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Futurepedia will be a public wiki in many languages that covers a topic Wikipedia traditionally hasn't (until recently, see below) allowed: thinking and writing about the future. This would be a major advance to global foresight culture, something all the world's citizens should have. We've reserved Futurepedia.org for this, and are just waiting for volunteers to help us find sponsors. Perhaps you? At Futurepedia you will find structured speculations on possible, probable, and preferable (3P's) futures in science, technology, environmental, economic, political, and social (STEEPS) domains. As in Wikipedia we will use MediaWiki software, and all material will be shared in a Creative Commons share-alike or GNU Free Documentation License.

One way to ensure you're right at least some of the time is to make the same prediction year after year -- after all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. "Dr. Doom" himself -- New York University economist Nouriel Roubini -- has been expecting a U.S. financial catastrophe for years. As Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute told the New York Times Magazine last year, Roubini's explanations -- increasing trade deficits, soaring current account deficits, Hurricane Katrina, skyrocketing oil prices -- have tended to evolve over time. But as we now know, he hit the jackpot by calling the housing bubble in 2006. Smart or lucky? Wait to see where his next predictions land.

The purchases weren't about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal. Estimated on the basis of one crop per year, the land purchased represents 55 to 65 cubic kilometers of embedded freshwater, an amount equal to roughly 1½ times the water held by the Hoover Dam. And, because this water has no price, the investors can take it over virtually free. It's not quite a scenario from a James Bond movie, but the rush to lock up scarce water resources in agricultural belts is nonetheless disturbing. It suggests another food crisis might not be too far away.

Psychologists and other social scientists (most economists excepted) have learned a lot in the last few decades about what makes us happy. They have taught us that, in affluent societies, money doesn't buy as much happiness as people think. Indeed, for people living above subsistence, it may buy very little. They have also taught us what affects well-being more than money: close relations with family, friends, and community; meaningful work; security (financial, job, and health); and democracy.

Factories making sought-after Apple iPads and iPhones in China are forcing staff to sign pledges not to commit suicide, an investigation has revealed.

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies-especially the Internet-now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways.  The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.   Our basic research question is:  How can people and computers be connected so that-collectively-they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?' The Center for Collective Intelligence brings together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing the way people work together.

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.

Africa still evokes in the minds of many some mix of corruption, disease, war, and poverty -- the Four Horsemen of Africa's Apocalypse. Indeed, the economic crisis has fueled a whole new round of such worries. But the perpetual hand-wringing over the continent's dreadful state misses a broader trend: Africa is rising, and it could emerge from the crisis stronger than most people think.

From birth on, no moment in a person's life will go unmonitored. At each street corner, at the entrance to each home, perhaps even inside each room and under each bed, there will be a metal box, tamper-proof and solid enough to prevent burglary. Each box will contain a receiver and a transmitter linked to a central computer. Every time a person passes near the box, an electronic report will go out. It will run somewhat as follows: "The level of the anger hormone carried in the bloodstream of No. KJ-090679883 is a little elevated. Inject 21 milligrams of the relevant antidote into his bloodstream to prevent him from turning violent."

Foresight projects are in-depth studies looking at major issues 20-80 years in the future. Recent examples include Tackling Obesities, Future Flooding and Mental Capital and Wellbeing. Foresight uses the latest scientific evidence and futures analysis to tackle complex issues and provide strategic options for policy

Taken together, these discoveries mean that one can write out a life code, manipulate a cell, and execute a specific desired function. It means we can convert cells into programmable manufacturing entities. But this software builds its own hardware, allowing companies to begin using bacteria to produce chemicals, fuels, medicines, textiles, data storage, or any series of organic products.

Navy Crowdsources Pirate Fight To Online Gamers

It sounds counterintuitive, because lower oil prices are making fuels from farm and forest land less competitive. This is true, but only in the short run. The crisis has boosted awareness that dependency on a limited set of resources, including financial products, must be avoided by all means. The best response is diversification -- and biofuels will be a major beneficiary of this incipient trend.

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.

The Economist/Qualcomm Challenge: Pictures of Tomorrow.What urgent problem or need do you foresee becoming especially important in 2012?  Submit a compelling photo or video taken on a mobile device that reflects the World in 2012

ABOUT FIND THE FUTURE Find The Future at NYPL brings visitors to the Library together with players around the world to tap into the creative power of the Library's collections. It is the first game in the world in which winning the game means writing a book together - a collection of 100 ways to make history and change the future, inspired by 100 of the most intriguing works of the past. Starting May 21, 2011, visitors to the Stephen A. Schwarzman branch of the NYPL can play the game with their personal smartphones or on Library computers. Global players will join the game with any computer that has access to the Internet. The game is free to play. The game is designed to empower players to find inspiration for their own extraordinary futures by bringing them face-to-face with the writings and personal objects of people who made an extraordinary difference in the past. The game starts with a special, invitation-only event on May 20, 2011. As part of the Centennial celebration weekend, hundreds of gamers will earn the chance to join a special once-in-a-lifetime event: an "overnight lock-in" at NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman building. This "write all night" lock in will serve as the official kick-off for the Find The Future game. All visitors to the Library or the website nypl.org/game will continue to be able to play Find The Future through the end of 2011.

Over the next decade, cities will continue to grow larger and more rapidly. At the same time, new technologies will unlock massive streams of data about cities and their residents. As these forces collide, they will turn every city into a unique civic laboratory-a place where technology is adapted in novel ways to meet local needs. This ten-year forecast map, The Future of Cities, Information, and Inclusion (PDF), charts the important intersections between urbanization and digitalization that will shape this global urban experiment, and the key tensions that will arise. 

"Together, they highlight five "technologies that matter" for cities in 2020: mobile broadband; smart personal devices, whether they're dirt-cheap phones or tablets; government-sponsored cloud computing (modeled on the U.K.'s national "G-cloud" initiative); open-source public databases to promote grassroots innovation, and "public interfaces." Instead of Internet cafés, imagine an outdoor LED screen and hacked Kinect box allowing literally anyone to access the Net using only gestures."

"Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology - and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous."

"* Report: A Synthetic Overview of the Collaborative Economy. By Michel Bauwens, Nicolas Mendoza and Franco Iacomella, et al. Orange Labs and P2P Foundation, 2012. "