For this assignment, we were to read two readings and comment on three passages from them. The readings were:
New Scientist writes about a patent filed by George Stetten, utilizing a miniature camera in conjunction with machine vision (algorithmic pattern recognition), to provide clues about the environment to partially or fully blind people. Spotting an obstacle, the fingertip-mounted device would give tactile feedback (vibration) to guide the user around it. It could also help the user locate switches and controls.
I think a new age is dawning for sensorially challenged people. In 2004, I worked together with an international group of designers to build a wearable device that deprived its’ user of her visual sense, and replaced it with auditory feedback. It was an experiment in pseudo-synaesthesia, but the technique could easily be applied to empower visually impaired people.
I visited the Austin Makerfaire this weekend. One day (with a late start) was not nearly enough to experience everything, or to participate in any workshops that were going on all around, but I did get a good idea of the makings and craftings going on around the U.S. and the world. Below, I’ve listed the people and projects that inspired me the most.
It was probably two years ago that I stumbled across Folkert Gorter. I found him because I liked the work that he did, but I bookmarked his site for another reason. One of the sites in his body of work was named SpaceCollective. I clicked on the link and found a glowing orb with the words “Coming Soon”. When I provoked the orb with my mouse it subtly changed to reveal a log in form. I thought that this was quite peculiar.
A while back, I made a post about crowdsourcing, an internet buzzword that identifies the productive path of online networking. Recently, I stumbled upon CrowdSpring, a site set up to align creatives with clients. It is providing a great entry for any designer or client that wants to get involved with a creative endeavor.
A couple of months ago, Radiohead released the separated “stems” (vocals, guitar, bass, strings/FX and drums) of their single Nude, announcing a remix contest. It is a difficult song to remix at 6/8 timing and 63 bpm, and Tom Yorke + co. apparently had a blast making fun of all the generic 4/4 entries.
James Houston had a bit of a different idea of using the stems, which were available for $.99 each in the iTunes Store. He reconstructed the original song by forcing old printers and hardrives do acoustic tricks and play the stems as an orcestra. Fast forward the clip to about 1:15 for the tune (after the jump).
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I’m not an active user of Facebook web pages. I don’t have the time or interest to participate actively in the community, but I do take advantage of the Facebook network.
Without the events posted there by my friends, I would be locked inside for most of the month. Since I don’t want to log in to Facebook.com, I sought a way to get the events listed in iCal on my Powerbook. The solution is called (somewhat uninspired) fbCal, an application that lets you subscribe to your events to Google Calendar, Apple iCal, M$ Outlook, or Mozilla Sunbird.
As a science, creating robotics that are self aware is a field that is on the verge of creating artificial intelligence. Hod Lipson has a great TED talk in which he introduces two robotic experiments that touch on self awareness and evolution. One is a four legged machine that becomes self aware and teaches itself to walk. It is a fascinating and somewhat scary thought that we can create machines that have an understanding of a goal and not only have the means to reach the goal, but have the means to teach themselves to reach the goal.
For a relatively small membership fee, you can be a part of a local maker community with access to advanced tools and a large pool of knowledge. TechShop is “like a health club with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment…or a Kinko’s for geeks. Started in Silicon Valley in 2006, TechShop is now expanding to Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, LA, San Diego, Austin, Orlando, and Durham, some locations opening in the summer of 2008, some later.
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For many of us, in thoughts or dialogue about the state of the world and how it can be changed we reach a wall that is made up of a political system intertwined with corporate economics. You can try to climb the wall but it seems that the wall always manages to be bigger. You can try to break the wall, but people have spent their entire lives breaking the wall without making much change. Lawrence Lessig has been trying, again and again to fight with this massive obstacle but recently, he has decided to try a new technique. He is now attempting to change the wall. He will inject a virus of good into it with the goal of morphing it from a looming, impermeable form to a road with signs and maps.
Maybe a bit abstract. This might be better: Read more…