Lifeboat Foundation

Erika Ilves is an entrepreneur who does not let herself be limited by the size of planet Earth while there is a whole universe out there. ‘For now, we are developing and training our mining robots on Earth. But in less than a decade they will underpin mining operations on the Moon and beyond,’ she claims.

2008 Disney-Pixar animation WALL-E takes us to planet Earth in 2805, abandoned by people and covered in heaps of trash. There is only one cute robot left whose job is cleaning up the planet. In real life, we do not have to wait another 800 years to see this happen. Robots like this already exist. And if we treat our resources more reasonably, the picture might not turn out be as gloomy as depicted in the movie.

‘Personally, I do not believe we will be running out of resources any time soon. We have plenty of resources on Earth to last us a few centuries,’ says Erika Ilves, cofounder of OffWorld, a company that is developing a new robotic work force to enable the settlement of the solar system. But Erika would not want to be among the first humans to set foot on Mars. Before moving people to other planets, it might be wiser to send robots out there.

Continue reading “To the Moon, Indefinitely” »

Science-fiction author William Gibson famously said, “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”

Nowhere is that more true than in the tech world, where it’s easy to think that innovations, products and services available to us are ubiquitous, even when their distribution is, in fact, very limited.

Many of the innovations that we take for granted are simply not available elsewhere.

Continue reading “Silicon Valley is living in a bubble of technology that’s not accessible to the rest of the world” »

Older automakers like Ford and General Motors driverless cars outscored Waymo and Uber in new survey, USA Today reports.

This is a fair enough article, though I believe I’m more Libertarian than it paints me. I think a lot of people forget or simply don’t know my book The Transhumanist Wager (how I started my futurist career back in 2009) is known by many as transhumanist libertarian manifesto. Also, ideas from my past political campaign do not always correspond to my current gubernatorial run:

Like many libertarians, I was initially excited when Zoltan Istvan announced his candidacy for Governor of California.

Istvan is the founder of the Transhumanist Party and author of “The Transhumanist Wager,” which is considered a manifesto on transhumanist philosophy. The basic premise of transhumanism is that the next step in human evolution will be to improve our bodies and expand our lifespan with radical technology, eventually leading towards immortality. While he still needs to obtain the nomination, having someone announce their intents this early gave me hope that maybe the party would have a shot at making an impact in the California mid-terms.

Continue reading “Is Zoltan Istvan a Libertarian?” »

Philosopher Daniel Dennett believes AI should never become conscious — and no, it’s not because of the robopocalypse.

This is the future of personalized female health.

Fifty years from now, today’s humans will be obsolete, author and historian Yuval Harari tells MarketWatch.

Sometimes people bring up overpopulation scenarios where the population can fit inside Texas. But they ask, what about all the stuff that supports that population? Here is one answer.

Located in an abandoned 70,000-square-foot factory in Newark, New Jersey, the world’s largest vertical farm aims to produce 2,000,000 pounds of food per year. This AeroFarms operation is also set up to use 95% less water than open fields, with yields 75 times higher per square foot. Their stacked, high-efficiency aeroponics system needs no sunlight, soil or pesticides. The farm’s proximity to New York City means lower transportation costs and fresher goods to a local market. It also means new jobs for a former industrial district.

Continue reading “From Home Aeroponic Gardens to Vertical Urban Farms” »

Depression, anxiety, grief, despair, stress—even suicide: The damage of unfolding climate change isn’t only counted in water shortages and wildfires, it’s likely eroding mental health on a mass scale, too, reports the American Psychological Association, the preeminent organization of American mental health professionals.

Direct, acute experience with a changing climate—the trauma of losing a home or a loved one to a flood or hurricane, for example—can bring mental health consequences that are sudden and severe. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, suicide and suicidal ideation among residents of areas affected by the disaster more than doubled according to a paper led by Harvard Medical School, while one in six met the criteria for PTSD, according to a Columbia University-led paper. Elevated PTSD levels have also been found among people who live through wildfires and extreme storms, sometimes lasting several years.

But slower disasters like the “unrelenting day-by-day despair” of a prolonged drought, or more insidious changes like food shortages, rising sea levels, and the gradual loss of natural environments, will “cause some of the most resounding chronic psychological consequences,” the APA writes in its 69-page review of existing scientific literature, co-authored by Climate for Health and EcoAmerica, both environmental organizations. “Gradual, long-term changes in climate can also surface a number of different emotions, including fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, or exhaustion.”

Continue reading “Climate change is causing PTSD, anxiety, and depression on a mass scale” »