The Future This Week: VR, Robots, and SolarCity

In The Future This Week, Serious Wonder immerses itself into the virtual world in search of this week’s headlines of the future, from human genome editing to the development of household robotics ready to perform all of your chores. This week we’re given a glimpse into a future where virtual reality finally dips its toes in TV broadcasting and two of the leading companies promoting electric energy – Tesla and SolarCity – might just join forces.

Whether we’re genetically modifying the human genome to help us combat disease or are immersing ourselves into virtual worlds, how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive humanity in its entirety will soon be transformed beyond anything we’ve ever imagined. The future is a fickle thing, where it’s hard to determine how things might shape. But if these developments tell us anything, it’s that the human condition itself is in for a ride of its life. Welcome to the future!

On September 22 of this year, the first ever hybrid VR/TV sci-fi show called Halcyon will be debuting on the TV network channel Syfy, which will be based on a fictional – get this – VR company. SOURCE

Basking in the success of both companies, Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors has made an offer to acquire SolarCity, a solar energy company that Musk cofounded nine years ago, for $2.78 billion. SOURCE

Photo Credit: Tech Crunch

Aiming for the future of robotics, Elon Musk just recently announced that his new robotics firm, Open AI, will be developing ‘domestic robots’ that’ll perform basic household chores, while solely relying on technology that already exists. SOURCE

After a review over the University of Pennsylvania’s proposal to begin human gene-editing research to help combat cancer, the federal biosafety and ethics panel have finally given the researchers the go-ahead. SOURCE