Articulos
The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past. Tim Berners-Lee This book, Ch@nge: 19 Key Essays on How Internet Is Changing Our Lives, is the sixth installment in BBVA’s annual series devoted to the exploration of the most important issues of […]
As the Middle East hits bottom for governance, leaders must address cry for justice and respect. The way the political situation has evolved in the countries that experienced the so-called Arab Spring has created despondency in some quarters. Are Arab nations doomed to remain fractious and poorly governed? The answer is no, and the reasons […]
“Why do they hate us?” is a question often asked among the American population since September 11, 2001. At the same time, Arab-Islamic populations around the world find themselves in a similar predicament. Ubiquitous misrepresentations and alienating stereotypes pervade through security discourses, conflating images of an extremist minority with the attitudes of the peaceful majority. […]
There’s a Future: Visions for a Better World is the fifth book in this annual series that BBVA devotes to disseminating the best knowledge on the greatest topics of our time. We launched our project in 2008 with Frontiers of Knowledge, which explored the recent advances and key challenges faced by scientific research in the […]
If you could improve by implanting a chip in your brain to expand your nervous system through the Internet, ‘update yourself’ and partially become a machine, would you? What Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, poses may sound like science fiction but it is not; he has several implanted chips, which makes him a cyborg: half man, half machine. In this fascinating article, Warwick explains the various steps that have been taken to grow neurons in a laboratory that can then be used to control robots, and how chips implanted in our brains can also move muscles in our body at will. It won’t be long before we also have robots with brains created with human neurons that have the same types of skills as human brains. Should they, then, have the same rights as us? […]
From a focus on predicting the future, the modern discipline of Futures Studies has broadened to an exploration of alternative futures and deepened to investigate the worldviews and mythologies that underlie possible, probable and preferred futures. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for the study of the future. Case studies derived from organizational, institutional and national foresight studies are used to illustrate theories and methods. […]
The fact that not all people with an identical mutation develop a certain disease shows that a biological reality is complex; there are compensatory mechanisms and it is necessary to distinguish between a person´s genome (genotype) and his or her traits (phenotype). When speaking of genes and genomes, we are not speaking about an objective physical reality, that is to say, a phenotype, but about information. Moreover, this fact reveals that biology is not deterministic nor does it rest on the principle of specificity. This vision allows an understanding of how multiple phenotypes can be formed from a single genome, and how environment and chance select, at each moment, one from among all those possible phenotypes. From this perspective, it is evident that disease is individual and that medicine cannot be predictive, but must adapt to the person, working with specific cases and not statistics. […]
The history of the past five hundred years is as much a chronicle of mankind using machines as of mankind being changed by machines. When the British brought railways to India, it was to a control a distant colony through the efficient movement of goods and troops. But it also spurred the breaking down caste barriers since all travelers had to occupy common small spaces. A frontier research area and molecular scale, nanotechnology´s scale from which physical and biological properties arise. This will lead to the disappearance of the distinctions between man-made and living that we see today. Man and machine will fuse, raising some of the most difficult evolutionary and ethical questions of our history. […]
Given the importance science has in our lives and societies, it is not small question to consider whether it is possible to predict the future of this discipline. Using the history of science as his main tool, Sanchez Ron analyses predictions made by a number of scientist about the nature of science and its future paths. Providing a wealth of examples from those who have practices the soothsayers´ art, the author chooses cases that missed the mark entirely, including predictions in mathematics (Hilbert), The theory of evolution (Erasmus and Charles Darwin) and artificial intelligence (Wiener, Von Neumann and Turing). The author also explores the relationship between science and technology, as well as addressing issues such as how social needs or science fiction affects predictions of the future of science. […]
Model simulations of the response of the Earth to the ongoing global warming predict that the Northern Hemisphere will heat up about twice as fast as the Southern Hemisphere. If so, the thermal equator will undergo a northward shift. By analogy to a shift that occurred about 14.500 years ago, this will strengthen monsoon rains in China, increase the discharge of the Nile, make more arid the dry lands in the 35 to 45º N latitude belt and shift Amazonia to the north. Evidence in support of this prediction comes from the small southwards shift of the thermal equator that accompanied the transition from Medieval Warm to the Little Ice Age. […]