- Highlighted in Red are important sections of the Article which i found will be impactive on the synopsis of my Home of the Future posters.
Extract from the article:
"Speculations on the Future of Science" By Kevin Kelly
(http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly06/kelly06_index.html)
Kelly had five things to say about the next 100 years in science...
1) There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.
2) This will be a century of biology. It is the domain with the most scientists, the most new results, the most economic value, the most ethical importance, and the most to learn.
3) Computers will keep leading to new ways of science. Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year. The data volume is growing to such levels of "zillionics" that we can expect science to compile vast combinatorial libraries, to run combinatorial sweeps through possibility space (as Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata), and to run multiple competing hypotheses in a matrix. Deep realtime simulations and hypothesis search will drive data collection in the real world.
4) New ways of knowing will emerge. "Wikiscience" is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors. Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating "fast, cheap, & out of control." Negative results will have positive value (there is already a "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine"). Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later. (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.)
5) Science will create new levels of meaning. The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory. It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not. It is all becoming effectively one machine. And we are the machine.
Extract from the article:
"Architecture Experts Ponder Future of Skyscrapers in the Digital Age"
By Sarah H. Wright
(http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/archexperts-0926.html)
- Mitchell didn't dismiss skyscrapers as dinosaurs of urban design, but he noted how the digital revolution has created a "more mobile and connected workforce. When any place--from an airport lounge to a bench under a tree--can be a workplace, there is a lot less need for cubicle farms stacked up in towers."
Extract from the article:
"Earths Climate Outside 'Safe Operating Space"
By Emily Sohn
(http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/09/24/earth-tipping-point.html)
We are on the verge of pushing nature into a state of instability like nothing humanity has seen before, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The study, which attempted for the first time to come up with real numbers for a set of conditions beyond which Earth may not be able to recover, found that we may have already crossed several tipping points.
"Massive disruptions in climate, ecosystems and so on can have severely negative impacts on things like air quality, pollution levels, pests, emerging diseases and so on." - Jonathon Foley, a climatologist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota.
Excessive global warming, for example, might lead to a rapid rise in sea levels, the collapse of major circulation patterns and drastic changes to regional climates, including more floods and retreating glaciers.
Too much acidification in the oceans, which happens when the seawater absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, makes it difficult for creatures to survive, grow and build shells.
"Again and again, we find that a little environmental damage is OK," Foley said, but at some point, the planet just can't take it anymore, which is especially true when it's taking multiple hits at once. "In science, we look at one issue at a time. In the real world, all of this stuff is hitting the fan at the same time."
The specific numbers in the study remain estimates, said limnologist Steve Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and scientists will likely debate the details of each tipping point for some time.
The important thing for now, he said, is to recognize that nature has hard edges, that we can't just keep abusing the planet forever, and that we know enough now to be very concerned.
Interactive map of the world displaying different effects of Global Warming:
"Map: Global Warming Effects"
National Geographic
(http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-impacts-interactive.html)
- Sealevel Rise is expected to exacerbate storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards
- Intensity of tropical storms may increase
- Effects associated with rapid urbanization, industrialization and economic development
- Health risks due to heatwaves increaces
Extract from the article:
"Our Future Environment in Perspective"
By Howard and Sylvia Oliver
(http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/tiger/publications/perspectives.htm)
"Positive Energy Technology"
The increasing demand for energy is a major source of the pollutants causing global warming. Burning of fossil fuels of any type releases carbon, that has in the past been locked up in the earth, back into the atmosphere. Nuclear power stations have the advantage that they do not do this but are obviously associated with environmental concerns of other types created by immediate and long-term radiation problems.
There are other forms of ‘greener’ energy production and it is now often possible, at a premium, to purchase domestic electricity derived from renewable sources. It is, however, difficult to find many forms of electricity production that do not have some negative environmental impact. For instance, wind power causes both noise and visual pollution, and tidal and hydroelectric energy production can cause environmental problems associated with changes in land use. In a few parts of the world geothermal energy can be used with success for both power production and space heating. Technology associated with solar generation of electricity and solar heating panels is improving and getting less expensive, so this may be able to contribute more in the future.
It is, however, unlikely that it will be possible for the developed world to shift significantly from power production based on fossil fuel, in the short term, so the main hope must lie in reduction of polluting emissions associated with the generation process. The same comment applies to energy for transport where a reliance on oil is likely to continue but at least emissions can be reduced.
