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IFTF - Human+Machine Futures forecast map

The great people from The Institute For The Future (IFTF) have released a new infographic which highlights advances in technology that will create new forms of human-machine symbiosis. The map examines how Humans & Machines are:

• Discovering how our senses work at high-resolution levels.
• Amplifying our “natural” sensory modalities.
• Borrowing, mimicking, or inventing senses we don’t yet have.
• Mediating our sensory experience through machine interfaces.
• Remixing our senses for different experiences.
• Sharing our senses in high fidelity, and in more profound ways.

In addition, they created four artifacts from the future, each representing one colour in the system. Good stuff (as always)!

[See the map in detail (PDF)]

Threats from the Future: The Future of Nestle Food

Recently Nestlé Germany released a new food trendreport, titled „Wie is(s)t Deutschland 2030?“ (roughly translated to "Eating habits in Germany 2030”).

I admit, they haven’t done everything wrong. The process is technically all right. They’ve developed with a small group of undefined experts 5 scenarios which were evaluated by more than one thousand people. So far standard procedure. Can’t complain.

But let’s face it: You get what you ask from Nestlé. A confused website, ordinary corporate futurism-chatter, standard flat-pack projections based on well-known emerging technologies, a lot of unrelated stock-images from Getty and a massive amount of buzz including hot air. Nothing more. Truly the instant soup among trend reports, stored on the hallway for all the redundant futchs with flavor enhancers and artificial ingredients.

In terms of content, the scenarios are average. Just trivial descriptions of possible options. In summary:

1. Resource-efficient food in a value oriented society
2. Food for self-optimization in a perfomance-oriented society
3. Reflected pleasure in a responsible society
4. Communal meal as an experience in a destructurized society
5. Simple food satiation in a virtual environment

So why the fuss? Have a look at the illustrations, because I’m not sure what happened here. They all look like moodboards for modern sterile-societies in dystopian YA novels or like fast sketches for a new black mirror episode. Of course, they are simple. But drones with a sixpack of beer in urban environments (imagine 8kg flying 10 feet above your head) for the sake of convenience? Autonomous service shopping carts as representatives of reflected consumption in a responsible society? Dinner with friends at work with number crunching holo-statistics?

So, either the designer has landed a magnificent coup here (teased Nestlé) or the briefing was just a piece of crap (bullshit in, bullshit out) or Nestlé tries to sell trojan horses (buy more packaged food from canteens or delivery services, it’s good for ya, because it’s the future).

What ever it is: What the hell Nestlé Germany? At least talk to your colleagues in America. They are honest enough to brag that they have 100 scientists working on a food replicator.

[Nestlé Future of Food (german)] [picture credit CC BY-NC 2.0 Nestle]

Nice read about genetic engineering, lab-grown milk, DIY biohacking and in-vitro food.

Real Vegan Cheese is made from the same proteins found in cow’s milk, but they came from genetically modified yeast.

[more about in-vitro milk]

clickdragclick

New web art tool from vincemckelvie lets you remix GIFs by selecting areas and turning them into brushes:

clickdragclick allows you to paint with selections of an image like a paintbrush.

first click and hold to select part of the image, release and drag to paint, then click again to finish the stroke.

the background parameter toggles the source image on and off and the sequence parameter animates your brush strokes.

make sure to upload and save your painting.

Try it out for yourself here

GTA5 PC Race Bike using Oculus Rift DK2

As soon as GTA V came out for PC this week, the Oculus community immediately went forward to find a way to play it with a VR headset, and it arrived. This video gives an idea how it plays (despite the poor quality video).

Download Vorpx (Google it) if you have GTA5 on the PC, a DK2 and a spare 30 pounds or so its well worth it.

Link

Programmable Table

Latest design project from the MIT Self Assembly Lab is a table whose form can be reconfigured:

Through a collaboration between MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab and Wood-Skin S.r.l. a revolutionary new type of furniture has been designed. The Programmable Table demonstrates an entirely new category of furniture that actively self-transforms from shipping to full-functionality.

This prototype, unveiled at the 2015 Fuori Salone del Mobile in Milan in collaboration with BIESSE, demonstrates the first highly-active and reconfigurable furniture that mediates between various conditions: shipping, storage and a variety of uses. Demonstrating transformation through the use of the Wood-Skin® process, this table takes advantage of an embedded pre-stressed textile to self-transform in precise and predictable ways. Once in-place this furniture may be reconfigured into other shapes or flattened again for storage and moving.

By minimizing the volume during shipping, the flat-packed Programmable product is extremely efficient and economical for distribution. Further, this product eliminates the need for human or machine assembly of complex parts and simple can be removed from the package, allowing it to dynamically jump into shape. The Programmable Table is a new vision for the future of smart and self-transforming household products.

Link

Animation

Music video from Japanese group Young Juvenile Youth features lead singer Yuki with surreal digital manipulations:

Directed by Kosai Sekine

Music video for the single ‘Animation’ by Young Juvenile Youth. The track is taken from their debut mini album 'Animation’ on Beat Records.

Link

Researchers working in Kenya's archaeologically prolific Lake Turkana region claim to have uncovered a set of 3.3-million-year-old stone tools. That's 700,000 years older than the previous record, and predates evidence for the evolutionary origins of the genus Homo by half a million years.

Read more...

Cyber CUT - Grzegorz Przybys

valanthos:

Gateway - Calandia District by Hideyoshi

doczeta:

Cyberpunk pixel art from http://valenberg.deviantart.com/

fuckyeahcyber-punk:

Cyberpunk Walkway - Lamberto Azzariti

A little morning plasma.

mirkokosmos:

by Mikołaj Cybe Piszczako

bhlack:

glow blog

mayahan:

Creative Earrings

animationhypervisor:

piece by Feng Zhu on #DrawCrowd http://drawcrowd.com/projects/c02440bfe973d6a9701c50ae9fe9089a4cc5afd0

ourbedtimedreams:

untitled by Masa ~(:-D) on Flickr.

Gonkius has created one of the most gorgeous LEGO rockets I’ve ever seen. Those seamless curves…I can’t get over them. They are everywhere! Looking at their photostream, it would appear this is their first publicly released build. I can’t wait to see more.

All images © Jessica Fulford-Dobson

Australian skateboarder Oliver Percovich created the non-profit Skateistan in 2007, a grassroots project that connects youth and education through skateboarding in Afghanistan. The organization, which has since grown to an award-winning international NGO, caught the attention of London-based photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson and inspired her to visit the program in Kabul in 2012—especially after learning 45% of the students were female.

In Afghanistan skateboarding has spread to become the number one sport for women, as they are forbidden to ride bicycles. Soon after arriving and entering the girl’s world, Fulford-Dobson was accepted by the young Afghan skateboarders. She photographed the girls with natural light, helping to expose their personalities through simple portraits. Within the images you can see the girls’ natural confidence, images that capture the subjects both posed and candidly skating through the indoor facility.

“I met so many impressive women and girls in Afghanistan: a teacher as tough and determined as any man; young Afghans in their early twenties who were volunteering at an orphanage and were passionate about being seen as strong and willing to fight for themselves, rather than as victims of circumstance; and girls who were being educated to be leaders in their communities and who were already thinking carefully about their own and their country’s future,” said Fulford-Dobson.

Fulford-Dobson won 2nd prize in the 2014 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize with Skate Girl, 2014 (one of the photographs taken while on location in Kabul) and her exhibition Jessica Fulford-Dobson: Skate Girls of Kabul opens at Saatchi Gallery in London on April 15 and runs until April 28, 2015. You can donate to Skateistan’s program in Kabul as well as other cities here. (via feature shoot)

“L’équipée”, which somewhat literally translates to “The Journey”, is a group of motorcycling women from Paris who embarked on a ride through the Himalaya Mountains on Royal Enfields.

In total, they published three different videos from their Himalaya road trip. The other two have been featured in the past on the MotoLady website, but I’ve put them all in order below some choice photos from the fashionable adventure women.

L’équipée en Himalaya – Episode 1/3 (17:15)

L’équipée en Himalaya – Episode 2/3 (18:14)

L’équipée en Himalaya – Episode 1/3 (24:25)

Follow L’équipée on facebook for their current adventures.

Want to go back in time and check out the first L’équipée motolady feature? Head over to the L’équipée: Parisian MotoLadies post.

related: more road trips | more Royal Enfield

The post Five Ladies Ride the Himalaya Mountains appeared first on Moto Lady.

With all of the excitement surrounding space exploration and the use of rockets in getting us there - thanks in no small part to efforts from Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX - it should come with little surprise that interest in rocket engines and rockets in general have also been on the upswing. Of course, with this being 2015, many have been looking at how rockets can be made better or more efficiently with...what else...additive manufacturing technologies.

This article Rocket Lab unveils first 3D printed, battery-powered rocket engine for low-cost space travel is first published at 3ders.org.