FourCast (2009)

We're proud to have Len Peralta of JawBone Radio and Monsters By Mail, and Veronica Belmont of Tekzilla and Qore as our first victims, er, guests. This episode was a blast, dealing with the end of the world, the terraforming of Mars, and of course, MoleMen.

For our next trick, Scott and I got Leo Laporte of TWiT fame, and Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback to square off with their visions of the future. You may think Leo is the optimist, but you'd be wrong. Witness the title of our episode. It was Jim that has the rosier view of the future. Including the chance for all of us to someday become Ashton Kutcher. Listen in folks, it's a good one.

This time on FourCast, comic, movie, and TV writer Gerry Conway and podcaster Brian Ibbott predict a world brimming with superheroes, domed cities, and RPGs based on your trip to the grocery store.

This time we are blessed with two musicians whom we are both fans of. Jonathan Coulton, known best for his Code Monkey and zombie songs, and MC Frontalot, known best, apparently for his back trouble int he nerdcore documentary but really for his amazing nerd rap prowess. We discuss their visions of synthetic life, machine-led government, nanobots, and the amazing growth of our brains. Or will we have brains in the future?

We're doing things a little differently this time. We had so much good conversation this time around, that we're pbreaking the show into three parts. Part one of the prediction extravaganza with Scott Kurtz and Jeff Cannata sees us discuss the end of journalism as we know it and ponder a world with one game console platform.

In part two of our conversation with Jeff Cannata and Scott Kurtz, it's time for the long term predictions. We discuss the decline of America and the potential rise of virtual nations.

The final part of our conversation with Jeff Cannata and Scott Kurtz covers the final simulation of everything and the elimination of all genders. Or does it? In fact, it does.

While we have a lot of fun worrying about self-driving cars, it's really the singularity we should be worried about. Justin Robert Young pretty much believes it will be disaster, while Brian Brushwood has a rosier vision.

Everything's going wireless, and magazines are on the way out. So we'll build our houses out of old wires and magazines.

Among the solid state drives and USB appendages we discover the similarity between Apple and the itchy pest, chiggers.

Defying gravity, leaving our bodies, and eliminating humanity. In a good way.

No matter what we predict in this episode we find it all leads back to Dune... and the Space Amish.

Candy-coated humans, the Gross Domestic Happiness quotient, one language to rule them all, and more.

Body mods, presidential elections in the future, and the survival of humanity.

We will ditch copyright, public libraries and traditional narrative, and embrace mutations. But don't worry, time is running out. Literally.

Find out why teleportation will work for dead cats. Also, we'll pick a job for you but it won't be in self-help.

Looking forward to better airlines, stain-resistant clothing, pay-by-arm transactions, and more.

Wireless brains, boundless energy, virtual religion, and more.

Darthweef and PhatEmoKid tells us about the bedbugs, cures and Utopias in our future.

Solutions for cancer and money problems, and why the small humans will come out on top.

Cheap tech saves us all while our lungs are infected by solar cells.

Fighting the intelligence gap, ending the judicial system, and more.

Looking forward to an alliance of space colonies rebelling against their BBQ-hating overlords.

Unicorns at the bottom of the sea, level 3 civilizations, organs in jars, and more.

No more borders, but we will have a civil war and we'll be saved by alien cyclopicorns.

The wild turkey shoot is coming to a big city near you, and you'll be able to literally share your memories of the event.

We will be burning everything down and creating artificial consciousness, resulting in self-aware fire-robots.

Dogs talk while we use our networked brains to chat with artificial sentient life on the bottom of the ocean.

Deciding which brain-machine interface to use for immortality: organic, mechanical or virtual.

Our mems-pants we downloaded while VR-shopping can change colors with the situation but can't save us from destruction.

Democracy through Farmville, chip implants for nutrition advice, and more.

Seth Rogen's future, landfill rage, and the greatest peanut butter combination of all time.

Life will be sweet when algorithms govern our social lives and body bugs govern our biology.

Brain hacking will be easier when we're always connected to the Net to watch live coverage of state secessions.

Hot swap your organs without interrupting the WiFi in your brain, and bad news is consolidated at MySpoo.

In our parochial future filled with pirates, robots will tolerate us while Scott pole-dances under the name Robot Sugar.

In our future, there will be no governments, only science wars.

The rise of citizen scientists who record their life will lead us to global harmony on Mars.

We learn to love the mole men, throw out our DVDs and break up into small countries.

Our guests have good reasons for having hazy future predictions. But the crazy? They bring the crazy.

We're headed to the gold standard, going bankrupt, losing our faith in science and we'll lose the world to the slime molds anyway.

Hollywood won't stop making comic book movies, but we will stop talking to teach other in our ultraseats. And it will all happen underground.

The proxy war will rage but we'll find water on 581g, and get plenty of online music and education.

No more I/O devices, no more copyright and no more URLs. But we will have ChromeOS!

Find out the best way to be weightless and live forever with Aaron and Mary on this episode of FourCast.

We're putting a hard drive in our heads, and we can't tell the Google history index has changed history, but we're all in caves now, so it's OK.

If Chad doesn't get us in his dictatorial domination of new media, thumb-cats will!

Desktop sales take off, data mining makes us safer, memories get cataloged, and more.

Twitter and Facebook will die, GPS gets hacked, animal chats make us all vegetarians, but we all die anyway, and more.

We wander the universe playing Call of Duty 20 on our million-core processors, and using our slaptops, and more.

Humans grow the eff up, get happy, replace our body parts and get happy.

Textbooks are free, hydroponic farmers grow in our cities, and computers become Gods.

Bioluminescent spots running down your back with billboards.

We won't die, and we won't have nay land, but we'll all be experts.

We all share Internet, power and brains, but how long now will be really smelly and social.

We'll taste our movies and burn our trash, but we'll all be made of broccoli. Yet a trip to Jupiter will take our mind off it.

Scan your tomatoes, travel at Mach 20 and put your phone in your brain.

We got brain drain, big bangs and charity that gives back.

We wear our computers, improve our toilets and all die in a singularity. But we can think our way out of it.

Beatniks, home power and board games will make our future complete.

Aliens will bind us, waste will be dealt with and the makers will inherit the Earth.

It's survival of the cutest, or survival of the aliens that can't enjoy simulations. But we can't use telepathy because of the ads.

Civil War leads to education reform, and finally to the singularity.

We live long enough to end the US, colonize the universe and meet the alien dragons.

We'll archive our brains, defy gravity, and colonize planets with SimCity Arcologies.

Giant halogens on Mars, equal rights for time, and all hail the electronic king.

We all create the movies we want in our barter society, when we're into playing realistic D&D sims. But we're all part of the AI game.

Sure, you can't hug a child with robotic eyes, and printing a baby has issues, but our perma-kittens will take our minds off it.

We stay away from space, impose a police state and then hand it over the printed-out spiders.

We get avatars and live for a long time, but the aliens will keep us in line.

Pop in your new eyes and enjoy the new middle ages, before humanity shuts down for good and becomes hermit snipers.

Chip me baby one more time. Also giant elephants protect us.

China's on the Moon, the robots beat everyone else, but at least we have voice control.

We move into the ocean, shut off annoyances and stop cruelty. Really? Yes.

We all stop commuting, but we have self-driving cars! And holographic keyboards.

We learn how to grow eyeballs in inappropriate places, our biometrics gets hacked, but we don't care because we can get our entertainment everywhere.

Sure we can't tell if it's a computer, but it won't kill us. It will kill our physical-altered progeny. Am I right?

Also you'll need an email address in the future, but not necessarily an ID.

Computing will be everywhere and so will media, but it will all happen in our minds.

We pick our pictures after the fact and take back control of publishing!

Pregnancy will get easier, safer and we'll pay the hospital bills in hugs.

Your heads up display won't let you get lost, but you're rewired brain may not like where you go.

Kickstart my comic heart and speak my version of English while you do it.

We'll need a disaster to teach us computer security, but we won't have those nasty keyloggers since we'll all use tablets.

We'll have enough bandwidth to live in the Simiverse and shoot documentary movies there.

Cinemas will show TV shows, movies come straight to your TV, plus other shocking developments.

We'll have an Amazon phone that's ad supported and upgraded organs to enjoy it with.

While the name ultrabook will become meaningless, eBooks will not replace the dead trees entirely.

We'll be able to program matter to be whatever we want, too bad nobody will know how it works.

Travel by tube in your custom car listening to your custom station.

When we all have wearable computing we'll need to jam it and stop the parallel universes from invading us. But at least we have easy access to Point Break.

Scott and Tom share their predictions in this the triumphant finale of FourCast.