VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

Avatars meet in Second Life to celebrate Future Day 2012

The first Future Day on March 1 featured events in 14 cities in 8 countries. The largest event was at Terasem Island in Second Life, with about 50 attendees. The auditorium at Terasem Island was full and we were eagerly awaiting three of the speakers to arrive: Ben Goertzel, Martine Rothblatt, and Howard Bloom. I introduced [...]

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Beyond texting: augmented-reality windshields — what could go wrong?

What? You thought distracted drivers texting on cell phones and swerving erratically is a problem? That’s so 2011. Imagine a future in which icons flash on your car windshield, hologram-style, as your car approaches restaurants, stores, historic landmarks or the homes of friends, effuses CNN. Simply point your hand at them, and the icons open [...]

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How to learn things automatically

OK, this one’s right out of The Matrix and The Manchurian Candidate. Imagine watching a computer screen while lying down in a brain imaging machine and automatically learning how to play the guitar or lay up hoops like Shaq O’Neal, or even how to recuperate from a disease — without any conscious knowledge. Researchers at [...]

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Will the Kinect 2 read your lips? Open the pod bay door, HAL

The next generation of the Kinect (bundled with future Xbox consoles) may be “so accurate it can lip read,” the Technology Review Hello World headline breathlessly reads — evoking HAL 9000 in 2001. What’s more, says Eurogamer, citing a nameless source, “Kinect 2 will be so powerful it will enable games to detect when players [...]

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Mask-bot: A talking video humanoid robot

Welcome to the creepiest uncanny-valley experience yet: a talking robot face called Mask-bot, developed by a team at the Institute for Cognitive Systems (ICS) at TU München and AIST, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan. What sets Mask-bot apart is that it can instantly construct and project a static video image [...]

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Beyond GPS: your phone in 2015

Attention smartphone users: the recent launch of the first two satellites for Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system (GNSS) could make things a lot more interesting in about four years. Galileo will deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to one meter range, compared to 10 meters for GPS, the European Space Agency (ESA) states, and it [...]

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‘Pig’ movie: question reality

Pig is a trippy indy film that starts weird and gets weirder, with hints of Memento, Total Recall, Groundhog Day, The Truman Show, Vanilla Sky, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Starring Rudolf Martin (Vlad Dracula in The Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula and Ari Haswari in NCIS), the film engaged my mind right [...]

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teleXLR8 returns, featuring quantum physicist Gildert on ‘Hack the Multiverse!’

This exciting news just in from Giulio Prisco: “teleXLR8 is reopening on Sunday 21 10 a.m. PST with a talk by [experimental quantum physicist/programmer] Suzanne Gildert on Hack the Multiverse!.” The teleXLR8 online talk program is “a telepresence community for cultural acceleration,” as their blog puts it. Translation: an audiovideo seminar — think TED in [...]

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The Singularity is Far: A Neuroscientist’s View

David J. Linden is the author of a new book, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. He is a Professor of Neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Chief Editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology. It should [...]

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Film Preview | Source Code movie combines mind-uploading, parallel universes, time travel, simulated reality

In the science-fiction movie Source Code (April 1 release), a secret program called “Source Code” sends a pilot back in time to cross over into another man’s identity and relive the last eight minutes of the passenger’s life on a train. The mission: find a bomb that exploded on the train, killing everyone on board, [...]

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