The Future This Week: Mars, Mind Reading, and Droneboarding

In The Future This Week, Serious Wonder launches into space in search of this week’s headlines of the future, from the colonization of Mars to the colonization of the Moon. This week we’re given a glimpse at what is to come and what is already occurring. From droneboarding to using advanced software to read another person’s mind, the future is definitely revealing its face in ever more radical ways.

Whether we’re exploring the cosmos or are figuring out different ways to enhance, or altogether change, the human experience here on Earth, the future certainly appears splendid indeed. We’re finding ourselves at a tipping point, of which the exponential growth rate of scientific discovery and technological progress are accelerating towards us before our very eyes. The question is: are we ready for what is to come? Welcome to the future!

According to Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield, the Moon will be humanity’s next obvious choice of colonization, which will replace the International Space Station in just over a decade. SOURCE

Speaking at the StartmeupHK Festival in Hong Kong, Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, stated that there’s a good chance that his company will be sending people to Mars by the year 2025. SOURCE

Photo Credit: European Southern Observatory/FlickrCC

While originally shared for mere entertainment, Russian YouTuber Valplushka uploaded a video of what appears to be a young child “droneboarding” – that is, snowboarding while being dragged around by a drone. SOURCE

Published in PLOS Computational Biology, a new paper details an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Washington in which, using brain implants and advanced software, they were able to read a person’s mind at the speed of thought. SOURCE