joshbyard:

Future of Warfare, 2030: Massive High-Altitude Airships Rain Armed Drones on Remote Targets

A joint venture of European aerospace firms BAE Systems, EADS and Finmeccanica, MBDA asked its weapons engineers to project ahead to 2030 and take a stab at guessing how UAVs might then be deployed.

What they came up with is a class of UAV that provides expendable backup for the descendants of today’s Predator and Reaper drones.

The vision is of vast airships that constantly loiter at high altitude over target areas, carrying pods of small UAVs in much the same way as today’s fighter jets carry missiles under their wings.

These launcher racks could contain at least two types of armed UAV - a small scout and a long-range version. Both sprout spring-loaded wings when air-dropped and are powered by electric ducted-fan engines.

A controller on the ground - dressed in the robotic garb that will clearly be de rigeur in the 2030’s military - then punches a few buttons on a wrist mounted screen to choose a UAV and its target GPS waypoints…

(via One Per Cent: Loitering airships could dispense drones on demand)

emergentfutures:

Before revealing the list, Cappucio provides a little context: In the last minute, there were 204 million emails sent, 61,000 hours of music listened to on Pandora, 20 million photo views and 3 million uploads to Flickr, 100,000 tweets, 6 million view and 277,000 Facebook logins and 2 million plus Googlesearches.

He repeats a theme that is going to come up a lot at this event: the “nexus” of cloud, big data, social and mobile.

• Organizational entrenchment and disruption
• Software-defined networks
• Bigger data and storage
• Hybrid cloud services
• Client and server architectures
• Internet of things
• IT appliance madness
• Operational complexity
• Virtual data centers
• IT demand

Full Story: Forbes

India announces $35 tablet computer to help lift villagers out of poverty

Does this put an end to MIT’s “One Laptop Per Child” project?

world-shaker:

We never stood a chance…

world-shaker:

It’s hard to understate just how huge this list is. Amazing resources, and definitely something for everyone.

thequirkyinventor:

Physical security for people who trust steel more then encryption!

Holland, MI —

A group of 19 teens will train to become ambassadors for bringing technology to the elderly, minorities and the poor.

Latin Americans United for Progress director Roberto Jara said on Tuesday his organization received a grant to create a Digital Connectors team in the Holland area. The students will study leadership, teaching, computer hardware and networking in order to later teach others to use technology.

“We’re looking for volunteer opportunities. … We would like to go into nursing homes, actually,” said Carmen Ruffino, program instructor for the Digital Connectors team.

Another potential project for the teens could be acting as technology tutors for parents or community members.

“A lot of the parents are working parents who don’t have time to learn about the Internet,” Ruffino said.

Besides creating a group of computer experts who will share skills with friends and family, part of the goal of the Digital Connectors program is to get students who would otherwise be apathetic about learning computer skills to gain experience.

“It’s an opportunity for them to find out how computers may help in their careers,” Ruffino said.