science

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Nicholas Negroponte On the Future: Predictions From 24 Years Ago

Nicholas Negroponte is best known today for his work with the One Laptop Per Child project, but he's been doing interesting and pioneering technological work for a long time. In 1984, Negroponte gave a talk at the very first TED conference. His talk was about how people interact with computers, both in the present (in 1984!) and his hopes for the future. Negroponte's discussion is surprisingly relevant to modern technology; his view of technology from the very early days of the personal computer focuses... READ ON

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The Dead Man's Switch

Last night's LOST season finale made mention of a "Dead Man's Trigger," which is another term for a Dead Man's Switch. Although these devices are well known to some geeks, I thought I'd write a little explainer to introduce the notion more broadly. (Warning: very minor LOST spoilers follow.) While the LOST switch was in fact a "fail-deadly" (the opposite of a fail-safe), the concept is similar. In fact, this isn't the first time we've seen a Dead Man's Switch on LOST: Season 2 was all about Desmond's... READ ON

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Joshua Klein Shows What Crows Can Do

Joshua Klein is interested in synanthropic species: those animals that have specifically adapted to live within human ecologies, like large cities. Example species are rats and cockroaches, which survive well in human habitats. But Klein is most interested in crows: they don't just survive, they thrive in human environments, even using human technology to feed themselves. Klein discusses crows creating and using tools, using human fishing gear, using cars to open nuts, and much more. Okay, so Klein... READ ON

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Geep: Behold the Sheep-Goat Chimera

Let's say you've got a sheep and a goat (and a bioengineering lab) and want to have a little fun. Why not make a geep? Geeps are created in the lab by effectively mashing up fertilized embryos from sheep and goats, then implanting the result into sheep or goat mothers. The resulting animal isn't a hybrid, it's a chimera: an animal with two genetically distinct sets of cells inside it. Thus a geep looks like a sort of frankenpet, with patches of its body exhibiting furry goatlike features and others... READ ON

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Documentaries I Like: Connections

Connections was a documentary series produced for the BBC in 1978. It sought to explain human history through an "alternative view of change" in which multiple aspects of history, including technology, religion, and finance combine to bring about social change. This mode of analysis moves beyond conventional linear narrative, and as a result embraces complexity. Each episode is an essay connecting several seemingly disparate events or technologies through an extended web of logic -- it's great fun to... READ ON

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Modeling Economics Using Water

Engineer/economist Bill Phillips, a New Zealand native, built a machine to model the British economy in 1949. Although it was high-tech for its time, today the Phillips Machine seems a little...nutty. What's odd about the machine is that it used water power -- hydraulics -- to model the flow of money through the British economy. Here are some snippets from yesterday's Guardian article about the machine (emphasis... READ ON

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Brian Cox Explains the Large Hadron Collider

The CERN Large Hadron Collider made the news last month when a lawsuit was filed by Walter Wagner, over his concerns that the LHC's experiments might destroy the Earth. Wagner hypothesized that the LHC's experiments could create a planet-consuming miniature black hole. Long story short: most physicists think it's quite unlikely that the LHC will kill us all...but because they're scientists, they can't categorically predict what will and will not happen. (There's a good NPR Science Friday program... READ ON

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Why Indiana Jones Was Right to be Scared of Snakes

I, like most everyone else, am really looking forward to May 22, when the new Indiana Jones movie hits screens. Indy is the perfect hero, except for that one flaw: his fear of snakes. After some research, though, I found that he may not have been too far off in being scared of snakes. Here are some reasons he was right. They might take over the country It sounds like something out of a horror movie: deadly snakes slither into an unsuspecting town, slowly killing the poor citizens. Unfortunately,... READ ON

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Ray Kurzweil's Pill Habit

Ray Kurzweil is probably best known for his 70's era reading machines -- early speech synthesizers that could optically scan printed words, recognize them (despite being in multiple typefaces), and speak them back. (We had one of these gizmos at my public library when I was a kid -- it was an amazing piece of gear.) He's also famous for inventing music synthesizers, and it's not unusual to see the name Kurzweil emblazoned on a digital piano. These days he's typically referred to as a "futurist"... READ ON

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Scientists Pleased to Meet New Species

It's always stunning to me when scientists discover new species. And unlike the recent hexapus (the 6-legged octopus) that got so much press over a birth defect [click here to read about Henry the Hexapus], a recent expedition by New Zealand scientists to Antarctica's Ross Sea has uncovered all sorts of new and unusual species. Apparently, the scientists were on a 35 day census of the region, and traveled 2,000 miles collecting over 30,000 sea creatures. In any case, National Geographic has a terrific... READ ON