Futurist Edge

Futurist Edge is temporarily shuttering, to be reborn with a slightly new purpose under the Adair Futures umbrella. Thank you all for your support over the past few years.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update Opportunity worked along Endeavour Crater's western rim through November, taking pictures, hiking slopes, and finishing work in the depths of Cape Tribulation.

Year-End Cargo Shipments Prepped Amidst Space Research Inside the station, astronaut Peggy Whitson installed aerosol samplers to collect airborne particles for analysis on Earth.

Ministerial 2016: Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration Ministers from the 22 ESA member states and Canada will gather in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 1-2 December to discuss future spending priorities for the ESA spa...

United Space for Europe European spirit, identity and cohesion are the overarching aspects for Europe to achieve the best of outcomes for its states and citizens in space and for a ...

The first Extreme Futures Tech Forecasting Conference in is coming up this month! With a keynote from Alexander Rose of the Long Now Foundation, it's shaping up to be quite an exciting event!

Extreme Futures and Technology Forecasting Conference - Fall 2016 The EFTF Conferences first event in San Francisco. Lots of lighting rounds of industry luminaries, and local technologists on the future of technology. Profits from the conference will be donated for the creation of a 527 corp PAC focus on politics and futurist ideals. This conference is about th...

Free Kindle preview of A Method for the Madness by Adair Daniels.

read.amazon.com

A new Earth-like planet has been discovered orbiting around Proxima Centauri. This as yet unnamed planet could be the most promising location for a first human space settlement outside the solar system.

Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri discovered The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates have been discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be "Earth-like" (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have...

Futurist Adair Daniels sat down with Next Level Life entrepreneur Bill Hargenrader for an interview about space and the future.

Next Level Life: Futurist Adair Daniels Interview by Bill Hargenrader Ep 15 Thanks for watching! Be sure to click the thumbs up and subscribe for future video updates! Today’s Next Level Life Interview is with Adair Daniels, futurist...

The Kindle edition of the book from futurist Adair Daniels, A Method for the Madness, covering his acclaimed futures research method Qualitative Futures Squares is now on sale on Amazon for $.99! This deal is short lived, so get yours now!

"Adair's work on Qualitative Analysis for predicting future technology trends is a key tool that technologists can use to better predict where trends are going and help build better technology strategies in their individual segments." David Kelley, CTO Zensa, Inc and Microsoft Industry VIP.

“Adair has put together a powerhouse of a lesson on qualitative future prediction methods packed into a practical quick to read book. Save yourself the time and trouble of randomly guessing and start applying Adair’s innovative method to your business and research.” Bill Hargenrader, Founder of NextLevelLife.net and Author of Mars Journey: Call to Action

A Method for the Madness: An Intro to Qualitative Futures Squares (Navigating the Madness:... Predicting the future accurately is incredibly difficult. The future is always changing, and there are an infinite number of possibilities. However, this does not mean that we can’t make meaningful predictions. The Qualitative Futures Square is a tool to hone and direct an attempt to predi...

Futurist Edge is celebrating two months of success for A Method for the Madness with an Amazon sale for the Kindle Edition for $.99 from July 18 to July 25. You can click below to learn more or purchase here: http://amzn.to/29DuQaz

"A Method for the Madness: An Intro to Qualitative Futures Squares first provides a brief introduction to futures studies, an emerging field that boasts dignitaries such as Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku. Next, it covers the issue inherent in creating a "futures hypothesis", a tool from which to begin futures research, which unlike a standard hypothesis must address multiple possible futures.

Then, the book launches into an exploration of the Qualitative Futures Square as a method of creating a futures hypothesis, as well as how its flexible and malleable nature provides an easy framework for a researcher to make cohesive, useful predictions for the future. While designed as a tool for forming futures hypotheses, it's equally useful for creating adaptive goals, especially in a business environment. With its built-in addressing of the probabilistic nature of the future, goals cemented utilizing the QFS already have answers for favorable/unfavorable changes."

"Adair's work on Qualitative Analysis for predicting future technology trends is a key tool that technologists can use to better predict where trends are going and help build better technology strategies in their individual segments." David Kelley, CTO Zensa, Inc and Microsoft Industry VIP.

“Adair has put together a powerhouse of a lesson on qualitative future prediction methods packed into a practical quick to read book. Save yourself the time and trouble of randomly guessing and start applying Adair’s innovative method to your business and research.” Bill Hargenrader, Founder of NextLevelLife.net and Author of Mars Journey: Call to Action

Celebrating Two Months of Madness - Futurist Edge Futurist Edge is celebrating two months of success for A Method for the Madness with a sale on Amazon for the Kindle Edition, at $.99 for one week!

Is the blockchain the future of voting?

Australia to Make Blockchain Voting App a Global Democratic Movement While Russia is testing an e-proxy voting system based on a distributed ledger, Australia is launching a Blockchain voting app in hopes of starting a global political movement.

"One of the difficult challenges we are facing with IoT and smart cities is the reality that technology is outpacing policy."

Are you ready to start taking action? Many of you are experts in your fields, and could be of heavy use in informing policies as they relate to emerging technologies. How many of you are willing to step up and guide the US into the future?

Smart Cities: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly More and more devices are plugging into your government’s corner of the Internet of Things (IoT), but are we truly implementing the right projects in 'smart' ways? Here’s what you need to know about the state of smart cities opportunities along with some potholes to avoid and questions to be answere...

"It's impossible to measure precisely just how good an investment NASA is. But some NASA watchers have tried, with estimates of $7 or $8 returned for ever $1 spent on NASA."

"The stuff we take for granted would not exist without the space program," said Bill Nye, chief executive of the Planetary Society, pointing to GPS and weather reports as examples of technologies we owe to the country's investment in space research. "NASA is the best brand the U.S. has. Even people who hate the United States respect what NASA does."

NASA's bold bet on Juno will pay off. Stay tuned NASA research that began with an eye toward the heavens has long made its way back to our lives on Earth. Experts say the Juno journey to Jupiter will pay dividends, even if it's not yet clear how.

Curiosity has found pretty interesting new evidence.

Ancient Mars Was Even More Earth-Like Than We Imagined New findings from NASA’s Curiosity Rover provide evidence that significant amounts of oxygen once permeated the atmosphere of ancient Mars. The Red Planet, it would seem, was more Earth-like than we thought.

A Method for the Madness Launched! - Futurist Edge A Method for the Madness is the de facto manual for the Qualitative Futures Square. The QFS is a tool to hone and direct an attempt to predict the future.

NASA has revealed the X-57 "Maxwell", an electric research plane with 14 electric motors. The name "Maxwell" is to honor the great physicist James Clerk Maxwell, whose name graces the most important equations for electromagnetism.

Energy efficiency at cruise altitude using X-57 technology could benefit travelers by reducing flight times, fuel usage, as well as reducing overall operational costs for small aircraft by as much as 40 percent. Typically, to get the best fuel efficiency an airplane has to fly slower than it is able. Electric propulsion essentially eliminates the penalty for cruising at higher speeds.

Learn more: http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-electric-research-plane-gets-x-number-new-name

With 14 electric motors turning propellers and all of them integrated into a uniquely-designed wing, we will test new propulsion technology using an experimental airplane now designated the X-57 and nicknamed “Maxwell.”

Learn more: http://go.nasa.gov/1W3wwzA

The core of futurism.

Blast off.

Liftoff from this week's successful SpaceX Eutelsat/ABS launch.

New circumbinary, or "Tattoine", planet discovered!
http://go.nasa.gov/1U9D2Fz

Double suns! A new planet that orbits two suns has been discovered using our Kepler Space Telescope. Planets that orbit two stars are known as circumbinary planets. The stars here are similar to the sun, with one slightly larger than our home star and the other slightly smaller. The planet has a mass and radius nearly identical to that of Jupiter, making it the largest transiting circumbinary planet ever found. More: http://go.nasa.gov/1U9D2Fz

The "Mars Exploreres" posters from NASA are epic! Are you ready for humans to become an interplanetary species?
http://go.nasa.gov/1Psa7Fa

"Stan Larkin was the first patient in Michigan to ever be discharged with a SynCardia total artificial heart, back in 2014. He, long with his brother, was diagnosed with familial cardiomyopathy, a condition that can kill instantly and without warning - a leading cause of death among athletes.

The total artificial heart is a temporary replacement used when both sides of a person's heart fail, and the more conventional devices such as an implanted defibrillator won't work. When Dr. Jonathan Haft first met the two brothers, they were extremely sick.

The incredible part of the story is that Stan not only was living without a heart for over a year, but led an almost normal life. He was able to play basketball with it on, something that astounded his doctors."

Living Without a Heart for Over a Year - Futurist Edge Stan Larkin was living without a heart for over a year, by having an artificial heart in a backpack. Will this be the future for heart patients?

Come support the DNA Gene Therapies Congress! A combination of our friends at IES and BioViva, as well as other industry leaders, the European DNA Summit will enable new, innovative directions in gene therapies. DNA will bring together the talent, money and passion of the gene therapies & health extension field to demonstrate to the public the advancements in the field.

D.N.A - Gene Therapies Congress Designing New Advances: European Gene Therapies Summit (D.N.A) | Crowdfunding is a democratic way to support the fundraising needs of your community. Make a contribution today!

Recently, comments from Elon Musk have revived interest in what I call the "simulation argument" - the idea that we must, logically be living in a simulation (this definition differentiates it from the hypothesis, which is the idea that we may be living in a simulation). This argument is not made with evidence, but with pure thought alone.

The last time this argument gained attention, I wrote this article. In it, I discuss the similarities this has with Pascal's Wager and Roko's Basilisk, and the pitfalls of trying to make an argument based upon pure logic, without reference back to reality.

Debunking Futurism Nonsense - Futurist Edge Debunking futurism nonsense is an unfortunate but necessary task.

Thought for the week: would you ever take up a "virtual" job, where you were paid to perform a normal, paid-for task in virtual reality?