Tag: technology

The top ten transhumanist technologies

Here’s an interesting list of the top ten transhumanist technologies. The introduction (in case you’ve never heard of transhumanism): Transhumanists advocate the improvement of human capacities through advanced technology. Not just technology as in gadgets you get from Best Buy, but technology in the grander sense of strategies for eliminating disease, providing cheap but high-quality …

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Aha! I knew I had a good reason not have an iPod!

The headphones can conduct electricity into your head if you’re struck–or nearly struck–by lightning! Talk about music that will “blow your mind”…

"The Strangest Sights in Google Earth"…

…can be seen here, courtesy of PC World. The Badlands Guardian is the coolest, I think, although I also quite like the giant pink bunny and the World War II bomber caught in flight.

Nanotechnology marches on…

…to the soccer field. Near-microscopic robots playing soccer. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?

Inflatable space module performing well

Bigelow Aerospace‘s Genesis II inflatable space module continues to perform well; the company has released the first high-resolution photos from orbit. I like their slogan: “Getting you excited about space again.” Not that I’ve never not been excited, personally. I was pleased to watch my six-year-old daughter enact a flight to the moon in the …

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Anniversary of first musical recording

Wired regularly posts a “this day in technology” item. Today’s caught my eye: apparently, it was on this day in 1888 that the first known musical recording was made–Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt: Israel in Egypt, assigned the catalog number HWV 54, is an oratorio, a form in which Handel excelled. Like his more famous …

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From Babel Fish to Woohoo!

Today’s Web column for CBC Saskatchewan’s Afternoon Edition… ********* If you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you’ve heard of the Universal Translator. The Universal Translator is a computer device that is able to instantly translate almost any alien language, no matter how bizarre, into American English. Of course, the Universal Translator doesn’t exist…yet. But all over …

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This could be big!…er…small!

Spintronics+plasmonics=spinplasmonics: A University of Alberta research team has combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other areas. Dr. Abdulhakem Elezzabi and his colleagues have applied plasmonics principles to spintronics technology and created a novel way to …

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WiTricity? Why not?

Unless it’s your smoke alarm saving your life, mysterious electronic beeping in the middle of the night is highly annoying. It certainly annoyed Marin Soljacic a few years ago when he found himself standing in his kitchen in his pajamas in the middle of the night for about the sixth time in a month, staring …

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Wi-Fi is so last year…

…are you ready for wireless electricity?

Searching out search engines

This week’s CBC Radio Web column… ********* Have you ever heard yourself say, “Let me Google that?” Probably. Google is by far the most popular search engine on the World Wide Web–so popular many people never think of using anything else. But Google isn’t the only way to search for things on the Web. Just …

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Turning waste heat into sound…

…and then into energy: Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. The heat engines also could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat as their electronics grow more complex. And Symko foresees using the devices to …

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