A Spaceship for the Sea

Here.

Future War Air Sea War

• 4 New Technologies That Will Carry The Weight Of War
• The Future of War: Soldier Enhancements

• The Marines Are Building Robotic War Balls
• Big robot fleet takes to UK waters
• Are Weaponized 'Crab Walker' Robots The Future Of Chinese Land Wars?
• Navy Demonstrates Swarm Of Armed Robot Boats

Dutch Windwheel Corporation

• The Dutch Windwheel
• In The Netherlands, A Giant Wind Turbine For People To Live On
• A Giant Funhouse Wind Turbine: Your New Apartment?

A Chart Comparing the Sizes of Famous Spaceships From Movies, TV Shows and Video Games

Source.

Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children (2005)

Mondo Paleo-Futuroso

• Tomorrow People - The World of The Future
• BLAST OFF! to Yesterday's Future
• America of the Future
• How Soviet Artists Imagined Communist Life in Space
• The groovy socialist world of 1970s Soviet futurism
• “Glory to the Conquerors of the Universe!”: Propaganda Posters from the Soviet Space Race (1958-1963)
• Computopia: Old visions of a high-tech future
• How We’ll Live: Futurists’ 1988 predictions about life in 2013
• Fantastic Sci-Fi Art Shows You a Beautiful, Bewildering Future
• Retrofuturism
• Here’s How People 100 Years Ago Thought We’d Be Living Today
• Twentieth Century Futurism Looks Really Bizarre Now
• 7 Amazing Images Of The Future, From 1947
• Archive Gallery: Diabolical Death Rays from the Pages of Popular Science

Technological Singularity!

Links

• Singularity-related research links, from Ray Kurzweil
• Singularity Hub | The Future Is Here Today…Robotics, Genetics, AI, Longevity, The Brain

Essays and Articles

Source.

• Wikipedia
• Are We Overthinking the Perils of Artificial Intelligence?
• Facebook Lays Out Its Roadmap for Creating Internet-Connected Drones
• Robo Brain Project Wants To Turn the Internet into a Robotic Hivemind | Popular Science
• This Machine Can Learn About the World Just by Watching It
• The Rise of the Drone Master: Pop Culture Recasts Obama
• Facebook’s Quest to Build an Artificial Brain Depends on This Guy
• Curiosity And RoboSimian Robot At DARPA
• DARPA's New Biotech Division Wants To Create A Transhuman Future
• Why Robots Won't Rule
• The Next Big Thing You Missed: The Quest to Give Computers the Power of Imagination
• The Machine's Director Takes Us Inside The Worst-Case Scenario For A.I.
• Open Letter to Eveyone Tricked into Fearing AI
• 10 Futurist Phrases And Terms That Are Complete Bullshit

10 Reasons an Artificial Intelligence Wouldn't Turn Evil

The Coming Technological Singularity - Vernor Vinge

Noam Chomsky on Singularity 1 on 1: The Singularity is Science Fiction!

The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil (First Chapter)

Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil - Wikipedia

Singularities and Nightmares: Extremes of Optimism and Pessimism About the Human Future by David Brin

A Critical Discussion of Vinge’s Singularity Concept by Robin Hanson

Is a singularity just around the corner by Robin Hanson

Brief History of Intellectual Discussion of Accelerating Change by John Smart

One Half of a Manifesto by Jaron Lanier—a critique of "cybernetic totalism"

One Half of an Argument—Ray Kurzweil's response to Lanier

A discussion of Kurzweil, Turkel and Lanier by Roger Berkowitz

The Singularity Is Always Near by Kevin Kelly

The Maes-Garreau Point by Kevin Kelly

"The Singularity – A Philosophical Analysis" by David Chalmers

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, By Lev Grossman, time.com, Feb. 10, 2011

Is It Time to Give Up on the Singularity?

Reports and Curiosities

• DeepMind Technologies (AI firm purchased by Google).
• Report on The Stanford Singularity Summit 
• An IEEE report on the Singularity. 
• March 2007 Congressional Report on the SingularityAlternate Link

Fiction and Scripts

• The City of the Living Dead by Laurence Manning & Fletcher Pratt (1930)
• The Last Evolution, by John W. Campbell, Jr (1932)
• The Terminator
• Terminator 2
• Terminator 3 
• Matrix

In the News

• Humans Appear Programmed to Obey Robots, Studies Suggest
• What Is DeepMind? The Artificial Intelligence Firm Bought By Google
• Google’s AI Acquisition Blurs Lines Between Futuristic Visions and Business-as-Usual | Singularity Hub
• By Hiring Kurzweil, Google Just Killed the Singularity | MIT Technology Review
• The 'Singularity' is here, but without any emotion
• Does Google Glass Mean The Singularity Is Near?

Chopping Mall (1986)

Film.

"A group of teenagers that work at the mall all get together for a late night party in one of the stores. When the mall goes on lock down before they can get out, The robot security system activates after a malfunction and goes on a killing spree. One by one the three bots try to rid the mall of the "Intruders." The only weapons the kids can use are the supplies in other stores. Or . . . if they can make it till morning when the mall opens back up" (imdb).

50 Years+ of Japanese Concept Cars

Source.

German Retro-Futurism 1950s-1970s

Source

Ipod City, Shenzhen, Foxconn

Foxconn

• The haunting poetry of a Chinese factory worker who committed suicide - The Washington Post
• Million Robot Revolution Delayed—iPhone Manufacturer Foxconn Hires More Humans 
• Google Partnering with Foxconn to Test Industrial Robots
• Foxconn’s Pivot to America: Reverse Outsourcing With Robots
• Journey Inside the Cavernous Interiors of these Mega-Factories
• Analyst Downgrades Apple Because It Treats Workers ‘Like Animals’
• 'Mass suicide' protest at Apple manufacturer Foxconn factory
• 1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?
• Apple's Foxconn PredicamentIn China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad
• Terry Gou (Forbe's profile).
• A Chinese View of iPod City
• Foxconn orders massive nets to catch jumping factory workers
• Foxconn Promises 20% Wage Hike Following Suicides
• iPod City: Apple criticized for factory conditions
• Welcome to Ipod City
• The stark reality of iPod's Chinese factories

Shenzhen

• Wikipedia article
• Shenzhen Stock Exchange
• Shun Hing Square
• Shun Hing Square, Shenzhen
• SEG Plaza
• Pingan International Finance Centre

Busy Town

"Although Busytown is more realistic than Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, Scarry's vehicles have occasionally surrealistic elements, including Mr Frumble's pickle car, a car shaped like a doughnut, and a toothbrush mobile. Scarry used repeatedly his formula in which his books did not have a plot but offered bits of information in various spheres of knowledge, on school activities, cars and trucks, counting, animals, professions, etc. "Wherever I go," he was fond of saying, "I'm watching. Even on vacation when I'm in an airport or a railroad station, I look around, snap pictures and find out how people do things. Someday it will all show up in a book." (from The Busy, Busy World of Richard Sacrry by Walter Retan and Ole Risom, 1997)

The Best Word Book Ever,1963 and 1991

United States Patent US2201689 - Walt Disney, The Art of Animation.

Copy of the original patent.

The Player

In full.

Great discussion of Nolan Bushnell's (founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese) early career, touching upon subjects of  consumer electronics and recreational robots, the possible social purpose of video games, the economic links between pizza parlors, midways and video game consuls, and divorced, single parents in the 1980s.

See also:
Androbot on the old robots page. A brief profile of Nolan Bushell's short lived personal robot company, in the eighties.

Technocracy Rhetoric

My unconstrained mirth for the literature ( . . . and recent! . . . ) of Technocracy knows yet no limits.

It is as if to see the rhetorical excesses of Socialism--for one, but any of the large-scale, utopian schemes descended from the Enlightenment--in the funny mirror.

If eccentric, declamatory pamphlets positing to solve by superior reason the globe's most knotty, thorny, intractable problems are your thing, the official site has numerous, hilarious freebies.

More

Documents at Technocracy.ca.

Neon Genesis Evangelion Episodes 1-26

In full.

Scripts (in English)
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 1
Neon Genesis Evangelionepisode 2
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 3
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 4
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 5
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 6
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 7
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 8
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 9
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 10
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 11
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 12
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 13
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 14
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 15
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 16
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 17
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 18
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 19
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 20
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 21
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 22
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 23
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 24
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 25
Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 26

The Joy of Mechanical Force and The Futurist Manifesto by F. T. Marinetti (1909)

In full.

Ghost Trains, Folklore

The St. Louis Ghost Train
Kate Shelley Saves the Train
Casey Jones
Express Train to Hell
Ghost Handprints
Ghost Train
Ghost on the Tracks
John Henry: The Steel Driving Man
Lincoln Death Train
Phantom Train Wreck
Screaming Jenny
Screaming Tunnel
Shadow Train
Silverpilen

Pulp
Satan Turns the Timetables

General

c/f The Ghost Trains Sent to an Early Grave

The History Of Slot Machines

Source.

GAMBLING MEN

Source.

"1891 and against the backdrop of the town of Brooklyn, in the recently-booming east coast New York City, Sittman and Pitt had just developed the gaming machine that in the years to come would be considered THE precursor to the modern slot machine. Based on poker, possibly to cash-in on the popularity of the game, the machine contained five drums carrying a total of fifty cards and like it’s namesake in the table-sitting world, it proved to be a popular hit with gambling players everywhere but especially in it’s home city of New York. At this time you would be hard-pressed to find a bar in the city that didn't have at least one of these machines standing at the side of the bar waiting for potential players to insert a nickel and press the lever in the hope of a good poker hand. These machines had a drawback. There was no direct payout mechanism, so in order to cure this problem, establishments would for example, offer a patron a free beer should he receive a pair of Kings, maybe a cigar if he hit a lower hand. It was not ‘made’ easy for a customer to win. Once obtaining a machine, many establishments would typically remove two select cards from the deck: the Ten of Spades and the Jack of Hearts. This, naturally, cut the odds of winning drastically and to make it even more difficult to win, the drums themselves could also be re-arranged to the taste of the proprietor.

"What can not be re-arranged so simply however, is the differing accounts of a German immigrant named Charles Augustus Fey, and his invention over on the west coast. There are some who say he invented the first mechanical slot machine in 1887, four years BEFORE Sittman and Pitt’s machine hit the bars of New York. There are others who state that Fey conceived his innovation in 1895, four years AFTER Sittman and Pitt’s machine. It is the year 1895 however, that seems to prove more popular with gambling history enthusiasts. Regardless of the chronology, Fey’s invention was revolutionary.

"With what later would be termed the first "one-armed bandit," Fey had solved the problem of designing a machine capable of making an automatic pay-out for all possible winning combinations. This was achieved by replacing ten cards with five symbols ( Diamonds, Hearts, Horseshoes, Spades and a cracked Liberty Bell ), and utilizing three reels instead of five drums thereby considerably reducing the complexity of reading a win! Three bells in a row equaled the largest payoff, amounting to fifty cents or ten nickels. The machine, consequently called Liberty Bell due to it’s attractive symbol became a massive success and is generally credited with spawning the massive mechanical gaming device industry at this time.

"During the next five years Charles Fey also invented the first descendent of the Liberty Bell called "4-11-44" named so after the maximum winning combination of the machine, worth five dollars. After this success, Fey upgraded his business from small-shop trading to factory production and in successive years invented the "Card Bell" machine and then further improved it a year later in 1899. This latest innovation had an altered symbol ( Star ) and boasted a maximum prize of twenty dimes or tokens, achieved with a three bell combination!

"Fey had been enjoying limited competition and favorable government legislature in his bid to dominate the gaming device market. However, various companies including Kalamazoo and Monarch had also released slot machines and one company in particular would severely test his control. Again, there are conflicting theories as to what actually happened but it was well-known in gaming device circles around the turn of the century that Charles Fey refused to sell or lease his revolutionary Liberty Bell slot machine to anyone. One theory as it that in 1905, a robbery occurred at a saloon in San Francisco, a theft in which only two items were stolen - an apron and a Liberty Bell slot machine. Less than a year later, Herbert Stephen Mills who had inherited the ‘Mills Novelty Company’ some years earlier from his father Mortimer Mills, produced a new version of the Liberty Bell called the Mills Liberty Bell. Despite the competition, the Mills Liberty Bell saw off all challengers. Mills, at this point, was employing assembly-line techniques for the construction of slot machines and despite the controversy, later became known as the "Henry Ford of slot machines."

"The other theory however states that Charles Fey actually went into business with the Mills Novelty Company, and then manufactured the Mills Liberty Bell which stunted all competition.

Source

"The Mills Liberty Bell itself featured a cast iron case with a classic Liberty Bell actually cast into the front of the machine. Originally the machine had cast iron feet with toes, but this was scrapped in later versions and they were replaced with ornate scrolled feet. Playing cards ( the King, Queen and Jack ) were depicted on the machine’s reel strips, and it also featured a bell that rung when a winning combination was hit. This was later dropped for the Mills Liberty Bell, though this concept would resurface many years later.

"Charles Fey had not only had to contend with these commercial losses, but he suffered most heavily when his main slot-machine producing factory was almost utterly destroyed in an earthquake. After this point, Fey faded into relative obscurity and he died some years later in 1944. Herbert Mills’ company however continued to thrive.

A BOOMING INDUSTRY

"By 1910 slot machines could be found seemingly everywhere. The Mills Novelty Company introduced slight variations to it’s Liberty Bell design and named it the Operator Bell. The Operator Bell had a more fitting neck coin entry and also featured fruit symbols unlike previous models. The Mills Novelty Company was also now producing five different variations of it’s Liberty Bell design at it’s factories, and by the time World War One broke out, the company had expanded into Europe and it’s factories were manufacturing up to 30,000 gaming machines.

"The age of the cast iron machines came to an abrupt end when Mills introduced slot machines fashioned with cheaper wooden cabinets, and by the early 1930’s the Mills Novelty Company made a number of changes to it’s production line of slot machines that signaled another revolution of the gaming industry.

"The new wave of machines introduced a double jackpot that allowed players the luxury of knowing that they could win twice in quick succession. The machines were also designed to be quieter and these 1930’s machines are now referred to as the "Silent Bell(s)."

"New cabinet designs were also released as part of this new wave of slot machines and included such themes as the Lion Head, the War Eagle, the Roman Head and finally in 1933, the Castle Front.

"The War Eagle also boasted a new coin acceptor that displayed the coins played moving successively across the top of the machine. In the case that slugs were used to operate the machine, the operator would now be able to see if such an object was being used. The new specification also added additional movement. Herbert Mills passed away in 1929 at the age of 57, leaving a vast fortune to his wife and eight children.

"In 1909, the previously favorable laws were thrown out the window, and new laws were introduced declaring that slot machines could no longer dispense cash. Slot machine manufacturers and bar owners managed to cope with these new laws by giving away free packs of gum and other prizes for getting certain combinations of symbols on the machines. There is a theory that this was the idea for the fruit and bar symbols present on modern-day slot machines. The bars are said to represent the packs of gum and the fruit symbols indicate the various kinds of candy that were won. Another theory holds that an early slot machine rewarded it’s players by awarding fruit-flavored chewing gums with the pictures of the flavors depicted by the corresponding symbols on the reels. The popular ‘cherry’ and ‘melon’ symbols are said to have derived from this machine. According to this representation of events, the ‘BAR’ symbol now common in slot machines was actually derived from an early logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company.

"In 1919, the American government declared PROHIBITION and the consumption or supplying of alcohol was made illegal. The slot machines which mainly populated bars and saloons, were moved into the speakeasies that had been set up in light of the recent changes in the law. Since the speakeasies were illegal anyway, the managers figured they may as well go back to offering cash prizes on the slot machines. Because of this, the popularity of slot machines increased even more.

"Despite the governmental pressure the gaming industry continued to bloom and grow, especially in the state of Nevada where gambling was legalized in 1931. Several companies sprung up to take advantage of the situation, and they began to manufacture and sell slot machines to the fledgling casinos in Nevada. The manufacture and enjoyment of slot machines grew at an exponential rate well into the 1960’s.

"NEW LOOKS FOR NEW ERA

The pinball machine manufacturer, Bally, in 1964 began to produce a new slot machine named Money Honey. This machine was powered by electricity, and also possessed new sound effects as well as being classed as a multi coin machine. It was also the first slot machine ever to have a hopper - the name for the holder into which the coins get paid out. More innovations flowed from the Bally business brains; they added games that had more reels, bigger hoppers and more coins until 1970 when they produced a hopper large enough to hold dollar coins which meant larger jackpots for the consumers.

"In 1978, Atlantic City legalized gambling, and by this time Bally had cornered about 90% of the slot machine market. The company continued to add reels, knowing this would decrease chances of winning and so maximizing the size of a jackpot . In addition to increasing the number of symbols on each reel with 25 eventually becoming the maximum, they also raised the wagers so games could be played at $5, $25 and even $100. Bally also hired a computer programmer by the name of Inge Telnaus to increase the size of the jackpots without losing profits for the company. Using a computer program, Telnaus utilized a random number generator that cycled through the numbers on imaginary reels he had made. A revolution had been realized in slot machine gaming as Telnaus with these imaginary reels could radically change the amounts that could be won. This random number generator has ushered slot machines into a new age and opened up new markets with new opportunities to be explored much like the Californian gold fields did for the American populace over 150 years ago."

World in 2000 as Predicted in 1910

Thanks Sean Dixon for Facebooking this. And thanks Sad and Useless for posting.

Illustrations by French artist Villemard in 1910 of how he imagined the future to be in the year 2000.

Unavoidable.

See also: Predictions of the Year 2000 from The Ladies Home Journal of December 1900