Vol. 1, No. 5 | January
2, 2015 | AAI Foresight
Inside Foresight SIGNALS
> Has the First Cybermurder Already Happened?
> Satellites Reveal a Global Night-Light Gap
> Boldly Forecasting Emergency Medicine in the 24th
Century
> Rooftop Resources Project: Report from Timothy Mack
> Futurists at Work, Foresight in the News
Has the First Cybermurder Already Happened?
The recent spate of attacks ranging from corporate theft to
denial of service for gamers has brought new attention to cyberwarfare and
cybercrime. The potential for even online murder was one of the forecasts by
the Internet
Organized Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA) report. But it’s possible that a
cybermurder has already taken place, observes foresight analyst Richard Yonck in his recent post on
the Scientific American blog.
“When hackers cause widespread power outages as they may
have done in Brazil nearly a decade ago,” Yonck writes, “isn’t it likely that
someone among the millions affected will die due to a lack of electricity?
True, such deaths wouldn’t have been specifically targeted, but to any victims
and their families that distinction is of little comfort.”
FBI futurist Marc
Goodman, author of the forthcoming Future
Crimes, adds that even six years ago, “terrorists were using search engines, like Google, to determine who
shall live and who shall die,” as he recently noted on Tim Ferriss’s podcast. And technologies that can do more damage are
now in more hands: 3-D printers can produce military weapons and
bioterrorists can download the recipes for diseases from the Internet.
Indeed, the biggest potential threat from cybercrime is how
easy it is becoming for more people to commit it, Yonck argues. We should
therefore “give greater consideration to the negative and unanticipated
consequences of our new technologies as early in their development as we
possibly can, in order to better address their vulnerabilities and
shortcomings,” he advises.
And Goodman reminds us that we can do more to protect
ourselves from cybercrimes by using common sense: For instance, don’t open
links or attachments in e-mails from unknown sources, keep your security
software up to date, don’t use the same user names and passwords for all your
accounts, and invest in a subscription to a virtual private network if you
frequently use public Wi-Fi.
Sources: “Facing Up to Online Murder and Other
Cybercrimes” by Richard
Yonck, Scientific American Blog (December 3, 2014). “Marc Goodman, FBI
Futurist, on High-Tech Crime and How to Protect Yourself,” The Tim Ferriss
Show (podcast, December 9, 2014).
Image credits: Surian
Soosay (Internet riot police), Tim
Reckmann (Anonymous), via Flickr, Creative Commons. Collage by C. G. Wagner
for AAI Foresight SIGNALS.
Signals: bioterrorism,
cybercrime, hackers, security
Satellites Reveal a Global Night-Light Gap
Not only are American cities brighter at night than German
cities are, but the night-light gap actually increases with city size: Larger
U.S. cities emit more nighttime light per capita than smaller cities do, while
larger German cities emit less.
These findings are the product of new high-resolution night
imaging made possible by the European
Space Agency’s NightPod instrument, deployed in 2012. Work conducted by the
Remote Sensing section of the German Research Center for Geosciences also
reveals significant differences in the world’s light sources: Airports and
harbors generate most of the night light in megacities of the developing world,
while sports stadiums and leisure centers light up the night in wealthier
cities of Europe.
The brighter lights of bigger U.S. cities may be due to
differences in the types of lamps used, in the architectural features of the cities,
or in the amount of trees or other foliage available to block light traveling
upward.
The findings also offer data on electricity use and suggest
ways to improve lighting efficiency in the world’s cities: Installation of
efficient LED lamps, for instance, could reduce future consumption—and minimize
light pollution by directing less light upward into the night sky.
Reference: C.C.M. Kyba, S. Garz, H. Kuechly, A. Sánchez
de Miguel, J. Zamorano, F. Hölker (2015). “High-resolution imagery of Earth at Night: new sources, opportunities,
and challenges.” Remote Sensing,
2015, 7(1), 1-23; doi:10.3390/rs70100001
Signals: astronomy,
cities, efficiency, energy, imaging
Boldly Forecasting Emergency Medicine in the 24th Century
Humans will be living longer and healthier lives three
centuries from now—at least until we’re called into battle against Klingons.
The 50-year-old Star
Trek science-fiction franchise has inspired numerous innovations, from fax
machines to flat-screen monitors. Now, a team of scholars in Vienna is
speculating on how emergency medicine may evolve by analyzing more than 500
episodes from the various Star Trek series.
We’ll still die from cardiac arrests in the future,
according to study leader David Hörburger of MedUni Vienna, but the causes will
be more related to traumatic events, such as exposure to “energy weapons” and
poisoning, rather than to general medical problems, such as arrhythmias.
The study also offers guidance for treatment of cardiac
arrests; today, patients have a better chance of survival if they are already
in the hospital, while those home alone have the worst survival rates. By
contrast, cardiac arrest patients in Star
Trek’s twenty-fourth century benefit from teleportation and the hand-held
diagnostic “tricorder” device—fictional inventions that are already inspiring
today’s medical innovators.
Source: Medical
University of Vienna
Reference: D. Hörburger,
J. Haslinger, H. Bickel, N. Graf, A. Schober, C. Testori, C. Weiser, F. Sterz,
M. Haugk. (2014). “Where no guideline has gone before: Retrospective analysis
of resuscitation in the 24th century.” Resuscitation
(December: Volume 85, Issue 12, Pages 1790–1794) dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.10.008.
Signals: health,
medicine, science fiction, Star Trek
Rooftop Resources Project: Report from Timothy Mack
The practical realities of building sustainable networks are
coming to life in Oakland, California, under the stewardship of a nonprofit
group called Bay Localize as part of its Rooftop Resources
Project.
Working with PlaceWorks,
a Berkeley design and planning consultancy, Bay Localize is utilizing GIS tools
to conduct a search for Green Roof candidates that might host hydroponic
gardens, photovoltaic panels, and rainwater-collection systems. Some roofs
could be viable for more than one of these uses, although slanted roofs have
not worked well for garden sites. (Energy generation requires the slant to be
in the right direction.)
The project team then collects a deeper layer of data on the
ranges of building use and construction, roof access and materials, structural
integrity, and surrounding room for ground-level water-collection tanks. This
data can be collected and collated using hand-held devices and then used to
calculate gallons of water, kilowatts of electricity, and pounds of vegetables
potentially produced by any one rooftop. Read more.
Timothy Mack is the managing principal of AAI Foresight Inc.
This report was excerpted from Foresight
SIGNALS Blog. Image courtesy of Bay
Localize.
Signals:
collaboration, energy, gardens, green buildings, hydroponics, photovoltaics,
sustainability, urban planning, water
Futurists at Work, Foresight in the News
The Futurist
Portfolio: South African investment banker Murray Legg believes U.S. companies will continue their momentum in
2015, with technology, health care, and industry delivering “great returns,
likely into the low double digits,” he writes on his blog.
His Futurist Portfolio comprises companies led by visionaries, “companies that
are looking into the future and bringing solutions to market that address the
challenges the middle of the bell curve aren’t entirely aware of as yet.” His
picks include Naspers, Novo Nordisk, Google, Apple, Alibaba, Tesla, and Airbus.
Read: “2015—My
Stock Portfolio View,” Murray’s Blog (December 6, 2014).
A Futurist for the
Birds? Environmental scientist Jessica
Zelt’s work enlisting citizen scientists to produce a database of bird
sightings is featured in Audubon magazine.
Begun in 2008, the project to digitize the North American Bird
Phenology Program now involves more than 2,500 volunteers transcribing
handwritten reports as much as 100 years old. Unlocking this historic data
promises to help scientists understand the effects of climate change on bird
migration. Read: “Three
Generations of Citizen Science: The Futurist” by Rachel Nuwer, Audubon (November-December 2014).
Send us your signals
and stories! News about your work or other leads, tips, reviews, and ideas
are welcome. Contact Cynthia G. Wagner, consulting
editor.
Want more signals from AAI Foresight? Check out the blog! Log in to add comments.
Feel free to share Foresight SIGNALS with your networks and
to submit any stories, tips, or “signals” of trends emerging on the horizon
that we can share with other stakeholders and the foresight community. And if
you’re interested in becoming a blogger for FS, please contact Cindy Wagner,
our consulting editor, at CynthiaGWagner@gmail.com
Foresight SIGNALS is a publication of AAI Foresight
Freeland, WA 98249
Managing Principal:
Timothy C. Mack
tcmack333@gmail.com | 202-431-1652
Webmaster and IT
Consultant: Tom Warner
Consulting Editor:
Cynthia G. Wagner
