Google 2084
Tongue in cheek speculation on what Google’s home page may look like in 2084, created by Randy Siegel for NY Times. Frankly, I don’t think this is very realistic: We don’t have to wait that long for most of this.
What is Next Nature?
With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Posts Tagged ‘Technorhetoric’
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“Powerbutton” Button
Powerbutton is a badge. Found on buzzworks.nl.
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Fake for Real: QWERTY, the Right Order
Did you ever wonder why the letters on the keyboard are in the order they are? The reason for QWERTY goes way back. This order was chosen to reduce the probability that mechanical typewriters’ hammers would get entangled. Over time, typewriters were replaced by computers. Though various alternative keyboard layouts have been developed from a user-centred perspective, to enable more comfortable and faster typing, the QWERTY layout remains the standard today. Once a technology has become the norm, it seems to take on a certain aura of authenticity. To supplant it, an alternative must be significantly better.
From our Fake for Real series.
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Brain-computer interface for Second Life
While recent developments in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology have given humans the power to mentally control computers, nobody has used the technology in conjunction with the Second Life online virtual world ‘ until now.
A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a BCI system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. To control the avatar on screen, the user simply thinks about moving various body parts ‘ the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms.
The system consists of a headpiece equipped with electrodes that monitor activity in three areas of the motor cortex (the region of the brain involved in controlling the movement of the arms and legs). An EEG machine reads and graphs the data and relays it to the BCI, where a brain wave analysis algorithm interprets the user’s imagined movements. A keyboard emulator then converts this data into a signal and relays it to Second Life, causing the on-screen avatar to move. In this way, the user can exercise real-time control over the avatar in the 3D virtual world without moving a muscle.
Future plans are to improve the BCI so that users can make Second Life avatars perform more complex movements and gestures. The researchers hope the mind-controlled avatar, which was created through a joint medical engineering project involving Keio’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and the Tsukigase Rehabilitation Center, will one day help people with serious physical impairments communicate and do business in Second Life.
(For video of the Second Life BCI, check the links on the Ushida & Tomita Laboratory news page, right above the first photo.)
Via PinkTentacle. See also: Playing Dreams, Out of Body Experience.
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Printing virtuality
Phone, internet, television, photography, even books or music: today it is hard for the mind to escape from virtual worlds. A day without communication or interaction could make us feel like we left home without a wallet. The key to why communication and virtual reality is such a success, hence adopted in our every-day-life, is the concept of being in two places at the same time. This ability makes us feel like we can experience twice as much in the time given.
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The things we design end up designing us
“While battling the forces of nature, man has become more and more independent of physical conditions. At the same time, however, he has become more and more dependent of technical means, of other people and of his own self. Just think of the various forms of dependence that come along with driving a car. There have to be highways, for which road tax has to be paid. Petrol supply has to be arranged. Once on the road, you will have to concentrate, otherwise you might end up in a car crash. You will have to show consideration for other road users, and you simply need to have your driver`s licence. And all this is required just to move your body from A to B and save a little time. Physical independence is achieved at the expense of social and mental dependence. Highly precise and productive machines often require highly precise and productive functioning humans to operate them. The things we design often end up designing us”
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Observe/me Bags
No, these aren’t X-ray pictures, these are designers bags! Part of the Observe/me fashion line of bags, wallets, gloves and coats created for the modern observed people. Everything has already been made transparent and is preprinted with not always innocent content. The products are meant to show people that they have in fact less privacy than they might think. The creator, Geeske Wiarda, aims to create awareness and debate with her appealing products.
Related: Cat bag |Ă‚Â CCTV Total World Domination.
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The Professors Doppelgänger Robot
Although there are numerous researchers out there creating humanoid robots, none are as explicit about the close relation between anthropomorphism and narcissism as professor Hiroshi Ishiguro from ATR Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. Ishiguro decided that if he’s going to be a roboticist he might as well create an “angry eyes” twin-brother version of himself, the Geminoid HI-1 (japanese website).
The remarkable realism comes from silicone molds cast from Ishiguro’s own body. Ishiguro is using his robot twin brother to teach his classes for him, and creep out students with lifelike movements such as blinking, “breathing” and fidgeting. The robot can be remotely controlled via a motion capture system that tracks Ishiguro’s mouth movements and allows the robot to speak his voice – or that of an assistant if he’s feeling particularly uninspired.
The aim of the project is to experiment with the viability of tele-presence and find out if he can really command the attention of a classroom with a mere robot doppelgänger. Ishiguro thinks future business meetings will have androids and humans side by side at the table. Well, lets be positive, it sure would save a lot of business class flights. There is also a peculiar video of Geminoid HI-1.
Via Engadget, Related: Robot Dance, Social Robots, Child Care Robot.
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Digizerk
Henk Rozema displaying his invention (2006), the digital tombstone “Digizerk”. It was only a question of time that global digitalization would be introduced on cemeteries. The digital contents can be viewed only by relatives who own a remote-control device. The newest model runs on solar power. Presenting slideshows of the most important moments of the deceased are perhaps as dull as one could expect from a “new medium” like this. Here’s an idea for Henk Rozema to work on: I think (correct me if I’m wrong) it was in the Fox-movie “I Robot” that – through a StarWars-like-beam-device – actor Will Smith communicates with a holographic projection of the US Robotics-leading scientist (James Cromwell) who just fell from the companies building and died. The device contains some clues and answers on his death, provided and triggered by asking the right questions.
What if in future, people would record and save their ideas and answers to questions in their tombs for the generations to come. Cemetery = library knowledge-base! Bas Groenendaal has done something similar with his project: “Release“.Digizerk.eu | digizerken.nl | video (dutch) | Related posts: Vin memoriam | Pencils made of cremated humans | Human DNA in trees
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Surplus – Terrorized into Being Consumers
For those who find it to difficult to read John Zerzan, there is still a Youtube version. Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is a Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, prominently featuring Zerzan. The film was created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg.
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Breaking Point?
John Zerzan, published in Green Anarchy issue #24 – Spring/Summer 2007
The rapidly mounting toll of modern life is worse than we could have imagined. A metamorphosis rushes onward, changing the texture of living, the whole feel of things. In the not-so-distant past this was still only a partial modification; now the Machine converges on us, penetrating more and more to the core of our lives, promising no escape from its logic.
The only stable continuity has been that of the body, and that has become vulnerable in unprecedented ways. We now inhabit a culture, according to Furedi (1997), of high anxiety that borders on a state of outright panic. Postmodern discourse suppresses articulations of suffering, a facet of its accommodation to the inevitability of further, systematic desolation. The prominence of chronic degenerative diseases makes a chilling parallel with the permanent erosion of all that is healthy and life-affirming inside industrial culture. That is, maybe the disease can be slowed a bit in its progression, but no overall cure is imaginable in this context–which created the condition in the first place.
As much as we yearn for community, it is all but dead. McPherson, Smith-Lovin and Brashears (American Sociological Review 2006) tell us that 19 years ago, the typical American had three close friends; now the number is two. Their national study also reveals that over this period of time, the number of people without one friend or confidant has tripled. Census figures show a correspondingly sharp rise in single-person households, as the technoculture — with its vaunted “connectivity” — grows steadily more isolating, lonely and empty.
In Japan “people simply aren’t having sex” (Kitamura 2006) and the suicide rate has been rising rapidly. Hikikimori, or self-isolation, finds over a million young people staying in their rooms for years. Where the technoculture is most developed, levels of stress, depression and anxiety are highest.
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Featherless Chicken
Behold the featherless chicken, created by Scientists at the genetics faculty at the Rehovot Agronomy Institute near Tel Aviv, Israel.The idea behind the development of this naked bird is that it will create a more ‘convenient’ and energy efficient chicken which can live in warm countries where feathered chickens don’t do well and cooling systems are too expensive to be commonly affordable. Not growing feathers saves energy that can be used to grow meat.
Critics say the feather-free chickens will suffer more than normal birds. Males might be unable to mate, because they cannot flap their wings, and “naked” chickens of both sexes are more susceptible to parasites, mosquito attacks and sunburn.
The chicken is “disgusting”, says Joyce D’Silva of Compassion in World Farming. “It’s a prime example of sick science and the suggestion that it would be an improvement for developing countries is obscene.”
“Factory farming is such an inappropriate technology for developing countries because it uses scarce resources like water, electricity and grain that could be used for human consumption, to produce meat that only the middle classes can afford.”
The bird is not genetically modified – it comes from a natural breed whose characteristics have been known for 50 years. Read more at NewScientist.
See also: The tissue engineered Meat of Tomorrow, Fish Bowl – Ready Made Meal, Confetti Chicken, How to print an Organ.
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CCTV total world domination
Painting by Banksy. Related: Cellphone Treemasts
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Excuse me, Is Your Tooth Ringing?
The ‘tooth phone’ consists of a tiny vibrator and a radio wave receiver implanted into a tooth during routine dental surgery. Sound, which comes into the tooth as a digital radio signal, is transferred to the inner ear by bone resonance, meaning information can be received anywhere and at any time – and nobody else can listen in. However, the ‘telephone tooth’ does not allow people to talk back to callers or make outgoing calls.
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RFID Chips: Is your cat infected with a Computer Virus?
A group of computer researchers from Amsterdam have demonstrated that it is possible to insert a software virus into radio frequency identification tags, part of a microchip-based tracking technology in growing use in commercial and security applications.
Many pets, as well as commercial livestock, have been injected with a tiny microchip that can identify them if they get lost (pets) or are later found to habor disease (livestock). Up until now, no one thought these microchips, called RFID tags, could themselves be infected with computer viruses. Now researchers at the Vrije Universiteit have discovered that computer viruses in animals, supermarket products, airline baggages and other physical objects are a real.
RFID tags are tiny, inexpensive microchips that can be attached to physical objects, such as products in a supermarket, or injected into animals. When a specialized kind of chip reader attached to a computer sends out a radio wave on a certain frequency, all RFID tags within range respond to it by identifying themselves. The retail sector, for example, is planning to replace the now-familiar bar code with RFID tags in the coming years because RFID-tagged products can be scanned much faster and more accurately than products with bar codes.
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Even Better than The Real Thing
Give it to me baby! Meet the teledildonics.
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Child Care Robot
NEC corporation is developping a “Childcare Robot PaPeRo” capable to play with and watch over children. The Childcare Robot is capable of recognizing and verbally communicating with people, sending images by mobile phone to persons far away, as well as playing games and singing along with others. With it, NEC is looking for new relationships and possibilities as a part of children’s groups at daycare centers, kindergartens and elementary schools.
“The aim of our research at NEC is not just to further robot technology, but to examine and develop better human-machine interface through the concept of living with robots“, said Yoshihiro Fujita, Project Manager, NEC Incubation Center.
