Futurist Foresight

Scanning the ever changing global environment and examining the leading trends in business management, strategic foresight, robotics, space (government and commercial), energy, the digital landscape and other emerging technologies today, in order to better understand tomorrow.

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Future Tech

We will examine emerging technologies based on the following categories. These have been heavily, but not exclusively, based on the work of Michell Zappa and sources listed after the categories (and subcategories) listed below:

Robotics
Utility Fog
Telematics
Swarm Robotics
Robotic Surgery
Embodied Avatars
Domestic Robotics
Self-Driving cars
Smart Toys
Appliance Robotics

Biotech

Biomarkers
PGS (Personal Gene Sequencing)
Telemedicine
Personalised Medicine
Stem-Cell Treatments
Regenerative Medicine
Artificial Limbs / Hybrid Assisted Limbs
Wetware (Biofeedback)
Artificial Retinas
Organ Printing
Synthetic Blood
Smart Drugs
Synthetic Biology
Gene Therapy
Nanomedicine
Reversal of Aging
Anti-Aging Drugs
Synthetic / In-Vitro Meat
Human microbiome is mapped
Quantum biology reveals the physics of life
Epigenetics informs real-time genome tweaking
Organisms become programmable
New lifeforms created from scratch
Electronic eye glasses

Warfare

Cyberwarfare
Metamaterial Cloaking
UAVs (Unmanned Arial Vehicle)
Exoskeletons

Money

Mobile Payments
Cashless Society
Virtual Currencies

Materials

Programmable Matter
Nanowires
Graphene
Carbon Nanotubes
Optical Invisibility Cloaks
Molecular Assembler
Biomaterials
Meta-Materials
Self-Healing Materials
Memristor
Personal Fabricators
Additive Manufacturing
Print on Demand
3D Printing
Space-time cloaks conceal macro-world events
DNA origami constructs useful nanodevices
Teleportation scales up from atoms to molecules
Metamaterials make invisibility real

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Intelligence Amplification
VR-Only (Virtual Reality) Lifeforms
Machine Translation
ANN (Artificial Neural Networks)
Procedural Storytelling
Medical Diagnostics
Natural Language Interpretation
Software Agents
Machine-Based High Frequency Trading
Recommendation Engines
Machine Augmented Cognition

Space

Space Elevator
Sub-Orbital Spaceflight
Lunar Outpost
Mars Mission
Solar Sail
Space Tourism
VASIMIR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplamsa Rocket)
Private / Commercial Spaceflight
Regulatory hurdles drives open standards and “Coopetition”
Discovery of extraterrestrial life
Personal satellites for $1,000
Zero-G biology accelerates drug discovery
Orbital manufacturing becomes practical
Moon base
Asteroid Mining

Energy

Space-Based Solar Power
Superconducting Interties
Nanostructure Battery Cathodes
Enernet
Conductive Energy
Multi-Segmented Smart Grids
Predominant Use of Renewables
Tidal Turbines
Traveling Wave Reactor
Thorium Reactor
Nanogenerators
Biomechanical Harvesting
Piezo-Electricity
Artificial Photosynthesis
Solar Thermal
Photovoltaic Glass
Photovoltaics
Inductive Chargers
Smart Meters
Fuel Cells
Ultra-Capacitors
Bio-Enhanced Fuels
Lithium-Air batteries

Media

All Media on Demand
Gamification of Media
Procedural Storytelling
Location-Aware Media

Natural User Interface (NUI) Software / Interface

Multitouch
4K Projection
Immersive 3D Projections
AR (Augmented Reality)
Immersive Virtual Reality
Gesture Recognition
Speech Recognition
Haptics
Telepresence
Machine Vision

Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP) Hardware

Tabs and Pads
Holography
Context-Aware Computing
3D - Volumetric Screens
Boards
Reprogammable Chips
Flexible Screens
Modular Computers
Eyewear-Embedded Screens
Electronic Paper
Pico-Projectors
SPIMES (objects that can be tracked through Space & Time)
Wearables
Smart Clothing
Fabric-Embedded Screens
Retinal Screens
Quantum Computing
Skin-Embedded Screens
Transparent LCD
Glasses free 3D TV

Internet (Connectivity)

Smart Cities
Interplanetary Internet
HAP (High Altitude Platform)
Smart Infrastructure
4G - 4th Generation Cellular Wireless (WiMax, LTE [3GPP Long Term Evolution])
5G - 5th Generation Cellular Wireless
Virtual Property
Pico-cells
Mesh Networking
Photonics
Reputational Economy
Social Graph
Remote Presence
Exocortex
PAN (Personal Area Networks)
Cloud Computing
NFC (Near Field Communication)
Unified Data
Semantic Web
White space Wi-fi
Electronic roads

Geotech

Weather Engineering
Vertical Farming
Seasteading
Desalination
Carbon Sequestration
Climate Engineering
Arcologies

Sensors

Depth Imaging
Near-Field Communication
Pervasive Video Capture
Biometric Sensors
Smart Power Meters
Biomarkers
Machine Vision
Computational Photography
Neuro-Informatics

Neuroscience
Machine learning merges with cognitive science
Quantum physics explains consciousness
Brain atlas built
Brain scans record “Mind Movies”. (Being done already)
Optogenetics leads to neural switchboard

Big data
Gamification of science
Scientific papers executable as code
A wikipedia of science models
Data-intensive science spawns new disciplines
Massively linked data becomes a public utility

The Ocean of the future
Seawater fuels fusion
Humans plumb ocean´s depths
The oceans top millimeter is mapped
The majority of ocean species are inventoried

With subsequent blogposts articles will be posted on the main categories and their subcatagories.

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Michell Zappa studied these company events and put together a brilliant infographic on just where the technologies may head in the near future. It’s based upon the predictions from companies within the industries of Warfare, Biotech, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet, Money, Materials, Green Energy and Space. There are a ton more categories on this chart, so you should be able to find your interests right in there in the nest of predictions.” - Read more here

Michell recently released the 2012 update of the infographic into a new layout on a separate site:

Envisioning Future Tech - Michell Zappa 2012 Update

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A look at the future of science in 2021 as laid out by the Institute for the Future:

Future of Science 2021

”That’s the real point behind the group’s new super-visual report, called “The Future of Science: 2021,” (PDF) which you can see above and view in more detail on the IFTF website (you have to really zoom in to read all of it). This may sound like it’s coming out of a cheesy “Star Trek” episode, but by questioning what the future can be, we can help shape what it will be, the group says.” - CNN

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Deloitte Tech Trends 2012 - Would you like to read the full article? Click Here to download Deloitte Tech Trends 2012

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CNN Money - Timeline of the future.