The Future And You--April 29, 2015

Robert J. Sawyer--Part 3. Topics: Microsoft's new HoloLens eyeglass computer which beats Google glass by providing a head up display over your entire field-of-view; the latest DARPA Robot Challenge showed us that robots are still amazingly slow, clumsy and bumbling; why the future popularity of sex robots is perfectly reasonable; making the case for human augmentation; why human augmentation will probably, over time, alter an individual's personality; benefits of the new laser-based carbon-dioxide scrubber for space travel; ideas on how to increase fairness in the judicial system; and the idea that if there had been as many smartphone video cameras during the civil rights movement as there are today, it probably would have proceeded a lot more rapidly and a lot less violently. Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers in history — and the only Canadian — to win all three of the world’s top Science Fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. (The full list of includes: Frederik Pohl, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Robert J. Sawyer, Arthur C. Clarke, Connie Willis, Paolo Bacigalupi.) Robert J. Sawyer  is also an award-winning scriptwriter and an in-demand keynote speaker. Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the April 29, 2015 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 43 minutes] This interview was recorded using Skype on March 22, 2015. Stephen Euin Cobb has interviewed over 350 people for his work as an author, futurist, magazine writer and award-winning podcaster. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he has also been a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. For the last nine years he has produced a weekly podcast, The Future And You, which explores (through interviews, panel discussions and commentary) all the ways the future will be different from today. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen is the author of an ebook about the future entitled: Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science.