Institute For The Future

Religious Nudges: Sabbath App

 At sundown this Friday, March 4 the 2011 US National Day of Unplugging will begin (powered by Reboot).   Think slow, think sabbath (Abraham Heschel...

SIGNALS: Language, Retail, FabFutures, AltEnergy, TV, Water, TechTYF, Medicine, Noble Gases, Collaborative Consumption

The Future Tense (Source) #FutureOfLanguage Consumers Hold On to Products Longer (Source) #FutureOfRetailKinect as 3D scanner: Fabricate...

The Future of Food Experiments

A couple months ago, I happened upon a flier for something called Micro Beekeeping. The premise of micro beekeeping is pretty simple - the proprietor,...

SIGNALS: Fab Futures, Risk, Alt Energy, Packaging, Adaptive Power, Coal, Wind

3D-Printed Skin Could Revolutionize Treatment for Burn Victims (Source) #FabFuturesYou will commit a crime in the future (Source) #RiskAssessmentDirty...

The Rise of the Therapeutic City--HC2020 Perspective

Therapeutic City

MakerBot Day 4: It Takes a World to Make a MakerBot

You may have noticed that, four posts into this series exploring life with a MakerBot, I've yet to actually print anything with my Thing-O-Matic. To...

Three Lessons from Genetics for Thinking about the Future

There have been a lot of great articles looking back at the history of genetic sequencing to mark the ten-year anniversary of the sequencing of the...

SIGNALS: Turing Test, Regenerative Medicine, Pakistan, Coal, Spy Plane, Carbon, Energy, Kinect

Mind vs.

4 Lessons from Gaming in a Corporate Context

This is a question I've heard a lot over the past couple of years.  Based on aggregated lessons from the corporate games of which I've been a part,...

Maker Bot Day 4: Spaceship Thing-O-Matic

Sometimes, when I am really and truly immersed in something, I find myself making some truly banal, self evident non sequitur, but then treating them...

SIGNALS: Water, Fabrication Futures, Alt Energy, TechTYF, Power Struggle

Water Studies Institute (Source) #FutureOfWater10 year old extols his 3D printer's virtues (Source) #FabFuturesEnergy Technology to 2050: Shell...

I'm going to let you in on a secret: this post is a composite of sorts. Because, as it turns out, when you are as cautious (and inept) at putting...

Humanity + Machines + Internet

Michael Chorost's new book World Wide Mind:  The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is in bookstores as of today.   The 5...

SIGNALS: Food Futures, Power Struggle, Fabrication Futures

How biofuels contribute to the food crisis (Source) #FoodFutures #PowerStrugglePrint me a...

IFTF Research Methodology: Signal Scanning

One of IFTF's research methodologies is Signals Scanning.  This process is used on internal research projects, with clients, shared on Twitter, and...

SIGNALS: Robots, Power Struggle, Food Futures, Future Jobs

Robots to get their own internet (Source) #IFTFRobotsNew Congress Majority Plans $100 Billion in Budget Cuts, Slashes Clean Energy...

Gaming Religion

Hacking religion is what happens when DIY culture and the Maker Movement meet religion.  On the one hand, this is nothing new, just think of the...

SIGNALS: Space, Alt Energy, Power Struggle, Fabrication Future, Extended Self, Retail, Language

Japanese Space Agency to Use Fishing Nets to Scoop Up Space Junk (Source) #FreeSpaceChina: Number 1 in Thermal, Solar, Nuclear, Wind and Hydro Power...

MakerBot Day 2: I Start to Build

Let me start off by saying that I mean this in the nicest way possible -- I am really enjoying the lurching process of building my MakerBot, and am...

The box sits unopened in my living room and I am feeling, if I am being perfectly honest, quite nervous about cracking it open. The sticker --...

What Are The Health Benefits of That Sedan?

A few months ago, the automaker Nissan announced announced that its cars will soon spray out vitamin C at drivers to ward off skin damage, and that...

GreenGoose: Live Up To Your Best Intentions

Want to live up to be your best intentions?  Wish you hydrated yourself better?  Or that you were more consistent in taking your vitamins everyday? ...

Your (digital) Life After Death

Today Rudy Adler, co-founder of 1000Memories visited us here at Institute for the Future to share about his project, which links to the future of...

The Canary in the Coal Mine

One of my favorite new products of the past couple of years is something called