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The prospect of genetically much altered future generations is no longer in the distant science fiction future but rather in the "some of the people reading this will live to see it on large scale" future.

Some more competitive governments might mandate genetic editing to put a floor on intelligence. Want a first class high tech economy? Allow no kid below 120 IQ. The first government to do that will have the highest per capita income economy in the world 50 years later if not much sooner.

My expectation is that differences in regulatory response to germ line genetic engineering technologies will cause the populations of the world's various countries to diverge in a variety of ways that will be immediately visibl

“When the zeitgeist is moving, art usually goes hand-in-hand with it,” says Rossin, describing a world in which we’re constantly glued to our iPhones, Androids, laptops, and tablets as much if not more than we are to the faces of fellow humans. Mediums have historically risen from the predominant technology and social relations of the time in which they exist

“Because of the level of sensory overload we experience on a day-to-day basis, we need to have this fully arresting experience in virtual reality in order to get a total sense of vertigo from a work of art,”

Enveloping, consciousness-bending experiences aren’t “just to escape life,” says Rafman. “But to create a total experience that will create a feeling that is qualitatively new. That is ultimately the most radical thing.”

we won't need to teach children how to read and

write, but rather how to use computers and think creatively

world in which we all use voice-in, voice-out (VIVO) computers

the average desktop computer now has the raw processing power equivalent to all of the human brains on Earth combined

There is no longer a clear distinction between human and machine intelligence

Full immersion VR is now a mainstream phenomenon

NEW EDUCATION MODELS

education will become an "on-demand service" where people "pull down a module of learning" when they need it.

"School kids will learn from short bite-sized modules, and gamification practices will be incorporated in schools

From staff-free ticket offices to students who can learn online, it seems there is no corner of economic life in which people are not being replaced by machines.

One of the reasons Google is investing so much is that whoever owns the communications system for driverless cars will own the 21st century's equivalent of the telephone network or money clearing system: this will be a licence to print money.

The only new jobs will be in the design and marketing of the cars, and in writing the computer software that will allow them to navigate their journeys, along with the apps for our mobile phones that will help us to use them better

Singapore had the foresight to realise very early that they didn’t have resources. They didn’t have water, they didn’t have energy. So they were forced from the start to include sustainability in their thinking. They understood that economic sustainability for them was tightly linked to environmental sustainability

The infamous traffic in Indonesia’s capital city, Jakarta, led to the first phase of a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) rail system to alleviate the strain on roads, to be announced this year

The inexorable rise of the waters of the earth’s oceans since 1880 has already contributed almost 20 cm (nearly a foot) since 1880, and more recently the rise continues at an accelerating pace . The IPCC (2007) predicts an increase of sea level of between 0.5 to 1.5 m by the year 2100

Island nations under threat include Bermuda and the Bahamas in the Atlantic, the Pacific Islands of Palmerston, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean

in terms of numbers of persons impacted, the oceanic islands pale in comparison with the slow-motion disasters that will occur in densely populated, low-lying coastal cities like New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, Jakarta and Dhaka.

whole countries such as Mauritius and Tuvalu will need to evacuate due to rising sea levels. But while coastlines in much of the world may suffer, climate change will be a positive development in some areas. Specifically, Canada; northern Europe; Russia; Alaska; Patagonia, Argentina; and southern Africa may all experience real estate booms.

Continuing with the New York example, Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently proposed a $20 billion climate change plan for the city.

The plan is designed to mitigate damage from another Sandy-sized storm and would drastically change everyday life for New Yorkers, with sharply increased taxes and large construction projects in most seaside neighborhoods.

We increasingly live in a world where we don’t have to leave our homes, and when we do, we travel in isolation

It is in public space that we encounter a wide variety of people different from ourselves. Public spaces are important because they provide room to negotiate how we will live together in a highly populated environment. Encountering people of different races, classes, ages and abilities on a daily basis has the potential to cultivate a citizenry that is more tolerant of diversit

Streets are declining as a form of public space because street life often is perceived – and sometime is – unsafe: thus we frequently retreat indoors, making the streets even less safe

никто особенно не расстроился, когда однажды утром вместо лютой Натальи на работу вышла Райхон, вежливая и старательная женщина из Таджикистана. Она меняла воду в ведре после мытья каждого этажа и протирала перила специальной тряпочкой

Как-то незаметно сменился персонал в ближайшем супермаркете. На кассах вместо неприветливых продавщиц советской школы появились улыбчивые таджички.

Прошло два года. Наш подъезд снова грязный — дважды в неделю Райхон забегает, чтобы небрежно смести пыль и также небрежно кивнуть в ответ на приветствие.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants living in the country vary widely, but fall somewhere in the range of three to six million people. It is likely that around 30 percent of Moscow's immigrant population is illegal.

According to Russia's Federal Migration Service director, Konstantin Romodanovsky, these middlemen have created a shadow economy that amounts to almost $1 billion. As with every lucrative industry in Russia, this shadow market inevitably has ties to the government.

The cruelty that has become an all-too-common refrain in today's Russia stems, at least in part, from the ingrained belief in Russian exceptionalism -- the idea that Russian morality is unique and therefore beyond reproach. Originating in ancient Kievan Rus, this idea was propagated by the Orthodox Church in the Middle Ages, and was prominently displayed in the communist revolutionary claims of the 20th century.

Last week, Japan’s ominously named robotics company Cyberdyne announced new technologies it’ll start rolling out at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in September: Two robots, one exoskeleton. One robot shuttles unwieldy luggage, another cleans the facility, and the exo assists with heavy lifting.

Japan’s government actively funds robotics R&D, with aims to triple the nation’s robotics market to $22 billion in the next six years, and is keen on showing off some impressive technology at Tokyo’s Summer Olympics in 2020

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem

Yet many are realising that the gadgets we chuck away can be ripped apart and transformed into something new – brand new technology, or even art.

In 2012, we discarded 48.9 million tonnes of electrical and electronic products. If current trends continue, by 2017, the annual amount of e-waste produced globally will reach 65.4 million tonnes – that’s roughly 20% of the weight of all the people living on Earth.

Governments should stop thinking about refugee camps as temporary places

"These are the cities of tomorrow,"

The average stay today in a camp is 17 years. That's a generation."

Consumers in China spent $116.8 billion on luxury goods abroad in 2015

This translates to 46% of the global volume of high-end goods, which includes branded leather goods, cosmetics and electronics, according to consultants at Beijing-based Fortune Character Group, which derived these figures from the revenues of some 20,000 brands.

The government says that 120 million Chinese tourists — just about 1% of the population — went overseas in 2015, and contributed to 12% of global spending on their holidays.

M-Pesa’s success has been phenomenal. Recent statistics show that fully one-quarter of the Kenyan economy flows through M-Pesa.

Other countries are taking a crack at a similar mobile digital currency. Vodacom

has launched M-Pesa in other African nations, as well as India and parts of Eastern Europe. In Latin America, Ecuador recently announced it would launch a nationwide digital currency, residing largely on people’s smartphones

Sociologists from Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), avoid using the term “middle-class”, explaining that a mechanical transfer of terms used in most developed countries standards only distorts the picture. Other researchers claim that if the middle-class does not exceed 25%-30 % of the population (the highest figures obtained for Russia), it is useless to discuss the phenomenon, since this figure is around 60% and over in developed societies! It is not just a matter of statistics; it means quality difference for middle-class role in society in general and its consumer aspect in particular.

‘The Russian middle-class is growing not due to entrepreneurs and people from free business, but due to government employees or state corporations. Furthermore, gradually this tendency is becoming more vivid and changing the mentality of what the middle-class is

Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands.

In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked.

She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text.

In 2018, happiness among young adults in America fell to a record low. The share of adults ages 18 to 34 reporting that they were“very happy” in life fell to 25 percent—the lowest level that the General Social Survey, a key barometer of American social life, has ever recorded for that population.

Happiness fell most among young men—with only 22 percent of young men (and 28 percent of young women) reporting that they were “very happy” in 2018.

We wondered whether this trend was rooted in distinct shifts in young adults’ social ties—including what The Atlantic has called “the sex recession,” that is, a marked decline in sexual activity for this group in recent years.