Topic: The Future

What are the challenges to traditional copyright caused by technology? What new rules must be written to protect intellectual property rights, but not overly limit usage in an age where the computer is a copying device and the internet is a giant network of copying devices? In this episode of Future Talks, Gerd and Glen discuss how technology is leaving old rules behind They also talk about open source and how it relates to possible changes in the current copyright model. They also review how patents are subject to the same technology challenges.

Glen Hiemstra and Gerd Leonhard talk about the important megatrends that are shaping the future of media. They discuss a number of topics, including user generated content and media, globalization, access versus ownership, copyright versus usage right, the digital natives, the net generation and the aging of the baby boomers, the growth in wireless broadband and mobility, convergence, the decline of the hit culture, the rise of the ubiquity paradigm and much more.

The future is creatable and can be planned for. It has an effect on the present because it tells us what to get ready for and it can change how you think about tomorrow. Glen Hiemstra, founder and owner of Futurist.com and author of the book Turning the Future into Revenue, discusses the important concept of future planning. He talks about how to plan for the future and reviews both positive and negative examples of business future planning.

Bruce Sterling suggested the creation of a new type of technological device, called "spime", that through pervasive RFID communications and GPS navigation can track its history and interact with the world. OpenSpime, a project of WideTag Inc., enables individuals and corporations to better understand their environment, through the use of a series of GPS-enabled sensors. Co-founders David Orban and Roberto Ostinelli join Phil and Scott to discuss the concepts and technologies.

Today, the US dominates the Web in terms of participation, access and the influence of American English on online communication. But Internet connectivity is rapidly increasing in developing nations such as India and China. There are statistics to support the claim that the percentage of online participation from these countries far outnumbers that from the West. It is expected that by the year 2030, 50% of the population of the planet will be online. What implications is that going to have on the West?

More than a quarter of internet users are aged between their early teens and their mid twenties. This group spends a third more time online than the next most active age group. With this in mind, Safa Rashtchy asks five teens searching questions about their digital habits. When trying to figure out what will be the next big thing on the internet, it's best to ask its users. Who better to ask, therefore, than those who spend a great deal of their time online?

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Richard Morgan, author of the science fiction / future noir novels featuring the character Takeshi Kovacs. They'll talk about what he sees a society's future social issues.

In the future we may be able to find lost keys with a simple google search. Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling imagines how physical objects will be part of the internet as they become trackable in space and time. Bruce discusses the theoretical and technical challenges that we face as we try and think about and develop the Internet of Things. From Spimes to Thing Links to Blogjects, the terminology and verbal framing devices currently being used are pulled apart in this keynote address from the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

Changes in technology and in how information is shared both further and faster are transforming how organizations operate. Thomas Malone, of the MIT Sloan School of Management, shows how the changes in organizational structure mirror changes in how human society has organized and operated. His presentation illustrates that these changes can be primarily tied by a single factor, the cost of communication, and he presents present-day examples to show what the organization of the future may look like.

As part of the recent BioAgenda Summit 2006, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, debates Ray Kurzweil, one of America's most prolific inventors and a futuristic thinker in his own right. Their topic? One of the burning questions of our time: Will biotechnology save us? Or hurt us? The answers are nuanced, and they often don't agree. We'll find out how the audience voted -- From help us to hurt us to "It's too early to tell."