Any and all subject matter related to the future--the long view--of the human condition. Technology, Health, Economics, Politics, Society, Environment and the basics of how to think about the future.
“We are all now connected to the internet, like neurons in a giant brain.”–Stephen Hawking Unless you are living in a remote cabin completely off-grid, it has reached the point where you cannot avoid artificial intelligence. It’s in our search engines, it’s on our phones, it’s on the social media on our phones. It’s permeating […]
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”–variously attributed The above quote dates from the late 19th century. A 21st century version might well be, “everybody talks about disruption, but can anybody do anything about it?” One person who has strong ideas on what to do about it is Roger Spitz. He […]
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne This podcast originally aired in March of 2022 “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne I wouldn’t call future fluency a a new jargon. I would call it a unique and practical way of looking at foresight–of integrating it into the culture […]
“The internet gave us access to everything; but it also gave everything access to us.””–James Veitch Our daily lives are overloaded with information from more sources than anyone can can count. Your smart phone is substantially more connected to the world of information than the network TV newsroom of just a couple of decades ago. […]
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”–Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlett) What is the fodder that feeds generative AI? Of course, there is massive software programming, but creating useful output requires data. Tons of data. Anne Boysen has a masters in strategic foresight from the University of Houston […]
“Anyone who thinks there is safety in numbers hasn’t looked at the stock market.”–Irene Peter Nowhere do we hear more about artificial intelligence than in the world of investing. Nvidia and other major AI-related stocks are in the news every day. Is AI over-bought and due for a correction? Perhaps at the peak of Gartner […]
“The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do.”–B.F. Skinner “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne It’s non-stop: the buzz, the chatter, the speculations, the concerns. It’s visceral: the excitement, the awe, the deep amazement. But it’s also disturbing and at times, to some, terrifying. It’s artificial intelligence. […]
“I did not come to NASA to make history.”–Sally Ride “Going to Mars would make NASA great again.”–John Grunsfeld This episode was originally aired in October of 2019. The inaugural ASCEND conference was cancelled due to Covid-19. It was held virtually in 2021 and live in 2022. The 2023 event will be held in October. […]
“To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”–Charlemagne I wouldn’t call future fluency a a new jargon. I would call it a unique and practical way of looking at foresight–of integrating it into the culture of an organization. Dmitriy Zakharov is a fellow […]
“So I submit to my colleagues here today that hydrogen is not as far away as we think it is.“–Bob Inglis In February of 2017, Seeking Delphi™ featured Infinity Fuel Cell and Hydrogen, Inc.™ founder and CEO Bill Smith, in an episode entitled What Ever Happend to Fuel Cells. Not much was happening in early […]
“Mining asteroids will ultimately benefit humanity on and off the Earth in a multitude of ways.”- Peter Diamandis Peter Diamandis might be right, but asteroid mining is probably not imminent–at least not in the way that lunar mining is. With both the NASA and the Chinese National Space Agency having designs on establishing permanent lunar […]
“We have created science and technology to extend our life, but we haven’t created life we want to extend.”–Sergey Young, Seeking Delphi™ episode #55, explaining why he believes more people do not support radical life extension. Few individuals have done more, from an advocacy standpoint, to promote breakthroughs in human longevity, than Sergey Young. Seeking […]
This podcast was originally recorded and aired in November of 2018. “The Promise of Autonomous Vehicles is Great.”–Dan Lipinski “My opinion is that it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous vehicles.”–Elon Musk ™ There’s no shortage of opinions on the viability of self-driving cars. Be you a bull or a bear, though, […]
This podcast originally ran in June of 2018. Seeking Delphi(tm)will return from hiatus with new material next month. “I can’t imagine a future without robots.”–Nolan Bushnell ™ In the popular HBO series Westworld, robotic hosts are depicted as being placed into a kind of psychiatric analysis by their creators. Could this actually happen one day? […]
“I believe fuel cells could end the 100-year reign of the internal combustion engine.” –William Clay Ford Seeking Delphi will return from Hiatus in Mid-May. This is the first in a series of rebroadcasts of the highlights from the past 4 years of programs. Much has changed in the fuel cell sector since this program […]
“There’s a lot of automation that can happen that isn’t a replacement of humans but of mind-numbing behavior.” –Stewart Butterworth “Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we better prepare for it.”–Mark Cuban In an early standup routine, Woody Allen once joked that when his father came home to announce that his job on an […]
“Ageing is, simply and clearly, the accumulation of damage in the body. That’s all that ageing is.–Aubrey de Grey It’s that simple. Or so say Aubrey de Grey and his many followers in the gerontological and biotech communities. But the sixty-four dollar question is: how does the message disseminate to the rest of the world? […]
“It is not in our stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.”–Willaim Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III Got foresight? Do you even need it? Hell yes, you do. The consequences of lack of foresight have never been more evident than they are in the age of the coronavirus pandemic. But just how […]
“What I’m after is not living to 1,000. I’m after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to.”–Aubrey de Grey It’s all so complicated. Back in January I hosted a panel entitled The Dawn of Superlongevity: Scenarios for a post-aging future. I hoped to address many of the issues involved in getting […]
“I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.”–Stephen Hawking For Seeking Delphi’s™ fiftieth** episode, we return to visit with one of our earliest guests, professional futurist and author Richard Yonck. Three years ago, he joined me to […]
“As far as I’m concerned, aging is humanity’s worst problem, by some serious distance.”–Aubrey de Grey Keith Comito, president of Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, joins me for a discussion to preview the 2020 Eding Age Related Diseases conference, to be held online, August 20-21, 2020. Go HERE to register for the conference, and use discount […]
“Pets have more love and compassion in them than most humans.”–Robert Wagner Even as the pandemic-struck U.S. economy shrunk by 32% in the first quarter of this year, veterinary medicine saw a different story. Pet ownership soared at a record pace, and public pet supply companies, like Petco, registered increases in sales. Donna Harris […]
“I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.”–Elon Musk With the May 30 launch of two American astronauts to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Dragon Crew capsule, history was made. This was not only the first launch of astronauts from American soil since 2011, it […]
“The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”–Thomas Edison Richard Dawkins might disagree with Thomas Edison. He’d likely say the purpose of our bodies and our brains is to carry around–and perpetuate– our genes. Increasingly, though, the purpose of body is to carry around our technology and interface it with […]
“Without Electricity, the air would rot.” Ralph Waldo Emerson What might Ralph Waldo Emerson say if he lived in the age of “shelter-at-home?” Perhaps he’d opine that without electricity, we all would rot. At any rate, we’d all be a lot more miserable, if not in far greater danger. The reliability of electricity has […]
“The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”–Bernard Baruch For all the pain, suffering, sickness in death, all we have to look forward to if we survive the pandemic, is the worst global economy since the 1930’s. Does one need a financial analyst or a […]
“If a severe pandemic materializes, all of society could pay a heavy price for decades of failing to create a rational system of health care that works for all of us.”–Irwin Redlener There is no doubt about it. The after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be with us for many years into the future. […]
“Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we need to prepare for it.”–Mark cuban Unfortunately, mass unemployment has apparently hit us without any help from automation. But if there is a silver lining in the COVID-19 pandemic–and it’s awfully hard to imagine one–it might be that this may prepare us for dealing with mass […]
“I want to die on Mars–just not on impact.”–Elon Musk “I am convinced that humans need to leave earth.”–Stephen Hawking Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking are not alone in their calls for humanity to become a multi-planetary species. But they certainly are the most visible advocates for space colonization. And while the moon […]
“Future shock is a sickness that comes from too much change in too short a time.”–Alvin Toffler The newly released volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, and looking ahead to the next 50 years. In this episode recorded just […]
“No serious futurist deals in prediction. These are left for television oracles and newspaper astrologers.”–Alvin Toffler The newly released volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, and looking ahead to the next 50 years. Seven of the contributors have been […]
“Your future self is watching right now through your memories.”–Aubrey de Grey The newly released volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, and looking ahead to the next 50 years. Seven of the contributors have been guests on Seeking Delphi™ This is […]
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”–Albert Einstein The upcoming volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, and looking ahead to the next 50 years. Seven of the contributors have been guests on Seeking Delphi™ This is the fifth in a series of repeats […]
“We’re doing a lot better than people think.”–Jerome Glenn “Change is the process by which the future invades our life, and it is important to look at it closely.”–Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock The upcoming volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future […]
“It’s dangerous when people are willing to give up their privacy.”–Noam Chomsky The upcoming volume, After Shock, features 50 of the world’s most renowned futurists reflecting on the 50-year legacy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, and looking ahead to the next 50 years. Seven of the contributors have been guests on Seeking Delphi™ This is the third in […]