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Bucky
by Richard Buckminster Fuller was a dreamer. No doubt about it. He had all sorts of ideas about how technology could be employed to solve the ills of our society and species. Most of them never saw the light of day, although his name lives on in a number of areas. There's an excellent opportunity to learn more about him by visiting an excellent new retrospective on him that is in New York's Whitney Museum, and there's a New Yorker article that you can read online.
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Let's Dwell On Design
by The Dwell On Design Conference begins tomorrow here in (not so) sunny Los Angeles and it looks to be a fantastic few days of talks, house tours, and exhibitions. Oh, and did I mention that I managed to get my hot little hands on a FREE PASS to the event for a lucky Correlations reader?
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The Cell Wars: Google's Android vs. Apple's iPhone
So I thought I'd take a break from my obsessing about robots on Mars and turn my attention to some earthbound expert systems. It's time for your faithful blogger to upgrade his cell phone. Enter technophilic obsessive compulsive disorder.
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Open House at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Ever wanted to see where those wonderful spaceships we send out there are designed and assembled? Wanted to talk to the scientists and engineers who do that? Well, this weekend you can do it quite easily. Go to JPL!
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Time in your Eyes
by Last night I watched a great reality-style documentary on the philosopher Derrida, and was struck by something he said; that as we age, our eyes are the only parts of our bodies that remain unchanged. I was curious about what scientific research might be out there to support the notion, so I googled "eyes & age" and came across an interesting study that was conducted recently by Danish scientists.
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Geospatial Technologies & The Art of Destruction
The images below may look like pieces of modern art, but they're actually hi-res shots of human rights violations around the world. Developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project uses GIS & satellite imagery to get a bird's eye view of destruction on the ground.
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Pie in the basement
You've probably heard of the concept of vertical farming. Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier generated a lot of buzz last year with his proposals for geoengineered sky farms designed to feed our planet's growing population. But, as usual, the Japanese are way ahead of the curve, and have been at this indoor gardening business for some time.
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Junk Science
So when we left off in my last entry we were talking about shooting satellites out of orbit and the ulterior motives of our government. Oh, and we were trying to figure out what this all had to do with DIY month here on the WIRED Science website. I think I figured out the, umm, correlation.
Target Practice
So the other day the Pentagon made the decision to shoot down an ailing spy satellite. Why exactly would they go through all the trouble of firing a missile (that costs millions of dollars) at what amounted to a school bus-sized piece of space junk? And what does it have to do with DIY month? Answers and conspiracy theories abound after the jump.
A Buggy Perspective
When I was little, my concept of infinity was that our entire twinkling universe fit neatly inside of God's belt buckle. And standing next to God of course, was his Mum. From that world I'd zoom out again past their stars and suns and solar system, until all of that space fit inside a bigger God's belt buckle, who lived in a bigger world, with his bigger Mum. Infinity to my 5 year old mind, was essentially worlds existing endlessly & simultaneously within bigger worlds, and of course, bigger belt buckles.
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Do-It-Yourself Supercomputing
by A little-known fact about me is that I once built a supercomputer from scratch and then used it to do supercomputing. Do-It-Yourself Month finally offers me an occasion to brag a bit.
Do-it-yourself molecular biology
by Learn a low-tech way to extract DNA!
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The World's Thinnest Notebook
by As readers know, I've been searching for a laptop that's small, lightweight, compact, and easily portable--not as a primary computer for data, but rather a writing tool for travel and coffeehouse composition. Well folks, I've converted to Mac. Officially. This post comes straight from my new MacBook Air...
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DIY: A Presidential Debate on Science and Technology
It's official. Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama have been invited to ScienceDebate2008. We're so close to seeing this through and now more than ever, we need your help! The time has come to get involved...
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Finding DIY Solace in iPod Battery Replacement
by It's Spotlight on DIY month here at WIRED SCIENCE Digital, so I thought I would revisit one of my first attempts at taking something apart and fixing it up. Over a year ago, the hacking bug bit me. Though I spent 4 years at MIT among some of the best hackers in the world, I never got the urge to take anything apart in an effort to make an improvement, make it cool, or just to see what was under the hood. I admired my hacker friends at school, and often took advantage of their concoctions (my favorite being the homemade DDR system in our lounge). In a sense, the hacking bug finally caught up to me out of necessity: due to my music obsession I needed an operational iPod without having to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a new one.
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Climate Models Don't Predict Climate
We know the radiative properties of the atmosphere are changing as a result of human activity. We know that such changes are a primary factor in how the atmosphere behaves. We have, therefore three choices (you can pick all in combination, or just one, but you can't pick none of them) 1) accelerating climate change 2) large cutback in emissions and 3) artificial mechanisms to remove greenhouse gases from the air. The climate models don't really have much to say about how much, when, or how, which are really the big questions. So what are the models for?
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Fashion :: The Future is so Yesterday
Fashion Week is about to kick off in New York tomorrow, but some of the craziest and most futuristic styles were actually showcased yesterday at the Boston Museum of Science. Dubbed, Seamless: Computational Couture, the show featured emerging designers from around the world who incorporate experimental technology into their designs. Check out a few of these concept pieces below:
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Framing Science At The NC Science Blogging Conference
I spent Saturday at the NC Science Blogging Conference... but don't let the title fool you. Science bloggers, writers, and journalists from around the world converged in Raleigh, North Carolina to talk about opportunities in new media, our role, and the changing environment.
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Boring Macworld Photos PLUS Parting Thoughts!
by My final thought about the event is that it was a big sack of fun to be there, but I'm not all psyched up about the "big" announcements. I shall further express my lack of psyching in list form...
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Macworld '08: Quicken Redux
Anyone who uses Quicken for PC and then has had the unfortunate displeasure of switching to the Mac version feels an overwhelming sense of castration. Sometimes I feel like Intuit went out of its way to say, "Heeeey, suck it Mac User!" The interface is dreadful, batch editing is a drag and many times I yell at the transaction download system like it was an under-achieving teenage son. You might imagine, therefore, that I was pleased to run into a guy in front of the main showroom handing out flyers for the Intuit booth and its brand new iteration of Quicken for Mac, which will be out this fall.
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Where do our radio waves go?
I was reading on the internet that our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930's have already traveled past 100,000 stars. Which got me to wondering...What happens to these radio waves? Do they degrade? Would it actually be possible to listen to these broadcasts if someone theoretically set up a massive receiver like the one at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in The Quiet Zone segment?
'Saved' by MacBook Air
Remember the quandary over Mac or PC?
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Diagnosing disease, the old-fashioned way
Medical technology marries the old with the new to "sniff" out infections and cancer.
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2008 CES: The Neonode N2
While eating at a schmancy sushi place in the Venetian, I noticed a Nordic looking fellow when he pulled out what looked like an iPhone accidentally knocked up a CB radio mic. The bastard device in question was the Neonode N2, a cellular phone of Swedish citizenship with no carrier in the US yet.
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2008 CES: 3-D DLP HDTV
Samsung really impressed me this year. From the capable yet stylish Blackjack II cell phone to a powerful virtual surround Sound Bar with a wireless Bluetooth subwoofer to a new Ultra Mobile PC to RSS on your TV to OLEDs and larger smooth HDs to a freaking PERSONAL CELL TOWER, this peddler in electronic delights was probably my favorite overall exhibitor.
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A Holiday Gift Guide for Science Geeks
If there's one thing that I've learned from working on this show, it's that science nerds truly are a diverse & colorful bunch. So this year, instead of re-gifting that "one-size-fits-all" pocket protector, here's a handy little guide to finding that perfect science-inspired present for geeks of all persuasions.
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Missionairies of Macintosh
Mac or PC? And if I commit to Mac, will I too be Saved? Do I need to be? Will I become a Mac fundamentalist scorning the others at Monday staff meetings? Will I begin to preach the gospel of Apple? I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of responsibility...
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The Beauty of Old Science
Science of the 1800's always seems filtered to us through a sepia-colored imagination. There's a warmth & beauty to the feel of the time that is so different from the cold and clinical aesthetic of modern science. It's that whole romantic image of manuscripts, mechanical tinkering & taxidermied falcons, that you just don't get sitting in front of a laptop in a lab today.
Tiro the Moonlighting Robot
I guess this is what it's come to now...even robot teachers are on the lookout for extra cash. Here's Tiro (a project developed by Hanool Robotics) teaching English to elementary school kids in South Korea:
Flying robots take to the skies
by Tiny unmanned planes have been investigating the Antarctic atmosphere for the first time ever this year. Usually planes get bad press when it comes to global warming but these robot planes are different. They boldly fly where nothing has ever been before hoping to shed some light on some of the biggest climate change unknowns. How will sea ice respond to warmer temperatures? What effect will it have on warming all over the planet? Can sea ice provide an early warning of other major changes?
Flight team member Alex Gough tells us how it feels to launch a plane into uncharted territory...
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Future Distribution
Some things announce themselves as the future. Blaise Aguera y Arcas' Photosynth software is one of those things.
I suspect it was experiences with technologies similarly robust to Photosynth that led William Gibson to famously remark: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed."
For your reading pleasure (and my future biographers' research needs) I present you with the origin story of my (soon to be famous?) opening line of this blog entry.
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We Don't Need Another Hero
RoboDoc is our segment about the Da Vinci Surgical System, and was selected for the obvious technophilic, Wiredness of it all. I mean, it's surgery with robots!
I could do the usual rant on the controls (motion scaling, tremor reduction, etc.) and provide a litany of superlatives regarding the robot's accomplishments (smallest patient, youngest patient, et al), but I want to tell you a story about the people involved. Here's what happened right before all that amazing footage of the Da Vinci in action was shot.
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Deep Impact: Sputnik
Today is the 50th Anniversary of the USSR's launch of the satellite Sputnik. The impact of this event on our culture should not be underestimated. America was scared, shocked, and panicked. The full meaning of the event was not clear to everyone, but the idea that "the Soviets were ahead" did not sit well, and it spurred a huge investment in science and technology - including recognizing the importance of better science education in schools. It must have been an amazing time. The culture was changed forever.
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