Services 2020

Well-programmed computers -- whether in the form of personal computers or hand-held devices -- are becoming the vehicles of choice. They will offer many ways to master materials. Students (or their teachers, parents, or coaches) will choose the optimal ways of presenting the materials. Appropriate tools for assessment will be implemented. And best of all, computers are infinitely patient and flexible. If a promising approach does not work the first time, it can be repeated, and if it continues to fail, other options will be readily available.

This diffuse, fractured world will be run more by cities and city-states than countries. Once, Venice and Bruges formed an axis that spurred commercial expansion across Eurasia. Today, just 40 city-regions account for two thirds of the world economy and 90 percent of its innovation. The mighty Hanseatic League, a constellation of well-armed North and Baltic Sea trading hubs in the late Middle Ages, will be reborn as cities such as Hamburg and Dubai form commercial alliances and operate "free zones" across Africa like the ones Dubai Ports World is building. Add in sovereign wealth funds and private military contractors, and you have the agile geopolitical units of a neomedieval world. Even during this global financial crisis, multinational corporations heavily populate the list of the world's largest economic entities; the commercial diplomacy of emerging-market firms such as China's Haier and Mexico's Cemex has already turned North-South relations inside out faster than the nonaligned movement ever did.

Resilience, conversely, accepts that change is inevitable and in many cases out of our hands, focusing instead on the need to be able to withstand the unexpected. Greed, accident, or malice may have harmful results, but, barring something truly apocalyptic, a resilient system can absorb such results without its overall health being threatened.

This blog serves as the primary point of contact for a competition seeking game designs to engage participants in research on the relationship between communication technology and power relations.

The Hawaii game competition

Because of the hectic pace of China's economic and social development, Chinese energy demand will continue to grow rapidly in next 40 years. Beijing appears determined to pursue a low-carbon development strategy, and wind energy is going to be one of the main resources for achieving China's low carbon goals.

"Are you making money renting your apartment on Airbnb? You're a Micro-Entrepreneur. As more and more services let people monetize their own assets and knowledge, it's creating a new sector of the economy."

"Beautiful, and a little disturbing.."  Radiohead, Dead Air Space "These powerful images prompt us to consider everything that is at stake - the things we value, the things we take for granted - and call us to work towards a very different future."  Yvo de Boer, KPMG, Special Global Advisor on Climate Change and Sustainabilit

It seems like we're playing video games every day. Every morning and evening on the subway, I see people swiping their phones, whether they're slinging a red bird into a pile of green pigs, guessing a friend's drawing, or any number of fun, frivolous, addictive activities. That's a lot of time spent on games, and a lot of cognitive energy. What if all of that brain power could be put toward social issues, like finding a way out of poverty?

"Late last week, Google representatives unveiled a significant enhancement to the company's ubiquitous search engine. They're calling it the "Knowledge Graph" and claiming it will support "more intelligent searching for real-world things on the internet"."

" Four Futures of Food serves up a quartet of scenarios plotting out alternative descriptions of how America, as well as the wider world, could be eating in the year 02021. Each is based on a different trajectory that change could describe - Growth, Constraint, Collapse, or Transformation."

It's hard to think of a more attention-grabbing title than Robots, Men, and Sex Tourism - especially in the academic world. Written by researchers from New Zealand's University of Wellington and published recently in the journal Futures, the paper predicts that in the decades to come, humans will patronise robot-staffed brothels, freeing them from the guilt associated with visiting a flesh-and-blood prostitute.

Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? These questions are especially pertinent today given the role that ICTs played during this year's uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. Indeed, as one Egyptian activist stated, "We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world." But do these new ICTs-so called "liberation technologies"-really threaten repressive rule? The purpose of this dissertation is to use mixed-methods research to answer these questions.

Scientists are pioneering the use of 3D printers to create drugs and other chemicals at the University of Glasgow. Researchers have used a £1,250 system to create a range of organic compounds and inorganic clusters - some of which are used to create cancer treatments.