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This is a new periodical from Scientific American that is ideal for a 7 Revs class. It deals primarily with issues of our future planet including well-written articles on water, energy, green-technology, biodiversity, population and even conflict. The graphics, images and charts are easy to understand. Articles present scientific interpretations of problems, many with a future focus. Excellent for use in all course topics.

NOVA - Car of the Future: Engineering for the Environment * Released April, 2008 * Running time: 54 min * Description: This documentary is hosted by the radio hosts for NPR's program, Car Talk. The hosts Tom and Ray visit several manufacturers and entrepreneurs who are creating more efficient, eco-friendly cars, such as new versions of hybrids, hydrogen fuel cells, and electric cars. The hosts add some humor that makes the documentary more enjoyable for students, while discussing serious issues. * It can be viewed in six different parts at: PBS.org - specifically: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/program.html * Rating: Very good * 7-Revolutions Section: Technology

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture.

* Filmed: February 2003 * Running time: 22:20 * Description: Juan Enriquez talks about the future of genomics and genetically modified organisms. He discusses why it will be important for everyone to have an understanding genetics. Draft 82 * Rating: Good (It's a bit dry) * 7-Revolutions: Technology

great for future of technology. short, good for in-class

Interesting exchange of ideas about the value of looking ahead. This whole NYT series is excellent.

Good short video looking at the future of military robotics. 

Wired Magazine devoted this issue to the future of food. There are excellent "info-graphics" and it is usefully divided by topics.

Renowned\ninventor Kurzweil (The Age of Spiritual Machines) may be technology's most credibly\nhyperbolic optimist. Elsewhere he has argued that eliminating fat intake can prevent\ncancer; here, his quarry is the future of consciousness and intelligence. Humankind, it\nruns, is at the threshold of an epoch ("the singularity," a reference to the theoretical\nlimitlessness of exponential expansion) that will see the merging of our biology with the\nstaggering achievements of "GNR" (genetics, nanotechnology and robotics) to create a\nspecies of unrecognizably high intelligence, durability, comprehension, memory and so\non. The word "unrecognizable" is not chosen lightly: wherever this is heading, it won't look like us. Kurzweil's argument is necessarily twofold: it's not enough to argue that\nthere are virtually no constraints on our capacity; he must also convince readers that\nsuch developments are desirable. In essence, he conflates the wholesale transformation\nof the species with "immortality," for which read a repeal of human limit. In less capable\nhands, this phantasmagoria of speculative extrapolation, which incorporates a\nbewildering variety of charts, quotations, playful Socratic dialogues and sidebars, would\nbe easier to dismiss. But Kurzweil is a true scientist-a large-minded one at that-and\ngives due space both to "the panoply of existential risks" as he sees them and the many\npresumed lines of attack others might bring to bear. What's arresting isn't the degree to\nwhich Kurzweil's heady and bracing vision fails to convince-given the scope of his\nprojections, that's inevitable-but the degree to which it seems downright plausible.\n(Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights\nreserved.)

* Filmed: February 2008 * Running time: 15:54 * Description: Craig Venter discusses creating new organisms with bioengineering. Altered and new organisms, like bacteria, may serve an important role in the future of medicine and energy. * Rating: Excellent * 7-Revolutions: Technology

* Filmed: February 2005 * Running Time: 22:56 * Description: Ray Kurzweil is an entrepreneur and inventor and has a unique perspective on the future merging of medicine, neuroscience, and computers. He claims that by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. His talk has great graphics, videos and imagery. * Rating: Excellent * 7-Revolutions: Technology

* Filmed: February 2008 * Running Time: 4:03 * Description: This talk gives a short description about how Function MRI and neuroimaging techniques will soon enable us to control a greater part of our brain and could replace, in part, the need for psychotherapy and drugs for depression and pain. Has a good "future" feel to it. * Rating: Very Good (It's short so it good for showing during class) * 7-Revolutions: Technology

* Filmed: August 2006 * Running Time: 8:48 * Description: A short lecture demonstrating cutting edge technology for humancomputer interface showing an innovative touch screen. This is an interesting example of the future of technology. * Rating: Very Good * 7-Revolutions Section: Technology

* Released March 2007 * Running time: 110 minutes * Based on the 1993 novel by P.D. James, the movie is a cautionary tale of potential things to come. Set in the crisis-ravaged future of 2027, humanity has become infertile, immigration is a crime, refugees are caged like animals, and the world has been torn apart by nuclear fallout, rampant terrorism, and political rebellion.

* Released 1999 * Running time: 60 minutes * Produced by Berkeley Media and available through their website http://www.berkeleymedia.com/ * Educational discounts are available; be sure to ask. A review quoted on their site says: "This film manages, miraculously, not to fall into the simplistic trap of equating population growth with abstract numbers that count up doom and disaster. Rather, it reminds us that this is the most human of all subjects, and its future depends above all on the human lives of young women, who live in many different circumstances in many parts of the earth. It depicts these young women, appropriately, as looking ahead to lives very different from those of their mothers -- lives at a global turning point toward lower birth rates and population stabilization." -- Donella Meadows, Prof. of Environmental Studies, Dartmouth Univ.

* Released April, 2008 * Running time: 92 min * Description: In this documentary several of the world's experts on climate change and sustainability are interviewed including: former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, progressive CEO Ray Anderson, and scientist and activist David Suzuki. It contains wonderful video footage and a very high production value. It is hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio and it appears to be intended for a younger, college-age, audience. In this documentary they discuss both the science and philosophy of the future of our planet. It starts off a bit depressing, but ends with some practical ways for individuals to enact change. * Rating: Excellent: Students rated The 11th Hour as their favorite video of the semester. * 7-Revolutions Section: Resources, Population, Technology