GENOMICON

(via make)

A convergence of my favourite solution looking for a problem, and the medium where sooner or later, everything worth reproducing, gets reproduced. Legoification is like a coming of age ritual.

Anyway here it is. I quite like this because it uses some sort of distance sensor rather than a giro… and if you can get a lego motor-sensor loop fast enough to keep an unbalanceable thing balanced, then you can probably use something similar on a reprap to get around having to to have ultra-high-tolerance engineering on every part. The machine can just sort of “feel its way”.

Or something. On that note, here’s another solution looking for a problem (another favourite of mine) a hexapod… doing what hexapods always do, which is pushups, then a spot of very slow walking… but this one’s different because it’s used genetic algorithms to teach itself to walk… and the good thing about that, is that you can use the same software on different hardware configurations.

And finally… I saw recently that the 2nd Life guy’s new thing is to create a… “a sentient artificial intelligence which only exists in a virtual world, capable of thinking and dreaming.”

LOL – no chance.

Ok – I’ll refine that… there’s no chance of telling the difference between the real thing and a simulacra…

… but a difference that makes no difference is not a difference* right?

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* that’s a classical allusion – 10 points to any sci-fi fan who can tell me where it’s from.