Future Report NOW - Citizen senators, UAV Drone Home, New Mars Mission, Personal Mobile Cloud, The King and Me, Dave Blackburn

Listen Now Dr. Future Show 2.26.13

We really enjoyed hosting the show today, it had a nice flow to it. AP’s Liz Sidtodi’s suggestion of citizen congressmen and Senators entering politics for one term only, for the intention of crafting and passing solid legisation, and then leaving, is as she said, a “radically reaonable idea.”  

And Drones, should we let them free to roam American skies?  Not trivial, as basically, drones are airplanes, and as such can do most things airplanes do well - fast and easy transpo of people and goods, exploration and pleasure flying, and defensive/offensive immune system type roles in facing/creating threats.

And beyond the usual piloted airplane roles, drones, or more accurately UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), can be very very small, as diminuative as hummingbirds and dragonflys.  What should the regs be for such craft?  Not exactly in the exising purvue of the Federal Aviation Administration….:oh no, Mr. Bill!  We did not drone on about UAVs, however,  <groan>  as there were other amazing stories this week  worthy of our attention :-)

One geek topic we explored is the creation of a personal mobile cloud and a home cloud.  What’s the main thing people run back into their burning houses to save, besides loved ones?  Often old photographs and family archives…our personal cherished memories. From a nerd pov, of course, these deeply emotional moments and milestones..i.e. weddings, birthdays, graduations, award ceremonies, the things we like to reflect on later, are basically, data.  Photographs have given way to computer files.

To discuss this we brought on one of our fav geeks, Mark Buchanon, a programmer working on such issues, and looked at Seagate’s breakthrough award-winning new gadget, the Wireless Plus, a small portable wifi hard drive!

We also spoke quite extensively about crowd-sourcing projects, and that how this year, 10% of Sundance films (17 movies), were crowd-funded by sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.  And just this week, a Kickstarter-financed film won an Academy Award!  (‘Inocent,’ in the Short Documentary category).

We then spoke with tech visionary Dave Blackburn, who started a new IndieGogo project today, a documentary on a topic dear to his heart and that has figured prominently in his life, fast-pitched softball.  Dave had a rather special relationship with the sport, as you will hear.. 

Enjoy the show, and we’d love your comments and feedback!