[time] A Timeline of the Far Future … from Information is Beautiful.

[life] Study: Most Americans Now Believe Society Has Gotten Dystopian Enough to Start Adding “Neo” to Names of Cities … ‘“Most participants also mentioned that they were disappointed that we reached dystopian status without having flying cars, murderous replicants or the ability to have katanas pop out of your arms,” said research assistant Daniel Matthews. “People were pleasantly surprised by a few dystopian traits that are present, such as the plentiful amount of synthwave and neon colored mesh tank tops. Other than that, though, the cyberpunk genre did not prepare Americans for how much scrolling through Reddit they would be doing in the dystopia.”’

[funny] Jacob Von Hogflume Blue Plaque … ‘Inventor Of Time Travel’

[future] A Radical Pessimist’s Guide To The Next 10 Years … many depressing predictions from Douglas Coupland … ‘You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual — You’ve become a notch in the Internet’s belt. Don’t try to delude yourself that you’re a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you’re just a node. There is no escape.’ [via Robot Wisdom]

[future] How Is America Going To End? The world’s leading futurologists have four theories … ‘For nearly three hours, we run through America-killers that range from the believable to the science fiction-y: rising sea levels, a collapse of entitlement programs, an attack by a foreign power on American soil, a pandemic 10 times worse than the 1918 flu, global domination by a space-faring nation that uses geo-engineering to “turn off” climate change, and the emergence of a transnational class of biologically enhanced supermen and women (“They’re all about 6-2-and that’s the girls,” Schwartz says) who identify more with one another than with any particular nation…’

[books] Space to think — the Observer interviews William Gibson … ‘I’m reminded of something Gibson once said: ‘I didn’t imagine that art girls in the Midwest would be flashing their tits in cyberspace… but I’m glad that they’re doing it.’ Does he retain that optimism? ‘You could say, in some ways technology and entertainment culture does not look that good from outside. I mean, if you looked at the internet objectively, sometimes you would think it was just a tsunami of filth, something you would not want anywhere near your children.’ It is though, he believes, an intimately human form of culture. ‘I think that one of the things that sets us most thoroughly apart is the ability to preserve our individual memory. The information of the cave paintings becomes Borges’s library, Borges’s library becomes a laptop computer.’ The internet is the shared memory of the species.’

[future] Must-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual — On Cosmological Eschatology and Galactus: ‘CE is the study of how the Universe develops, ages, and ultimately comes to an end. While hardly a new concept, what is new is the suggestion that advanced intelligence may play a role in the universe’s life cycle. Given the radical potential for postbiological superintelligence, a number of thinkers have suggested that universe engineering is a likely activity for advanced civilizations.’ [via Warren Ellis]

[robots] Jamie Zawinski on fixing his Roomba: ‘…let me rephrase that story: My personal cleaning robot has malfunctioning hardware.’

[fun] Warning Signs from the Future … [via Warren Ellis]

[future] Bruce Sterling’s Final Prediction — Sterling’s last column and Prediction for Wired Magazine … ‘The Internet, for instance, crawled out of a dank atomic fallout shelter to become the Mardi Gras parade of my generation. It was not a bolt of destructive lightning; it was the sun breaking through the clouds. Everything we do has unpredicted consequences. It’s good to keep in mind that some outcomes are just fabulous, dumb luck…’

[futures] The Coming Death Shortage — interesting look at what happens in the near future as people live longer and longer lives … ‘Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple in their twenties; Albert Einstein dreamed up special relativity at about the same age. For better and worse, young people in developed nations will have less chance to shake things up in tomorrow’s world. Poorer countries, where the old have less access to longevity treatments, will provide more opportunity, political and financial. As a result, according to Fred C. Iklé, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “it is not fanciful to imagine a new cleavage opening up in the world order.” On one side would be the “‘bioengineered’ nations,” societies dominated by the “becalmed temperament” of old people. On the other side would be the legions of youth-“the protagonists,” as the political theorist Samuel Huntington has described them, “of protest, instability, reform, and revolution.”‘

[quotes] Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future … Darryl Zanuck: ‘Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.’

[internet] Penny Arcade: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

[size] Do Penis Enlargement Pills Work? — a brave blogger intends to find out and report back … ‘I took two pills yesterday (after lunch and after dinner). I noticed a “tingly” sensation in my penis when I got my first post-pill erection last night. It was quite strange, like I could feel the blood filling it up.’ [via Kottke’s Remaindered Links]