Yesterday was an interesting anniversary. Wired News reports: March 29, 1993: Teleportation Beams From Sci-Fi to Real Science 1993: Scientists show teleportation is possible, at least theoretically. The downsides: The original teleported object must be destroyed, and it can’t happen instantaneously. The story goes on to flesh out some of the milestones that have occurred […]
Via Boulder Future Salon, here’s a lecture from Carnegie Mellon University on the subject of innovation.Scott Berkun worked on the development team for Internet Explorer, where he says that innovation was his job. One interesting moment is when he claims that he managed to do some good, innovative work “in spite” of the company he […]
Apparently, Edison wasn’t first. You can go here to listen to a woman singing a French folk song, recorded in 1860 — a full 17 ears before Edison’s first audio recording. The recording technology employed was crude to say the least. Apparently there wasn’t even an option for playback: American audio historian David Giovannoni recently […]
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the invention that made it all possible. A tremendous technological leap forward in its own right — perhaps one of the clearest points of demarcation between the the technology of the 20th and 21st centuries — this device showcased the kind of fundamental rethinking that we casually refer to […]
From StrategyPage: LRAD is basically a focused beam of sound. Originally, it was designed to emit a very loud sound. Anyone whose head was touched by this beam, heard a painfully loud sound. Anyone standing next to them heard nothing. But those hit by the beam promptly fled, or fell to the ground in pain. […]
Preparing for the Foresight Vision Weekend in Sunnyvale, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my map of the development space for nanotechnology which we revisited in a recent edition of FasftForward Radio. I’ve never been completely satisfied with the axes of that diagram. I wanted to show how some developments have this immediate […]
Like a good responsible citizen of the planet, I recently joined The Instapundit Readers Group in the One Billion Bulbs campaign. I replaced four incandescent bulbs in my garage with fluorescents. (As an added benefit, the new bulbs may prove to be Sith-repellent.) But let’s not stop, there folks. Fluorescent bulbs are just the beginning. […]
…only improvements. Or so says TechRivet’s friend, “M”: There have been only a few true scientific breakthroughs since WWII that truly have been impactful on our lives. I include true new technology, not improvements on existing technology. My candidates include: * Transistor * Integrated circuit (although this could be argued as an improvement on the […]
I Like this one. I don’t think I’d like this one: Clocky does a runner when you hit the snooze button, forcing you to actually get up out of bed and find the little bugger to turn it off. By which time, of course, you’ve done the hard work and you’re ready to get up. […]
Over on L2si. (I gotta get me one of those.)