Category: Emerging Technology
Fab Lab Discussion Forum
I first started following the work of Neil Gershenfeld during my various visits to MIT Media Lab, and of course through his book Fab, along with speculating about fictional HP DeskFabs and Fabster P2P networks…a miniature attempt at Bruce Sterling-eqsue Design Fiction! So it was a huge surprise to learn that Gershenfeld would be stopping…
Bruce Sterling @ Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign
…from March 2007; thanks Semiot! I first saw ‘Chairman Bruce‘ speak in San Diego at ETech 2006, though I’d followed his writing since I was a teenager. I’m always kinda confused when I hear his talks; Sterling can alternately poke fun at his own ideas, embarrass the audience that they’re buying into his ‘mental loops…
Exposing the APIs of invisible things
Kati London was one of my favourite speakers at the ETel Fair in February 2007. Along with other ITP students, Kati saved our asses when a bunch of speakers fell ill and they were able to put together a replacement session showcasing projects such as Kati’s Botanicalls to those who’d missed the Fair. I was…
23andMe
When your mission is to organise the world’s information, the acquisition of blogging and video-sharing technologies is obvious; indeed your competitors seek to emulate your vision and do the same. Maybe you have to be crazy to look at a genome and see a web acquisition…we know those crazy enough to think that they can…
Futures Past
An excerpt from Salon’s review of Where’s My Jetpack… Sometimes it feels as if progress itself has actually slowed down, with the 1960s as the climax of a 20th century surge of innovation, and the decades that followed consisting of a weird mix of consolidation, stagnation and rollback. Certainly change in the first half of…
Proto-spime
Springwise is covering the private-beta launch of ILetYou today; an interesting service that enables users to rent their private DVD collections as a kinda micro-Netflix. I love the notion of mobilising and monestising my now inert collection of DVDs as spimey–blogjects, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t provide better a catalogue or pricing than…
Taking A Moment
This is interesting. Sascha Pohflepp’s Buttons project doesn’t capture images, but time stamps which are later used to retrieve photos taken by other people at the same moment. It’d be interested to extend the camera to capture location too. Pohflepp’s ‘blind camera’ is the latest in a series of really simple devices that capture a…
Second Wardrobe
Cute. Meez.com allows users to construct and export avatars for use in online communities, IM clients, blogs and other social software; kinda like a super-Stortrooper. News.com is carrying a video review of the service today. The image on the right, is the best approximation of myself I could construct without joining Meez (or losing weight);…
Facon
A few weeks ago, Ian and I were speculating about the ethics of laboratory-grown/in vitro meat. We wondered if, as a vegetarian and as a Muslim, whether the consumption of in-vitro meat violated our ethics and beliefs – given that ‘no animal was harmed in the production of this meal’. Ian felt his vegetarianism would…
It’s Alive! (My Chumby)
Today, I hooked up my Chumby, named ‘Chumby Chumbing Rodriguez’ in honour of Futurama’s Bender. Here’s my out of the box experience: Power – I needed a shaving adaptor to connect the 2-pin AC adaptor to a UK outlet and I couldn’t find the power button as it was stealthily concealed by a sticker (doh!).…