Back in the 1980s I used to read Omni magazine. In the 90s, it was magazines like Wired, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing. These all presented views of the future that I found interesting and (mostly) hopeful - even if a good percentage of their articles had no basis in reality.<p>Today, they're all gone or nothing like what they used to be.<p>What magazines, blogs, podcast, etc. do you use to discover possible positive future technologies?
Tech has gone mainstream so these stories are everywhere now. The Nytimes, WSJ, Washington Post all have tech sections and if you don’t read large national “papers”, you read about them at whatever news aggregator you have.<p>This is no longer niche news but part of everybody’s daily information diet.
HN has really embraced our current techno-pessimistic culture, so all the things that get on trashed here are definitely worth looking into. And no, I'm not joking. In the old days, HN had split brain, so things would both get trashed and celebrated - the famous Dropbox thread (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863</a>)? The top comment is gently dismissive, but overall the thread is also quite encouraging. Twitter is much better, since you can still get the split-brain effect there, rather than isolating yourself in a negative echo chamber.<p>So fining headlines isn't hard, I think the real value these days, which didn't exist prior to YouTube becoming huge, is that now you can actually really dive into these things in a way that was incredibly inaccessible before.<p>Take self-driving cars: You'll see the usual dismissive crap here, but then you can go on YouTube and you can watch Karpathy talk for hours about how they're building their system. Then you can go watch someone like Yannic Kilcher talk about Karpathy's presentation, explain pappers on which the work is based, etc. Then you can go watch AI DRIVR test the latest iteration in the real world. Because there's so much content, you can basically find content at every level, from basic pop-documentary explainers all the way to lectures and paper analysis, allowing you to gradually go deeper and deeper.<p>Rockets and Space? Scott Manley and EverydayAstronaut will explain missions, engines, everything. SmallStars has amazing visuals. EVs? Sandy Munro will tear down an entire car and show you every single little thing in there. Electric Flight? "Electric Aviation" will explain the engineering tradeoffs between Lillium's small ducted fans and Joby's large propeller design. Biology? iBiology let's you dive into any current reserach (Synthic Bio, Connectome scanning, using DNA as structural material). You can just keep going like that for anything, it's just plain amazing.
You don't. There isn't any. The reason why is explained here: <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit" rel="nofollow">https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declini...</a>
Lately, I've taken a liking to low energy tech, permacomputing, solarpunk, etc. Writing on those topics is scattered among subreddits, certain blogs (e.g., 100 Rabbits) and forums, and various Medium and Substack posts.
The Internet is bigger than ever. Depending on the community the sources differ.<p>For ML, you have to read papers and fill in the gaps. Learn the basics enough to be able to slog through the vocabulary and math, then try to turn theory into reality.<p>For crypto, everything cool that happens in public happens on Twitter. There are news aggregators for crypto news, but it all happens on Twitter first.<p>It seems it takes more personal effort to get to the cutting edge these days. That could be because this edge is always getting farther away from the starting point, the blank slate of ignorant childhood.
Adafruit and the surrounding community.<p>Also, there are several thriving tinkering communities on YouTube.<p><a href="https://adafruit.com" rel="nofollow">https://adafruit.com</a>
My theory is that it has basically gone underground (private groups on Slack, Signal, Discord, etc and maybe some public-yet-opaque activity on Twitter) along with much of the rest of the internet.<p>Weird and wonderful tech is by definition something that threatens the status quo, and having a public presence could attract unwanted attention by hostile journalists or even law enforcement. This has been called the dark forest theory of the internet. Being unsearchable also raises the the barrier to entry and keeps newbies out - besides not having to deal with them, this also keeps more in the pot for you if you ever figure out a monetization path.<p>Unfortunately I never got on the cool Discords or whatever in time to know the details of or network myself into these communities. But I’m pretty sure there are people printing pharmaceuticals in their garage with bacteria right now. DIYbio is fascinating
(like the guy who made his own vaccine) but there’s no primer or news site about it - you’re going to have to dig hard and actually talk to people to get informed. I know for a fact there are people printing and inventing new firearms and things like electrical primers.<p>There are cool things (for a certain definition of cool - not necessarily positive) going on with cryptocurrencies - check out rekt.news for a sample of what’s going on. They are covering heists, but the details tell you a lot: did you know you can take out a loan of $100M right now with zero credit or identity checks? You just have to pay it back in the same transaction.
Visions of the future is really important here. That's kind of lost prominence in tech writing these days. (Did we all decide we had a big enough dose of the future for now? There's a lot of existing tech that's mind-blowing, and still hard to catch up with, I guess)<p>I'd probably start with Isaac Arthur.
Sounds lame I know, but really (for when I want an overview or maybe to pass time): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies#See_also" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_technologies#See_also</a> ?
for the fantastical stuff, I'm a fan of Design Tech blogs and aggregators like <a href="https://www.yankodesign.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.yankodesign.com/</a><p>it's 99% just gorgeous renders, but still helps get the idea machine going :)
Rex Research<p><a href="http://www.rexresearch.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.rexresearch.com/</a><p>Sure, most of the stuff there is pretty crackpot, but the stuff that isn't...
Neophilia is real and it's impossible to satisfy when everything is always new<p>It felt amazing in the 1990s when you were a teenager staring at the same 184 lego bricks for 6 months<p>But now you're older and blind to interesting new things because you're looking for new things in a bucket of new things
I enjoy the Linux mobile space: <a href="https://linmob.net/" rel="nofollow">https://linmob.net/</a> is a good blog to start.<p>That community happens to be interested in other topics such as decetralization and repairable hardware too.
I honestly find a lot of interesting projects on Tiktok. Saw a laser harp driven by arduino last night that I am interested to explore.<p>I have also come across some DIY haptics for VR on there.
"future technologies" is pretty wide open.
aka could start a separate ycominator companion site
and still leave out a lot. ;)<p>One helpful approach I'd use would be to use a search engine(s) to help
narrow down the focus a bit. aka "omni alternative";"tech podcast"<p>Yeah, typcially way to much info indepenent of what term(s) one uses;
but great for getting a grasp on what's relate; prunning ideas dont
want to conside; and new takes/views on "old" stuff.<p>Obviously, have to concept prune by default & necessity.
Also bit more "customized overload", too<p>try search one day, wait for some time (day, week, month, year(s);
do same search terms -- get an idea of how quickly things are evolving.<p>note: for given term(s)/topics, might seem to disappear, but things changed
enough that the "search" is obsolete!
try same search on multiple search engines!<p>A few prune/starter search category ideas:<p>1) Lot of self project blogging aggrigate & individual/group sites
(vs. 80's & the dialup bbs). just try a term(s)/author and prune away!<p>general: www.indistructables.com / youtube / <a href="https://www.thingiverse.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thingiverse.com/</a><p>directed: blinkenlights.net ; "tech magazine", grab a term/author/story & search<p>2) Searching foundational sites (gnu/mit/ieee/acm);
sites containing citation/papers (csail robotics spinoffs)
websites, aka cmu robotics, mit csail, georga tech, etc.) either for
whats being done or reviewing what's cited in paper(s). aka hardware
needs software & vise versa.<p>3) In the search vein, sometimes just doing search for things like the 1920's mechanical tv, ardrino punch card reader, and/or 3d printed project can turn
up some fasinating stuff/ideas.<p>general: hackaday / makezine<p>directed: check out a project's url / citations / inspiration / etc.<p>general "thing a group/individual has done" : www.creativeapplications.net has limited set of examples on home page with archives stuff available to subscribers.<p><a href="http://technovelgy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://technovelgy.com/</a> what was once 'future tech'.<p>aka what Asimov ideas are still yet to happen? / What sci-fi writer ideas is SpaceX going to run into?<p>4) search term "open source projects":<p><a href="https://medium.com/@likid_geimfari/the-list-of-interesting-open-source-projects-2daaa2153f7c" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@likid_geimfari/the-list-of-interesting-o...</a><p><a href="https://www.oshwa.org/open-source-hardware-journals/" rel="nofollow">https://www.oshwa.org/open-source-hardware-journals/</a>
<a href="https://opensource.com/tags/hardware" rel="nofollow">https://opensource.com/tags/hardware</a>