GENOMICON

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From Festo who constantly make amazing things. This looks like a solution looking like a problem to me, but those are some of my favourite things.

On that note, check out this tape-art:

Kinetic art without the kinesis.

… and this…

Which is so cool I can hardly stand it.

Decelerator Helmet

Hallucinogenic drugs can on occasion, induce violent psychopathic behaviour in people not taking them.

Which responds to head-tilting etc.

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Unfortunately, I come from one of those countries where people will do anything… ANYTHING… to avoid embarrassment… so chances are this won’t catch on… although maybe the technology could be used elsewhere.

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That’s cool, but until they manage to turn the thing inside out so you can stand on the inside, it’s a solution looking for a problem

Ingenious

Motorized shoes – for people too lazy to walk, or people who are disabled… and not able to walk…

…the ranks of whom are swelling by the day, on account of the lazy ones, attempting to use motorized shoes.

Brilliant. A solution looking for a problem that creates the problem it is designed to solve.

Reminds me of something actually – not sure what, but I think it’s got something to do with beer.

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The interesting bit (I think) is that it uses an Android phone to interface with the web. I am Borg etc. We are Borg.

I think this is proof of concept for something that hasn’t been invented yet. Probably some sort of crowd-sourced sex thing I should think – or a wearable twitter feed.

Speaking of Android – there was a thing earlier where some of those Shanzai chaps in China had managed to make an android-powered iPad – which is mildly interesting because DRM is basically the thing that defines the iPad.

And lack of DRM is the thing that defines the Internet.

And worthy of a post in its own right, but not getting one… but apropos of the battle for the root etc, here’s a little vid about Wikileaks

Cuz if we are to become Borg, then it had better be on a non DRMed basis.

I like that blonde Aussie guy at the end – reminds me of Asmodious from Gabriel – Michael Piccirilli. I thought he was great.

I can’t really think straight at the mo. You may have noticed.

This is cool

Virtual cow-tipping etc.

It would kindof be better though if the screens were massive, around the other way, and you sat on the inside of it (not being hassled by massive cows). That’s what’s coming after 3D. 360-degree movies. You could be in space – where you belong etc. Out among the stars.

Or maybe not – movies are all about directing attention – 360 degree stuff is probably more useful for gaming etc. Still… nice idea.

Back to the first one – you could probably also use it for some creepy, weird and totally megalomaniacal sex toy as well – filled with tiny screaming porn-stars who you molest with your (suddenly, for the first time) massive todger. God you people are weird. I can’t believe that’s the first thing you thought of.

It’s not wonder the country’s going to the dogs.

Where some MIT people have sortof made or sortof not made this thing where these little microcopters arrange themselves in a grid which can then be controlled like pixels in a 3D holographic display

with a curiously 1970s design aesthetic.

I’m not sure about this one – the little helicopters look cool but any video that starts with the word “Imagine” just makes me feel used and manipulated. Unclean etc. Like I should go out and mow the lawns to get my sense of self back. I am not a Mac.

So there’s a solution looking for a problem if ever I saw one. Cool thing to do though. They’re like self-motile throwies – inevitable in some ways. It’s utterly fucking inevitable that they get used in some uber-prat billion dollar “rock” concert – probably U2… and there’s a gust of wind which results in a massive micro-copter crash… and they go careening into the crowd and get tangled up in the back-combed hair of the hapless and sheep-like fans – who stampede – for the exits, for the fire-escapes, for the stage… in all directions at once. Carnage. Utter carnage… and 15 minutes later, all that’s left is the aftermath of a medieval battle-scene with torn limbs and broken bodies, still eerily illuminated by thousands of humming, hovering LEDs.

Imagine that.

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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.

A while back I said I was going to have all the search and rescue bots on one page. Well I can’t be arsed with that… so they’re going to be on pages linked with the search and rescue tag.

In case I haven’t mentioned it, “Search and Rescue” is a sub-category of “Solutions Looking for Problems“… I mean sure, sometimes people do get lost, or get into dangerous situations, but it’s pretty rare – and certainly not as big a problem as car-crashes or landmines or people just being piss-wits generally.

So we’re hell-bent on building this giant, planet-scale monster… a human machine symbiote… and we don’t know why, or even what exactly it is that we’re building… but we wants it… we wants it…

So we keep making these things, and when we don’t know what they’re for… some little voice (like an angel on the shoulder) pipes up “search and rescue?”.

So anyway:

1) Fly eyes

an excuse to have a really cool photo of a fly-eye… although they don’t look so cool when you get them in perspective do they? No. They’re bastards.

Anyway, the attached article is about using some uber-simplified algorithm for controlling robotic flight… means you can get away with using a much smaller, lighter brain to fly something than we currently do… though it is quite remarkable that a fly is clever enough to work this out, because they’re not generally regarded as being the sharpest tools in the box. I’ve got a feeling that some species of AI is the only sane way of getting computers to control really complex robots… and it has the potential for using the same bit of software to control any device. Mind you, the learning curve could be a bit scary.

So um… don’t get me wrong – what this article is talking about is actually an extremely clever and quite remarkable development. But um… what’s it for? well…. it could be useful for search and rescue. Obviously.

2) Robo-Shakespeareans.

Ok – this one pushing the dial of the daftometer well into the red zone – people doing Shakespeare with robots (and I suspect that by “robots” we actually mean remote-controlled toys).

Now I’ve got nothing against Shakespeare. I’ve heard that some of the stuff he wrote was actually quite good, for the time etc. A bit talky maybe, but he did apparently have a certain literary flair… unfortunately his work does seem to have this… thing… where people use it to lend credibility to daft experiments.

The gist of the article though is that (and this should come as no surprise to anyone) people do seem to be pre-disposed to anthropomorphising these things… and this could be useful for… err… well, search and rescue.

They even invoke the Godwin’s Law variant ’9/11′ – which has long since stopped being whatever it should have been… and instead has become this cynical touch-stone for every dubious-(and generally authoritarian)-cause-championing wanker in the entire universe. To be fair though, the person name-checked in the article did have robots at the World Trade Center… so um… maybe there is merit in getting them to do a bit of Shakespeare etc. Can’t hurt can it? Never did me any harm.