The Martin jetpack will be available in 2012 for $100,000

In order to make it publicly available, Glenn Martin’s jetpack had to be tailored around the FAA’s ultralight standards, which mean that its speed was limited to a maximum of 63mph and its maximum flight time limited to a mere 30 minutes. The good news is that due to it being in the ultralight category, should you decide to get your hands on the jetpack, you will not be required to have a license of any sort.

via weliveinthefuture

blakewhitman:

emergentfutures:

GM’s Autonomous Pod Cars Are Coming To A Megacity Near You

GM has autonomous, electric pods that can be summoned by a smartphone and will whisk you, hands-free, to wherever you want to go. They’re almost ready, now we just need to wait for GPS to catch up.

FINALLY.

comicbooks:

Iron Man - To Infinty…and Beyond! by Patrick Boutin-Gagné

Sure, why not?

Suspect Warren Taylor, of Sullivan County Tenn., lies on the ground after surrendering to a robot after holding hostages at a post office in Wytheville, Virginia on Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009.

Whoa. (Click through for more photos that will make you feel uneasy about the future).

(via unburyingthelead:rememo:medicines)

"MIT researchers have created a system of floor blocks that generate power when the blocks rub against one another as people walk over them. A crowd of 30,000 moving to and fro could create enough power to run a small electrical system or perhaps bring a subway train safely to a platform in the event of a blackout."

THE FUTURIST’s Top 10 Forecasts for 2010 and Beyond

Confession: I’m kind of a sucker for fortune cookies. Especially this one.

Krugman + sci-fi + THE FUTURE

From The New Yawkah:

“Krugman explained that he’d become an economist because of science fiction. When he was a boy, he’d read Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ trilogy and become obsessed with the central character, Hari Seldon. Seldon was a ‘psychohistorian’—a scientist with such a precise understanding of the mechanics of society that he could predict the course of events thousands of years into the future and save mankind from centuries of barbarism. He couldn’t predict individual behavior—that was too hard—but it didn’t matter, because history was determined not by individuals but by laws and hidden forces. ‘If you read other genres of fiction, you can learn about the way people are and the way society is,’ Krugman said to the audience, ‘but you don’t get very much thinking about why are things the way they are, or what might make them different. What would happen if?’”

I think I like this Paul Krugman guy.