Category Archives: futures

Francis Fukuyama, stasist twit

Francis Fukuyama doesn’t think much of libertarians. The hostility of libertarians to big government extended to U.S. involvement in the world. The Cato Institute propounded isolationism in the ’90s, on the ground that global leadership was too expensive. At the … Continue reading

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leftovers

A couple of items found somewhere-or-other, years ago. PREDICTION CORNER. ‘Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, from England to India, by guided missile. We stand on the threshold of … Continue reading

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busk to the future

The poet Tom Digby asks (on his own list): Didn’t bards of old live largely on tips and free meals and such, rather than from some giant corporation pushing packaged “product”? Might the Internet move us back toward that model? … Continue reading

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Jack and the nanotube ribbon

The Space Elevator Comes Closer to Reality. (And with only three popups!) Dragging lines up seems so inelegant, though, compared to bringing in a carbon-bearing asteroid and extruding the whole thing down. Maybe next time.

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paper forever

In the New Yorker, a review of The Myth of the Paperless Office. (Link from Monty Solomon on a private list.) Paper enables a certain kind of thinking. Picture, for instance, the top of your desk. . . . The piles look … Continue reading

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robots.txt

Ftrain: Robot Exclusion Protocol. A story about the Google of the future. (From Amygdala. Scroll down a bit to see a rant on Star Treks past and present.)

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nuke em till they sell

This gives me a fab idea for a business: produce trinitite for collectors by setting off nukes on the Moon. (It wouldn’t be the same as the original trinitite, because Lunar soil has more aluminum, if memory serves.)

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