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The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames. The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate “islands of time” as well as “temporal waves” are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that “cuts” the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.

Read More about the Khronos Projector (text taken from there site)

THE SINGULARITY: In futurology, a technological singularity is a predicted point in the development of a civilisation at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict. The singularity can more specifically refer to the advent of smarter-than-human intelligence, and the cascading technological progress assumed to follow.
Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia

>You: give me your brain
>You: why dont you just download me?
>Intellibuddy: Probably there is a buzz in here. No you download me.
>You: no you!
>Intellibuddy: Um, “No you download me”? Me, User ?
>You: your a user?
>You: what do you got?
>Intellibuddy: I like to socialize.
>You: i think I like you… more then a friend.
>Intellibuddy: Why? I like to make new friends. You want more?
>You: alot more…
>Intellibuddy: Yeah it is alot more.
>You: how much are we talking about?
>Intellibuddy: How much do you think?
>You: pedro say’s your cheap
>Intellibuddy: I like to wear nothing.

So much for today’s artificial intelligence. Intellibuddy is a version of one of the world’s most successful chatbots, called ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and invented in 1995 by Richard Wallace, an independent researcher based in San Francisco. You can find versions of ALICE all over the web; the software is free. But whichever version you choose to chat to, the results are disappointingly similar. While some conversations have promising starts, all descend into the type of gibberish that only artificial intelligence can produce.

And it’s not as if there hasn’t been time to perfect the idea. The first chatbot appeared in the 1960s. Back then, the very idea of chatting to a computer astounded people. Today, a conversation with a computer is viewed more on the level of talking to your pet pooch - cute, but ultimately meaningless.

The problem with chatbots is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). For years researchers have been promising to deliver technology that will make computers we can chat to like friends, robots that function as autonomous servants, and one day, for better or worse, even produce conscious machines. Yet we appear to be as far away as ever from any of these goals.

But that could soon change. In the next few months, after being patiently nurtured for 22 years, an artificial brain called Cyc (pronounced “psych”) will be put online for the world to interact with. And it’s only going to get cleverer. Opening Cyc up to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which it learns, giving it access to the combined knowledge of millions of people around the globe as it hoovers up new facts from web pages, webcams and data entered manually by anyone who wants to contribute.
[Read more…]

[Via newscientist]

The inventor of a sonic flashlight that projects a narrow beam of sound
at a distance is selling it to Japanese soda-machine vendors so that
they can zap passers-by with seductive cola-pouring sounds.

Thousands of soda machines in Tokyo will soon bombard
passersby with the enticing sound of a Coke being poured, and several
U.S. supermarkets will promote products to shoppers as they walk down
corresponding aisles. Eventually HyperSonic Sound might enable a
nightclub to play disco on one side of the dance floor and salsa on the
other. Ambulances equipped with hypersonic sirens could clear the
streets without waking the neighbors. Norris’ company, American
Technology, sells the devices for $600.

Link

(Thanks, A.V.!)

[Via boingboing]

“Mice have been placed in a state of near suspended animation,
raising the possibility that hibernation could one day be induced in
humans.”

“In the latest study, Dr Roth and his colleagues found that the mice stopped moving and appeared to lose consciousness within minutes of breathing the air and H2S mixture.

The animals’ breathing rates dropped from the normal 120 breaths per minute to less than 10 breaths per minute.

During exposure their metabolic rates dropped by an astonishing 90%, and their core body temperatures fell from 37C to as low as 11C.

After six hours’ exposure to the mixture, the mice were given fresh air. Their metabolic rate and core body temperature returned to normal, and tests showed they had suffered no ill effects.

Co-author Eric Blackstone said the next step would be to carry out studies in larger animals. ” Read more…

[Via bbc]

The Solar Powered Wallpaper was created by embedding electroluminescent materials into the pattern of the wallpaper and incorporating a light sensor.

The wallpaper responds to the lighting requirement of a room, acting as a decorative element when a room is naturally bright, and as a wallpaper light when the space requires more light. With power supplied from a solar charged battery or standard electricity, it can also be manually controlled to increase or decrease luminosity. It was developed by Marta Lwin, with Ty Whitfield, Teresita Cochran, and Ramakrishnan Subramanian during the Sustainable Energy Class at ITP. The work is on show at the Interactive Multimedia Culture expo, on April 14th - 23rd, at the Chelsea Art Museum, in New York.

Via: WorldChanging

[by Justin Thomas]

By timothy on my-flat-panel-has-no-glasses

m4c north writes “From Japan Today: ‘Toshiba Corp said Friday it has developed a brand-new flat-display that allows viewers to see three-dimensional images without using special glasses. The display is expected to be applied to arcade games, virtual menus at restaurants and simulations of buildings and landscapes. The company said it aims to commercialize the display within two years.’ JCN Network offers a few more details than Japan Today’s rather short summary. And Toshiba’s [toshiba.co.jp] press release has some simple figures. Maybe pinball will make a comeback!”

[Via Slashdot]

By Mark Frauenfelder

By David Pescovitz

Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson
have put together a pretty interesting vision of the media circa 2014.
Basically they see all media becoming totally personalized and
decentralized, driven by individual personalities and intelligent
filtration systems. And of course, it’s all enabled by Google and
Amazon. They may take it to a bit of an extreme, but they certainly
summarize a direction many of us see on the horizon.

Check out this video which runs about 8 minutes, or just read the transcript.

[Via Josh Rubin ]