We’re 11 days into 2011 and I’m watching the north of my country drown on live-television, as they in turn switch between exhausted officals giving press conferences, to reports straight from social media. In fact, they’re just sending viewers straight to #qldfloods. But, look.. SHINY!

Let’s face it, we’re going to need ever better methods to record disaster pr0n and navigate our way through it. OK, we don’t need them, but some kind of distraction is needed now and again. What have we got so far this year?

Augmented reality HUDS? Check. This was just released for skiers:

Introducing  Transcend, Recon Instruments’ collaboration with Colorado’s Zeal Optics. Transcend is the world’s first GPS-enabled goggles with a head-mounted display system.

Minimum interaction is required during use, sleek graphics and smart optics are completely unobtrusive for front and peripheral vision making it the ultimate solution for use in fast-paced environments.

Transcend provides real-time feedback including speed, latitude/longitude, altitude, vertical distance travelled, total distance travelled, chrono/stopwatch mode, a run-counter, temperature and time. It is also the only pair of goggles in the world that boasts GPS capabilities, USB charging and data transfer, and free post-processing software all with a user-friendly, addictive interface.

Just like the dashboard of a sports car or the instruments of a fighter jet, Transcend’s display provides performance-enhancing data, but only when you choose to view it. Safe, smart, fun…all wrapped up in the hottest goggle frame of 2010/11.

Now, of course you ask, but how will I best show my friends a panoramic, interactive recording of that sick black run (or train for the next one)? Sony has just the thing:

Besides looking über futuristic, Sony’s “virtual 3D cinematic experience” head mounted display (aka ‘Headman’) sports some fairly impressive specs. The tiny OLED screens inside are head HD resolution (1280 x 720), and the headphones integrated into the sides of the goggles are outputting high quality simulated 5.1 channel surround sound.

OK, that’s just a prototype. But something like it will be coming soon, so leave some space for it in your underground bunker.

But m1k3y, you say.. “those are great and all, but WHERE’S MY CLATTER?!” Well, I saved the best for last:

In 2008, as a proof of concept, Babak Parviz at the University of Washington in Seattle created a prototype contact lens containing a single red LED. Using the same technology, he has now created a lens capable of monitoring glucose levels in people with diabetes.

It works because glucose levels in tear fluid correspond directly to those found in the blood, making continuous measurement possible without the need for thumb pricks, he says. Parviz’s design calls for the contact lens to send this information wirelessly to a portable device worn by diabetics, allowing them to manage their diet and medication more accurately.

Lenses that also contain arrays of tiny LEDs may allow this or other types of digital information to be displayed directly to the wearer through the lens. This kind of augmented reality has already taken off in cellphones, with countless software apps superimposing digital data onto images of our surroundings, effectively blending the physical and online worlds.

Making it work on a contact lens won’t be easy, but the technology has begun to take shape. Last September, Sensimed, a Swiss spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, launched the very first commercial smart contact lens, designed to improve treatment for people with glaucoma.

The disease puts pressure on the optic nerve through fluid build-up, and can irreversibly damage vision if not properly treated. Highly sensitive platinum strain gauges embedded in Sensimed’s Triggerfish lens record changes in the curvature of the cornea, which correspond directly to the pressure inside the eye, says CEO Jean-Marc Wismer. The lens transmits this information wirelessly at regular intervals to a portable recording device worn by the patient, he says.

Like an RFID tag or London’s Oyster travel cards, the lens gets its power from a nearby loop antenna – in this case taped to the patient’s face. The powered antenna transmits electricity to the contact lens, which is used to interrogate the sensors, process the signals and transmit the readings back.

Each disposable contact lens is designed to be worn just once for 24 hours, and the patient repeats the process once or twice a year. This allows researchers to look for peaks in eye pressure which vary from patient to patient during the course of a day. This information is then used to schedule the timings of medication.

…

Parviz, however, has taken a different approach. His glucose sensor uses sets of electrodes to run tiny currents through the tear fluid and measures them to detect very small quantities of dissolved sugar. These electrodes, along with a computer chip that contains a radio frequency antenna, are fabricated on a flat substrate made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a transparent polymer commonly found in plastic bottles. This is then moulded into the shape of a contact lens to fit the eye.

Parviz plans to use a higher-powered antenna to get a better range, allowing patients to carry a single external device in their breast pocket or on their belt. Preliminary tests show that his sensors can accurately detect even very low glucose levels. Parvis is due to present his results later this month at the IEEE MEMS 2011 conference in Cancún, Mexico.

“There’s still a lot more testing we have to do,” says Parviz. In the meantime, his lab has made progress with contact lens displays. They have developed both red and blue miniature LEDs – leaving only green for full colour – and have separately built lenses with 3D optics that resemble the head-up visors used to view movies in 3D.

Parviz has yet to combine both the optics and the LEDs in the same contact lens, but he is confident that even images so close to the eye can be brought into focus. “You won’t necessarily have to shift your focus to see the image generated by the contact lens,” says Parviz. It will just appear in front of you, he says. The LEDs will be arranged in a grid pattern, and should not interfere with normal vision when the display is off.

For Sensimed, the circuitry is entirely around the edge of the lens (see photo). However, both have yet to address the fact that wearing these lenses might make you look like the robots in the Terminator movies. False irises could eventually solve this problem, says Parviz. “But that’s not something at the top of our priority list,” he says.

So close… And Terminator eyes? That’s a feature, not a bug. YES PLEASE!

Video of Lepht Anonym‘s presentation at 27c3, mentioned earlier, is now online.

Don Bastardo:  ”You want to see the work?  Fine, but you won’t understand it, and you won’t replicate it at home.  You want to speak with the dead?  What do you think you’re going to learn?”
John Reinhardt: “How to permanently change my mind.  Because the one I’ve got isn’t big enough.”

Evolutionary Psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has recently been publishing a version of his Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis over at Psychology Today.   His theory, amongst many other things, establishes a connection between intelligence, novelity seeking and the consumption of psychoactive drugs.  Or, as the Atlantic Wire put it: “Smart People Do More Drugs — Because of Evolution.” The quick version, hopefully without boiling it down too far, is that Kanazawa believes that more intelligent individuals are better equipped to deal with novel situations – and in fact seek those situations out.   Thus, highly intelligent individuals are more likely to seek out experiences with psychoactive drugs, which are essentially novelty sinks.  He’s not claiming that this behavior has a traditionally positive effect – in fact his wording shows a pretty strong bias against psychoactive experimentation but simply that people with high IQs are more likely to seek these experiences out.  Or in his words:

People–scientists and civilians alike–often associate intelligence with positive life outcomes.  The fact that more intelligent individuals are more likely to consume alcohol, tobacco, and psychoactive drugs tampers this universally positive view of intelligence and intelligent individuals.  Intelligent people don’t always do the right thing, only the evolutionarily novel thing.

What struck me, is not that he found proof of this tendency – eyeballing the amount of Ph.D’s in the room the last time I tripped has me anecdotally primed for such a conclusion – but how interestingly it matches Terence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape” theory of human cognitive development. While history and the fields of Anthropology or Evolutionary Biology haven’t been too kind to many of McKenna’s theories over the years since he passed away, one that continually strikes me as relevant – perhaps because of my own theories of hybridization and technological development – is the Stoned Ape.

Here’s the Stoned Ape on the back of a napkin:  A series of studies in the 1950s revealed that sub-threshold (i.e. not tripping balls) doses of psilocybin resulted in heightened visual acuity and movement perception.  So, hunters would have had the ability to consume psilocybin and have an instant upgrade to their hunting abilities.  

Let’s resurrect my favourite caveman, Grok Kurzweil as an example:

Grok is a hunter, with his primitive tools and lack of developed linguistic technologies. His chief rival from some other tribe is Throgg. Grok, one day due to conditions or timing, adds the nice tasting mushroom he found under a pile of feces to his diet. Soon, Grok Kurzweil and the Kurzweil tribe is outperforming Throgg’s tribe and developing better living conditions, which as anyone not on the Texas Board of Education can tell you, theoretically resulted in more Smart-Drug using Grok Kurzweils and less Throggs. There also would have been a non-incidental amount of tripping balls. If the Stoned Ape theory is at all true, the times after hunting expeditions probably looked a lot like a shorter, hairier version of Burning Man. This resulted in linguistics skills, which in turn may have been tied to tool-making skills, which may have been tied to the proto-imagination as a targeting adaptation for throwing, which led to better conditions which led, eventually, and more recently to LOLCATS.

There’s a not-inconsiderable connection between the idea that cognition evolved hand-in-hand with exposure to psychoactively generated states of novelty and the idea that intelligence itself can be linked to an ability to “withstand” and seek out novelty.  And while Kanazawa himself doesn’t theorize on the outcomes of exposure to psychoactive drugs – and also puts forth that the use of psychoactive substances is an evolutionarily recent event – I’ve got to wonder if this avenue of research isn’t on the cusp of validating at least some of McKenna’s theories on cognitive evolution.

We talked about the prototype HUD contact in January 2008. They have been working on improvements:

Today — together with his students — Babak A. Parviz, bionanotechnology expert at University of Washington, is already producing devices that have a lens with one wirelessly Radio Frequency powered LED. To turn such a lens into a functional browser, control circuits, communication circuits and miniature antennas will have to be integrated. These lenses will eventually include hundreds of semitransparent LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye: words, charts, imagery enabling the wearers to navigate their surroundings whithout distraction or disorientation. The optoelectronics in the lens may be controlled by a seperate device that relays information to the lens’s control circuit. Another use could be the monitoring of the wearer’s health and biomarkers f.e. cholesterol, sodium, kalium or glucose.

Link and photo via nextnature.net, though the image is a concept only at this point and not yet a working prototype.

Thanks to LBA for the tip-off!

from Sara 013‘s flickrstream

A small grinder logo on the left front chest, large warning sign on the back. You know you want one. They are going to be available later this week, from Avatar Press.

Panel preview, sent by the mysterious 13:

There have been clues in a few places, including the secret Doktor Sleepless community.

Out this week!

Found in the secret Doktor Sleepless community (you are a member, right?):

Whomever scans the QRC code and gets a web address, please put it in the comments so all our readers can follow where it leads. Thanks!

Via imgfave.com.

Out this week!

I dislike the Barbie concept – so perfect, perky, likable and pink. Gah. I’d be the last person to support anything Barbie, but the recent parental uproar over the “Tattoo Barbie” reminded me very much of what Doktor Sleepless was saying to the grinders:

“That stuff’s just fake.”
“Don’t get idea above your station.”
“Take that shit off”
“Dress properly.”
“Why can’t you be like everyone else”

Sure, these are dolls marketed towards children – but not every parent was upset about this doll. Reading bits and pieces across the interwebs, some parents felt this was their child’s’ generational image, much like how Elvis was controversial during their time. Still others thought it showed a greater respect for tattoos. Some people felt it was wrong to encourage children to get tattoos because real tattoos don’t wash off with soap and water and that children wouldn’t understand the difference.

Yes, because children would never ask their parents about the tattoos they have. They wouldn’t never noticed they don’t wash off with soap and water. They would never ask why they had gotten them in the first place. Tattoos aren’t proper creativity.

Shipping next week! A new player enters the game…

Cover via Avatar Press.

Created by prophesise, for the DOKTOR SLEEPLESS community.

Thank you for sharing, prophesise!

Via Avatar Press‘ flickr stream.

Thrills, chills and more Sarah Berlin?

Image via Avatar Press‘ flickr.

Pronoia sent me an email, telling me of the Xion audio player and more specifically, the Clatter Skin he’d created for it. Take a look:

Damn impressive job! Thank you, Pronoia, for sending me the link to your creation.

Out tomorrow in North America, DOKTOR SLEEPLESS VOL. 1 ENGINES OF DESIRE TP:

Image via Avatar Press‘ flickr stream.

DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #9 is shipping this week. Here’s a lovely preview image, courtesy of Avatar: