An interesting webcast by Amber Case (from O’Reilly Media’s YouTube channel): Note: Cross-posted from FUTR.es.

From Silicon.com: In this video interview, Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics and AI at the University of Sheffield, discusses developments in robotics – from the proliferation of robots in Japan’s automotive industry to the stair-climbing dexterity of Honda’s Asimo robot and beyond. He also discusses ethical issues, and in which countries we can find the [...]

Education Futures celebrates its first five years of exploring new futures in human capital development with a timeline of the history of education from 1657-2045. This timeline provides not only a glimpse into modern education, but plots out a plausible future history for human capital development. The future history presented is intended to be edgy, [...]

Looking at demographic trends across the United States, Advertising Age came to a conclusion that will be stunning for most people: “The concept of an ‘average American’ is gone, probably forever,” demographics expert Peter Francese writes in 2010 America, a new Ad Age white paper. “The average American has been replaced by a complex, multidimensional [...]

The future is getting harder to imagine –so much that the SciFi channel is giving up on science fiction and rebranding the channel. Rather than pushing for bold futures, network executives at NBC Universal have decided to retreat into the make-believe worlds fantasy, the supernatural and pro wrestling. From their media release: By changing the [...]

The Star Tribune’s Karen Youso interviewed me for what I thought would be a short sidebar article on accelerating change, but it wound up taking the full front page of the Variety section in today’s paper. I’m absolutely delighted to see mainstream media discuss the Technological Singularity! … especially since the article contains questions for [...]

This past week… A shockwave passed through the singularity community today with the public launch of Singularity University at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.  Singularity University aims to assemble a world class community of thought leaders, academics, and entreprenuers across the many fields of exponentially advancing technologies (nanotechnology, genetics, medicine, artificial intelligence, etc.) [...]

Thanks to Jamie Schumacher for passing along the video link: “Imagine [...] turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.” …and, 28 years later, newspapers are shutting down because they cannot compete with the home computer.

Here’s another look at accelerating change. On Friday, the New York Times published an excellent review of Dalton Conley’s book, Elsewhere U.S.A.: “A new breed of American has arrived on the scene,” Conley, a professor at New York University, declares in “Elsewhere, U.S.A.,” his compact guidebook to our nervous new world. Instead of individuals searching [...]

Last month, IBM took out a two-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that touted their vision for a smarter planet. They believe: The world continues to get “smaller” and “flatter.” But we see now that being connected isn’t enough. Fortunately, something else is happening that holds new potential: the planet is becoming smarter. That is, [...]