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For our German speaking followers: an interview with Gerd Leonhard for Luxembourg’s leading newspaper. Great read.

Five mass extinctions have nearly wiped out life on earth. As Annalee Newitz writes in her new book, the sixth is coming.

You’d like to see that happening again now. But the data show that it just isn’t happening as fast. We’re having the automation and the job destruction; we’re not having the creation at the same pace. There’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to find these new jobs. It may be that machines are better than that.

That said, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, because ultimately the purpose of economic progress and technological progress is to be able to create more wealth with less work. I mean, isn’t that what we want? More wealth with less work? So, if we are in a Star-Trek economy, where replicators create all the essentials that we need, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we can have an economic system that matches to it and find a way that people can share in that benefit. And people can still continue to find meaning and value in life. May 11, 2013 at 10:23AM

singularitarian:

On a global level, we are adding connected intelligence to both machines and objects using chips, micro sensors, and both wired and wireless networks to create a rapidly growing “Internet of things” sharing real-time data, performing diagnostics, and even making remote repairs. Many jobs will be created as we add intelligent connected sensors to bridges, roads, buildings, homes, and much more. By 2020, there will be well over a billion machines talking to each other and performing tasks without human intervention.

Futurist and Futures Agency member Ross Dawson speculates on what technologies will be common in the year 2030.

destx:

First coined in 1990 by Tom Caudell, a researcher at aircraft manufacturer Boeing, ‘augmented reality’ used to refer to a head-mounted digital display worn by aircraft technician to guide them in the assembly of electrical wires in aircrafts.

Today, the fundamental idea remains in the definition of AR, which according to Digital Trend is “the interaction of superimposed graphics, audio and other sense enhancements over a real-world environment that’s displayed in real-time”.