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

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.

from

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another solution to a problem that nobody has.

What is it with these people? How much did they spend developing that? Hadn’t they noticed that Segways haven’t exactly taken off? Just because you get pretty girls to demo the things doesn’t mean you won’t feel like a total prannet trundling down the street on your $5000 (or whatever it is) “walking aid”. It’s like wearing a hat with a great big arrow pointing downward and a sign saying “Look at me everyone. I want attention”

I used to know this guy who would visit the big art galleries in London… pretend to be disabled, so he could trundle about in one of the wheelchairs they provided. Now that’s a good idea… and less embarrassing than tootling about the place on a mobile-shooting-stick that causes people to forget about the paintings and look at you instead.

Tell you what Honda: give me a couple of million dollars and I will develop a machine for you that will change the world, and that loads of people will actually buy.

Because we all know that the first thing… THE very first thing, that anyone is going to do when they invent an antigravity device, is they’ll solve that problem that has weighed so heavy upon the human soul for so very, very long… they’ll solve the problem of getting up and going to the fucking kitchen to get a glass of water.

Although to be fair… if you’re the sort of person who’s so lazy they’ll actually go out and buy a flying tennis ball (or better still, get a flying basket ball to go out and buy one for you) so you don’t have to get up off the sofa to get a drink of water… well you’re probably not that into “water” are you? No, you prefer to drink coca-cola with an extra couple of table-spoons of sugar in it, or pure lard, straight from the mini-vat etc.

Still. Never mind. It’s the Electrolux Designlab Competition for inventing inventions that will never in a million years actually get invented. Oooh shiney etc. Products.

That said, I quite like this:

It’s a little robot made out of an upturned coke bottle, that carries a plant around until it finds a suitable spot, and then (presumably) it plants it. I’m rather enamoured of the concept that in the future, every tree will have its own gardener… and this goes some way towards that… or at least it would, if it weren’t just a cartoony drawing. Maybe I should make one myself. I’ve got an upturned coke bottle somewhere. The walky bit with the massive eye could be tricky, but what the hey. You’ve got to start somewhere.

So um… don’t get me wrong. I’m all for designers dreaming dreams etc… what really gets up my goat though is the way this stuff is replicated across the web as though it’s actually real. It’s link-bait… let me see…

… let me see… let me see if my favourite eco-bullshit-artist site has anything on it… www.ecofriend.org, the spiritual home of “made up stuff that might be a bit green”…

… oh yes, there it is… momentarily dipping its toe into the waters of uncertainty with “[designer] has tried to make”… (italics mine) but from then on in, it’s all present-tense as though this thing actually exists, and as though the energy required to make a ball fly around collecting raindrops is somehow less eco-angry than simply leaving a fucking cup out in the rain.

Rant over etc.

Still spherical robots. Marvelous.

Looks like someone’s actually attempting to make one of those scary spherical police-state-bots off The Prisoner.

A Spy Zorb.

Speaking of spheres, here’s a nice take…

A quater-sphere projector screen for playing games in.

There’s a nice poetic juxtoposition between inventing a zorb who’s job it is to wander about… “watching” people in actual reality, and inventing another one who’s purpose is for people to sit inside their own little reality, and never see beyond the skin at all.

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edit : further to the rant at the top, check out this video from Microsoft

From Craftzine – lots of conducting wires sewn close together that behave in different ways according to how they’re touched.

One of the ways that living organisms differ from machines is that we’re covered by a sensor-layer. The things above don’t work by tweaking hairs (unless you count whiskers) and even if they do, it’s not due to bare electrical wires (which will have trouble with water), but this (I think) is a step in the direction of increasing robotic tactile sensory resolution. I think what we’ll eventually wind up with is some sort of web of piezo cells embedded in a gel.

Speaking of which, and going directly into NSFW-Land, check this out:

Solving problems you never knew you had. Their site has all manner of remarkable gadgetry, the bulk of which seems to be use-once, and about $20 US a go, so you wouldn’t want to bungle it etc. As you occasionally do.