Envisioning Your Future in 2020

By Sam Martin - April 9, 2010

At the end of last year, Forbes magazine asked frog to help them envision the future in 2020. In December, we held a workshop in San Francisco that brought designers, futurists and journalists together to think about the current state of computing, how we might experience it 10 years from now and, perhaps most importantly, how we might make the transition into these possible futures.

The day-long event led to an extensive online feature: “Your Life in 2020,” a collection of illustrated concepts and videos that envision the future of ubiquitous computing. In that future,  your computer is not only incorporated into every aspect of your life but is a part of you. With this in mind, we imagined how future technology would influence the key areas of Social, Travel, Commerce, Healthcare, and Media. Here's what we came up with.

Our Second Brain or "ThingBook"

In the future nearly every visible thing will be cataloged and indexed, ready to be instantly identified and described to us. Want to go shopping? In the future we won't need big retail stores with aisles of objects on display. We'll be able to shop out in the world (see image, above). Do you like that new car you saw drive by? Or those cool shoes on the woman sitting across the room? All you’ll have to do is look at it and your mobile handset or AR-equipped eyeglasses will identify the object and look up the best price and retailer.

Bodynet

Like Google for our bodies, future technologies will allow us to monitor our body's vital conditions and compute the outcome of our actions on-the-fly. So you'll know right away what it's going to take to work off that Burger and Coke.

Curious about the future of social networking? Whuffie is a conceptual social Metric based on what others think of you. In the future this Metric might actually be usable as real money. Why not? Celebrities are used to getting things for free based on their popularity. This is the same idea taken to its democratic extreme. Socializing will take on completely new dimensions when we can see everything public about a person right as we are talking with them. Think dating is difficult today? Imagine the hoops we'll have to jump through when everyone in the bar can see your complete dating history the minute you walk into the room.

Shape Shifting: Emily Guthrie

Electrorheological fluid

http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-6/p14.html

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32254/the-shape-shifting-future-materials

photorheological fluid

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070320130532.htm

Nitinol Wire

http://www.imagesco.com/articles/nitinol/01.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7jjqXh7bB4

philips design-Yanko Design

Cooking Up The Eco Greens

The Green Cuisine takes inspiration from the Japanese Teppanyaki steakhouse style of cooking and serving. Hosts and guest get comfy in the cooking area where preparation and consumption form the part of the eco-routine. Food is cooked in appliances like the Healthy Steamer, Smart Kettle & Cups, and Cooking Modules, that work together on an interactive Kitchen Table. The integrated performance indicator monitors and displays energy consumption, giving you a fair idea of how Green you have been!

The bottom line: with this futuristic kitchen you can reduce energy consumption and optimize waste management. Philips will dish out the details on questions like “How will this work?”, much later!

Designer: Philips Design

Green Cuisine – Kitchen & Appliances Concept by Philips Design

vision 2010-early 2000

motorola concept design

Motorola concept design-around 2005

Optical illusion

Magic mirror

Doraemon

Here are some of his tools:
Takekoputa: small propellers
When people put them on their heads, they can fly freely. It seems that the structure of the propeller is very simple, but is not well known. Using a propeller, you can fly 600 kikometers at 80 kilometers per hour, like flying from Tokyo to Osaka in seven and a half hours.

Taimu-mashin: the time machine
Doraemon and his friends can use the door to go into the future or the past. They can even decide when and where they will go. However, they don't always end up where they planned. The entrance and exit to the time machine is in Nobita's desk.

Dokodemo-doa: everywhere door
If they open this door and say the name of the place they wish to go, they will go there as they pass through it. But the door looks like an old weak wooden door , once it was even thrown out with the trash. But it is so convenient, I am sure modern businessmen/women would love to have one.
Small Light
It looks like a flashlight. They flash the light at someone or something to make them small. Usually the light is used to defeat enemies. The light has limited range so it is not always useful.
Taimu-furoshiki: Time wrapping cloth
It looks like an ordinary wrapping cloth, but has great power. It has two sides, but its effect depends on which side you touch things with. On one side any item you touch the cloth to will become newer, and the other side will make an object older. If you put the wrapping cloth on persons, they will become younger or older only in their appearance.
Sewayaki-roupu: the helping rope
It can change itself to anything. It may stroke Nobita's head, pay newpaper bills, be a horse, fly in the sky as an airplane or be an umbrella when it's rainy. The only thing that it can't do is speak. It communicates its with sign language.
Moshimo-bokkus: The "if" box
It just looks like a telephone box (booth). If they say "***** world, please" to the receiver and exit the box, the world changes to what they said. The world ends when they say "Please go back" to the box. So they can't go back when the box is broken.
Mad Watch
If they use the watch, only they can move while time stops for everything/everyone else.

Here are some tools in Doraemon's pocket that are not as useful as those shown above:
Sasuto-amegafuru-kasa: raining umbrella
If they open the umbrella, it rains only under the umbrella. This can be useful when you need it to rain.
Kenka-tebukuro: the fight gloves
They are similar to boxing gloves. If you wear them, you begin to strike your own face and fight wth yourself.

Tech for Electrolux

Small water desalination chips for converting salt water to potable water.

A look at shape-shifting plastic.

Induction Stovetops.

The "Rendezvous" table was one of my ideas for the contest, exactly, good thing I didn't pursue that!

Soft Refrigerator concept for Electrolux 2020 contest.

Cool future kitchen concepts.

by Austin Haidinyak

Get your tech on...

http://www.antigravitytechnoloy.net/
http://www.gravitycontrol.org/
http://www.universetoday.com/ Cloaking Devices
http://www.ihpva.org/ Human powered vehicles
http://www.cltc.ucdavis.edu/ Lighting Technology
http://www.visual-lighting.com/
http://www.organprint.missouri.edu/ organ printing
http://www.abcnews.go.com/ organ printing
www.pa.msu.edu/cmp/csc/nanotube.html Nanotubes!
www.alternative-energy-news.info/nanotube-technolgy-transforms-co2-into-fuel/


From M. Claiborne

BITE MY SHINY METAL!...links to futuristic materials

10 Interesting futuristic materials - Accelerating Future.com

16 Wild materials and technologies - Popular Mechanics.com

There are so many materials on this website that you'll forget all about your obsession with Velour oven mitts - Transmaterial.net

- d.hadley -

Printable Sensors for Cell Phones and Other Devices?

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010) — The cellphone is switched off but immediately springs into action at the point of a finger. It is not necessary to touch the display. This touchless control is made possible by a polymer sensor affixed to the cellphone which, like human skin, reacts to the tiniest fluctuations in temperature and differences in pressure and recognizes the finger as it approaches.
The sensor recognizes the finger's heat signal without being touched. (Credit: Copyright image/Joanneum Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH)

(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Plastic Electronics Could Slash the Cost of Solar Panels

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Chemists Create Self-assembling Conductive Rubber

Polymer chemists have created a flexible, indestructible material, called metal rubber, that can be heated, frozen, washed or doused with jet fuel, and still retain its electricity-conducting properties. To make metal rubber, chemists and engineers use a process called self-assembly. The material is repeatedly dipped into positively charged and negatively charged solutions. The positive and negative charges bond, forming layers that conduct electricity. Uses of metal rubber include bendy, electrically charged aircraft wings, artificial muscles and wearable computers.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

moldable, adhesive, self curing silicon.

This is a mold-able silicon developed by an art student to repair and customize existing products.
(Submitted by Alex Ross)

Mini Generators Make Energy from Random Ambient Vibrations

Tiny generators developed at the University of Michigan could produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor.
(submitted by Alex Ross)

Making Car fuel and Plastic from carbon dioxide

ScienceDaily (Mar. 29, 2010) — Researchers from the South West are working on a £1.4 million project that could take carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into car fuel.

The project aims to develop porous materials that can absorb the gas that causes global warming and convert it into chemicals that can be used to make car fuel or plastics in a process powered by renewable solar energy.

The researchers hope that in the future the porous materials could be used to line factory chimneys to take carbon dioxide pollutants from the air, reducing the effects of climate change.

(Submitted by Alex Ross)

The Future

Chemical Computing
Paintable Electronics? NIST Studies Spray-On Manufacturing of Transistors
Mobile Phone Mind Control
3D Without the Glasses
The Robots Among Us
Nano-based RFID Tag
Quantum Film
Invisibility Cloak in 3D
Printable Sensors
Nano-sized Sensor Tubes!
The Shirt Pocket Movie
Rollup Flexible Displays
Pong with Your Eyes
Tactile Gaming Vest
Phone Future
The Sounds of Nanoscience
Broadband Through Your Arm
Shape shifting Polymer
Augmented Windshield
Quantum Effects Seen in Visible Objects

From Ian Kempton

Rotterdam Cube Houses as Stayokay Hostel

From Stayokay, the famous Kubuswoningen, designed by Dutch architect Piet Blom in the 1980's, are now a hotel. In December 2009 the Cube Houses became the most modern of Rotterdam's listed buildings. The new Stayokay Rotterdam hostel officially opened March 24th.

from M.Claiborne

The Perfect Machine by Lance Letscher



Cubes and collage are the name of the game, or rather, the Perfect Machine, as far as Lance Letscher is concerned. Themes of technology, locomotion and the creative impulse fuel the latest collages and sculptures by this artist who combines record covers, pages from books and other paper cast-offs into colourful pieces of art. Guns, walking feet and a festive looking cycle are among the collaged items that take their place among Letscher's recent work.

Artist: Lance Letscher
+ dbermangallery.com

From M.Claiborne

Bowery FMX Bike by Giant

Via @uncrate, cross between a traditional track racer and a BMX bike, the Giant Bowery FMX Bike is a mix of the old and the new. "It features a lightweight ALUXX aluminum frame, a BMX custom 'no rail' saddle, a CroMo 3-piece tubular crankset, alloy high-rise handlebars, and the ability to go fixie or freewheel."

From M.Claiborne

3-D Printing Whole Buildings in Stone...in Space: This Printer Rocks

In Pisa, Italy, mad genius Enrico Dini is building sandcastles on the moon. His giant 3-D printer is the first of its kind with the potential to print whole buildings, and it makes them out of solid rock, cutting down a thousand-year-long process into a few minutes. It uses sand, but someday it'll use moon dust.

The machine, called D-Shape, sprays a thin layer of sand with a magnesium-based glue from hundreds of nozzles--its resolution is about 25 dpi, not bad for printing on this scale. The glue binds the sand into solid rock, which builds up, layer after layer, into a sculpture, or a piece of furniture or, someday, into a cathedral. "What I really want to do is to use the machine to complete the Sagrada Familia," Dini says. Okay, it seems a little crazy, but not much.

Dini claims the d-shape process is four times faster than conventional building, costs a third to a half as much as using Portland cement, creates little waste and is better for the environment. But its chief selling point may simply be that it makes creating Gaudiesque, curvy structures simple.

It's not enough for D-Shape to be the missing link between the tiny 3-D printers of today, which never really caught on beyond gimmicky jewelry and model-making, and bigger printers capable of making full-size structures. No, Dini wants the moon. As part of the European Space Agency's Aurora program, he's talking with La Scuola Normale Superiore, Alta Space, and Norman Foster to modify D-Shape to build with moon dust. Voila: instant moonbase.

By Ian Kempton

Shape-shifting polymer pulls off amazing memory tricks

CALL it the yoga polymer: Nafion, a material used in some fuel cells, has an unrivalled memory for contortions.

Tao Xie at General Motors in Warren, Michigan, has twisted and stretched a Nafion strip into three distinct shapes, and found that it will revert to each shape at the appropriate temperature.

Nafion becomes softer as it is heated. At 140 °C Xie stretched it into a particular shape, which was locked in the polymer's "memory" as it cooled to 107 °C and stiffened. Stretching and cooling it twice more allowed two other shapes to be memorised, so that when heated to the appropriate temperature the Nafion formed the corresponding shape (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08863).

Previously the best shape-memory polymers were able to remember only two shapes.

By Ian Kempton

The Cloud (By Emily Guthrie)

Funky Chair

Another wacky clear chair. Ron Arad calls it the "Well transparent Chair." It's well strange and probably well expensive too. Made from bent plastic sheets; the sitting surface gives a bit so it's probably not as uncomfortable as it looks.

-Rob Todd

Flying Car...again.

The Transition®

Every pilot faces uncertain weather, rising costs, and ground transportation hassles on each end of the flight. The Transition® combines the unique convenience of being able to fold its wings with the ability to drive on any surface road in a modern personal airplane platform. Stowing the wings for road use and deploying them for flight at the airport is activated from inside the cockpit. This unique functionality addresses head-on the issues faced by today’s Private and Sport Pilots.

Terrafugia’s award-winning MIT-trained engineers have been advancing the state-of-the-art in personal aircraft since 2006. Now you can streamline your flying experience with the revolutionary integration of personal land and air travel made possible by the Transition® Roadable Aircraft.

Performance
Cruise: 100 kts (115 mph)
Rotate: 70 kts (80 mph)
Stall: 45 kts (51 mph)
Range: 400nm (460 mi)
Takeoff over 50' obstacle: 1700' Fuel burn: 5 gph
Fuel tank: 20 gallons
Useful Load: 430 lbs
On road: 30 mpg, highway speeds
Light Sport Aircraft (LSA)
Convenience
Front wheel drive on the ground
Automotive-style entry and exit
Two place, side by side
Automated electromechanical folding wing
No trailer or hangar needed
Cargo area holds skis, fishing poles or golf clubs

Safety
Drive in case of inclement weather
Proven 100 hp Rotax 912S engine
Full vehicle parachute available
Modern glass avionics
Automotive crash safety features

Dimensions
Folded:
6’ 9” tall
80” wide
18’ 9” long
Airplane:
6’ 3” tall
19’ 2” long
Wingspan:
27’ 6” Cockpit:
51” at the shoulder
Training
Become a Sport Pilot in as little as 20 hours of flight time in a Transition®-specific course. For existing pilots, get comfortable quickly with the familiarization training included with every Transition® delivery.

Order Today
Place your fully refundable $10,000 airframe reservation deposit here. Anticipated purchase price: $194,000.

Still not quite what I was hoping for, but pretty cool! Austin

Revealed: The £1m bullet-proof SUV (but that's cheap compared to the vodka that comes with it) By: Emily Guthrie

Revealed: The £1m bullet-proof SUV (but that's cheap compared to the vodka that comes with it)

This is the world's most expensive SUV - but with three bottles of the world's most expensive vodka included in the price tag, it actually appears to be a bargain.
The £1million Dartz Prombron Monaco Red Diamond Edition has gold-plated windows, pure tungsten exhausts, and the speed gauges are encrusted in diamonds.
The seats are not for the squeamish. They are made of one of the softest materials around - leather from a whale's penis.
And, just to send the bling factor right through the roof, this SUV also comes complete with an exterior bulletproof Kevlar coating.
But that's nothing compared to the vodka that comes with it.

The car company has thrown three bottles of Russo-Baltique, the vodka brand it created this year to mark its100th anniversary, Motor Authority reported.
Last year, a bottle retailed for £790,000. It is not a meant to be drunk, the company's website explains - instead it should be displayed as art.
That's because the bling of the bottle frankly puts the SUV to shame.
According to the Dartz company's website, the flask, a replica of the radiator guard used for the Russo-Baltique cars, is made from gold coins minted between 1908 and 1912. This is around the time the company manufactured its first car.
The flask cap is made from white and yellow gold and contains a diamond-encrusted replica of the Russian Imperial Eagle.
And finally, the bottle itself is made of bulletproof glass 30cm thick - just in case.
The car - and vodka - were produced especially for the mega-exclusive Top Marques luxury motor show in Monaco next year.
The car is made by the company that produced armoured vehicles for Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Tsar Nicolas.
The seats are indeed of 'real whale penis leather,' says a spokesperson for Dartz Kombat.
'It is inspired by the original playboy Aristotle Onassis' yacht Christina O, which had bar stool seats made from sperm whale foreskin.
'Some people have called us crazy because of this, but we think we must make a luxury car till the end.'
Weighing four tons and powered by a V8 engine capable of 450 horse power, the Pombron's maker also claim the car is 'rocket grenade proof'.

In the past our customers have included Lenin and his revolutionary partner Trotsky,' explains the Dartz spokesperson.
'In fact we are launching a version of this new model in 2012, just for Latin America.
'This will commemorate the fact that Trotsky was killed in Mexico with an ice pick in 1940.
'As such, the Latin version will come with a gold ice axe to mark this fact.'
Keeping the exact details of the car secret, the Pombron's makers say the SUV will be unveiled to Prince Albert of Monaco at the Top Marques opening in April of next year.

Flexible OLED

ModisTech to commercialize cheap, flexible OLED lighting this year
By Donald Melanson posted Feb 20th 2010 at 6:51AM

It's far from the only one working on flexible OLED lighting, but it looks like ModisTech could be among the first to actually bring something to market, as its now announced that it will begin commercialization of its 150 x 150mm flexible OLED panels this year (seemingly ahead of its original 2011 schedule). Those will apparently be used for various indirect lighting applications including desk lamps and car lighting, and promise to provide a more natural light than LEDs while maintaining some of the same power savings. Still no word on any actual products using the OLED panels, unfortunately, but they will supposedly be inexpensive for companies to adopt (and very cheap to manufacture).

Austin Haidinyak
02.20.10

Flat pack Bicycle

This flat-pack bike and scooter by Designer Nicolas Belly, won second prize in the L’Argus Design Competition, which had the theme of "Less is More: Traveling in the Era of Simplicity."

posted by RobTodd

Nanofiber lighting

Nanofiber lighting promises to be better, safer than incandescent or CFL bulbs
By Donald Melanson posted Feb 12th 2010 at 1:35PM

Well, it looks like you can add another contender to the great light bulb debate -- a group of researchers from RTI International now says that nanofiber lighter is is more efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and safer than compact fluorescents. The secret to that, it seems, is a combination of nanofiber-based reflectors and photoluminescent nanofibers (or PLN), which together are able to form a lighting device that pumps out more than 55 lumens of light output per electrical watt consumed. That's five times more efficient than a regular incandescent light bulb, and since there's no mercury, the researchers say it's far safer than CFL bulbs. What's more, it's also apparently able to produce more natural light than CFLs, although there's noticeably no mention of potential pricing -- they do say that the first products using nanofiber lighting could be available in three to five years, though. Video after the break.

Austin Haidinyak 02.12.10