Welcome to the latest edition of FutureScapes. Today we dive into some amazing and controversial futures finds in social media. An in-ear, real time translator straight out of sci-fi blasted across social media these past weeks, but is it everything its creators are claiming? Plus, 3D printing is going metal, banks are still behind on the times, AI dips its employment toes into the legal profession and physics, the obsolescence of voting via Big Data, and a bit more.

In this issue:

• Futures Finds in Media
• New Books & Old Friends
• Rohit on the Road

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Futures Finds in Media

In-Ear Language Translators May Soon Be Here, Thanks to Waverly Labs via Futurism

Waverly Labs will soon release a pair of in-ear translators, called Pilot, that allow conversations between people speaking different languages to be translated in real time. Through crowdfunding, the in-ear translators will be available next year for $410. How Star Trek.

I Just Spoke With Pilot And I Don’t Know If It Is Real… via Forbes

However, Forbes contributor Paul Armstrong has strong doubts that Pilot is all it’s cracked up to be. After a 20 minute conversation about the technology and funding behind Pilot with Andrew Ochea, the founder and CEO of Waverly Labs, Armstrong had this to say: “Ochea did his best to answer and asked me at the end if I was convinced it wasn’t a hoax. I answered honestly. I wasn’t.”

Lasers and nanoparticles combine to allow metallic 3D printing in midair via ExtremeTech

Harvard’s Wyss Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has stepped outside of the 3D printing box to develop a new type of printer that uses a special formulation of silver nanoparticle ink and lasers to print unsupported metallic structures in midair, overcoming the traditional 3D printing medium of supported plastic.

More People Are Living Past 100 Years Old Than Ever Before — Here’s Why via Bustle

Pew predicts that by 2050 there will be 8 times as many centenarians as there are today, with China and Japan projected to have the highest number of adults over 100. Rohit spoke on this phenomenon and its socio-economic ramifications late last year. What will society look like when people retire at 100 and live to 120?

HDFC Bank exec: This is how future of digital banking looks like via CNBC moneycontrol

Established banking is one of those sectors that is potentially the least prepared for and the most resistant to the change exponentially growing digital technologies are bring about in other business sectors…

Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone via The Guardian

Renewables can power the world! In a clean energy milestone, Portugal ran on renewable energy alone for 4 days. This followed Germany’s announcement on May 15th, when clean energy had powered almost the entire country all day, with power prices actually turning negative a few times.

Artificially Intelligent Lawyer “Ross” Has Been Hired By Its First Official Law Firm via 2045

“Ross, the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney, has its first official law firm. Baker & Hostetler announced that they will be employing Ross for its bankruptcy practice, currently comprised of almost 50 lawyers.”

Nobel-Winning Physics Experiment Recreated by AI… In One Hour via Futurism

In another leap forward for AI and physics, Australian physicists have created an AI that can run and improve complex physics problems with little oversight. The idea is to leave the manual stuff to the AI, allowing the scientists to focus on high-level problems.

Dronebuster will let you point and shoot command hacks at pesky drones via ars technica

Tired of your neighbors or the CIA spying on you via drones? Hack them! “DroneDefender is a two-pronged drone jammer—it can disrupt command-and-control signals from a remote operator or disrupt automatic GPS or GLONASS guidance, depending on which of the devices’ two triggers is pulled.”

IN THE FUTURE, BIG DATA WILL MAKE ACTUAL VOTING OBSOLETE via Nextgov

Better than just predicting winners, the big data being collected by search engines and trend watchers may make voting obsolete: “Why are we struggling so hard to figure out how to use Trends or tweets or shares to predict elections when Google actually knows exactly how we are going to vote. Impossible, you say? Think again.”

New Books & Old Friends

We’ve added quite a few new authors to our store in the past months. Be sure to drop by and check out the latest works available at Fast Future Publishing.

In addition to new books, we’ve updated the site with a brand new Free Presentations page, a collection of Rohit’s most popular presentations through the years. Check back regularly as the page will be updated as Rohit continues to speak around the world.

Gray is the New Green by Karen Sands

Gray is the New Green is paradigm shifting business book for visionary leaders, savvy marketers, and innovative entrepreneurs who are ready to rock their revenues in the Longevity Economy by staying in sync with the people who keep them in business. Discover how demographic trends coupled with cutting-edge findings will positively influence your future leadership, business development, market reach, and succession planning.

What Works: Case Studeis in the Practice of Foresight by Sohail Inayatullah

What Works furthers the practice of foresight in organizations, institutions, cities and nations. Divided into three parts, the book moves from theorizing the future to case studies of foresight in action and concludes with innovative futures methods. What Works covers over thirty years of Inayatullah’s research in futures studies and offers one of the most comprehensive works on methods and case studies and, most importantly, implications and applications available today.

Resilience And The Future Of Everyday Life by James H. Lee

How can we sustain ourselves in a world turned upside-down? That’s the central question of Resilience and the Future of Everyday Life. In this thought-provoking book, James H. Lee explores the unprecedented challenges of the post-modern age. Some see these problems – from financial chaos and exploding debt to career uncertainty and environmental worries – as proof that human society is on the verge of collapse. Lee looks past the doom and gloom and sees possibility instead. He asks, “What if the so-called ‘coming apocalypse’ leads not to societal collapse but a more resilient way of life? What if these global problems initiate a positive cultural transformation?”

It’s YOUR Future… Make It A Good One! by Verne Wheelwright

Awarded “Most Important Futures Work” by the Association of Professional Futurists, It’s YOUR Future… Make it a Good One! by Verne Wheelwright takes a step-by-step approach to teaching you how to achieve the future you want. This book shows you in simple, easy steps how to learn about the methods and tools that futurists use (very successfully) in large businesses around the world and how you can use the same methods (even more successfully) in your own life, career, or business.

2015-16 State Of The Future From The Millennium Project

2015-16 State of the Future brings together an extraordinarily diverse set of data, information, intelligence, and hopefully some wisdom about the future. This report is for thought leaders, decision-makers, and all those who care about the world and its future. Readers will learn how their interests fit into the global situation and how the global situation may affect them and their interests. The report provides an eye on global change and information utilities that people can draw from as relevant to their unique needs. It provides an overview of the global strategic landscape: business executives use this research as input to their strategic planning, and university professors, futurists, and other consultants find this report indispensible in teaching and research.

To order your copy of these books, please visit our store.

Rohit on the Road

• May 28: Early Childhood Council, New Zealand – Living to 120
• June 8: Hogan Lovells, Washington DC – Future Impacts of Artificial Intelligence in Legal
• June 20: Ernst & Young, London – Keynote The Future of Business
• June 30: Frost & Sullivan, Growth, Innovation & Leadership Conference – Keynote The Future of Business in Europe
• July 1: DS Smith, Innovation Workshop London – Disruptive Innovation & The Implications for Manufacturing, Packaging & Distribution
• July 18: Nokia, Inspiring Leaders Program Munich – The Future of Business Workshop