2012: No-Space Odyssey

Year 2012 has started. We can definitely say that science-fiction predictions have failed. It's even worse - we regressed since the Space Race between Russia and USA. We still send new spy satellites, telescopes, and other galaxy scanners, but human species is unlikely to colonize planets, not even the Moon. Crewed space programmes are expensive, time-consuming, and fruitless from a short-term political perspective. World's super-empires prioritise development of new-breed tanks, spy drones and cyber-soliders. Economic crisis has hit space industry heavily - NASA shuts down space shuttle programme, Russia screwed up most of the recent attempts to put satellites up in the Earth orbit (three failures in six months!) and European Union don't have money anyway. China will most likely send a super-laser into a near-orbit, rather then human crew to set up base on the Mars. Virgin Galactic will most likely send rich tourists into a near-orbit, to experience 5 minutes of weightlessness for £250,000.

Priceless? Not really. Let's face it - our generation lost the space revolution, and the future of space industry is bleak. It is the Cyberpunk vision that becomes increasingly real - the egocentric revolution of virtual reality, cybernetic body modifications and organ growing. Lack of natural resources, ultra-interactive (pop) entertainment, heavy militarised border security. Extreme liberalisation contrasting with extreme policing. Extreme capitalism - no social benefits, no free health care, no subsidised education, no aid for developing countries.

Yes, we will probably increase our lifespan, through trangenetically growth liver, second heart and stem cell theraphy. Yes, we will probably be able to plug silicon based microchips into the brain to expand our senses, perception, boost memory and reading time, skill learning and information processing. Yes, we will probably beat cancer, AIDS, swine flu, and create hundred deadly viruses in the process. Yes, we will probably find a way to get energy from fusion, create self-steering electric cars and grow a strawberry that cures hangover. Finally, we will probably get Facebook status displayed directly to our visual cortex with the face matching and personality analysis on every person we pass on the street. But is that it?

Welcome to 2012 - happy new year and hope we can still dream of science-fiction.

Image source: NASA

Computers Will Predict The Future

Let's do an experiment.

Let's take supercomputer with 1024 Intel Nehalem cores and let's call it Nautilus.

Let's take Nautilus and give it 100 million news articles to read.

Let's ask Nautilus to apply mood detection for those articles searching for words such as "terrible", "horrific" or "nice". Those words will describe global sentiments.

Let's ask Nautilus to detect words for locations, like 'London', and record those locations on the map, showing where the specific waves of news were produced.


What do we get?


We get a trend, showing that BEFORE large events happening around the world, the mood of the words used in the news becomes very negative. And we know the location of the places, where the mood goes down. Such analysis is possible because Nautilus was programmed using similar algorithms for analyzing news as those used in DNA simulations and weather forecasting. It was done a posteriori - after the events happened - but now it will be applied to the ongoing events with better location engine.


What Nautilus did is, indeed, a weather forecasting for the large events in the worlds. Not perfect, but definitely above the level of chance. Still, as @mjrobbins points in his article for Guardian, you need human to make sense out of the analysis outputted by Nautilus, so it's not that computer does all the job. But it's a good start.

Details are in this paper and slightly biased BBC news article.

Drawing by Geek On Acid
@motioninsocial

Geek On Future: Shopping Bill From 2030

Here is the future receipt from Tesco I will get in 2030 - inspired by my weekend reading of Wired and reflection on my shopping list.

Click on the link above for better quality PDF or on image below for medium quality view.

[Photo & File by Geek on Acid ®]

Piracy and Spotify Are The Beginning Of New Transition

Last week it emerged that people downloading music illegally spend £33 more than legal file sharers on buying music legitimately. So if you are a pirate, you are usually spending more money on music from legal sources than those people who don't download illegal torrents.

Intuitively that makes sense - when you have an opportunity to try out the product, it's more likely that you will buy it - and it must apply to music as well.

But let's dig it a bit more. 

In the beginning man created a vinyl. And it was good. The quality of soft vinyl brought analogue music to the commercial market. Then there was a tape. It changed the market and it was cheap. While you couldn't copy the vinyl, you were easily able to copy the tape, but at the cost of quality. Walkman made the physical music media mobile. It was a great era of physical media. And it was good.

Then, there was a CD and it was more expensive, but the quality was ultimately much higher than tape. And after some time, people started ripping CD's. Tape and vinyl slowly ceased into oblivion. That's how the digital era began. 

Then the iPod and iTunes made the entire music library mobile and accessible immediately. Many people abandoned physical for digital, because they could have everything here and now, synchronised with their portable players. 

But digital music was almost as expensive as the physical media, and people said that it was not good, so they kept ripping those CD's and downloading music illegally. Torrents became standard. The music market profits sinked down to ever-low levels. The music quality was compromised by portability, ripping algorithms and cheap, but instant hi-fi sets. In a hi-end market, the hard vinyl made an exclusive come back, bringing expensive but high-quality analogue medium back in market. But the mainstream was digital, low-end and pirate.

But another transition was on it's way. Spotify. The idea was simple - lets give people all the music available online for free, but once in a while they will listen to 30 second advert. And if they like it, let them pay £5 per month for the advert-free version, with an option to backup some songs on their hard drive to listen offline. And finally - for £10 per month, they will have all the above plus they will be able to get those track on their smartphone or portable player, and backup much more tracks offline.

And so it worked, and people liked it. 

And thats where we are and the new revolution is emerging in the digital world. Spotify is a first step towards new media model, where you rent or stream the content, but you do not own it. This instant, legal, cheap and ownership-free model is ultimately the way we will consume music, TV shows and movies. While Apple understood it, and pursues such idea with it's new release of Apple TV. BBC's iPlayer, Spotify or Netflix are already taking over the market. It will take some time before big broadcasters will realise that this is the future, but we are getting there. 

Ultimately, the TV model will change entirely to streaming. Retail stores will disappear, as user will be able to stream content for free and immediately buy it online with extras and higher quality, either in digital (Spotify, iTunes) or physical (Amazon) format if their prefer. With the increase in digital sale, more hardware will be offered for free as a part of subscription, like it is with mobile phone contracts, or BT, Sky and Virgin Media in UK. This is the beginning of new digital transition. 

My (failed) Jailbraking Manifesto

In 1976 iPad would be a size of a building and it would cost you $18 billion (SEMI PV Group, 2010).

It has nothing to do with this post, but I thought I will share some useless infornography with you ;-)

Anyway, after a week of using my jailbroken iPhone, I thought I will give you some ultimate reasons why jailbraking is great, both ideologically and pragmatically...

How wrong I was... it turned out... to be a big disappointment...

Don't get me wrong, you will still benefit when you jailbrake you iPhone, but there are four lessons I learned during last week when exploring unauthorized apps from Cydia Store and Rock Your Phone Store are:

1. They are all expensive (but you get free trial on most of them).

The cost of majority of apps oscillate between $4.99-$9.99... WTF?

2. They crash frequently, and crash your iPhone too.

3. Some of them are very tricky to set up.

For example - getting games for snes4iPhone which allow you to run old Nintendo games on iPhone or iPad (and playing them using Wii Remote) is quite tricky...

4. You iPhone will keep crashing and performance will significantly slow down, if you start installing too many jailbroken apps.

Well, I definitely tested a lot... and had to restore my iPhone to default.

There is one ultimate reasons why I will keep my iPhone jailbroken:

I can use my iPhone as wireless WiFi modem/hotspot - both for laptop and iPad - anywhere with 3G or EDGE connection.

Yes, tethering for free. No extra charges, no bullshit from O2 about additional packages for data transfer. I just run app called MyWi ($19.99 - expensive, yes, but considering price difference between iPad 3G+WiFi and iPad WiFi only (£100), plus data packages for iPad (£10 for 1GB/month), plus paid tethering for iPhone (£15/month) - it's £25/month saving plus £100 in my pocket) and I can create a secure WiFi hotspot from my iPhone anywhere covered by 3G or EDGE. And it works fast, fully integrated with multitasking, including when iPhone is in sleep mode. Best app ever. 

I can also unlock my iPhone and use it in any country with local pay-as-you-go cards, but right now I recon I could do it without jailbraking, just speaking to my carrier.

If you want to jailbrake your iPhone/iPod, it's super simple:

a) run Safari on your iPhone/iPad, 

b) go to JailbrakeMe 2.0 website,

c) slide the slider.

---

That's it, I don't see any other reason to jailbrake your iPhone beside purely ideological (you don't like Apple's technocratic, totalitarian heaven). But in terms of practical application, there is just so much crap in those jailbroken stores, that I just really decided to clean all this shit and only install MyWi.  

[image by Geek On Acid ©]

Batman Is Dead (At Least Three Times)

No tech-geek stuff today. But comic books - yes. Graphic novels - definitely.

Comic books are like a modern mythology for me - they reflect different anxieties, hopes, dreams and urban legends circulating in our society. They reflect our mundane reality but wrapped in symbols, metaphors and supernatural heroes with amazing abilities - same as in ancient mythology. It is especially reflected between comic book realities and political world.

Examples? There are numerous.

In 1983 just after Chernobyl disaster, Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore release first issue of 'Watchmen' - a brutal and more realistic take on superheroes, set in the world where Cold War never ended. When George W. Bush became a president of US in 2001 it wasn't long before Lex Luthor became president of US in special issue (Superman: Lex 2000). Shortly after attacks on 11 september 2001 Marvel released a special 'black issue' with superheroes perspective on WTC attacks (Amazing Spider-man vol. 2 #36). Shortly after invasion on Iraq, Frank Miller announces 'Holy Terror, Batman!', where Batman takes on Al-Qeada ;-) It's yet to be released.

Graphic novels are especially worth attention, because they are frequently pieces of art, linking great drawings with top class story plot.

Batman was always my favorite character in every aspect: complex, dark, intelligent, psychological and... he is human at the end of the day. So I keep a track of the fresh and interesting novels that coming out with this superhero. Today a quick glance into three interesting position I've just finished.

They are all about Batman's dead.

First is 'Whatever Happened to the Capped Crusader?' written by Neil Gaiman. The story is simple and very bizarre - in a Gaiman style. It's Batman's funeral and different good and bad characters are coming to pay their respects. Some of them have story to tell on how the Batman died, and those stories are very, very different from each other... It's a short but amusing story kept in the atmosphere of Gaiman's 'Sandman'.

Neil Gaiman was always great in redefining the meaning of graphic novel, and he did it perfectly with 'Sandman' series. Those stories prove, in my view, that he should abandon writing books and focus on graphic novels. I would give him, not 'Maus', Pulitzer for the 'Sandman'...

Second is 'Batman: RIP' - the official Grant Morrison take on Batman's dead. Bruce Wayne took part in a strange experiment long time ago - scientists closed him for 10 days in the deprivation chamber. He experienced himself on completely different level, barely surviving mentally the strain of delusions and hallucinations generated by the isolation in chamber. But suddenly years later, the experience comes back, and the line between reality and delusion becomes very thin for Batman...

This story is an ultimate masterpiece, very violent but very intelligent, with deep reflections on human nature, personality and fragility of mind. It takes you in this best place where novel can take you, with beautiful illustration by Tony Daniel.

Finally, there is also Batman's dead in 'Final Crisis' - again written by Grant Morrison - it's one of the coolest graphic novels I read in years. The story unveils a horrible success of Darkseid, who uses all modern media - TV, radio, mobile phones, internet - to infect almost entire population of Earth with neurolinguistic virus he sourced from other dimension alien technology. Superman and other superheroes who survived the virus have to travel between alternative realities before Darkseid takes over the entire universe. This is heavy and quite strange story, and I won't tell you how Batman dies - read it yourself ;-)

[images credit: DC]  

How would my dream tablet look like?

I wake up to the subtle ambient sound played from my tablet. It's different everyday. The tablet monitors my body movements during the night and it learns how long my REM/NREM sleep stages least and wake me up in the most optimal time (Sleep Cycle App). When I get up my tablet has already downloaded articles and news that are relevant to my research and personal interests (Mendeley or Papers), plus blogs, feeds and info that might be interesting for me (YourVersion, or rather some intelligent RSS system that learns my information-sucking habits). During breakfast I  scan through available info and choose which topics I want to explore more, saving them for later (Instapaper) and marking articles that are particularly interesting. On the way to work I get my e-mails, check calendar for daily goals, and look at social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube) which are clouded into one app. I quickly and silently dictate some short replies (using something similar to Google Speech Recognition on Android). 

When I get to work, longer journal and magazine articles are already downloaded to my device and integrated with my references database (Mendeley), with keywords and tags extracted, and with a visual representation of words frequency (Wordle). Reading is fully tactile with ability to make notes and comments on articles text (Skim). If I have any idea, bookmark or snapshot I want to make, I switch between applications and connect any info to my notebook database in the cloud (Evernote). Screen is easy for eyes, non-reflective, low-power consuming and with good contrast (next generation E-Ink). If you look close on the device, this tablet has 64GB drive, a 5-7 days on single battery charge, WiFi, 3G, GPS, low-weight, 3D microphone, accelerometer, headphone socket and front camera for making smooth video conferences (Skype). On my way back from work I listen to free music from the app that maps my musical preferences and habits (Last.fm) and allows me to listen everything for free (Spotify).

Consuming media, browsing, creating, communicating - everything is effortless and intuitive with my dream tablet, with multi-touch, Text 2.0 with eye-tracking, voice recognition and algorithms that constantly learn and map my behavior to create the better interface for me.

And what is certain - my dream tablet is closer than you think ;-)

Skinput, Text 2.0 and Atari Pink Floyd

You sit on the sofa, relax and you flick your finger - immediately projector in front of your turn on, and a tiny remote control icons are displayed on the skin of your arm. You tap the icons and switch the channels, another tap on the skin and you run some applications in background to get e-mails and news. Than you just flick your fingers, and display a nice table on your entire shoulder showing tunes that you have in your music library or list of movies. You 'click' your skin where the title is displayed...

This is Skinput - a new technology that will turn your skin into control surface. Researchers in Carnagie Mellon, in collaboration with Microsoft Research designed a sensor that will register vibrations and sound conducted by your skin. The sensor will also contain simple LED based projector, that will display icons, titles, whatever images you want on your skin, allowing you to control any devices around you. In the simplest format, you will be able to give commands to your devices only using simple finger taps, without even displaying anything on your skin. And mind you - this is Chris Harrison PhD project. Neat.

Next - tablets! Favourite media topic for the last couple of months, my technology search engines are filled 90% with iPad reviews. But one thing came through as potentially very interesting - eye-tracking tablet with Text 2.0. The idea is that tiny camera in front of your tablet will register your eye movement. You will be able to focus on a word and see definition of it, but Text 2.0 is something more - it will know when you skim the text and it will fade out irrelevant words for you. It will learn your reading habits, with possibility to give you feedback. Most important, it is completely new possibility of controlling applications just by LOOKING at particular points on the screen and vast possibilities for visual perception research. Above - Apple patent for eye-tracking - it's coming ;-)

Finally, some music, check out this album by Brad Smith - he made the entire Pink Floyd album 'Dark Side of the Moon' in the chiptune, atari-sound-like version. Especially listen to side two - awesomeness in 8-bit clothing - it made my day ;-)

We will teach Robots our skills

The new exciting project has been launched, with 7 million euro funding from EU, as a part of our pan-european cognition and robotics strategy. AMARSi or Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills, is a 4-year long interdisciplinary research, which aims to develop a new breed of robots, that will learn motor skills by constant interacting with human counterpart. The idea is to combine dynamic neural networks build on reservoir computing, and new approach to hardware design. Robots will be interacting with human worker using strategies of imitation, but the human caretaker will be able to physically correct robot actions at any time, giving him more direct feedback for learning, without time-consuming reprogramming. It's like when you are showing your kid how to do things, those robots will be intended to work in a very similar way. The design will be based on two existing platforms: infant robot iCub (RobotCub) and four-legged Cheetah (Biorobotics). So to summarize - AMARSi is more about developing a software for a new learning strategies for robots, rather than redesigning hardware. Nevertheless, creating the motor skills architecture to enable such open-ended behaviour is a real challenge, so I am looking forward to see how they manage to achieve that.

[photo credit: RobotCub]

What are Supercomputers doing at the moment?

As China joins the list of fastest Supercomputers on the 5th place, it is maybe worth to look at what are the main application areas for the top 500 Supercomputers.

It is always difficult to look at details of major projects run by supercomputers, because there is so much they are doing every second. For example the fastest supercomputer in the world, Jaguar, is able to run 1759 petaflops (1 petaflop = quadrillion operations per second) and has 224,162 processors. From their website it seems that astrophysics (supernova collapse), superconductors and fusion plasmas are top priorities, although other disciplines have reasonable share in Jaguar processing time.

It is hard to find out what research the Chinese supercomputer, Tianjin-1, is going to be used for. They indicated that petroleum exploration and the simulation of large aircraft designs would be major areas. Still, it belongs to The Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), so...

Now, what about general patterns of application for other remaining 500 supercomputers? Lets take first 6 major ones. While it is 'not specified' what is the application of 117 of them, 78 is used for research, 47 - finance, 34 - information service, 31 - geophysics, 30 - logistic services, 22 - semiconductors. Not bad. The question is - what kind of research (78)? If geophysics or superconductors are there, together with aerospace, medicine and life sciences, this must be cell biology or advanced physics.

Table 1: Supercomputers application area (source: top500.org)

However, things get complicated when we look at segments of market the computers are working for. The leading is industry - using 62.4% of them (312). This is followed by research - 18.2% (91) and academic segment - 15.8% (79). That would indicate (only by subjective correlation) that the majority of 'research' (from the application area table) is done for industry, and therefore have some commercial application. This might be pretty much everything, from new face-scrub recipe and GM crop to design of super-submarine or space craft. However, deeper inquire reveal that massive calculating power is bought by stock market companies for so called 'high-frequency trading' (HFT). In HFT supercomputers make calculations, predictions and decisions by analyzing ongoing flow of data from stock market and test it against historical data. And it all occurs very, very fast - they can handle 10,000 orders per second. HFT is a topic I will discuss on different occasion, some people contribute credit crunch on this strategy, but certainly we live in strange and beautiful times, your company has miliseconds advantage over the others, and it matters, and it already occurs without human intervention - how could it be differently now?

I guess that nicely summarizes the topic - supercomputers are where the money are. And what the do - well, calculate those money ;-)

Table 2: Countries with highest number of supercomputers and number of supercomputers used in different market segments (source: top500.org)

[data source: www.top500.org]
[photo credit: ORLN]

Noticin.gs

There is a new game I started playing recently - Noticin.gs. The rules are simple - when you NOTICE something interesting in your environment, you make a photo, and then you upload it to Flicker, with geotag for the location where you captured the photo. The other rules are:

• People aren't noticings,
• You can only submit one photo of each 'thing',
• Each player is limited to three noticings per day,
• It must be clear to other players what the noticing in the photo is, using the title of the photo if it's unclear in the picture.

After each day you photos get scored and you are earning the points. That's it.

Why is it interesting?

For the same reason as the reactive music I described here - this is a trick that makes you connect and attend to reality, rather then isolate and disconnect from it. When I am searching for the thing to capture I am more aware of everything around me. Speaking simply, noticin.gs makes you NOTICE things more.

So get your mobile phone set up with Flicker and start playing, and you will notice a lot of cool things surrounding you...

Nexus One, Transparent Display, Project Natal and shit loads of touch tablets.

Its the beginning of 2010 and there is a lot of stuff happening in the technology world. Particularly, I have been focusing on Consumer Electronic Association (CES) conference to see if there is anything worth cyberpunk attention.

First - everyone has been hooked on the release of Google Nexus One phone (pictured below), which for me looks really like another iPhone copy. Some specs are better (larger screen, 5 Megapix camera, voice recognition, multitasking), but to be honest - I would expect more from Google. All the internet gossips about Nexus One came true, which was... very disappointing, because it was all so predictable! I really like the fact that you can dictate your SMS's to the Nexus, but I know from experience that as a non-native English speaker, those technologies doesn't work so well for me. Nothing really new there, it is like Google just recycled iPhone. Not impressed at all. However, what has to be admitted is that the real war is not in the hardware but software that matters in mobile phones at the moment. As Mike Harvey reflects in his Times review from yesterday that only Google Android OS is a real candidate to overtake Apple on the mobile market. We shall see how it develops, and what phone we will have in our pocket in a year time...


Second - the cool stuff, is the prototype for Samsung transparent OLED display and 0.05 mm OLED panels (pictured below in the format of window displayed during CES conference). Yes! I was waiting for it! I already see my mobile phone with transparent display scanning the reality around me with augmented labels, or my flat windows being my displays. Also, the perspective of reading a e-newspaper on 0.05 mm display is even more exciting. Ok, maybe I haven't outlined the most practical aspects of this technology (like hmmm... transparent medical body scanner - you know, the one from Aliens) but it still has very high cyberpunk-geek factor for me. It's the kind of stuff from sci-fi movies that comes true. Ah, shame it's still in research and development, no release date yet...


Third - Microsoft Project Natal for 'new' Xbox 360 - finally. 'You Are The Controller' as the advert says - full body gaming interface. I think it was inevitable after Nintendo Wii, but it will finally be here, this year, in your living room. Project Natal is a tiny camera (pictured below), that combines depth sensor, multi-array microphone, and software which provides camera with 3D full body motion capture, face capture, voice recognition, acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression. So you slash, shot, speak, shout, kick, or jump, and your on-screen gaming character does the same. However, on the CES they didn't actually demoed this device. Microsoft folks just showed cheesy clips of Natal and jumped around excited how amazing it's going to be. Demo please Microsoft, we want proper user demo. Anyway, its coming soon, this summer. I think I will actually buy Xbox just to experience it...


Forth, fifth, sixth... all the other releases are taken by so called 'Slates' or touch tablets. Lenovo Tablet, Dell Tablet, Freescale Tablet, T-Mobile Vega Android Tablet... This year on CES almost every possible company decided to release their own tablet, probably in competitive anticipation for widely-gossiped iSlate (that is supposedly coming soon from Apple). And, I totally agree with my pal from lab, David (who already criticized it here), that tablets don't fill any market gap, and therefore they are useless. Ebook I understand, because I want to read and store journal papers, newspapers and articles on the thin and light device with E-ink display (and they are cheap). Netbook I acknowledge, because I would like to have a light laptop working in the Cloud (and they are cheap). But I don't need a 10" copy of my iPhone with touch LCD or LED screen. Not useful for writing, not useful for reading, shit, it's a retarded technology and it's expensive. Enough for today.

[photo credits: Google, Engaget, Wikipedia]

Reactive Music and Reconnected Reality

I have different soundtracks to everyday world, my iTunes library is filled with playlists for different moods, actions and places.

Those playslists also allow me to escape from the surrounding noise, and therefore from the actual experience of auditory reality that I exist in.

However, I've recently discovered reactive music, the type of music that is shaped by your everyday world sounds.


I have two apps on iPhone: Kids on DSP and RjDj, both based on the same engine - that is to play some pre-recorded samples, but morph and mix them with sounds recorded in real time from microphone placed in the headphones. So the software records sounds that surround you and sample them into a continuously evolving soundtrack. As a result you actually listen to your environment which makes you more connected to reality. Your medium returned you to the world that surrounds you.

It is very crude and simple, it needs to be improved, but I see a type of augmented reality here that works like boomerang, that comes back to you with some upgrade of your actual experience of the moment and the sounds of your surroundings. You don't actually cut yourself from the noise, but you use those sounds to make your music.

So I recorded my trip back from work today using different 'scenes'* from RjDj and Kids on DSP and I managed to make a small album out of it, ;-)

*'scenes' are small programs inside RjDj that control how sound is recorded and sampled with the default sets. Those 'scenes' can be programmed and published for users by anyone who make one.

Geek On Acid: Back From Work
[recorded with RjDj and Kids On DSP]

Virtual Dresses and Skin Displays

Today something for geek chicks out there. Some hot tech-news from the world of fashion.

First - you have a trouble with deciding whether to buy this online dress? Not sure about the size, or how it will go with your jewelery? Well, folks at Tobi Shopping created Virtual Dressing Room, Fashionista. It works as augmented reality, so you print a special marker, stand in front of your computer camera, and just change the dresses or other clothing that overlay on the top of your body image, with everything showed in your browser display in a real time. With printed marker you adjust the position of the dress in the virtual camera space. It is a bit crude, but very interesting idea in terms of applying augmented reality in the user interface. I tested it with Ola, and she got hooked on it quite quickly. Below are her photos with the virtual dresses :) But watch the tutorial before you try the dresses.

Second - remember those gang members from Gibson's Virtual Light? Or drummers from Stephenson's Diamond Age? Yes, the ones with interactive tattoos which were displaying different images under their skin depending on emotions and their behavior. Now research team from University of Pennsylvania finally made it, with the LED tattoos technology that can turn your skin into the full color screen. Those LED's will be the combination of silicon microchip with silk substrate, allowing the chip to smoothly dissolve into your body. Unnoticeable microelectronics implanted in the surface of your skin will allow to hook it to any electronic device, displaying anything you want. They will be also useful in diagnostic aspects, like monitoring vital metabolic signals, blood pressure, etc. Initial displays will be black and quite basic, but the potential application for the future is limitless, from full body displays to microchips being implanted to your retina to regulate the amount of light coming to your eye or displaying augmented reality. Philips is already exploring some commercial use of electronic tattoos. It is a bit creepy, but... I love it ;-)

Neurointerface

William Gibson in his 1984 novel Neuromancer predicted that we might connect the computer to our brain. His dark story was a fiction 25 years ago, but now it becomes a reality.

We are closer than ever to interface our brain with the computer.

One of the most promising developments is BrainGate (currently during clinical trials conducted by Cyberkinetics). BrainGate consist of a sensor in the form of sophisticated micro-electrodes implanted directly into motor cortex and a decoder - dedicated software translating brain activity into useful commands for external devices. At this stage the majority of tests are conducted in patients with severe forms of paralysis, like Quadriplegia or Locked-in syndrome.

Application? Prosthetic limbs control, complex computer operation with augmented reality, therapy for neuronal-based disorder (in expansion of deep-brain stimulation).


Certainly, we don't know enough about the brain at this stage to be able to create complex interfaces, but even hooking motor cortex with functional microchip will be a milestone in neurocybernetics.

Problems?

What problems? ;-)

But seriously, one outlined in this month issue of Wired is neurosecurity. Folks at the Medical Device Security Center (MDSC) showed that they could reprogram implantable hearth regulator with simple radio equipment. Now, think about your neuroimplant being hacked, and your prosthetic limb, anti-depressive brain stimulator or remote control function (;-) taken over? So MDSC is now developing encrypting security methods for neuroimplants.

A Firewall for your brain.

[photo credits: Cyberkinetics]