June 20th 6pm CET | 12 noon EST | 9am PST | 930 pm IST: Beyond Knowledge. A new era of global consciousness? - This will be a very special GerdTalks show with my guest Bill Halal (GWU Professor Emeritus, Techcast, Author) on the coming era of Global Consciousness, and the concept of human work moving beyond knowledge. You can join via LinkedIn or via Youtube (hit the bell!). You can also watch this show live on my website. Yes, sure it’s free! SIGN-UP via eventbrite (optional)

Find out more. Or visit the Youtube Playlist

Scott Galloway on the current crypto-currency crisis: trustless systems are an illusion (good stuff)

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of ‘The Ministry for the Future,’ talks with Cory Doctorow about climate change, hope, and raising a kid in a climate crisis. My 2 fav authors! 5*

In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures?

Astrophysicist and author Carl Sagan managed to predict a lot of the things the challenges America faces in the year 2021 all the way back in 1995 … gotta love the tagline!

» The Next 10 Years: Rethinking Work and Revolutionising Education. Imho, one of my best talks on the future of education & work (despite the fact that I had a pretty nasty cold that week and my voice is kinda funky::) Direct YT link.

…using the pretty cool padlet app to share my latest education-related content

This is how Walmart envisions Shopping in the #Metaverse. Thoughts? Not my cup of tea…. but hey… have a look

The EX Future and Science Museum in Dalian, China, features an array of customizable robots made to look “alive” — down to the lines on their palms.

People seem to love this new meme:)) The Metaverse could be heaven for business, commerce, big tech and big state, but hell for humans and society. It could turn out to be ‘everything we’ve ever dreamed of but little of what we really need’.

» The Great Reduction: Futurist Gerd Leonhard’s take on virtual reality, sims and the Metaverse - Post summary: The so-called metaverse is the latest and the boldest attempt to replace human relationships and experiences with highly monetizable simulations, reducing complex human life to data feeds, fancy graphics and AI-fuelled convenience: Consensual hallucinations sold as ‘human empowerment’. We should be careful what…

More Metaverse reads here, via GerdFeed

Via the newsletter of the Center for Humane Technology

“Social media doesn’t simply reflect society; it shapes society.  The world we see through social media is distorted, like looking into a funhouse mirror. These distortions are negative externalities of an advertising-driven, engagement-maximizing business model, which affects people and relationships in myriad ways…”

There’s a general sense that it’s bad for society—which may be right. But studies offer surprisingly few easy answers….

“I hated Facebook from the start and couldn’t wait for it to die. That was a pretty reasonable thing to expect. After all, I’d watched social networks from SixDegrees on crash and burn as the network…”

Will Elon make a difference? I kinda doubt it

Why we must act now to ensure that exponential technological progress remains a benefit for humanity and the planet

The Ministry for the Future - Bill Gates just featured this book, btw. Rolling Stone review. Long Now video. Good Interview video. Guardian review.

Here’s a woman with a powerful mission!

Meet Bill on my show on Monday - he’ll talk about his book as well.

DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.

Playing with Dall-e 2 Open ai to generate images that do not exist in real life…

IEEE Spectrum spoke to Kai-Fu Lee about his book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, focusing on the last few chapters that take on the big issues of job displacement, the need for new economic models, and the search for meaning and happiness in an age of abundance.

The AI Index is an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry. The annual report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence, enabling decision-makers to take meaningful action to advance AI responsibly and ethically with humans in mind..

Loved this book. Made me think.

The Sustainability Revolution will be even bigger - and vastly more existential - than the digital revolution. In this live-stream session (GerdTalks episode…

My new microsite on the 4Ps. Twitter hashtag.

» Why ‘Big Green’ is inevitable ; Cultured meat, 3D printed pizza and beyond. This is #9 in my new WHY series launched in March 2022.

Australian civil engineer Delton Chen explains his idea for a new currency, portrayed in Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-catastrophe novel.

Join me Sept ½ in Estoril / Portugal - this is a really promising event!

So happy to be back to IRL!

and of course, on Apple iTunes

“In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures? Researcher Lauren Holt makes the case for a broader form of “offsetting” to help balance technology with natural systems”

In this keynote for Calik Denim I touch on many fashion & apparel industry-related topics such as sustainability and the Experience Economy, and of course on my key topic “The Good Future” and explain what the next 10 years are likely to bring…

I had a great conversation with fellow futurist Anders Sorman-Nilsson for his ‘2nd Renaissance’ vodcast. You can it check out here (video, as below), or on Spotify (audio). We investigated ‘The Good Future’, why ‘Green is the New Digital’ and discussed why pandemic was/is a test run for climate change and how to re-design capitalism […]

“But just as the machine metaphor gives us a distorted view of automated manufacture as prime mover, so the algorithmic metaphor gives us a distorted, theological view of computational action.”

“Compared to a status-quo, do-nothing pathway, the most aggressive carbon-reduction scenario leads to a 7% drop in passenger traffic and a 22% increase in ticket prices by 2050, driven by a 70%…”

“The sociobiologist E O Wilson suggested, or rather implored, for half the world to be rewilded. This was framed as being essential for human survival, but this 50:50 split appears to me to have a…”

I sure want one of these for my office!

‘The Real Toy Story’ – A Look Inside the Chinese Factories That Make Christmas Toys. Automation….? Nope. Michael’s website with all the pics. *is that different today - this story is 7 years old I believe — wonder what has changed.