THE FUTURE ;

In the latter half, director of communications for the World Future Society, Patrick Tucker ,discussed the profound changes coming our way from technology and big data. He described himself as "cautiously bullish" about technology and the future, expressing excitement that humanity seems to be improving in its ability to both talk about and predict what may be ahead for us. Tucker mused that while humans spend 70% of our time looking ahead to the future, we only seem to be able to predict small scale events and not larger trends. This, he said, will change as technology improves. "Because of the enormous amounts of data that we're creating," he marveled, "we'll be able to understand those futures in ways that are much more accurate than ever before in history."

Due to the prevalence of technology in everyday life, Tucker said, people inadvertently generate a massive amount of unseen data about themselves that is shared amongst computers. Using the example of a cell phone knowing your precise location as soon as you turn it on and then gleaning more information about you as it is used, he explained that "this is your meta data and it speaks volumes about you." While the accumulation of such personal information may seem unsettling, Tucker argued that, rather than fruitlessly attempt to minimize the data we create, people will eventually learn to harness it as a means of discerning what the future may hold. Over the course of his appearance, Tucker also talked about Bitcoin, robots, and the future of privacy in this technology-rich worl