Science / Technology
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Foldable OLED Display
November 24th, 2008
This is the first foldable display I’ve seen that really looks like it works well and folds completely in half. Can’t wait to see it it in a real product. Via Gizmodo
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Minority Report comes to life
November 15th, 2008
I want one. The most incredible part of this to me is that it only took 6 years to go from a sci-fi movie concept to an actual product. Development of “impossible” gadgets is becoming so fast, at some point the word impossible will just drop it’s prefix. Where will we be in 20 years? In 1988 I was two, the internet didn’t exist, TVs still had picture tubes, and a video watch was the “impossible” device. It turns out that a video watch isn’t very useful, but we’ve done even better: the iPhone or Android not only provide video (and the time), but music, internet, and a platform with limitless possibilities.
It’s hard to imagine the “impossible” gadgets from 2028. My best guess is that most of them will be robotics. Right now, our idea of an impossible robot is WALL-E. We may not be able to cram all of his features into a robot (it’s a cartoon after all), but I think we will have artificial intelligence that is convincing enough that we will have robotic friends, or pets. We will love them, and they will love us.
What impossible gadgets would you like to see in 2028?
Via Fubiz.net
Update: if you want more information about G-Speak visit Oblong
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Werner von Braun - When space travel was still theoretical
November 5th, 2008
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I Love Sketch
October 14th, 2008
ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo .This is the kind of user interface that I would like to see more of. Intuitive, simple design. Notice that there are no tools in the application, just gestures of the pen. Via Mant
Here, an additional input device that is entirely visual. I’ve heard rumors about Apple using a mirror, or second built-in camera in their MacBook line to provide similar functionality by looking at finger position (but we didn’t see that in today’s MacBook refresh). This is also the kind of thing you could easily recreate for cheap, if someone would just provide the software.
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The Greatest Crisis of Our Lives
October 10th, 2008
Over a year ago I read a book titled Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Nassim describes an inherent negative property of information, essentially, that it is difficult or costly to think about, or determine the unknown.
“Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters — we need context. Randomness and uncertainty are abstractions. We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial — and we do not know it. This is not a psychological problem; it comes from the main property of information. The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort.”
- Nassim Taleb
Our refusal to consider the abstract has lead us to our current financial disaster. If you’re unsure, just look at Taleb’s warning of global economic collapse from his 2006 book:
“Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.”
“The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deem these events “unlikely”.”- Nassim Taleb, Black Swan 2006
It appears that fixing this mess will be left to my generation. Please, educate yourself. A good place to start is the most recent This American Life Podcast. It gives a detailed description of why the financial system is crashing. Another resource is the previously mentioned Black Swan.
Good luck.
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Stephen Hawking in Zero G
July 3rd, 2008
One of Stephen Hawkings dreams is to one day fly in the weightlessness of space (a dream that he and I share). He hasn’t made it to space yet, but this is pretty close. Here he is seen flying in a zero g airplane at a sharp descent allowing up to 25 seconds of apparent weightlessness. The apple is symbolic of Isaac Newton with whom Professor Hawking shares the same chair at Cambridge.
See the video at TED.com
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