AN ALPHABET OF TOMORROW (H-M)

Helium-3. Helium-3 is a gas that is rare on the Earth, but which has the potential to be the fuel for a new generation of clean nuclear fusion power plants. There is thought to be an abundant supply of helium-3 on the surface of the Moon, and as a result Russia, China, American and some other nations have intentions to go to the Moon and potentially to mine helium-3. Russian space corporation Energia has indeed announced that it expects to be producing helium-3 on the Moon on an "industrial scale" by 2020.

Given that one Space Shuttle cargo bay of helium-3 could power the United States for a year, a new helium-3 Space Race and related infrastructure development may become one of the most significant aspirations and accomplishments in human history. Mining lunar helium-3 may also become a large part of our "solution" to the oil shortage, broader fossil fuel depletion, and climate change. For more information see the Helium-3 Power Fact File and/or my Mining Helium-3 On the Moon video.

Internet Development. Over the past decade the Internet has clearly had a profound impact on social, cultural and business relationships. However, equally as significant Internet developments are also yet to come. At present these are most associated with the growth of "Web 2.0". This is where a more interactive use is made of the Internet for social networking and other forms of interpersonal computing, as well as for online service delivery. For more information on Web 2.0, see my Web 2.0 video and/or the Web 2.0 pages of our sister site ExplainingComputers.com.

Near-future Internet developments are also heavily associated with cloud computing. This is where individuals and organizations connect to an online "cloud" of computing resources, rather than relying on local software and hardware. For more information on this Internet development see my ExplainingComputers Cloud Computing Video. Finally, with Web 2.0 barely a few years old, the likely characteristics of "Web 3.0" are also starting to be speculated upon. Whilst a definition of Web 3.0 remains far from clear, many commentators believe that it will involve a more semantic (almost self-aware) web rich with artificial intelligence, and/or the significant development of online 3D virtual reality.

Joint Ventures. Joint ventures occur when two or more organizations undertake an activity together. Of course, for organizations to work together in such a manner is hardly something new. However, given the global nature of some of some future challenges, not to mention converging industry boundaries and structures, joint ventures are likely to be increasingly characteristic of both the private and public sector organizational landscape.

As a result of the New Industrial Convergence, the boundaries that currently delineate the manufacturing, medicine and the media industries are likely to significantly blur. Technologies and skillsets will hence be increasingly applicable across previously distinct industry boundaries, hence presenting a wider and wider range of opportunities for mutually-beneficial cross-organization activity. There is also already an increasing trend for organizations to specialise in business functions (such as customer interface management, logistics or web service delivery) rather than traditional product or service markets, and this too is likely to result in higher-and-higher levels of future joint venture activity.

Knowledge Economy. Traditional economics informs us that economic value is created via the "factors of production" of labour, capital, land and raw materials. However, over the past decades, a more knowledge-focused or "new" economy had emerged as economic value has increasingly been created by working with information (raw data processed into a useful form) and knowledge (or information that had been analyzed within an expert reference to enhance it with meaning).

With increasing dematerialization and more and more business and interpersonal exchanges taking place online, the rise of a knowledge economy in which brain power, computer processing power or some future hybrid of the two become the most significant factors of production looks set to continue. An economy based on capturing, manipulating, storing and communicating information is also likely to be one that is less demanding on our dwindling physical resource requirements, and hence part of the solution when dealing with resource depletion and climate change. A range of resources on the knowledge economy can be found from EnterWeb here.

Life Extension. Life extension is the art and science of maximising the human lifespan. It therefore concerns all attempts to promote health and quality of life, to slow the process of biological ageing, and/or to augment or transcend the human body in order to achieve "cybernetic immortality". Life extension is therefore one element of the Transhuman Agenda, as advocated by organizations including the World Transhumanist Association and who provide some interesting resources on life extension here.

Whilst once a largely speculative discipline, several studies into life extension are now starting to be taken seriously. These include experiments involving caloric restriction and human growth hormones, and as reported by EnhanceProject.org. Nutritional approaches to life extension are also promoted and available online from the Life Extension Foundation. For more information please see the Life Extension Page.

Mashups. A mashup is created when two or more separate but already highly developed resources are drawn together to offer something new. Today, mashups are an online phenomenon that are commonly created using social networking and web services tools that allow information and applications from one website to be near-effortlessly integrated into another. For example, it is now common to integrate or "mash" video from YouTube, photo albums from Flickr, or gadgets from Google, into another website, or to integrate geographic data from Microsoft Virtual Earth into property or traffic congestion websites.

As the future unfolds, the "collage construction" practice of mashing existing but separate high-level resources into new offerings -- and in the process avoiding the requirement to entirely create new products and services from scratch -- is likely to take on many new forms. In particular, due to the New Industrial Convergence, opportunities will increasingly exist to create mashups across both industries and previously discrete technological arenas. Already DNA is being transgenically "mashed" to create new species of animals and plants. However, with the parallel development of computing, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, future mashups may be both digital and genetic --or "diginetic" -- and are likely to start to take place not just transgenically across species, but across the more fundamental boundaries of the "natural" and "artificial" world.