Untitled

Unidisplay + Unipsycho acoustic (by carsten nicolai)

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:29:39 -0400

Unidisplay + Unipsycho acoustic (by carsten nicolai)

ripperdoc: Awesome concept art from Ben Mauro for a cool little...

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:52:20 -0400

Awesome concept art from Ben Mauro for a cool little movie project called “From the Future with Love”. (Look for trailer in next post.)

brucesterling: *Ransomware bandits posing as cybercops and...

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:51:19 -0400

brucesterling:

*Ransomware bandits posing as cybercops and hacktivists

8bitfuture: Energy harvesting pavement powers its own...

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:51:17 -0400

8bitfuture:

Energy harvesting pavement powers its own streetlights.

London-based startup Pavegen has developed tiling that can harvest kinetic energy from people’s footsteps, turning it into up to 8 watts of electricity per footstep.

The tiles are made of 95 percent recycled tyres, and use a proprietary wireless communications technology to transmit data about the number of footfalls and the energy generated via the Internet. A wireless network of the tiles could provide valuable information to city planners and nearby business owners about the number of pedestrians in the area at different times of the day.

At the last Summer Olympics in London, the tiles were installed outside a tube station where they generated enough energy to power lights in the area for five hours a night.

ripperdoc: What would happen if police forces were fully...

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:43:34 -0400

ripperdoc:

What would happen if police forces were fully outsourced into private, competing companies and where everyone needed a police insurance? Take a look.

William Gibson Reads From His Next Novel, The Peripheral

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:43:14 -0400

technoccult:

Klint Finley

Gibson recently made an appearance at the New York Public Library, and he also did a surprise reading of the first couple pages of his forthcoming science fiction novel The Peripheral. The reading begins about 80 minutes in.

The video and transcript can be downloaded here and The Awl has a good write-up of the rest of the talk.

For more Gibson, check out our dossier.

Big Data Gets Bigger: Now Google Trends Can Predict The Market - Forbes

Sat, 04 May 2013 04:41:47 -0400

Big Data Gets Bigger: Now Google Trends Can Predict The Market - Forbes:

futuristgerd:

Yesterday three economists, (Tobias Preis of Warwick Business School in the U.K., Helen Susannah Moat of University College London, and H. Eugene Stanley of Boston University) published an eye-opening paper that said Google Trends data was useful in predicting daily price moves in the Dow Jones industrial average, which consists of 30 stocks.

Gerd adds: yet another reason why the current form of stock markets won’t exist in 5 years;)

unflujodefotones: Hiro Protagonist: Snow Crash by ~ariokh

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:08:17 -0400

unflujodefotones:

Hiro Protagonist: Snow Crash by ~ariokh

Photo

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:08:11 -0400

futurist-foresight: A look at internet usage...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:08:08 -0400

futurist-foresight:

A look at internet usage globally.

futurejournalismproject:

Only A Third of the World’s Population is Online

Via Statista. Select to embiggen.

joshbyard: Michigan Researchers Working on Smart Dust...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:07:08 -0400

joshbyard:

Michigan Researchers Working on Smart Dust Prototypes, Dubbed “Micro Motes”

The next generation of computers will be able to carry out complex calculations but will be little bigger than a snowflake.

Such tiny computers – nicknamed smart dust – would work much like their larger cousins, says Prabal Dutta at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They will have tiny CPUs that run programs on a skeleton operating system and be able to access equally small banks of RAM and flash memory.

The plan is for such sensor-packed machines to be embedded in buildings and objects in their hundreds or even thousands, providing constant updates on the world around us.

Dutta’s group is creating the first prototypes, which they have dubbed Michigan Micro Motes. These devices, a cubic millimetre in size, come equipped with sensors to monitor temperature or movement, say, and can send data via radio waves.

…Like microscopic Robinson Crusoes, the motes will live off the power they can scavenge from their surroundings. A mote near a light source might use a tiny solar panel, while a mote running somewhere with greater temperature extremes can be built to tap into that, by converting the heat energy that flows between hot and cold into electricity.

So what will be smart dust’s killer app? The Michigan team says Micro Motes could be used to monitor every tiny movement of large structures like bridges or skyscrapers. And motes in a smart house could report back on lighting, temperature, carbon monoxide levels and occupancy. With motes embedded in all of your belongings it might be possible to run a Google search in the physical world. For example, asking Google “where are my keys?” would give you the right answer if they have been fitted with a mote.

(via Smart dust computers are no bigger than a snowflake - tech - 26 April 2013 - New Scientist)

juddgeeksout: Sagas of the Icelanders calls out to me.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:04:57 -0400

juddgeeksout:

Sagas of the Icelanders calls out to me.

Climate change could hit Berkshires in Massachusetts and Connecticut economy hard

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:04:04 -0400

Climate change could hit Berkshires in Massachusetts and Connecticut economy hard:

climateadaptation:

The Berkshires are a small mountain chain and community located in western Mass and Connecticut (near me!). It’s widely known for its picturesque New Englandy towns with lots of arts, music, hiking, skiing, hunting, fishing, apple picking, and and nice things.

The local paper, called the Berkshire Eagle, posted this really well written piece on how the economy will be impacted by climate change. The locals have not been responding well to the article, but I admire it for being as straightforward as you can get.

By the end of the century, the Berkshire County economy — much like the global economy — may be forever altered by the effects of climate change. Some local economic changes have already begun in response to impacts expected from climate change in the coming decades.

Land-use planners and policy specialists in the insurance industry are preparing for changes likely to be brought on by warmer temperatures and more severe weather events. Local farmers and business owners are already looking to their future, many doubtful about the climate change concept, but still determined to build revenue streams that will withstand climate changes or compensate for weather-generated losses.

In one example of a specific local economic effect likely to result from climate change, Cameron Wake, associate professor with the Institute of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire and a lead author of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a dire assessment of the local ski industry: “By the end of the century, the only ski areas that remain viable [in the Northeast] will be in the western mountains of Maine.”

"Ownership might be getting replaced with membership, or revised to mean membership. In the..."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:03:03 -0400

“Ownership might be getting replaced with membership, or revised to mean membership. In the not-distant future, maybe we’ll belong to dozens of “exchange communities” or bartering networks of varying levels of exclusivity. The largest barter network in the Maryland-DC area, Barter Systems Inc., has over 1400 members. Members can barter a mailing list management service for stress management or maid services.”

- Things Aren’t What They Used to Be: Is Ownership Passé? | Harpy’s Review | Big Think (via futuristgerd)

wastelanderfox: О боги, лечь спать в восемь вечера, а затем...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 17:58:51 -0400

wastelanderfox:

О боги, лечь спать в восемь вечера, а затем проснуться в полночь и не знать чем заниматься до утра - это высший пик моей логики.

Но в ожидании чуда наткнулся на красивую комнату в стиле Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Разве не чудо? Теперь будем мечтать об этом чуде :3

Photo

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:16:13 -0500

Photo

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 08:09:49 -0500

"The single most important thing for an individual to do is to recognize that society is not made up..."

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 08:04:22 -0500

“The single most important thing for an individual to do is to recognize that society is not made up of individuals but of groups, some tight and some loose. Democracies are not markets, divided into atomized and rational actors. Democracies are coalitional, and the big thing we lose with the continuing shrinking of the importance of newspapers is having a place where news junkies and sports fans both occasionally see the same front page.”

-
Clay Shirky on the Internet as a Distractor and Disruptor - Frog Design - The Atlantic (via infoneer-pulse)

This is an important aspect on human society, but how does it relate to the observations from the discussions around the wisdom of crowds?

(via futuramb)

Actually, Shirky is conflating some things here. We should parse our how people connect through social networks and how ‘democracies’ work. I am going to have to read the whole thing and get back to you.

(via stoweboyd)

futurejournalismproject: China’s New Censorship Model Sina...

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:53:53 -0500

futurejournalismproject:

China’s New Censorship Model

Sina Weibo (commonly described as China’s Twitter with over 320 million users) not only has one thousand content monitors but is hiring.

It’s also created a new rating system to get users to report on each other.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

The system, dubbed “Weibo Credit,” encourages users to report each other for activities ranging from harassment of others to the spreading of “untrue information,” with each negative report resulting in a lower credit score — leading eventually to the public humiliation of a “low-credit user” badge, and possibly even a deleted account.

According to the notice, each user will start with 80 points, with a “low” score being defined as anything less than 60 points. Deductions for spreading false or plagiarized content will be calculated based on how far that content spreads: Fake information that is reposted 100 times or less will result in a two-point penalty, for example, while fake information reposted 1,000 times or more will result in a user losing a full 10 points.

On the flip side, users can earn points by taking steps to verify their identities, like submitting ID card numbers (10 points) and linking their mobile numbers to their accounts (another 10 points).

Over at Slate, Jacob Weisberg writes about Chinese censorship attempts across social media. He notes that the uncertainty over what the state will crack down on, and whether the state will crack down on a particular person, has lead to a “successful” self-censorship model:

For those who might be inclined to challenge the legitimacy of the Communist Party, uncertainty produces a powerful chilling effect. Earlier this year, the dissident writer Zhu Yufu was sentenced to seven years in prison for a poem referring to “The Square,” and some messages sent over Skype. In Beijing, I met with He Depu and his wife Jia Jianying, fearless dissidents recently released from eight years in prison and 18 months in a labor camp respectively for advocating democracy. But such punishment is by no means certain. I had dinner in Beijing with Koonchung Chan, author of a subversive dystopian novel called The Fat Years, whose theme of which is the erasure of the Tiananmen Square massacre from public consciousness. His book can’t be published on the mainland, but Chan hasn’t been punished and speaks his mind with impunity. The ambiguous boundary also applies to journalists and scholars, who can be denied visas or arbitrarily evicted for unspecified reasons, as Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera English was earlier this month.

But Weisberg also notes that self-censorship isn’t quite doing enough. Explicit censorship is having trouble too as some influentials have millions of follows who can track and see what is being done. The Web, after all, is where government cat and activist mouse watch one another other.

But self-censorship no longer seems to be getting the job done. When I visited China in early 2008, the overall conversation was far more constrained; You had to develop a feeling of trust with someone before he or she would criticize the government, especially in any kind of public setting. This time, an entire class of journalism students at Peking University shared their objections to the blocking of websites—and their professors seconded the sentiment. The lone dissenter was a student who came up to us afterward to say that he agreed with the government. One of the interesting moments on the trip came when a professor at another university turned to an official minder assigned to us and said, “Don’t turn me into the Party for what I’m about to say.” He proceeded to suggest that the government should apologize to the families of the students killed at Tiananmen Square…

…In Shanghai, I met another key figure in China’s evolving free-speech landscape, Han Han. A teen heartthrob, novelist, race-car driver, and perhaps the most popular blogger in the world, Han plays a cat-and-mouse game with his censors. When he wants to write something especially provocative, he’ll post it in the middle of the night, or over a holiday weekend, when he figures that a personal censor who plays one-on-one defense goes off-duty. Sometimes Han’s posts get taken down right away, sometimes they’re removed later, and sometimes they’re deluged with negative comments he traces to officaldom. But with more than 500 million visits to date, Han’s blog is too popular to shut down. As he calibrates what he can get away with in relation to the government, the government calculates what it can get away with in relation to him.

Which brings us back to the Weibo credit system of online neighbor monitoring online neighbor. With an exploding Internet population, the Chinese understand they can’t monitor everyone.

Instead, they’re turning to one of the most powerful social systems produced by the Internet yet: Crowdsourcing.

Image: The Sina Weibo logo. Big Brother as a cute eye?

Old idea, new tech: Snitches, rats, informants, bufos

Weaponizer blog: - Mexican Cartel's Radio Net built by Enslaved Engineers

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:58:39 -0400

Weaponizer blog: - Mexican Cartel's Radio Net built by Enslaved Engineers:

worsethandetroit:

I updated the weaponizer blog today - the headline is pretty self-explanatory.