All posts by Paul Raven

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Military exoskeleton prototype – mech-warriors in the offing

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Sarcos robot exoskeleton It’s not quite the loader that Ripley uses to ass-kicking effect in Aliens, but it’s a (mechanically augmented) step in the right direction. A robotics startup called Sarcos has been demoing a prototype robotic exoskeleton that mimics the movements of its human operator while amplifying his (or her) strength. Don’t rush off to your local recruiting station just yet, though – Sarcos estimates a five year development process before the suit is ready to rock. There’s a video if you want to click through on the link, by the way. [Via OhGizmo!][Image lifted from linked article]

[tags]robot, military, exoskeleton, prototype[/tags]
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Computing as commodity – an economic singularity approaching?

Asus Eee notebook computer Charlie Stross has been shopping – and he’s pretty impressed with the Asus Eee notebook he bought. Not because it’s particularly powerful (which by current standards it isn’t, really) but because he feels it represents a turning point in the commoditization of computer technology:

“The Eee isn’t an order of magnitude cheaper than a normal laptop but it is close to an order of magnitude cheaper than previous ultra-lightweight subnotebooks. And I think I’m going to use it as a pointer to a future trend in the computer business, at the low end. The Eee is about 8 times as powerful as that 1998 Omnibook, at a quarter the price. That’s an improvement of half an order of magnitude in one direction and close to a full order in the other. And it’s a tipping point, I think, showing that the price points that have defined the goal posts for the personal computer business aren’t set in stone.”

As Stross points out, client-side power is becoming less necessary as well as cheaper – at least outside of boutique markets like the one Apple has staked out for itself. And this is a good thing, surely? Well, it would seem so at first. But with the science fiction writer’s instinctive “what if?” chops, Stross looks beyond the immediate:

“… how deep will be the recession that follows once the personal computing industry deflates to its natural value (i.e. peanuts)?”

Ouch. Double-edged sword. [Image by UnwiredBen]

[tags]computing, technology, commodity, economics[/tags]
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Old-school bioweapons – sick sheep

Ram with curly horns Biological warfare would appear to be a much older idea than we thought. New translations of ancient Middle Eastern texts suggest the Hittites had hit upon the idea of weakening their enemies with diseases by sending them rams “cursed” with a bacterial infection called tularemia – over 3 millennia ago. Tularemia is still a potentially lethal agent today … whether or not a sheep would be a successful delivery system in our modern age is an unknown quantity, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were parts of the world where it could still be very effective. [Image by Dave-F]

On a lighter note, I can’t help but be reminded of the Sheep Cannon from the hilarious and addictive Worms computer games.

[tags]warfare, biological, disease, history[/tags]
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Friday Free Fiction for 23rd November

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A bit of a sparse week for free fiction this time … but there’s always the webzines listed in the sidebar if you’re running short. OK, here we go:

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Classic free fiction at ManyBooks.net: The Creature from Beyond Infinity by Henry Kuttner (1940), The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison (1922), “A Wind is Rising” by Robert Sheckley (1957, writing as Finn O’Donnevan)[edited to remove link to copyright infringing material; see comments], plus “Viewpoint” (1960) and “Unwise Child” by Randall Garrett (1962).

At Project Gutenburg, pointed out by none other than Warren Ellis as a formative influence in his reading as a young man, Space Prison by Tom Godwin, the author of the bleak classic short “The Cold Equations”.

And at Arthur’s Classic Novels: The Time Axis by Henry Kuttner (1948) and Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham (1936).

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A heads-up from BoingBoing, which may not be news for those tech-obsessed (or financially fluid) enough to own an iPhone:

Josh [Klein] sez, “I wrote a sci-fi novel called “Roo’d” and released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Even cooler, it was chosen for release for the eBook reader for the iPhone – the first modern novel released for the platform, and the second available after Tarzan. W00t! As a first-time author I could never have gotten this kind of feedback any other way – now everyone who hacks their iPhone can try out my book, and I’ve received tons of fabulous feedback. Go Creative Commons!”

You should be able to get Roo’d here at Josh’s own site, but it appears to be down at the moment (doubtless thanks to the BoingBoing effect), so maybe try the Google Cache or wait a while.

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The Friday Flash Fictioneers take the field somewhat reduced in numbers this week, but there’s always a few of the troops willing to man the trenches. Let’s see:

Gareth L Powell has been ill, so he’s using an excerpt of a story titled “Falling Apart” in lieu of a fresh offering.

Dan Pawley puts a twist in the tale with “The New Boss“.

Gareth D Jones is trying an experiment in viral memetic flash fiction with “Let Me Entertain You” – will we see it linked on MetaFilter and Digg before the weekend is out?

And lastly there’s “New kid blues” by yours truly, which probably shows the influence of the Philip K Dick anthology I reviewed recently.

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That’s your lot! Don’t forget to drop me a line at my address as found on the Staff page if there’s something you think deserves a mention of Friday Free Fiction. In the meantime, have a good weekend!

[tags]free, fiction, stories, online[/tags]
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The writer as entrepreneur

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Striking writers outside Disney studios The WGA writers’ strike rolls on, pitting the justifiable desire of creatives to be paid a fair deal for the fruits of their labour against the same sort of grasping tactics that are causing the music industry to eat itself like a cancer. [Image by NoHoDamon]

While I’m supportive of the writers’ position on this issue, I’m intrigued by the outsider opinions. Techdirt points us to an LA Times article discussing the rise of alternative financing models in the movie industry, and suggests that if the big studios stick to their guns they will actually hasten their own demise by creating an environment where smart and talented writers can bypass the traditional system and take their scripts straight to the market, funding their productions using a venture capital process similar to that used by technology startups.

Now, I’m not an economist or a script-writer (and nor do I play either of them on television), but I find the underlying logic of this idea appealing – it seems to be a business model that fits the internet age. But then TechDirt, as fascinating a read as it is, is very much biased toward the independent operator/startup philosophy (as demonstrated by its previous coverage of the WGA strike). Perhaps this idea places too much of a burden on the writer – whose job is, after all, to write. But then again, it’s an accepted truism that novelists must self-market if they hope to be successful, even with the support of a publisher.

I guess only time will tell. But from my personal point of view, a significant lessening of the corporate homogeneity of Hollywood could only be a good thing – it might result in a movie industry that produces more than one film every year that I can actually be bothered to go and see.

[tags]writers, Hollywood, strike, entrepreneurship, business[/tags]