Last year, a consortium of unidentified individuals launched Virternity with the stated goal of a digital life for all. A world that would be owned not by any government but by the people. This digital world, Virternity said, would remove the physical constraints upon us and the planet and usher in a completely new plane of existence. Then, without any warning, Virternity disappeared.
Fender’s mostly the one doing odd things, from a PC/iOS compatible strummer to a guitar made of paper to the versatile Fender Acoustasonic, we’ve seen a few ideas. Now, we can add the locally-made Rubato Lassie guitar to that list.
Running, though, could get a boost in future thanks to wearable tech like these exo-pants. The wearable exoskeleton, the creation of Harvard University and University of Nebraska researchers, aims to assist folks looking to get their movement on.
Journalist Eve Livingston’s recent article for The Face examines the many social and cultural features of Scottish Twitter. But the fact it has provided a medium for written Scots language to evolve in a way that wasn’t possible before the advent of social media is equally fascinating.
The entire Apollo 11 mission to the moon took just eight days. If we ever want to build permanent bases on the moon, or perhaps even Mars or beyond, then future astronauts will have to spend many more days, months and maybe even years in space without a constant lifeline to Earth. The question is how would they get hold of everything they needed. Using rockets to send all the equipment and supplies for building and maintaining long-term settlements on the moon would be hugely expensive.
Unless you do a fair bit of business in the sort of Information Technology that involves paying someone very expensive to keep it all going, that is. But you might hear more about the Japanese multinational, if the successful test of its new passenger drone is any indication.
In this week’s Light Start, the Channel is crossed, AI takes on knitting, we indulge in some Console Wars (later), and check out some Little Monsters.
Young people are now fully ensconced in the digital age as it whirls around and within them. This is the epoch of the Anthropocene — the age of humans, wherein a technological worldview and human tools hold the central place in re-shaping the earth and its people. It’s also a time when 1.8 billion youth make up the largest generation of 10 to 24 year olds in human history with 50 per cent of the world’s population under 30 years of age.
Today, discussions about lunar exploration have moved away from establishment of a permanent lunar base as a preliminary for extended exploration. Instead, there has been a significant advance in planning the construction of the Deep Space Gateway – a space station in orbit around the moon. This is an international project between a number of different space agencies.
Researchers have designed a “Multimodal Turing Test” to judge a machine’s appearance, movement, voice and what we call embodied artificial intelligence (EAI). This is a measure of how well artificial intelligence is integrated with a robotic body in order to expresses a personality.