The British government has started to plan how it will cope a population of cyborgs within the next decade as our notion of identify is radically transformed by technology.

A new report, The Future of Identify, published by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills lays down the challenge for UK law makers that the huge change technology will create in society.

For the most part, the report is a fairly sensible and comprehensive look at the challenges that the emergence of net natives – those young adults that have grown up with the internet, and regard their virtual identities as every bit as important as their physical ones – will place on society and government.

It examines the impact that a hyper-connected society, awash with persistent data on people's behaviour, will have on crime prevention, healthcare, employment, education.

But there are is also consideration of some of the more esoteric problems that technology will bring.

“Interventions to slow the effects of ageing and improve quality of life for the elderly, drugs to improve memory and cognition, developments in reproductive technologies, cloning, animal/human organ transplants, and genetic modification are also likely to have implications for identities.

“Some of these developments may challenge notions of what it is to be human, as interfaces between humans and machines are also being explored in new ways.”

As medical technology improves, it could even be possible to monitor people's brain activity and understand something about what they are thinking.

“If these technologies become more reliable and accepted in courts as evidence, there are implications for personal identities as thoughts and intentions may no longer be private,” the report notes.

So the government wants to be able to read our minds as evidence in courts. That's a cheery thought for a Monday morning.

We've all heard those annoying prerecorded marketing voice messages before. They're the spam of telephones. While many might just grind their teeth bear it, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to put a stop to it.

The FTC is starting the Robocall Challenge in order to once and for all put a stop to those annoying robotic telemarketers. The challenge offers a $50,000 bounty to anyone who can come up with a technical solution to the robocall menace.

Participating challengers will be given de-identified data on robocall consumer complaints made between June 2008 and September 2012. Data will include information on call dates, call lengths, and consumer area codes.

With the data the challenge participants will have to come up with a technical solution that lives up to the FTC's three prong criteria. Winners will be chosen based on their solutions ease of use, roll out potential, and effectiveness.

While the challenge may sound easy enough the real reason for the competition is because killing off robocalls is hard. The people behind robocalls use caller-ID spoofing so that when a consumer tries to call back the robocaller gets a different number. The method makes it remarkable difficult to trace the source of robocallers.

This will be the FTC's first use of the US government's new challege.gov contest. Challenge.gov was created by the US General Services Administration as a way to offer citizens a chance to come up with solutions to issues facing the nation.

Those interested in stopping the robocall menace have until 17 January to enter the contest. Participants can submit their ideas on the robocall.challenge.gov website starting 25 October. Winners are expected to be announced next April.

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we will all be able to live like Highlanders in about 20 years.

Kurzweil predicts that with the rapid growth of nanotechnology we will never die. The renowned scientist believes that we will soon have the technology necessary to halt and reverse aging.

"I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogram our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever," wrote Kurzweil.

"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively."

If Kurzweil is right, nanobots will improve human physiology in just about every way. His hypothesis states that technology will make us all athletes and geniuses. Not only will we live forever, but we will also live much better lives.

"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen," Kuzweil continued.

"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes."

Imagine, in just 20 odd years you too could end up the next Olympic gold sprinter all because you opted for those bionic legs. Plus, you'll never die so you can win multiple gold medals if you want. Maybe you can win one for each category?

Ford predicts that we'll see completely autonomous vehicles by 2017.

According to an article at Extreme Tech, Ford expects self-cruising cars within five years. The automaker believes we're not that far off from seeing cars driving themselves without the need of human drivers.

Using pre-existing technology like Active Park Assist, Ford envisions a future without terrible drivers. The Focus creator says that robot chauffeurs will reduce the time it takes to commute and prevent accidents.

Ford expects that self-driving cars will reduce travel times by 37.5 per cent and cut traffic jams by 20 per cent. All figures that point to the obvious conclusion that it's a terrible idea to drive a car.

Robots are just better at driving than humans. They beat us in chess, on Jeopardy, and now in driving. It's clear that soon humans will just have to pack it in and let robots create other robots that will eventually become better than even them. It's the cycle of robot life.

Humans used to have the upper hand on robots when it came to driving, but now we don't even have that ace in the hole. So while Ford predicts automated cars by 2017, we predict the robot apocalypse by 2020.

On a side note, whatever happened to flying cars? Why isn't anyone investing in that technological breakthrough? With all this talk of robo-cars you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to build a hover car.

Not that we're bitter or anything...

Online retailing giant Amazon likes to do things a little differently. So when it found it had $775m burning a hole in its pockets, it realised that the best way to spend it was – on what else – a laser-guided robot drone army to man its vast warehouses.

Amazon has agreed to stump up the cash for warehouse picking and transport robot maker Kiva Systems – the brainchild of a former employee at dotcom poster child, Webvan.

Kiva chief executive Mick Mountz saw first-hand how Webvan's inability to get orders out of the doors quickly enough hamstrung the company. The MIT-trained engineer put his mind to devising a more forward-thinking approach to fulfilment.

And what better way, than through the use of robots?

Over the past 10 years, Kiva has landed a string a high-profile customers, including high street fashion retailer GAP.

The Kiva system relies on custom-designed facilities, so that its open floor space can be transformed into a information grid for its robots, which use a combination of 2D barcode stickers and a wireless network to navigate around a warehouse.

Amazon's aim is clear: Kiva's rack-shifting robots should help it reduce the cost of operating its warehouses.

“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfilment centres, said David Clark, vice president of global customer fulfilment, at Amazon.

But if that doesn't prove a fulfilling strategy, it can always just make the robots dance around its warehouses, which would look pretty good.