Lifeboat Foundation

No matter how many books crowded my parents’ living room bookshelves in my childhood home in New York, two always sat at eye level right in the center: Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.

Robots have shown us disappointment in their delivery v. promises in the past. Therefore, I understand why consumers are disenchanted.

A survey finds many Americans seem skeptical or uncertain of future predictions involving robots, artificial intelligence and virtual lovers.

Continue reading “Americans Doubt Future Popularity of Virtual Lovers” »

Human civilization has always been a virtual reality. At the onset of culture, which was propagated through the proto-media of cave painting, the talking drum, music, fetish art making, oral tradition and the like, Homo sapiens began a march into cultural virtual realities, a march that would span the entirety of the human enterprise. We don’t often think of cultures as virtual realities, but there is no more apt descriptor for our widely diverse sociological organizations and interpretations than the metaphor of the “virtual reality.” Indeed, the virtual reality metaphor encompasses the complete human project.

Virtual Reality researchers, Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson, write in their book Infinite Reality; “[Cave art] is likely the first animation technology”, where it provided an early means of what they refer to as “virtual travel”. You are in the cave, but the media in that cave, the dynamic-drawn, fire-illuminated art, represents the plains and animals outside—a completely different environment, one facing entirely the opposite direction, beyond the mouth of the cave. When surrounded by cave art, alive with movement from flickering torches, you are at once inside the cave itself whilst the media experience surrounding you encourages you to indulge in fantasy, and to mentally simulate an entirely different environment. Blascovich and Bailenson suggest that in terms of the evolution of media technology, this was the very first immersive VR. Both the room and helmet-sized VRs used in the present day are but a sophistication of this original form of media VR tech.

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This veteran lost his legs in war. Now, he’s found new purpose in yoga.

Russia’s hope of a partnership with China in Tech. Could QC be part of this?

In May 2014, Putin visited Beijing and presided over the signing of numerous deals, including a mammoth 30-year natural gas contract worth $400 billion, seeking to show the West that Russian Federation still had viable options.

They are also hoping to clinch an agreement on a high-speed railway line between Moscow and Kazan, some 700 kilometres east of the capital, by the end of the year.

Continue reading “Putin praises ‘all-embracing’ partnership of Russia, China” »

NASA aims for a Star Trek future by transforming replicators into a real-world technology using a 3D printer/recycler! — B.J. Murphy for Serious Wonder.

Good luck with that one Russia. Just to deadly for me.

To teleport from one place to another has, and still remains, one of the most sought-after technologies since it was first conceived in the writings of our greatest science fiction authors.

Few won’t have gawped at Star Trek’s transporter and while we’ve managed to conquer many of the technologies first outlined in the series this one has evaded us so far.

Continue reading “Russia’s Planning To Develop A Teleportation Device By 2035” »

Matt Mullican’s virtual worlds.

Moscow has signed an agreement with Los Angeles-based company Hyperloop One to explore building a futuristic, high-speed transportation system known as a Hyperloop in the Russian capital.

A Hyperloop involves using magnets to levitate pods inside an airless tube, creating conditions in which the floating pods can shuttle people and cargo at speeds of up to 750 mph (1,200 kph).