future

With $16,000 in 1983, you could buy yourself a post-bankruptcy DeLorean and cruise around with Irene Cara on the radio. Today, you can blow the same sum on this chunky wristwatch manufactured from real DeLorean parts.

The automaker went under in 1982, but its DMC-12 sportscar was immortalized as the time machine in the "Back to the Future" films. Swiss watchmaker RJ-Romain Jerome recently announced its $15,900 DeLorean-DNA, which shares the look and some parts of its namesake.

"Entirely made of brushed stainless steel, this chronograph uses the same materials as the original bodywork of … Read more

Anyone who works in tech is going to like this. Wealthfront, an online financial adviser based in Palo Alto, Calif., today rolled out an interactive tool (see below) that let's you see what tech jobs pay among private firms across the country.

You'll learn, for instance, that software architects make more than managers -- a mean of $183,000 a year plus equity compared with $163,000 plus stock -- and that cash compensation across all tech companies is $112,000. Another curious finding: Despite the huge demand for engineers in Silicon Valley, jobs in the northeast pay … Read more

Remember that wild and woolly time before iPhones? I do. In early 2007, I used to keep a Thomas Guide in my car. I think it was also the last time I played Scrabble by picking actual tiles from a bag. As the Apple faithful contemplate the better life that awaits with a 4-inch screen and 4G LTE, it got us thinking -- not about the changes in the past 5 years but about how we'll use smartphones in another 5.

We enlisted the help of Mike Liebhold, senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, to help paint … Read more

A fan had a dream. He dreamed he would some day roll around Vice City in a souped-up DeLorean, dressed as Marty Mcfly, packing heat, and terrorizing the town. Then he made it happen.

The creator of the Back to the Future Grand Theft Auto mod (SeedyROM34 on YouTube), spent months working on the elaborate creation with many hours of file editing thrown into the bargain. This is quite a bit more than just a skin. There's time travel, an excellent-looking Marty McFly character, and a detailed DeLorean complete with flux capacitor.… Read more

Learning how to cook can be a frustrating experience. This should not be the case. Aside from an occasional overcooked steak, the process should be an enjoyable one. And considering that one gets to eat the results of one's labor, the aftermath isn't too bad either. (Unless that steak is really overdone.) Understanding that learning how to cook can be thought of as a game, a research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has created a cooking simulator designed to give novice cooks instantaneous feedback.

As a novel approach to culinary education, the system is composed of … Read more

The Electrolux Design Lab is a yearly competition that challenges design students across the globe. This year's competition asked students to create home appliances that would "provide a fuller sensory experience." Perhaps one day, some of these entries will be used in the home kitchen. Below are a few highlights:

Ingresure (seen above) is by Jongwoo Choi. It is a gadget designed to be a taste tester. Instead of chef's tasting their own creation, they would use the device to taste it for them. The idea is that the Ingresure would give amateur chefs the assurance … Read more

Before Google, many young'uns (such as myself) relied on magazines, telephone hotlines, and other old-world forms of communication to learn more about upcoming video games, hints, or cheats. One favored source of Nintendo game information for many people, Nintendo Power, will end its 24-year run this year, reports Ars Technica.

Supposedly, the magazine's parent company, Future Publishing, could not strike up a new contract with Nintendo to keep the publication going. An Ars source cites Nintendo as "difficult to work with," uninterested in expanding online content for the Nintendo Power brand, and even unwilling to retake the magazine from Future (which gained rights to the magazine in 2007 from Nintendo).

Future Publishing did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment. … Read more

Do you have a cochlear implant? An intraocular lens in your eye? A prosethetic leg with microservos? You may not realize it, but you're standing on the front line of a new age of medical augmentation, one that's raising a host of complex questions.

Who owns the expensive implant that allows you to hear or see better or the sleek thin blades that let you sprint faster? How are upgrades to your device handled? What happens to you and your device if that company goes out of business? Do the answers change if the procedure is elective rather than life-saving?

No one has easy answers, or even much beyond informed speculation -- certainly not the doctors we spoke to for this article or the medical students who addressed medical augmentation at a Defcon 20 session last month in Las Vegas. But all agree on one thing: A new frontier of medical augmentation isn't just coming sooner than you think. It's already here, as society moves from medically necessary augmentation to elective procedures. Call it human hacking. … Read more

Technological futurism to Intel's Brian David Johnson is a lot more than engineering. He combines ethnography, science fiction literature, and consumer research to help the company know where things are going in the future just beyond the average geek's grasp.

I caught up with Brian at an Intel event where their engineering teams basically hold a science fair -- a really impressive science fair. In addition to what's in the video, I also assembled a slide show of a few more things that caught my eye. Check it out below.

One of the most interesting things I … Read more