Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Robots ReAssemblePermalink
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The “Luke Skywalker” ArmPermalink
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Instant MerchandizingYou can now manufacture products on demand, using your own designs, very quickly, easily and cheaply. And it’s only going to get better.
PermalinkWelcome to the age of the instapreneur. With nothing more than a design, amateurs can manufacture jewelry, robots, T-shirts, furniture — anything. No warehouses. No minimum orders. And no money down. The digital economy isn’t just digital; the same market forces that allowed midlist musicians to make a living distributing their songs online now give amateur clothiers the chance to sell their wares without having to persuade Barney’s buyers to carry them.
Thousands are launching instant businesses. Zazzle, of Redwood City, California, offers a dizzying array of user-designed products from posters to tennis shoes. StyleShake, a custom-clothing site in London, received 25,000 dress designs in its first three months. Spreadshirt, founded in Leipzig, Germany, hosts 500,000 individual T-shirt shops. “These companies significantly lower the threshold for someone to bring anything to market,” says Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. “There’s an industrial-age bias that you need volume to support a factory; but with this, much-more-creative low-volume businesses become viable.”
Friday, March 21, 2008
More Impressive than a SegwayDean Kamen has invented a machine that will purify any water source, whether it be seawater, urine, or toxic waste. It can make clean drinking water from any source of water. Very nice.
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Monday, March 17, 2008
Big Dog RobotPermalink
Monday, March 10, 2008
Bionic EyeThere is one, and it looks pretty real.
Too bad it doesn’t glow in the dark. But you can always get one of these contacts.
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Sunday, March 02, 2008
A Focus on the FutureJapan leads the world in robotics. They want robots to serve them rather than immigrants, which is why they haven’t loosened their extremely tight immigration laws. And this could actually be a boon to humanity, because we can’t continue to depend on people from poor countries to do all our dirty work.
One of the key differences between Japan and the US, is they don’t fear technology. They embrace it. Their fiction isn’t full of ways technology will be the end of humanity. Our Luddite mentality, our fear of progress has held us back.
Robots are already taken for granted in Japanese factories, so much so that they are sometimes welcomed on their first day at work with Shinto religious ceremonies. Robots make sushi. Robots plant rice and tend paddies.
There are robots serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, spoon-feeding the elderly. They serve tea, greet company guests and chatter away at public technology displays. Now start-ups are marching out robotic home helpers.
They aren’t all humanoid. The Paro is a furry robot seal fitted with sensors beneath its fur and whiskers, designed to comfort the lonely, opening and closing its eyes and moving its flippers.
For Japan, the robotics revolution is an imperative. With more than a fifth of the population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the workforce and care for the elderly.
In the past several years, the government has funded a plethora of robotics-related efforts, including some $42 million for the first phase of a humanoid robotics project, and $10 million a year between 2006 and 2010 to develop key robot technologies.
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Robots have long been portrayed as friendly helpers in Japanese popular culture, a far cry from the often rebellious and violent machines that often inhabit Western science fiction.
America was once the technological leader of the world. But as our education system worsens (see below) and our technological edge weakens, we really should be following the Japan’s lead and developing our own robotic answers to many of our problems.
Most of our robotic advances have been in the military, with drone aircraft and vehicles. That’s where we put our money and priorities in the field. Generally speaking, most of America’s technological developments came from either military research or the space program, then trickled down to consumers.
But that’s not a sustainable way of doing things. Billions get funneled down various rat holes and a few good things come out of it. A lot of it gets wasted. The Japanese just focus on what needs to get done and it’s paying off for them.
We should focus on the future.
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Saturday, March 01, 2008
KidsA source of amusement or derangement. You decide.
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Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Future Tech
Nano tech cell phones.
Or how about electronic tattoos?
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Tuesday, January 01, 2008
It’s Come to ThisEven though the weighty Michael More praised Britains NHS in his movie Sicko they probably wouldn’t treat him according to new laws put in place in England.
Smokers, drinkers and the obese are about to be denied health care there. Just as they deny it for people over 70. Not unless they “change” (the old don’t have that option).
It doesn’t matter that the people being denied health care pay for it. It every country where they have Socialized medicine, there are high taxes that pay for it. You are forced to pay them, just as you are here. But paying taxes is no guarantee they will give you any benefits. All they have to do is pass new rules and they can deny you anything.
Socialized medicine is never the answer. Once you give all the power to bureaucrats, they start turning the screws. They always claim they are going to take care of you, but they never really want to. The services you get from most governments is poor. That’s because large bureaucracies simply fail to work well. And scammers usually drain the system of funds, while the truly needy go without.
Governments should never get too much power over the people’s lives, because the power freaks will abuse it every time. And power freaks are drawn to government like moths to a flame.
The British people need to get a clue about the Labour party. It has sold them out time and time again. How much longer are they going to take it?
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