate change. 60 Minutes' The Age of Warming.

The Top Ten Robotic Trends for the 21st Century

1. Robots in both physical and electronic forms will become integrated into our society.
2. Robots will express functional emotions and reasoning.
3. Advanced robots-androids-will appear similar to human beings and fill roles in commerce, community, and government.
4. Robotic efficiency and precision will transform manufacturing, medicine, space travel, research, and industry and displace skilled human labor.
5. The robotics industry will become a multi-billion dollar global business, spawning many new careers and business opportunities.
6. Human beings will adopt robotic human enhancements to achieve superhuman capabilities.
7. Cyborgs-part human, part robot-will develop skills superior to natural humans to meet the demand of specialized jobs.
8. We will encounter serious ethical, security, and social issues due to our robotic creations.
9. Robots will provide convenience, safety, and productivity that will benefit humanity and profoundly impact lifestyles.
10. Androids will achieve a basic level of self-awareness.

New UN Climate Change Report

There is a new United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change which predicts more droughts, fires, floods and storms. The report says temperatures will rise by 6.7 degrees, by 2080. If we are wrong, and sea levels rise in coastal cities, where most of the world's population will be living by 2030, then we could face a risk that is hard to measure in dollars or lives. I am not afraid of forecasting the authentic trends that may hold to disasters such as the environment-at-risk here. The convergence of mega-cities, population growth and extreme climate change simply puts the developing world in harms way in the future.

The Top Ten E-Business Trends for the 21st Century

1. E-business will become a critical competitive strategy that will revolutionize the global economy.
2. Companies will learn to manage customers' relationships by virtually serving their needs "24 × 7"-24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
3. E-business that enables customers to personalize and customize products or services will flourish.
4. Using the Net to find new customers and to better target customer preferences will be a standard practice.
5. Producing, marketing, and distributing products or services online will be a cost-effective strategy for business.
6. Learning to develop and serve online communities with niche interests will be essential to building customer loyalty.
7. E-business models that provide greater choice for customers will change the traditional economics of supply and demand.
8. Ready access to the Net from multiple gateways-cable TV, satellite, wireless telephones, and other devices-will greatly expand e-business opportunities.
9. Highly efficient e-business virtual supply chains will intimately link manufacturers and producers directly to customers.
10. E-business will reach over one billion people and generate more than $2 trillion in revenues worldwide by 2005.

Geoengineering The Planet

There are some large scale ideas emerging about how to fix climate change by deploying huge clean technologies, called geoengineering. Whether this is an engineering fantasy, or reality born on impending environmental risk, we shall see. But the Accelerated Change, brought by the convergence of innovations, primarily nano-bio-info-neuro NBIC, see Nano, may be of use to mitigate climate change risk. Averting climate change with geoengineering, like alternative schemes to block sun radiation, redirect or alleviate ozone, even apply terraforming to the earth's atmosphere, may be the only solutions to avert future crises to the environment or human health.

The Top Ten Electronic Education Trends for the 21st Century

1. Electronic education via the Net will enable interconnected learning experiences, choices, and opportunities for billions worldwide.
2. Educational content will be delivered by new computer, interactive TV, satellite, and Internet technologies in the new millennium.
3. Interactive online multimedia and multidimensional content will revolutionize learning.
4. Self-paced, self-directed individualized virtual learning will dominate business training.
5. Students and teachers will prefer on-demand virtual learning to traditional school programs
6. Corporations will prefer Net-based training where workers can learn at their own pace.
7. Virtual Reality scenarios that depict real-world and fantasy experiences will increase the learning impact for all types of education.
8. Real-time Net chats with other global learners will make virtual education a satisfying social experience beyond the limits of time and distance.
9. Teachbots-smart agents-will transform education, providing personalized guidance when and where people need it.
10. People will learn to design their own electronic learning programs, which will increase their understanding, skills, creativity, and career choices.

Disney's New Future Movie

Recently, Disney released a new animated film called Meet the Robinsons. As the futurist chosen to work on the film, mostly for promotion, I had a blast. From flying cars to instant nano-buildings and genetically enhanced frogs that sing, the film is a great adventure romp into the future. I went down to the studio and was interviewed for Movie Surfers.

Of course this was pure Disney--a retro-vision of the future, with a theme about a young orphan who wants to make the world a better place in the future, and he did. The other cool fact about this film was the outstanding animation, first after the merge of Pixar and Disney, with the genius of John Lassiter on overdrive.

Also, Disney is rolling out the film this week to 700 theaters in 3-D. Somehow this retro-innovation is coming back strong. Rodriguez of Spy Kids did a 3-D film and it was a hit. This is the wave of the future 3-D Web. I think the dancing T-Rex probably deserves his own film next time. Check out the film if you have kids or not.