David Suzuki has been active for decades popularizing science to listeners of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I would place him as one of Canada's natural resources and was delighted to learn that he is still active now that he was retired from UBC.
Some of this is Canada specific, but much of it impacts the planet as a whole. Suzuki is a god and I recommend his words highly - anyone who hangs out with E.O. Wilson must be cool by definition.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
Experts often make bad calls when it comes to identifying important technologies (of course they frequently correctly label the real garbage). More than a few hats worth of eating here...
http://www.foresight.org/News/negativeComments.html
Popular Mechanics had a spotty record for predicting the future (they came up with the helicopter in every garage image). To mark an anniversary they recently celebrated their hits and misses.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/time_machine/2001/12/hits_and_misses/print.phtml
One has to wonder how much magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science added to the need to consume. Some have speculated that publications like these, with their constant announcements of new products, helped create consumerism by the numbers - eg. buying things you know little about by some metric that you don't understand ... hmmm ... the PC industry.
But there is still great fun in novel transportation..
Autogyros, blimps and hovercraft are prominent in many views of the future. Amazingly enough there are people who build human powered hovercraft. Where else but in the UK - here is the work of a team at University College London. Very cool and probably a way to get extreme exercise.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uczxhpf/
6:56:19 AM 
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