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Futurology
Futurology is the study of the future.


Interview with Blay Whitby Print
Wednesday, 07 February 2007
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence
Katherine Power interviews Blay Whitby, who works at the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex and is the author of Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide.
 
(This is the longer version of an interview originally published in Rocks Magazine, February 2007 issue.)
 
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what is its purpose?

AI is the study of intelligence in humans, animals, and machines and the attempt to engineer intelligence into any type of artifact.

One purpose of AI is to understand what intelligence is and how it works. The second is to build useful technology. As a matter of history, AI has been very successful at both.
 
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 February 2007 )
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The World in 2030 Print
Thursday, 21 September 2006
Richard Power describes the world in 2030 as he imagined it would be in his novel Mistica, the first of a planned science fiction trilogy which attempts to anticipate developments during the 21st Century.
 
Domestic environment

The world in 2030 was in many ways unchanged since the end of the 20th Century. Most people lived in houses built before 2000; roads, pavements and gardens had changed little; tables, chairs, beds, cutlery and flooring were often several decades old; food was essentially the same. Of course novel products were available. New houses could be assembled from light prefabricated units, easily replaced or re-arranged if a change in architectural design was needed. Furniture could also be made from lighter, softer, more flexible materials, or seeded with useful devices such as network sensors or local information stores. As well as traditional food you could experiment with artificial meat or alcohol-free wine. But these novelties were not yet majority tastes: by and large people kept to cheaper traditional products that worked almost as well.
 
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 December 2006 )
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