The Future And You -- December 19, 2012

Jacob Krogsgaard (atmospheric scientist and project manager) is today's featured guest.

Topics: Driverless cars are legal in California and Nevada, why smartphones are not done changing the world, such as using a smartphone to give an EKG test, why high-frequency computerized stock trading is a problem, how journalism is being radically changed by the Internet, and police officers using tiny drones to take aerial photos of automotive traffic accidents. Also: examples of volunteer driven productivity; such as: the uncountable number of free tutorial videos on uTube, and the thousands of classic books which can be downloaded from Librivox.org and listened to as audiobooks for free. As well as: swallowing a camera in a pill, the Chinese going to the moon, the coming boom in space missions for profit, why cable companies are dinosaurs, and the problem of dieing newspapers.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the December 19, 2012 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 31 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on December 1, 2012.

Jacob Krogsgaard is currently working (along with Tom Canton) to create a documentary film entitled Mass Driver which will promote the idea of using of a mass driver as a space launch system to the general public (as well as to the scientific and political communities) as an alternative to rockets and space elevators. Jacob Krogsgaard is an atmospheric scientist and project manager. Tom Canton is a experienced director of business, training and music videos.

News Item: This is the seven year anniversary episode of The Future And You. Seven years ago (on December 15, 2005) the very first episode of The Future And You became globally available for public enjoyment. Back then it was in a magazine format in which each episode contained many guests. This made the show very long; usually about an hour and a half. Too long, some listeners said, which is why I changed it to the current shorter format. Sound quality back then was also less than it is today since I was doing phone interviews through a traditional land line telephone instead of through Skype or Google Talk. 

Despite their age, I am pleased to say that my decision to keep all past episodes up and available indefinitely has proven to be a good one. All the past episodes, even the very earliest, continue to be downloaded at a rate that I find pleasing. I'm also pleased at the global nature of the show's popularity. While the USA makes up about 60 percent of the audience, I have listeners in over 140 nations around the world. China tops the foreign countries, followed by all the English speaking nations (in order of population), then the developed countries in Europe and Asia and the Americas, followed finally by what seem to be all the nations that have access to the Internet.

I'd like to thank everyone who has helped to make this show a success: both those who listen and those who have let me interview them. The desire to hear and the desire to share ideas and opinion about the future is what keeps this show going. Thank you all, I appreciate your help.