future

Vote on Canada’s Digital Future

- Adam Clare

Conservatives suck

On Monday the 19th Canadians will cast their ballots for who they think should run the nation. Open Media has released a report card on where the political parties stand on digital issues impacting Canadians. It’s with no surprise that the conservatives get a failing grade. The good news is that every other party support online freedoms.

Don’t want the Canadian government reading your email and watching what you do online? Vote them out this election.

We have assessed the main parties on the digital policy issues Canadians told us matter most. The grades below are a crowdsourced assessment by your OpenMedia team based on these criteria.

Although we don’t endorse any party, we work on these issues every day and want to make sure you can cast an informed vote based on what matters to you.

See the report card.

WorldFuture Conference 2015

- Adam Clare

If you’re in San Francisco this July you’re going to want to check out the conference of the future: the WorldFuture Conference. They’ll be looking at future-critical issues (many of this issues are what this very site looks at) and be discussing how to prepare for what the future holds.

If we’re not thinking about how our current actions will impact the world in the future we are not giving enough thought to our actions. Think and act about the future people you’ll never meet.

WorldFuture 2015: Making the Future is expected to gather hundreds of foresight-minded professionals of diverse backgrounds. It will provide participants a unique opportunity to network with industry and government peers from around the world, collect actionable insight on future-critical issues and emerging technologies, and build alliances across World Future 2015’s three conference tracks: the Business of Foresight, Global Issues, and Technology & Innovation.

In keeping with our action-oriented theme, we are pleased to announce that Steve Jurvetson, a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson will be the WorldFuture 2015 keynote speaker. Known as venture capitalist making the future, Steve was the founding VC investor in Hotmail, Interwoven and Kana, and he serves on the Boards of Tesla and SpaceX. Steve was chosen by the SF Chronicle and SF Examiner as one of “the ten people expected to have the greatest impact on the Bay Area in the early part of the 21st Century.”

In addition to two high energy days of interactive sessions, WorldFuture 2015 will also offer two days of pre-conference master courses, a Millennials’ morning of activities for student futurists, special networking events, and offsite trips to relevant area attractions.

Check out WorldFuture 2015.

Live in the Now, Plan for Your Future Self

- Adam Clare

There are many things that make one happy, but what if our fundamental approach is wrong? Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert looks into other ways of thinking about happiness and the overall take we have on our self.

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” Dan Gilbert shares recent research on a phenomenon he calls the “end of history illusion,” where we somehow imagine that the person we are right now is the person we’ll be for the rest of time. Hint: that’s not the case.

Rest of World to Canada: Stop Risking The Future

- Adam Clare

COP 19 ends this week and there is at least one clear message coming from the meeting: Canada is risking the wellbeing of future generations. While most countries agree that climate change needs to be dealt with and carbon output needs to be curtailed, Canada is refusing to budge on its pro-tar sands stance while keeping an ineffiecent resource-based economy running.

Hopefully Canadians will be able to notice the rest of the world is concerned about more than just Rob “Crack Mayor” Ford. Other countries are clearly thinking into the future and let’s hope Canada can do the same.

Good on the forward-thinking participants of COP 19!

“How can Canadians not see that their grandchildren will share the world with nine billion other people (by 2050)? And I have no certainty at all that it will be a livable world.”
…
“We’re not, I think, a stupid race. I know that political timescales can be very short. But I believe that these next two years – 2014, we have to change course, and 2015, when we need sustainable development goals and a robust, fair climate agreement – we can still do it.

“We need a forward-looking leadership, and that won’t come from Canadian politicians unless it comes from the Canadian people.”

Read more at the CBC.

Futuristic Things That Became Reality Last Year

- Adam Clare

It seems that most ideas in the realm of Science Fiction stay as fiction but it’s not too rare that “out there” ideas from Sci-Fi can become real. At the Sci-Fi blog IO9 they have complied a list of some seemingly crazy things that turned out to become real last year. The list range from the really cool to the more banal that can occur everyday.

9. An Electric Car is the Year’s Best

If anyone ever doubted that electric cars were the future, those concerns were officially laid to rest in 2012. Tesla’s luxury Sedan, the Model S, captured one of the auto industry’s most prestigious awards by taking home Motor Trend’s Car of the Year honors. It marked the first time that an electric car has taken the top prize — a vehicle that doesn’t run on gas or have an internal combustion engine.

Read more at IO9.

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