May 2012
54 posts
Weather as a Force-Multiplier
A high-risk, high-reward endeavor, weather-modification offers a dilemma not unlike the splitting of the atom. While some segments of society will always be reluctant to examine controversial issues such as weather-modification, the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril. From enhancing friendly operations or disrupting those of the...
The myth of the eight-hour sleep
Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society.
By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness.
He attributes the initial shift to...
Sorry for the service interruption.
Hi new friends. Sorry for the break in posting, but the Chrome OS browser is refusing to render Tumblr correctly. Take from that what you will.
Here’s the stuff I was building up until I could find another computer. Submissions are open, so add your own.
April 2012
67 posts
Humans Assign Morality to Robots
Two new studies out of The Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems(HINTS) Lab in Seatle show that humans view robots as moral entities. The resulting paper is entitledDo People Hold a Humanoid Robot Morally Accountable for the Harm It Causes.
The answer seems to be yes.
To test this, the humans were set up to play a rigged game with a robot, during which the robot would make a...
Ateneo Naider - Edición General | The intelligence... →
It is necessary to scale down to street level for example, in order to understand the value of technology in daily life. To see the city from above as the generic idea of a smart city does, allows us to see certain needs (energy distribution networks, traffic flows, etc.), but it does not provide sufficient clarity to see the real life of the city and its citizens. And that life takes place on a...
Glitched Out
To me, the common thread is flaw. Flaw in the way the technological meets the social, the human. Corruption in the artifact. Seams in the seamless. Machines gone slightly wild, or missing a few bits upstairs. America’s Craziest GIFs. Asymmetry in a world of designed perfection. Computational daydreaming. The New Aesthetic has a thing about drones, and a thing about computer vision. It unnerves...
Drones are Paranoid Androids →
This sensibility conjures the idea that we are in some kind of post-cinematic age where the maximum attentive ability that can be expected from a sentient public is to stay watching (in the multiplex of Twitter?) as attuned, informed spectators. There is an entire cottage industry of Bush-era movie-making. If a Michael Bay or a Spielberg were to concoct the spectacle of a drone movie, what...
Stock-Picking Robot ‘Marl’ Is a Fraud, SEC Says →
On their websites, doublingstocks.com and daytradingrobot.com, and in newsletters, the Hunter brothers claimed the robot was a “sophisticated computer trading program and the product of extensive research and development,” the SEC said in a New York federal lawsuit, which seeks to seize the pair’s profits. At least 75,000 investors paid a combined $1.2 million for $47 annual subscriptions to the...
“The Correction Service Robot observes the... →
The world’s first corrections service robot allows for efficient prisoner management and takes on a number of simple tasks for guards while closing the communication gap between prisoners and their guards.
The prisoners are protected from situations such as suicide, arson and assault. Furthermore, it recognizes repeated behaviors of prisoners, and detects anomalies in advance, protecting...
Urban Software: The Long View
The concept of urban intelligence overlaid upon a city is much older than one might think. It originates in the 1830s in the symbiotic development of intercity railroad and electrical telegraph. The railroad made it possible to quickly deliver both passengers and written communication over long distances; the telegraph, whose wires followed rail lines, facilitated nearly instantaneous...
Map of Domestic Drone Authorizations - Google Maps →
“A revived Tupac “proves” how a mass lunar deception could be executed.”
– Y! Big Story: Tupac’s resurrection and questions over raising the dead | Trending Now - Yahoo! News (via iamdanw) 