Category Archives: Futurism

Information Handling

DNA contains information about a living organism. It codes everything in an living being. Thats why it makes sense for corporations like Microsoft to invest in research that studies howDNA can be used to store data. Unlike most of the existing data storage devices out there, DNA doesnt degrade over time, plus its very compact. For example, just four grams of DNA can contain a years worth of information produced by all of humanity combined.

As humankind progresses, the amount of data we produce and consume has been growing considerably. Gone are the days when a 1.44Mb floppy disk could fulfill our needs. This continual increase in data necessitates a more robust and durable data storage device. In a study published in the journal Science, Researchers Yaniv Erlich and Dina Zielinski demonstrated how DNA may be the answer to our data storage needs.

Erlich and Zielinski stored six files into 72,000 DNA strands, each 200 bases long. The files included a full computer operating system, a 1895 French film, an Amazon gift card, a computer virus, a Pioneer plaque, and a study by information theorist Claude Shannon. We mapped the bits of the files to DNA nucleotides. Then, we synthesized these nucleotides and stored the molecules in a test-tube, Erlich toldResearchGate. To pack the information, we devised a strategycalled DNA Fountainthat uses mathematical concepts from coding theory. It was this strategy that allowed us to achieve optimal packing, which was the most challenging aspect of the study.

To retrieve the data, the researchers used DNA sequencing technology and a software to translate the genetic code back into binary. To retrieve the information, we sequenced the molecules. This is the basic process, Erlich said. Remarkably, the recovered files were error-free.

Humanitys means of keeping data intact have greatly improved over the years. Weve moved from paper to magnetic film to microchips. But DNA presents an even better option. As Erlich explained:

DNA has several big advantages. First, it is much smaller than traditional media. In fact, we showed that we can reach a density of 215 Petabytes per gram of DNA! Second, DNA lasts for an extended period of time, over 100 years, which is orders of magnitude more than traditional media. Try to listen to any disk from the 90s, and see if its still good.

Erlich also believes that its time to move to a better technology. [T]raditional media suffers from digital obsoleteness. My parents have 8 mm tapes that are basically useless now, he added. DNA has been around for 3 billion years, and humanity is unlikely to lose its ability to read these molecules. If it does, we will have much bigger problems than data storage.

Asked when this technology could be made available, Erlich replied with an optimistic estimate. I would guess more than a decade, he said. We are still in early days, but it also took magnetic media years of research and development before it became useful.

Ultimately, research like Erlichs and Zielinskis leads to other opportunitiesto explore a future of biological computers. This opens the possibility of using molecular biology tools to assist computing, Erlich said. Usually, it is the other way around!

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New Study Confirms That the Future of Data Storage Is in DNA - Futurism

The Remarkable ISS

The International Space Station (ISS) may be an impressive technological marvel, but its also tangible proof of what humans can accomplish when we set aside political, religious, gender, or racial differences and focus on science.Built by Russia and funded by the United States, the $100 billion space station is the result of more than a dozen countries working together.

A remarkable amount of effort went into the successful creation of the ISS, which has now been in operation for more than 16 years. It currently orbits Earth at an altitude of 354 kilometers (220 miles), traveling at 28,163 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour). The space station orbits our planet every 90 minutes, and an acre of solar panels keep the outpost running.

Right now, the ISS is home to several crew members from various nations, all of whom are focused on learning about how humans can live and work in space.It is arguably the most visible example of international cooperation and everything that can be achieved when nations collaborate.

Soon, a new addition to an ISS expedition crew will make history aboard the space station. When Jeanette Epps joins Expedition 56 in March 2018 as a flight engineer, she will become the first African-American to join the ISS as a crew member.

Epps holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland and served as a fellow in NASAs Graduate Student Researchers Project, an initiative that hopes to increase engagement amongst students who want to pursue advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Epps shared her thoughts on joining the ISS:

There have been three African-Americans who have visited ISS, but they havent done the long-duration mission that I am undertaking. Ill be the one spending the longest time on the ISS. As a steward, I want to do well with this honor. I want to make sure that young people know that this didnt happen overnight. There was a lot of work involved, and a lot of commitment and consistency. It is a daunting task to take on.

While Epps will be the first African-American to board the ISS for a long-term expedition, numerous African-American women have lent their expertise to the success of NASA. As far back as the 1950s, African-American women were contributing to humanitys mission to explore the unknown, and soon, Epps will be able to add her name to the list of people breaking new ground in space exploration.

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The ISS Is Getting Its First African-American Crew Member in 2018 - Futurism

The Future of Taxis

Electric vehicles have been growing in popularity among fleet operators, and soon, Beijing may find itself earning a reputation as the hub of the electric taxi. The Chinese city is home to one of the most important taxi fleets in the world, numbering around 70,000, and under a new program for air pollution control that will begin implementation this year, those taxis will be going electric.

According to a report by National Business Daily, the transition to electric cars will cover all new taxis registered in the region. All newly added or replaced taxis in the city of Beijing will be converted from gasoline to electricity, according to a draft work program on air pollution control for Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and surrounding areas in 2017, the report reads.

The city isnt the first to push for electric taxis. Previously, Shenzhen and Taiyuan both announced similar policies for their taxis, but the move is significant for a municipality of over 20 million people.

The total fleet conversion is expected to cost around 9 billion yuan ($1.3 billion USD), but the cost is worth it. Electric cars will potentially save taxi companies from gas expenses and could lower maintenance costs. They will also help save the city from pollution, as Beijings populace is exposed to hazardous air quality on a semi-regular basis.

The move to electric cars isnt cheap, though, which is why Liu Jinliang, chairman of Geelys ride-hailing arm Caocao, hopes the government will provide subsidies to taxi companies. National Passenger Cars Association secretary-general Cui Dongshualso hopes that the government will speed up the construction of charging facilities.

This new mandate, coupled with the Chinese governments recentrelaxation of restrictions on car manufacturingin an attempt to draw more electric vehicles, demonstrates the countrys seriousness in investing in electric cars. According to Electrek, the nationis now the worlds biggest electric vehicle market, with a fleet of over 600,000 electric cars more than both the U.S. and European markets combined. Soon, theyll be adding another 70,000 to that total.

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China Is Replacing 70000 Taxis With Electric Cars - Futurism

Blockchain: More Than Bitcoin

Blockchain and cryptocurrency are relatively new. Most people might even think that Bitcoin invented just in 2009 and probably the most popular blockchain-based cryptocurrency out there is the only one of its kind. But blockchain is more than just Bitcoin.

Blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions. Its public and is not governed by a central body. As such, theres a relative level of transparency coupled with security through cryptography. In other words, its safe and reliable, and monitored by hundreds of miners who keep these ledgers. Its quickly becoming of interest to not just existing financial markets, buthumanitarian and sustainability efforts.

At the moment, blockchains are most frequentlyused for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But it has other uses like what distributed public blockchain network Ethereum does. Instead of focusing on just digital money like Bitcoin, the Ethereum blockchain runs the programming code of decentralized applications, allowing for enterprise use. Transactions in the Ethereum network rely on a crypto-token (also known as security tokens) called Ether.

While theres specific no research lab dedicated to blockchain and cryptocurrency just yet, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency research and development company IOHK wants to change that. IOHK was established in 2015 by Jeremy Wood and Charles Hoskinson, one of the founders of Ethereum. Theyre planning toinvest up to $1 million in two facilities for research: one at the University of Edinburgh, and the other Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The labs will cover topics such as cryptography, smart contracts, and how to upgrade cryptocurrency systems. Best of all, their research will be open source and accessible to everyone. This is commonly not done in the startup setting, Hoskinson told Business Insider. Usually, this is something you do if youre a company like Microsoft Microsoft has research campuses at many major universities.

Hoskinsonalso said that setting up these research labs can provide perspective and better understanding of the growing blockchain technology. After having discussions, they [the experts] said, actually we dont have answers to a lot of these fundamental questions, explained Hoskinson. We said, how do we get those answers? And they said, we need to write some papers, we need to do some basic research. Over time we started moving into the university research space.

We already know that blockchain is more than Bitcoin, but now that there will be research labs dedicated to understanding its potential, the future of the technology is bound to develop rapidly. The days of digital cash becoming globally dominant could arrive sooner than we think.

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In Case You Missed it, The Blockchain Revolution's Officially Begun - Futurism

Commercial Space Travel

Early this week, Elon Musk of SpaceX made an exciting announcement: humans are going back to the Moon next year. An interesting detail of the planis thatthe crew is expected to includetwo private citizens who have apparently already paid a significant deposit to become part of the first Moon mission in more than 45 years.

The journey will take about a week, reaching around 480,000 to 640,00 km (300,000 to 400,000 miles) into space extending past the 401,000-km (249,000-mile) record set by the Apollo 13 astronauts back in the 1970s.

There have been significant advances in space travel in the decades since the U.S. managed to put a man on the Moon. Even so, this private Moon mission is not without risks, especially to its paying passengers.

On their mission, the space travelerswill likely experience severemotion sickness because zero gravity confuses the balance sensors in the inner ear. The absence of gravity also causes biological tissues to expand, so while the space touristswill be able tosnap a selfie with the Moon in the background, theyll have to deal with puffy faces in their post. More serious concerns could come from radiation exposure. This risk will bepartially mitigated by the spaceships built-in protection against radiation, as well as the short time-frame of the mission, but these do not completely eliminate the danger.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of space travel are the circumstances that we cant yet predict. For instance, spacecraft failure and other technical difficulties that could take place during blastoff, over the journey, or even upon reentry into Earth, could prove to be dangerous.

Consider also that, up until now, only extremely healthy people have been sent to space andthey still wentthrough rigorous training and health checks to ensure their bodies were up to the task. A burgeoning space tourism industry means we might one day be sending relatively unhealthy people into space people who could require medication to travel. Their health will be subjected to a completely new environment, and, should a medical complication arise, the medicine and equipment necessary to treat it could be hundreds of thousands of kilometersaway.

Nevertheless, private companies like SpaceX continue to look for solutions for these potential problems. This year, SpaceX will launch the unmanned Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, followed by a manned mission in the second quarter of 2018. The next stop after that will be the Moon. And then, if everything goes as planned, we will finally make our way to Mars.

As it has in the past, space explorationcontinues to demonstrate that humanity is willing to take a few risky steps in order to make that next giant leap.

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Will SpaceX's Moon Tourists Survive the Trip Across the Cosmos? - Futurism

Visions of the future, from the early 20th century.

This article is based around a transcript of a segment from The Anthill 10: The Future, a podcast from The Conversation. Gemma Ware, society editor at The Conversation and a producer of The Anthill, interviewed Selena Daly, an expert on the Italian Futurists.

When the Italian journalist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti went off to the frontlines of World War I, he was thrilled to be pedalling there on a bicycle. Back in 1915, bikes were an avant-garde mode of transport and Marinetti was an avant-garde kind of guy. Hed made waves across Europe a few years earlier when he launched the Futurist Manifesto.

Selena Daly: Marinetti, who was a master at advertising and self-promotion, got the first manifesto published on the front page of the Paris daily newspaper Le Figaro in February of 1909. This really was a very bold launch of an artistic and cultural movement at this time and got a lot of attention also around the world.

Selena Daly is a lecturer in Italian studies at University College Dublin and an expert in the Italian Futurists. Marinettis vision of the future was built around high praise for technology and the aesthetics of modernity.

SD: So he praised in this manifesto the speeding automobile, steamships, locomotives. All of these technologies that perhaps to our eyes now may seem a little bit quaint but at that time were really at the cutting edge of technology. So very famously, Marinetti in that manifesto praised the speeding automobile as being more beautiful than the famous Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace which stands in the Louvre then and still today.

It was a movement that began with literature and poetry and spread to sculpture, fine art, music and even textiles. For example, this 1921 piece called Fox-trot Futurist by an Italian composer, Virgilio Mortari, was influenced by the Futurists. Marinettis vision was as destructive and provocative as it was creative and forward-thinking.

SD: He felt that Italy as a country was completely weighed down by the baggage of the Renaissance and the baggage of ancient Rome and its classical past. And he really wanted Italy to just stop looking backwards always and instead look to what the future could offer them in terms of inspiration for art and literature. And in that first manifesto he says he wants to rejuvenate Italy which he found very stagnant and therefore he said that everyone should set fire to the libraries, flood the museums and in this way break all links with the past.

With World War I in the offing, Marinetti and his band of followers quickly agitated for Italy to join the fight. They felt that war would help bring their Futuristic vision into being.

SD: One of the most famous slogans that Marinetti coined was in that very first manifesto where he said that he praised war as the sole hygiene of the world. The idea there should be a purging war which would rid Italy and Europe of all of its obsession with the past and they could move forward to a brighter future.

It took nine months for Italys leaders to agree to join the war during which time the Futurists campaigned vigorously for intervention. When Italy did enter the war on the side of the Allies in May 1915, Marinetti and his group of fellow Futurists signed up as soon as they could.

SD: They were terribly excited by the bombardments. They found this to be an inspiration also for their art and in very many ways putting into practice what they had preached and what they had thought about and imagined in advance of World War I.

When the war ended in 1918, the Futurists went through an intense period of political engagement, forming the Futurist Political Party and forming a close alliance with Benito Mussolini and his Fascist movement. The Futurist party wanted to make Italy great again. They wanted a country that was no longer in servitude to its past where the only religion was the religion of tomorrow. Their manifesto promised revolutionary nationalism, and included ideas such as totally abolishing the senate and the gradual dissolution of the institution of marriage. A 1914 design by futurist architect Antonio Sant'Elia. Antonio Sant'Elia

SD: But in the end of 1919 there were Italian elections and the Futurists and the Fascists performed disastrously. So they received less than 2% of the vote in Milan and its at that point that Marinetti actually decides that parliamentary politics isnt for him and he withdraws. He disbands the Futurist political party and he withdraws completely from parliamentary politics because he feels disillusioned and he feels that the message that he has isnt getting through.

Post-1920, Futurism no longer goes down the parliamentary politics route but it was, after 1924, very closely aligned with Mussolinis Fascist movement. So while they may not have been engaged in parliamentary parties they were very much on the side of the Fascist regime and that didnt change at all during Marinettis lifetime.

Marinettis association with Fascism has tainted the Futurists legacy ever since.

SD: Obviously some Futurists distanced themselves from the movement because of this alignment with Fascism. But others didnt. Its interesting a lot of the art in the 1930s and some of the 1940s is what can be described as Fascist pro-regime art. There are a lot of portraits of Mussolini done in a Futurist style for example. And the Futurists, while they were never the official state art of Fascism because Mussolini never wanted to proclaim one art to be the state art of Fascism the Futurists were still featured at official events and did have this very strong alignment with Musssoinis regime at that time.

Marinettis allegiance to Mussolini went right up to his death in 1944 in Bellagio in the north of Italy, near to the puppet regime run by Mussolini towards the end of World War II.

SD: Because there was such a cult of personality also around Marinetti and he was really the focal point of the entire movement it did rather peter out at that stage after his death and then at the end of the war as well. So there were surviving Futurists who did try in the 1940s and 1950s to keep Futurism alive and there was an interest in Futurism most definitely, but it was tainted by Fascism and there was a reluctance in many circles to really address the Futurist art and Futurist literature on its merits because of the shadow of Fascism that was hanging over it.

Italys relationship with Futurism is still complicated, but some Futurist images have remained iconic.

SD: There is a sculpture of Boccioni, one of the most famous Futurist artists, actually featured on the Italian Euro 20 cents coin, just to give an indication of how important the Futurist aesthetic is to a vision of modern Italy today. Boccioni, died actually in 1916. He died under arms, he actually fell off his horse in training so he didnt have the glory of a battlefield death that he may have wished for because he was also very belligerent.

But he was never tainted by Fascism because he died before Fascism actually came into being. So therefore its much easier to place a Boccioni sculpture on a Euro coin in Italy because he doesnt really have those other connotations and other associations with Fascism.

And the Futurists did help shape the way others in the 20th century went on to imagine what the future could look like.

SD: The Futurist aesthetic had a very profound influence on the language of advertising for example in the 20th century. For example, BMW recently said that they were very much influenced by the Futurist aesthetic in the design of one of their cars. There are fashion houses that are still using Futurist prints and Futurist textiles to inspire their collections. There is still an affinity for the Futurist aesthetic even today.

So while Marinettis technological, streamlined vision of the future may have been born out of a specific political moment, it has continued to resonate. Even the generic use of the word Futurist today remains strongly connected to Marinettis vision from 1909.

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How the Italian Futurists shaped the aesthetics of modernity in the 20th century - The Conversation UK