“Right now all of our eggs are in one basket,” explains meta-geneticist Christopher E. Mason. “And the basket is called Earth.” Our home planet and solar system are not tenable long-term locations for humanity’s HQ. The first step to moving beyond this place is to learn how to colonize extraplanetary bodies, specifically Mars. If in…

Living on Mars is an essential back-up plan for humanity, says author Stephen Petranek. Here’s how he thinks we can survive the radiation. Stephen Petranek’s new book is “How We’ll Live on Mars”.  

Did you know Alfred Hitchcock was a formally trained engineer? Guru Madhavan could see it in his movies. Madhavan’s new book is “Applied Minds: How Engineers Think.”

Much to the chagrin of NASA rocket scientist Dr. Wernher von Braun, President Nixon chose instead to greenlight the space shuttle program because it intrigued the military-industrial complex. Stephen Petranek’s new book is How We’ll Live on Mars. View more: How Will Satellites Help Us Achieve Future Cities?

Establishing a colony on Mars would protect the long-term survival of the human race. Stephen Petranek’s new book is “How We’ll Live on Mars.”

Stefan Weitz, Microsoft’s Director of Search, explains that the future of machine learning consists of teaching artificial intelligence to identify patterns. This will allow, for instance, a search engine to critically analyze your search queries rather than simply scouring the web’s index of results.

Automation is a major threat to the median American worker who specializes in what is called “routine knowledge work.” Andrew McAfee of the MIT Sloan School of Management explains that this is the sweet spot where technology is making its greatest inroads. Jobs like tax preparation, which often requires a mastery of formulas and policy,…

Eric Siegel never thought he would experience a machine acting in a way that he would subjectively consider to be intelligent. IBM’s Watson, however, changed all of that.

We spend the first year teaching children to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. For more information visit www.bigthink.com.

More than ten years after the publication of his groundbreaking work of urban theory, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Richard Florida is sticking to his assertion that the rising creative class is an engine of economic and cultural growth. For more information visit www.bigthink.com.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we are going to create synthetic neocortexes in order to extend the power of our own neocortex. For more information visit www.bigthink.com.

American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says he would like to go to space himself, or at the very least help others get there, but he’s content living vicariously through the robots for now. For more information visit www.bigthink.com.

One of the inventions that may be realized by advances in nanotechnology is the creation of a von Neumann probe, which is essentially a virus, a self-replicating probe that can then explore the universe near the speed of light. For more information visit www.bigthink.com.