New generations of Input Devices …
This article notes a new type of Input Device that is using Holographic Keypads. It sounds really interesting, however when I went to read the web pages, I found little details about how the product actually works, and the required hardware. Hopefully I’ll find more of this in the future.
Good intentions with bad results …
I was listening to NPR yesterday and they were covering the recent events in Bolivia. The specific segment was about Indians that live up in the mountains, and their current situation. The reporter talked about the various recent events that have further damaged the economic conditions of the Indians.
The one comment that really hit me was that a large number of local textile plants have closed down recently, limiting the opportunities for work. And why did these plants close down? The reporter indicated that it was due to the tremendous influx of “used clothing” being donated from the United States!
So with all of the “good intentions” that we have as Americans by giving away our “used” possessions, it seems that we are creating some very bad results … putting companies in these countries out of business. I would have never thought about this as a possibility … and obviously the people donating their clothing and other possessions have not thought about this either.
The world is often far more complex than than people think … and we often over look the possible consequences of our actions.
The Neuron-Silicon Interface and the Future of Neural Prosthetics
Ok … I have to admit that I really want to go to this Neuron-Silicon Interface conference. This is even beyond where the wearable computer research is going … however along the same path. At the upcoming IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers there are a number of very impressive presentations on where the wearable market is moving … however “Neuron-Silicon Interface” will take this concept even further.
When listening to Ray Kurzweil speak about the future, I see these types of discussions very enlightening on our progress in exploring the man-machine interfaces of the future. What is interesting is when you begin to think about the possibilities that will emerge as these neural implants become much more “mainstream”. Just as we are seeing a new culture of piercings, tatoos, and now “extreme body modifications“, I can see in the not-too-distant-future that our culture will embrace a wide range of neural enhancing technologies.
I love the wild ride that we are on … and look forward to what we can’t see over that next rise.
The transparent society gets closer … or a closeup?
There is a merging of technologies, and the evolution of technologies, that is creating the possiblity of every person becoming a “sensor” that can be used by others. With the Internet, 802.11 wireless, wearable computers, cell phones with cameras, and now embedded cameras … we’ll soon be able to share and broker audible and visual information from anywhere.
This article shows what HP engineers have been up to with embedded cameras in glasses. When coupled with a small computer that has recording capabilities, GPS, and wireless connectivity, we could all be sharing recorded information about almost anything that we experience. If you have not read David Brin’s The Transparent Society … you ought to. We’re getting closer and closer …
A New Idea for E-Paper
I was just talking with a friend about when E-Paper (ePaper?) is going to arrive. This article explains yet another possible way that we are going to see this occur. It involves oil and water, and a way to cause the water to be attracted and repelled by the individual pixels.
I’m not sure if I am as interested in this as a replacement for paper … which would be interesting … as much as for fashion, or other purposes. Imagine giving someone a gift wrapped in this paper! 😉
Man and Machine merging …
I have continued to read about Kevin Warwick and his work with Cybernetics. He is becoming one of the earths first true Cyborgs. Along with Steve Mann (who I’ll post about in the next few days) they are leading the world with this type of research.
In this latest article called “No more talk … Just think” he is exploring an area that I have discussed with friends for quite some time. If the proper sensors were inserted into the brain, a simple application could be used to learn certain neural firing patterns as you thought, or thought of moving a muscle, etc. Once these patterns were learned, we could assign new ways to communicate the presence of these patterns. So now simply thinking about something could be detected by software, and then that software could trigger any type of action. This puts a very different type of spin on “my ears were burning” … I might think about my wife, which would trigger the software to send an instant message to my wife. Even further, it might send a message to her cyborg-implant, which would then activate a small heater implanted in her ear. 😉
With cyborg implants that have visible or non-visible (wireless) communciations you will have whole new ways of communicating … between humans, and between humans and machines.
The coming of Dynamic Blogs, and Log Blogs
In following the evolution of the “blog”, I have been thinking about a lot of advanced services that could be converted into “blogging” and “aggregating”.
For example, I am currently involved in a wireless networking project. The wireless access points use the Syslog protocol to send event notifications to a central server for monitoring. I recently realized that it would be great to convert these Syslog events into a blog! So instead of running a conventional “syslogd” on my server, I would instead run a version that created it’s output in RSS format.
Upon thinking about this further, it became obvious that another possible solution would be to instead create a simple log-file-to-RSS engine. It would be given tasks to “tail” a particular log file, and then convert the output into RSS format. This could even be done on demand by a script …
What is very interesting are the number of these “dynamic” blogs that are appearing, and what other possibilities exist …
Wired News has a beautiful new (beta) application for RSS. Give it a search term, and it returns articles that include the term. For example, this feed shows all the articles that contain my name; subscribe to it, and you’ll be informed of anything new written about me on Wired News. We used to call this ego surfing, now I have an ego aggregator. Progress is amazing. As Steve Gillmor says, aggregators are the new desktop, RSS the format that ties together information flows. We call this information routing. Powerful stuff.
[Scripting News]
More and more blogging tools …
I like seeing the increase in blogging tools. There is a lot of work being done to refine the various models and use cases for blogging. I came across w.blogger through the post below. People are building numerous tools for hosting blogs, rendering the posts, and also for posting to hosted blogs. There is a mainstream product just waiting to happen here!
bBlog 0.6-pre1. bBlog is a blogger. [freshmeat.net]
We were acquired …
I’m finally getting close to catching up on my reading. I had over 15,000 articles back-up in Radio, and have blasted through them in under two months. I have to admit that I just plain deleted many of them … and found more Radio bugs in the process!
One of the companies that I was consulting for, Vultus, was acquired back in June. We were out looking for funding, and creating the next generation of our technology, and found a really interesting fit with The SCO Group. We began to explore … what if we took our architecture for platform-independent UI, and moved this to the back-end, and uncouple it from UI? Now we have a whole new place to create the future! It’s fun to read about your own adventures in the press …
SCO scoops up Web services start-up. The Unix software company, at the center of a controversial Linux suit, buys Vultus, a maker of software for building Web-based applications. [CNET News.com]
Evolutionary Developmental Systems
I am getting pretty excited about the upcoming conference this weekend. The Accelerating Change Conference 2003 will be held on Stanford University campus in the Bay Area, and is going to have a great group of speakers and conversations. It’ll be happening Friday the 12th, through Sunday the 14th, and I’ll be there … and blogging.
One of hte best things is that I’ll have a chance to discuss some of my work here at SCO, and what we are developing. This group of people is always great for ideas and feedback!