From the UK’s Science Museum’s History of Medicine:

Made from steel and brass, this unusual prosthetic arm articulates in a number of ways. The elbow joint can be moved by releasing a spring, whereas the top joint of the wrist allows a degree of rotation and an up-and-down motion. The fingers can also curl up and straighten out. The leather upper arm piece is used to fix the prosthesis to the remaining upper arm. The rather sinister appearance of the hand suggests the wearer may have disguised it with a glove. Among the most common causes of amputation throughout the 1800s were injuries received as a result of warfare.

via Warlach & Commuter Dirge

Some might say it’s a bit late, but MIT’s SENSEable have at least got a solution for the next big horrible oil spill.  Seaswarm is a cutting-edge, 21C design; just the sort of thing we need to clean up the mess left by 20C, brute force industry.

From the looks of it, they’ve just got a prototype built and that snazzy video.

Yo, guilty Billionaires (yeah, you Gates and Buffett) sink some dollars into this and start dropping them around the world.  Kenya, Africa might be a good place to start.

I love this new ecology of bio-mimiced robots.

From Wired UK:

The gecko’s toe hairs interact with the wall in a molecular attraction called “van der Waals force“. Using this force, a gecko can hang and support its whole weight on one toe. It only sticks when you pull in one direction.

…

For this reason geckos have rotational ankles to ensure that they stick at whatever angle they are running. Their rear feet turn backwards when they are upside down or walking down a wall head first — otherwise they’d fall.

Such one-way adhesives are important for climbing because they require little effort to attach and detach a robot’s foot. Otherwise you have to press the foot down firmly to attach it and then work just as hard to pull the foot off. Directional adhesion is more like hooking and unhooking yourself from a surface.

With this in mind, Cutkosky and his team began asking how to build artificial materials that create the same effect. They came up with a rubber-like material with tiny polymer hairs made from micro-scale mould and attached it to a robot. The research was described in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

A layer of the adhesive was cut to cover a mechanical lizard’s foot. The newest versions of the adhesive have a two-layer system, similar to the gecko’s lamellae and setae, and allow Stickybot to climb smooth surfaces such as metal and glass. The scientists hope to develop the material to allow humans to climb walls like geckos, using technology called Z-Man.

Further proof we’re living in the Future. From IEEE Spectrum:

Chauncey Graetzel and colleagues at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems started by building a miniature IMAX movie theater for their fly. Inside, they glued the insect facing a LED screen that flashed different patterns. These patterns visually stimulated the fly to beat its left or right wing faster or slower, and a vision system translated the wing motion into commands to steer the robot in real time.

The fly, in other words, believed to be airborne when in reality it was fixed to a tether, watching a virtual-reality simulation and controlling a robot at a distance.

The key component in their setup was a high-speed computer vision system that captured the beating of the fly’s wings. It extracted parameters such as wing beat frequency, amplitude, position, and phase. This data, in turn, was used to drive the mobile robot. Closing the loop, the robot carried cameras and proximity sensors; an algorithm transformed this data stream into the light patterns displayed on the LED screen.

In a paper in the July 2010 issue of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, they describe the vision system’s latest version. It uses a camera that focuses on a small subset of pixels of interest (the part of the fly’s wings responsible for most lift, for instance) and a predictive algorithm that constantly reevaluates and selects this subset. The researchers report that their system can sample the wings at 7 kilohertz — several times as fast as other tracking techniques.”As autonomous robots get smaller, their size and speed approach that of the biological counterparts from which they are often inspired,” they write in the paper, adding that their technique could “be relevant to the tracking of micro and nano robots, where high relative velocities make them hard to folow and where robust visual position feedback is crucial for sensing and control.”

The ETH group, led by professor Bradley Nelson, head of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, performed their main Cyborg Fly experiments two years ago. It’s not the only “flight simulator” for flies, and other research groups have used insects to control robots. But still, the ETH project stands out because of its high-speed vision component. This system could be useful not only for biology research, to study insect flight and track fast movements of appendages or the body, but also for industrial applications — for monitoring a production line or controlling fast manipulators, for example.

In happy news, it seems the returning vets from OS wars are owning their prostheses; far from hiding them, they are doing everything to ‘pimp them out’.

Which this Doonesbury strip captures:

(Click thru for higher rez)

This via Rob ‘Eyeborg’ Spence, who is seeking a suitable female volunteer to create a real-life Cherry Darling from Death Proof.

I was very disappointed with the recent Futurama ep Lethal Inspection, in which Bender learnt he was created without the online backup unit that made all other robots immortal. To me, this would’ve been the perfect opportunity to rip on mind-uploading; have Professor Farnsworth mocking Ray Kurzweil’s head-in-a-jar, asking him what happened to that Singularity of his.

So when this most recent episode of Futurama, The Prisoner of Benda, did some genuine SF for once, exploring the relationship between body and identity, I thought it deserved props. Also, because it was hilarious, and peaked with this insane scene (SPOILER):

This is what I want from my SF; crazy human, alien, robot body-swapping action. (Versus lame iPhone/Twitter satire.) See io9 for a more in-depth review.

In other Identity news, Orkut (the SNS that we are constantly told is “huge in India and Brazil”) are now letting you split your personality; or more accurately easily control what aspects of your life you share to different groups of ‘friends’.

Facebook have a clumsy implementation of this, but Orkut seems to be the first to tackle this big problem in Social Network design properly: do you want your boss, co-workers and friends getting the same information? More details over on Read Write Web.

Another great Augmented Reality concept video from Keiichi Matsuda, the maker of Domestic Robocop.

Note: requires old school blue/red 3D glasses for optimal viewing pleasure.

The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.

via BLDGBLOG | Chris Arkenberg

As Fast Company report Leon, Mexico is about to become the test-bed for a Future; but it might not be the Future you’re looking for:

Biometrics R&D firm Global Rainmakers Inc. (GRI) announced today that it is rolling out its iris scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.” In a partnership with Leon — one of the largest cities in Mexico, with a population of more than a million — GRI will fill the city with eye-scanners. That will help law enforcement revolutionize the way we live — not to mention marketers.

“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” says Jeff Carter, CDO of Global Rainmakers. Before coming to GRI, Carter headed a think tank partnership between Bank of America, Harvard, and MIT. “Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years,” he says.

Leon is the first step. To implement the system, the city is creating a database of irises. Criminals will automatically be enrolled, their irises scanned once convicted. Law-abiding citizens will have the option to opt-in.

When these residents catch a train or bus, or take out money from an ATM, they will scan their irises, rather than swiping a metro or bank card. Police officers will monitor these scans and track the movements of watch-listed individuals. “Fraud, which is a $50 billion problem, will be completely eradicated,” says Carter.

This video, taken from GRI’s website, shows how the system works:

Touching on the rather obvious privacy issues, Fast Company write:

For such a Big Brother-esque system, why would any law-abiding resident ever volunteer to scan their irises into a public database, and sacrifice their privacy? GRI hopes that the immediate value the system creates will alleviate any concern. “There’s a lot of convenience to this–you’ll have nothing to carry except your eyes,” says Carter, claiming that consumers will no longer be carded at bars and liquor stores. And he has a warning for those thinking of opting out: “When you get masses of people opting-in, opting out does not help. Opting out actually puts more of a flag on you than just being part of the system. We believe everyone will opt-in.”

…

When I asked Carter whether he felt the film was intended as a dystopian view of the future of privacy, he pointed out that much of our private life is already tracked by telecoms and banks, not to mention Facebook. “The banks already know more about what we do in our daily life–they know what we eat, where we go, what we purchase–our deepest secrets,” he says. “We’re not talking about anything different here–just a system that’s good for all of us.”

So there you have it. Facebook and all those loyalty cards are now being used as a precedent to create a complete panopticon.

via Gizmodo | thanks for the tip-off Cat Vincent!

From the New York Times comes news of the X2:

…a prosthetic knee loaded with microprocessors, sensors and even a gyroscope that gives amputees more freedom of movement, and better balance, than previous prostheses, veterans affairs officials say. It is smaller, lighter and has a longer-lasting battery (up to four days) than other widely used prostheses.

…built by Otto Bock HealthCare, the same company that builds one of the most advanced prosthetic legs available, the C-leg. Both units use microprocessors and sensors to calculate and control movement, but the X2 also includes a gyroscope and accelerometer, Mr. Miller said. Those devices convey more detailed information about the movement and speed of the leg, enabling microprocessors to determine whether a person is, say, taking a small step up a stair versus hopping over a large obstacle.

With the X2, users should be able to step backward without stumbling or ride a bike without having the knee lock — potential problems with earlier prosthetics, Dr. Miller said.

“They can more closely mimic the natural gait pattern,” he said.

via AnthroPunk

Developers are finally coming out with the next wave in sweet apps, integrating Neurosky’s MindSet with smart phones.

From The Next Web:

ThinkContacts is designed to allow a “Motor disabled person to make a phone call to a desired contact by himself/herself”. Requiring a special headset to read users’ brainwaves, it uses brain activity to determine which of three contacts on the screen the user wants to call.

While the app is looking quite basic at present, the project’s wiki at Forum Nokia only opened six days ago meaning this is likely to be an early-stage project

via Chris Arkenberg

Blockquoting for GreatJustice this very simple and clear explanation of the Google/Verizon Net Neutrality proposal, and just what a turnabout for Google it is:

In 2006 Google produced the following public service announcement to help sway legislative opinion leading up to the vote on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2007 (S.215). Senator Barack Obama was a cosponsor of this bill. The PSA aired in key districts for approximately one month leading up to the vote.

http://www.vimeo.com/14099243
Early this week Verizon and Google issued a joint statement to U.S. legislators titled “Verizon-Google Legislative Framework Proposal.” In this statement, Verizon-Google suggests exempting wireless broadband access from net neutrality. This was not an oversight. This is a departure from Google’s public stance and advocacy for net neutrality.

Increasingly, technology companies are shipping devices with access to wireless broadband networks pre-installed. It’s not just smart phones any more: laptops, tablets, gaming devices, entertainment systems, navigation tools, automobiles… And while the term “wireless broadband” has come to mean wireless phone services like 3G and 4G networks, the term also likely includes wireless city initiatives. So… what could have caused Google’s founders to abandon the principles of net neutrality just as the web begins entering its wireless era? Could it be that they have the opportunity to control and to profit from a web user’s wireless experience in a not so distant future when being “wired” will be like saying you use a rotary dial phone?

Keep reading on the Voogle Wireless site for ways to encourage Google to reconsider their proposal. Don’t be EVIL!

We kind of like Kevin Warwick a lot here. And for good reason, he is, like Tony Stark, using himself as a test-pilot for the future.

So, of course, we must post this interview with him over on Motherboard.tv:

Most interesting is him further confirming that neuro-streaming will be the Next Big Thing, in Lifeblogging..

via Gizmodo

In a great victory for the SATANIC GLOBAL TRANSHUMANIST CONSPIRACY, Mattel have released the perfect gift for all the little Transhumanists in the house, Barbie Video Girl.

As this video shows, the camera quality is pretty decent, and the design is frankly hilarious:

I am hoping this could mean the return of the Barbie Liberation Organization.

thanks for the tip-off Seej500!

poster from MotiFake, orig image Nadya Lev models Mother of London

We’ll start this gently, with the Onion’s piece that both satirizes 80s cyberpunk and proves how mundane and banal the realization of such visions can be:

In the blink of an eye, this real-life Johnny Mnemonic keys in his encrypted, top-secret passcode and enters the fortified binary area from which all his personal communiqués are sent forth in a dizzying array of ones and zeroes.

Now you might say, ok sure.. but is it really the cyberpunk future?! Well, what’s another distinctive feature of that dystopic setting? A hostile climate:

Deaths in Moscow have doubled to an average of 700 people a day as the Russian capital is engulfed by poisonous smog from wildfires and a sweltering heat wave, a top health official said Monday.

Moscow health chief Andrei Seltsovky blamed weeks of unprecedented heat and suffocating smog for the rise in mortality compared to the same time last year, Russian news agencies reported. He said city morgues were nearly overflowing, filled with 1,300 bodies, close to their capacity.

That’s from Salon’s article about Moscow’s lethal smog. 700 people a day are currently dying, not from war, famine or disease.. but because they can’t breathe!

Between Europe’s recent flooding, and now Pakistan too (“the U.N. estimates that 13.8 million people have been affected”!), forget the world being uninsurable, it’s becoming flat out unlivable.  In Germany they’re freaking out about radioactive boar meat, from a nuclear reactor meltdown that happened before half our readership was born!

Tech heads flying around in a helicopter full of mercs to undisclosed locations in Central Asia?  That’s one of my twitter friends.  A globe-trotting, border jumping cyber-as-cyber-gets punk that codes the defense used by millions to thwart snooping governments and corporations from the carparks in middle America and helps out on a little thing called wikileaks, has his phones taken by the Feds and uses body doubles to dodge them later after presenting at hacker conventions?  That’s @ioerror.

So what are we missing from that classic cyberpunk vision?  Evil corps in league with the government.  Well that’s easy, init.. BP kills an ocean, gets slapped on the wrist (instead of hung from a lampost) and bitches about lost profits.  Puh-lease.

But now, the one great hope.. the company that promised it would never be evil.. it’s going over to teh DarkSide?!  Oh Google, why hast thou forsaken us?  We wanted to believe!  Next Twitter will be telling us who to follow and promoting trending topics and talking about inserting tweets for money.  (Oh wait..)

Here’s something we’ve forgotten:  cyberpunk was a warning! These were cautionary tales from the early 80s through to the early 90s, based on how the world could go wrong.  We didn’t listen.

As The Bronx sing, This is our Shitty Future:

There, vent your rage for a few minutes.  Now, what are we going to do about it?!

(all links via the interwebz, all words via rampant insomnia)

What follows is Jamais Cascio, who we’ve mentioned here a few times before, presenting a condensed, thirty-minute version of the Institute for the Future’s forecast for the next ten years.

This is what Futurism looks like today; not rabid predictions of jetpacks and flying cars, but sane, measured statements that pick up recent trends and forecast their result.

Haven’t seen The Yes Men Fix The World? It’s “a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks.”

They’re being sued for impersonating the United States Chamber of Commerce. So, naturally, they made a special cut with that very footage at the start and have released it via peer-to-peer.

The UK’s Astronomer Royal, Baron Martin Rees, recently gave a fascinating lecture as part of the Seminars of Long-term Thinking series, put on by the Long Now Foundation.

From Stewart Brand’s summation of the speech:

“We are the nuclear waste of stellar fusion,” Rees noted, the ash from long-dead stars all over the galaxy exchanging their gases in a complex ecology, and the galaxies show a mega-structure of density contrasts generated by gravity. Poised midway in scale between atoms and stars, biological life appears to be the peak of complexity in the universe—a flea is more complicated than a star.

Since we don’t know how our own life emerged and haven’t discovered any elsewhere, we still have no idea whether life is common in the universe or if we are unique. We can be certain that we are not the culmination of life forms here, because we are less than halfway through the Sun’s lifespan. In the six billion years to come, there are likely to be creatures as far beyond humans as we are beyond microbes, and science as far beyond our present understanding as quantum theory is remote to a chimpanzee.

Now that we are stewards of this planet, we are responsible for maintaining life’s possibilities in this cosmic neighborhood.

It’s over an hour and half long, but it’s riveting stuff. Grab the link and (if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere) sit outside, stare at the stars and listen. Or just hit play here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Bonus Content!

For your patience you get a treat – A Glorious Dawn, an auto-tuned mash-up of Carl Sagan’s work, featuring Stephen Hawking:

Second, a profile of Elon Musk and his desire to retire to Mars.

Lastly, Charlie Stross has been having fun dissecting various aspects of space colonization; from working out the size of an independent off-world colony, to critiquing the much worn ’space as another Wild Frontier’ myth.

From Space Fellowship:

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured this view of the fires and smoke in three consecutive overpasses on NASA’s Terra satellite. The smooth gray-brown smoke hangs over the Russian landscape, completely obscuring the ground in places.

The fires along the southern edge of the smoke plume near the city of Razan, top image, are among the most intense. Outlined in red, a line of intense fires is generating a wall of smoke. The easternmost fire in the image is extreme enough that it produced a pyrocumulus cloud, a dense towering cloud formed when intense heat from a fire pushes air high into the atmosphere.

…

According to news reports, 520 fires were burning in western Russia on August 4. MODIS detected far fewer. It is likely that the remaining fires were hidden from the satellite’s view by the thick smoke and scattered clouds. High temperatures and severe drought dried vegetation throughout central Russia, creating hazardous fire conditions in July.

From beyond the Uncanny Valley comes this disturbing creation, the mutant hybrid lovechild of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Dren from Splice.

The portable machine features a soft silicone body that is pleasant to the touch, and it uses 9 actuators to move its eyes, mouth, head and rudimentary limbs

Now, trust me.. in an earlier experiment in journalism I hung out in a warehouse in Japan where they made fuckable mannequins.. these don’t stand a chance. Sure, they’re built for telepresence…

The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers.

.. but you just know they’ll have preset ‘routines’ or have playable ‘games’ for them, soon enough too.

More details over on Pink Tentacle.

On sale now, from $US 8K for the low-end model, to $US 35K for the deluxe.

via JWZ

What up Snow Crash? The gargoyles are here!

Wanting to have his to-do list and schedule permanently displayed, Martin Magnusson hacked together this wearable computer. More details thanks to WIRED:

For his wearable computer, Magnusson is using a pair of Myvu glasses that slide on like a pair of sunglasses but have a tiny video screen built into the lens.

A Beagleboard running Angstrom Linux and a Plexgear mini USB hub that drives the Bluetooth adapter and display forms the rest of this rather simple machine. Four 2700 mAh AA batteries are used to power the USB hub. Magnusson has used a foldable Nokia keyboard for input and is piping internet connectivity through Bluetooth tethering to an iPhone in his pocket.

via AnthroPunk