future

A Kurzgesagt animation on longtermism, arguing that because the future could hold trillions of people, our actions' effect on future generations may be what matters most.

Microsoft's 2015 concept video imagining how ubiquitous computing, collaboration services and data analytics might change work 5-10 years later.

A video essay explaining hauntology, Mark Fisher's idea of lost futures, and 80s nostalgia. It uses the Fallout games and other media as examples of a retro-futurism that mourns futures that never arrived.

Apple's late-1980s Knowledge Navigator concept video, produced under John Sculley, showing a professor using a tablet-like device with a conversational software agent. It envisions hypertext, touchscreens and voice assistants.

A 60fps capture of Future Crew's 1993 MS-DOS demo Second Reality, one of the best-known pieces of the demoscene. It runs about 16 minutes of real-time graphics and music effects on PC hardware of the era.

Captain Disillusion explains the visual effects behind the Back to the Future trilogy. He covers ILM's motion-control, computer-controlled camera work and clever pre-CGI tricks.

A capture of Second Reality, the real-time audiovisual demo by Future Crew first shown at Assembly 1993, recorded from a 486DX2-66 with a Gravis Ultrasound. It showcases the peak of early 1990s PC demoscene techniques.

Home video from 1993 showing Future Crew members at Mika Tuomi's home finishing the PC demo Second Reality shortly before release.

The first-place PC demo at Assembly 1992, Unreal by Future Crew, showing real-time effects such as palette-based wormholes.

Scott Galloway's TED talk uses data to argue that young Americans are financially worse off than earlier generations, calling it a great intergenerational theft. He covers root causes and what could change it.

MC Frontalot's nerdcore song "Secrets From The Future" (2007), about secrets not staying hidden once future technology can break today's encryption.

Wendover Productions explains why drone delivery has not become the future once promised. It covers no-fly zones, costs and the difficulty of the final drop-off.

A 20-minute Y Combinator interview in which Sam Altman asks Elon Musk how to build the future. Topics include which problems a 22-year-old should work on, such as AI, genetics, and brain interfaces, and general advice for founders.

Part 3 of WIRED's Future Cities series on Shenzhen. It examines how attitudes toward patents and intellectual property differ from the West, and how shanzhai (copycat) manufacturing created an ecosystem of rapid iteration and distribution.

Fully Charged host Robert Llewellyn visits Orkney, where wind, tidal, wave and solar generation plus community energy schemes power the islands. It presents the archipelago as a model for future energy systems.

A 20-minute S3 episode touring Terraform Industries, a startup making synthetic natural gas from air and solar power. It walks through the reactor, injection system, direct air capture and electrolyzer, plus the company's cost goals and next milestone.

An update from the Strange Parts YouTuber on his recovery from a brain injury caused by a metal pipe while filming, and his plans for the channel.

Solomon Hykes shows Docker to the public for the first time in a five-minute lightning talk at PyCon 2013. It demos Linux containers and the simplicity of a Dockerfile.

Episode 7 of the Inside Koenigsegg series, where Christian von Koenigsegg demonstrates the camless Free Valve engine technology. It discusses how such innovation could affect the wider auto industry.

GreatScott! tests ProLogium lithium ceramic batteries, a solid-state design. He measures their volumetric and gravimetric energy density, compares them to Li-ion and LiPo, and runs durability tests at the end.

A UK tradesman's rant on the disadvantages of air source heat pumps, covering grants, heat pump types and whether they are worth it. He argues they are impractical for many British homes.

CGP Grey argues that a classroom works well only for the one student pitched at the average level, and sketches a future of personalized instruction. It introduces the idea of a Digital Aristotle, a tutor for every learner.

Corning's 2011 concept video showing a future where specialty glass surfaces and touchscreens are woven into everyday life.

An excerpt from an RSA event in which physicist David Deutsch makes the case for optimism as a driver of progress in the 21st century. It is a short highlight of a longer discussion.

A 1994 video from Knight Ridder showing a concept for a tablet newspaper with a rounded-corner rectangular touchscreen. It was reposted by Matt Novak of Paleofuture.

Keiichi Matsuda's short concept film depicting a future where physical and virtual realities have merged and the city is saturated with media and advertising. It shows an augmented-reality-filled daily life as a provocative vision.

Epic 2014 is a short science-fiction film that imagines the media landscape merging into a personalized, computer-generated news service. It is a fictional history of 'Googlezon' and the decline of traditional newspapers.

An 8-minute fictional short film, made by campaigners for a ban on autonomous weapons, depicting swarms of cheap AI-guided micro-drones used to kill targeted people. It ends with a call to action against autonomous weapons.

James Mickens of Harvard gives a funny lecture at HBS's Future Assembly arguing that blockchains are a very bad idea. He covers their trust, legal and practical shortcomings for real-world problems.

A speculative-fiction video by Tom Scott, framed as coming from a future, about an AI called Earworm that enforces copyright so aggressively that humanity ends up forgetting a century of pop culture. It is animated and narrated as part of his series of videos from a future.

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show satirizes the AI industry's promises of a better future while it builds technology to replace workers. It mocks executives and AI hype.

A short demo of Sun Microsystems' Looking Glass, a 3D desktop GUI concept for a future operating system.

The climactic orange juice futures trading scene from the film Trading Places, in which the heroes corner the market on the trading floor.

Kurzgesagt explains the black hole bomb and how far-future civilizations might extract energy from spinning black holes, including Dyson-sphere-style ideas.

CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply" argues that automation will make a large part of the workforce economically obsolete, much as engines did for horses. It surveys robots and software replacing both physical and mental labor.

CGP Grey narrates an animated adaptation of Nick Bostrom's Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. The story uses a dragon that demands a daily toll of lives as a metaphor for aging and society's acceptance of death.

Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at the Intertwingled festival, presented using a revived Smalltalk-78 system running on emulated 1970s Xerox PARC hardware. It shows live, user-programmable software from that era.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

Robert Miles explains instrumental convergence: why an AGI with almost any goal would tend to pursue sub-goals like self-preservation and resource acquisition. It builds on Omohundro's basic AI drives and his orthogonality thesis video.

Robert Miles explains the orthogonality thesis: how an agent can be highly intelligent while pursuing goals that seem stupid or alien to humans. He separates intelligence from goals and touches on the stamp-collector example.