The New York Times has an article about Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog, WELL) - he uses hackers/hacks in a way I’ve always thought was inspiring-
Stewart Brand has become a heretic to environmentalism, a movement he helped found, but he doesn’t plan to be isolated for long. He expects that environmentalists will soon share his affection for nuclear power. They’ll lose their fear of population growth and start appreciating sprawling megacities. They’ll stop worrying about “frankenfoods” and embrace genetic engineering.
…He predicts that all this will happen in the next decade, which sounds rather improbable — or at least it would if anyone else had made the prediction. But when it comes to anticipating the zeitgeist, never underestimate Stewart Brand…
…He thinks the fears of genetically engineered bugs causing disaster are as overstated as the counterculture’s fears of computers turning into Big Brother. “Starting in the 1960s, hackers turned computers from organizational […]
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These little bots make cockroaches believe that they’re one of them, at least that’s what the roaches want us to believe -
LEURRE will propose a modeling protocol to be applied to the calculus of emergence in mixed-societies and study its properties. Its goal is similar to research in collective intelligence or self-organization, namely to understand how phenomena at one level of biological organization (here social) emerge from the properties of lower-level units (individual behavior). Having determined the pathways of information flow among the units and their behavioral rules, analytical and numerical models enable to predict the properties of the mixed society.
LEURRE is mainly concerned with the dynamics and the emergence of collective patterns. We consider three types of entities: the animals, the robots and the chemical/physical variables (e. g. pheromone, sound, building material, resource, shelter,. . . ).
The robots and animals (the autonomous agents) are characterized by their position, orientation, […]
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Electronics Weekly on “printed electronics” -
Nowadays, the term printed electronics is taken to include thin film electronics that will become printable. Most of the potential for printed electronics lies in what Toppan Forms calls Smart Media Products (SMP) which will be intelligent and mass producible yet often customisable as well. They will usually be used at the human interface or connected to networks and embedded ubiquitously into the environment.
All this means that printed electronics will largely create new markets, such as tape around pipelines to detect leaks and impending leaks and signal that there is a problem. After all, leaks still occur in refineries and in utility pipes underground.
Certainly, printed electronics will commonly take the form of tape, “wallpaper”, posters, patches and packaging rather than electronic equipment. Electronically savvy companies already making patches, tape or packaging such as 3M and Toppan Printing will be more comfortable with this world than […]
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Wired has an interesting story about the growing problem of fake holograms…
Fake holograms also undermine anti-counterfeiting practices erected by memorabilia and coin collecting groups, in which valuable collectibles — like comic books, coins and baseball cards — are sealed in bags with numbered holograms that a potential buyer can verify with special hologram reading-gear.
The biggest problem, Allen and others say, is that almost anyone can get a hologram printing machine now, often for less than $10,000, or simply order duplicates of a master hologram from dozens of hologram-making companies throughout the world.
Wired News: Fake Holograms a 3-D Crime Wave - Link.
I can care less about the counterfeiting, getting a home hologram machine for under $10k sounds awesome.
Pictured here fake hologram - Trademark Management Inc & Wired. Read the article and spot the differences with the real/fake ones.
Related:
360 degree holograms - Link.
Make your Own Hologram Kit - Link.
Design a Hologram Kit […]
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Most of the time all you see are slick videos of the new bipedal robots flawlessly trotting about, but we like this one, when things go a little wrong… - Link.
The action starts 58 seconds in.
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Sven sent in this video demonstrating Behrokh Khoshnevis’ Robo Building machine in action - Link.
Related:
Behrokh Khoshnevis - Link.
Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) - Link.
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Back in October of 2006 our sharp eyed MAKE readers spotted a strange water craft and ultimately figured out what it was, here’s a story about it’s debut by the SF Chronicle —
“The strangest vessel made its formal premiere Thursday on San Francisco Bay, and it was a sight to see: It looked like a spider, wiggled over the waves like a porpoise, and was fast as the wind.
It is named the Proteus, after a Greek god of the sea, and is the first of what might be a long line of wave adaptive modular vessels — WAM-V for short — developed by Ugo Conti, an engineer and inventor. Conti calls it “the prototype of a new class of vessel.” Thanks Wonko - Link.
Related:
Mysterious boat - Update: Solved - Link.
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Wesley writes -
“The inventor of the bear protection suit has just built a protoype for a suit or armour capable of stoping bullets and knives.” - Link.
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BBC on the current human-lost-to-computer chess saga…
“Deep Fritz, a chess-playing computer, has beaten human counterpart world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik in a six-game battle in Bonn, Germany.
Deep Fritz won by four points to two, after taking the last game in 47 moves in a match lasting almost five hours. “ [via] - Link.
About 9 years ago the humans lost the chess battle to Deep Blue “Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine” is definitely worth seeing if you’re interested in that sort of epic…
IBM is really active in the open source community, perhaps we could collectively request access to the Deep Blue source to not only see how it beat our best human chess player at the time, but to run our own versions of Deep Blue (it could run on a modern computer for sure by now). It might also clear up a lot of questions on how exactly IBM […]
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New Scientist has an article on turning any surface into a touch screen using small piezoelectric sensors to sense surface vibrations -
“A series of acoustic sensors that turn any surface into a touch-sensitive computer interface have been developed by European researchers.
Two or more sensors are attached around the edges of the surface. These pinpoint the position of a finger, or another touching object, by tracking minute vibrations. This allows them to create a virtual touchpad, or keyboard, on any table or wall.” [via] - Link.
Related:
Non-Invasive washing machine cycle detector project (uses piezoelectric sensors) - Link.
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Imagine being able to program your bumper sticker to say anything you want… CRAVE has a quickie about VW’s programmable electronic bumper sticker that “enables drivers to communicate real-time messages to other road users”… - Link.
There are a lot of ways to do this now (LEDs, e-ink…) and I bet we’ll see some from Makers -really soon-
Previous:
LED car messages - Link.
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Our pal (and Maker profiled in MAKE 01) Neil Gershenfeld is in Fortune magazine/CNN - “According to MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, the digital revolution is over, and the good guys won. The next big change will be about manufacturing. Anyone with a PC will be able to build anything just by hitting ‘print.’
Imagine a machine with the ability to manufacture anything. Now imagine that machine in your living room. What would you build first? Would you start a business? Would you ever buy anything retail again? According to MIT physicist Neil Gershenfeld, it’s not too early to think about these questions, because that machine, which he calls a personal fabricator, is not so far off - or so far-fetched - as you might think.” - Link.
Related:
Fab lab articles, how-tos and projects @ MAKE - Link.
From the pages of MAKE:
Welcome to the Fab Lab - Neil Gershenfeld shows us that personal fabrication […]
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Ok Makers, map the human genome faster than anyone else and pick up a cool $10 million - “Two years ago, engineer Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X Prize when his SpaceShipOne flew 62 miles into space. The second X Prize winner won’t travel nearly as far — but must traverse an unzippered human genome, crunching its 3 billion bits of DNA data in record time.” Thanks Hans! - Link.
Pictured here, Kimberly Chapman knitted DNA models…
More:
X PRIZE Foundation - Link.
DNA inspiration:
Knit DNA Model - Link.
DNA Hacking - Link.
HOW TO - Extract DNA from anything living - Link.
Art from your DNA… - Link.
Coffee shop offers DNA testing - Link.
DIY DNA Explorer Kit - Link.
Kitchen Counter DNA Lab. Extract, purify, and experiment with the blueprint of life. MAKE 07 - Page 59.
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At IFA2006, Philips showed off their Lumalive light emitting textiles, the jackets and shirts can play animations as well as change colors. The video has a few clothing examples and a big clock inside a couch… - Link.
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