Don’t forget: these are future fiction stories. I’ve watched the video several times now, and the movement is so uniquely human that I find myself empathizing with the robot. How weird is that? Watch it one more time and tell me if you don’t feel a tinge of emotion when the unit is shoved, and […]
Science
A Fan of Freedom
I’ve had an interesting series of conversations recently with people that are coming down hard on capitalism. The argument was that this evil system of economics is directly responsible for the current global economic downturn.* There’s two things interesting about this argument. First, none of the people I spoke with seemed to understand what the […]
The Nook
The rumors have been swirling for most of this year: Barnes and Noble has an ebook coming. With a massive catalog of digital books at their disposal, and market share evaporating (and condensing around Amazon), they needed to do something. What they’ve done is re-imagined the e-reader while the devices are still in their infancy. […]
William Kamkwamba: Human Dynamo
I love the story of Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan, the Indian genius who taught himself mathematics and went on to create sublime proofs, capturing the attention of the world’s greatest mathematical thinkers. One-in-a-million prodigies like this seem to be sprinkled throughout time and geography, their distribution as random as it is sure. Just as a few […]
Sci-Non-Fi: Augmented Vision
The Star Trek Communicator became the Nokia RAZR, yet people still mock sci-fi for being too “out there.” What makes us uncomfortable in fiction soon becomes a necessary crutch in real life. I found out yesterday that a friend of mine is having his knees replaced. I wasn’t surprised, just asked how long the re-hab […]