The Future And You
Ideas and opinion about the future based on verifiable facts of today.
 
The Future And You--May 28, 2014

Simone Pond (advertising executive, author andblogger) is our featured guest.

Topic: Trends in The Advertising Industry.

Specific items discussed: The TV show Mad Men; the power of viral videos; the public backlash against giant digital billboards; the rise of human billboards; the continuing decline of newspapers; the recent loss of schmoozing; the shrinking number of advertisers willing to commit to three or five year advertising contracts; the overwhelming migration of advertisements from all traditional forms of media to the Internet; (because of) the astounding targetability of Internet ads. Simone also describes some of the ways advertising has earned its reputation for evil manipulation. I tried to defend advertising, but she insists that everytime she comes home from her advertising job she feels unclean. She quotes Sean Connery from the movie The Anderson Tapes. "What is advertising but a legalized con game?"

Simone Pond is an advertising executive with a Los Angeles advertising agency. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a B.A. in Communications and a minor in English. She is also the author of two novels which are set three hundred years in the future: The City Center, and its sequel: The New Agenda.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 28, 2014 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 34 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on May 1, 2014.

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 has also been 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. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.

Direct download: TFAY_2014_5_28.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:37am EDT

The Future And You--May 21, 2014

Simone Pond (advertising executive, author and blogger) is our featured guest.

Topics: Trends in book promotion, but also tips and pointers on how to do it better.

Specific items discussed: online book promotions, facebook and social marketing, websites which will promote book give-a-ways for free, countdown promotions, goodreads.com, Amazon's Kindle policies and the promotional options they offer to authors, the importance of creating a brand, GooglePlus, weaknesses of traditional advertising as compared to online, how she made the book trailer video which she put on youtube and the results has yielded, and which promotional method has given her the best results--for the effort and money she expended--out of everything she has tried. Also mentioned: Falling Stars: The Air Crashes that Filled Rock & Roll Heaven by Rich Everitt, and How to publish and sell your article on the kindle by Kate Harper.

Simone Pond is an advertising executive with a Los Angeles advertising agency. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with a B.A. in Communications and a minor in English. She is also the author of two novels which are set three hundred years in the future: The City Center, and its sequel: The New Agenda.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 21, 2014 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 33 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on May 1, 2014.

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 has also been 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. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.

Direct download: TFAY_2014_5_21.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:41am EDT

The Future And You--May 14, 2014

Eric Lerner (President and Chief Scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics) is our featured guest.

Topic: Plasma Focus Fusion: a form of clean fusion which might well become a game-changer for civilization. If the ongoing development is successful, it could completely re-write our future as compared to current expectations. It could do this for three reasons: it can provide us with more electricity than we currently use on this planet, it can provide it at only a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour, and the third and bonus reason, it is clean energy. Clean in the sense that it does not produce any radioactive waste material at all. Being a small portable device, Focused Fusion would be ideal for space exploration within our solar system--possibly reducing travel time to Mars to under one month. As a secondary topic, Eric Lerner also talks about the growing body of evidence that the Big Bang Theory of the origin and large scale structure of the universe may be completely wrong. An uncomfortable thought to be sure.

Eric Lerner, President and Chief Scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, has been active in dense plasma focus (DPF) research for 30 years. Beginning in 1984, he developed a detailed quantitative theory of the functioning of DPF. Based on this theory, he proposed that the DPF could achieve high ion and electron energies at high densities, suitable for advanced fuel fusion and space propulsion. Under a series of contracts with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he planned and participated in carrying out experiments that tested and confirmed this theory. In addition, he developed an original model of the role of the quantum magnetic field effect on DPF functioning, showing that this effect could have a large effect on increasing ion temperature and decreasing electron temperature, which would reduce unwanted X-ray cooling of the plasma.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the May 14, 2014 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 50 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on May 8, 2014.

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 has also been 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. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.

Direct download: TFAY_2014_5_14.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 12:00am EDT

The Future And You--May 7, 2014

Hank Pellissier--[Part 2]--(writer, editor, speaker, producer, futurist and transhumanist).

Topics: A good bit of detail on the life-extension experiments using Carbon 60, Buckyballs dissolved in olive oil (and where you can buy it for yourself). And a bit of info on other anti-aging medicines and supplements such as: TA-65, Product-B, Stem Code, and from The Bullet-Proof Executive Upgrade Aging Formula. Also: biohacking, quantified-self, and some ideas on what to do with all that free-time if you live for centuries.

Hank Pellissier is a writer, editor, speaker and producer, especially on futurist and transhumanist topics. He has written 22 articles for HplusMagazine, and 30 articles for IEET.org - the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. Seven of his articles placed in the Top 12 in 2011 hits. In 2012 he was appointed the Managing Director of IEET. He continued to write for the site, finishing the year with 4 articles in the Top 12. He left IEET in October 2012 to start Transhumanity.net. He gave that site to Zero State in February 2013, and started ImmortalLife.info. He sold that site to Giovanni Santostasi in June 2013, and started the website BrighterBrains.org. At this site he started producing the TRANSHUMAN VISIONS conferences in the San Fransico Bay Area. He is the author of three e-books, Brighter Brains-225 Ways to Elevate or Injure IQ, Why is the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews so High?, and Invent Utopia Now. As a journalist, he was the "Local Intelligence" columnist for the New York Times (San Francisco edition) and he's a frequent contributor to GreatSchools.org. Past work includes a daily column for Salon.com titled "Naked World," two columns for SfGate.com titled "Urban Animal" and "Odd Barkings," and dozens of articles for other publications like San Fransisco Bay Guardian, World Future Society, and Acceler8or. He has also performed as a solo performance artist and Slam Poet, under his nom de plume, "Hank Hyena."

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 30, 2014 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 55 minutes] This is the first portion of my interview with Hank Pellissier which was recorded using Skype on April 24, 2014. The next portion will be in next week's episode.

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 has also been 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. Stephen is the author of Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science as well as A Brief History of Predicting the Future.

Direct download: TFAY_2014_5_7.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 9:50pm EDT