I highly recommend a free subscription to an newly enhanced newsletter called Accelerating Times. Written by John Smart, one of Peter Bishop’s students at the Studies of the Future master’s program (UH Clear Lake), this bimonthly email includes a wide range of news about technological and scientific breakthroughs which demonstrate the accelerating pace of innovation. The writing is terrific, plus it has lots of pictures!

The most recent issue rounds up stories about nanotechnology, using telemedicine for psychotherapy, as well as trends in manufacturing:

The experts talk about important advances we can expect in sensors, wireless, machine to machine communication, MEMS/nano, and other areas, but it seems to me that the next truly major revolution in industrial automation will have to be cheaper, smarter, safer, and more modular, "plug and play" components for the manufacturing line.

Significantly less expensive, smaller, and more rapidly reconfigurable modules, with ability to interoperate regardless of manufacturer, would massively grow the current market for manufacturing systems, making automated production more affordable to small businesses around the planet.