wear and tear

Amazingly, material scientists working in the laboratories of University of California’s San Diego campus are developing fabrics and casings (and even circuit-boards) that can repair themselves using an ink like compound infused with magnetic particles that can be directed to a rip or crack and instantly cauterise the wound at first signs of disintegration. This self-healing function is a lot like our own pliable, living skin and may make some significant inroads into our culture of over-packaging (if our stuff was more resilient, maybe handling wouldn’t be of such importance) and disposable outlook on things. What if you had socks that darned themselves? I think that would in itself be a motivation to mend and rehabilitate things not yet imbued with the ability to patch themselves up.

slam-dunk

Thanks to the always marvelous Nag on the Lake, we’re given to ponder on the meta-consumer character of these 3D printed earrings, designed to catch cordless headphones when they inevitably (they say, although I’ve never liked using any sort of ear-bud) dislodge from ones ears. Without judging the merit of this concept, which I think is pretty clever for the niche or failing it redresses, the brilliance of this “product” is that it’s only a concept that one can make, reinvent or not. How do you think greater access to 3D printing technology is going to change the relationship between consumers and manufacturers and potential be a disruptive factor all around.

sietch

Working in conjunction with UC Berkeley and the Peace Corps, a San Francisco-based laboratory has produced a prototype atmospheric well that, powered by wind alone, can harvest litres of clean water. The Water Seer’s turbine push air into a buried condensation chamber (cache) to be collected as needed and is a completely closed system, requiring no extra plumbing or purification-process—very similar to the techniques that Frank Herbert described for the Fremen of the desert world of Arrakis.

force-sensitive

Whilst trying to understand the behaviour of light as it passes through a series of quantum logic gates that forces the ray to choose one state or another without the de-coherence of observation (oy! whenever I look at you, you either go all wavy or are so particular), physicists in Australia may have inadvertently invented the light-sabre. Though beams of light had been considerably slowed down beforehand, scientists had never been able to sustain a completely stationary collection of photons—apparently, until now. In trying to make quantum chips more practical and predictable, the researchers produced a bolt that’s effectively frozen in place, the Jedi weapon of choice.

meet the warner brothers and the warner sister, dot

Tinkerers Orville and Wilbur Wright had a sister named Katherine, a teacher, suffragan, and alumna of Oberlin College (the only graduate in the family), who very substantially contributed to their (while not seminal—more here and here) important and pioneering demonstrations of powered-flight.
Though there’s no clear documentation whether the unsung Wright had wished herself to be an aviatrix or helped with the design, there is testament to her relatively unacknow- ledged work behind the scenes that included running the brothers’ bicycle shop while they were away experimenting (with no backers, their only source of funding for their trials) better than they had done themselves and acting as their unwavering publicity agent and tour manager, encouraging them to persevere against a doubting public. Be sure to read the full account of the life of the heroine of Kitty Hawk at the link up top.

uniform resource locator

We are reminded by the always marvellous Nag on the Lake that the first bona fide website came on-line a quarter of a century ago on 6 August, 1991.
While working at the predecessor research facility to CERN, internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee was frustrated that there was no unified way to navigate the various databases that universities had established a universal access key as a way linking across different servers. These days we would characterise such disjointed pockets of information a walled-garden, and had not Berners-Lee realised that without making his hypertext transfer protocol public-domain, rivalry and acquisition would have doomed the project that augments and compliments our reality to unimaginable degrees before it was even given license to experiment and innovate. The original first website is conserved at the hyperlink here.

electric mirages

The fatal accident involving a tractor-trailer and driverless carriage, the brilliant BLDGBlog reports, was certainly a tragedy, but also prizes out insights into the increasingly inscrutable realm of machine perception.
Just as the component influences of complex algorithms quickly grow beyond human comprehension and artificial intelligences behave in ways that their programmers could not predict, it’s rare that we bother trying to understand how a machine sees and judges accordingly. When things run like clockwork, I suppose we are not that considered about what’s under the hood and how it works. Diagnostics revealed that the robot car could not distinguish between the chassis of the truck and the sky, forwarding further thought on the design of infrastructure and of space in general (the home, highway, office and warehouse) to make it more (or less) machine-accessible. What do you think? Is real-estate to be landscaped for use by computers, much like most of the traffic of the internet, or are those unreasonable accommodations?

fifteen thousand when we get to alderaan: purchasing-power or human capital

I had been ruminating this growing discussion over the question why the Star Trek and the Star Wars universes deliver us to such a starkly different future and past (presumably—but reference points are hard to cement for long ago and far away) for the past couple of days, and the comparison and contrast that space-faring civilisations and how that’s reflected in society. Whilst I believe that the trajectory lies mainly in the story-telling, exploration for its own sake and exploration for self-fulfilment and both franchises can be a reflection of the epic and there’s some cross-over and significant departures from the set course, it’s interesting to ponder the different outcomes and considering how technology either liberates economically or further enslaves.  Do you think either world-view presented will shape how we conduct our own exploration and colonisation? 

chirality or stage-directions

Though H is most charitable and patient and even anticipates my reflexes by giving my idiosyncratic directions their expected (correctly) and opposite responses, I was glad to learn that I am not quite alone in distinguishing my (or others’) right from left.

As Kottke ponders, as we begin to lose personal, native points of reference, I wonder if this incapacity might become something more endemic and more tolerated, like excusing a city-dweller for having not substituted equally personal landmarks and routines (for not seeing the rising or setting of the Sun and stars) for the cardinal directions. I wonder if having to face and flip one’s own reflection (as sometimes I feel that to be an impossible challenge) might be a skill-building activity for its own sake.  Divination from a mirror darkly is called scrying (though usually in the form of a crystal ball) but could possibly also broaden one’s cognitive frontiers or perhaps at least recognise one’s inward focus.  Despite or because of my orientation awkwardness (and maybe others becoming more comfortable with their own), I am noticing that it is more of a challenge to communicate it to others and do echo in wondering what it means when there no longer a dominant hand (of course these are not taken, like the side of the bed that is inalienably one’s own, away but our cues, like wrist-watches may be going out of style) or no clockwise orientation as an internal guide.

silicon valley, tin-pan alley

It is indisputable that the wired economy encourages moonlighting and pushed a sizable proportion to a managed, feudal entrepreneurship wherein risks and rewards are mitigated for the organisers, but the Guild also cultivates a myth about its importance and predominance. Being a feckless challenge to question the drift of market-forces in whatsoever capacity, it’s hard to dispute progress without being labelled a Luddite.
That sense of entitlement, however, to being a serf, a mechanical Turk to a pyramid-enterprise that trickles down. As much as we might rail against nationless corporations for not paying their share of taxes into government coffers or being exempt from the same regulations that govern mere mortals, we attribute the same belief that enables the scoff-laws—government policies and policing are antiquated institutions that stand in the way of progress and our own jonesing for something on the side. What should I be the only chump paying into that system?  Zoning and safety laws or an evolving framework of regulation certainly would only suppress and prevent us from turning vacant apartments into boutique-squats for well-paying tourists, and price-out established residents or so gentrify courier-services as to drive into the ground the entire infrastructure with competition. What do you think? Despite our complaints, wouldn’t we all like to be as clever and exploitative, even if we wouldn’t admit to sharing those same values?

these kids today with their y2k

Though I could not say whether the potential y2k cataclysm turned out to be a non-event because of assiduous preparation or the dire prediction of tigers falling from the heavens were somewhat exaggerated, but I do wonder if the anticipation and collective-relief was not somehow instructive on a sociological level.
Attuning us in a sense to future-shock, we were given a reasonably credible apocalyptic scenario that we each were able to do something about—other than repent. It is not as if we are powerless in the face of climate-change, political corruption or exploitive business, but there’s no tidy patch for it, deadline that everyone can agree on or easy to convey, process underlining problem. Computers would wink out of existence if the clock is dialled back and all those subsequent versions were never born. We dodged a bullet here. Now there’s talk of tipping-points and saturation, but we are just as readily shouted back from the ledge as we are led on. I wonder if those who survived such prophets of doom and lived to tell the tale have a different threshold for resignation when it comes to contemporary big problems than those who did not. What do you think? What do you remember about minutes to midnight on the last day of 1999?

red pill, blue pill

Expounding on comments made by one the industry’s visionaries at a coding conference, Vox magazine delivers a very good and accessible primer for the probing question whether we exist in a “base” reality or are living in an advanced simulation. Like the classic Brain-in-a-Vat inquiry, our philosophic prowess cannot solve the nature of the Universe, but I never really understood why a very complex scenario might be preferred (more likely) than a simpler one, albeit mundane one.
Even if technological advance were to grind to a halt or hit some unforeseen barrier, it’s easy to image us experiencing a virtual reality of our own making that’s indistin- guishable from the outside looking in, so suppose what an alien intelligence might develop over a thousand years or in ten thousand years. Given that there would be countless trillions of computers running, the odds that we’re in a so-called base, foundational existence is diminishing low, if one accepts the logic of the argument. What do you think? Is being a playable-character in a super-intellect’s video-game different than being in the Mind of God?

faux chateaux

Via the always thought-provoking Mental Floss, we learn of the rather questionable (though possibly nothing ought to be taboo in the name of science, and equally not surprising given our native stinginess and de-enterprising ways of finding short-cuts) endeavour of crafting wine without the fruit of the vine.  San Francisco-based Ava Winery simplifies and expedites the whole time-tested, involved process of growing, harvesting, fermenting and ageing through chemistry.

The preliminary results, after a tasting, were not however described in the usual savoury and celebratory vocabulary of foxy or smokey or smooth by oenolgists but rather with harsher descriptors, but I suppose this was just the Premier Cru and it takes time to perfect the formula. What do you think? I am not liking this (I think) and wonder what the point is. I wonder what sort of obnoxious name will have to be invested for grapeless wines—wintage, Vino Vidi Vici®—and feel that we ought not voluntarily give up on traditional methods while they are still viable.

gestalting or pinky and the brain

Via the always engaging The Browser comes a fascinating investigation into the ethics of genetic experimentation and hybridisation. Such husbandry is just about marrying up the right DNA—which does present technical hurdles though brute technology is quick to obtain and accommodate pathways that are penitentially advantageous to humans as organ farms, a repository of spare-parts, but from some fronts bodes caution, lest these chimera achieve an animal-singularity.
Personally, I couldn’t say that there was some enduring uniqueness to modes of human consciousness that make us special or so horrifyingly privileged. Some ethically-minded individuals are expressing concern that a human mind trapped in a laboratory rat’s body (reading gestating as gestalting) would elicit outrage. I’d dare to submit that an unadulterated rat probably is thinking along those very lines without some imagined vital spark. What do you think? Perhaps humans ought to be spliced with some humanity.

shop-class or genie back in the bottle

Though sometimes touted with great optimism as the desk-side Industrial Revolution, democratizing manufacture and taking the power away from big business (and one ought not to curb one’s aspirations on this account), invoking how inkjet printers did not put the publishing magnates into arrears Wired! magazine presents more of a tamed but nonetheless important speculation on the possibilities of 3D printing with modelling to help artists and artisans perfect their final product.
Sort of like confronting a first draft with red ink and the necessary detachment from one’s own words, 3D modelling and experi- mentation allows one to explore folds, contours and stresses nearly as on the native media and approach the potters’ wheel, as it were, with a bit more confidence. But what do you think? There’s probably much to be gained by the return of cottage-industry or the ability to assert some independence from the factories and sweat-shops or even one’s warranty and service-agreement by being able to produce one’s own quasi-unauthorised replacement parts. Perhaps the desktop revolution did not occur with printing and self-publishing (at least, not to order) in part because the presses were so cheap but the ink so dear. Designing our own printers, however, perhaps we won’t let that short-coming materialise, unless we are placated with instant delivery on demand and the tumult of obsolescence.

automatonophobia

The brilliant Kottke, maker of fine hypertext products, introduces us to a new type of uncanny valley in the form of composite three-dimensional masking.
While trying to capture the essence, the thing in itself, of personalities or politicians, one found that a sort of ventriloquist’s dummy is created and despite transferring personæ to different individuals, the original speaker still reverberates through gestures and facial expressions that come across as familiar and recognisable but look awkward and alien on the face of another. The eeriness and conflicted vocal cues is probably best illustrated in the video demonstration of the technique with talking-heads and statesmen found at the link above. The fear of anything that impersonates a living being is called automatonophobia (as in an automaton), which can include wax-figures and mannequins too.

rapture-ready or recursive self-improvement

In the labour market, the concerns about mass redundancy due to advances in robotics is undeniable and computing has gotten quite good at putting on at least a friendly persona, a clever mask for its subroutines that make it possible for the user (client) to engage with it.  Maybe humanity’s enduring and abiding mystery is a bit of a conceit itself, and surely the spark of conscious, self-awareness is dulled some if it only amounts to a convincing though banal chat with an automated customer service telephone tree, judged effective if the result is customer satisfaction.

The Singularity does not necessarily follow—and if it did, artificial intelligence won’t partake of the same negative and positive aspects of human character—on it’s own accord, at least, and needing human agency—like greed, ambition, kindness or curiosity that we would like to ascribe to it. Such an incubation period, even if at infinite speeds, does not given guarantee a survival instinct or evolutionary drive—gestating in an environment where it can only know, if know at all, those traits as abstractly material. There may only come a point when the robotics industry has taken all the jobs, writes sitcoms and the news, are our interstellar ambassadors, controls the economy and the defense apparatus—but by Jove, they’ll still be us curmudgeonly humans, managed but still with the advantage of being conscious, whatever benefit that affords. Maybe the Singularity is like the way that some fundamentalist Christian sects interpret the Rapture, the End of Days—for those not left behind (that is, made unemployable by the robot masters) they’ll be the chance for some sort of ersatz biological or uploaded immortality. What do you think? Are we just forever refashioning our hopes and fears?

5x5

rook to queen’s gherkin: the skyline of London in chess pieces

ossuary: sojourn around the world to reveal how the dead are kept among the living

blue harvest (dead link): Chinese theatres screen Star Wars saga for the first time nearly four decades after its release

consider yourself part of the furniture: aspirational lamp aims to earns its keep, like a character in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse

border-control: colourful gallery of world’s passports

warp and weave or venus in blue jeans

Via the splendiferous Kottke comes report of the latest technological collaboration of the wearable type in the form of Project Jacquard and the amazing, technicolour dreampants.

While it’s probably at best misleading to suggest that these new touch-sensitive textiles come in many colours or own any heritage to the that thermochronic experiment of the late 1980s that seemed to go underground (or even mood rings, which have seen a revival), having apparel that clothes one in a second, interactive skin, the Generra brand was the first thing I thought of. These new materials, however, are not to meant to interact with one’s body alone—though I imagine that true dreampants could be self-tailoring and will probably be laden with the soon to be standard compliment of vital-sign monitors and check one’s overall circulation and admonish the wearer if he or she becomes too big for his or her britches—but are moreover extensions of one’s distilled quiver of gadgets. One’s jeans and shirts would become control-panels and beacons for one’s electronic frontiers as intuitively (or not) as any other state-of-the-art implement.

bypass or great big convoy

Via the ever-excellent Kottke comes this rather profound study and projection of how self-driving vehicles will alter the economy and particularly the gas-food-lodging infrastructure built to support commercial trucking. While it does not take much boldness to imagine a phalanx of safer, more efficient robot guided convoys taking truckers out of the drivers’ seats as it has already come to pass, but the impact does not of course stop with this last lament of middle-class bread-winners.
The article is written from an American perspective and by analogy compares the seismic changes that could occur to those communities that the interstate freeway system passed by and withered for the sake of expedience, but I think the analysis is completely universal. With manufacturing increasingly retreating into yonder tightfistedness, goods are forever being shuttled back and forth. Consuming merchandise created and delivered by machine, vast swathes of the human workforce (and ultimately, all of it) become redundant and without access to meaningful employment. The untenable situation is accelerating to an important junction, wherein either there is no demand to satisfy the production-capacity because no one has the tender to pay for it or money becomes a rather meaningless trifle and in a utopian society, humans are at last allowed to enjoy the fruit of their labour. I suppose that’s precisely the point of progress but it is hard for me to imagine that the robber-barons might herald this event joyfully—especially if they knowing ushered in their own severance. What do you think? Will those automated cars drive us all off a cliff or make our existence better by abolishing capital?