Blogs Apr 3, 2009 at 4:16 pm

Comments

1
I went to TED in 2005 I think and it was one of the most amazing times in my life. So much intelligence in one room it was frightening. All the TED talks are online. I highly recommend them.
2
Hm, seems common sense enough.

"Data anywhere".
3
They're working so hard and making so much progress on the solution to the wrong problem.
4
Awesome! We'll spend the Future creeping through darkened bookstores!

Somebody hurry up and invent the DED.
5
@3 - Your comment needs a little more explanation, I think. What do you think the is "right" problem to be working on?
6
So, the word cloud thing. Would it be possible to do some sort of Google bomb type thing so that the word "pedophile" flashes across a person when someone meets them for the first time? Cause that was the first prank that flashed into my mind.
7
SiXth SenSe - a SenSe that would give uS SeamleSS acCeSS

Too many s sounds.
8
That was.... kind of horrifying.
9
student builds amazing contraption with $350 in Radio Shack parts, that will likely lead to all kinds of advancements. And it only takes 3 before commenter says "yeah, but he didn't cure cancer, save the economy, or end global warming..."

WTF?
10
I want it. Right fucking now!
11
I'd do him. That's freaking amazing.

But not really. Programmers....

The types of advancements we'll see in our lifetimes are going to be freaking awesome. Just better hope you stay rich through it all.

Which is hard to do these days...
12
The real horror of this is that as these technologies becomes old in 5 months the hardware is thrown away. Throw away throw away throw away. That's what's killing the planet and sugar you've having a big part in it.
13
@11 My iPhone cost me 200 bucks and about 40 more a month then a regular cell phone. Why do you think this would be much more than that?

I mean granted if your poor its tough, but you don't exactly have to be rich to afford this stuff.
14
Cool, but I would rather have a touchscreen smartphone for most things, just for ease of use and visibility. With their technology, I could just as easily use my phone's camera to scan books or groceries or whatever.

However, I could see a portable interactive projector (perhaps integrated into a smartphone) being very useful for impromptu presentations, drawing/notetaking, and gaming.
15
@12 Actually we are getting pretty good at recycling this kind of stuff. And honestly, there is a point where my personal satisfaction overrides my concern for the environment.
16
@5

In a word, a better signal to noise ratio, and less overhead wasted on non-productive bullshit.

The hardware we have today is not a hardship to carry around and use. Most things we use are as small and light as we could ask for. It's mostly a matter of polishing the design, adding fins and pretty colors and a corkscrew attachment.

The real problem is making all this crap work together seamlessly, without all the high-maintenance of dealing with antivirus updates and scans and spam. Or having to check your work email AND twitter AND fb and fifteen different blogs. And then you have all these piddling devices with six month half lives and incompatible battery chargers and on top of that people have to waste time worrying about compatibly between .PDF and .DOC and all those other time-sucking formats.

Also, when I walk into a meeting or a theater, I want a bluetooth signal to tell my phone to go into vibrate mode without me having to remember. And to turn the ringer back on when I go outside. It should come with Dick Mode, too, where it ignores the signal and leaves my ringer on anyway.
17
@16 - Integration is a problem, I'll grant you, but it's a problem that lots of people are working on, and it's vastly improved over just a year ago. The idea that hardware is "as small and light" as we could ask for is silly, though. It's not human nature to improve things just to some arbitrary "enough" point and then stop, nor should it be. Devices will get smaller (or bigger, as appropriate), lighter, faster, thinner, more injectable, etc., as long as people are out there thinking.

Productive (and bullshit) are relative concepts. If doesn't increase your productivity (and if that's what you're after), don't use it. The idea that it's a collective waste of time for anyone to pursue it is weird, though.

And auto-ringer-switching-signals are a great idea (and one that's been attempted, I believe), but hardly defies the non-productive bullshit label for many people, I'd say.
18
Great,

now the groids on the bus can yell into their hands, text their babies daddy in movie theatres, and make drug deals in school, all without the pesky intrusion of having an actual phone.

Whacha bet some gold tooth having thug from tukwilla will be jim jaming on his hand while he shoots up a day care...
19
@18 holy freaking crap ! you are probably the most thoroughly racist troll the planet will ever see.
21
I am very interested to see where this goes.

I've been thinking a lot lately when shopping in the "real world" that I've gotten so used to processing a lot of information quickly in a hyperlinked way that there are times where - just like her example of the ecologically-sound TP type of question - I wish there were a zippier interface than phone browser I could use out and about to do that kind of processing.

I see 16's point, but I actually think the physicality of this, the move towards making interacting a little more fluid, IS productive. I feel like the act of type, pointing and clicking are still so SO much slower than how my brain works that anything that might create less extra physical steps would be great. Not out of laziness, but just that there is then less friction so I can work a little closer to the speed of my thoughts.
23
Even as a scientist and engineer I never seem to get that excited about IT gadgets. Its like, "Wow, thats shiny, but whats the point exactly?" I know I'm being a luddite, but a keyboard and mouse work just fine for me and always will. Hell, I use an ssh command line for most things. I think biotech is where the real, society transforming innovations are going to come from. Believe me, there's some mind blowing shit coming down that pipeline.

/end negative nancyism

cool!

24
really though, that is pretty fucking cool
25
Privacy implications kill it for me - who controls the services that processes the continual stream of images you send and supply the data used to augment your reality?

Pranks are the first step, but if you think spyware and identity theft is bad now, wait until something like this becomes widespread.
26
Totally agree with elenchos @16. Exactly. Too much time spent on this crap instead of dealing with entertainment lawyers and such that are making integrating all this stuff on our computers impossible.

The hardware is not the problem. Its that there is too much crap to wade through to get what we want. And I don't want to become an expert on settings and tool bars and all that crap.

Just get 'er done.

How about a device the size of an I Pod that streams radio stations from all over the planet. Its doable but there is probably some lawyer in the way demanding payment for the content.

That's the kind of thing that slows innovation. Its not like we're scratching our heads about how to build something small enough or with the right kind of antenna or whatever...
27
So we're blaming engineers and programmers for bureaucratic blockades? Because ... that's *not* what they're responsible for?
28
I am a social worker, not a scientist--not that I need to point that out as it will become apparent to the reader pretty quickly.

The sixth sense stuff seems pretty interesting, but I wonder: If everything becomes interactive than what happens to it on the molecular level? If you draw a watch on your wrist then what's going on on the surface of your wrist and beneath?

I'm not so ignorant about science to assume that x-rays and microwaves are the same thing, but they move through things, e.g. skin and food, respectively, and change them, at least in the case of the food in that it cooks. Also, X-rays produce radiation--you know how you have to wear a lead apron at the dentist when they take x-rays of your teeth? So I'd like to know what happens here.

Can any scientists or science minded people explain?
29
While I know this invention is really hard to make and I applaud the ingenuity, I find it to be a really bourgeoisie item that I don't really relate to. It doesn't really help anyone, it just helps them shop.
30
2000 years of progress and we're almost to aboriginal dreamtime...
31
@28 - I'm confused by your question. The watch projected on the guy's wrist in the prototype demo is just regular old light projected onto his skin. It's no more harmful than shining a flashlight onto your arm--i.e., not harmful at all.

I don't know, maybe if you shined a light on your arm for 1,000 years you might cause some cell damage, but you'd probably have other problems by then.
32
When we will understand that TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL PROGRESS. I'm so fucking sick of this. I spent 6 months of my life writing a thesis on how technology affects our patience and social interactions. And it turns out that those that use technology more are much less patient than those that rarely use these technologies. Our brains are starting to work like the machines we use so much. We can barely read books, or the end of an article for that matter. It's frightening, really.

Please wait...

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