Researchers at Carnegie
Mellon University and Microsoft have developed an acoustic biosensor that turns an arm into a crude touch screen. |
An armband, worn around
the bicep, detects minute sound waves that travel through skin when it is tapped.
The researchers designed a software program that can distinguish the origin of
the acoustic sounds–which vary due to slight differences in underlying bone
density, mass and tissue. The system then translates these locations into
button commands. A pico projector embedded in the armband projects a display–a
game of Tetris or button controllers–onto a user’s palm or arm. |
The researchers found
that they were able to achieve 95.5% accuracy with the controllers when five
points on the arm were designated as buttons. They will present their results
at this year’s CHI conference next month. |
See the researchers
present Skinput below. |
David Cope’s software creates beautiful, original music. Why are people so angry about that?
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UC Santa Cruz emeritus professor David Cope is ready to introduce computer software that creates original, modern music. (Catherine Karnow) |
| The office looks like the aftermath of a surrealistic earthquake, as if David Cope’s brain has spewed out decades of memories all over the carpet, the door, the walls, even the ceiling. Books and papers, music scores and magazines are all strewn about in ragged piles |
| A semi-functional Apple Power Mac 7500 (discontinued April 1, 1996) sits in the corner, its lemon-lime monitor buzzing. Drawings filled with concepts for a never-constructed musical-radio-space telescope dominate half of one wall. Russian dolls and an exercise bike, not to mention random pieces from homemade board games, peek out from the intellectual rubble. Above, something like 200 sets of wind chimes from around the world hang, ringing oddly congruent melodies. |
I wonder to what extent the paradigm shift in understanding the abstraction of resource allocation via money is pervasive.. | A simple typo gave Michael Ivey the idea for his company. One day in the fall of 2008, Ivey’s wife, using her pink RAZR phone, sent him a note via Twitter. But instead of typing the letter d at the beginning of the tweet — which would have sent the note as a direct message, a private note just for Ivey — she hit p. It could have been an embarrassing snafu, but instead it sparked a brainstorm. That’s how you should pay people, Ivey publicly replied. Ivey’s friends quickly jumped into the conversation, enthusiastically endorsing the idea. Ivey, a computer programmer based in Alabama, began wondering if he and his wife hadn’t hit on something: What if people could transfer money over Twitter for next to nothing, simply by typing a username and a dollar amount? |
The rise of agriculture made commodities like cattle and grain ideal proto-currencies: Since everyone knew what a heifer or a bushel was worth, the system was more efficient than barter.
Read more at www.wired.com |
“Our Digital Lives Have Evolved — So Must Trust” go read this
After reading that headline, I can see some (maybe lots) of you scratching your heads saying: “Wait a minute — trust is a not a technology!”
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A decade ago that would have been true — it is not now.
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Our digital lives were once confined to e-mail, some web surfing and an occasional online purchase (for the braver among us). A mere decade on and our lives are increasingly being lived online. Yet, while our dependence on the internet has grown exponentially, the technologies we use to navigate the sometimes dangerous, somewhat untrusted waters of the internet remain the same — largely confined to incremental improvements in narrowly defined segments of security or access.
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“You care about the environment and factor it into your daily choices. But how do you know if your decisions actually make a difference? Knowledge is power: PEIR lets you see how your daily choices affect the environment and how the environment affects you.”
fascinating take.. PEIR, the Personal Environmental Impact Report, is a new kind of online tool that allows you to use your mobile phone to explore and share how you impact the environment and how the environment impacts you. |
What’s unique about PEIR? Taking a step beyond a “footprint calculator” that relies only on your demographics, PEIR uses location data that is regularly and securely uploaded from your mobile phone to create a dynamic and personalized report about your environmental impact and exposure. |
PEIR gives you greater control over your environmental impact and exposure by allowing you to interactively explore how it creates its results from your activity patterns. |
“In sum, there are more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic about the Internet and its role in shaping our lives, culture, economy, and society. But that doesn’t mean it will be all roses going forward.”
a highly important (and very good) read, go read all of it I believe that the Internet and digital technologies are reshaping our culture, economy, and society in most ways for the better, but not without some serious heartburn along the way. |
I believe that the world of information abundance that has dawned is vastly superior to the world of information poverty that we just left. But I also understand that not all information is equal and that that the rise of abundance raises concerns about information overload, objectionable content, and the role of “authority” and “truth.” |
I believe that free and open source software (FOSS) has produced enormous social / economic benefits, but I do not believe that FOSS (or “wiki” models) will replace all proprietary business models or methods. Each model or mode of production has its place and purpose and they will continue to co-exist going forward, albeit in serious tension at times. Read more at techliberation.com |
Save your tears for Tiny Tim. A boom in sophisticated prostheses has created a most unlikely by-product: envy. |
There are many advantages to having your leg amputated. |
Anybody who hears “prosthetic” and thinks “peg leg” might wonder about Herr’s sunny hubris. The thought that an artificial limb could make anybody stronger or faster, or confer social advantage, is an opinion ripe for skepticism. Wearing one is inconvenient at best. It often hurts. It can break. It is obvious proof of loss. It seems by its very nature to announce a lack of health or vitality. |
In the meantime, Herr says, you can dispense with the Tiny Tim pity and the warm fuzzy feeling you get when a little girl struggles to her feet on poorly designed stilts. Because the new machines — and they are machines — are becoming so lustrous and so efficient that some people are already willing to chop off a perfectly good limb to get one. |
“These are admittedly “toy” systems, but as synthetic biological circuits become more complex, the control of populations of cells in a precise way will undoubtedly be critical. Adding more rules and circuits that control different genes will lead to more complex and useful patters and a deeper understanding of the emergent properties of gene networks.” | Groups of individuals (from molecules to cells to animals) following simple rules and responding to environmental cues will create the amazingly complex emergent behaviors we see in nature, making cells, bodies, and societies far more than the sum of their parts. Each individual acts without knowing what the final outcome will be, whether it’s birds flying in formation, termites building intricate underground tunnels, or human societies building cities and networks. At a molecular level, one of the most striking examples of emergent behavior is embryonic body pattern formation. Every cell in the embryo has an identical copy of the genome, but each cell activates a specific set of genes depending on the concentration of chemicals in its environment, concentrations defined by the orientation of the egg and neighboring cells. |
as always John Brockman puts it in a manner no other writer can. absolutely brilliant. | “Love Intermedia Kinetic Environments.” John Brockman speaking — partly kidding, but conveying the notion that Intermedia Kinetic Environments are In in the places where the action is — an Experience, an Event, an Environment, a humming electric world. |
On a Sunday in September 1966, I was sitting on a park bench reading about myself on the front page of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section. I was wondering whether the article would get me fired from my job at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, where I was producing “expanded cinema” and “intermedia” events. I was twenty-five years old. |
Hall’s candidate for the most important invention was not the capture of fire, the printing press, the discovery of electricity, or the discovery of the structure of DNA. The most important invention was … talking. To illustrate the point, he told a story about a group of prehistoric cavemen having a conversation. Read more at www.edge.org |
The Information Age is over - What’s next? |
At a time in history with unprecedented access to global information streams, it may seem odd to some that the “Information Age” is already behind us. Traditionally a period of history can be characterized by the dominant technology that separates the leaders from the followers. Today is no exception. Power and influence is often associated with those that master the novel technology and rapid changes in economic and/or political fortunes soon ripple across societies. The dawn of the “Industrial Age” coincided with global changes in how physical materials were transformed and distributed. The costs of manufacturing and distribution plummeted raising the standard of living for many. The commoditization of material goods began and the control of capital, raw material sources, and production capacity reshaped the thinking of the day. |
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