On Monday, Royal Dutch Shell ended its nine-year effort to explore for oil in the Alaskan Arctic — a $7 billion investment — in another sign that the entire industry is trimming its ambitions in the wake of collapsing oil prices. An oil forecast by Kirk Spano (Bluemound Asset Management) is that oil prices will …
This article is part of the 2015 ‘Think Further’ series, sponsored by Fred Alger Management, Inc. For more ‘Think Further’ content and videos, visit thinkfurtheralger.com A Huge Leap Forward is possible for the bottom 2 billion people within 5 to 10 years. Two thirds of the rural population in developing countries are without electricity. This …
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has agreed on the definition of fifth-generation (5G) networks, a key technological requirement and its schedule to commercialize the technology by 2020. The union has decided to define 5G as a network which is capable of transmitting data at up to 20 gigabits-per-second. This means that users can download one …
Venture Capitalist Mary Meeker published her 2015 Internet Trends (196 pages) China Loves WeChat China’s Shopping Innovation Smartphone share in China India’s big internet companies next Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It …
Our fast-approaching future of driverless cars and “smart” electrical grids will depend on billions of linked devices making decisions and communicating with split-second precision to prevent highway collisions and power outages. But a new report released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warns that this future could be stalled by our lack …
The French Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is deploying with its battlegroup to the Gulf, and is understood to be preparing to contribute to coalition air strikes against Islamic State. Sailing on 13 January, the carrier battlegroup – which includes a nuclear-powered attack submarine – will head from Toulon through the Suez Canal …
There was a survey of experts who work or have worked in the field artificial general intelligence and of people with some level of futurist prominence. They were asked to predict whether AI (actually AGI artificial general intelligence) would be hard takeoff or soft takeoff. However, there is no quantification or solid definition of hard …