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Microfluidics – chemical electronics?

Microfluidic circuit - image from Raindance TechnologiesWired has a report on the growing field of microfluidics – tiny devices that can sort and manipulate tiny droplets of liquid in ways analogous to electronic logic circuits, which have the potential to accelerate pharmacological research and the development of new medical treatments. [Image ganked from website of RainDance Technologies – please contact for take-down if required.]

Drugs aren’t just used for curing disease, though – one can only imagine the sort of illicit recreational substances that this technology will create once it becomes more common, and it will surely speed us toward the time when sports prowess is as much to do with the chemical augmentation of the participants as any inborn skill.

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Simulations – from guns to festivals

Via reBang, here’s an article on the ironically named Zen Technologies, an Indian company that specialises in training simulators that can teach everything from driving a truck to crack-shot sniping with an AK47. When you add this selection to other training devices like the virtual chainsaw, you realise we’re rapidly reaching a point where almost any high-risk activity can be experienced virtually.

But low-risk activities are catching up fast now the technology is more accessible; as soon as people get access to virtual worlds, they start recreating objects and events from the real world (even major festivals, like Burning Man’s SL incarnation), and fabbing technology means that objects that start their life as virtual can be made real and solid in meatspace … so how long before we need the equivalent of Customs and border controls between reality and everywhere else?

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Kids more aware of internet risks than parents

I was not surprised to see that kids are as computer savvy as this report shows them to be, but judging by the media and politicians wringing their hands constantly over the poor kids at risk the moment they step online, one hopes that this kind of awareness propagates out a little more.

Sadly, probably not, as the people who need to read that study and stop hyperventilating are not snagging it in their RSS feeds, huh?

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None of this is really real

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Via the indispensable TerraNova blog comes word that no other organ than the New York Times itself is running an article that talks about the Simulation Argument. This exceptionally science-fictional slice of philosophy, created by one Nick Bostrom, contends that the reality we exist within is in fact a simulation of extraordinary complexity, and we are just very cunningly scripted artificial intelligences within it.

What’s interesting is that John Tierney (for the NYT) seems more convinced of Bostrom’s theory than Bostrom himself. It’s a head-twistingly paradoxical piece of thinking, so much so that even George Dvorsky finds it makes his brain hurt – which makes me feel slightly better about being in the same situation.

But my main concern is this – if Bostrom and Tierney are correct, and this really is just a simulation, haven’t they now sent a rather obvious signal to the builders of the simulation that the inmates have seen behind the wizard’s curtain? What if the success of the simulation is dependent on our ignorance of it being one? But then, surely they’d have programmed against that contingency – code is law, after all … but that sounds like the arguments for the ineffability of a deity creating mankind with free will! Good grief … if anyone needs me, I’ll be slumped in the corner surrounded by Greg Egan novels and an empty bottle of gin.

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