What would be the ideal car for me? If I became super-rich, one thing I’d like to do is custom-build my own car from the ground-up. First of all, it would have to be a convertible; I love feeling the wind and the air on … Continue readingMy Dream Car
Where are all the gleaming futuristic towers stretching like needles a mile or more into the sky like science fiction promised would be the Future, realized by the 21st century? The closest we’ve come to a real-life Coruscant, at least aesthetically, is places like Dubai; … Continue readingWhere’s My Mile-High Tower?
Twitter isn’t real life. Or is it? Alexey Guzey has a page on his (rather excellent) website about why you should join Twitter right now, and of the perks people list the most striking to me is how common it is to meet new and … Continue readingSponsus ex Twittera?
I can’t stand frustration; ever since I can remember I’ve always had a very low tolerance for it, but ever since the lockdown crisis began in March 2020, and especially stretching into this year, I’ve become much worse. That was the context in which my … Continue readingOf Fediverses and Frustrations
Image is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sketches for Broadacre City; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. What would a genuinely futuristic transportation system look like? From land to air to sea, from human-powered to nuclear-powered, and from everything in between, our options for … Continue readingThoughts on Futuristic Transportation
More than a generation into the age of the Internet, we see everywhere a vast information network ideally suited to the sharing of man’s knowledge, yet almost nowhere do we see it being effectively employed to teach people from start to finish how to do … Continue readingToward a New Vision for Online Education
The past week saw the highest-profile online “deplatforming” yet: Twitter banning Donald Trump, with follow-up actions by other major online services. What does this mean? What are the implications for the future? What should be the response, if any, from those of us who are … Continue readingThe Rise of Deplatforming and the Decentralized Web
How advanced would a spacefaring alien or future civilization become? What is the ultimate fate of intelligence in the universe? Big questions, but there are fundamental underpinnings that affect any civilization that might be out there, perhaps none more fundamental than energy. Civilization’s progress may … Continue readingThe Coming Union of Intelligence and the Cosmos Primeval
For the entire history of computing to date, and even dating back to the advent of television, glowing screens with a board-like form have been the primary and ever-more-dominant way people consume information. This “glowing screen” or “glowing board” paradigm reached its culmination in the … Continue readingIndistinguishable From Nature: Toward a Ubiquitous Dark Web
The role of transportation technology, specifically the fastest transportation that the masses can afford and the infrastructure permits, is a pervasive but often unconsidered factor in our daily lives, influencing our built environment and even our social and economic opportunities. After rapid advancement in the … Continue readingPersonal Transportation of the Near Future: Flying Cars and Beyond