10 – Cyberwar,

• This is less of a technology, and more of that inevitable power shift from pen and paper to all-digital mediums
• Recently we’ve seen the Sony hack exposing emails about the film industry, we’ve seen threats and cyberattacks against banks and commerce
• In the beginning we fought war with sharp sticks, then gun, now nuclear bombs – but when our entire lives revolve around technology, how long before a DDOS attack becomes an act of a new kind of war?

9 – Taser Gun,

• If you’re within 20 feet of a police officer, chances are you might wind up on the receiving end of a taster, but what if the range were up to 100 feet?
• The Taser X12 is a 12-gauge shotgun that fires miniature tasers, semi-automatic fire, fires as fast as you can squeeze the trigger
• The death toll from taser-related deaths on unarmed criminals has actually risen over the years, to an average of four deaths per month
• This new gun will calm things down for sure

8 – Hijacking Your Mind,

• Just like Inception, the U.S military would love to be able to delve into your mind and plant a false story to make you not want to be a terrorist anymore
• This is a legitimate DARPA proposal, and while it could theoretically work – the potential for abuse is almost unlimited
• At what point do you get so fed up with grilling a suspect to find out if he’s guilty, that you resort to implanting a confession directly into his mind? Where is the line drawn?

7 – Competitive Robots,

• At the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, a group of robots are put in a room with two piles, one of food, one of poison
• The robots were fitted with blue lights they could flash on and off – they quickly realised the point of the room with most blue lights was likely all the robots huddled around food
• After several phases, the robots began turning off their lights, refusing to help each other, some even diverted other robots away from the food by blinking their lights in a different direction
• It’s scary how humanlike they can become when greed takes over

6 – Geoengineering,

• This idea was originally supposed to be used in war, to cause natural disasters in the enemies home country
• Nowadays it’s been suggested as a way to treat climate change, mainly by throwing chemicals into the atmosphere or into the ocean
• The downside to this: some of these chemical mixtures might have unforseen effects – damaging wildlife, causing floods and draughts, all because the chemicals mixed with something we didn’t factor in

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