Read moreThis warfare will be characterized by air forces, robotic forces and enhanced soldiers, and will rely in electrical power grids and other resources as soldiers fight across new battlefields in Europe and Asia. Space will be a vital element, as it allows for communications and the ability to watch a battlefield from a better birds eye view.
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Read moreThe dominant suburban form of all our capital cities creates a landscape that lends itself to the relatively economical retrofitting of water tanks, which could provide the washing and garden-watering needs of most suburban households, leaving the central water supply for kitchen and bathroom. Regrettably, most state and local governments have abandoned their water tank subsidy, undermining any sense in the electorate that we might take some responsibility for our own survival.
Read moreIn Melbourne, the previous state government’s botched privatisation of the rail system has distracted attention from just how extensive the network really is. With a bit more investment it could carry a lot more people. And Melbourne, thankfully, as the only Australian city that didn’t garrotte its tramway system, now revels in the eighth-largest network on the planet. What a civilised way to travel.
Read moreprint isn’t dying, so much as it’s becoming much less interesting and useful. Buying a magazine that’s two-thirds ads is not interesting, nor it is often terribly useful. Buying a magazine that’s two months behind the internet is neither interesting nor useful. Buying a magazine that is simply shitfuck ugly is neither interesting nor useful. Buying a magazine so bereft of content that it doesn’t outlive a single sitting on the bog is neither interesting nor useful.
Read moreVarious planetary models were used to calculate and compare the habitability of Mars, Venus, Europa, Titan, and Enceladus,“ Mendez said. "Interestingly, Enceladus resulted as the object with the highest subsurface habitability in the solar system, but too deep for direct exploration. Mars and Europa resulted as the best compromise between habitability and accessibility
Read moreOver the next 12 months, Hollywood will release several movies with trans-humanist themes, such as Jonathan Mostow’s Surrogates, James Cameron’s Avatar, Barry Ptolemy’s Transcendent Man and The Singularity is Near, with a script by Ray Kurzweil. In a time when the publishing industry is struggling, Better Humans LLC has just launched a new magazine called H+ covering the trans-humanism scene for fans of radical technological change
Read moreThe information revolution is about to hit the developing world for the first time. Not because of governments or NGOs, but because there’s money in them there shantytowns. Think volume. Mobile-payment companies like Sagentia, Gemalto, and Obopay are already targeting the billions – yes, billions – of emerging-market consumers with mobile phones but no bank accounts. First, the developing world leapfrogged copper wire and went directly from word-of-mouth to GSM phones: now they’re jumping straight from the abacus to the smartphone.
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The information tsunami about to hit the developing world is going to be like our desktop, internet, and mobile revolutions all rolled into one. It will save untold thousands of lives, thanks to initiatives like Uganda’s recently unveiled Google SMS health service, vastly improve millions more, make a lot of people rich – and wreak a lot of bloody havoc. Poor countries tend to be tribal, corrupt, politically unstable, and full of angry and frustrated people. There’s a reason China blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube immediately after the Xinjiang violence earlier this year: good networks make insurgents far more dangerous and can amplify a single riot into citywide or even countrywide violence. Better buckle your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy decade.
Read moreGemenne said there was more at stake than cultural and sentimental attachments to swamped countries. Tuvalu makes millions of pounds each year from the sale of its assigned internet suffix .tv to television companies. As a nation state, the Polynesian island also has a vote on the international stage through the UN.
“As independent nations they receive certain rights and privileges that they will not want to lose. Instead they could become like ghost states,” he said. “This is a pressing issue for small island states, but in the case of physical disappearance there is a void in international law.”
Read moreHacking post-industrial cities is becoming a necessity also. The ‘shrinking cities’ project is monitoring the trend in the west toward dwindling futures for cities such as Detroit and Liverpool:
“..In particular, climate change, dwindling fossil sources of energy, demographic aging, and rationalization in the service industry will lead to new forms of urban shrinking and a marked increase in the number of shrinking cities.”
Read moreFor instance, one of the best strategies for reducing U.S. emissions is growing bright green, compact cities. These cities reduce emissions in all sorts of ways, e.g., by reducing the distance people drive, making infrastructure more efficient, making it possible to live wealthier lives in smaller spaces, and helping people to substitute services for products. But cities offer other economic benefits. Just as one example, people who live in walkable neighborhoods are healthier and safer than most Americans are today, meaning that this emissions reduction strategy also returns enormous economic benefits in health, longevity and emotional well-being. These sorts of benefits are almost never brought in to the economics debate about climate change. That doesn’t make the money they save us and earn us any less bankable.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 