News from the Future: Now growing in a garden near you? Plastic

Goodbye Plastic, Hello Fungus!

Scientists, microbiologists, and designers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands have found a way to mimic plastic. Motherboard’s Alejandro Tauber explains that using “fungi’s filament-style growth, it can grow within different waste materials, simultaneously decomposing and fortifying them.”

This makes it possible to use 3-D printing filament from fungus derived from potato starch, which is porous enough to create furniture or packaging. Fungi are biodegradable, so a plastic derived from them would significantly lessen the amount of plastic waste produced annually. In addition, home-grown plastic would require less energy and fewer resources to produce. Taken in tandem -- a biodegradable plastic that with a small environmental footprint during production -- it's a step toward a greener, cleaner planet.

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GIFs Starring You

You’re probably asking yourself, what could possibly make a cat GIF better? You + cat GIF = GiphyCam. The brains behind Giphy, your favorite GIF creator, are releasing a new app called GiphyCam that allows anyone with an iPhone to create and star in their own GIFs.

Adam Leibsohn, the COO of Giphy told WIRED how it works:

“You send me something, I want to react to it,” Leibsohn says. “Now I can react with me. I can make myself the content! And that was what was missing before.”

Essentially, GiphyCam is putting the “me” back into “meme,” and allowing you to message your friends with your very own, customized “memoji.” Vine is under pressure to up its visual-presentation game.

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The Robot Apocalypse is Here

If you’ve been waiting for the next Terminator movie (listen Arnold, there’s no sleep for the wicked!), stop scoring movie spoiler sites and check the headlines: the robot apocalypse (or combat with robots) is now a thing happening in real life. Boston Dynamics, a robot company, has invented a robot that can go anywhere a soldier can go.

Their goal is to create a robot whose movements and perceptions rival that of animals and humans. So far, the focus has been on creating balance and stability for the robot, and an ability to respond to natural environments, like climbing or running through rocks. This could mean that down the road, robots could be fighting our wars for us, or with us – who knows what exciting possibilities the future could hold?