If you want to build the future, you need to understand smart materials. When Ted Nelson said in his 1974 book Computer Lib, “You can and must understand computers NOW,” there would have been more than a few people who thought he was jumping the gun.
In hindsight, Ted was bang on. We’re on another precipice of dramatic innovation as we get closer to closing the gap between technology and physical objects. We may not have satisfied Peter Thiel with flying cars yet, but smart materials are opening up new ways to communicate, connect and automate our lives. The possibilities of smart materials are extraordinary. Imagine not having to check the weather before you get dressed, because your clothes will adjust themselves to regulate your body temperature. This is what the future looks like, so if there’s ever a time to learn about smart materials, it’s now.
Smart materials have a fairly vague definition, which points to any material that exhibits ‘smart behaviors.’ Catarina makes a great argument for getting involved with smart materials and exploring their uses: The world-changing sensor we saw at CES. Ultra Ever Dry. Google+ How to Tie a Necktie Eldredge Knot. Adam Green: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins, Pickpocket. A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability.
Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with. “Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.” Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. “Fuck. Robbins held up a thin, cylindrical object: the cartridge from Jillette’s pen. Robbins, who is thirty-eight and lives in Las Vegas, is a peculiar variety-arts hybrid, known in the trade as a theatrical pickpocket. “Yes.” A robot that flies like a bird.
How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History. It was January 2010, and investigators with the International Atomic Energy Agency had just completed an inspection at the uranium enrichment plant outside Natanz in central Iran, when they realized that something was off within the cascade rooms where thousands of centrifuges were enriching uranium.
Natanz technicians in white lab coats, gloves and blue booties were scurrying in and out of the “clean” cascade rooms, hauling out unwieldy centrifuges one by one, each sheathed in shiny silver cylindrical casings. Any time workers at the plant decommissioned damaged or otherwise unusable centrifuges, they were required to line them up for IAEA inspection to verify that no radioactive material was being smuggled out in the devices before they were removed. The technicians had been doing so now for more than a month. "We were not immune to the fact that there was a bigger geopolitical picture going on.
We were definitely thinking... do I really want my name to be put on this? " Jon Snyder/Wired. Photoshop “unblur” leaves MAX audience gasping for air. Avinash Kaushik - Google+ - This is seriously impressive. / They are quietly taking…