Forget HAL 9000. Beware: Paro

HAL will soon have his way, as it seems the robots are taking over slowly but surely. In a cool example of how we humans are getting better at enabling robots to emote and display empathy, Paro, a $6,000 baby seal, is one of many robots being used to help soothe the elderly. In fact, it’s very cool to see how we try to program robots to think and feel like we do. It’s not an easy task. Yes, robots can play chess — and beat humans, but seems they can now even win at Jeopardy!, a game requiring much verbal logic…Although he may lead the revolution in taking over the world one day, this seal is damn cute…

An App to Replace Drs? It Could be…

MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a mobile-phone application that, coupled with a small plastic device held over the screen, can determine users’ eyeglass prescriptions. Now, that’s a useful app. Seems we are moving away from the world of pointless but fun apps to a utilitarian approach. Called NETRA or near-eye tool for refractive assessment, the system asks users to align lines on the phone’s screen while looking through a small plastic cube. Now only if insurance would cover this…

Does insurance cover this?

Print is Dead…Finally?

Well it’s not often you see magazines shuttered…then relaunched. But that’s what you have with Gourmet, a perennial bastion of the culinary arts. Discontinued in October, Conde Nast just announced they are launching an iPad app called Gourmet Live. Back at Northwestern we called students in the print program “Dinosaurs” for a reason. And it’s about time the meteor hits. WIRED has done an exceptional job with their iPad app and others will be quick to follow. How many other industries can you think of where you can shutter an epic brand, then relaunch it 8 months later?

Don't spill on it...

I Want to Climb Inside my Data…Do you?

Ever since I saw Professor  JoAnn Kuchera-Morin speak at the CAT Conference in NY last year, I have been obsessed with her AlloSphere — and have even emailed her about potentially visiting when I am next in the area. The AlloSphere is a three-story-tall aluminum sphere with a catwalk running through the center with six hi-def 3-D video projectors that spray 360-degree images onto a spherical screen.  It resembles the famous catwalk fight seen in the Death Star, but it’s actually located at UC Santa Barbara and what it essentially does is, it allows researchers to literally get inside their data and information. Projects so far include examinations of how hydrogen atoms bond together and a giant model of the brain derived from fMRI scans. Up to 30 people can fit on the catwalk, and they get glasses and wireless joysticks to mess around with the streaming imagery. Dozens of speakers play sound into the echo-free chamber. The result is psychedelia with research applications….How could you not want to experience this? Every time I look at data, I envision what it would look like in the AlloSphere…

Get in there...

Texting Sharks warn Life Guards? OMG…WTF?

I’m not sure if sharks are participating willingly, but apparently some beaches in Australia have outfitted sharks with SMS enabled devices that text life guards to warn them when they get too close to land. If something doesn’t seem right here, it’s not. This is technology inserting itself into the circle of life. But I must admit, it’s kind of cool. If only we could text the sharks back. Shouldn’t this be a two-way communication?

y didnt u txt me?

Reality Cannot be Copyrighted, right?

What does digital humanism mean to you? This is a nice piece in the NYT about content, creativity and the Internet. It explores how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. All of us content creators should be aware…

Is this the end of Authorship?

2010: A Cultural Space Odyssey

For those who aren’t following Japanese Astronaut Astro_Soichi on Twitter, then you’re missing out on an epic cultural narrative. We often get to our best thinking by perceptual re-organization and what better way to open these doors of perception than to look at our lives from space?

Looking at a man-made bridge in Greece...

Design and what it means for our future…

A nice looong talk on Design and the potential cultural impact. Love the concept of Divergence vs. Convergence and the advantage of pocket-sized items which ultimate lead to convergence by default….

Diverngence meets convergence...

Riddle me this: The Madhatter meets Technology & Culture

Mobile? Traditional? Digital? Are we talking about different channels? How many screens do we have that we interact with each day? How is a “digital” creative different from a “traditional” creative? It sounds like a riddle…Why is a raven like a writing desk. Well, there is no clear-cut answer, but all I know is I want to be a part of the solution…Unfortunately as the ad industry grapples with this brave new world, this is the best take on modern technology and culture:

On a slightly more serious note, a nice convergence of traditional, digital and mobile is Google Biking Paths. They just annouced today that the mapping feature will now begin including biking directions…

Can you think of a better use of Google mobile maps?

Did Avatar avoid the Uncanny Valley?

With all of these 3D movies bombarding us, it’s no wonder that animated humans are starting to freak us out a bit. It’s well known that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. Called the Uncanny Valley, the “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a creatures lifelikeness. At least the Navi were blue in Avatar, but when will our technology allow us to clear this valley?

Now you know why dolls and robots freak you out...