The Future And You -- February 13, 2013

Stephen Euin Cobb (author and futurist) is today's speaker.

Topics include: Entropia Universe--a huge online game somewhat like World of Warcraft but with an economy pegged to the US Dollar. (Players are allowed to put money into the game and to take money out. Apparently some people are making their real-world living by playing the game.) Also: A push to make more advanced robotic prosthetic arms for amputees; a pacemaker-like device which has been used to produce deep-brain stimulation which has shown good results in reducing the effects of Alzheimer's disease; and a website called GovTrack.us which allows any person to track what any member of congress is doing, saying and voting for.

Also: your host's recent guest-blog entry for the online magazine SF Signal (in which he makes some positive predictions about the future); his being interviewed for the online magazine Hofstra Pulse (about why movies, TV shows and novels so frequently depict an awful future no one would want to line in); comments on your host's experiences writing and training neural nets (a form of artificial intelligence); and his conviction that our "do-nothing" Congress is a direct product of our elected officials constantly squirming under the massive scrutiny of the voters watching them through the unblinking Internet.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the February 13, 2013 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 36 minutes] 

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist, magazine writer and host of the award-winning podcast The Future And You. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he is also a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. His novels include Bones Burnt Black, Plague at Redhook and Skinbrain.