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future

News: How To Predict The Future Better Than Everybody Else

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Crystal Ball

History often isn’t kind to those who go on the record making predictions. Albert Einstein once said that nuclear energy would never be a thing, while Margaret Thatcher predicted that a woman would never be prime minister in her lifetime. And remember the record executive who said the Beatles had no future in show business? People are often spectacularly bad at forecasting the future. But they don’t have to be, says Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has spent decades studying how people make predictions. In a new book, “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” … Read more

Discussion: Smart Phones of the Future

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phones

Every year, there’s a new iPhone. And five or six new Galaxies. And they basically look the same – a little bigger, maybe a little curved, but essentially a big screen on a rectangular body. Maybe the color changes a bit, but the iPhone 6s would still be recognizable to an iPhone 1 user. And yet, if you look at the jump from the first cell phones to the Motorola flip phone, or from there to the iPhone, the leaps were pretty evolutionary. So it seems like we’re due for something new, and if history is any guide, there will … Read more

Discussion: Countries of the Future

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We tend to live firmly in the now – the way things are at the moment is the way most of us assume they always have been, and always will be. But as they say, the only constant is change. A hundred and fifty years ago, the Britisah Empire was ascendant, and the US was a regional power fighting over slavery. The Romans had their time, as did the Greeks, and empires have waxed and waned throughout history. So Let’s fast-forward 100 years – do we still have mostly the same countries on the globe? Which countries no longer exist, … Read more

News: Buildings of the Future?

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The Interlace, one of Singapore’s most ambitious and unusual residential developments, has been crowned World Building of the Year 2015 at the World Architecture Festival. Built as a vertical village, OMA/Buro Ole Scheeren’s unique design strays away from the region’s classic housing – instead of clusters of isolated towers, the Interlace consists of 31 apartment blocks laced together. Full Story at Gay Star News

Opinion: What Will Happen to Our LGBT Literature?

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One reason I’ve been writing all these years has to do with helping us feel good about ourselves. I’d like to think the cultural work that’s proliferated from the latter half of the twentieth century through today has contributed to building our strength so we could accomplish all we have. If the pendulum of history swings against us like a wrecking ball from the future, we’ll need the writing, the photographs, the women’s music–to stay strong, to be queer strong, just as we need it now. But will our stories be available twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now? I … Read more

Discussion: Beauty in the Future

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beauty

Our conceptions of beauty change over time. A few hundred years back, fat and white was “in” in Europe because it showed you could afford food and weren’t part of the peasant class. Today the rich and elite are thin and bronzed. How will the future, specifically space travel and new genetic techniques, change our sense of beauty once again? What will be considered beautiful in 2514?

News: Men in Jetpacks Fly Beside Massive Airbus A380 in Spectacular Video

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Last week we had flying cars. This week we have men in jetpacks. The future is here: Jetpack daredevils Yves Rossy and Vince Reffet recently partnered with Emirates Airlines for a stunt involving an Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane, over Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah and skyline with Burj Khalifa in the background. It’s an airspace Rossy and Reffet visited earlier in 2015. Rossy has also jetpacked over the Grand Canyon. Said Emirates COO Adel Al Redha of the stunt: “This display between man and machine celebrates the magic and beauty of flight, a feat which just over a hundred … Read more

The Next 800K Years in Sci Fi Predictions

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Photo by Michel du Cille/The Washington Post

When will humans land on Venus? When will we have robot cats? And when will the aliens finally come? Science fiction offers some potential answers to these burning questions. The timeline below, created by designer Giorgia Lupi and her design team at Accurat for the blog Brain Pickings, lays out 62 future events predicted by various works of science fiction, from “Hunger Games” to Isaac Asimov. Here’s a selection: 2012: The Titanic is resurrected from the ocean floor. (“The Ghost from the Grand Banks,” Arthur C. Clarke) 2019: The U.S. loses its position as world leader to Japan. Extraterrestrial life … Read more

“The Homecoming” by J. Scott Coatsworth

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The Homecoming

Genre: Gay Science Fiction Length: Novella   ALDISS AND his crew crash land on a forgotten Earth, expecting it to be abandoned after hundreds of years. Their own world is destroyed, and now Earth is their only chance for a new start. But it’s winter, the climate is harsh, and Earth is not as forgotten as they thought. The inhabitants also may not be as open to new arrivals as Adliss’s crew hopes. I loved this book. The setup was interesting, and the characters were engaging. I loved how spacemen and werewolves collided: technology meets primal Earth. First contact between … Read more