The space race was in full swing. For the first time, a space probe had recently landed on another planet (Venus). And I was eagerly studying everything I could to do with space. Then on April 2, 1968 (May 15 in the UK), the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released--and I was keen to see it. So in the early summer of 1968 there I was, the first time I'd ever been in an actual cinema (yes, it was called that in the UK). I'd been dropped off for a matinee, and was pretty much the only person in the theater. And to this day, I remember sitting in a plush seat and eagerly waiting for the curtain to go up, and the movie to begin. It started with an impressive extraterrestrial sunrise. But then what was going on? Those were landscapes, and animals. I was confused, and frankly a little bored. But just when I was getting concerned, there was a bone thrown in the air that morphed into a spacecraft, and pretty soon there was a rousing waltz--and a big space station turning majestically on the screen. The next two hours had a big effect on me. It wasn't really the spacecraft (I'd seen plenty of them in books by then, and in fact made many of my own concept designs). But what was new and exciting for me in the movie was the whole atmosphere of a world full of technology--and the notion of what might be possible there, with all those bright screens doing things, and, yes, computers driving it all. It would be another year before I saw my first actual computer in real life. But those two hours in 1968 watching 2001 defined an image of what the computational future could be like, that I carried around for years. I think it was during the intermission to the movie that some seller of refreshments--perhaps charmed by a solitary kid so earnestly pondering the movie--gave me a "cinema program" about the movie. Half a century later I still have that program, complete with a food stain, and faded writing from my 8-year-old self, recording (with some misspelling) where and when I saw the movie. A lot has happened in the past 50 years, particularly in technology, and it's an interesting experience for me to watch 2001 again--and compare what it predicted with what's actually happened. Of course, some of what's actually been built over the past 50 years has been done by people like me, who were influenced in larger or smaller ways by 2001. When Wolfram Alpha was launched in 2009--showing some distinctly HAL-like characteristics--we paid a little homage to 2001 in our failure message (needless to say, one piece of notable feedback we got at the beginning was someone asking: "How did you know my name was Dave?!"). One very obvious prediction of 2001 that hasn't panned out, at least yet, is routine, luxurious space travel. But like many other things in the movie, it doesn't feel like what was predicted was off track; it's just that--50 years later--we still haven't got there yet. Well, they have lots of flat-screen displays, just like real computers today.

A thriving super colony of some 1.5 million Adelie penguins has been discovered on the remote Danger Islands in the east Antarctic, surprised scientists announced. Just 100 miles (160 kilometres) away in the west Antarctic, the same species is in decline due to sea ice melt blamed on global warming, they said. The first complete census revealed that the Danger Islands host more than 750,000 breeding pairs of Adelie penguins, more than the rest of the Antarctic Peninsula region combined, the team reported. It included the third and fourth-largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world. A thriving super colony of some 1.5 million Adelie penguins has been discovered on the remote Danger Islands in the east Antarctic, surprised scientists announced.

"It has always been our ambition to get inside that white space, and now we are there the space can no longer be blank," wrote the polar explorer Captain Scott, on crossing the 80th parallel of the Antarctic continent for the first time in 1902. Fast-forward more than a century--and the deep ocean floor around Antarctica still offers a "white space", beyond the reach of scuba divers, only partially mapped in detail by sonar from ships and seldom surveyed by robotic vehicles. So I jumped at the chance to join a team from the BBC on an expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula for Blue Planet II, to help them as a scientific guide. Thanks to the crew of the research ship Alucia, we dived in minisubmarines to 1km deep in the Antarctic for the first time. And while we didn't face anything like the physical hardships endured by early polar explorers on land, those dives did give us the opportunity for some unique science.

Jobs are disappearing, incomes retreating, the precariat growing. Thousands of people risk their lives in stormy seas to flee wars, moribund economies and climate change on a daily basis. Traditional politicians continue to avoid publicly addressing the tsunami of unemployment, apparently baffled as to how to react to a historic transition: the automation of critical masses of labour once performed by humans. Five acronyms - AI, AR, VR, BC and UBI - promise to shape the developed world's future and solve the problems of the present. In the process, however, these innovations risk transforming the world around us, and upsetting humanity's very definition of itself.

After receiving more than 18,300 applications, NASA has finally announced its new class of astronauts – some of whom could move on to deep-space missions aboard the Orion spacecraft. The space agency introduced 12 men and women today on stage at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, during an event that was attended by Vice President Mike Pence. Vice President Pence wished'Godspeed' to the new class, and revealed the Trump administration will be reopening the National Space Council, with Pence as a chair, in efforts to'ensure that America will never again lose our lead in space exploration and space innovation technology.' The lineup includes: Kayla Barron, Zena Cardon, Raja Chari, Matthew Dominick, Bob Hines, Dr Warren'Woody' Hoburg, Jonny Kim, Robb Kulin, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara, Dr Frank Rubio, Jessica Watkins The chosen few will undergo two years of training, after which they will be assigned to various missions, including research on the International Space Station, launches aboard commercial spacecraft, and even deep-space exploration. After brief introductions from Johnson Center Director Ellen Ochoa and the showing of a video from current astronauts welcoming the newcomers, Flight Operations Director Brian Kelly introduced the new candidates one by one, in alphabetical order. The lineup includes: Kayla Barron, Zena Cardon, Raja Chari, Matthew Dominick, Bob Hines, Dr Warren'Woody' Hoburg, Jonny Kim, Robb Kulin, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O'Hara, Dr Frank Rubio, Jessica Watkins.

Battalions of insect cyborgs - stealthier than any man-made mini-drone - could soon hit the skies to join the fight against terrorism. Draper, along with Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Janelia Research Campus, have created cyborg dragonflies in an effort to aid intelligence and reconnaissance. Known as DragonflEye, the project would allow the US military and intelligence services to deploy these cyborgs as micro-drones capable of spying for their masters. In addition to the secretive nature of the drones, they're also expected to be more agile, lighter and smaller. The US military, like others around the world, has long pursued tiny flying robots to deploy for surveillance.

The average single-family home takes roughly seven months to complete, but MIT researchers have developed a cutting-edge system that does the job in less than a day. The team has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. Equipped with a precision-motion robotic arm and powered by solar panels, the machine sprays an insulation foam mold on the ground and then fills it with concrete – it completed the walls of a 50-foot-diameter, 12-foot-high dome in 14 hours. MIT has designed an autonomous robot capable of 3D printing the basic structure of an entire building. MIT's system is a massive robotic arm attached to a track vehicle.

Need a building customized for a particular site quickly? Researchers say a 3D printer may be the answer -- and could reduce the cost to boot. Researcher Steven Keating and colleagues write in this week's Science Robotics a 3D system could reduce construction costs while speeding the process, incorporating different materials and densities as the process moves forward to produce optimal combinations of strength and other properties. "Contemporary construction techniques are slow, labor-intensive, dangerous, expensive, and constrained to primarily rectilinear forms, often resulting in homogenous structures built using materials sourced from centralized factories," the researchers said. Instead, they propose a digital construction platform, an "automated construction system capable of customized on-site fabrication of architectural-scale structures using real-time environmental data for process control."

To see the world through the eyes of a 40-ton polar whale it helps to use a little bug. At least that's what this satellite tracking tag resembles. We're crammed into an inflatable black rubber zodiac on a blustery day in Antarctica's Gerlache Strait, puttering toward a motionless humpback whale. A fist-sized camera with gangly grasshopper-like antennae and suction cup feet sits on a pole resting on scientist Ari Friedlaender's shoulders. Towering icebergs and glacier-draped mountains rise around us.

Elon Musk has a new plan to protect humanity from artificial intelligence -- if you can't beat'em, join'em. In October 2014, Musk ignited a global discussion on the perils of artificial intelligence. Humans might be doomed if we make machines that are smarter than us, Musk warned. He called artificial intelligence our greatest existential threat. Now he is hoping to harness AI in a way that will benefit society.