Futurist
Industrial designers demo carnivorous robotic furniture
Posted:
02.07.2011
Comments: 0
Call it a twisted sense of humor or practical, self-sustaining technology, but the designers at Auger Loizeau built prototypes for five pieces of furniture that feed off of organic matter to catch household pests. These carnivorous appliances range from a coffee table that captures and digests mice to a fly-paper clock that runs off of decomposing fly corpses.
Nobody will sell these appliances in the near future, but the concept is interesting and should probably lead to robots that do digest and run off of organic matter. We should just give up now.
Related posts:
- Robot Monday: G1.R1 Gripper Demo from Meka robotics
- Robot Monday: Robots Are Joining the Workforce in Scotland
- Robot Monday: If You Could Have A Robot
Futurist
Zebra Imaging’s digital holographic map of Seattle
Posted:
12.09.2010
Comments: 0
Zebra Imaging is a spin-off from MIT’s Media Lab. In addition to making digital holographs, they have clearly invented time travel, because there’s no way you can convince me that the above technology has NOT been brought back from the future.
Futurist
Cinematic concept art — “City of Exiles” by Martin Kalimukwa
Posted:
12.08.2010
Comments: 0
Futurist
Virtual J-pop star pushes genre to new heights of artifice, annoying
The number one factor contributing to my descent into madness this week is “the world’s first virtual diva,” Hatsune Miku. In case you don’t keep up with the steady flow of crazy oozing out of Japan (I admit it’s quite hard—one person can only handle so much) allow me to inform you of what I’m talking about, and maybe you too will wake up tomorrow morning singing nonsense songs about vegetable juice.
Futurist
Google is developing cars that drive themselves
Posted:
10.10.2010
Comments: 0
The latest in the New York Times’ “Smarter Than You Think” series on robotics takes a look at Google’s small fleet of autonomous vehicles, capable of driving hundreds of miles without so much as a touch of the wheel from the driver.
Futurist
New feature: An edifying roundtable on the possibilities of life on Gliese 581g
Posted:
09.30.2010
Comments: 0
Are you, like the rest of the world, wondering what life forms exist on the new wonder planet that everyone’s talking about, Gliese 581g?
Yes?
Then check out our edifying roundtable. And prepare yourself for an education on aliens. And space fetuses.
Futurist
Richard Branson announces commercial space travel within 18 months
Posted:
09.28.2010
Comments: 0
In elementary school you were told that you could be anything you wanted to be when you grew up. That was a lie. Astronauts, raise your hand. That’s what I thought.
How many of us put glow-in-the-dark stars on our bedroom ceiling or dressed up in a space customs for Halloween? We dreamed of reaching the stars and exploring other planets, but that rocket crashed with reality. Bet you’re not a cowboy either.
Futurist
The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.
IDEO’s “The Future of the Book.”
Posted:
09.25.2010
Comments: 0
The above concept video by IDEO, a “global design consultancy,” shows just how much potential tablet computers have to change how we read. The little computers will be able meld multiple media forms into one amorphous and ever changing product.
The funny thing is, the video also shows why tablet PCs are never going to really kill e-readers. The brave new world of publishing might lead to groundbreaking products, but they will be fundamentally different products from a book. The distractions that come part and parcel with interactivity fundamentally alter the experience of reading. There’s a good number of people out there who read books almost entirely for an escape from distractions.
Interactive magazines on the other hand — well, there’s some serious potential in that.
Futurist
New feature: Dystopian death match to the death
Posted:
07.13.2010
Comments: 0
Notice how all the viral videos these days are previews of the world after the near-annihilation of humans by some terrible catastrophe? Well, we did, and we collected our favorites to go head-to-head with their fictional counterparts. Compare, contrast, and freak out in our newest feature.
Related posts:
Futurist
The Bionic Future
Bionics is becoming more and more of hot area in research, says Robert Shepherd, Ph.D., director of the Bionic Ear Institute in East Melbourne, Australia.
Try out the latest issue of Handshake (Now in PDF!)
