CEO Futures Briefing: the Gen Z airport rats and robots with living tissue
Each week Nikolas Badminton curates a weekly list of insights and learnings for progressive executives, world leaders and foresight practitioners - CEO Futures Briefing
This week we look at Gen Z hanging at the airport, human composting, robots with living tissue, Connectomics, uploading your brain into a computer, and a journey to the end of time.
Also featured is an insightful interview on the Exponential Minds Podcast with Peter Nowak who talks about the citizen superheroes that don masks to fight crime while the world falls apart.
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If you have questions about these things we’re sharing, or a challenge with seeing the futures for you and your organization? Reach out to speak with Nikolas today to arrange a time to talk.
Three articles to read
Introducing You to 'Airport Culture', Gen Z's New Favourite Pastime
Going to the airport for fun or to while-away time has become a noticeably popular activity. Interrogate it a little further, and it becomes obvious why. An airport is a free, diverse and safe space that offers the roaming possibilities of streets and parks, with the added benefit of lots of security, meaning nothing bad is likely to happen to you there.
Isabel, 17, who lives on the edge of a housing estate in north London, will go up to Heathrow Airport weekly on the 140 bus with a group of friends, usually in the evening; a modern equivalent of a Friday night out on the town.
Read more at VICE
Colorado legislature passes bill to allow human composting
The Colorado House passed the bill on Tuesday on a 45-18 vote. It passed unanimously through the state Senate in March.
The legislation authorizes human remains to be converted to soil using a container that accelerates the process of biological decomposition, also known as "natural reduction.”
It also places certain restrictions on the soil, including selling the soil or using it to grow food for human consumption. It also prohibits the commingling of human remains without their consent.
Read more at The Hill
The Army Wants to Give Its Robots Living Muscle Tissue
The Army Research Laboratory believes its bots could use real muscle, which allows most living things to move and manipulate their environments, instead of mechanical arms, wheels, tracks, and other systems to travel across the battlefield. The concept, which some might find disturbing, is an example of the new field of “biohybrids.”
Today’s military robots, particularly ground-based robots, navigate the battlefield on wheels and tracks, methods of locomotion copied over from human-occupied vehicles. But researchers “are reaching a point where they’re experiencing diminishing returns in the design of these robots with wheels as their primary locomotor, and batteries as their centralized power system,” NextGovreports.
Read more at Popular Mechanics
Three videos to watch
What is Connectomics?
Connectomics is big data for the brain. Combined with high powered data analytics and machine learning, it is providing doctors and researchers the most comprehensive model of the human brain to date, and may answer century old questions about cognition, neurological and mental illnesses, and what makes us human.
Dr Michael Sughrue is a internationally recognized neurosurgeon, a researcher in Connectomics, and Co-founder of Omniscient Neurotechnology.
You might soon be able to upload your brain into a computer
Futurist Nikolas Badminton joins CTV on his monthly show to explain digital immortality - creating a clone of yourself in a computer for people to interact with after you die.
TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time
How's it all gonna end? This experience takes us on a journey to the end of time, trillions of years into the future, to discover what the fate of our planet and our universe may ultimately be.
We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos - to name a few.
This is a picture of the future as painted by modern science - a picture that will surely evolve over time as we dig for more clues to how our story will unfold. Much of the science is very recent - and new puzzle pieces are still waiting to be found.
Featuring the voices of David Attenborough, Craig Childs, Brian Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michelle Thaller, Lawrence Krauss, Michio Kaku, Mike Rowe, Phil Plait, Janna Levin, Stephen Hawking, Sean Carroll, Alex Filippenko, and Martin Rees.
A conversation that counts
Each week we dig into the archives of all of the interviews Nikolas has undertaken with the insightful and entertaining Exponential Minds Podcast. This week we feature Peter Nowak who talks about the citizen superheroes that don masks to fight crime while the world falls apart.
The last word...
“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
Noam Chomsky
About Nikolas Badminton
Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist at futurist.com and a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, researcher, and media producer. He helps trillion-dollar companies, progressive governments and the media shift their mindset from “what is” to “WHAT IF…” The result is empowered employees, new innovative products and incredible growth that leads to more revenues and a more resilient future.
Nikolas advised Robert Downey Jr.’s team for the ‘Age of A.I.’ documentary series, starred in ‘SMART DRUGS – a Futurist’s journey into biohacking’, and features on CTV, Global News, Sirius XM regularly. His mind-expanding research and opinion can be found on BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Sputnik and Venturebeat.
Nikolas provides the opening chapter - ‘Start with Dystopia’ in a new book - ‘The Future Starts Now: Expert Insights into the Future of Business, Technology and Society’ for Bloomsbury. He is currently writing a new book that equips executives and world leaders with insights and foresight tools to imagine disruption, strengthen strategic planning, and see unforeseen risks.
Nikolas is a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce - The RSA. The organization has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years with notable past fellows including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, and Tim Berners-Lee.