JOELFALCONER

In June and July, I published a series of editorials at The Next Web that take a look at futurist topics that have always fascinated me. If looking beyond the immediate future, to the possibilities that long-term technological advances might bring us, is your cup of tea, you might enjoy these pieces.

Humanity Plus: How Transhumanism Could Change the Human Race

Transhumanism, as it’s known, is the process of augmenting ourselves with advanced technology; the point where the technology isn’t merely an extension of ourselves — like your smartphone probably is — but a part of ourselves.

Read more about transhumanism.

What is the Technological Singularity?

Technological singularity was a term coined by Vernor Vinge, the science fiction author, in 1983. “We will soon create intelligences greater than our own,” he wrote. “When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity, an intellectual transition as impenetrable as the knotted space-time at the center of a black hole, and the world will pass far beyond our understanding.”

Read more about the Singularity.

Online games: where the real key to the future of social technology lies

We’ve been trying to wrangle this Internet thing to allow us to share an experience the way we can in real life. In real life, we can watch a movie together. Play poker and down a case of beer together. It can be as simple as sitting down to chat, sharing the same physical space — the atmosphere, food, music, all those things that add to an experience and make it stick out as something memorable.

Read more about the future of social technology.

What Would Colonization of the Final Frontier Look Like?

It’s not a huge surprise that governments and corporations aren’t investing heavily in space colonization itself. We still need to make many, many more of these ancillary but important advances before we’d make any significant progress in the area. And there’s that other issue – that governments and corporations don’t see a need to ramp up the timeline on this. But Stephen Hawking, one of the few physicists whose name regular people actually know, thinks differently. He’s worried that until we disperse, we’re in imminent danger of a catastrophic event destroying human civilization – heck, human life – for good. “One we spread out into space and establish colonies, our future should be safe,” Hawking once said to a BBC reporter.

Read more about space colonization.