Each week Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker, summarizes the top-5 future looking developments and news items that I find to be inspiring, interesting, concerning, or downright strange. Each day he reads through dozens of blogs and news websites to find those things that we should be aware of.
In Future Trends – Magic Leap, Cyborgs and Pokémon GO we look at the trends that we should be aware of today, July 15th, 2016. How bones can be printed from stem cells, cyborg stingrays, and Pokémon GOing crazy.

A leap into mixed reality (Magic Leap)

Magic Leap is coming and we may see it in 2016 (something I have been saying for sometime now).

Watch this amazing 3D bioprinter make artificial bones from scratch

If 3D printing is already impacting manufacturing today, what breakthroughs could bioprinting — or printing any mix of organic and inorganic materials — achieve tomorrow? In a recent video, a basic prototype of the Aether 1 bioprinter is shown printing two bones connected by a tendon using six materials that include synthetic bone, conductive ink, stem cells and graphene oxide.
While bioprinted organs are still a long way off — this video offers a glimpse into that future.

Via SingularityHUB

With gold and rat heart cells, scientists make a robot stingray

A team of researchers, led by Sung-Jin Park and Professor Kevin Kit Parker at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, have found a way to meld bioinspiration with robotics and cybernetics with the creation of a fully controllable robotic ray that uses light-activated rat muscle cells to swim. Their research has just been published in Science, and it’s impressive. And also adorable.

Via IEEE Spectrum

Pokémon Go players are waging war over the White House

For the last week, Pokémon Go players have been taking part in a secret battle to gain control of the most visible and coveted gym in the entire country: the White House.

As you probably already know, Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game that makes use of real-world locations. Most locales are flagged as simple Pokestops, where players can collect resources, but some landmarks, which the game calls gyms, are more special than that. At gyms, players can take control of a venue much like they can in Foursquare, except the only way to maintain leadership here is through battles. The most powerful trainers can install their Pokémonteam to defend the gym in question, and their chosen monsters will stay at that locale until they are defeated. Challengers can drop by the gym at any time to fight gym leaders, and if new contender is victorious, not only will they gain XP, they also have a chance to claim the throne. Since Pokémon Go also allows players to join a team, gyms end up being hotbeds for competition and dominance.
Wouldn’t you know it, Pokémon Go lists the White House as a gym, as most of the world found out after the following image of a Blastoise went viral:

Via KOTAKU

Can a robot mend a lonely heart?

“Perhaps I have been alone for too long,” writes the self-described 34-year-old from Germany. “Perhaps I have found in my dolls what I was looking for in vain among humans for an even longer time. Being a quiet man myself, my two silent companions and I [are] getting along quite well.”
Via CNET

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.