The Future And You

Sara M. Harvey (fantasy author, costume designer, teacher and historian) is today's featured guest.

Topics: how the mixing of literary genres is one way that new genres evolve spontaneously out of old ones; her first-hand experiences with a publisher that went bankrupt and very nearly dragged her first novel into oblivion with them; a few tidbits of how fantasy novels are marketed; unusual ways a writer can promote their work; as well as Wikipedia, book covers, word choice, sentence structure and inspiration.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 28, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 60 minutes] (This interview was recorded before a live audience at LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN on July 11, 2009.)

Sara M. Harvey is an author of fantasy novels who prides herself on her genre-mixing style of story-telling. Her latest novel is The Convent of the Pure (2009 from Apex Book Company). She has a Master of Arts in visual culture, with an emphasis in costume history, from New York University. As an academic she contributed several nonfiction chapters to the three volumes of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing through World History. She also spent several years working in various entertainment industry costume departments, including the Creative Costume Department of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Currently, she is an instructor of design and fashion history at the International Academy of Design and Technology in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kristen Bury (Business & Project Management Consultant) is today's featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 21, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time:24 minutes]

Topics: the academic teaching of future studies; right-brain, left-brain and whole-brain thinking; creativity and problem solving; and other aspects of the future. This interview was recorded the evening after she'd opened the panel discussion on creativity at the World Future convention held at the Chicago Hilton on July 18, 2009.

Ted Stalets (Vice President of Vote World Government) and Bob French (CEO of Vote World Government) are today's featured guests.

These two gentlemen feel that some of the problems of this world are too big to be solved by individual nations or even by nations trying to act together. They have taken to heart the concept that -- Global problems require global solutions. They seek a democratically elected representative government which is completely global. Literally, a parliament for the Earth.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 14, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 26 minutes] (These two interviews were recorded at the World Future Convention at the Chicago Hilton on July 18, 2009.)

News Item: I'm recovering very well from my surgery of March 29, 2010. You probably noticed that there was no episode last week. I was just too frail and my mind too foggy from the pain medicines to assemble, upload and post one. I'm doing much better and hope to stay on track with the coming episodes. Thank you all for the many emails wishing me a speedy recovery. -- Stephen Euin Cobb

Jordan Chabalowski and Christopher Breedlove (Journalists helping Web 1.0 transition into Web 2.0) are our featured guests.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 31, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 42 minutes]

Topics: how Twitter can help people get more work (such as building credibility and reputation with clients and potential clients by letting them know what you are working on, or verifying that you are working on projects similar to their own); how the technical sophistication of our lives is making the younger generation into specialists without generalized knowledge of simple things (such as what plants are edible in their own backyard, how to grow food, their physical location in the world or even in relation to their own friends, and how to fix things); the irretrievability of everything we put online (including photos, blog entries, and our profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin) which will all be searchable years from now by those we ask for a job, those we ask to marry, and eventually even our children; trends in India they have witnessed by living there; and how American schools can learn social engineering from the ways the Nazi's rewrote grade school textbooks.

This interview was recorded at the World Future Convention in Chicago last fall. Jordan and Christopher were there covering the event for the online news-magazine Reality Sandwich. In addition to journalism, they translate messages; not from one language to another but from traditional forms such as advertising or websites into social-driven media such as YouTube, Twitter and iPhone apps.

BTW: Also mentioned was LibraVox.org which is one of your host's favorite places to download audio books for free. These audio books are free because the are out of copyright and were read by volunteers.

News Item: On Monday, March 29, 2010 (two days before this episode goes public) your host will go to the hospital for outpatient surgery. Recovery will take about six weeks. Hopefully the pain medicines won't interfere with any of April's episodes. If it does rest assured I will be back soon. For those who were expecting to see me speak and moderate panels at RavenCon in Richmond Virginia (April 9-11, 2010) I apologize. As much as I was looking forward to seeing so many good friends and getting so many cool interviews I have had to cancel that appearance.

Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 24, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] Part three of three with Dr. Sandberg.

Topics: changes he expects in the next two decades; technical difficulties of emulating a full human brain in a computer; what people should do differently if they expect to live for centuries; and his vision of how the Singularity will play out.

Dr. Anders Sandberg is currently postdoctoral research assistant for the Oxford group of the EU ENHANCE Project at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute (Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University). He is cofounder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. And between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association.

His other interests include physics, astronomy, biomedicine, psychology, complexity theory, art, science fiction, roleplaying, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, information visualization, intelligence amplification technologies, and the philosophy and politics of human enhancement.

BTW: There was, as you may have noticed, no episode last week. I was very sick with an intestinal virus or food poisoning. (This week's episode was supposed to be last week's episode.)

Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 10, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes] Part two of three with Dr. Sandberg.

Topics: obvious problems with autonomous robots attempting to decide which humans to kill during warfare; the ethics of military and law enforcement use of non-lethal weapons; the ethics of greatly extending human lives; how human memory works and how it might be enhanced; his stand on morphological freedom; and his involvement in the development of computer emulations of the human brain.

Dr. Anders Sandberg is currently postdoctoral research assistant for the Oxford group of the EU ENHANCE Project at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute (Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University). He is cofounder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. And between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association.

His other interests include physics, astronomy, biomedicine, psychology, complexity theory, art, science fiction, roleplaying, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, information visualization, intelligence amplification technologies, and the philosophy and politics of human enhancement.

Dr. Anders Sandberg (computational neuroscientist, futurist, transhumanist and author) is our featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the March 3, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 35 minutes] Part one of three with Dr. Sandberg.

Topics: benefits we may get with our first neural implants; augmentations we already have and some we may have soon; the IQ enhancing drugs in widespread use on campuses today; the good and bad and political ramifications of the far more powerful IQ enhancing drugs we will see in the future; people (such as the founders of TransAlchemy.com) who feel that any augmention of the human body is terrible and should be prevented; the digital simulation of a human brain using computational neuroscience; the robotic future of automobiles; and Modafinil use by surgeons, athletes, truck drivers and nuclear power plant operators.

Dr. Anders Sandberg is currently postdoctoral research assistant for the Oxford group of the EU ENHANCE Project at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute (Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University). He is cofounder of and writer for the think tank Eudoxa. And between 1996 and 2000 he was Chairman of the Swedish Transhumanist Association.

His other interests include physics, astronomy, biomedicine, psychology, complexity theory, art, science fiction, roleplaying, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, information visualization, intelligence amplification technologies, and the philosophy and politics of human enhancement.

Speakers and attendees from the World Future Convention '09 held in Chicago.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 24, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 29 minutes] These interviews were recorded July 18-19, 2009.

Topics:

A dozen college students from Student Pugwash describe the mission of this international organization, as well as what worries them about the future and what gives them the most hope. These students include: Jessica Holsinger, Nick Lilovich, Autumn Rains, and Alex Webster.

Vicki Stein (program director of Future Problem Solving Program International) describes how FPSPI teaches children a step-by-step method of problem solving which can be used for the real-life problems they will face outside the classroom.

Shashi Parulekar (of Natural State Research) describes how his company is working to make fuel out of waste plastic.

Frederik Pohl (author of Gateway--the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards) is today's featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 17, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the second half of this interview, which was recorded on January 30, 2010.

Topics: How he and Arthur C. Clarke became friends many decades ago; and how in Arthur's declining years Arthur asked Fred to finish a book that he had started but could not complete. Fred's years working as a literary agent--during which he became Isaac Asimov's first agent, and sold Isaac's first novel: A Pebble in the Sky. His work as the editor of various magazines including Astonishing, Galaxy and If--which is when he bought Larry Niven's first few professional stories, and when he hired Judy-Lynn del Rey as his secretary at Galaxy Magazine even though she knew nothing about Science Fiction at the time. (This was long before she worked at Ballantine Books, married Lester del Rey, and became so influential at Ballantine that they put her in charge of an imprint and named it after her.) Miscellaneous topics include: how he came to write for Playboy Magazine; why he wrote under so many pseudonyms; his method of collaborating with other authors; and how he become Encyclopedia Britannica's first official authority on the Roman Emperor Tiberius.

Frederik Pohl is a science fiction writer, and has been a book and magazine editor, as well as a poet, critic, literary agent and teacher. He edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

Frederik Pohl (author of Gateway--the classic science fiction novel which won the Nebula, Hugo, Campbell and Locus awards) is today's featured guest.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 10, 2010 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] This is the first half of this interview, which was recorded on January 30, 2010.

Topics: predicting the future using the Delphi Method; his co-founding of The Futurians; his nonfiction books: The Way the Future Was, Our Angry Earth, and Science as a Spectator Sport; the Americanization of the world (which he has witnessed by traveling to more than 50 different nations); his modest contribution to democracy in Moscow; how he was excluded from attending the very first WorldCon; and a few insights about his long-term friends: Donald A. Wollheim (the creator of DAW Books), and Isaac Asimov.

Frederik Pohl is a science fiction writer, and has been a book and magazine editor, as well as a poet, critic, literary agent and teacher. He edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine If, winning the Hugo for If three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.

I asked Fred for this interview for several reasons: I'd read Gateway in 1977 when it first came out (I was 22 and still impressionable); a few weeks ago, his buddy Gregory Benford suggested that I interview him; and because, just a few months ago, Frederik Pohl celebrated his 90th birthday.