With advancements in current technology, we are seeing objects that were once dull and boring take new life and perform tasks our grandparents never could have dreamed of. A couple of the most recognizable brands in the world are at the forefront of a move towards smarter, more efficient surfaces around our homes.
People love their pets. Many people love their pets more than they love other people. Despite this unwavering affection, we’re still unable to communicate with them. What are they thinking? How are they feeling? Where do they want to go? Well we’re reaching a point where all of those questions may soon be answered.
The internet and the airplane have combined to tear down boundaries worldwide and fuel the globalization fire. Standing on two continents in one day was absolutely unfathomable even one hundred years ago. Businesses are now thriving with a global reach, while the Earth is currently at the most peaceful time in it’s history. Communication and collaboration brought upon by technology have been fundamental to this shift.
These two history-changing inventions that accelerated globalization on it’s current path are the new inspiration for taking humanity to the next level. A patented transportation concept that is as lightning quick and connected as the internet is gaining funding, and prototypes are set for the immediate future. Evacuated tube transport will rock your world.
Over the last few decades, we have become unbelievably spoiled with technology. Everything is becoming faster, slimmer, lighter and more efficient. The materials that we produce our gadgets with are becoming more impressive seemingly by the day.
By now you’ve probably heard of graphene, if not you can read more about it’s potential capabilities here. Graphene has been lauded as the perfect future material for our technological needs, but it does have one major flaw: it conducts electricity too well at this point to be used in electronics. Graphene in it’s purest form is unable to control the electricity flowing through it; it would thus be difficult to make future gadgets out of it. Fortunately, there have been a couple of recent major breakthroughs in the supermaterial realm including a genetic modification to graphene and a material cousin. Both hold a lot of promise for the future of sweet gadgets.
When the first sports were conceived, the athletes involved just played the game. In the 21st century, that has all changed. Sports are now a science. Instead of just taking it play by play, we analyze, study, graph and dissect. There are now metrics in every sport that can pinpoint the ultimate weaknesses of any team or individual.
Teams and coaches aren’t the only ones trying to get an edge, performance clothing companies are conducting seemingly ridiculous tests to produce the most efficient clothes, shoes, and accessories possible. Nike, being the number one sporting good company in the world, is at the forefront of future performance research. In this particular case, they’ve taken a page from an unlikely sport to produce the fastest performance running wear in history. The discovery is set to make it’s debut at the 2012 Olympic Summer Games in London.
While apps and alarm clocks that predict the weather and help you prepare for a trip are convenient, who really likes guessing what that means to the body? Wouldn’t you rather just feel for yourself?
A young prodigy engineer and designer named Robb Godshaw is heading a project that changes the way we see, err feel, weather forecasts. Robb has a history of thinking outside the box, and his latest endeavor is no different. Godshaw has created an aluminum box with a metal haptic (touch) senor on top that is capable of duplicating temperatures in “the most extreme climates on Earth.” He is calling it the Cryoscope, and it can let you feel temperatures ranging from freezing to 108° fahrenheit.
Astounde covered a story in February about how Google, along with Audi, BMW and others are deep into testing of a car that not only parks itself, but drives itself. Advancements in GPS and motion sensing technology have made this dream a reality. News then came in late March that a man lacking 95% of his vision, “drove” a car for the first time in a long time. We now have a glimpse at what the official license plates of these vehicles will look like, and we can soon expect to see them cruising beside us on the interstate.
As you may or may not be aware, ICANN the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has opted to open the floodgates, and expand the number of potential web addresses available to us online. While mainstays such as .com, .net, and .org will not be directly affected, we’re about to be introduced to a whole new world of domain names. You’ve probably already seen some new TLD’s or top level domains (the word or letters to the right of the dot) such as .Biz, .TV, .XXX and .Me. If you are still unfamiliar with the basics, you can learn a bit about them here. The norm is about to change, prepare to be subjected to hundreds and potentially thousands of new gTLD’s starting within a year.
Long distance communication has come a long way in the last 150 years. In 1860, the first pony express sent a hand-written message 200 miles per day on horseback. Not even two years later, the foundation was laid for the telegraph to send long distance messages seemingly instantaneously. While it must’ve seemed amazing at the time, it was still a very impersonal form of communication; we still weren’t able to use any of our five senses to communicate.
The telegraph led to the telephone, which amazingly opened our ears and let us hear a loved one’s voice from an incredible distance. Phone lines eventually enabled us to connect to the internet, and we can now not only hear each other, but see eachother in real time from anywhere in the world. The ongoing evolution continues to make long distance communication as personal as ever. The next natural step is to implement another one of the five senses into the equation; in this case, the ability to touch or feel someone via the internet. That possibility is closer than you think.
Skydiving is quite the rush. There’s a certain lemming-like quality to free falling thousands of feet towards the Earth with only fabric encased in a backpack to stop you from a date with gravity. The act of skydiving and the idea of it becoming a sport would have seemed absurd just 100 years ago, when we could barely even get airborne. Now skydiving is the ultimate thrill. Unfortunately he feeling of your stomach up in your throat is only pleasurable for so long, and you’re left looking for that next thrill. In this case, jumping from heights that would make your blood boil. Is space skydiving the extreme sport of the future?