Sound recognition software can analyse audio in ways that our hearing cannot. But human hearing has the edge in other skills – discriminating one audio source from a background of many for example, like a conversation at a loud party. Which is why engineers at the UK’s Newcastle University are developing a computer model of the ‘auditory midbrain’, the lump of grey matter that deals with the way we perceive sound. The results could enable voice-commanded robotics and a new generation of hearing aids.

Tech-heads and SF writers have been talking about human-machine interfaces for years. In a weird new twist on this idea, military researchers are developing just such a system – but one that uses the tongue to connect the brain to the external signals. This device is being used to allow deep sea divers a 360 degree field of view and sonar-like information about their environment, and there is work beginning on an infra-red version for soldiers.

What does the future hold for computing? Why we need only look at the present as viewed from the lens of the past. Easy, right? [waxy]

Join the fight. Ban the bulb. Bruce Sterling has been on this kick for a while now.

Bless those people at NASA – no matter how much of a kicking their budgets take, they keep on dreaming real big. And they’re science fiction fans, too. How else would they have entertained the idea of building an antimatter engine to propel a manned mission to Mars? Apparently it would cost $250 million to manufacture enough antimatter to power the thing, but balanced against the hidden costs of normal rocketry solutions, that’s a pretty good deal. (Hat-tip to False Positives.)