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Singularity Q&A
Originally published in 2005 with the launch of The Singularity Is Near . Questions and Answers So what is the Singularity?
Better Than Human | Gadget Lab
Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do? It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force.Self-Tracking Apps To Help You 'Quantify' Yourself : All Tech Considered
Noah Zandan shows off his Zeo sleep-tracking headband. His other self-tracking devices are on his wrists. Noah and his father, Peter, are both part of the growing "Quantified Self" movement. Elise Hu / NPR
Robots on the rise in the workplace
Technology has always been one of the great drivers of the U.S. economy, constantly creating jobs and eliminating some in the process. But recently, MIT professors tell Steve Kroft, technology has been eliminating more jobs than it creates -- a net loss that poses a danger to the delicate economic recovery. Kroft's report on this technological revolution, often characterized by advanced robotics, will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Jan. 13 at 8 p.m.
Could you say "no" to this face? Christoph Bartneck of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand recently tested whether humans could end the life of a robot as it pleaded for survival. Christoph Bartneck In 2007, Christoph Bartneck , a robotics professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, decided to stage an experiment loosely based on the famous (and infamous) Milgram obedience study. In Milgram's study, research subjects were asked to administer increasingly powerful electrical shocks to a person pretending to be a volunteer "learner" in another room.
No Mercy For Robots: Experiment Tests How Humans Relate To Machines : Shots - Health News
Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ Rupture. Xabi Tudela / Courtesy of the artist When you hear a song on the radio today, there's a good chance that song was made using a computer. There's also a good chance that it was made using Western music software like, say, Ableton Live.
Translation Software For Music Makers : The Record
NASA engineer Adam Steltzner led the team that designed a crazy new approach to landing on Mars. Rachael Porter for NPR It's called the seven minutes of terror. In just seven minutes, NASA's latest mission to Mars, a new six-wheeled rover called Curiosity, must go from 13,000 mph as it enters the Martian atmosphere to a dead stop on the surface. During those seven minutes, the rover is on its own.
Crazy Smart: When A Rocker Designs A Mars Lander
Elon Musk's Mission to Mars | Wired Science
<img src="http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/business/2012/04/icons-mag-logo-1.gif"/> When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars—sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific—you need to find another diagnosis. That’s the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world. All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs.solitude
Like Bitbanger Labs on Facebook Remee has been selected as a finalist for the William McShane Fund, by Buckyballs & Brookstone! If you think Remee deserves to be available at Brookstone, vote here! Yes, really!
Remee - The REM enhancing Lucid Dreaming Mask by Bitbanger Labs
100 years ago this year, the man who first conceived of the computer age was born. His name was Alan Turing. He was also a math genius, a hero of World War II and he is widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence.
The Turing Problem
101010: That's the number 42 represented in binary, which is the mathematical way today's binary computers see every single piece of information flowing through them, whether it's a stock price, the latest Adele track, or a calculation to generate an MRI of a tumor. But now IBM believes it's made progress in developing quantum computers, which don't use binary coding. It is not overstating the matter to say this really may be the ultimate answer in computing machines. Quick, mop your brow and don't worry: The science isn't too hard to grasp and the revolution, when it comes, could rock the world.
IBM's Quantum Computers Could Change The World (Mostly In Very Good Ways)
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ Videogames can change a person's brain and, as researchers are finding, often that change is for the better. Love them or hate them, online videogames are a treasure trove for researchers who are studying how all those keyboard taps, mouse clicks and joystick moves may affect behavior, perception and even cognitive skills. WSJ's Robert Lee Hotz reports. A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception.
When Gaming Is Good for You
After Conquering Consoles, Hard-Core Gaming Shifts To Mobile : All Tech Considered
Gears of War: Judgment hit stores on Tuesday. Courtesy Microsoft Studios This generation of video game consoles will be remembered for over-the-top, knock-you-out-of-your-seat extravaganza games like Halo , Call of Duty — and Gears of War, a juggernaut of a game. The first three Gears of War sold 19 million units, making it a $1 billion franchise. And the latest, Gears of War: Judgment, has just hit stores at a crucial time in the video game industry — sales are down, new Xbox and PlayStation consoles are due out, and mobile gaming is growing. In a lot of ways, what's happening with Gears of War is emblematic of what the industry as a whole is going through.Cloud Computing: Cloud University
The recession created new demand for higher education, demand that can be met more economically, thanks to improved broadband access and decreased costs in delivering Internet services. Remarkably, the pricing of higher education has remained flat despite these advances -- presumably reacting more to the increased demand than the decreased production costs. How do you e-pledge a sorority? We may soon find out. The world of higher education is changing rapidly, with the number of college students taking face-to-face classes expected to fall from more than 14 million in 2010 to only 4 million in 2015, making it level with the number of online students.During the past 40 years, accounting for inflation, we have nearly tripled the amount of money we spend per student in public K-12 education. It was roughly $4,000 in 1971, and last year amounted to $11,000 per student. Over that same period time, our students’ math and verbal test scores have remained unchanged. I am no Warren Buffett, but I can comfortably say to you that that is a lousy return on investment. In an increasingly competitive world, it is clear that our education system--as currently designed--isn’t sustainable.