futurologists's posterous

Future of Aviation

Airbus_concept_plane_1

  
Robin Mannings has been helping Airbus with their future visions. (to see Robin's Foreword, download the pdf of the full report about the Airbus Concept Plane - see url above) 
The Airbus Concept Plane of the Future is launched at the 2010 Farnborough Air Show together with a Competition for Students (Fly Your Ideas)  http://www.airbus-fyi.com/ 
 
The time horizon is 40 to 50 years!  Looking forward to a sustainable future for aviation and one where the may well be many times more people flying than are today in, aircraft and transport systems that are fuel efficient (e.g. using bio fuels) , comfortable (e.g. using smart shape-shifting self cleaning seat materials) and with an airframe that seems very futuristic by today's standards.

Formidable challenges are ahead for designers, technologists and the business community but is refreshing to see a major company really thinking about the long term future and their part in in! 

 

Bio-Computing Predictions from Robin Mannings Published in ITPro

http://www.itpro.co.uk/617365/humans-are-the-computers-of-the-future
 
Robin Mannings recently presented visions of the future at a VMWare product launch event in London. Some of the presentations  were reported by IPPro web-magazine. He started with Charles Darwin (as it is his bicentenary this year)  and maintained an evolution theme ending with the future of bio-computing where nature and (human) technology converge.

Robin Mannings joins silicon.com Agenda-Setters Nomnation panel

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/agenda-setters-2009/
 
Joined in the silicon.com nomination panel the other day to choose the annual  "Agenda-Setters" List.
 
To see my profile and the others on the panel  http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/agenda-setters-2009/who-chose-the-2009-agenda-setters-39559856.htm  
 
It was great fun spending a few hours debating the shakers and movers for the future. Introducing some new names and keeping some well known ones - and also strays outside the obvious IT industry/ big business sphere to include a hacker, film director and academic/open-source folk.

Fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society

Robin Mannings is now a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.   He will be giving a presentation on Whereness to the Southern Region of the RGS in the new year and will be speaking in September on Smart Cities at a utilities workshop organised by the Ordnance Survey. Further details and the contents of these geographical-futures sessons will be posted nearer the time.

Future of betting, dating aqnd job hunting - New Scientist on betting stats.

Good read re luck and betting (New Scientist, 8 Aug, p35). Says how to get best job/spouse etc. Works like this:   Suppose you have n job ads - how many interviews should you have before accepting one? (the trouble being, that if you are too fussy then you have to take the nth job which will most certainly be worse that some rejected)

Strategy that is best is to have n/e interviews, then take the next best one.  (that way you get a 37% chance of getting the best job which are your optimal odds). Where e is ~ 2.72, the natural log base. Eg if you have 10 interviews/dates - do 3 (and note the attributes of the best best so far) then accept the next one that is better.
 
Also explains how to beat the bookies by using (Internet) betting and arbitrage. Not all bookies use same odds, so  algorithm can tell you how to place optimal bets that cannot loose (provided bets are allowed and the stakes are not returned). If odds with bookie is a1 and for bookie 2 is a2, the aribtrage opportunity Q = 1/(a1+1) + 1/(a2+1) ....   if Q<1 then there is an opportunity.  Multiply the stake for each bookie with the factor 1/(a1+1)/Q  for bookie 1 and 1/(a2+1)/Q for bookie 2 .... and so on.