Picture this: you’re sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the “Sex and the City” movie and you’re watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don’t be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona. [ read more ]

According to the less alarming forecasts of the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate), the ocean level should rise from 20 to 90 cm during the 21st Century with a status quo by 50 cm (versus 10 cm in the 20th Century). As a solution to this alarming problem architect Vincent Callebaut came up with this ecotectural marvel that could serve as a luxurious future retreat for 50,000 inhabitants seeking refuge from rising waters due to global warming. He believes the world will be desperately seeking shelter from the devastations of climate change, and hopes the auto-sufficient amphibious city will serve as a luxurious solution. To bad that right now we are close to 7 billion people and this luxurious future retreat is just for 50,000 inhabitants ( just for rich people ). [ read more ]

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.” [ read more ]

North America’s buildings cause the annual release of more than 2,200 megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere, about 35 percent of the continent’s total. The report says rapid market uptake of currently available and emerging advanced energy-saving technologies could result in over 1,700 fewer megatons of CO2 emissions in 2030, compared to projected emissions that year following a business-as-usual approach. A cut of that size would nearly equal the CO2 emitted by the entire US transportation sector in 2000. [ read more ]

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Computer scientists have found new ways to use technology to make people’s lives easier. Setting up cameras in the kitchen to record each step made in cooking helps cooks pick up where they left off if distracted. An electronic picture can use symbols to convey a wealth of information — the more stripes on the barber pole, the more traffic on the way home. A camera worn around a person’s neck can interpret gestures, transmit them to electronic devices, replacing remote controls.

What does your future look like? Here’s a look at what some of the leading scientists are working on today to bring into your homes tomorrow. [ read more ]

Accessible only on foot or on skis, these one- and two-person insulated tents, anchored to wooden platforms, are designed to leave absolutely no trace when they are pulled up in the spring. They have no plumbing or electricity, but each has a highly efficient wood stove. They are grouped around a restored 19th-century farmhouse that has a solar shower and generator-powered electricity for just a few hours each day. [ read more ]

1. You get in your car.

2. You drive to a big building full of stuff. [ read more ]