How will our relationship to technology evolve in the future? Will we regard it as something apart from ourselves, part of ourselves, or as a new area of evolution? In this new video from the Galactic Public Archives, Futurist Gray Scott explains that we are a part of a technological cosmos. Do you agree with Scott that technology is built into the universe, waiting to be discovered?
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Self Driving Cars and Ethics. It’s a topic that has been debated in blogs, op-eds, academic research papers, and youtube videos. Everyone wants to know, if a self-driving car has to choose between sacrificing its occupant, or terminating a car full of nobel prize winners, who will it pick? Will it be programmed to sacrifice for the greater good, or protect itself — and its occupants — at all costs? But in the swirl of hypothetical discussion around jaywalking Grandmas, buses full of school-children, Kantian Ethics and cost-maps, one crucial question is being forgotten:
What about the Squirrels?
What is your take on the ethics of driverless vehicles? Should programmers attempt to give vehicles the ability to weigh moral problems, or just vehicles only have the aim of self-preservation?
Let’s face it: people are awful. They’re stupid and forgetful and do terrible things like leave pets and children in hot cars. Safety experts say that an average of 37 children die in locked vehicles every year. And while there is no obvious solution to this particular aspect of humanity’s chronic wretchedness, there are some new safety features coming out soon that can hopefully help prevent these types of tragedies from happening.
Starting in 2018, the new Nissan Pathfinder will include sensors that can detect when the rear door is opened before a trip, so that if the driver neglects to open the rear door again after the car in parked, the horn will beep several times as a reminder. That way, drivers wouldn’t get more than a few steps away before being reminded to give the backseat a quick check. The new system will also display an alert on the instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, so the driver gets a reminder even before he or she leaves the vehicle.
Washington State University (WSU) physicists have found a way to write an electrical circuit into a crystal, opening up the possibility of transparent, three-dimensional electronics that, like an Etch A Sketch, can be erased and reconfigured.
Ordinarily, a crystal does not conduct electricity. But when the researchers heated up crystal strontium titanate under the specific conditions, the crystal was altered so that light made it conductive. The circuit could be erased by heating it with an optical pen.
Posted in electronics | Leave a Comment on The LG Wallpaper TV is incredibly bendy, so much so, that we asked two willing LG folk to show us its shape shifting moves and how it attaches to the wall via magnets…
Researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing have now developed a new type of electronic skin, with a colour change easily seen at just 0–10 per cent strain.
The material is made from graphene — a form of pure carbon that is 200 times stronger than steel.
Two layers of graphene are included — a highly-resistive strain sensor, alongside a stretchable organic electrochromic device (ECD) that changes colour when a current is applied.
Scientists have developed an electronic sensor that is hypoallergenic, breathable and can be worn constantly for a week, enabling continuous, unobtrusive health monitoring.
The patch, developed by scientists at the University of Tokyo, is, according to its creators, so thin and light that the majority of users will forget they are even wearing it – a far cry from many of the weighty or uncomfortable health monitoring solutions currently available.
Designed to withstand repeated and continuous bending and stretching, the patch can be worn during a host of day-to-day activities, including sports. As a result its creators believe it could be used not only in healthcare settings, but also to monitor professional athletes.
Technology can be wonderful. But how do you keep track of yourself when technology allows you to be everywhere at once?
In this film Prof. Yair Amichai-Hamburger (director of the Research Center for Internet Psychology at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications) argues that even though technology allows us to reach out and connect more easily than ever before, if we don’t ever take a step back, we can lose track of our humanity in the process.
Engineers have developed a type of camera that doesn’t require any lenses. They’re replacing curved glass with something that does the same job computationally – an ultra-thin optical phased array.
Researchers hope that the findings could turn a wide range of flat surfaces into image collectors.
To capture the perfect selfie or Instagram photo, cameras use lenses. In digital cameras, the lenses are used to focus the light on to a digital sensor. The optical phased array has a group of light receivers that adds a minute delay to the light as it is captured. This allows the camera to switch focus and look in different directions using nothing but electronic trickery.
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