Category Archives: Futurist

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A California doctor is proposing a floating abortion clinic,located on a boat docked in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, to help people in the surrounding states access abortions following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

In an interview with theAssociated Press, Bay Area-based OB-GYN Dr. Meg Autry urged creativity such as the creation of a floating abortion clinic in handling the issues that arose from Roe's demise.

"We have to create options and be thoughtful and creative," Autry toldthe AP, "to help people in restrictive states get the health care they deserve."

The boat clinic concept is still in its fledgling phase, as a nonprofit called Protecting Reproductive Rights Of Women Endangered by State Statutes nonprofit (PRROWESS) works to raise money to bring it to floating fruition.

Like lots of other federal land-based clinic proposals that have sprung up in Roe's wake, PRROWESS' legal team believes that the swaths of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico could serve as a safe harbor for licensed practitioners who could provide abortions to people in nearby states where the procedures are now illegal, including Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. It would also benefit Floridians seeking abortions after their state decided to ban the procedure after 15 weeks unless the life of the parent is in danger.

If someone in one of the aforementioned states was seeking an abortion, as Autry told the AP, it would be easier to go down to the Gulf and board a boat than travel to another state where abortion is still legal, which in many cases could result in a day-long drives or expensive plane tickets.

"This is closer and faster access for some people," she said, "particularly for working people that live in the southernmost part of these states."

The concept is certainly both novel and feasible, but it may ironically run into issues with the current Democratic administration, given that the Biden White House has rebuffed the concept of using federal lands (andquite possibly waters by extension) to provide abortions because, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, "it could actually put women and providers at risk" of prosecution.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and this creative concept to help people in states where abortion was made illegal is certainly one for the books if the federal government lets it happen.

READ MORE:Floating abortion clinic proposed in Gulf to bypass bans [The Associated Press]

More on abortion:Google Says It Will Automatically Delete Abortion Clinic Visits From Users' History

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Floating Abortion Clinic Proposed in Gulf of Mexico to Circumvent Bans - Futurism

If youre adjusting to being back in an office for the first time after two years of working from home, you might have realized that your work bag is a little out of date. Whether youre looking for a bag that wont look out of place at happy hour, or you want something that can withstand your morning commute, these work bags will have you looking forward to going back into the office.

Key Selling Point: This nylon backpack can easily function as a diaper bag, a work bag or a picnic basket it can be whatever you need.

The Jemma Jules Nylon Backpack truly has it all, including a smaller insulated bag inside of it that can be used as a lunch box for the busy mom on the go. You can carry the bag around using the handle on top, or use the comfortable webbed backpack straps for a hands-free option. If neither of those sound appealing, dont worry; you can also convert this bag into a crossbody. It comes with a changing mat (which doubles as a laptop sleeve pocket), stroller clips, and two water bottle holders thats perfect for moms and kids.

Key Selling Point: It may seem like a standard work bag, but this sustainable tote comes with multiple interior pockets so you dont have to sacrifice style for function.

Inspired by the busy and bustling Tokyo city, this tote bag might seem compact, but trust us: its bigger on the inside. It has a special compartment for your water bottle, tablet, and even an interior loop that can hold your pens or lipgloss, and theres still four other pockets (three on the inside and one on the outside) to fill with whatever you want. You can also easily adjust the strap to a length that suits you theres six lengths to choose from, and dont worry, the strap will definitely stay in place; theres also six knobs that secure the strap. Its lining is made out of recycled plastic bottles, and the black leather body will go with any outfit. If blacks not your color, no problem it also comes in gray and orange.

Key Selling Point: If you want a stylish bag that's also water-resistant, this is the bag for you.

The TUMI Hope Tote is perfect for those who are looking for a tote that can double as a briefcase or a purse, depending on the time of day. The interior of this spacious bag is just as good as its exterior; it has room for your laptop, zippable interior pockets for your phone and accessories. It even comes with a water-resistant pocked so you can stay hydrated all day with a water bottle. Leather straps add a touch of elegance this nylon tote, while the top zip keeps everything you need secure inside.

Key Selling Point: A hands-free bag thats perfect for anyones morning commute.

The Mobile Solution Convertible Caryall Tote bag was made for your morning commute; its sleek design means you wont bump into another commuter with your bulky bag, and its shoulder straps allow for hands-free carrying so that you can start answering work emails while youre on the train. Its wide enough to carry a 14 -inch laptop, which fits comfortably in a padded laptop sleeve. Inside the bag, there are multiple zip and wall pockets so that you can separate your chargers from your books, and your books from your pens. Lastly, the bag is made out of a water-resistant nylon material thats built to last longer than your companys work-from-home policy.

Key Selling Point: This tote is a trendy bag and portable organization aid, all in one.

The TUMI Devoe Hope Laptop Tote is a lightweight laptop tote thats perfect for towing around everything you need for your day. Whether youre commuting to the office, running errands after work, or simply hitting a coffee shop for a study sesh, this bag can be your saving grace. It comes equipped with nearly every storage pocket youll need, including a 15-inch laptop compartment and separate interior water bottle pocket, so you wont have to fret that your water bottle is loose and spilling on your important documents or worse, your tech devices. With an interior key leash, pen loop, two interior zip pockets and two separate media pockets, and even a quick-access phone pocket, youll be rest assured that everything youve packed is easy to access and wont be rattling around unsecured. The bag is easy to transport with its double top leather handles, and has a handy strap to add an extra bag in case you need an extra purse to carry everything; although, the tote bags size should suit just about anyones commuting needs.

A work bag doesnt have to be all style and no function or all function no style you can find options that fit your aesthetic without sacrificing added pockets or a place for your water bottle. Whether its a sustainable bag that keeps up with your packed after-work social life or a bag that you can turn into a diaper bag on the weekends, an upgraded work bag can make achieving work-life balance that much easier.

This post was created by a non-news editorial team at Recurrent Media, Futurisms owner. Futurism may receive a portion of sales on products linked within this post.

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Get the Job Done With These 5 Work Totes - Futurism

It's official.

The ever controversial head of the Russian space program, Dmitri Rogozin, is being replaced by deputy prime minister Yury Borisov, according to an official statement by the Kremlin.

"Bye, Dmitri!" tweeted Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

It's unclear what Rogozin's next gig will be, but according to Russian news siteMeduza, he could soon be overseeing operations in eastern Ukraine after repeatedly threatening neighboring countries with missile strikes a move that would blur the lines between firing and promotion.

The news comes after Rogozin repeatedly lashed out at Western partners, particularly following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He has garnered a reputation for making thinly-veiled threats, provocative statements, and going on countless unhinged rants, sometimes directed at fellow Twitter addict, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Rogozin went as far as to threaten the US with a plummeting International Space Station during the early days of the Russia's invasion earlier this year.

"Since the invasion of Ukraine, Rogozin has been increasingly bellicose and made numerous threats about Russian participation in the station," Ars Technica senior space editor Eric Berger,a close Rogozin watcher,tweeted in response to the news of the sacking. "While most of those threats have ended up being hollow, they have damaged working relations with the west."

Berger himself has repeatedly butted heads with Rogozin on Twitter, with the former space program head even accusing Berger of war crimes last year.

The news could take a massive load of pressure off NASA, which has been trying to keep operations on board the ISS going in spite of Rogozin's provocations.

The space agency is still planning to go ahead with a scheduled astronaut seat swap, allowing Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina to travel to the ISS on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in September.

"No one is happier this morning than [NASA's] Johnson Space Center, from the astronaut office to the corner office to comms," Berger wrote in a follow-up. "Rogozin was a nightmare to work with and a destabilizing force in the ISS partnership."

"He was also a nationalist asshole, of course," Berger concluded.

While the international space community can breathe a little easier, having a belligerent and trigger-happy crony at the helm of an active warzone isn't exactly the most reassuring of prospects either.

The Kremlin has yet to announce what itsofficial plans for Rogozin are next but we already dread to hear where he's headed next.

More on the news: Rumors Swirl That the Deranged Head of the Russian Space Program Is Getting Fired

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Russian Space Chief Leaving Post, May Be Headed to War Zone - Futurism

In an effort to prevent power outages this winter, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida asked that as many as nine of the country's nuclear reactors be brought online.

Earlier today Bloomberg reportedthat Kishida is expecting the shortage because of extreme weather as well as delays in opening other nuclear power stations. That's in addition to Japan's decision to use fewer energy sources from Russia as it continues its bloody invasion in Ukraine.

Nuclear power is a fraught topic in Japan. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the country had as many as 54 nuclear reactors supplyingaround 30 percent of the country's energy demands. According to Bloomberg, if the nine reactors Kishida wants to come online actually do so, they could generate as much as 10 percent of the nation's energy needs.

That doesn't mean people are super thrilled just yet.

"Uh oh," one Twitter netizen said today of the news, recalling controversy over the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Experts, too, are torn on whether Japan's nuclear plans are really that bad. Chris Bataille, an energy expert with Columbia University's center for global energy policy, said Japan is acting just in time. He also suggested that proper safety precautions alone could prevent future disaster.

"Japan turns the corner in time, hopefully," Bataille said online today. "Keep your large, legacy nuclear reactors that are running safely open until new clean generation can be built."

Still, not everybody is convinced post-Fukushima regulations are enough to protect people and the environment. Jon Wolfsthal, a former presidential nuclear advisor, was far more skeptical of the news.

"Japan still has no plan for how to handle massive amounts of radioactive spent fuel and accumulating plutonium from reprocessing," Wolfsthal said online today. "Some will laud this step as a sign of nuclear renaissance, but solutions continue to elude us in the real world."

Given that Japan recently gave the all-clear for "treated" nuclear waste to be dumped into the Pacific Ocean, Kishida's request is certainly worth some of the skepticism. But it's also worth mentioning that the government is fining four former executives responsible for part of the 2011 disaster billions of dollars some small steps toward accountability.

Let's hope the country finds the right balance, getting the energy it needs without more disaster.

Updated to adjust context around the Fukushima disaster.

More on Earth and energy news: Active Supervolcano Is Causing Ground Above it to Shift, Study Finds

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Japan May Need Nine Nuclear Reactors Turned On to Get Through Winter - Futurism

McGonigal: I hit my limit of reading headlines and news stories that described world events like the pandemic and extreme weather as unimaginable. In recent years, weve had so many shocking political events in the United States, and extremism and new kinds of protests and social movements, and this word just kept showing up. It was exasperating because wed predicted so much of this for a long time. It wasn't that they were unimaginable or unthinkable, we just didn't want to think about them because it's stressful and it makes us feel anxious. Or, we didn't have the tools or information to vividly imagine what living through a pandemic would be like or how social media might fuel extremism. I wanted to write a book to help people confidently see that no future is unthinkable because we refuse to think about it, or no future is unimaginable because we don't believe that transformative change is possible.

One of the books driving ideas is urgent optimism. What is urgent optimism and why should we strive for it?

McGonigal: Urgent optimism means we definitely need to act and not sit around and wait for the future to happen. We will take action to shape how the future turns out. The optimism comes from a sense of agency or self-efficacy where the future is shaped by actions that we take today to prepare, plan and change the way the world works. To stay engaged with the future we have to fuel the fires of hope and creativity. We have to feel that the future can be better due to our own actions. At the end of the day, urgent optimism allows for the mental flexibility to internalize a realistic sense of hope that is grounded in an awareness of risks and threats, but engages with new technologies, solutions, and movements that will make things better.

What are some accessible futurist techniques that might translate well to schools or other youth-oriented environments?

McGonigal: There's a simple habit of collecting and sharing what we call signals of change. Anybody can gather signals, and they would definitely work for teachers who want to bring future-thinking into their classrooms. A signal of change could be a news story, a surprising social media post, or something from the world around you. It's something you've never seen before that represents a new way of doing things or a new way of being in reality. You can take a picture of it or take notes about it. It's not a hypothetical idea or fiction: it's a real change happening somewhere.

Every art form has its medium, and signals of change are the raw material of the futurist. Writers use words, computer programmers use code, musicians use musical notes, and artists use paint or clay. We create ideas about the future out of these signals of change. Examples might include a No Drone Zone sign in a park, a pay-what-you-can restaurant in Berkeley that had no prices on the menu, or a story about the new virtual real estate market unfolding in the metaverse. These concrete examples make you stop in your tracks and say, Wow! I guess things can be different. These, to me, are signals of change.

Schools and teachers can create a culture of investigating signals, sharing signals, responding to them, and reflecting on them. Students might discuss whether the signal makes them feel more hopeful or more worried. Does it make them feel powerful? Are they curious to learn how to engage with it? Where will it lead? You can even organize signal scavenger hunts.

Every subject benefits from future-thinking, and it makes learning more relevant because it's about things happening in the world that are cool, interesting, weird, and surprising. My background is in gaming, so I'm always looking for opportunities to generate the positive emotions that we easily get from games, but maybe not from our everyday lives. The surprise, the delight, the curiosity inspired by signals of change are great ways to bring those positive emotions into the classroom.

What are some exciting futures for schools that have emerged from your work?

McGonigal: One of the biggest ideas for driving change in schools that I'm excited to see is the concept of a grand challenge. Instead of traditional subjects or declaring a major in university, students might undertake a challenge to solve a global issue like climate action, ending poverty, gender equality, or zero hunger. Im excited to see how people use the idea of connecting learning at all levels and across disciplines to global grand challenges to create more meaningful learning experiences.

In the book you describe a future-thinking technique where you immerse groups in large-scale scenarios and social simulations, usually set 10 years in the future. How can schools, parents, youth, or community groups run or participate in these scenarios?

McGonigal: The most practical thing to do is take scenarios from the book, those we share publicly at the Institute of the Future, or visit the Urgent Optimists website, which has a club you can join with new scenarios every month. Teachers, parents, community groups, or anybody can adapt scenarios to local lived experience. You play with it, see how people react and what emerges. It could be like a school newspaper or a school play, where kids are eager to roll up their sleeves and be a part of creating something together. It could be a simulation club, a scenario club, or a signals club, but they can be integrated in classrooms as well.

Can you share a powerful or memorable experience that emerged from your work with youth?

McGonigal: We invited teens to a 10-year forecast conference and asked them to imagine a future rite of passage. A lot of teenagers don't get driver's licenses anymore, and it was such a rite of passage for decades. It meant freedom and independence and growing up. Today, teens are less interested in driving for sustainability reasons, economic reasons, or mental health reasons. We asked them what do you think teenagers are going to do as rites of passage in the future? The rite of passage that they came-up with that they all agreed sounded the most plausible was the first time that they would personally experience a climate catastrophe or terrible extreme weather. That was in 2018, before Greta Thunberg came on the scene and really channeled this righteous anger of young people. It was definitely a clue to us that this generation was already experiencing a pre-traumatic experience of climate change. They knew it was something that they would personally live through. The old teenage ritual was about freedom and independence, and this new rite of passage was going to be about coming to terms with loss and trauma. When young people imagine their future, we should believe them. What they're saying is that they feel like there's a lot of trauma and suffering coming, and they need ways to imagine better worlds.

Running a scenario seems to be as much about personal growth and building resilience as it is about predicting the future. What are the benefits of running a scenario or a simulation, even if they might not accurately predict the future?

McGonigal: Future scenarios and simulations are all about how things could be different, so that fundamental creative skill of thinking differently is at the heart of it. It also is a big driver of hope, particularly for young people. Often, its less about preparing for the challenges of the future and more about imagining the world we want to wake up in. Its about being the authors of our own worlds; to use the power of the future as a place where nobody has said no yet.

Learning how to visualize the future more specifically can help people experience less depression and less anxiety. When we're anxious, we tend to fixate on vivid mental images of things that scare us, but we can imagine a future where we deal with things effectively. We can imagine ourselves taking actions that are within our power in order to deal with situations. Or, we can just redirect our imagination towards something that is a better representation of our hopes and values so that we don't get stuck.

In the book you also discuss cultivating empathy for our future selves. Can you tell me more about that?

McGonigal: It stems from research done at UCLA that used neuroimaging to study how we think about our future selves or our far-future selves. Our brain reacts to our future self as if they were a stranger. This explains why we often have a hard time taking action today that benefits our future selves, whether it's saving money for a long term goal, exercising, sustainability choices, or even voting. It even leads to procrastination. We avoid doing tasks and hand them over to our future selves. Future me will be fine writing this paper! But, you're still going to be you when you get there.

We can build a relationship with our future self by vividly imagining future-thinking scenarios and what our life in the future might look like. It's kind of like neurological cross training because it helps us develop what is called hard empathy for our future self, which then can translate into empathy for other strangers or other people we perceive as different from ourselves. Our empathy grows by thinking about differences: how the future could be different, how our future selves could be different, and how other people's experiences of a crisis or change is different. Some people are very motivated by helping others and not helping themselves.

And, finally, this is a nice segway into the empowering concept of learned helpfulness.

McGonigal: By imagining what we might do in a possible future, we can learn our own helpfulness. It is so powerful to imagine how our own unique skills and abilities and strengths, no matter how small, might be of service to others. We often give ourselves more creative latitude when we imagine our future selves. We think, future me can be really powerful and capable and amazing and accomplished. We set higher goals for our future self, and we can more easily see ourselves take action in the future because we're not there yet and our imagination has room to play. We feel the power of our agency when we imagine ourselves doing things that tend to be more ambitious, more audacious. When we envision what we might do to help others in the future, we are empowered to realize we could take that action today and change the future accordingly.

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Harnessing the power of future-forecasting to help invent a better world - MindShift - KQED

In January 2020, when the coronavirus started making headlines around the world, Jane McGonigals inbox was flooded with emails from Silicon Valley execs, government officials, and nonprofit leaders. They all had the same question: Jane, didnt you run a simulation of a respiratory pandemic?

Yes, she had. All the way back in 2010.

McGonigal is a game designer. She builds simulations that help players imagine the unimaginable. And in 2010, she invited nearly 20,000 people to immerse themselves in a future world besieged by a global pandemic. How would you change your habits? she asked. What social interactions would you avoid? Can you work from home?

A decade later, when COVID-19 went from nascent threat to full-blown crisis, McGonigal started hearing from folks who had participated in the simulation. Im not freaking out, one of them said with relief. I already worked through the panic and anxiety when we imagined it 10 years ago.

According to the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, we can all learn to make the shift from panic to poise by training our brains to think about the unthinkable. But what does that training look like? In her new book,Imaginableand on todays episode of The Next Big Idea podcastMcGonigal shares evidence-based techniques you can use to see the future coming. Listen to the full episode below, or read a few key highlights. And follow host Rufus Griscom on LinkedInfor behind-the-scenes looks into the show.

Rufus Griscom:Your path from studying and designing video games to working as a futuristsome would see that as counterintuitive. I think you see this as a logical progression. Why does that sequencing make sense?

Jane McGonigal: What first really fascinated me about the gaming community was this trend that I was observing in gamers: They were developing real skills, real abilities, collective intelligence, and collective imagination that they wanted to apply in a bigger contextmaybe help solve some real-world challenges.

This was back in 2001 when I was starting my PhD work. And I thought, This is amazing! It would be really good for humanity if we could channel these new skills that are coming out of online gaming into real-world problem-solving. But at that time, there were not a lot of games to play that actually connected this community with real-world challenges.

After studying it for six years, writing my dissertation on this topic, I rolled right into, Im going to be the one to make games that help gamers apply those strengths to real-world contexts. And the context that I wound up working in was trying to anticipate hard-to-predict futures, or apply that collective imagination to seeing future scenarios from massively many points of viewthe same way that we see a game worldso that we might discover the outlier risks or unexpected opportunities. And thats what Ive been doing for 15 years now.

This mission to take our interest in gaming and collective imagining exercises and use them to help us better understand possible future outcomesyou and your team have been engaged in this for a while, and you have an astoundingly impressive track record at anticipating possible future outcomes. Can you share some of the details of what you all have done?

2020 was a really strange year to be a future forecaster, in that I had an experience of living through a very difficult future that we had been forecasting for a decade or more. My work at the Institute for the Future involved creating these social simulations way back in 2008, 2010, where we were inviting thousands of people to spend weeks in a private social network. It would look like Twitter, Facebook, or Discord, but everything being posted and shared was about a hypothetical future.

Futurists love to look 10 years ahead because that gives us enough mental distance to think creatively. And if were imagining problems that might not happen for 10 years, it gives us enough time to prepare for them or prevent them. So we were looking at the years 2019 and 2020; and back then, our simulation centered around, How would we survive and adapt to a respiratory pandemic that started in China that was also complicated by cascading crises?One of the things that I specialize in is figuring out how different crises and disruptions intersect. So were not just looking at it from a public health perspective or an epidemiology perspective. We were also thinking about how we would survive and adapt when we have the supply-chain disruptions, when there is misinformation and conspiracy theories about the pandemic being spread on social media, when there are historic wildfires and extreme heat waves due to climate change. And thats just what we lived through in 2020.

What made me sort of crazy for a little while, and made me want to write the bookImaginable, is that there was this incredible proliferation of news stories and headlines using the word unimaginable to describe the pandemic and its consequences. But itwasntunimaginable. We just didnt have a critical mass of people imagining it. We had 20,000 people in one of our simulations, and 8,000 in another. My goal is to have 20millionI think that would really help us prepare for the future.

McGonigal:When we give ourselves these long, luxurious deadlines, we feel time rich. And when we feel time rich, we think, I have all this time! I can do what I want. I can do what matters to me.

When we have urgent deadlines or too many tasks on our to-do list for today, we feel time poor, time deprivedand then we just dont use our time because even though we still have the same amount of time, it feels scarce.

Another thing that researchers have found is that when we imagine 10 years out, we tend to think about things that are more relevant to our most important valuesthe kinds of goals that would help us live a life that we would consider really authentic, really true to our dreams or what we find meaningful and purposeful.

I give people this challenge. Its not, Where would you like to be in 10 years or what would you like to be different? The challenge is to try to vividly imagine waking up on a specific day. So, pick a day of the week; is it a Monday? Is it a Saturday? A Sunday? You imagine yourself waking up, and you try to picture every detail. Where are you? Are you in the same room that you woke up in today, or is it a different room? Where is it? Is there somebody with you? Is it a person? Is it a pet? Is it a different person or pet than you might wake up with today? And then imagine what mood you are in. What mood would you like to wake up in? What would put you in that mood? What might be on your calendar for that day that would put you in that mood?

And then I tell people, Go put it on your calendar. If youve just imagined yourself doing this amazing thing that makes you feel a certain way, go ahead and open up your Google or Apple calendarthey do go 10, 20, 30, 40 years in the futureand put it on your calendar. Even better, invite somebody. Invite a loved one.

It can spark some really interesting conversations about our real hopes and dreams. What is it going to take to get there? Because weve given ourselves 10 years, it allows us to dream bigger and also enjoy that sense of time spaciousness to really make some changes or explore possibilities that we would dismiss as impossible today.

Griscom:Are there any other future scenarios that you think our listeners should consider?

Things to pay attention to: government-mandated internet shutdowns is a huge future force that is spreading globally. If youre not aware of this phenomenon and not potentially prepared to live through weeks or months of the government turning off the internet, thats something to think about.

Another one is climate migration. Weve got to be willing to think about the risks where we live. Are we in a climate-secure, climate-resilient place that will probably be welcoming others who are migrating out of climate-unsafe regions? If so, we should be prepared to see a higher density of living, to be welcoming to people who have been forcibly displaced. Are we emotionally ready for that? Are we economically ready for that? Also think about our pathways to move if we need to. That is something that every serious futurist that I know is thinking aboutpathways of human movement within countries, and across borders. How can we support people economically, socially, mentally, psychologically? How can we make a home? Thats a problem space that warrants so much imagination and innovation and creativity. If I could get all of the smartest minds on the planet to work on something, it would be thinking about movement. That is the biggest future scenario that would benefit from our imagination, and also our innovation.

This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.

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Futurist predicts Covid and what's coming in a decade - Fast Company

AnimationHistoryIllustration #anime#architecture#drawing#film#science fiction

Akira, cut #1, Final production background detail, Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 93 x 53 centimeters. All photos from AKIRA (Movie), based on the graphic novel AKIRA by Katsuhiro Otomo. First published by Young Magazine, Kodansha Ltd. MASH ROOM / AKIRA COMMITTEE, shared with permission

Katsuhiro Otomos 1988 sci-fi classic Akira has had an unparalleled influence on anime and film, and an exhibition at the Tchoban Foundation in Berlin showcases the original drawings that brought its futuristic cyberpunk setting to life. Akira The Architecture of Neo Tokyo features 59 production backdrops, layouts, concepts, and image boards, many of which have never been shown publicly. The collection includes now-iconic works by art director Toshiharu Mizutani and collaborators Katsufumi Hariu, Norihiro Hiraki, Shinji Kimura, Satoshi Kuroda, Hiromasa Ogura, Hiroshi no, Hajime Soga, Tsutomu Uchida, and Takashi Watabe.

Otomo first released the dystopian story as a manga series in 1982 before turning it into the highly influential action film a few years later. The narrative follows characters Shtar Kaneda, the telekinetic Tetsuo Shim, and their friends, who navigate the imagined Japanese metropolis of Neo Tokyo with its neon streetlights, crumbling infrastructure, and unrelenting post-apocalyptic vibe.

Ahead of the exhibition, curator Stefan Riekeles also released the book Anime Architecture: Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities. The volume contains fantastic scenes from various animated classics including Ghost in the Shell and Metropolis. You can see Akira The Architecture of Neo Tokyo through September 4, and according to Its Nice That, the show might travel to London next.

Akira, pattern no. 182, final production background, Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 55 x 42 centimeters

Akira, pattern no. 2211, final production background, Hiroshi Ohno, poster color on paper, 50 x 36 centimeters

Akira, pattern no. 2204, picture board, Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 25 x 35 centimeters

Akira, pattern no. 700, final production background Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 26 x 37 centimeters

Akira, pattern no. 214, final production background, Toshiharu Mizutani, poster color on paper, 25.5 x 37 centimeters

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. You'll connect with a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, read articles and newsletters ad-free, sustain our interview series, get discounts and early access to our limited-edition print releases, and much more. Join now!

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An Exhibition Unearths Rare Production Drawings from the Futuristic Neo Tokyo of the Anime Classic 'Akira' - Colossal

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For the Metaverse to achieve its promise, it requires a base-level blockchain protocol equal to the technical, economic, and philosophical origins of the Metaverse idea itself an open and expansive virtual universe. To fulfill that promise, cryptocurrency pioneer Peter Vessenes and renowned futurist Neal Stephenson are announcing Lamina1, a new Layer-1 blockchain technology designed for the Metaverse with Web3 principles in mind.

Co-founders Vessenes and Stephenson serve as Lamina1s chief executive officer and chairman, respectively. Later this year, the company will launch a testnet and a subsequent betanet. Beyond 2022, the co-founders plan to seed a new immersive environment inspired by Stephenson's million-selling novel Snow Crash, building infrastructure and releasing tools to support the work of third-party creators who want to build Open Metaverse experiences at scale.

Lessons Learned from Web 2.0

As titans of the technology industry implement their vision of the Metaverse - a sector projected to grow to $1T in the coming decade - Lamina1 is working to ensure it does not repeat the missteps of the past by continuing to perpetuate existing structures of centralized ownership and inequality.

Lamina1 proposes an alternative a more modern and integrated Web3 community and ecosystem as the first building block for a truly Open Metaverse. The provably carbon negative Lamina1 chain will offer high transaction volume and an economic design with new incentive mechanisms to help create thriving, vibrant economies for creators and entrepreneurs.

Lamina1 Co-founders Bridge Visionary Science Fiction to Imminent Metaverse Reality

The concept of the Metaverse, an immersive version of the internet was first brought to life in 1992 with the publication of Snow Crash. Now, 30 years later, Stephenson is for the first time founding a company to create the digital world he envisioned.

The 30th anniversary of Snow Crash, and recent interest in actually building the Metaverse, has got me thinking about how to do it in a way thats true to the original concept, said Stephenson. That means creative ferment rooted in a strong base layer of open source tech that provides key services to creators while making sure that they get paid. The purpose of Lamina1 is to provide that, using the best and most up-to-date ideas from the industry. Well build first-and second-party experiences just to make sure it all works. But well know weve succeeded when Lamina1 is adopted by third-party creators.

This vision will be brought to life by the considerable engineering and business acumen of Lamina1s co-founder, Peter Vessenes. Vessenes is known in the cryptocurrency industry for a series of firsts, namely launching the first VC-backed Bitcoin company (2011) and forming the Bitcoin Foundation (2012) - today a blueprint for the way the now $1T+ blockchain industry engages communities and manages and creates cryptocurrencies.

Lamina1s Founding Team Brings Together Experts in Virtual Worlds

Joining the Lamina1 team is Metaverse pioneer Tony Parisi, former head of AR/VR at Unity. He was also an early leader in Web3D and virtual reality, the inventor of VRML (the original standard for 3D graphics on the web) and co-creator of glTF, the open file format that today powers millions of 3D objects. Rounding out the Lamina1 leadership team is advisor Rony Abovitz, founder of Sun and Thunder, Magic Leap, and MAKO Surgical.

I am incredibly excited about Lamina1, said Abovitz. When Neal and Peter told me what they wanted to do (and if I would join their quest), it felt right and good. Neal brings wisdom, empathy, creativity, and a moral framework to his work- attributes deeply needed in creating a good future and a Metaverse that works for humanity. There is no one better to lead the way to build a more Open Metaverse. It is also the right time in human history for there to be a connection between the decentralized open innovations we see in the crypto world and Neal's innate vision and deep insights. I also loved the meshing of Peters genius in crypto with Neals visionary imagination.

I dont know how to describe this other than a true meeting of the minds, said Vessenes. "As an active investor and cryptographer, I have a list of the technology, economic and social innovations I'd like to see in a Layer-1 chain, so being able to team up with Neal and his personality, wisdom, and vision was compelling enough that it brought me out of retirement, so to speak. Seeing some of the earliest Bitcoin and Ethereum investors in the world back the project personally feels like a super special moment for all of us. I can think of no better way to honor Snow Crash's 30th anniversary than by co-founding Lamina1 with Neal.

Initial Investors in Lamina1 include Rony Abovitz, Geoff Entress, Jeremy Giffon, Bing Gordon, James Haft, Reid Hoffman, David Johnston, Joseph Lubin, Patrick Murck, Matthew Roszak, Tihan Seale, Peter Vessenes and Wu Ying.

Lamina1 will be formally introduced at Consensus 2022 presented by CoinDesk. For more information, visit lamina1.com.

About Lamina1

The brainchild of Neal Stephenson (Chairman), who first conceptualized the Metaverse in his 1992 million-selling book Snow Crash, and Peter Vessenes (CEO), a foundational leader from the early days of Bitcoin, Lamina1 is a Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built to empower the Open Metaverse. Lamina1s chain technology, cryptographic model and extensive intellectual property partnerships (to be announced throughout 2022) will establish it as the preferred destination for this generations most creative minds those who are crafting the digital societies of the future. It is the first provably carbon-negative blockchain in the world.

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Visionary Futurist Neal Stephenson and Crypto Pioneer Peter Vessenes Announce Lamina1, the Layer-1 Blockchain for the Open Metaverse - Business Wire

Teslas futuristic diner with drive-in theater and Supercharger station is finally becoming a reality, and we get a look at what could look like thanks to renders based on the construction plans.

This project has been in the work for a long time.

In 2018,Elon Musk said that Tesla plans to openan old school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant at one of the new Tesla Supercharger locations in Los Angeles. It was yet another, Is he joking? kind of Elon Musk idea, but he apparently wasnt kidding.

A few months later,Tesla actually applied for building permits for a restaurant and Supercharger station at a location in Santa Monica. However, the project has since stalled, apparently due to local regulations. Nevertheless, Tesla still moved forward with a Supercharger at the location, but it had to move the diner project to Hollywood earlier this year.

Last month, Tesla filed the construction plans with the city giving us the first look at what the automaker intends to build.

We learned from the plans that it will be a semi-circular two-story diner with 29 Supercharger stalls and two movie theater screens, but everything is from architectural plans.

Ed Howard, an expert in architectural models, built renders based on those plans to give us a better idea of what the Tesla diner could look like:

Obviously he took some liberties for things that werent in the plans, like the name of the diner, Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

But for the most part, thats what the building and layout should look like:

It looks like the right mix of retro-looking, which was the original plan, and a more futuristic design, which was the new plan once it got moved to Hollywood. The renders are accurate down to the bamboo walls that are going to separate the Tesla diners lot from the rest of the block.

We dont have a solid timeline on when Tesla plans to open the diner, and it is going to be dependent on permit approvals, but things are moving forward.

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Heres what Teslas futuristic diner with drive-in theater and Supercharger could look like - Electrek

Eat your heart out!Apethony Hopkins

Elder statesman of the silver screen Anthony Hopkins appears to be getting into crypto and NFTs but there may be a deeper reason the actor has taken on his cringiest role yet.

In a widely dunked-ontweet, the "Hannibal" star tagged three of his fellow A-listers Snoop Dogg, Reese Witherspoon, and Jimmy Fallon to ask them where he should start on his NFT-buying journey.

"Im astonished by all the great NFT artists," the tweet read, with Hopkinsesque aplomb. "Jumping in to acquire my first piece, any recommendations?"

As Miles Klee of Futurism's sister siteMEL jokingly suggested, Hopkins might want to look into firing whoever put him up to this debasing promo.

In terms of exactly who that was, another Twitter user noted thatthe Welsh superstar recently signed with the Creative Artists Agency talent managers the very same agency that represents Snoop, Witherspoon, and Fallon.

Unfortunately, it goes even deeper than that.

Since Hopkins' public turn towards blockchain, Twitter users have been quick to point out that CAA is an investor in the OpenSea NFT market, and others still suggested that the agency is pushing its talent to shill NFTs because of this investment. Media commentator Max Read even outlined, conspiracy map-style, the manifold connections between CAA, its clients, and the NFT world on his Substack.

Futurism has reached out to Hopkins' representation for comment about whether his contract with CAA plays a role in his newfound interest in NFTs. Regardless, it sure is interesting that so many celebrities repped by the same agency are all suddenly interested in this weird new "art" world.

READ MORE:Mapping the celebrity NFT complex [Read Max]

More on celebrity NFT shenanigans:Lawyers Ponder Whether Stealing an NFT Should Give You Legal Rights to It

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There's an Interesting Theory About Why Anthony Hopkins Is Suddenly Shilling NFTs - Futurism