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IP Justification

My IP is this:

                    "Logical Selection Complex"

This is the concept that in the future we will have to eventually select who can breed and who cannot due to the overpopulation. This will lead to a society where people are judged inferior based on the importance of their genetic material and if they have the social right to continue their bloodlines.

I believe that over the coarse of my blog I have justified that the best horror ideas come from the most believable fears that we have had over our time. That being said I think I have also pr that throughout the blog that the next largest fear that we will face is that medicine has worked too well and we will soon have to many people and not enough resources. These two facts combined prove to me that in the future we will have a very genuine population crisis, however before it actually happens I think that fear of it will rise quickly in anticipation of the event. This will create an IP which will be very marketable.

To reference my research on why this will be marketable I will simply say that the reason the wolfman was so popular was because in our past a certain event spouted horror stories that have been passed down, I will also say that Frankenstein is a horror story of an event that has probably been tried countless times and if not has been feared for longer, zombies have been around for as long as we have feared illness, disease and that there are too many people. Throughout my blog I have drawn up the conclusion

Forecast

The subjects I have picked have been boiled down a little more in my horizon scanning to more tangible definitions which I can look into, the big picture has now become the future of media technology, medicine however has become the future challenges medicine will face. The horizon scanning therefor will look into projected technological advances in the next five years along with projected population figures and future troubles medicine expects to face.

Through this I hope to define a problem that medicine will not be able to fix in the future.

(Disturbed, 2009)

I have placed this song in the blog simply because the lyrics and themes of the music seem to be accurate to the fear which I have predicted for the next 10 years.

First of all population, according to the information I have already mentioned in this blog the population is said to reach 7,714,932,861 by 2017.  (U.S. Census Beuro, 2011)

This is to be our largest problem, there will be too many people and not enough resources to survive, I do not believe however there is any policy that could be put in place by any government that would actually stop this problem from developing. Nobody is going to agree to a policy that has attached to it even the most remote chance of that person being killed for some strange form of the greater good.

For this reason I think this problems resolution will have to come under the guise of something else, I believe that in the not too distant future there will be specially made diseases to cull population figures, most likely this will be done as an act of war simply because killing people who do not agree with you ensures your followers are the majority. This will lead to a larger amount of xenophobia in the world as a whole and most likely a 2nd rise in the acceptability of racism, as other cultures become more and more associated with the deadly diseases made to kill them. This will greatly decimate the population but it will never wipe out an entire race, simply put a virus is a parasite and must always ensure its survival by keeping at least a few of its hosts alive.

(FunnyPictures.net, 2010)

Lets explore this concept further, so why not another method? why not just solve this with war? well war has been our answer to overpopulation (and any other problem we have with other people) in the past, however I think war would be ineffective as a solution for overpopulation. It seems that these days less people die in wars due to the advent of technology, due to the change in the way we have wars we do not need to throw endless amounts of troops at our enemy's to win, so victory is not dependant on a large number of casualties as it used to be. Also times of war is when our technology advances the most, as a result we might exit the war with less deaths from natural causes which would only lead to make the problem of overpopulation worse!

(Teachers Resourses. 2009)

I suppose that I should have a reality check and try and conceptualise a more tangible possibility for population growth...or at least one that sounds nicer. Anyway another possibility is mandatory sterilisation, although very controversial if done judiciously it could completely solve our overpopulation problems in one lifetime...and if done realistically it could solve it in 4. However this method also has problems, mostly that it has the heavy potential to get rid of the variation in our gene pool by removing the ability to breed from certain groups of people. Its all a slippery slope however with this more sanctioned method of population control nobody will be murdered because there are too many people, they just wont be born...

Image of a protester from a news report

(Lake F, 2011)

As for other problems that medicine will have to face?
I predict that the other problems that medicine will face other then the fallout of these tailor made virus is the possibility of other infections destroying the rest of the human race as the tailor made virus cull the population. Its a dangerous game making an infection that will kill human beings as if it works well it could mean the end of us all, for that reason it seems like an act of hubris to create the infections in the first place, however it is very necessary.

Perhaps before the infections are made for cultures they will be made to specifically target the old or perhaps to target people with a certain unimportant but common gene
(however this would possibly lead to an ever so slight stagnation of the genetic pool).
The other fear is that this illness will mutate into something unstoppable, perhaps by infecting an animal or another race for which it was not intended, this process has lead to some of the most dangerous infections of recent years, such as swine and bird flu and aids.

A media example of the Tailor made virus's meant for warfare and going wrong is the quite recent film the crazies, where American towns are culled as a virus makes people murderous psychopaths.

(Eisner B, 2010)

As for the predictions for the future of technology? Well its a lot nicer then the forecast for medicine! If Moore's law is to be followed by 2017 technology will be 32 times better!
We will have holographic televisions and be starting to play with integrating our own nervous systems into the games controls in small ways. If nothing else we will have mastered and more openly marketed motion capture controls.

This should mean the complete end to the controller for anything! This should mean a move to biometric locking systems instead of traditional keys, all of these ideas and predictions would mean we would be carrying a lot less around with us as we moved around!

(Cannon R, 2009)

This image is a fantasy image which represents one of the ways we perceive the future of virtual reality technology.

I believe however the idea of actually "plugging in" our bodies into technology is a little bit archaic (for future technology that is!)
I believe by the time we have the capacity to reasonably imitate reality we should be able to transmit the information without a hard wired connection. Its a brilliant idea, making computer games a lot more social and bringing people together! every game will become an mmo which anybody can play! holidays and tourism will become slightly obsolete however...

And there you have it!
What I seem to predict for the future is that we shall fear overpopulation of the planet and running out of resources as it becomes more of a realistic truth and we can deny it no longer. Technology should advance to a great degree in this time and we may even solve the problem of a lack of resources or space with technology but it is doubtful. I also predict that medicine will be called to account for the problem of overpopulation as it has been one of the main causes of our "over-survival".

Throughout this blog I have also proven that all the best horror franchises have been based upon real genuine fears, even ones we have had a long time ago seem to be valid. They only become more popular as the fear becomes more of a reality. I think with this I can create a good IP.

Medicine Horizons

Medicine is always advancing, every time a problem presents itself for humanity then soon after medicine creates a cure. However I find it difficult to find any information on what medicine will cure next, I mean when medicine does make advancement in any field it will most likely immediately be published in a news program but it won’t be documented before it actually is prov en to be successful. For this reason I am instead going to have to look into more loosely based definitions of the future of medicine

To elaborate on what I have just said I feel that I have proven mostly that to research medicine It is better to look into the problems that medicine will be facing in the future or to look into the cures that medicine will soon have. I have also proven that medicine is one of the best producers of the fears which make the best horror films, with this in mind I will be gearing my horizon scanning towards problems that medicine will have to face, technology which will be coming out and the fears which may be developed.

However before I define my search parametres I want to see if i can find anything a little more random to add to the research.

So I put medicine into amazon and checked the books that will be coming out in 2012 and found this:

(Engel F, to be published 2012)

This book seems to be coming out to talk about the possibilities of using stem cells to repair the human heart. According to this book the human heart scars instead of healing properly, which is a major problem from a medical standpoint. However zebras and newts have been proven to be able to repair such damage to their organs using stem cell cultures, the tests show that it is possible for stem cells to repair damage to a mammal’s heart so it should theoretically work on humans also.
(Engel F, 2012)

This would be a boon to anybody who suffers from any sort of heart condition. This shows that in the future more of the causes of mortality will be eradicated or at least easier to treat, this also represents the future of steam cell research as it becomes more applicable in medicine.

This book's existence shows that the topic has a definite popularity, as does the fact it is already on sale in amazon online.

Now let’s think, it’s more likely that before you hear about the medical answer to a problem you'll hear about the problem. So it would be much more effective to look at the problem in this part of the blog.

(Rogers P and Leal S,  2010)

Ah, a new crisis. It appears that if the population figures continue to project as they do into the future of humanity we will actually run out of water. Since the population is rising uncontrollably we are actually getting to the point where we are running out of drinkable water for the human race, it is not due to poverty that people won’t be able to get clean drinking water soon. (Nusca A, 2010)

The existence of this book shows that there has to be a lot of media presence for this problem, as the book wouldn't have been written if there was nothing to back up its claims and projections.

This is one of the few problems I do not believe medicine can solve, because it is one of the main causes of the problem.
Now, back to a topic I have looked at in quite a few posts before now.

Overpopulation.

Image of Barak Obama

(August Review.com 2009)

According to a recent speech Obama gave to America it seems that in his own words:


"The basic promise that no matter who you are or where you come from, what you look like, that you can make it in America if you try — that vision is on the line" (Obama B, 2011)

It seems that to compete with the industrial advances of china and other such countries America would have to lower its minimum wage. Something that Obama is not willing to do, as he says that his country doesn’t agree with survival of the fittest, more of survival of the nation. (Bruce M, 2011)

This shows that the resources are getting strained slowly among the larger population, this is another example of a problem that will face medicine. Medicine as a whole is a very expensive industry and pursuit especially for the patients, if the financial strain continues it will start to become a redundant medium as more and more people cannot afford any medical help.

The quote from the presidential speech recently shows the media presence and popularity of this topic, as does the web article on it.

Image of the world

(MailOnline.com, 2008)

 

So boiling this all down, it’s quite obvious that the main problem that medicine in the future will face is simply that it worked. Simply put it allowed the population too exponentially rise until we became far too many to support ourselves, this is a problem that cannot be solved by medicine at all as the problem is largely medicine's fault.

According to a U.S government projection I found in this recent article published on the daily mail website, population figures are set to hit 7 billion in 2012. This population figure ties into the more dangerous predictions made earlier on (mentioned in my present posts), this is a problem that medicine cannot solve. (Mailonline.com, 2008)


Let’s pick another topic to do with medicine and the future

The 2012 Olympics! But where does medicine fit in?

(Orchard S, 2011)

Drug testing has been a part of the Olympics since the drugs were outlawed, however is this going too far? I mean there seems to be a lot of money going into this process. As much as the 2012 Olympics are important and integral to our culture it’s a phenomenal amount of money to spend for a world which all shares national debt. (Orchard S, 2011)

The concept of thwarting creating is a game of escalation, it seems that the better we get at finding cheaters the better we get at cheating, it’s a money wasting game which gets us nowhere as a whole.
Now a brief look at the advances of technology...or more accurately the projected development.

Presentation Video of the possible future

Sarcastic gamer. (2009).

Project to make realistic androids

(Whitehouse, D. 2005)

The above technology parody preview shows the popularity of the subject due to its existence, the idea of the parody video is to show what the people want to see. The second is a video showing the research being done by a university, again showing its popularity.

The first video is an advertisement video made by IGN.com for what they invasion the future of technology to be, a very beautiful world full of touch technology where all things are intractable and possibilities are limitless. It brings the idea of scientific futuristic technology to the forefront of our minds and keeps us wondering when will it get here? Well the second video is one of the developments being done on android robots in japan. It shows how realistic they are becoming now and that it won’t be too long until we have the robots we have always dreamed of, if nothing else it shows that the future is always speeding towards us!

(Orca S, 2009)

 

Ah yes, nanotechnology again. Well according to an article released in HP magazine if we follow the level of development we have dept. up for the last few decades we should be able to achieve nanotechnology in 20 years. If this is true we will be able to completely eradicate the concept of waste because nanotech robots can reconstruct the molecular structure of anything and reorganise them into...well anything! (Orca S, 2009)


This would be a great stride in all forms of technology and would do wonders for the medical field, it may even remove the need for surgeons, who knows? And it isn’t very far into the future!

presentation about prosthetics

(Kuiken, T. 2011)

Prosthetics have been a large industry for as long as people have been able to survive amputation. However now we seem to be making big leaps in the subject all of a sudden. We have already found a way to reconnect a prosthetic arm to the nerve endings and allow for brain controlled movement, however more recently we have also found we can regain all of the feeling which was in the human hand into the robotic hand!
This market is fantastic and is another way that medical science will advance ever so soon, it’s truly amazing how close the future of technology is isn’t it?


Final medical horizon I think...

(Rowe A, 2011)

A new gadget which has been made to advance neuroscience, this headset can detect and output all of the brains electrical impulses and workings without actually breaking the human skin. This device will make neuroscience much easier and wholly possible, combined with other technologies in the future we should completely understand the functions of the human mind.
(Rowe A, 2011)

Well it seems that the future of medical technology is both bright and fraught with dangers that it cannot solve! This has shows without a doubt popularity of medicine throughout time in the media but also that medicine has been the font of inspiration behind many horror themes throughout history. It seems that what I have learnt most from my research is that the best horror ideas seem to be from medical myths and the advent of future technology.

Big picture Horizons

I have decided that I shall try to take on a new direction in my horizon post, in the last two posts I have proven quite solidly that there has been a continual interest in the media towards large issues and also that when we look forward we usually see the fears of what might happen if we are not careful. I have also proven to some degree that the best sorts of horror media is that based on fears. However I do not feel that this accurately shows the big picture, as it only seems to show the horrors we may face tomorrow.

But what else are we looking forward to?
Technology seems to be something we are always looking forward to, it also seems to be what we solve our problems with. With that in mind I think for my big picture horizons post I shall look into the advent of technology and what will soon be coming out.

The reason for this is mainly because I want to see if I can predict the problems we will face tomorrow by looking to see if technology will create any new fears in the next few years or if it'll stop any fears that already exist. For this I think ill focus more on media based technology as in technology which will advance avenues of media, simply because they will be what will be popular in technology tomorrow.

My first step is to look into the next steps for one of the largest games console companies,
Sony.

Image of Sony Presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show

(Bozeman R, 2011)

This is an image of a las Vegas conference in which Sony announced its new project of a 3D interface you wear as a pair of goggles, the statistics of the goggles are very interesting being HD, 3D and 5.1 surround sound. They are very immersive however unbearable. (Bozeman R, 2011)

They however represent what is on the horizon for gaming, a more immersive experience in the form of your head being placed within the screen allowing you to look around.

This image from the consumer electronics show shows that this technology will defiantly be popular in the media because of its appearance at a consumer electronics show demonstrating the prototype.

However I watched this video on Holographic technology and I began to wonder, perhaps holographic television will be the next big thing? 3DTV is very painful to watch and hard to focus on and this system seems to bypass it...

Article about prototype Holographic TV

(Kelly S, 2011)

If Holographic displays are the next step then we should be able to easily see things in front of us which look real. With this technology items appear 3d in the sense that if you move to the left you see a different image to what you did when you were sat to the right. (Kelly S, 2011)

This type of technology has media presence and popularity proven by this TV news article that has been done on it.
With sight and sound you should be able to get a very accurate 3D world projected to you, but what about interacting with that world?

(Shinoda,H. 2009)

interesting, so it seems that japan is working on the idea of using ultrasound to imitate holograms being more touchable and pliable, this is an interesting step forward and will defiantly be usable is stuff like holographic keyboards and such other controls. (Shinoda,H. 2009)

This video shows tests being done by the university of Tokyo, showing that the technology defiantly has popularity in the media due to the tests and technology actually existing, because if a university wanted to test on a technology it would be due to a demand.

However for a totally immersive Realistic holographic system it is not exactly perfect, you cannot imitate solid objects with this, so what other technology on the horizon might be able to make you feel like there is a real world around you?

Demonstration of the Haptic Phantom Omni

(Sensible Inc. 2010)

I have already covered the haptic before now, however I think it definatly has scope in this article on the future of technology after finding this video by the university of berlin showing what they are doing with haptic technology.

Test done by the Computer science Department

(University of Berlin, 2010)

This test by the university of Berlin shows popularity for this technology because of its existence on youtube.

So now we are getting somewhere, this video demonstrates the usage of the haptic technology in the way of interaction with a three dimensional environment. This does cover some of the bases required for an immersive VR environment, but obviously not all of them. So what else will be commercially viable in the future of Haptics?

Image demonstrating Mobile Haptics

(Hardawar D, 2011)

This is an image taken from a website which talks about the future of haptic feedback technology as a viable choice for the mobile phone industry, the article is titled "forget 3D, Haptics is the future of mobile screens". The article goes on to say that since phones are already capable of giving is tactile feedback depending on where we touch it’s no big leap to say in the next 5 years mobile phones will be able to simulate objects to us using feedback feeling. (Hardawar D, 2011)

This would mean a new age of phones even allowing for mobiles to be used by the blind even if they only have a touchscreen!

This article on the Internet shows popularity for this technology as it proclaims the technology's future viability into a very popular market.


What about movement? If this was a computer system we couldn’t allow people to wander around the real world with it. Well luckily something has been in development for quite some time which answers this problem.

(Waters, D. 2008)

It’s called the cyber walker and in this BBC news story they are planning to soon reconstruct the lost city of Pompeii and allow people to walk through it on this treadmill which works on two axes. It is said to be the closest thing to natural movement you can get. (Waters D, 2008)

well if we combine the technology which is in development here we can say that soon we will be able to mimic sight, sound, walking, and even to some extent touch, that’s a lot of what we need to recreate virtual reality!

This exhibit where they allowed people walk through a digital reconstruction of Pompeii shows the popularity of this technology at present and that its development into more uses in future technology will defiantly be anticipated.

But there has got to be more, the whole body will need resistance systems like that of the haptic,
Well it seems that in the military they are working on exoskeletons which really start to bridge the gap.

Video about new Exoskeleton technology

(Carjam Radio. 2011).

If we use this technology but slightly reverse its function so that on top of helping the user move easily it also offers resistance to the user we should be able to simulate solid objects in a virtual world in a more complete way.

This podcast about the military technology being presented here shows its popularity in the media.

But I feel I must digress now into more types of research which encompass the big picture's horizon. For this I will simplify my search somewhat and look at the phrase 'The big picture' as a horizon search subject.

(Lartigau E, To be released in 2012)

This film which will come out next year shows that the title Big Picture will definatly have media presence in the future.

Well I think in this post I have proven that in the future we will have a completely new world of technology to explore! If my projections are right in the next 10-20 years we should be well on our way to virtual reality, the next step in media. In my forecast I shall combine my research here with the ideals I found in my past and present posts to create a projection of the future.