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“After The Diners Have Ordered, The Robots In The Kitchen Set To Work Cooking”

June 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Serving Humanity, One Diner at a Time,” a story by Eddie Wrenn in the Daily Mail about a restaurant in China staffed by robots:

“If you pay a visit to this restaurant, in downtown Harbin, China, you will find 18 robots – from a waitress to a cooker to an usher – ready to ensure your dining experience is perfect.

The restaurant has 18 types of robots, each gliding out of the kitchen to provide your dish, with specialty robots including a dumpling robot and a noodle robot.

When a diner walks in, the usher robot extends their arm to the side and, with a sci-fi flourish, says ‘Earth Person, Hello, Welcome to the Robot Restaurant.’

After the diners have ordered, the robots in the kitchen set to work cooking.

Once the dish is prepared, a robot waiter, which runs along tracks on the floor, carries it from kitchen to table.

Prepared dishes are placed on a suspended conveyor belt and when the plate reaches the right table the mechanical arms lift it off and set it down.

As they eat, a singing robot entertains diners.”

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“It Demonstrates That Anyone Can Use A Computer Without Technical Knowledge”

June 29, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Jobs and Wozniak sold 50 Apple I computers to the Byte Shop.

Remarkable 1978 footage from inside the Palo Alto Byte Shop, one of the outlets in Paul Terrell’s early personal computer retail chain. The power was just beginning to pass into our hands, though I think all these years later we still haven’t done much with it.

“It Does Better Than The Average Doctor In Deciding Whether The Baby Needs Immediate Help”

June 28, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In “How to Dispel Your Illusions,” a NYRB piece from December 2011, Freeman Dyson writes about Daniel Kahneman’s reliance in objective information over subjective analysis, using as an example the work of noted pediatric anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar. An excerpt:

“Kahneman had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and had read a book, Clinical vs. Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence by Paul Meehl, published only a year earlier. Meehl was an American psychologist who studied the successes and failures of predictions in many different settings. He found overwhelming evidence for a disturbing conclusion. Predictions based on simple statistical scoring were generally more accurate than predictions based on expert judgment.

A famous example confirming Meehl’s conclusion is the ‘Apgar score,’ invented by the anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar in 1953 to guide the treatment of newborn babies. The Apgar score is a simple formula based on five vital signs that can be measured quickly: heart rate, breathing, reflexes, muscle tone, and color. It does better than the average doctor in deciding whether the baby needs immediate help. It is now used everywhere and saves the lives of thousands of babies.”

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Apgar is lauded by actress (and nurse) Kathryn Crosby, year unknown:

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“You Can Then Use These Paints To Literally Paint Batteries On Any Surface”

June 28, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I’ve said before that my hunch is that in the near-term batteries will change tremendously for the better. Here’s a video about new spray-on paintable batteries invented at Rice University. (Thanks Next Big Future.)

“When It Needs To It Can Jump 30 Feet In The Air”

June 28, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

The Sand Flea Jumping Robot, by your friends at Boston Dynamics and DARPA.

“I’ve Seen Many Fine Brains Burned Out On Hard Narcotics”

June 28, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Funny and sad, this 1972 letter published at philipkdick.com was an insane attempt by the speeded-up sci-fi author to offer his knowledge about drugs (which was considerable) to the Orange County Drug Information Service.

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“Why Did A Boom From A Crane Snap Off, Hurtle To Earth, And Kill A Man?”

June 28, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Engineering, like much of life, is a series of approximations and educated bets, which may end up in failure. In order to create something almost beyond the possibility of disaster, it would have to be as overbuilt as the Brooklyn Bridge, and that’s pretty cost prohibitive at this point in developed countries. 

I can’t explain exactly why I’m so interested in this 1977 video about the Failure Analysis Associates in Los Angeles, which still exists today. It’s a company run by ghostbusters searching for the ghost in the machine, who try to figure out why the best laid plans of mice and men ended up motionless in a spring-loaded trap.

“Now At Last You Can Play At Home”

June 27, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Today is the 40th anniversary of Nolan Bushnell’s Atari, the pre-PC age way to get your kids to shut up for five minutes. The first commercial for the living-room friendly version of Pong from 1975, a lousy ad for a great product.

Although I wouldn’t say Atari invented Pong. Willian Higinbotham created Tennis for Two in 1958.

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“It’s Not Big Brother–We’re Doing It To Ourselves”

June 27, 2012 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Michael Crichton arguing that Orwell’s 1984 actually did come to pass, not by totalitarian regime but by our own hands. You know–we like to watch and be watched.

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“No Week Goes By Without The Unveiling Of A New Medical Device Or Weapons System”

June 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “How We Understand Our Gadgets,” Lewis Lapham’s new Tom Dispatch appraisal of these days of miracle and wonder:

“Like England in the late sixteenth century, America in the early twenty-first has in hand a vast store of new learning, much of it seemingly miraculous — the lines and letters that weave the physics and the metaphysics into strands of DNA, Einstein’s equations, Planck’s constant and the Schwarzschild radius, the cloned sheep and artificial heart. America’s scientists come away from Stockholm nearly every year with a well-wrought wreath of Nobel prizes, and no week goes by without the unveiling of a new medical device or weapons system.

The record also suggests that the advancement of our new and marvelous knowledge has been accompanied by a broad and popular retreat into the wilderness of smoke and mirrors. The fear of new wonders technological — nuclear, biochemical, and genetic — gives rise to what John Donne presumably would have recognized as the uneasy reawakening of a medieval belief in magic.

We find our new Atlantis within the heavenly books of necromancy inscribed on walls of silicon and glass, the streaming data on an iPad or a television screen lending itself more readily to the traffic in spells and incantation than to the distribution of reasoned argument.  The less that can be seen and understood of the genies escaping from their bottles at Goldman Sachs and MIT, the more headlong the rush into the various forms of wishful thinking that increasingly have become the stuff of which we make our politics and social networking, our news and entertainment, our foreign policy and gross domestic product.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“It Damages The Culture For Sports To Be Allowed To Become Something Foreign And Unnatural”

June 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Baseball stats guru Bill James believes that steroids (or some derivative) will be eventually be safe and legal, but that doesn’t mean he thinks that Congress wasted money on the steroids hearings. He says as much in a recent Q&A session with readers on his site, providing four reasons why he feels that way, though I think reasons 3 and 4 aren’t particularly sturdy. The exchange:

“Q: In your recent piece on [Roger] Clemens, you write, ‘My view is that…it was an entirely appropriate use of the power of congress to step in and tell them to fix the problem.’ What was ‘the problem’? I assume you’re referring to steroids and HGH, but why do you consider them a problem?

A: I would say there were four reasons that it was a problem:

1) It was disrespectful of the law,

2) It promoted the widespread use of potentially dangerous and harmful substances by young people aspiring to be athletes,

3) The public largely despised the use of steroids by athletes, and

4) If sports are a significant cultural activity, which I believe they are, then it damages the culture for sports to be allowed to become something foreign and unnatural.”

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“Humans May Taste Good, But Most Societies Are A Long Way From Cannibalism”

June 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “One Man’s Meat Is Another’s Person,” Raymond Sokolov’s 1974 Natural History article about cannibalism, a topic much in the news then because of the startling story from two years earlier about plane crash survivors in the Andes making desperately needed nutrients of dead passengers. The opening:

“HUMANS may taste good, but most societies are a long way from cannibalism. Of all the taboos in Western society, the prohibition against the eating of human flesh is the most widely obeyed. Thousands among us kill someone every year. Incest is not common, yet it occurs—and enriches the fantasy life of many an analysand. But cannibalism is an infraction of the social order that very few have risked.

Like all forbidden fruits, nevertheless, cannibalism fascinates us. Ever since Columbus first discovered it among the Caribs (who were called canibales, whence the name), it has inspired an entire literature of speculation and raised a dark question in the minds of people too civilized to feel anything but repulsion at the idea of bolting human steaks but unable to keep from wondering in untrammeled moments what they taste like.

Explorers, probably translating a Fijian phrase, reported that the stuff was known to its fanciers in the Pacific as ‘long pig.’ This never seemed more than a dubious description of the savor of our muscular Christian selves. The enigma basically remained until late 1972. Survivors of a Uruguayan plane crash in the Andes, who were cut off from the outside world for weeks, in desperation ate fellow passengers killed in the accident. After their rescue, the survivors told Piers Paul Read—who set down their story in the current best-seller Alive (Lippincott)—that after cooking the meat briefly (they tried it first raw), ‘the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor–softer than beef but with much the same taste.’

That is the kind of testimony one can believe, especially from Uruguayans, who know their beef. It is also good news that humans taste good: alternatives to soyburgers are always welcome, and we can at last exonerate cannibal societies of the charge of unrefined savagery. Instead, they were gastronomes.”

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“16 men survived for 72 days by doing the unthinkable”:

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“I Think This Might Become The Most Spectacular Event Ever”

June 26, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Dutch company Mars One plans a reality TV show about humans living on our neighboring planet in 2023, conflating technological prowess and narcissism, two hallmarks of contemporary Western culture. It doesn’t appear to be an elaborate prank as insane as it sounds.

“Where Is The Digital Paper I Dreamed About As A Kid?”

June 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Video-game designer Ste Pickford wonders why he still sketches on a pad with pen and pencil in this Digital Age. From his blog post:

“I’m no luddite. I’ve been happily working as a designer on computers for over 25 years, and I’m comfortable making graphics and building finished work on a computer. I can happily draw and paint with the Wacom pad (and even with a mouse if I have to), and I have no problems staring at the screen for hours on end, but I still revert back to pen and paper when I want to work out something new.

Why is this?

Is it because, despite my extensive computer experience, I started drawing before the computer age? I had never seen a computer before the age of 10, and probably not touched a mouse until I was about 17, but I had a pencil in my hand from the age of about 2 or 3. Perhaps the younger generation of designers, who’ve used computers since they were born, will be able to go completely digital and never need paper at all?

Or, more likely, is it that there still isn’t a software / hardware combination that offers the flexibility and ease-of-use of pen and paper, when you have unformed ideas that you need to explore?

Where is the digital paper I dreamed about as a kid?”

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Spiromania, 1973:

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“We’d Like To Find A Way To Bypass His Body, Pretty Much Hack His Brain”

June 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As Stephen Hawking’s motor skills further deteriorate, plans are afoot to tap directly into his head with cutting edge technology. From the Telegraph:

“Hawking, 70, has been working with scientists at Standford University who are developing a the iBrain – a tool which picks up brain waves and communicates them via a computer.

The scientist, who has motor neurone disease and lost the power of speech nearly 30 years ago, currently uses a computer to communicate but is losing the ability as the condition worsens.

But he has been working with Philip Low, a professor at Stanford and inventor of the iBrain, a brain scanner that measures electrical activity.

‘We’d like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain,’ said Prof Low.

Researchers will unveil their latest results at a conference in Cambridge next month, and may demonstrate the technology on Hawking.”

 

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“The Issues Of Freedom And Control Are Among The Most Misunderstood Of Your Work”

June 25, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Long-form interview with B.F. Skinner about the nature of education.

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“The Underground Is The Next Great Frontier”

June 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Subterreanan suburbs fit for a post-apocalyptic prince aren’t the only new plans for the space beneath our streets. From “Our Underground Future,” Leon Neyfakh’s new Boston Globe think-piece:

“A cadre of engineers who specialize in tunneling and excavation say that we have barely begun to take advantage of the underground’s versatility. The underground is the next great frontier, they say, and figuring out how best to use it should be a priority as we look ahead to the shape our civilization will take.

‘We have so much room underground,’ said Sam Ariaratnam, a professor at Arizona State University and the chairman of the International Society for Trenchless Technology. ‘That underground real estate—people need to start looking at it. And they are starting to look at it.’

The federal government has taken an interest, convening a panel of specialists under the banner of the National Academy of Engineering to produce a report, due out later this year, on the potential uses for America’s underground space, and in particular its importance in building sustainable cities. The long-term vision is one in which the surface of the earth is reserved for the things we want to see and be around—houses, schools, yards, parks—while all the other facilities that are needed to make a city run, from water treatment plants to data banks to freight systems, hum away underground.

Though the basic idea has existed for decades, new engineering techniques and an increasing interest in sustainable urban growth have created fresh momentum for what once seemed like a notion out of Jules Verne.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“What Have You Written Besides Notes To The Milkman?”

June 25, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Groucho, seemingly oblivious, sasses Ray Bradbury on You Bet Your Life, 1955.

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“We May Even Have Phones That Constantly Listen In On Our Conversations”

June 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At MIT’s Technology Review, Patti Maes, who researches human-computer interaction, answers questions about the future of smartphones. I think she’s a little aggressive in the timeline of her prediction, but she could be right and I could be wrong. An excerpt:

“What will smart phones be like five years from now?

Phones may know not just where you are but that you are in a conversation, and who you are talking to, and they may make certain information and documents available based on what conversation you’re having. Or they may silence themselves, knowing that you’re in an interview.

They may get some information from sensors and some from databases about your calendar, your habits, your preferences, and which people are important to you.

Once the phone is more aware of the user’s current situation, and the user’s context and preferences and all that, then it can do a lot more. It can change the way it operates based on the current context.

Ultimately, we may even have phones that constantly listen in on our conversations and are just always ready with information and data that might be relevant to whatever conversation we’re having.”

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“We Were Given A Vision Of Cathartic Future”

June 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A Japanese design engineering firm was tasked with creating a water bottle that would be effective in a post-apoclyptic landscape. Realizing that such environs would presuppose water scarcity, Takram took things several steps further, creating an alternative human organ system that would allow us to survive on a drastically reduced water intake. It may the future. You go first. An excerpt from the proposal:

“We were given a vision of cathartic future. A world in which humanity experiences a cataclysmic sequence of events that will bring us to the brink of annihilation. Afflicted by manmade causes, the rising sea level, radioactive emissions and release of hazardous materials into the environment, art and culture cease to exist. This provides an opportunity, not lament, to re-evaluate what constitutes art, design, culture and the quality of life itself when all prejudices and preconceptions vanish.

With this premise, Takram was tasked to design a water bottle. After a period of thorough research and analysis, Takram reached an uncanny solution. Our conclusion was that it would make more sense, in fact, to regulate how much water the human body can retain and recycle in this dire environment. This revelation resulted in the Hydrolemic system, a set of artificial organs.”

“The Moore’s Law Of Drone Technology Is Currently Accelerating”

June 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

What technology has exploded (in a couple of senses) more in the last decade than drones? In the new Wired article, “How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom,” Chris Anderson looks at what this brave new world of autonomous aircraft means. An excerpt:

“Look up into America’s skies today and you might just see one of these drones: small, fully autonomous, and dirt-cheap. On any given weekend, someone’s probably flying a real-life drone not far from your own personal airspace. (They’re the ones looking at their laptops instead of their planes.) These personal drones can do everything that military drones can, aside from blow up stuff. Although they technically aren’t supposed to be used commercially in the US (they also must stay below 400 feet, within visual line of sight, and away from populated areas and airports), the FAA is planning to officially allow commercial use starting in 2015.

What are all these amateurs doing with their drones? Like the early personal computers, the main use at this point is experimentation—simple, geeky fun. But as personal drones become more sophisticated and reliable, practical applications are emerging. The film industry is already full of remotely piloted copters serving as camera platforms, with a longer reach than booms as well as cheaper and safer operations than manned helicopters. Some farmers now use drones for crop management, creating aerial maps to optimize water and fertilizer distribution. And there are countless scientific uses for drones, from watching algal blooms in the ocean to low-altitude measurement of the solar reflectivity of the Amazon rain forest. Others are using the craft for wildlife management, tracking endangered species and quietly mapping out nesting areas that are in need of protection.

To give a sense of the scale of the personal drone movement, DIY Drones—an online community that I founded in 2007 (more on that later)—has 26,000 members, who fly drones that they either assemble themselves or buy premade from dozens of companies that serve the amateur market. All told, there are probably around 1,000 new personal drones that take to the sky every month (3D Robotics, a company I cofounded, is shipping more than 100 ArduPilot Megas a week); that figure rivals the drone sales of the world’s top aerospace companies (in units, of course, not dollars). And the personal drone industry is growing much faster.

Why? The reason is the same as with every other digital technology: a Moore’s-law-style pace where performance regularly doubles while size and price plummet. In fact, the Moore’s law of drone technology is currently accelerating, thanks to the smartphone industry, which relies on the same components—sensors, optics, batteries, and embedded processors—all of them growing smaller and faster each year. Just as the 1970s saw the birth and rise of the personal computer, this decade will see the ascendance of the personal drone. We’re entering the Drone Age.”

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“Doctors Agreed That Even A Near Miss By A Cannonball…Could Shatter Bones, Blind People, Or Even Kill Them”

June 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a Washington Post piece by Sarah Kliff that charts the things that kill us now as opposed to 200 years ago, a passage about the 1812 New England Journal of Medicine worrying over death by cannonball and sponteous combustion:

“Doctors agreed that even a near miss by a cannonball — without contact — could shatter bones, blind people, or even kill them. Reports of spontaneous combustion, especially of ‘brandy-drinking men and women,’ received serious, if skeptical, consideration. And physicians were obsessed with fevers — puerperal, petechial, catarrhal, and even an outbreak of ‘spotted fever’ in which some patients were neither spotted nor febrile.”

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“This May Be Your Last Chance Ever To Live The Dream”

June 22, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A 1983 California ad offering DeLoreans at the closeout price of $18,895.

More DeLorean posts:

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“This Was, Of Course, Science Fiction. But It Was Also Prophetic.”

June 22, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a smart NPR post, Amanda Katz wonders what the advent of e-books will mean to the generational passing down of volumes, using as an example a boyhood copy of War of the Worlds owned by pioneering rocketeer Robert Goddard. The opening:

“In 1898, a man bought a book for his 16-year-old nephew. ‘Many happy retoins [sic]. Uncle Spud,’ he wrote on a blank page at the front.

The book: H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, then just out in America from Harper & Brothers.The ripping tale of a Martian attack that set the mold for them all, it’s almost more striking to a reader today for its turn-of-the-century detail: carriage-horse accidents, urgent telegrams, news only via newspapers. Toward the end of the novel, the narrator gets ahold of a first post-attack copy of the Daily Mail: ‘I learned nothing fresh except that already in one week the examination of the Martian mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the ‘Secret of Flying’ was discovered.’

This was, of course, science fiction. But it was also prophetic. Uncle Spud’s teenage nephew — who stamped his name on the first page of the novel and read it religiously once a year — would himself go on to discover many secrets of flying. That nephew was Robert Hutchings Goddard, inventor of the liquid-fuel rocket.” (Thanks Browser.)

See also:

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“The Goal Is For Fliers To Move Almost Non-Stop Through Security From The Curb To The Gate”

June 22, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Iris scans are only the start of the souped-up technology at Dallas’ Love Field airport, which aims to make check-in a paperless, stopless process. From USA Today:

“At a terminal being renovated here at Love Field, contractors are installing 500 high-definition security cameras sharp enough to read an auto license plate or a logo on a shirt.

The cameras, capable of tracking passengers from the parking garage to gates to the tarmac, are a key first step in creating what the airline industry would like to see at airports worldwide: a security apparatus that would scrutinize passengers more thoroughly, but less intrusively, and in faster fashion than now.

It’s part of what the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, which represents airlines globally, calls ‘the checkpoint of the future.’

‘The goal is for fliers to move almost non-stop through security from the curb to the gate, in contrast to repeated security stops and logjams at checkpoints.'”

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President Kennedy and the First Lady arrive at Love Field, November 22, 1963, less than an hour before he was assassinated.

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