Greenflame » Science & Technology

‘Reborn babies’

stepheng — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:15:24 +0000

Article this week on ‘reborn babies’ - very lifelike dolls - sold to people primarily for collecting but also purchased by people like grieving parents. See ‘Reborn babies’ niche for collectors, grieving parents - Stuff.co.nz. I’m wondering if the revulsion some people feel towards them is part of the ‘uncanny valley’ response to human simulcra noted by Masahiro Mori (see Greenflame · Robots: From tools to partners).

Seems similar to the article I linked to in Greenflame · Virtual babies aim to ease parenting pain back in Feb 2004.

WorldWide Telescope

stepheng — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:33:19 +0000

When I can get a moment on the PC at home I’ll download and have a play with WorldWide Telescope. Looks interesting, but I need the PC to run it - no Mac version.

And I’ll get around to looking at Google Sky too.

Carter Observatory

stepheng — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:41:46 +0000

When I was at high school I used to make regular trips into Wellington’s Carter Observatory to attend astronomical society meetings, so I was sad to see this article today noting the loss of jobs and national status there. Many good memories of heading up the cable car to the observatory and planetarium at the top of the Wellington Botanical Gardens. Places like that fired my imagination to engage with science by firstly wanting to become a scientist, and then more recently to look at science’s relationship with other things like religion. It appears, like many of these things, that the money could only stretch so far - concentrate on education and the research drops, on the research only and it becomes disconnected from the public (and stimulating young scientists). So much, perhaps, for funding a broad ‘knowledge economy’.

See: Jobs lost in Carter Observatory restructuring - Stuff.co.nz.

Hopefully, once the dust settles, there’s something to continue in some positive form.

Books from blogs

stepheng — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:21:03 +0000

A couple of books on the go at the moment that I borrowed from the library after seeing them on a couple of blogs.

Firstly, A Case Of Conscience by James Blish, which is centred around a Jesuit biologists struggle with finding the perfect, moral alien society that doesn’t have any understanding of God. In a similar vein to later books like Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and Children of God, and to a certain extent Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead.

The book is part of the excellent SF Masterworks for Gollancz, a series of reprinted classic or significant science fiction works.

Peering into the future

stepheng — Wed, 30 May 2007 10:37:18 +0000

A couple of links came to my attention this week. Firstly, the Singularity Institute have started a blog to promote ideas about the technological singularity (Greenflame Â» Pondering the Singularity (Again)), and at the same time I came across the bioethics podcasts from The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. Both have interesting material on them, though they have quite different perspectives.

Here’s a selection of other links that relate to different people and groups looking at the future. It’s an eclectic mix pitched at a variety of levels, so caveat lector.

NetFuture: Technology and Human Responsibility
World Transhumanist Association
Nick Bostrom’s home page - Transhumanist, philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
Sentient Developments - by transhumanist George Dvorsky. There’s a podcast too.
Changesurfer Consulting by James Hughes and the related Cyborg Democracy. Hughes is Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
KurzweilAI.net - Techno-optimistic news and views linked in with Ray Kurzweil’s vision of a better future.
Betterhumans.com - Community site for techno-progressives/optimists.
The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network
BioCentre // The Centre for Bioethics & Public Policy (UK)
Center on Nanotechnology & Society
Toi te Taiao: New Zealand’s Bioethics Council
Bioethics Centre, Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand
InterChurch Bioethics Council (NZ)
Society, Religion and Technology Project (Scotland)

Nowhere near an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

The future of robotics?

stepheng — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:30:21 +0000

Interview with Rodney Brooks, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab on where he thinks robotics will go in the future. See Sizing up the coming robotics revolution | Newsmakers | CNET News.com.

‘Plastic’ blood

stepheng — Mon, 14 May 2007 09:17:05 +0000

In another of those areas where traditional boundaries become contested, scientists are working on developing a synthetic blood substitute for medical emergencies. (BBC NEWS | UK | England | North Yorkshire | Scientists create ‘plastic’ blood)

I wonder how this ‘blood’ will be considered by those communities that attach a special significance to human blood.

The World’s First Powered Ankle

stepheng — Sat, 12 May 2007 04:13:36 +0000

Technology Review: The World’s First Powered Ankle has an article on a new prosthetic ankle that functions in such a way as to add energy to walking, helping to reduce the effort required to use the prosthesis.

New extra-solar planet discovery looks interesting

stepheng — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:37:04 +0000

This report on the announcement of an extra-solar planet (ie. one orbiting another star) that lies within the zone where water would be a fluid and is relatively small looks interesting. See SPACE.com — Major Discovery: New Planet Could Harbor Water and Life.

VR you can touch

stepheng — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:41:01 +0000

This looks promising. Touch is much harder to simulate in VR than sound and vision. This development seems to bring it a bit close. See Haptic glove to touch on virtual fabrics - tech - 13 February 2007 - New Scientist.