Looking at Demos's report on the growth of professional-level amateurs in a bewildering array of fields. Have they cast the net too wide and are merely re-branding hobbies?

"Today, the technologies of deception are developing more rapidly than the technologies of verification..."

Halifax, Nova Scotia and bits of California have banned the wearing of fragrances in some public places. The next step after tobacco and alcohol bans?

Trendwatching identifies "life caching" as a trend - the ever-growing quantity of personal media (photos, writing, music, etc.) that people are sharing. Fair enough, but they ignore the consequences of this which are much, much more interesting than bigger iPods.

An Observer story on information gleaned from the British census shows growing polarisation between rich and poor segments of society, and a disintegration of "established forms of social cohesion - chiefly the family."...

Some people are commuting ever-further to London, this time from Spain, the result of a number of other trends. But how do we know whether it's really a trend itself?

Economist Bernard Lietaer on alternative currency systems around the world and how they can create foster more cooperative societies.

A paper describing how innovation can diffuse through a network that doesn't rely on business, and MIT's User Innovation website.

I finally got round to reading the June issue of Wired, a large chunk of which is edited by architect Rem Koolhaas. There are some interesting, but extremely short, articles about global trends, all shoehorned into the vague theme of...

This Mercury News article describes a mafia-like organisation emerging in one of the The Sims Online cities. Apparently, an attempt to create some order in the shape of a shadow government got out of hand and resulted in a rather...

A paper on how Chinese DJs and other music-lovers are getting hold of foreign music via the net, and how Jacques Attali sees music as an indicator of social change.

Some billboards in California, USA, are going to have the advertisements they display determined by the radio stations car drivers are listening to, according to this San Francisco Chronicle article. A device picks up signals from car radio aerials and...

The City Scan project uses hand-held computers, digital cameras and GPS to allow citizens to pinpoint instances of problems such as graffiti, holes in road, etc. This data is then used to generate reports and maps that officials can use...

I'm using some of the dead holiday time to catch up on emails, one of which included a link to Word Spy. It's like Wired magazine's Jargon Watch only including lengthy citations, background, and links to related words. Quite, quite...

This is quite a fun site about population growth, and features this stunning graph of population growth over the past 10,000 years (via Seb's Open Research). No matter how many times I see graphs like that they still stop me...

An interview with Ray Kurzweil on his plans to be cryogenically frozen and to put that off as long as possible by eating healthily. He has a book on the topic coming out. (via Boing Boing)...

The Telegraph has a story about how "an American team has used a pioneering genetic method to help convict an American doctor of deliberately infecting his former girlfriend with Aids." The story grabs one's attention by suggesting people could be...

I'm forever catching up on reading old Future Surveys and the June 2002 has a run of books on health issues, including Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections by Madeline Drexler (Amazon US and UK). The summary of this...

I always thought it interesting that there are people who make their living selling things on eBay. Something about the Internet enabling a new kind of person-to-person commerce that was stable enough to provide people with a livelihood. Now, eBay...

There's been a sharp rise in the number of Americans reporting "no religious preference" in the 1990s (up from 7% to 14% after decades of little change). Apparently this does not signal a doubling in the numbers of American athiests,...

The state government in South Carolina, USA, have been keeping DNA records of all babies since 1995 without the consent of parents. Some of this data has now been passed on to a genetics laboratory and the State Law Enforcement...

I love this, whether its statistics are meaningful or not. Players of Sony's online game EverQuest spend a lot of real world money on transactions such as selling game assets via eBay. Edward Castronova at Cal State Fullerton University, USA,...

The Institute for Applied Autononmy have developed a very pretty program that allows a user to identify a route between two points that will take them past as few CCTV cameras as possible. The data for the New York map...

A brief discussion of the potential effects on how building and city design might change following the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists. It would be interesting to read something more in depth on this (jump to the...

A RAND report on the Net twenty years out, and particularly America's place within it: "American ideals, with modest refinements, would write the constitution of a global civil society, even as the American state itself would lose its primacy." (via...

Some are claiming that the concentration of gays in a city (or, more broadly perhaps, the level of acceptance of alternative cultures) could be a leading indicator of future economic booms. Cities with the highest concentrations of gays are currently...

A look at why our frequent assumptions about English becoming the world's common language may not be so certain....

A series on BBC Radio 4 in the UK, hosted by Douglas Adams, looking at the futures of music, broadcasting, publishing and the effects of technology on society. (via Gorjuss)...

Adshel, the street furniture company, is planning a system of bikes free for loan in Cardiff, UK, similar to a current system in Rennes, France. Each user has a card that identifies them when they check a bike out of...

A report on Frog Design's system based around a golf-cart-sized electric car. Talks about neighbourhood hubs for delivery and collection of goods ordered online and links to a number of international car-sharing schemes....

A look at the "L.A. School" of urban theorists who see Los Angeles as an alternative look at the future of urban development. Contrary to the usually cited course of events, the city is not de-industrialised, but re-industrialised and many...

A team at the University of Manchester, UK, has boosted the lifespan of "microscopic worms" by 50% by using drugs. It's the first time any animal's life has been extended by the use of drugs....

We often hear about the increasing mobility of populations, and the numbers of people on the move (refugees, immigrants, etc) is increasing. This Disinfo article talks about campaigners focussing on borders and the treatment of illegal immigrants. As ever, a...

Progressive Insurance is offering drivers in Texas, USA, lower insurance costs if they allow their driving habits to be monitored by GPS. If the car is used less often, and at quieter times of the day, the monthly insurance bill...

For the first time in its thirty year history the International Union Romani is demanding recognition for a non-territorial nation for the Roma people. Links in to the whole demise of the nation state concept. (via Haddock)...

A report from a Next Twenty Years discussion, with Paul Saffo and others imagining what technology will be like in 2020 and how society will cope. (via Matt Jones)...

The Japanese government is planning to ban research into human cloning, with offenders possibly facing jail time. A spokesman for its science and technology agency said "Human cloning may pose a threat to the maintenance of social order, the foundation...

The softening of opinions on drugs takes two big steps: Cleveland has become the first police force to suggest considering "the legalisation and regulation of some or all drugs" and a Police Federation report recommends that ecstasy should be downgraded...

1999 saw a large increase in the use of industrial robots around the world. The increase is attributed to the decreased cost of robots (40 per cent cheaper than 1990), and higher labour costs and labour shortages in the developed...

Perhaps an oversimplistic comparison of the state of the Internet in the world's largest countries, but interesting nonetheless. The Chinese government has closed 127 Internet cafes in Shanghai, in the same week the Delhi government launches its first cybercafe, undercutting...

Nearly one third of 20-35 year old males in the UK are living with their parents, up from 25% in 1977/8. The later age of marriage and difficulties in entering the housing market are possible reasons. The article, citing a...

A 62 year old blind man can see 100 specks of light thanks to a device wired into his skull - enough vision to allow him to walk around and identify simple objects. He had the device implanted in 1978...

UK building societies converting to banks tend to close branches in the poorest areas. This leaves many people without access to financial services and other businesses often begin to leave the area. People "become social lepers excluded from mainstream society."...

Lifeshirt plan on selling a shirt in September 2000 which monitors the wearer's vital signs and sends the data to a secure website. This can then be sent to the wearer's doctor. $250 for the shirt, $30 per day for...

More than 16 million have died from Aids-related illnesses, with 2.6 million (a record) in the past year. "Life expectancy in southern Africa is expected to fall from 59 in the early 1990s to 45 between 2005 and 2010." "The...

In the UK "call centres employ over 400,000 people, a figure predicted to rise to over a million by 2004."...

The middle classes delaying childbearing until later in life will be able to provide very well for their kids, while children born to younger, poorer mothers will be far worse off. The increasing amount of elderly will drain resources from...

The homeless are taking advantage of Net connections in libraries and special cybercafes set up for them. Free email, classifieds, resum...

In 1995 Rodrigo Baggio started a computer school in a Rio de Janeiro favela with computers donated from C&A. Now his Committee to Democratise Information Technology has set up 107 schools in 13 states. A school was set up in...

A team at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan have found that mice live up to a third longer if they're missing a certain gene. "It's really the first time that anybody has intervened to extend the lifespan of...

The creators of the UK's Legoland are working on a project to build a hotel in space and expect to have it running by 2017. It will be built mostly of scavenged orbiting rubbish, will offer spacewalking excursions to the...

A look at how robots will become more common outside factories over the next 10+ years, in industries like meat packing (second highest accident rate after construction), shops, households....

Depression is the country's most common mental health problem....

Iowa is testing voting over the Internet alongside its conventional election. Voters receive a unique ID number to enter, and their vote is encrypted and "read anonymously" at a computer clearinghouse. Washington and Virginia have already conducted successful and secure...

A new estate in Hertfordshire, UK, will be "smart homes", with operations like adjusting heating, lights, alarm from any Net connection. Webcams point outside the house and videoconferencing facilities are built in. Being able to switch on the coffee machine...

Generally unremarkable report on a report about Britain in 2010: Continuing wealth divide, ageing population, end of youth culture dominance, less childhood, virtual offices and education....

A Cornell University group is working on flexible, thin computers: a layer of polymer-based transistors bonded to a sheet of silicon. Effectively a computer and its screen in a single sheet, "as large as meters on a side." The article...

Report on a survey by UN Economic Commission for Europe (co-authored by the International Federation of Robotics) which expects domestic robots to be taken up by the wealthy, to be integrated into their fully wired homes....

Report on a United Nations Population Fund report saying the world's population will be about 8.9 billion in 2050. This is down from an earlier prediction of 9.4 billion; a third of this gap is due to HIV/Aids which is...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego managed to revive cells in monkey brains which had previously been thought dead due to age, using gene therapy. Although the cells appeared to be physically back to almost normal, they haven't tested...