Elder Boom [PDF]
Some estimates predict that by 2050, the world population will reach its peak of around 9 billion -- then the decline will start, and as it progresses, the world's population will be increasingly dominated by elderly citizens -- with not enough young to care for them. The future's elderly are today's technology adopters and information hungry. They will most likely seek technology to allow them to continue living useful, productive and indendent lives. How will technology respond? For one thing, there will be more biotechnologies employed -- such as wireless, invasive body sensors. There will be a need for better ways to index, search and deliver content. As the workforce grows smaller, production will look for more ways to exploit technology -- the trend of the 90s isn't about to abate. As the elderly become less and less mobile, look for technologies to enable socializing over vast distances. Then bring in the robots -- they will be needed to supplement the dwindling workforce, as well as care for the elderly -- maybe even provide companionship.
The first chef
First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...
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