Clipmarks | wildcat's 'technology' clips

Five Innovations that Will Change Our Lives Over the Next Five Years

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:06:29 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: From IBM

IBM Reveals Five Innovations that Will Change Our Lives Over the Next Five Years

Unveiled today, the second annual "IBM Next Five in Five" is a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years.

The list is based on market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM’s Labs around the world that could make these innovations possible.

In the next five years, our lives will change through technology innovations in the following ways:

It will be easy for you to be green and save money doing it:

The way you drive will be completely different:

You are what you eat, so you will know what you eat:

Your cell phone will be your wallet, your ticket broker, your concierge, your bank, your shopping buddy, and more:

Doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat you:

Tags: ibm, innovation, technology, life, science

Fuel from food waste: bacteria provide power

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:00:38 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Researchers have combined the efforts of two kinds of bacteria to produce hydrogen in a bioreactor, with the product from one providing food for the other. According to an article in the August issue of Microbiology Today, this technology has an added bonus: leftover enzymes can be used to scavenge precious metals from spent automotive catalysts to help make fuel cells that convert hydrogen into energy.

Hydrogen has three times more potential energy by weight than petrol, making it the highest energy-content fuel available. Research into using bacteria to produce hydrogen has been revived thanks to the rising profile of energy issues.

We throw away a third of our food in the UK, wasting 7 million tonnes a year. The majority of this is currently sent to landfill where it produces gases like methane, which is a greenhouse gas 25 more potent than carbon dioxide. Following some major advances in the technology used to make "biohydrogen", this waste can now be turned into valuable energy.

Tags: bacteria, biotechnology, bioreactor, hydrogen, power, food waste

The Coming Convergence

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:13:34 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The message is clear: the choices we make now will converge to create a near and distant future that will be almost unbelievably wonderful or unimaginably catastrophic, or both. This knowledgeable, fascinating glimpse into the future is a must read for everyone interested in technology, upcoming innovations in business, science fiction, and the future.

Clip Source: www.sfwa.org

The Coming Convergence
The Surprising Ways Diverse Technologies Interact to Shape Our World and Change the Future

Imagine direct communication links between the human brain and machines, or tailored materials capable of adapting by themselves to changing environmental conditions, or computer chips and environmental sensors embedded into everyday clothing, or medical technologies that eliminate currently untreatable conditions such as blindness and paralysis. Now imagine all of these developments occurring at the same time. The stuff of science fiction?

Not So. These are actually the reasonable predictions of scientists attempting to forecast a few decades into the future based on the rapid pace of innovation.

Longer, healthier lives

Cheap, generally available food, energy, and technology

Reduced pollution and environmental stress

Economic disruption during transitional periods

Excessive power in too few hands

Increased vulnerability from overdependence on technology.

Tags: convergence, technologies, future, singularity

Pioneering Research in Neuromorphic Electronics that Function Like the Biological Brain

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:36:58 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The HRL team's ultimate goal is to build a low-power, compact electronic chip combining a novel analog circuit design and a neuroscience-inspired architecture that can address a wide range of cognitive abilities--perception, planning, decision making, and motor control. In the initial two phases of the SyNAPSE program, the team will translate the neuronal and synaptic functions of the biological cortex into similar microelectronic functions.

Clip Source: www.alzheimer.ca

Clip Source: www.prweb.com

HRL Laboratories, LLC, will begin pioneering research to develop electronics that will simulate the cognitive capabilities and efficiencies of the biological brain.

The daunting undertaking is part of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) SyNAPSE, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, program. HRL will lead a group of industry and university research laboratories with expertise in core areas of neuro and cognitive science in the groundbreaking research.

Despite exponential advances in computing technology over the last decade, the limitations of hardware and architecture prohibit computers from functioning independently in real-world scenarios. The goal of the SyNAPSE program is to bridge biology and electronics and establish a new paradigm for creating more intelligent machines that can interact with, react to, and actually learn from their environments.

Tags: technology, neuromorphic electronics, electronics

Thought control: it's the computer world's latest game plan

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:44:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “This is the tip of the iceberg for what is possible,” said Tan Le, another of Emotiv's co-founders, during a recent press demonstration. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and the brain as a new interface - the Holy Grail is the mind.”

Clip Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. Now get ready for another radical and rather unsettling leap in video games technology: thought control.

Satoru Iwata, the president and chief executive of Nintendo - which is expected to sell about 25million units of its successful Wii video games console this financial year - has no doubts about the next gaming boom. “As soon as we think something in our brain, it will appear within a video game,” he told The Times in an exclusive interview.

“You'll probably need to wear some kind of hat or helmet or something.”

As far-fetched as it sounds, Mr Iwata's claim - which brings to mind the plot of Craig Thomas's bestselling 1977 novel Firefox, about a mind-reading Soviet fighter aircraft - is already coming true: the world's first thought-controlled game is expected to be launched by the Sydney company Emotiv by the end of this year.

Tags: gaming, neuroscience, mind, emotiv

Mind over Matter

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:07:21 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

From the Hollywood film Firefox to the television show Heroes, science fiction writers have always dreamt of the day when humans could control machines with the power of thought alone.

Now British scientists are turning the vision into reality with a device that allows objects to be manipulated with brain waves.

The prototype, developed at Essex University, can already be used to play simple computer games. By imagining a movement, the wearer of the hat-shaped device can tell the computer to move an object around a screen or a robot around a room.

The researchers hope their technology will eventually allow people to move wheelchairs and drive cars with their thoughts.

How I translated my brainwaves into motion

The development came as the video games maker Nintendo disclosed that it wanted to build on the success of the motion-sensitive technology used in the best-selling console, the Wii, by developing games that can be controlled by thought.

Tags: mind, matter, brain waves

“Metabolically Dominant Soldier.”

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:57:37 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: nextbigfuture.com

$3 billion super soldier program: 10 times muscle endurance, 7 foot vertical leap, wall crawling, personal flight and more

DARPA today has a long-term, $3 billion program to help make such a “Metabolically Dominant Soldier.” In other words, the military is studying how to use technology and biology to meld man and machine and transcend the limits of the human body. Described the project director, “My measure of success is that the International Olympic Committee bans everything we do" The $3 billion program is definitely trying to achieve transhuman performance goals.

The wearable gear would enable running at 100 meter olympic sprinter speed for hours and the 7 foot vertical leap, the wall crawling, personal flight, invisibility, greatly enhanced strength, better body armor and carrying bigger and more powerful weapons.

The drugs and genetic enhancements and some technology which gets applied would allow for regeneration, faster healing

endurance of an Alaskan sled dog

cognitive enhancement

Tags: super soldier, human body, enhancement

Intel bets millions on speedy DNA sequencing chips

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:29:25 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.theregister.co.uk

Intel is among several investors pumping $100m into a biotech start-up that wants to make mapping an individual's genome as routine as taking an X-ray.

Pacific Biosciences of Menlo Park, California anticipates that by 2013 it will be able to sell a DNA sequencer that can tackle a person's entire hereditary information in as little as 15 minutes. The company's technology centers on the SMRT (Single-Molecule, Real-Time) chip, which is DNA sequencing hardware. Interestingly, companies making DNA sequencing machines have been following a Moore's Law type of trajectory where they're reducing both the time and cost associated with cranking through genomes by about half every 18 months.

The technology departs from the current industry-standard Sanger method of gene inspection — used for the Human Genome Project, which took approximately 13 years to complete

PacBio uses a faster machine that inspects longer blocks of DNA sequences

Tags: intel, dna, sequencing chips, biotech

Touched Echo Interactive Exhibit Uses Bone Conduction Technology

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:20:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.ohgizmo.com

Touched Echo Interactive Exhibit Uses Bone Conduction Technology

Most large museums and art galleries today provide some kind of personal audio device that visitors can carry with them if they wish to learn more about the various exhibits on display. A similar idea has been implemented at the Brühl’s Terrace in Dresden, Germany, but instead of having to wear headphones or hold some device to their ear, visitors simply need to rest their elbows on a metal rail and cover their ears with their hands. Using bone conduction technology (or what they call ‘Touched Echo’) the sounds of airplanes and explosions simulating the air raid that occurred on February 13, 1945 are transmitted from the metal rail through the visitor’s arms and directly into the inner ear. The sounds are completely inaudible to someone who isn’t touching the rail, and since the terrace is located outside the bone conduction system is a perfect solution because it’s completely weatherproof

Tags: touched echo interactive exhibit uses bone conduct

Will Green Technologies Exceed the Internet as the "Mother of All Markets"?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:13:24 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

We're talking about nothing less than the reindustrialization of the whole planet.

Venture Capitalist, John Doerr,

The legendary venture capitalist, John Doerr is fond of white-boarding the difference in the Internet boom and the coming boom in green technology as follows:

Internet made of: Bits, Pixels vs. Green Technology made of: Atoms, molecules

What is at stake: Finding Friends on FaceBook vs. Life on the Planet

Capital needed: Low, Google needed $25 million vs. High, Hundreds of millions

Time to success: Quick, 3 to 5 years vs. Longer, 5 to 10 years

Market Potential: Large Billions vs. Enormous Trillions

Alternative energy development of more energy-efficient products will create the next great boom cycle. Green tech development will include viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water.

Tags: green technologies, internet, market

The "Idea Acceleration Chamber"- " Kage Roi"

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:25:58 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

You've heard lots about genomic this and nano-that, but deep down we've all really known what high-tech was meant to provide: great big room-filling voice controlled displays.

Technology company Kayac have developed a prototype "idea acceleration chamber" called "Kage Roi". Microphones monitor conversations and search the web for relevant images and pages, displaying them directly on the meeting table, and even controlling the ambient lighting to match the desired mood.

Not since nuclear power has a technology with such an awesome potential for use and abuse come about. Once the idea is liberated from the corporate world and makes its way into the home, it could be the most awesome setting for parties and alcoholically-influenced discussions you've ever seen

while many struggle to make faster this and bigger that, others realise that outside of specialists there isn't any need to make some things better, but to blend them better with their human users.

Tags: kayac, tech, displays

Hot tech to watch in the next four years

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:53:12 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The lifespan of technology is such that it’s hard enough to buy a computer that will last you more than three years, let alone be state of the art after 6 months. So when Gartner Group – an information and technology research and advisory firm – releases their “Top 10 Technologies” list, it isn’t for “the next decade,” but rather “for the next four years.”

Such a list has just been released bm y the world’s leading technology research center, and appears below.

1. Multicore and hybrid processors

2. Virtualization and fabric computing

3. Social networks and social software

4. Cloud computing and cloud/Web platforms

5. Web mashups

6. User Interface

7. Ubiquitous computing

8. Contextual computing

9. Augmented reality

10. Semantics

Tags: technology, hot, computers, web

Virtuality and reality 'to merge'

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:58:26 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "In virtual worlds we do real romance, real learning, real business. Virtual reality is real reality."

He added: "Games are the cutting edge of what is happening - we are going to spend more of our time in virtual reality environments.

"Fully emergent games is really where we want to go. We will do most of our learning through these massively parallel interactions."

"Play is how we principally learn and principally create," he said.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Computers the size of blood cells will create fully immersive virtual realities by 2033, leading inventor Ray Kurzweil has predicted.

Exponential growth in processing power and the shrinking of technology would see the development of microscopic computers, he said.

"We will see a billion-fold increase in the price-performance of computers in the next 25 years," he said.

"Virtual will compete with reality," he told the Game Developers Conference.

Pea-sized computer

Mr Kurzweil said it was possible to accurately predict the growth and change in computing power by looking at how it had developed over the last 50 years.

"There will be a 100,000-fold shrinking of computer technology over the next 25 years," he said.

"Today you can put a pea-sized computer inside your brain, if you have Parkinson's disease and want to replace the biological neurons that were destroyed by the disease."

the blood cell computers would be able to "produce full immersion virtual reality from inside the nervous system".

Tags: virtuality, reality, merging

Is life a gift?

Thu, 15 May 2008 20:55:30 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: ieet.org

Mike LaTorra

Ethical Technology

Harvard’s Michael Sandel argues in his book The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering that life is a gift and that we should accept the unbidden nature of this gift, working toward acceptance and solidarity with others rather than seeking unbridled mastery over human biology. But is life properly viewed as a gift?

The claim that life is a gift automatically entails a responsibility on the part of the recipient of that gift to respond with gratitude and without taking issue with the precise attributes and characteristics of what has been given and received. One is supposed to live by the aphorism “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” (or you might see a lot of rotten teeth). So to accept Sandel’s premise that life is a gift is also to accept that one is obliged to respond in a certain way and without closely scrutinizing the actual conditions of what has been received.

But is life a gift at all?

Tags: ethics, technology

Spiritual Transcendence in Transhumanism

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:15:29 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: jetpress.org

The evolution of science and technology to the next several levels must include a harmonious symbiosis between science and religion. Human civilization has so far shown a stereotyped conflict between either. Both science and religion must be regarded as equally important methods for spiritual transcendence in transhumanism. This paper discusses how religion can complement the ideals of transhumanism if looked from a new perspective. The paper draws primarily on Eastern religious thought, particularly Hinduism, to explain why it is important for transhumanists and progressive futurists of science and technology to find common ground with religion in order to evolve. It is important for transhumanism to extract the transcendent messages from different religions. It also becomes important for religious thinkers to draw from the ideals of transhumanist philosophies in order to allow the survival of progressive religious thought into the undefined future.

Tags: transcendence, transhumanism, religion