Services 2020

"IRVINE, Calif. - Scientists have been using small variations in the Earth's gravity to identify trouble spots around the globe where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet's main sources of fresh water. "

Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today-perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system-in prison, on probation, or on parole-than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

"It's a remarkable bit of future artifact creation, as much of the forecast ended up playing out in the subsequent 17 years much as the IDL described. As predictions go, it was usefully on-target. At least, it could have been useful had anyone been paying attention. The IDL was closed the next year, its forecasts essentially forgotten. Knight-Ridder itself was bought out in 2006."

Then the entered are combined with the statistics and the user gets a statistical outlook on his future. He learns about the average life expectancy of his generation, the consequences of his smoking habits and the potential of a cancer-diagnosis. Also he learns how big the probability is of getting married and at what age. 

"(ISNS)-With Arctic ice receding at an unprecedented pace due to global warming, many nations seem far more interested in carving up the newly exposed resources than doing something to slow climate change, according to documents released by WikiLeaks."

Yesica and her lawyers have exercised a legal right now dubbed the "Right to Be Forgotten" that allows you to remove embarrassing pictures or information you put on the Web - and do it permanently, totally. Which means you can tell Yahoo or Google or Facebook, "I don't want that there anymore. I want this to be forgotten. You have the image or the email or whatever in your computers. Remove it. And if you don't, you are breaking the law."

Summary of a WikiLeaks story that the Saudis have been over-stating their oil reserves and some thoughts on why it go neglected by mainstream media.

We Solve For X is a new project that Google has put together to help solve some of the world's greatest problems that are facing our civilization. Problems such as global warming, and other stuff of science fiction that just might be possible

"Whether you're raising money, organizing people, or trying to influence change: if you can't do it alone, you can do it on The Point."

From August 2-21, a group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego embarked on an expedition aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon to explore the problem of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre.

International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system. The central purpose of IFs is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios. The model is integrated with a large database containing values for its many foundational data series since 1960. Through this web site IFs is freely available to users both on-line and in downloadable form.

"Business-as-usual in the financial sector is blowing up a bubble even bigger than the real estate bubble which burst in the 1930s. "

The Global Mail is a philanthropically funded, not-for-profit news and features website. Our mission is to deliver original, fearless, independent journalism. We will strive to inform, provoke, expose - and entertain. Our audience is our only agenda. We have no advertisers to answer to, nor shareholders who seek to profit. And our generous philanthropic benefactor has no interest in what journalism we produce. What The Global Mail produces will be the evidence of that.

Foresight is not about making predictions. Rather, it's a tool for identifying dynamics of change, in part by exploring the implications of those changes. This is a point I've made often enough that even I'm sick of it-but it remains an idea that not enough people understand. It's next to useless to say "X will happen;" it's much more valuable to say "here's why X could happen."

"For most of my life I owned very little. Until I was 30 I was a vagabond. I wandered remote parts of Asia in cheap sneakers and worn jeans. The cities I knew best brimmed in medieval richness; the lands were green in agricultural outlook. When I reached for something in those days it was almost surely made of wood, fiber or stone. I ate with my hands, trekked on foot through mountain valleys, and slept wherever. I carried very little money and even less stuff. My personal possessions totaled up to a sleeping bag and some cameras."

The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned space flight a century from now.  The year-long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed.

"As Surowiecki explained, certain conditions must be met for crowd wisdom to emerge. Members of the crowd ought to have a variety of opinions, and to arrive at those opinions independently. Take those away, and crowd intelligence fails, as evidenced in some market bubbles. Computer modeling of crowd behavior also hints at dynamics underlying crowd breakdowns, with he balance between information flow and diverse opinions becoming skewed." I thought this might have implications both for Delphi methods in general and for our crowd work specifically.

Despite an uncertain global economy and a continually shifting regulatory environment, the top teams at the world's leading banks are starting to plot paths toward growth. With no proven economic model to point to, bankers are attempting to understand the many possible futures they could confront over the next decade. In the industry's first-ever interactive eBook published by Ernst & Young and Knowledge@Wharton, "Global Banking 2020: Foresight & Insights," banking leaders explore a spectrum of potential scenarios - including some extreme possibilities - that could develop in the coming decade, along with strategies to help global banks thrive.

"Join world-renowned futurist Lynne Franks for a pathbreaking 5-part online course that explores how a feminine approach to the future can create social unity within cultural diversity. For this course, Lynne has gathered four extraordinary women leaders from the world of media, education, business and spirituality - women who are helping to move us forward into a future we want: Gabrielle Roth, Hazel Henderson, Denise Linn, and Jayanti Kirpalani. Starts June 19. Catch the early bird special until June 7."

"The current energy landscape is rife with contradictions: Gas prices are shooting up, renewables are being implemented at a seemingly rapid pace, natural gas is being simultaneously demonized and hailed as an energy savior, and electric cars are finally starting to roll off production lines. Fortunately, your tax dollars fund a government agency devoted to making sense of energy. The U.S. Energy Information Administration explains the gritty details of our energy future in its Annual Energy Outlook 2011, which has tracked our projected energy use all the way to 2035. Don't have the time to slog through its myriad charts and tables? We do. Read on for our abbreviated look at the report's most important findings."