Quite a few years ago when still in college, I read a book “When things start to think” by the Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Media Lab. It was one of the reason i always had this dream to someday be at the Media Labs and work on some the cool culture and technology intersection related stuff.
So this book introduced me back then to the concept of E Inks. Now part of various devices and particularly made famous by Amazon’s Kindle, the e ink eventually as a technology aimed to become printable on surfaces as thin as the newspapers.
Today FastCompany published an article that talks about T Shirts that will allow for E Ink printing, thus giving a huge avenue to advertisers to use people t shirts as a dynamic display medium. The possibilities that something like this brings about are enormous like maybe even cell phones could eventually get integrated into clothing.
Check out the interesting prospect of E Ink on cloth:
High speed photography is a art form that sometimes produces spell-bounding results. Today one of my facebook friends had shared a link which showed the work that the creative agency Dentsu London did for an advertisement for Canon’s Pixma printer. And I just couldn’t stop myself from sharing it on Technoticles.
The creator, Linden Glendhill, wrote that the shapes have been made out of water based paints and sound come from a speaker. The motion is captured with mic triggered flash units controlled by StopShot.
Corning, a company that work in the areas of specialty glass and ceramics has come up with a video that portrays a future scenario based on the use of glass. It is a well done video and worth a watch.
In the current world of humongous data volumes, smart analysis is the key to making sense of things. And today, more than ever before, the general public has access to data that can be analysed for free. Like via twitter we have access to what a lot of people in the world are talking about at any given moment in time. Mapping this data to various events happening at that time, gives a very powerful technique to analyze the impact of these events (or even tv shows) and the kind of conversations they are generating.
Below is a video that talks about some of this (in its later part). It is also a very nice watch if you like data visualizations.
Might sound hypothetical but a closer look is enough to convince that the internet or the web is slowly but surely approaching towards becoming a brain.
Think of the brain as a collection of nerves, thin pipes with openings to the outside world in form of organs, the eyes, ears, skin, etc.
The internet is also a collection of network pipes with opening to the outside world in form of input devices. Read more…
“To err is human but to really foul things up you need a computer” quotes Paul Ehrlich.
The computer history has witnessed major disasters which had led to loss of people, property and money due to the failure of so called “thinkable machines”.
Failure of technology in a field can lead to major disasters. Therefore “technological disasters” when taken together as a phrase suggests situations in which large numbers of people, property, infrastructure, or economic activity are directly and adversely affected by major industrial accidents, severe pollution incidents, nuclear accidents, air crashes , major fires, or explosion. But is it all due to the failure of a technology? The direct causes of these disasters or emergency situations are identifiable human actions, deliberate or otherwise. In this article we will identify that the causes of these disasters are mostly from the generalized set of human errors and unethical practice of their profession, irrespective of the field of disaster. Read more…
A few months ago, I attended a panel discussion on Immersive Design where the panelists delved into the philosophy of consciousness of technology: when and how do we realize that something (particularly Artificial Intelligence) has gained consciousness. And what would be the form that would gain awareness first (if it hasn’t already gained it). Would it be man made robots, or would it be the self organizing cities or the internet.
These are fascinating topics of discussion, but this particular post is dedicated to some of the coolest robots of the past decade. Some time ago GoRobotics.net put together a list of the top 10 robots of the past decade.
Keepon
It features the very cute (and not necessarily as advanced) KeepOn, designed to allow a broad range of interactions with children (particularly the ones with Autism) which otherwise are impossible to have. Also on the list is the advanced Predator Drone, used in many military strikes by the US recently.
Dance is a powerful medium of expression, and when fused with images and artwork, the result is a remarkable dance theatre that has elements of absolute delight.
The following video presents one of the works of Motionhouse Dance Theatre, a touring dance group that creates remarkable dance theatre, fusing images, action and dynamism to surprise, challenge and delight.
The piece presented here is called Scattered.
Quoting Motionhouse: We are creating a startling interaction between film and live performance, where dancers glide in the air or rapidly move around the space using aerial silks and harnesses. Performed on a huge curved floor (think of a half pipe), which disappears skywards upstage, Scattered uses projection technology to create a world in which the dancers move in, on and through the image.
Scattered delves into the majesty and savagery of water, a fundamental force in our lives as seven dancers plunge into an ocean, tumble down a waterfall, gasp with thirst under a scorching sun and slide on an avalanche to a frozen landscape of arctic beauty.
Such works keep reminding that the space where art and technology merges is a unique and fascinating space, that we need to nurture and appreciate
Artist Lee Jang Sub (www.leejangsub.com) tries to find harmony in the complexity of Seoul city map. He argues that a tree, though complex, has a harmony when seen from an overall perspective. Similar is the case with cities.
Patterns exist everywhere, in space and in time. Some can be easily explained mathematically while others are too chaotic to make sense of.
Fractal geometry is the branch of study that tries to find sense in this chaos.
But what could possibly be the relation between fractal geometry and self organization? Well, it seems that self organization follows fractals laws and results in systems with a fractal pattern.
The aim of any system is, generally, to continuously be in a state of stability.
I heard Amber Case case speak at a 5D (Future of Immersive Design) Conference at the Hammer Museum in LA. Apart from the fascinating discussion that she had with other panelists (from Allosphere and Hanson Robotics), she introduced to me the new field of Cyborg Anthropology. Its a funky name for something that lot of other people do but still it caught attention and stuck on to my memory. In short it is the study of the evolution of the fusion of the human and the machine. Another related field is the field of Cyber (not cyborg) Anthropology.
Here is Amber herself explaining Cyborg Anthropology in a short presentation for Ignite.
PS: Cyborg is short for “cybernetic organism,” a being that is part cybernetic machine and part organism.
