Category Archives: Transhuman News

Posted on February 1, 2023

EV supply chain issues in the U.S. will level out, making a more bullish EV market with expanding model options that make EVs more practical

St. Petersburg, Fla.After a difficult year dealing with electric vehicle (EV) availability and supply chain shortfalls, the U.S. EV market will rebound in 2023 and beyond, predicts Lars Thomsen, speaking on behalf of Juice Americas Inc. Consumers will have more model options to choose from and efficiencies in batteries and charging will continue to expand making EV adoption more attractive.

Thomsen, who is considered one of the most influential experts on the future of energy, mobility and smart networks, sees a number of factors driving EV adoption.

The Inflation Reduction Act and high gas prices, along with a lot of new compelling products across the board, have created a new momentum for the EV adoption in the U.S., he said. In many segments, EVs are the better choice for vehicles, not just for ecological, but also for economical and performance considerations. EV charging infrastructure is expanding as well in the U.S. but needs to catch up with the speed of rising demand.

Five key trends Thomsen says will influence EV adoption in 2023 and beyond are:

Increased global competition and innovation and price options will drive the EV market growth over the next decade. However, aligning supply and demand continues to be a challenge. Right now, demand for EVs exceeds most production capacity of many manufacturers and adds to their need for critical parts over the next two years, Thomsen said.

In parallel, he addeds, charging infrastructure will have to keep pace with EVs. The demand in all three areas of charging infrastructure (highway, destination, and home) is rising exponentially. Suddenly, money is to be made by building up public charging infrastructure, because there are customers that use and pay for it. This changes the game: We believe there will be a race for the most lucrative and best solutions that will turn a profit.

Read more:
Juice Americas Futurist Predicts Electric Vehicle Trends for 2023 | MOTOR

FilmYearDescriptionAfronauts2014The film, directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Frances Bodomo, features the Zambia Space Academy that works to beat the United States to the moon as the latter prepares its Apollo 11 launch.[4][5]Air Conditioner2020The Angolan film directed by Fradique revolves around the air-conditioners mysteriously starting to fall in the city of Luanda. The Guardian called the film Afrofuturist, writing, "Its a magic-realist parable with the thinnest shrinkwrapping of sci-fi" that shows how "the service guarantee runs out on the technology".[6]Black Is King2020The musical film and video album directed, written, and executive produced by American singer Beyonc. Scholar Kinitra D. Brooks describes the film as "an aural and visual rendering of Afrofuturistic Blackness in the 21st century". Brooks said, "Afrofuturism urges Black people to recover their pasts in order to create their own futures. 'Black Is King' imagines what it looks like to be there, whole and healed."[7]Black Panther2018The superhero film, directed by Ryan Coogler, stars the comic book character Black Panther who is the king of the fictional kingdom of Wakanda. The film features Afrofuturist themes.[8][9][10]Black Panther: Wakanda Forever2022The superhero film is a sequel to Black Panther. The film explores Afrofuturism "in the way the mantle of Black Panther presumably passes to Princess Shuri".[11]Blade1998In the superhero film, the human-vampire hybrid Blade, played by black actor Wesley Snipes, protects humanity from evil vampires.[1][12][10]Born in Flames1983The film, directed by Lizzie Borden, is described by Hyperallergic's Jeremy Polacek: "[It] presents the revolution as televised, paraded, reported, and reiterated by pundits and politicians and yet still incomplete. Socialism may reign in Bordens post-revolutionary America, but so does patriarchy, racism, and sexism."[12]The Brother from Another Planet1984The science fiction film, directed by John Sayles, features an alien who escapes slavery on "Another Planet" and crash-lands and hides in Harlem.[12][10]Brown Girl Begins2017The film is set in Toronto in the near future, and the upper class is protected by a force field.[13][5][10]Crumbs2015The Ethiopian post-apocalyptic film is directed by Miguel Llans.[4][10]Earthbound2021Short film directed by Swedish-Ugandan filmmaker Baker Karim. 2121. Earth has become uninhabitable and some have been chosen to leave the planet. Max is not among the chosen ones, but his goal is to get aboard the Ark, at any cost. "Earthbound" is the first Swedish Afro-futuristic film.[14]Executive Order2020A 2020 Brazilian dystopian drama film directed by Lzaro Ramos (in his feature directorial debut), based on the stage play Namibia, no! by Aldri Anunciao.Fast Color2018In the American superhero film, three generations of women have superpowers and are on the run from the government.[15]Hello, Rain2018The short film, directed by C.J. Obasi features a Scientist-Witch, who through an alchemical combination of juju and technology creates wigs which grant her and her friends supernatural powers. But when their powers grow uncontrollable, she must stop them by any means. It is based on the short story Hello, Moto by Nigerian-American author, Nnedi Okorafor.[16][5]Kwaku Ananse2013The short film, directed by Akosua Adoma Owusu, shows a parallel between the Ghanaian fable "Anansi the Spider" and a young girl's life.[9]The Last Angel of History1996The film, produced by Black Audio Film Collective and directed by John Akomfrah, combines science fiction and essay approaches and features a time-traveling "data thief" who searches for code to reveal his future.[1][17][5][9][10]A Love Letter to the Ancestors From Chicago2017The short film is directed by Ytasha Womack.[18]Memory Room 4511997The film, produced by the Black Audio Film Collective, is set in a dystopian world and presented as a documentary in which a time traveler interviews people of an earlier era.[4]Monsoons Over The Moon2015The two-part short film, directed by Kenyan filmmaker Dan Muchina, is set in Nairobi in a dystopian future. A street gang fights against totalitarianism by freeing young people trapped in the system.[19]Neptune Frost2021The film is set in a Burundian village that is made from recycled parts of computers. It features a romance between a coltan miner and an intersex runaway.[20]An Oversimplification of Her Beauty2012The film, directed by Terence Nance, is described by Ashley Clark as a "mash-up of integrated fiction/nonfiction shorts, home video, voiceover narration and stock footage" including "plentiful, head-spinningly trippy animation sequences that place the film squarely in Afrofuturistic territory".[1]Pumzi2009The short film, directed by Wanuri Kahiu, is Kenya's first science fiction film.[4][12][19][5][9][10]Ratnik2019The Nigerian science-fiction thriller film, directed by Dimeji Ajibola, features a soldier who comes home from World War III to find her sister deathly ill as a result of a chemical substance.[10]Robots of Brixton2011The computer-generated short film, directed by Kibwe Tavares, re-contextualizes the 1981 Brixton riot in a dystopian future where robots riot against human police forces.[4]Les Saignantes (English: Those Who Bleed)2005The erotic science fiction thriller is directed by Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.[4]Sankofa1993The film, directed by Ethiopian-born Haile Gerima, features a contemporary model who, during a photo shoot, suddenly finds herself on a plantation in the Southern United States during the plantation era.[4][12][17][5][10]See You Yesterday2019The time-travel film with a social-justice narrative features two black teenagers from Brooklyn trying to use time travel to change the world.[21]The Sin Seer2015A cop and a person who can "see" others' sins work together to solve cases, but one case leads the gifted person to face her past.[5][10]Space Is the Place1974The film, directed by John Coney, is a science-fiction take on the real-life musician Sun Ra and his crew The Arkestra. Ashley Clark said Ra plays "a cosmic card game" with a megapimp "to determine the fate of the black race". Clark said, "What follows is a brilliant and bizarre melange of comedy, musical performance and occasionally lurid blaxploitation aesthetics. It also, crucially, has a number of serious points to make about the plight of young urban blacks in a harsh, post-civil rights climate."[1][8][12][2][17][10]Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse2018The animated superhero film follows Miles Morales becoming Spider-Man after the death of the original Spider-Man, Peter Parker, in his universe. Morales also teams up with other Spider-People, including an alternate version of Parker, to defeat Kingpin and return them to their home realities.[22]Supa Modo2018In the feature film, a nine-year-old girl from a Kenyan village has a terminal illness and dreams of becoming a superhero. Her village helps her realize her dream. 14East said of the film's Afrofuturist touch, "There is a very mysterious element of magic realism and fantasy."[9][10]Swimming In Your Skin Again2015The short film is directed by Terence Nance. 14East described it as "a film that leans toward experimental stylistically, its content is very thematic and its sequences are dreamlike... [and] speculates what could be some major issues in the future if we do not respect nature".[9]They Charge for the Sun2017The short film, directed by Terence Nance, is set in a future where people live at night to avoid harmful sun rays and in which melanin comes into play.[17][5][10]To Catch a Dream2015The Kenyan surrealist short film, written and directed by Jim Chuchu, features a grieving widow who has nightmares and tries a mystical remedy to end them.[19]Touch2013The short film, directed by Shola Amoo, is set in the near future.[4]Touki Bouki1973The Senegalese road film is directed by Djibril Diop Mambty. The New York Times's Glenn Kenny said, "The movie is replete with such purposeful disjointedness, the better to articulate space-time dissociations."[2][9]Trafik d'Info2005The film, directed by Janluk Stanislas, was shot in Guadelope and is considered the first science fiction film to be shot in the Caribbean.[4]Welcome II the Terrordome1995The film, directed by Ngozi Onwurah, is set in an inner-city slum in a dystopian near-future. The film is the first directed by a black British woman to be released in theaters.[1][12][17]White Out, Black In2014The science fiction documentary, directed by Adirley Queirs, is set in Brazil and follows three men who deal with a past tragedy.[4]A Wrinkle in Time2018The multiracial adaptation of the 1962 science fantasy novel A Wrinkle in Time has, according to author and filmmaker Ytasha Womack, an Afrofuturistic signature of "strong female" characters.[13]Yeelen (English: Brightness)1987The Malian film, directed by Souleymane Ciss "follows a young mage on a journey to confront his power-mad father". The New York Times's Glenn Kenny said of the film in the context of Afrofuturism, "Mr. Cisss languid but mindful pacing and his indifference to Western film language conventions on space and time transitions also contribute to the movies distinction."[2][17]

The rest is here:
List of Afrofuturist films - Wikipedia

David Houle

(NOTE: Most of this column is a direct quote from my second book on the Shift Age Entering the Shift Age published in 2012.)

Prior to the development of the communications technologies of the last 200 years, the concept of place was an overriding reality of human life. Where one lived largely determined ones life, as other places could not be experienced without lengthy and arduous travel.This meant that the concept of place was the dominant reality and ones life was largely defined by what one did and experienced in that place. Reality meant physical reality.

Even during the explosive growth of communications technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, radio and television from the 1830s through the 1970s, one had to be in a specific place to communicate with another place. The telegraph office gave way to the telephone at home and at work, both connected to the wall.Radios were large and in the home, as were televisions. The experienced reality was still about places with these electric devices anchored in them.So, one lived in a place, was largely defined by that place, and was connected to the world through these place-based appliances.

No longer.

We now live in a broadband world, the world of connectivity.This new broadband world shows up on screen, from giant televisions to smartphones.

This screen reality can be every bit as compelling as the reality that we physically inhabit.Do we not all check our screens with close to addictive regularity?Isnt how a teenager is perceived at night on social media every bit as important to them as how they are seen in school the next day?

This connectedness, happening at the speed of light, is creating an entirely new place: the noosphere. Our physical reality exists in the biosphere the thin surface of the planet where life exists. But this new, rapidly growing noosphere is the electronic extension of our collective neurological activity. It is a pulsing, cyber-repository of humanitys creative brainpower, knowledge, history, culture, social interactions, entertainment, and commerce.This is a global village vastly more comprehensive and interconnected than Marshall McLuhan could ever have envisioned when he coined the phrase electric village more than 50 years ago. We now live in a two-reality world: the physical reality in which we live and the noosphere reality of the screen that connects us to everything and everyone else on the planet.

Story continues

The Shift Age is the first time that humanity has experienced these two realities. These realities will develop at significantly different evolutionary rates. This will cause an incredible transformation of physical reality and of human consciousness.

Often, if not always the future shows up first in the screen reality and then the physical reality. Here is one clear, real-time example of that.

10 years ago I was speaking to dozens of CEO groups and dozens of business conferences every year, These audiences expect a futurist to provide forecasts. Back during the Great Recession, it became clear that online retail was growing dramatically while physical retail was not. As a big fan of Amazon since the late 1990s, I was impressed with their long-term focus on growth and total market share. All the time that financial analysts criticized the company for low or non-existent profits, Amazon always responded that they were focused on the long-term.

At this same time, in an already over-retailed America, retail chains were fighting for anchor positions in new malls, undertaking growth for growth's sake.Basically, physical retail chains were competing against each other in the physical reality at a time when online retail was gaining ever more total market share.

So I looked at that reality and projected rapid growth online with flat to down growth in physical retail. I then, and for several years from 2010-2014 stated that the 2010-2020 decade would be a time of massive contraction in the physical retail space. That was clearly a forecast that came true. Dozens, if not hundreds of retail chains and outlets declared bankruptcy in this decade.

The key lesson to learn here is that, if one operates in physical reality, one must be aware of what is going on in the screen reality. The screen reality has, is, and will reshape our physical realities, business and personal.

NOTE TO READERS: In this space at the Herald-Tribune I write future-focused columns through a local filter. Three months ago, I launched a newsletter that covers many topics not covered here. You can sign up atEvolutionshift.substack.com.

Sarasota resident David Houle is a globally recognized futurist. He has given speeches on six continents, written 13 books and is futurist in residence at Ringling College of Art andDesign. His websites aredavidhoule.comandthe2020sdecade.com. Email him at david@davidhoule.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: The two realities of the Shift Age | The Futurist

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The two realities of the Shift Age | The Futurist