Neurocam automatically shoots whatever its user finds interesting. Perhaps you know someone who's a member of the "lifelogging" community – these are people who record pretty much all of their waking hours, typically using small, wearable video cameras. The problem is, they inevitably end up with a lot of footage that's just ... well, boring, even to them. That's where the neurocam comes in. It's a prototype headset camera, that only records when it detects that its wearer is interested in what they're seeing. The neurocam is a product of the Tokyo-based Neurowear team, which also brought us Necomimi and Shippo – moving, wearable, mind-controlled cat ears and a tail, respectively.
On the less goofy side, Neurowear is also behind a set of headphones that selects music based on the listener's mood. Like those devices, the neurocam incorporates sensors that detect electrical activity in the wearer's brain. A manual mode is also accessible, for those times when users want to record footage of things that they themselves aren't all that excited about. The brave new world of biohacking. Start slideshow PITTSBURGH — In the basement of a suburban two-story house on a quiet road just outside Pittsburgh, six mostly self-taught scientists tinker with an assortment of computer parts and electric equipment. They plan one day on becoming cyborgs — a future that may be closer than you think. They are Grindhouse Wetware — three men and three women — and they describe themselves as a "ragtag group of programmers, engineers and enthusiasts" who build cybernetic devices.
They find inspiration in both current technology and science fiction. "I don't want to go to space in a spaceship. I want to be a spaceship," said Tim Cannon, Grindhouse's 34-year-old co-founder whose basement serves as the group's headquarters and scientific lab. Cannon, following a long line of scientists who have experimented on their own bodies over the centuries, will have Circadia implanted in his forearm under a tattoo he has of a DNA double helix. 'Where's my jet pack? ' Melissa Farlow for Al Jazeera America. Cyborg Cockroach Company Sparks Ethics Debate - Wired Science. At the TEDx conference in Detroit last week, RoboRoach #12 scuttled across the exhibition floor, pursued not by an exterminator but by a gaggle of fascinated onlookers. Wearing a tiny backpack of microelectronics on its shell, the cockroach—a member of the Blaptica dubia species—zigzagged along the corridor in a twitchy fashion, its direction controlled by the brush of a finger against an iPhone touch screen.
RoboRoach #12 and its brethren are billed as a do-it-yourself neuroscience experiment that allows students to create their own “cyborg” insects. The roach was the main feature of the TEDx talk by Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo, co-founders of an educational company called Backyard Brains. That news, however, hasn’t been greeted warmly by everyone. “It’s kind of weird to control via your smartphone a living organism,” says William Newman, a presenter at TEDx and managing principal at the Newport Consulting Group, who got to play with a RoboRoach at the conference. Adaptation. Part of a series: Cyborgs & Architects photo credit: MSH* As part of the Cultural Theory program, I took a university course called Cyborgs.
This was in 1999 and it was cutting edge to give a presentation with my partner contributing her half through IRC projected on a screen. (It’s the future now, so people project Twitter #hashtags.) It was all very interdisciplinary and one of my classmates was a visiting student from the architecture school. I don’t remember his name but I do remember his extreme revulsion at the very idea of cyborgs. We talked about a lot of other stuff. Years later, it’s that angry opposition of cybernetic and architectural thinking that has stuck. All of: Cyborgs & Architects. One step closer to cyborgs – scientists create biological tissue with embedded wiring. Under its human skin, James Cameron’s Terminator was a fully-armored cyborg built out of a strong, easy-to-spot hyperalloy combat chassis – but judging from recent developments, it looks like Philip K.
Dick and his hard-to-recognize replicants actually got it right. In a collaboration between Harvard, MIT and Boston Children's Hospital, researchers have figured out how to grow three-dimensional samples of artificial tissue that are very intimately embedded within nanometer-scale electronics, to such an extent that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It could lead to a breakthrough approach to studying biological tissues on the nanoscale, and may one day be used as an efficient, real-time drug delivery system – and perhaps, why not, even to build next-generation androids. So far, our attempts at creating an intimate blend of lab-grown tissues and nanoscale electronics have led to mediocre results at best.
Source: Boston Children's Hospital Share.