“Robosapien,” the best-selling toy this past Christmas, is already obsolete, barely a month after millions of parents bought it for their children. The robot’s maker has announced an enhanced model to be in stores in February. Consumer groups are angry, as if the manufacturer had sold the original product in bad faith. Yet rapid obsolescence […]

Not long ago, digital cameras were exotic, expensive, produced poor pictures, and easily dismissed. Now, they are cheap, everywhere, as good as film at the high end, and many double as video cameras. Think of this example as you read in Health Futures Digest about other exotic, expensive, and currently rather limited technologies now emerging�hydrogen-powered […]

We’ve barely begun writing about the potential for implanted RFID chips, yet now find they are already implanted in the attorney general of Mexico, and his staff. RFID�s first major application, though, is for tracking shipments and inventory. A writer for Wired magazine took a close look at the German �Future Store� supermarket we first […]

America may be behind the curve in stem call therapy research in general, but that hasn’t stopped MIT from making an important contribution to the research in the form of a robotic technology for identifying stem cell growth media. Proposals are emerging within the biotechnology industry to adopt open-source approaches to drug development, at least […]

With globalization and technology leveling the playing field in the apparel industry, Third World garment workers have much to fear from a new scanner that may enable custom-tailored clothing to be made in the US as cheaply as ready-made clothes are churned out in China. There will likely come a day when a scanner like […]

The acceleration of innovations is starting to blur the line between what is to come and what has already, if only just, arrived. Health Futures Digest started out 18 months ago by trying to tell you what was coming in the next five to 20 years, yet we find ourselves increasingly reporting innovations anticipated within […]

Man could have God-like power of life creation in five years. Our creations won’t be too dangerous, some say. As it is, anybody can create mutant organisms for a few dollars today, and dangerous bits of life — artificial prions — have already been created, to advance our understanding of Mad Cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. […]

Worlds of the real and virtual are merging for fun, psychotherapy, and global hegemony. Batman and Barbie cavort in sync with the action on TV and in DVD movies, families at home play Wheel of Fortune alongside studio contestants, phobic patients face real fears in virtual environments, and the Pentagon plays war games in a […]

RFID tagging of groceries is starting to happen in Germany and will spread to the US this year. Supermarket productivity will rise, shopping will be easier and faster, and more people will be out of work. Automation, in the form of unpaid robots, is also set to snatch from low-paid second- and third-world workers the […]

Signs of accelerating revolutionary change this month range from the other-worldly: Preparations for human hibernation for deep-space travel; and another way of freezing light — to the mundane: A health insurer and patients getting to grips with medical innovation; the globalization of disease; the popularization of science; another breakthrough in fuel cells; the open-sourcing of […]