Science fiction movies should help illuminate our path forward - and lay bare the implications of present-day technologies, good and bad. All too often, however, sci-fi movies get the future all wrong. This includes some of our most cherished favorites.

Consider all the flicks featuring flying cars, poorly conceived time travel escapades, sex with aliens or heroes that are either willfully ignorant of present-day technology or savant-like in their ability to manipulate it into doing things it most certainly could never do. How then to select the 10 most worthy of this dubious honor?

Let me defer to popular cyber-punk author William Gibson, who famously stated: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." This may be the single most misguided statement about the future ever made. Over and over again the future takes its sweet time arriving, but when it does come it changes everything in unanticipated ways.

Therefore, I'm zeroing in on movies that predicted our scary-glorious future would arrive soon fairly soon, but which instead got everything spectacularly confused. As these 10 glorious misses prove, that's easy enough to do.

On to the show:  

1. Blade Runner

Please forgive me. I love Blade Runner. But it's comically wrong, pretty much about everything. Replicants? Androids on the cusp of being indistinguishable from humans? Memory implants? Colonies on Mars? A "city of 106 million people." A one-world culture that appears to be dominated by Japan but looks like Hong Kong. Crappy phones? Oh, and what's the deal with all that rain in California? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

2. Jurassic Park

If you can get past the cheesy acting and pap dialogue, Jurassic Park is good Spielbergian fun. But it's so off target. A rich man spends figures out how to recreate extinct species and the best application he can come up with a dinosaur theme park? Let's get this straight: this will never happen, not in any future.

Yes, I know... there's no Superman, either. Problem is, this film spends an inordinate amount of time trying to justify its science - and gets it wrong.

3. Brazil 

Terrorists. Excessive cosmetic surgery. Police state. Too many damn tubes and wires? The brilliant Brazil got much right - but was wrong on so many core elements. Ours is not a dystopian world where we are all faceless numbers, easily lost by an overarching, all-encompassing bureaucracy. Just the opposite, in fact. Increasingly, the world is an all-out competition for attention amongst billions of people striving to transcend anonymity. Everything about Brazil is backwards-looking. Worse, it completely missed how everything is going digital.

4. Videodrome

After watching Videodrome many times, I'm still not entirely sure what it's about. Here's my best guess: Cable television tells us what to watch, and as we watch we become changed - emotionally and physically. Um, perhaps. But it seems to me that the Internet is putting us more in control of what we watch, not the other way around.

With all our "second screens" - smartphones and tablets - plus YouTube, the Web and social media, there is never a shortage of personalized content. And most of it won't kill you, at least not right away. Ironically, television has become far less important to us than Videodrome would have ever thought possible.

5. Soylent Green

Spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people!

The world is so over-populated, resources so scarce, that what choice does poor Soylent Industries have but to make its foodstuff from humans? Except, that's not what happened. So far, the future has brought relative abundance - which has its own set of problems. 

6. 2001: A Space Odyssey

If you manage to stay awake through 2001 - no small feat in 2013 - you come to realize how wrong it is about everything. Alien contact, stately flights to the moon and a super-intelligence that is a... mainframe.

Sadly, 2001 spawned far too many copycat films with its silly singular view: Humans are not in charge of their past nor their future. The fact that the women are stewardesses and anyone who can do anything is a white male merely reveals just how clueless this film really was. On the plus side, it still looks and sounds awesome.

7. Fahrenheit 451

There is much good to say about Julie Christie and Francois Truffaut. But you cannot say this movie understood the future. In Fahrenheit 451, a firefighter burns books. This is his duty - because the "government" cannot allow books as they may foster an independent-minded populace.

Whenever this movie comes on, I download one of the thousands of free books that are instantly available to me via Kindle.

8. Inception

Infiltrating someone's unconscious mind. Stealing another's dreams. Controlling what others do by getting inside their head, all Bene Gesserit like? Inception may be cool, and it's certainly frustrating. But we are nowhere close to accomplishing what the film suggests. We can't even cure Alzheimer's. 

9. Logan's Run

In Logan's Run, life is perfect. And then you die. At the ripe old age of 30.

It may not be fair to include this film on the list. After all, it's set 250 years from now. Who knows what will happen in that time? However, given the fact that humanity continues to live longer, spends billions of dollars on extending life, and brilliant scientists such as Ray Kurzweil are actively pursuing a sort-of human-technological immortality through the singularity, I am going to go out on a limb and predict that Logan's Run will always be wrong.

10. Frankenstein

We can now keep people alive by putting inside them the organs of a dead person(s) - or an animal. Does that make the recipient a monster? Frankenstein warned what could happen when we attempt to bring the dead to life, or create a life from the dead. Whether or not we figure out how to do that - it isn't going to play out like Frankenstein.

Those are my choices, and I'll stand behind every one. But these 10 misfires are far from the only movies that completely whiffed on predicting the future. What films would you add to the list? Leave your comments below.

After a nearly year-long wait, Google Glass #961 made it into my early-adopter open arms on Friday morning. I live in Portland, and while I could have flown down to the Bay Area for the full Glass indoctrination, I instead opted to go it alone and see what strange and serendipitous experiences might result for a lone technophile-turned-cyborg in the Pacific Northwest.

Here, that story begins — with an unboxing of course.

I ordered the "Cotton" color of Glass. At the time of ordering the bright blue and tangerine colors were sold out, but white was my first choice anyway. 

When it arrived, the black outer packaging was about to fall off... a bit disconcerting considering Glass is a $1500 device. 

"XE" Explorer Edition logo, for pre-orders from last year's Google I/O

Glass came with sparse instructions, but at least there were a few arrows.

The front of the device, and what you'll be looking through. 

The 5-megapixel, 720p camera sits on an adjustable arm.

Google Glass is surprisingly lightweight, even more so than I'd expected.

The device charges via a micro-USB, included in the box.

Google Glass uses bone conduction technology so that what the wearer hears is amplified considerably.

The black and white micro-USB and microfiber pouch (with a hard case bottom) were nice luxury touches. 

Glass packs 12 gigabytes of memory for all the photos and videos you'll be taking.

Looking through Glass really does feel like glancing up at a tiny TV screen. The image is reflected from the outside. 

Much more is on the way for our Google Glass coverage. After I finally got the thing on my face, I wore Glass for 48 hours straight (excepting a few moments and sleep of course — no Scoble-style showering here).

Let's just say that it's been a really interesting weekend. Google's evolution of the smartphone has surprised me more times than I can count, so stay tuned.

Today, Google's Googliest project makes the leap from Android to iOS. Google Now, announced last June at the company's I/O 2012 conference, is part smart search and part personal assistant — but don't call it Siri. The service will make its debut on iOS through an update to Google's core Search app, available in the App Store.

According to Google's blog post on the release, "Today, with the launch of Google Now on iPhone and iPad, your smartphone will become even smarter. Google Now is about giving you just the right information at just the right time. Together, Google Now and voice search will make your day run a little smoother."

Google Now for iOS will be nearly identical to the Android release, though it won't enjoy the same deep integration as it does on Google's own mobile platform. That means no homescreen widget, of course, and no "swipe up" gesture for instant, fluid access. The iOS version will also be missing a few of the cards you'd find on Android: For now, cards for boarding passes, nearby events, Fandago and Zillow will remain an Android exclusive.  

A 20% Project That Took Off

We spoke with Google's Baris Gultekin, co-creator of Google Now, about the product's migration to that other platform. According to Gultekin, Google Now is the latest product home run with humble beginnings as a year-long 20% project (Google encourages employees to dedicate 20% of their time to a pet project that interests them).

"In the early days it was all about keywords," Gultekin explains. "With Google Now, you don't even have to search. We're really interested in having computers do all the hard work." 

For Google Now, the heavy lifting comes easy. A smart search app on steroids, it provides instant access to a spread of useful information, delivered via "cards". The cards are wholly dependent on context. As Gultekin puts it, "The product is different given the situation you're in." You might see a card for commute traffic around rush hour, or a card for your flight reservation the morning before you head to the airport.

Google Now Is Google, Now

Google Now is an umbrella project of sorts, tying Google's vast web of products together. Naturally, the product is also right at home on Google Glass, the company's futuristic eyewear that also aims to make this whole business of carrying the Internet less interruptive.

Google is betting big on Google Now, so it will be interesting to see if the service takes off in Apple's ecosystem. Google iOS ports like Google Maps are wildly popular, but will iPhone users take notice of Google Now? 

From its perfect morsels of context-dependent info to its uncanny knack for knowing what you needed to know before you knew you needed to know it, Google Now is a powerful tool — and a fun one.

Try it out today in the App Store and have fun pitting it against Siri in voice-powered search time trials.

You know you want to.

Remember that top secret Google Glass Foundry event?

You know, the one for developers for Google's cool new augmented reality (AR) glasses? The one with the ultra-strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that we'd heard nary a peep out of since the second half of the event wrapped up at the beginning of this month? On its Google+ Developers account, the company that fully intends to whisk us all into a wearable future of computing just gave us a little peek at what went down at the San Francisco and New York Google Glass hackathons. 

Meet The Google Glass Pioneers

The pair of two-day events invited about 40 developers to set up camp at Google's respective bicoastal offices, handed them each a set of Google's AR visors and... well, we're still not exactly sure what took place. But we're betting that the hackathons yielded Google Glass applications far more compelling than Sergey Brin's obsession with live-streamed video stunts from Google I/O last year. 

According to the brief official Google+ recap, Foundry attendees broke into teams and dreamt up more than 80 new tricks for Google Glass. Participants in the hackathons scored special "Pioneer" edition glass bars, like the placeholders handed out at Google's I/O conference.

The eight teams that came out on top won the grand prize of a free pair of the futuristic AR devices, which went on pre-order at Google I/O for $1,500 (though we've yet to pay a dime of that). The Glass API is still on lockdown for the time being, so don't expect to hear too much unless you can get your hands on a Medieval torture device and a Pioneer or two. 

SXSW And Google Glass 

As Google Glass Explorer #961, I can hardly wait to get my hands (ears?) on the things. While no release date is set yet for those of us who pre-ordered at I/O, Google will apparently be holding a SXSW Interactive session for developing for its newest, coolest platform. Here's the description for the SXSW Google Glass event, hosted by Google Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan:

"By bringing technology closer, we can get it out of the way. This is what Glass does. It provides an experience to the user that's there when they want it, and unobtrusive when they don't. In doing so, Glass creates a new kind of computing that's more about people than it is about computers. In this session, we'll look at Glass in people's lives with emphasis on how to use the cloud API to build new experiences and bring people closer together."

Below are more new photos from the Google Glass foundry events. Now that we've got Google Glass "pioneers" my status as a Google Glass "Explorer" suddenly feels a little inadequate. You can view the full album on Google+.

Photos by Daniel Gaines Photography and Philip Montgomery.

If you ever thought that something will last forever, get ready for a smack on the head.

The latest evidence of this grand falsehood is today's announcement from the United States Postal Service of a new plan to halt mail delivery on Saturdays, with the exception of package delivery.

The move, which is scheduled to begin this August, would save the post office $2 billion annually. Under the proposed plan, mail would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays, and post offices currently open on Saturdays would remain so.

This is all just in the planning stages, since Congressional approval is needed to make such a drastic change. But the USPS is expected to cite figures demonstrating the American public would be behind such a move when it makes its formal announcement later today.

Shifting Technology, Always

Technology has a way of disrupting the hell out of the things and processes we have come to accept as "always there" in our lives. If you went back 15 years, it would hard to imagine five-day mail delivery, yet here we are, with an proposal that makes sense. Personal mail delivery has fallen drastically since the advent of e-mail and social media networks.

Five years ago, I might have objected to such a plan. Saturdays were a big day for checks from publishers. Now that all my funds are direct deposited, I no longer care.

It's not just the mail, of course. A decade ago, it would have been hard to conceive homes not having landlines for phones, and yet these days it's commonplace, thanks to ubiquitous cell phones and e911 services that geolocate phones. (If I didn't live in a plaster-walled Faraday cage, I would ditch the landline in a minute.)

Five years ago, it would be really hard to imagine a world without a desktop Windows monopoly, but then Apple and Google took the computing world sideways into the land of smartphones and tablets and now things have gotten so bad for Microsoft, they've had to put financial stakes into companies (i.e., Nokia and now Dell) just to ensure Microsoft has a vendor that will actually sell Windows on said smartphones and traditional PCs.

For those of you who find that line of reasoning hard to accept, it may be time to let go of the staid notions you might have about technology. Nothing in this business lasts forever and something will always try to replace the technology you are using.

It's All Been Done

Many of us of a certain age have watched some new technologies rise to prominence, only to nearly completely fade away. Fax machines had a particularly short tech cycle, and VCRs shorter than that. Landline telephones had a good long run, as did personal desktop computers. But now, it seems, their time is waning.

This is not a proclamation that "the desktop is dead." But personal computing is changing, and drastically. We have inklings of what this might look like, but like any change, it's going to have its share of bumps and scrapes along the way.

Today's announcement from the USPS reflects the fundamental change in the ways we communicate. There will be other world-shaking announcements in the months and years to come, and we need to be ready.

Five-day mail delivery?

No idea is unthinkable any more.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Nest is doing very well. The company that makes the eponymous smart thermostat just closed on an $80 million round of funding, according to GigaOm. It's now shipping 40,000 to 50,000 thermostats every month, which is apparently enough to win the confidence of Google Ventures and Venrock. 

Call it the iPod of smart home technology. And not just because the Nest was literally conceived by the man who led the iPod team at Apple for several years. Like the iPod, the Nest thermostat is a disruptive technology planting itself into the lives of everyday, non-techie consumers, where it will slowly sprout into something much bigger. With the iPod, Apple popularized the digital music players among the masses and paved the way for a series of other, even more important devices. The Nest is about to do the same thing. 

For those who aren't familiar with it, the Nest is an Internet-connected thermostat that purports to learn its owners habits and configure the house's cooling and heating patterns more intelligently. The result is a more energy efficient home and, as the company proudly proclaims, lower utility bills. It's not the first smart energy management product to hit the market, but it is among the sleekiest and easiest for everyday consumers to understand and use. Sound familiar? 

Home automation. Wi-Fi-connected appliances. The Internet of things. These tech industry buzz concepts can get the crowd going at conferences like Le Web and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), but ask your mother or a random colleague what they think about them. Normal people don't even know what this stuff is. But soon they will. 

Plenty of startups, cable companies and telcos are gearing up for the smart home revolution, prepping their own remote lighting control, video security and energy automation features. Communications companies from Comcast to Verizon have begun offering these services as an add-on to customers' existing cable and phone bills. 

As cool as smart thermostats, security cams and remote controlled door locks are, they're only the beginning. The list of Wi-Fi connected household appliances keeps growing. An Internet-capable toaster or washing machine might seem silly, but the super-connected homes of the future will be much more energy efficient, easier to manage and secure. Soon we'll move onto automated cat feeders and plant watering systems - and from there we'll graduate to Jetsons-style domestic robots.

If any one product is poised to popularize smart home tech, it's the Nest. Its clean design, easy installation and availability from big retailers give it a prime position from which to plant a ticking, hyper-futuristic time bomb.

IBM believes technology's future lies in cognitive computing, which essentially means making computers think more like humans do. To IBM, that includes giving computers sensors that enable it to touch, see, hear, taste and smell - sensory input as one more piece in the puzzle to help solve problems.

IBM's Five in Five

IBM's progress toward cognitive computing is seen in the company's annual end-of-year predictions. Rather than its usual practice of prognosticating on where five technologies will be in five years, this year's Five in Five focuses on innovations that make it possible for computers to experience each of the five senses.

The projections mark the very beginning of what will be a long journey toward cognitive computing. The first step in building machines ablet to behave, think and interact like humans is to give them the same sensory abilities. That way computers can understand their environment, learn from it and act upon it. For example, if a robot could hear a train's whistle and feel the vibration on the tracks, it might be able to figure out that a locomotive is coming and get out of the way.

The Five Senses

Touch: IBM also expects smartphones and tablets to communicate using haptics, nonverbal communication that enables people to experience how an object feels. Haptic feedback is already use to for many things, including to provide tactile sensation when typing on a glass keyboard, but that's only the beginning. Eventually, devices pointed to an ecommerce site could vibrate to simulate the feel of a fabric’s weave, for example. (Click on the images to download the infographics.)

Sight: Vision will get an upgrade, too. IBM believes computers will be able to identify images and understand what they mean without the use of tags. This will lead to systems that can help doctors analyze X-ray pictures, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, ultrasound or computerized tomography scans.

Hearing: There will also be improvements in computers' ability to hear and understand sound. Greater sensitivity to sound pressure, vibrations and waves could lead to more-accurate landslide warnings, for example.

Taste: Computers with virtual taste buds will be able to calculate flavor, according to IBM, helping chefs improve recipes or create new ones. The systems will break down ingredients to their respective chemicals and calculate their interactions with neural sensors in a person's tongue and nose.

Smell: And, finally, according to IBM, computers will have an acute sense of smell in order to diagnose from a person's breath a coming cold, liver and kidney disorders, diabetes and tuberculosis. Similar to how a Breathalyzer detects alcohol, the computer will be able to check for molecular biomarkers pointing to diseases.

IBM believes it can blend the sensory innovations in computing with mobile devices, cloud computing and social media to create, "an unbounded set of possibilities in terms of what we can do," Kerrie Holley, an IBM research fellow, told ReadWrite.

How We'll Use Cognitive Computing

In time, cognitive computing will be able to do what people don't do well, such as understand the interactions of changing elements in huge systems. Examples include the global economy or weather patterns. With the help of a thinking, sensory-aware machine, we'll be able to cut through the complexity of these systems, helping us make more-accurate predictions and anticipate the consequences of particular actions.

In addition, cognitive systems can help us separate our personal prejudices and egos from the facts in trying to solve a problem.

"The machines will be more rational and analytic," Bernard Meyerson, chief innovation officer at IBM, said in a blog post. "We’ll provide the judgment, empathy, moral compass and creativity."

Think of it this way: The human-digital relationship will mirror the extraordinarily effective partnership enjoyed by Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on Star Trek. 

TED, the international conference known for tackling "ideas worth spreading" just topped a billion views for its videos. That's a billion with a "b."

That milestone didn't just happen on its own - TED has been gathering momentum online for a decade.

The first step came in 2001, when TED's current curator Chris Anderson's Sapling Foundation took over and turned the company into a nonprofit organization. Five years later, in 2006, an experiment to post six TED-talk videos online led to the birth of a viral phenomenon. Today, these videos are watched globally, and the speakers behind them are some of the most influential people in their fields, working to share insight on issues not often seen by the general public. But with TED's enormous success has also come criticsim and charges of elitism. Among other things, TED has taken heat for claiming to be for the masses, yet charging exorbitant ticket prices for attendance. And these days, even TED has competition. 

I had the chance to speak with Anderson about TED, from answering the critics to what it  took to get here, where TED is going, and the role of technology in the developing world. Anderson, an idea man born in a small village in Pakistan to missionary parents, stressed his desire to serve social change, the future of media companies and how technology is unifying us and creating a level playing field:

READWRITE: TED just went over a billion views on its videos. Tell me what it meant to get here and what that means for you as the curator and the founder of the brand.

CHRIS ANDERSON: Everyone here is thrilled about that milestone. We never dreamed it would get this big, this fast. What's surprising is that the reason it's happened. It's not like there's any big giant marketing budget or anything like that driving it. It's more been through word-of-mouth. Through online word-of-mouth. Largely email referrals, sharing and more recently social media, Facebook as well. So that's the thrilling part. There are enough curious people in the world that are getting excited about learning to the point where they'll watch something and then pass it on to their friends and family. I just find that exciting. 

RW: Tell me when the first TED talk was and how you got the word out there and that first push.

ANDERSON: We put six talks out in June of 2006. It was a small media team that tried to find a way to get TED out there. Early on our thoughts were let's put these out in a way that they're well-shot, they're well-edited and they capture the drama of what the audience feels live. It's a modern campfire experience. So, eyes locked onto a speaker. Not the boring, traditional association people certainly brought with them, of a guy stuck behind a podium in the distance. Communication is much more dramatic than that, so video has to reflect that. We certainly felt that. And then we only put up six talks as an experiment and just shared the links with a few blogs. And it took off from there to our pride and crossing our fingers. We were really excited by the response to these initial talks. Not just in the numbers but people reacting to them in email back to us, instead of being ripped by them, you know laughed, shared and wept, and that was a surprise. It was amazing they worked. 

RW: Who gave the first talk and how many talks have their been total?

ANDERSON: The six we launched on the first day, that included what is still today the number one talk. Ken Robinson's talk on education and a talk by Hans Rossling on showing why our conception of the developing world is wrong. There are now 1,400 or so talks posted. 

RW: And those are just official TED events. That's not counting TEDx, correct?

ANDERSON: Those are talks posted on our site. So some of them include TEDx or best of the other conferences on our site. But the majority of them are from our own events, yes. And it doesn't include the 25,000 other TEDx talks that are up on YouTube.

RW: Tell me who's one of your favorite guests, a best guest, and who was a worst guest? Or a worst speaker?

ANDERSON: I don't know if you can quote me on the worst but there's been some flops. And there's so many favorites. I love best talks that give you a mental shift. They just make you see the world differenrly. Everything from David Deutsch who's given a couple of talks. The way he thinks really appeals to me. Ken Robinson himself, changed a lot of peoples minds on how to think about education and how we have to figure out a better path before it all falls. I'm a fan of so many talks. Barry Schwartz who had the talk of the paradox of choice. He says that too much choice is actually not necessarily good for us. 

RW: Can you tell me, without insulting past speakers, maybe some flops, or at least the subject matter you didn't like?

CA: Well, I think there were people who way overshot their time slot and were gently nudged, pushed off the stage. There have been people who have been given, had their say, talks that were full of ego rather than insight. And there's a favorite instance, of a celebrity who was hissed off the stage because of the ego. The ego-to-insight ratio was just way out of whack. As they say, not all the talks are good, but at least the bad ones are short.  

Looking Ahead

RW: Now that you've gotten such a big name and created such a big, relatively mainstream brand, what are the goals going forward?

ANDERSON: The number one focus is just keep up research ongreat ideas. The world is often described in terms of events and political upheaval and so forth. We view the world through the development of knowledge. The truth is human knowledge is growing at a spectacular rate. There's amazing discoveries every year and the vast majority of them are completely invisible to most of us. That I think is something of a tragedy. Because the ideas are out there. They could fix our problems, it's just that they're not easily accessed. So, literally the number one goal is keep on finding those people and figure out how to make their work accessible.

RW: Do you have a roadmap?

ANDERSON: I often say that we do not have a roadmap. I think a five-year roadmap for TED, or a five-year roadmap for anything, in the fast changing world that we're in, sounds to be a flawed document. What we do have is a compass. Our compass is our mission statement and then first a strategy, a sense of openeness. When we want to get something done instead of seeking ourselves, we seek to empower the people to do it. We give away our best stuff so people can do it for us. So that whole TEDx thing that has happened in the last three years. We've given away our brand and allowed pre-licenses to people around the world to hold their own event. To the point that there are now six or seven every day held somewhere. It's vastly increased the number of people who can go to a conference. Instead of in California, 1,000 people spending $7,500, around the world there are 800,000 plus people who have spent less than $100 to go to one of these events. It's really democratized TED and that's thrilling. My whole genuine philosophy is how to open this thing up and make it available to anyone.

Is TED Elitist?

RW: Some would say that the price point for a ticket makes TED elitist. What's your take on that?

ANDERSON: The business model is that the profits made from the main conference are used to fund the rest of what we do. So the whole free distribution of ideas online (the TED Foundation) and the opening up of TEDx, none of that would have been possible without a successful concept where people were willing to pay lots of money. So, it's true that not everyone can come and afford to go that. But even if we cut the price to zero, it's not like everyone else could go. It would just make the waiting list that much longer. So we're doing what we can do. One, give away the content, and two, give away the brand. Which makes it kind of hard to make the charge of elitism stick, I think. It's absolutely the opposite of what TED is doing. TED is taking knowledge and making it as widely available as possible. 

On Publishing And Media

RW: I know you have a background in the news business and publishing. Where do you see that business going?

ANDERSON: Speaking broadly, attention is always going to be one of the world's most valuable commodities. From attention everything else flows. Every decision that anyone makes come from a point of attention. So it's always going to be an incredibly important business. How it is won, how it is monetized is in total flux right now. And I think that a lot of the traditional models of paying a large number of people a lot of money to write, when there are millions of people who are willing to write for free, many of them very insightfully, that is a problem. I think media owners need to grasp how to move their talent up a notch to a level of inspring, identifying, coaching, empowering other writers. Because the overall model is broken. 

Technology And The Developing World

RW: You were born in Pakistan. Do you think technology creates a level playing field for the developing world?

ANDERSON: I absolutely do. I grew up in a village in Pakistan in my early years. Kids I grew up with, most of them are probably grinding out a life of poverty somewhere. The main reason I'm not is because of education. My parents could afford to get me fully educated.

RW: What's different there now? 

ANDERSON: The kid in that village right now is going to have access to a cellphone within the next few years, if they don't already. Through which they can be eyeball to eyeball with the worlds great futures, and basically have a shot at realizing their full human potential. It's a game changer, it's really exciting, and I think we have already seen many instances where they're leapfrogging what we're doing in the West because of the pace of learning. 

Photo courtesy of TED Conference.

Epicenters of geekdom, where the future of technology are being built, exist in pockets across the United States. Yet, none drive the future quite like the geeks at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The Media Lab, powered by students and professors often working on sponsorships by large brands or government grants, delves deep into aspects of technology that promise to fundamentally change the future. From 3D printing to the future of optics, holographic imaging to socially aware robots, there is a little something for everybody at one of MIT’s most progressive research centers. 

This 3D printer creates a foam-like material that could one day be the structural foundation of buildings.

Yet, even in technology wonderland like the Media Lab, the innovation of the future is steeped in the building blocks of today. Robots, are powered by Android smartphones. Arduino processors for the do-it-yourself technologist are being built from textile materials, like fabric or paper. Cloud technology enables researchers to analyze large datasets with a speed and clarity never before available. Stereoscopic hologram images are built on the concepts like Pepper’s Ghost, developed in the 19th century. 3D image fields are being created by hacking Microsoft’s Kinect because they are cheap to acquire and implement. 

Meet The Dragonbot

For instance, take the Dragonbot (pictured right). This fuzzy little guy is an attempt towards a “socially aware robot” and its entire system, including its eyes and face, are powered by Android smartphones. By using a smartphone, researchers can leverage various sensors inside the device, like the camera and the touch screen interface, the microphone and the cellular connection. The Dragonbot could have many different purposes, including helping children learn a second language or assisting autistic kids with their speech issues. 

Imagine this scenario: you have a conversation with a Dragonbot in San Francisco (yes, you will be able to converse with these things eventually). It uses the camera in its smartphone brain to recognize your face and upload that recognition to a cloud server. You tell the Dragonbot something, perhaps that you are happy the San Francisco Giants are in the World Series. A month later you come to Boston and see a different Dragonbot. It can use its cellular connection to retrieve information from the cloud, recognize your face and ask about your feelings for how the Series turned out. 

That would be one smart little robot. 

Creepy Dragonbot prototype being developed at the mobile, dextrous, socially aware robotics department at MIT Media Lab

Off-The-Shelf Components

Let’s dig a little deeper: What functions currently available off-the-shelf from commercial companies make this robot possible?

First, the smartphone and all the sensors and computing power that goes behind it. A quad-core smartphone is as powerful as the best laptop of 2000, not even including the sensors inside. The facial and speech recognition that the smartphone uses is available from companies like Google, Nuance and Facebook. The cellular connection that enables the Dragonbot to send and store information comes from the big mobile operators, like AT&T or Verizon. The cloud storage could come from any number of providers, such as Google, Apple, Oracle, Facebook or Amazon. Put all this together with the right algorithms and applications and you have the potential for an affordable robot with its own artificial intelligence that could provide distinct value to the world. 

This is no ordinary poster. Paper-based circuitry with conducive ink printed in silver could have a multitude of applications.

The Dragonbot is just one example. All over the MIT Media Lab, off-the-shelf commercial technology is being used to create on futuristic concepts that promise to revolutionize our lives. The impact of innovations like smartphones and pervasive cloud computing are seen everywhere in the Media Lab. They are the building blocks of the next generation of technology, available simply by logging onto the Internet or walking down to your local Best Buy. 

Images by Dan Rowinski.