Institute For The Future

The June 2006 Harvard Business Review brings us an article on Avatar-based Marketing....

Amartya Sen on Indian Identity

We have been looking at the issue of identity for our Global ethnographic work in the BRIC countries. I just finished reading Amartya...

Wall-socket PC

I found this new device very interesting for home owners; a thin-client wall-socket PC (Jack PC) that will fit into standard sized wall sockets, and...

Mobility Maps

WorldMapper has just released a series of global visualizations of interesting human, economic, and commodity flows. These maps tie to some of the...

Light vs Mega Infrastructure

alex and i were talking before the conference and thought that next years' theme might be mega-infrastructure...

Collaborative mapping revisited

Gliffy is an online collaborative mapping tool that beats CMap, which I posted here a few weeks ago. ...

Virtual ecology

"Second Life resident "Laujosargas Svarog" has created an self-contained functioning ecosystem within the virtual world. The system includes computer...

Squid Labs: Lightweight Infrastucture Skunkworks

Eric Wilhelm of Emeryville, CA startup Squid Labs gave a talk at our TEchn Horizons exchange last week. He presented many projects that show how the...

It seems that the reasons for having a child in China are changing, according to a recent study done by a Beijing research firm....

Technology...yet another way to make $$$ for lawyers

In a blogpost on CNET's Alpha, we learn about Michael Schumacher, a German Formula 1 racer, being penalized after his car's telemetry showed that he...

Thanks for coming to the Exchange!

Thanks to all members that were able to join us last week at the Tech Horizons Spring Exchange--Beyond the Horizon: Science & Technology in Ten,...

Business Week discovers Ethnography!

How nice! We all (IFTF and many of you supporting-member companies) have been conducting ethnographic research for years. In the June 5, 2006...

Blogging the Technology Horizons conference

Couple short posts: Peder writes about it at We Make Money Not Art; Christine Peterson talks about (and gently disagrees with) our nano forecast....

Larry Smarr on the past and future of telepresence

At tonight's Technology Horizons conference, Larry Smarr gave a terrific talk on the history and future of telepresence-- i.e., systems that...

Fabrication and architecture

Yet another data-point on the relationship between fabrication technologies, design, and education. It's weird how you sometimes see clusters of...

Semapedia

Semapedia.org describes itself as "the physical wiki." The basic idea

Tringo conquers Second Life...now on to...um...yeah...Real Life

For those out there who spend time on Second Life, you are well aware of the addictiveness of Tringo and its pervasiveness within the virtual world....

I've got the Technology Horizons conference this week, so I'm focused on that and almost nothing else. I'll return to Ten Year Forecast stuff next...

A cool-looking conference at the Annenberg School this weekend....

"As I mentioned a few weeks ago, last year we were asked by the U.K. Government

As part of IFTF Tech Horizons' ongoing research on the future of mathematics, abundant computing, and lightweight infrastructure, I discovered the...

3D models from Second Life

A few days ago in my future of manufacturing piece, I speculated that in a future of flexible, rapid manufacturing, gaming skills might prove useful...

I recently finished a revised version of the magazine article on the future of personal fabrication technologies. It's now off to the editors, but I...

Flocking as method to organize online content

"It's always exciting at IFTF when several of the trends we're following intersect in a delightful moment of innovation. Oak Ridge National Laboratory...