I vividly remember being offended throughout my high-school education because ‘atoms’ where consistently presented as these perfect slick round little spheres. At one time I even called the teacher a fabricator of lies and shouted: “Atoms aren’t balls!!”.
Of course the poor man couldn’t help it, as it was just decided to teach us high-school kids a outdated, simplified 19th century version of the atom model, rather than confusing us with subatomic particles like protons, neutron, up-quarks, down-quarks, gluons and what do you have nowadays.
In retrospect I was just a kid trying to be witty after having flipped through some of the science magazines of my dad, who was a physicist. Nonetheless, I always remained keen on the underestimated role of simulations in modern science.
Are you still reading? Then this call for proposals might be for you. The STRP Festival, Institute of Complex Molecular Systems, and Animation Studio invite artists, designers and scientists to develop a new visual language for molecular structures.
“Recently, a new problem has emerged for molecular scientists. For many decennia they have used a world-wide accepted way of representing molecules, even though these molecules have never really been seen. Unfortunately, this language is not suitable to represent the increasing complexity of the molecular systems and dynamic processes that are subject of modern research. … We think that a breakthrough in this area is only possible with ideas of people with different specialisms.”
Download the full Call for Proposals (pdf).
Although this TED video has been all over the web and commented on this website already, it still deserves a separate post: Desigineers Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of the MIT Media Lab – Fluid Interfaces Group envision a ‘Sixth Sense’ a wearable gestural interface to pave the way for a more profound interaction with our environment by augmenting it with digital information. The next nature thinking in their argument is striking:
We’ve evolved over millions of years to sense the world around us. When we encounter something, someone or some place, we use our five natural senses to perceive information about it; that information helps us make decisions and chose the right actions to take. But arguably the most useful information that can help us make the right decision is not naturally perceivable with our five senses, namely the data, information and knowledge that mankind has accumulated about everything and which is increasingly all available online.
Hence, they propose to blend all cultural information within the environment as a natural phenomenon. Culture becomes nature. Our environment becomes the interface again.
Of course, like with every emerging next nature, there is always an older nature lost: You’ll never be able to meet new people without immediately googling them.
Related: On the Road, Augmented phone browsing, Avatar Machine, Datafountain, A Society of Simulations. Thanks Ton & Arnoud.
Getting information as fast as possible and on the spot is the trend. So what could be more direct than having information fired directly into the eye?
Today — together with his students — Babak A. Parviz, bionanotechnology expert at University of Washington, is already producing devices that have a lens with one wirelessly Radio Frequency powered LED. To turn such a lens into a functional browser, control circuits, communication circuits and miniature antennas will have to be integrated. These lenses will eventually include hundreds of semitransparent LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye: words, charts, imagery enabling the wearers to navigate their surroundings whithout distraction or disorientation. The optoelectronics in the lens may be controlled by a seperate device that relays information to the lens’s control circuit. Read the rest of this entry »
This guy put his work as an x-ray technician and his gaming hobby together and put his (old) gaming devices under the scanner. I was surprised how some of them actually look like nature, maybe there is a clue in that? (Probably not).
Check out his set of X-Ray Funnies on Flickr.
Never thought I would ever empathize with a hermit crab. But somehow the ’situation’ the creature is in, provides me with a feeling of recognition.
According to this video marine biologists in New Zealand are using glass shells to study hermit crabs. The crabs voluntarily move into the hand-blown glass shells with 7-10 days of the glass shells being added to the tanks – forcing the crabs in, would not be deemed acceptable by the institution’s ethics committee that oversees all experimental design involving animals and humans. This peculiar image of the week was taken by wildlife photographer Frank Greenaway.
Via Madscientistnz. Thanks Selby!
This video shows the first beta version of TwittARound – an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone 3Gs. It shows live tweets around your location on the horizon. Because of the video see-through effect you see where the tweet comes from and how far away it is.
The app does something similar as layar(.com) — launched in Amsterdam (NL) June 17th –, a phone interface that puts a content layer over the phone camera’s videoscreen to locate the nearest toilet, bar, supermarket, bank and other search categories.
Though we still trust our natural eyes and ears; with tools like these, we have but to reach in our pockets to look ahead and see what is coming. The apps are not predicting the future yet, but I am pretty sure we will have to get back on that soon.
via: i.document.m05.de (thanks @droombos) | Related: On the Road | Avatar Machine
The eye passes on more information to the brain than the brain will process. In that sense, the brain functions as a filter. But on the battlefield the risk of neglecting information could mean the difference between life and death. To take away the filter is the idea behind a pentagon-funded project to develop “brainwave binoculars”.
Intelligent binoculars can tap into the brain’s ability to spot patterns and movement to help soldiers detect threats from miles farther away than they can with traditional binoculars. Electrodes on the scalp inside a helmet will record the user’s brain activity as it processes information about high-resolution images produced by wide-angle military binoculars. Those responses will train the binoculars over time to recognize threats.
Via: blnz.com | Related: Scientists Extract Images directly from Brain | Do you Mind? | Turning Brainwaves into Tweets | Brainscan replaces Job Interview
Today browsing and gaming is dominated by the shortcomings of machines, for machines simply do not know who is on the other end. Man needs to interact; therefore man needs to input. Buttons, keys, keyboards, arrows, joysticks, consoles, gun-triggers, tracker-balls and steering-wheels are indispensable. Until now…
Microsoft is making serious efforts to end that era and by doing so, giving a fledged answer to the Nintendo Wii. Project Natal is the codename for Microsofts new and revolutionary way of gaming; taking Xbox into the next generation. It lets you, the user, take full control of the games by simply moving around, jumping, punching and kicking or whatever you feel like doing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Are you using Twitter and looking for faster ways to update your followers with your utterly mundane status on what you are thinking? Adam Wilson from the University of Wisconsin has now created a brain-twitter interface – you think it, you tweet it.
Alright, the brainwave control interface used is nothing fancy – we have seen that one before – and it allows you to write only an average of ten characters a minute. So what is the point here? Should we interpret this work as an emerging technology that is currently in its infancy but will soon reach total world domination? Or rather as a social-cultural reflection on the phenomenon of Twitter and the re-tribalizing functioning it undoubtedly has? My guess is the latter. It might just because of my nextnature mindset, but as far as I can understand it, tweeting is all about we.
Related post: Me, Friending, ancient or otherwise, Brain scan replaces job interview in 5 years?, Tribal communication technology, Want privacy? Use pigeon messaging.
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