www.makezine.com/01/nff

Tim O’Reilly

WILLIAM GIBSON ONCE SAID, “The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” His words match up perfectly with my experience.

Time after time, I’ve watched people who are comfortable pushing the boundaries of technology — researchers and the kind of people who are called “hackers” in the computer world — show us something that looks like a clever trick, only to see it blossom years later into a whole new industry.

I’ve built my business — one of the largest and most successful computer book publishers in the world — by watching these people, whom I affectionately call “alpha geeks,” and helping the technologies they pioneer find roots in the wider world.

So, for example, when Wi-Fi was first released as a local area network (LAN) technology, we saw hackers climbing on rooftops, placing homebrewed antennas to beam their office networks down to the local coffee shop. And we knew immediately that wireless networking was going to become much more ubiquitous than its corporate backers imagined.

This column celebrates news tidbits that, to me, hint at the shape of the future. I won’t draw any conclusions; I’ll just share some of the news headlines that are hitting the O’Reilly Radar. Make of them what you will.

You may notice that patterns begin to emerge: ubiquitous wireless networking, ubiquitous digital image recording, the surveillance society, robots in our midst, what Freeman Dyson calls “the domestication of biotechnology,” automobiles and buildings as computers ripe for hacking.…

Visit makezine.com for references to these items. In future columns, I’ll drill down into some of this “news from the future.”

If you are reading this magazine, you’re probably one of those people who is shaping the future that’s already here, so tell me what’s on your radar. Send email to tim@oreilly.com.

Tim O’Reilly ( tim.oreilly.com) is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media.

JAPANESE ROBOTS TO CARRY HUMANS

IMPLAN TED RFID TAGS TO REPLACE CASH

INTERNET-CONTROLLED ROBOT TO BROWSE LIBRARY STACKS

MAN FLIES UNPOWERED ACROSS ENGLISH CHANNEL USING CARBON-FIBER WING STRAPPED TO HIS BACK

HOME DNA SEQUENCING KIT GOES ON SALE

WIRELESS STREET LAMPS FOR TRAFFIC MONITORING

GENETICALLY MODIFIED FLOWER DETECTS LANDMINES

ROBO T “DOG” LEARNS TO EAT “GOOD-TAS TING” BLOCKS

GENE THERAPY CREATES SUPER-STRONG RATS

JAPANESE SCIEN TIST INVENTS “MAGNETIC WOOD” TO BLOCK CELL PHONE SIGNALS

DIGITAL “GHOSTS” TO GUIDE STUDEN TS AT COPENHAGEN UNIVERSITY

WIRELESS ACCESS POIN T BUILT INTO LIGHT FIXTURE

ISRAEL DEVELOPING MICRODRONE SPY PLANES

HP EXPERIMEN TS WITH “ALWAYS-ON” CAMERA

BRITISH GOVERNMEN T LOBBYING FOR REMOTE CON TROL OVER AUTO ELECTRONICS TO STOP FLEEING CARS

ROBOTIC CONES CAN BE AU TOMATICALLY MOVED AROUND ON HIGHWAY

“SENSECAM” NECKLACE TAKES 2,000 IMAGES A DAY

U.S. WILL USE ROBOTS TO PATROL WATER SUPPLY

FLASH-MOB GANG WARFARE

SENSOR-ENABLED SHOE DYNAMICALLY RECONFIGURES ITSELF BASED ON CHANGING CONDITIONS

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