Ayesha Khanna joins hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon to discuss her book Hybrid Reality. Co-authored with Parag Khanna, Hybrid Reality explores the frontier of the information revolution: The Hybrid Age, making the case that what human civilization needs more than anything is not greater IQ or EQ, but TQ: technology quotient.

  Has “balance of innovation” superseded the military “balance of power” as a measure of national potential? How are the smartest countries, cities, and companies  harnessing new technologies to gain an edge? Moreover, what role does TQ play in adapting to a future in which robots are normal social actors in our lives, healthcare becomes a vehicle for physical enhancement, academic pedigree dissolves in a global skills market, and virtual currencies enable tax-free transactions?   Join us as we explore these critical issues.  About our Guest   Ayesha Khanna is Founder and Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory group focused on human-technology co-evolution and geotechnology. She is a Partner at K2S Advisors which provides strategic and financial advisory services in smart and sustainable cities, technology and infrastructure. She is also a Faculty Advisor at Singularity University and directs the Future Cities group at the London School of Economics.

Ayesha Khanna joins hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon to discuss her book Hybrid Reality. Co-authored with Parag Khanna, Hybrid Reality explores the frontier of the information revolution: The Hybrid Age, making the case that what human civilization needs more than anything is not greater IQ or EQ, but TQ: technology quotient.

  Has “balance of innovation” superseded the military “balance of power” as a measure of national potential? How are the smartest countries, cities, and companies  harnessing new technologies to gain an edge? Moreover, what role does TQ play in adapting to a future in which robots are normal social actors in our lives, healthcare becomes a vehicle for physical enhancement, academic pedigree dissolves in a global skills market, and virtual currencies enable tax-free transactions?   Join us as we explore these critical issues.  About our Guest   Ayesha Khanna is Founder and Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, a research and advisory group focused on human-technology co-evolution and geotechnology. She is a Partner at K2S Advisors which provides strategic and financial advisory services in smart and sustainable cities, technology and infrastructure. She is also a Faculty Advisor at Singularity University and directs the Future Cities group at the London School of Economics.

Stephen Pinker, writing in The Better Angels of Our Nature:   It makes no sense to scrimp all your life so that you can have one hell of a ninetieth birthday bash. Self-indulgence becomes irrational only when we discount the future too steeply—when we devalue our future selves way below what they should be worth given the chance that those selves will still be around to enjoy what we’ve saved for them. There is an optimum rate of discounting the future—mathematically, an optimum interest rate—which depends on how long you expect to live, how likely you will get back what you saved, how long you can stretch out the value of a resource, and how much you would enjoy it at different points in your life.   So -- is FastForward Radio steering people wrong when we tell them to focus on the future? Exactly how steeply should the future be discounted in an era of accelerating change?   You could die tomorrow. You could live another 50 years. or maybe you could live another 500 years. So how much is your future worth? And which estimate do you use to value it?   Tune in and we'll explore!   Plus -- Paul Victor Vasquez joins us to talk about United Stewardship Alliance's latest uChallenge.

Stephen Pinker, writing in The Better Angels of Our Nature:   It makes no sense to scrimp all your life so that you can have one hell of a ninetieth birthday bash. Self-indulgence becomes irrational only when we discount the future too steeply—when we devalue our future selves way below what they should be worth given the chance that those selves will still be around to enjoy what we’ve saved for them. There is an optimum rate of discounting the future—mathematically, an optimum interest rate—which depends on how long you expect to live, how likely you will get back what you saved, how long you can stretch out the value of a resource, and how much you would enjoy it at different points in your life.   So -- is FastForward Radio steering people wrong when we tell them to focus on the future? Exactly how steeply should the future be discounted in an era of accelerating change?   You could die tomorrow. You could live another 50 years. or maybe you could live another 500 years. So how much is your future worth? And which estimate do you use to value it?   Tune in and we'll explore!   Plus -- Paul Victor Vasquez joins us to talk about United Stewardship Alliance's latest uChallenge.

Last week we talked about fallible vs. infallible futurism. We demonstrated how predictions can be phrased in such a way that they are never wrong.  

That can be an important skill, what with the future being so difficult to predict. But it isn't just the future -- sometimes we can't even predict the present.

To demonstrate, host Phil Bowermaster has put together five groups of headlines taken from recent news stories about science and technology. All of these headlines have to do with some scientific or technological breakthrough. Each of the five groups contain three headlines, two of which are real and one of which is fake.

Co-host Stephen Gordon will attempt to identify the fake. 

Sound easy? Well listen along and see how well you do!

Last week we talked about fallible vs. infallible futurism. We demonstrated how predictions can be phrased in such a way that they are never wrong.  

That can be an important skill, what with the future being so difficult to predict. But it isn't just the future -- sometimes we can't even predict the present.

To demonstrate, host Phil Bowermaster has put together five groups of headlines taken from recent news stories about science and technology. All of these headlines have to do with some scientific or technological breakthrough. Each of the five groups contain three headlines, two of which are real and one of which is fake.

Co-host Stephen Gordon will attempt to identify the fake. 

Sound easy? Well listen along and see how well you do!

This program may well be the most important 60 minutes of your entire life...

...or possibly not.

If you phrase your predictions the right way, they can't be wrong.

Is there any value in infallible futurism? And what is its relationship to the fallible kind?

Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon talk about why we need both kinds, and why it's important not to confuse to the two.

This program may well be the most important 60 minutes of your entire life...

...or possibly not.

If you phrase your predictions the right way, they can't be wrong.

Is there any value in infallible futurism? And what is its relationship to the fallible kind?

Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon talk about why we need both kinds, and why it's important not to confuse to the two.

Increasingly two models for the near future compete for our attention. We'll call one model Abundance and the other Limits to Growth.The former tells us that circumstances are improving and are likely to continue to improve; the latter says that a big reckoning is on its way.

A recent debate at TED between Paul Gilding and Peter Diamandis captures the issues pretty succinctly. So who's right?

Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon discuss.

Plus: other future-related topics, including:

Google getting smarter 

Saudi Arabia going solar...?   Daily aspirin linked to decrease in cancer deaths   Space exploration by robot swarm

Increasingly two models for the near future compete for our attention. We'll call one model Abundance and the other Limits to Growth.The former tells us that circumstances are improving and are likely to continue to improve; the latter says that a big reckoning is on its way.

A recent debate at TED between Paul Gilding and Peter Diamandis captures the issues pretty succinctly. So who's right?

Hosts Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon discuss.

Plus: other future-related topics, including:

Google getting smarter 

Saudi Arabia going solar...?   Daily aspirin linked to decrease in cancer deaths   Space exploration by robot swarm