Birthdays
Campbell Scott b. 1961 (The Amazing Spider-Man)
Benedict Cumberbatch b. 1976 (Star Trek Into Darkness)
No cute girls on the list of birthdays this year, so it only fair that the Picture Slot goes to Mr C. as a little present "for the ladies" as the dated cliche goes.
Many happy returns to both gentlemen.
Prediction: "... I expect robots in Japanese nursing homes by 2020, and in widespread use by 2025."
Predictor: Jaron Lanier in Who Owns the Future?, published 2013
Reality: I've taken this book out from the library and so far I'm enjoying reading it. It has very few predictions with dates on them. Instead, most of the advances in technology he posits are for "this century", which is too vague and too far in the future to be useful by this blog's criteria. Still, it does include a few dates and anything before 2020 is certainly fair game here, and I'll stretch things to 2025 if I think they are interesting enough.
For those unaware of the name, Mr. Lanier has been in the computer industry for a very long time and to this day is often involved in leading edge projects. He is given credit for popularizing the phrase "virtual reality" back in the 1980s. His more recent work includes advising on the design the virtual world game/product Second Life and consulting on the look of gadgets in the Steven Speilberg film Minority Report.
As for whether this his prediction about robots will actually take place, it's still anybody's guess. He specified Japan because "trustworthy fictional robots have been a Japanese cultural export for decades."
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
Saturday is song day and one we get our first lyrics from David Bowie, who wrote a lot of songs about the future.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
SOME SAY David Bowie is FROM the Future.
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