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A Preview of A History of The Future
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1–2 minutes·
No comments on A Preview of A History of The FutureTwo and a half years ago, I began a Kickstarter project for A History of the Future in 100 Objects, a book that would map out the 21st century in a hundred speculative objects. I wanted to cover more than just technology; I wanted to look at the future of religion, politics, sport, food, health,…
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6. Smart Drugs
2019; Unified Korea Can we change who we are? For millennia, we’ve eagerly bought potions and medicines that promised to make us smarter and wiser, and for just as long, we’ve been bitterly disappointed. Yet we kept coming back; there was just something irresistible about improving ourselves without any effort. And then the promises came true.…
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3. The Guide
2015; Seattle, US What is the good life? Philosophers, wise men, preachers, televangelists, self-help gurus — all have tried to answer the question of how we should live and thrive as humans. Some have been driven by a sense of moral duty and religious zeal, others by a quest for power and money, but over the millennia, they…
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1. Ankle Surveillance Monitor
2014, San Jose, US “Six months doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, compared to the guys I’ve met who were in for five years or fifteen years, I had it good. But it’s still plenty long enough to lose your job. Lose your family. Even lose your friends, people you thought you could rely on. Seemed…
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Molyneux’s Cube Contains Charity
Peter Molyneux is making a game called Curiosity: What’s Inside The Cube, in which players will be chipping away at a giant cube together in order to found out what’s inside; something “life-changing”, supposedly. Of course, you’ll be able to buy more expensive chisels and such to speed up how fast you can chip away,…
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What Retro Games Mean Today
What’s a retro game today? 8 bit pixellated graphics, chiptunes, simple platformer game mechanics, and charmingly traditional scoring and levelling? If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, that makes plenty of sense. I didn’t – I was born in 1982, so the most memorable games I played usually had at least EGA or…
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Augmented Reality: Paleofuture in Action
This month’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine has an augmented reality feature in which you use a smartphone to ‘bring the cover to life’. It’s far from the first magazine to do it, and it’s hard to miss adverts on the tube or at bus stops that have some variation of ‘scan this advert to…
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Does it Scale?
When I first heard about Occupy Wall Street, I had two conflicting reactions: I was happy that the incredible rise in inequality and the pernicious influence of corporations and vested interests on democracy was finally getting the attention it deserved – but I found the sheer lack of organisation painful to see. In particular, the…
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Thoughts on consistency in tablet news apps
A few months ago, I finally had what I’d been dreaming of for years – digital delivery of every single magazine and newspaper I read. No more stacks of New Yorkers and Economists lingering on tables waiting to be given away (or more likely, recycled); no more hunting for all the bits of subscription forms…
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Policy Games
Ever since last year’s UK elections produced a hung Parliament and the current Conservative/Lib Dem coalition, I’ve been following politics with a keen eye – particularly the travails of the Lib Dems, who find themselves in (sort of) power after many, many decades. It’s been interesting to see the spirited debates on places like Lib…
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