Will we find microbes on Mars? Can we make breathable Oxygen on Mars? I guess we’ll find out sometime between now and when we get there. I’m not betting on Elon Musk’s aggressive timetable, and I’m certainly not expecting to go there myself. But I do have a ticket to send my name there.
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on Apple Podcasts, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
–Wanna buy a flying car? Listen to Seeking Delphi™ podcast #27. Want an emission free vertical take-off-and-landing vehicle (VOTL)? See the video below.
“Our aim is to develop affectionate robots that can make people smile.”– Masayoshi Son
What–he worry? Ford’s delivery robot.
Will that thing to the left make you smile? I have my doubts about that. If you’re not familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley, you will be soon. Welcome to the creepy future!
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
–The Artemis 1 mission, won’t carry astronauts. But it will carry yeast into orbit around the sun. The mission will launch 13 cubesats next year, one of which will carry two varieties of yeast to test their survivability and growth in the radiation of deep space. E.T. make bread?
–A team of USC students have accomplished a rocketry first. They are the first students to design and build a rocket that reached the 100Km (62 mile) altitude that is defined by international law as the boundary of space. The school’s report says it used a parachute to land safely after reaching it’s targeted height–but it doesn’t say where. Oh well, to quote that old Tom Lehrer song, “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department says Wernher von Braun.” [See Video below]
Elon Musk–Tesla might be in all sorts of financial troubles, but Elon Musk has landed some funding for his The Boring Company. His tunnel-digging enterprise has just landed its first paying customer, The Las Vegas Convention Center. The center’s board of directors, as part of a $1.4 billion expansion plan, has allocated $46 million for two tunnels beneath the 200-acre site. They will be cut to provide passage for electric vehicles and pedestrians.
“I would love to have a robot butler.”–Brett Ratner
“I think I’d take a human butler over a robot one.”–Tom Felton
Want one of these?
Are you disappointed that we still don’t have flying cars? Well then, you might also be bummed out that we don’t have robot butlers, either. And while one company is trying to provide those robot butlers by an odd hybrid operated by human remote-control, I’m thinking it’s still a bit premature. I won’t be letting a robot handle a bottle of ’83 Lafite Rothschild any time soon.
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Robotics–If Alexa, Siri, or even a Roomba, is not enough for you, the Japanese firm MIRA may have just the answer. They plan to launch the world’s first robot butler service. But there’s a rather odd catch, and it’s maybe a bit creepy. The robots won’t operate autonomously. They will be operated by remote control by employees of MIRA.
–Robots in the home might have a ways to go. But robots in the hospital? Those are here now. (see below)
5G/mobile technology–Even as the U.S. and China square off in a battle dominate the emerging 5G segment of cellphone technology, Russia is making a desperate play to make up for it’s own lagging effort. They want to scare US consumers into thinking it’s dangerous. Will anti-5Gers become the kindred spirits of anti-vaxxers?
Seeking Delphi™ podcast/coming attractions: John C. Havens on IEEE’s new volume, Ethically Aligned Design, laying out their proposed framework for the safe and beneficial development of A.I. and other automated systems.
“My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous vehicles.”–Elon Musk, 2013
“We’ll have a fleet of robo taxis by the end of next year.”–(paraphrased), Elon Musk, this week
Ah, you have to love Elon Musk. Or maybe not. If he were a politician, the election opponents would be all over him for flip-flopping. Ok, so we’ll allow him to change his mind in light of further technological developments. The problem is, some pretty big names in field of autonomous vehicles don’t agree with him. And as for his track record on Tesla promises…well, you know the drill.
While you’re reading about all this week’s future-related news, don’t forget that you can subscribe to Seeking Delphi™ podcasts on iTunes, PlayerFM, or YouTube(audio with slide show) and you can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
–Tesla posted this video of an autonomous road trip (below)
Elon unveilled a Boring Company hyperloop test tunnel in California last year
Hyperloop/Boring Company–On another Elon Musk front, his The Boring Company made a major step towards a formal government approval of its first subterranean hyperloop transport system. It filed a 505-page environmental assessment study on the impact of its proposed NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC underground transit loop. Musk says an initial 16 tunnels for the route between Baltimore and D.C. could be completed in 15-23 months. Judging by the number of state, local and federal agencies that have to sign off on the proposal, it’s likely to take a lot longer than that to get the needed approvals.
Surveillance/Existential Risk.–Techno-philospher Nick Bostrom may be best known as a dyed-in-the wool transhumanist, and the man who first proffered the suggestion that all of us may living in an simulation. Now–going one step farther than Stephen Hawking’s suggestion that we might need a global government to keep tabs on the existential risks of technology–Bostrom has suggested that global surveillance of every single human might be the only thing that can save us.
Seeking Delphi™ podcast/coming attractions: John C. Havens on IEEE’s new volume, Ethically Alligned Design, laying out their proposed framework for the safe and beneficial development of A.I. and other automated systems.
As the internet of things, edge computing, and 5G connectivity all converge, we move relentlessly toward a world of ambient computing. It will be always on, ever around us and responding to us, whether we realize it or not. How do ambient computing and digital twins combine in the realm of ambient science? Intel’s Katalin Bártfai-Walcott joins me on the newest Seeking Delphi™ podcast to discuss exactly what this is and what its implications might be.
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Ah, you have to love Elon Musk. Or maybe not. If he were a politician, the election opponents would be all over him for flip-flopping. Ok, so we’ll allow him to change his mind in light of further technological developments. The problem is, some pretty big names in field of autonomous vehicles don’t agree with him. And as for his track record on Tesla promises…well, you know the drill.
Seeking Delphi™ 