Want a mechanism to get that neurological interface into your character’s brain in the first place?
Here you go.
Originally shared by Neuroscience News
Nanotubes Go With the Flow to Penetrate Brain Tissue
Rice University researchers have invented a device that uses fast-moving fluids to insert flexible, conductive carbon nanotube fibers into the brain, where they can help record the actions of neurons.
The research is in Nano Letters. (full open access)
Originally shared by Irina T.
“The Victorian age is renowned for the wealth of inventions that helped create the modern era such as the telephone, the typewriter, the bicycle, the electric light, the motor-car, moving pictures, the gramophone and the wireless. The inventor who most captured the public imagination was the American Thomas Edison, who became known as the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’, after his factory in New Jersey.
[…]
This in turn inspired many writers. Magazines became filled with examples of lone, often eccentric inventors coming up with new, often useless, ideas. For instance amongst the inventions in Van Wagener’s Ways (1898) by W L Alden is a way to make cats fly so they can catch birds more easily, or the perfect balloon which however doesn’t descend. One of the more ingenious inventions was tantamount to the first cyborg in ‘The Ablest Man in the World’ (1879) by Edward Page Mitchell (1852-1927) where an inventor adapts the famous analytical engine invented by Charles Babbage to fit inside a man’s head and creates a genius. In 1890 the first convicted murderer was executed by the electric chair. In ‘The Los Amigos Fiasco’ (1892) Arthur Conan Doyle improved the electric chair rather too much so that the victim is supercharged with electricity and seems to have become immortal.”
Excerpted from the linked article
Inventing the future by Mike Ashley/Published 15 May 2014
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/inventing-the-future
I did not know this.
Originally shared by Cyndi S. Jameson
A little textile history
Via Sarah Rios.
Originally shared by Ward Plunet
Local Roots: Farm-in-a-box coming to a distribution center near you
Eric and Matt could not be more earnest in their quest to feed the world. These two fresh-faced LA boys founded Local Roots four years ago. Their first purchases were broken-down, 40-foot shipping containers—this is apparently easy to do, since it is cheaper for shipping companies to just churn out new ones rather than fix broken ones. Local Roots then upcycles them into modular, shippable, customizable farms, each of which can grow as much produce as five acres of farmland. The idea is to supplement, not supplant, outdoor agriculture. And Ars got a look at one of these “farms” when it was set up in New York City recently. Every aspect of the TerraFarm, as the repurposed shipping containers have been dubbed, has been designed and optimized. The gently pulsing LED lights are purplish—apparently, that’s what lettuce likes—and the solution in which the plants are grown is clean and clear. The “farm” is bright and vibrant, and it smells great in there. This environment came about because Local Roots consulted a lot of experts. It employs horticulturalists, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers, software and AI developers, and data and nutrition scientists. The company does this to ensure that the growing conditions and produce are always optimal—both for the plants’ growth and their nutritional content.
This is the kind of thing that tends to turn up in stories about forest elves. But you could take a biotech approach, too – programmable furniture trees in a world where people take their time.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/forest-furniture-england-midlands-tree-shaping-chairs-tables
You could easily build an anthology just off the story possibilities in this article.
What’s the status of biotech, and specifically genetech, in your near-future setting? Better think about it if you want to stay current.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Enormous Promise and Peril of Bioengineering’s Pandora’s Box http://suhub.co/2BiArmh
Another benefit of autonomous, or even semi-autonomous, cars: traffic could flow twice as fast.
Originally shared by Jennifer Ouellette
Math Says You’re Driving Wrong and It’s Slowing Us All Down https://www.wired.com/story/math-says-youre-driving-wrong-and-its-slowing-us-all-down/
https://www.wired.com/story/math-says-youre-driving-wrong-and-its-slowing-us-all-down/
Qualified hope. I look forward to other strategies – perhaps using biomimicry to design small scavenger drones which will collect toxic plastic and remove it from the environment.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Massive Project to Clean Up the Ocean With a Two-Kilometer Screen http://suhub.co/2CjqFA7
“Explains” is much too yang a word for what she’s doing here. It’s more “suggests”.
I happen to be interested in utopias where natural balance, not powerful authority, is what keeps things working, though history shows us that’s hard to achieve (to say the least).
Via the Adafruit blog.
When the usually-utopian Singularity Hub sounds a note of caution, it’s smart to pay attention.
As this article points out, it’s all too easy to be caught up in the technical possibilities of a technology and ignore history and on-the-ground realities that may make it less useful, or not useful at all – at least, for the purpose claimed. I can see a possible place for bulk freight hyperloops replacing some trucking with more efficient transport – but, again, political distortions already favour trucking over more efficient rail.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
History Suggests the Hyperloop Is an Uncertain Promise for Future Cities http://suhub.co/2AHwkl8