Future Today #019 - Spain 2050, Earth 2, GPT-3, Brain-Computer Interface

Welcome to Future Today! A newsletter for those curious about social innovation, disruptive technologies and futures studies. In it I will share weekly blog articles, interesting links and recommendations for books, movies, series and courses.

?? Spain 2050 (ES) A strategic foresight exercise that pursues a dual objective: to improve our understanding of the social, economic and environmental challenges and opportunities that our country will face in the coming decades; and to generate, based on a multi-stakeholder dialogue, a Long-Term National Strategy that will allow us to set priorities, coordinate efforts, and guarantee the prosperity and well-being of our citizens in the future.

?? Toyota Is Building a Futuristic Prototype City Powered by Hydrogen. South of Tokyo at the base of Mount Fuji, Toyota is spearheading a project it calls Woven City. Plans for the futuristic prototype city were unveiled at CES in 2020, and construction began this past February. 

?? Long Term Thinking 101. This online playbook intends to provide a short introduction to opportunity spotting using foresight. It is aimed at those who are interested in learning new methodologies to look at the accelerating change in the world, so they can learn to anticipate on this change.

?? A Newsletter on Futures and Science Fiction (ES) With Tecnofuturos we want to promote knowledge about science and technology, future studies and science fiction, as elements of prospective reflection and stimulus of a mentality and culture open to exploration, alternatives, change, innovation, and responsibility. We address the Spanish-speaking world, particularly Spain, where we believe that this open-mindedness to the future is especially necessary.

?? Brain-Computer Interface User Types 90 Characters Per Minute with Mind. A brain-implant system trained to decode the neural signals for handwriting from a paralyzed man enabled a computer to type up to 90 characters per minute with 94 percent accuracy, researchers report yesterday (May 12) in Nature. 

?? Earth 2. Earth 2 is a futuristic concept for a second earth; a metaverse, between virtual and physical reality in which real-world geolocations on a sectioned map correspond to user generated digital virtual environments. These environments can be owned, bought, sold, and in the near future deeply customized.

?? Transhumanism: a quick guide. The message of transhumanists is that, thanks to science and technology, we can become far superior creatures to current humans and live forever.

?? China is already close to creating matter (ES) China is making great strides in perfecting a powerful laser that by 2023 will be able to produce matter and antimatter directly from the vacuum of space, following the same process that supposedly gave rise to the universe.

?? Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers in Breakthrough. Humanity has been able reach distant vistas, such as the Moon, the deep oceans, and the wild expanses at Earth’s poles. Now, scientists have made a new breakthrough in the exploration of a very different type of frontier—the hallucinatory world inside dreams.

?? Language models like GPT-3 could herald a new type of search engine. The way we search online hasn’t changed in decades. A new idea from Google researchers could make it more like talking to a human expert

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?? Read the newsletter in Spanish