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Mind over matter – the future of remote control

Cyborg headControlling mechanical and electronic devices with nothing but the power of your own thoughts is a science fiction trope almost as old as the genre itself, and like many other tropes it’s edging towards plausibility at quite a speed. [image by mize2oo5]

Futurismic has mentioned brain–computer interfaces a few times before, and the essential framework of the technology is fairly well established. However, the high costs involved mean that beyond research and rehabilitation there aren’t many truly practical applications right now.

But that’s not stopping the researchers thinking big, as in this Popular Mechanics article:

“… the research is showing that the brain can act independently of the body. One day, you could be sitting in an office and controlling a device from across the room—or in another building. And it’s not just flicking a switch. It could be a nanotool that’s moving through a tiny environment, and you can control it and see what it’s seeing.”

So, great news for the prospect of telecommuting – almost all manufacturing jobs could be done from the comfort of your armchair, for example. The flipside being, of course, that it would make offshore outsourcing an even more viable option than it is now. [story via SlashDot]

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The Colors of Antiquity

A Dragonfly FossilCan you imagine what the extinct birds of millions of years ago looked like? How big were they? Do they look like the birds of today? What colors were they? The first two questions are easily answerable by fossil records, but the third one is a bit more difficult, unless you have a time machine handy. But US researchers believe they’ve come a bit closer to solving the problem:

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, US researchers reveal how ancient feathers found in Brazil displayed “striking” bands of black and white. Previously, fossil experts could only guess at the range of hues exhibited by ancient birds and some dinosaurs.

To find an answer they had to look at behavioural and genetic clues:

There are particular cells that cluster into the dark areas of modern birds called melanosomes. Somehow the melanosomes are retained and replaced during the preservation process and hence you preserve a very life like representation of the colour banding in the fossils.

And also:

The Yale team believe they could identify brown, red, buff and even iridescent colours. The technique may be applied to other creatures to reveal the colour of fur or even eyes, the team believes.

This news reminds me of an SF story called The Color of A Brontosaurus, which speculates somewhat on the same subject matter.

[story via BBC News] [image by kevinzim]

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The future of social networking

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Where is social networking going exactly? Will Facebook still exist in a recognisable form in 100 years? (I’d say certainly not). Some people are of the opinion that “social networking” is a con designed to persuade people to part with marketable information:

Perhaps [people will] realise that web 2.0 is not there to “connect you with the people around you” and not about some pseudo-academic “social graph”. That’s the bait. The switch is the big data centre pumping adverts based on your age, where you live, who you’re friends with, what you like doing for fun, your politics and your grandmother’s shoe size.

This leads to many interesting debates about who owns the data held on social networking websites, and how much the whole shebang is worth.

My social networkThe problem with exponential growth and constant change is that you can’t tell if something is a flash in the pan or a long term trend.

It seems likely that people will continue to use communication networks to socialise, but that they will become less tied to a particular social networking website, given the systems produced by companies like Plaxo, which (if their guff is to be believed ) allows you to integrate stuff belonging to you and your friend’s from other social networks into one area.

[stories from Technology Review and The Register][image from luce legay on flickr]

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Japanese teen smokers hack age verification with bank-notes

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Tokyo vending machinesEverything can and will be hacked; once you have the motivation sussed, the exploits will be close behind.

Point in case: Japanese cigarette vending machines have age-verification cameras fitted to them to prevent teens from illegally purchasing tobacco. A great idea, and a typically Japanese high-tech fix for a social problem, right? [image by midorisyu]

Well, it might have been – if the kids hadn’t sussed out that the cameras can be fooled by not just pictures from magazines but the portraits of historical figures on bank-notes. Back to the drawing board – I wouldn’t want to be on the R&D team of the company that makes those vending machines right now.

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