Like the Grand Theft Auto RC missions come to life, this helicopter can grasp objects for transport. They don’t have to be a special size or shape, and it can lift them even if they are not centered. This is thanks to a load-balancing hand (originally developed as a prosthesis) that relies on flexible joints and a tendon-like closing mechanism. As you can see in the video, the light-weight chopper has an on-board camera so that the operator can see what is being picked up. This little guy has no problem lifting objects that are over one kilogram while remaining stable in the air.
“Owning the Weather” is a documentary about geo-engineering by Robert Greene. It’s about whether or not we should engineer the weather and the different impacts that this has. And not only because we can, but also because actually we are already doing so.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
I was trying to ignore this one, but it seems to be the story of the day.
Thankfully, the reaction far and wide seems to be one of incredulity, or else I’d have to have a long slow cry over a glass of scotch regarding the state of the internet. As it is, I’ll stick to the scotch.
That’s right, your standard binaural beats are being packaged by at least one clueless Oklahoma school district and ratings-starved, journalist-devoid local CW affiliate as the newest cyber-danger to cyber-come from cyber-space to cyber-molest your cyber-children under your very own cyber-nose.
Which is to say, that if you live in Oklahoma, your tax dollars are paying for someone at the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics to actually be worried that kids are “getting high” off of music and noise and that it will lead them to harder non-cyber-drugs.
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?
I normally try and restrain myself on here, but I’m out of ways to wittily articulate the tax-dollar supported stupidity on display here, so I’ll try and make this brief.
If you are a school board member/Oklahoma narcotics officer/journalist/parent concerned that there are now cyber-drugs going in the ears of innocent children, I’d encourage you to do one of two things:
Step 1: Get on the internet and make a vague attempt to educate yourself. Yes, we all know that Chris Hanson has told you that the internet is a living meat-pyramid of pedophiles, but really, it’s not that bad. If you don’t at least have a clue regarding cyber-anything, how are you supposed to know a cyber-drug if you see it? And if you’re on the official drug enforcement end of things you have no right to enforce cyber-jack-all without knowing what the hell you’re actually cyber-doing.
And if you can’t be bothered to do the 5 minutes of looking to realize this has been around for ages, and is a technique on CDs, in music, and in movies and not just on shady ripoff websites designed to make a quick buck off of the fact that you won’t let your kids have the good shit, then we move on to the next option:
Step 2:Go fuck yourself. Seriously, if you’re actually, really concerned about iDosing, then you are in fact not tall enough to ride this ride and are a contributing factor to why we can’t have nice things. Stop letting waxen-faced local news personalities fill your head with fear – which might be hard since it is the drug they’re peddling and it’s probably your drug of choice – and check yourself…
…before you wiggity-wreck yourself, or make a goddamn ass out of yourself in front of your kids and the rest of the world.
Merciful Vishnu, wait till they get a load of the the Brown Note.
[*Actually the first time I ever saw it was over on Technoccult, but every panic on the internet makes everything new again.]
Who needs photos of Man vs Nature, when in Europe, Nature is ruining Man.
So revel in these amazing photos of the devastation left by the worst flooding there in decades, selected from the Boston Globe’s collection – marvel as we continue to watch the world be destroyed through the eyes of a photo journalist:
Delicate patterns in the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill, cannot distract from the mess four to six inches deep on parts of the shore
Then one morning, you log into Facebook and see insurance companies asking questions about organ harvesting and sales. And as videos of fire vortexes and environmental disaster play in the background, you can’t help but wonder if you took that wrong turn into the Grim Cyberpunk Future. (Or the Alphaverse.)
I’ll make this quick, because honestly? It’s about Facebook and we all have better things to be doing with our time than talking about Facebook – that’s what the rest of the internet is for.
Here’s the deal: Facebook – after the incredible success of their Facebook Connect program from a few years back – is now launching their Open Graph program. They’re exposing pretty much all of their user information to third parties and making a lot of formerly “private” information “outward facing” by default. Why? Well, the Open Graph system allows all sorts of sites to connect and interact with each other via Facebook. It’s Facebook Connect on steroids. Pandora will know via Yelp via Facebook (and Facebook Presence) what clubs you like to hang out at and will deliver content based on that. Facebook kind-of already works like that, with you being able to use your FB login to access a wide range of websites and link a lot of content back to FB. The Open Graph is like that, only a great deal more pervasive, and some say invasive.
Now, as a Facebook user, you’ve already agreed to all of this. As they were keen to repeat at the recent f8: Hacking the Graph conference:
“So we’re absolutely clear: nothing we’re announcing today changes any of the existing privacy settings.”
If you use their service, then its Facebook’s world, you’re just posting in it.
The current Facebook Terms of Service allow them to move your information around in the way that they’re currently implementing. Just because years ago they said that they would never do it – but here, sign this thing we’ll never use that gives us the right to do it “just in case” – doesn’t make their turning around and finding new ways to use your digital footprint to generate revenue a surprise.
Privacy concerns for Facebook users aside, what does this all mean?
Well, as some of you may recall, back in 2009 the White House released the “Cyberspace Policy Review.” It was a strange little document that outlined the results of a 60-day review meant to “assess U.S. policies and structures for cybersecurity.” The full text of the document can be found here. [PDF]
Without turning this into a long rant or a conspiracy-theory laden diatribe, let me hop to the point. The policy review calls for:
…a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the Nation.
From here, rather than repeating myself, I’ll let io9’s Annalee Newitz do the talking:
Here is what a “cyber-security identity management vision” really is: A plan for how the government will establish and track your identity online.
…
And here’s where my not-so-wild speculation about Facebook identities comes in. Many companies have turned to Facebook as an “identity management” system (including Gawker Media), allowing people to log into their services using their Facebook identity. The reason is simple: Most people only have one Facebook identity, and they stick with it. There’s a general notion that your Facebook identity is your authentic identity, or at least an identity that you keep over time, and that its characteristics can be traced back to who you are in real life. Therefore, having you log into every web service, from io9 comments to Digg to (possibly in the future) Paypal, is a way of managing your identities. Instead of having a separate identity for each of those services, you have one. Easy to manage, easy to trace.
Why shouldn’t Obama’s cyberczar just cut a deal with Facebook (and maybe a few other social networks like LinkedIn) and turn those profiles into your authentic identities? So you can send mail and buy things using your Facebook ID, and that’s how you’ll be tracked. Hey, you’re already on Facebook right? And you can set your profile to “private.” So it’s easy and “privacy enhancing.” (Never mind how easy it is to get around those privacy settings – pay no attention to that black hat behind the curtain.)
You can read the rest of her breakdown of how pre-existing services can be used to impliment an identity management solution here @ io9. Fast forward to now, almost a year later and Facebook has begun rolling out features that seem tailor made for use as an identity-verification scheme. It’s easier than ever for your Facebook profile to be your default profile on a host of websites as well as for all sorts of fiscal transactions. The Open Graph, while still not providing a full-proof method for identity management does make it far easier to track the movements of your Facebook profile through the net and – as more and more features go live over the summer – through the embedded world as well.
Is Facebook changing because they “decided that these would be the social norms now” or is it simply because they want to continue to answer the question that has plagued the social networking giant since it opened: How do we make money off of this? Obviously, I’d say that the money is, as always, the key – and there are few better ways to monetize personal information than to use that personal information to provide a useful service to both the corporate world and the government.
My two cents? Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about social norms of privacy, the participatory panopticon or the post-privacy world he’s helping to facilitate (for better or worse) – he just wants the kind of sustainable revenue stream that being a government sanctioned identity management solution could bring.
It’s not quite atomic dogs (that damn dog makes me cry every time) or car-harpoons, but a Doctor in South Africa is now producing an insertable dentata.
The Rape-aXe system consists of a latex sheath, which contains razor-sharp barbs. The device is worn in her vagina like a tampon. When the attacker attempts vaginal penetration the barbs attach themselves to the penis, causing great discomfort. The device must be surgically removed, which will result in the positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest.
There is a video that goes with that:
While the device is controversial, to say the least; the idea of anyone having to live in an environment of violence that might make lining your vagina with spikes a logical course of action is nauseating.
HERE’S YOUR FUCKING JETPACK. There, boom, a commercially available Jetpack. You strap it on, it flies and you don’t even need a license in most countries. All you need is a little bit of disposable income and wham: Jetpack. What? You can’t afford it? Well what did you expect; that when jetpacks came around that they’d be free? I live in a country where free flu shots are considered a government conspiracy and you expect someone to strap a communist subsidized rocket up your ass and tell you to go to town? I don’t fucking think so.
What are you looking for in a jetpack, anyway? I mean, sure they’re cool and all – who didn’t hide in their rooms and gently bring themselves off while watching the Rocketeer? But what do your really want – flight? Well there are other ways to fly then strapping a giant engine to your back.
Oh yeah, speaking of flight, here’s your flying car, too:
It’s called a “helicopter”. Yes, you need a special license and metric shit-tonnes of money to own and operate one making it prohibitively expensive and unrealistic for many reasons – but hey, don’t feel bad - NINETY-ODD PERCENT OF THE HUMAN SPECIES feels the same way about cars. To break that down into more manageable numbers, if the world was a colony of 1000 people, by some accounts only 70 lucky bastards would own cars. Everyone else? Hoofing it, biking it, using public transportation or being stuck in a geographic area the size of a postage stamp by environmental factors.
So does the fact you can’t afford a flying car make you sad? Congratulations! Now you’ve woken up on the same side of the bed as the rest of the human race.
Okay. Fair enough, you don’t mean flying car in a loose sort of way that could include a helicopter. You want an honest-to-God Nick Fury agent of S.H.I.E.L.D “where we’re going we don’t need roads” Delorian with rockets strapped to its ass.
What is it with you people wanting to strap rockets to everything’s ass, anyway? Remind me never to look at your porn collection. (Well, I mean… if it has tastefully done ass-rockets, send it on.)
Flying cars are neat, too. But let me direct your attention to this window. Look out there… now assuming you’re in a part of the world where car ownership is the norm, then you’re looking at a place where there need to be laws in place to stop people from doing stupid shit while operating several tonnes of dangerous machinery at high speeds. It is somehow not common sense to not down a beer, smoke a joint, text your boyfriend, pierce your nipples and skullfuck a Peruvian trout when driving a two-ton death machine.
But people who weren’t gifted with a basic survival instinct aren’t the only downer about motor vehicles. You see, the people making cars are under no pressure to make safe cars. Do you really want the same companies that have to be sued, threatened and cajoled by private citizens and governments to not make cars that blow up when hit by a stiff breeze to be the ones responsible for shooting you and your car into the sky? That bit from Fight Club, about auto companies weighing the liability for death vs defects in their vehicles? That’s a true story.
So where is your flying car? Perhaps it is waiting somewhere behind the car that is not responsible for approximately 2% of all the death in the world, annually? (For ex. 1.4 million worldwide in 2004.) How in the hell is anyone supposed to level up to super awesome flying cars when we can’t even get cars-that-don’t-kill-people-all-the-fucking-time down?
Okay, that’s enough yelling; the shouty old man routine gets old – fast.
But that said, the “where’s my fucking jetpack” meme pisses me the fuck off.
First of all, why the obsession over a future made in the 1910-1930’s? Flying cars and jetpacks were the fantasy fetish objects of a different time. Not a simpler time, because the phrase “simpler time” is like “military intelligence” – it’s a contradiction – we only think times were simpler thanks to temporal and cultural distancing. Still, is that your future? Really? Or is your grandparents’ future? The Jetpack future is a future born of the past. It is a future created by people who lived in a world that had never seen the artificial suns rise over Japan, had not seen the realities of our space program, and probably couldn’t conceive of a black man in the White House or Celebrity Big Brother.
If you’re really serious about wanting the Jetpack future – and I know some of you are…
Hell, you’re listening to a man who once blew up a poster of Thomas Edison with homemade explosives while screaming “Nikola Tesla thou art revenged” at the top of his lungs and running naked through the woods. Which is to say… I have my own hang ups about stolen futures.
If you’re serious about the Jetpack future, then don’t stop at “this is not my future” – make it your future. Claim that vision of now that circumstances and small minds have denied you and find other like minded people and build it.
When Steampunk came back, you had people who looked at the future-of-a-different-past in some works of fiction and then started to make it real. Not just with cute costumes and at conventions, but with building their own machines, starting real community and carving out a niche where that future made of cogs and springs and the rushing of superheated air has weight and takes up space and becomes real. Now you’ve got people getting into D.I.Y. and sustainability and reclaiming urban spaces thanks to a subculture that in the beginning, just really liked some sci-fi books and had an unhealthy fixation with top hats.
Here’s the thing; if you stop at “this is not my future” and go no further, then someone else will make their version of the future and I can almost guarantee you’re not going to like it. I can guarantee this because you already don’t like it. We’re living in the future of men who saw people as commodities and human lives as disposable sources of income. It’s not some grand conspiracy, it’s just people who have a vision of the future where the top 2% get richer and the rest of the world… well… you want to be in that 2%, right? And the only way that is going to happen is if you buy into their future and not into the steam-sustainability-and-goggles future, the Ayahuasca-and-shamanism future, the Russian-feminist-ninja future or the Japanese-post-gender-newtype future.
We don’t have nice things because we let other people take them away from us. We have these futures that seem alien to us because we let them happen. I’m including you, me and 99% of all the humans and mutants I have ever met in that “we”, too. We are the reason there are no jetpacks or flying cars or universal distribution of water and food. ”We have met the enemy,” as a great man once said, “and he is us”. We contribute to a future that has no place for us in so many ways: inaction, being convinced that we don’t have voices that count, being convinced that the only choices we have are the choices we can buy, despair, alienation… the list goes on and on. We let the beautiful, amazing, weird, fucked-up futures we hold next to our hearts die stillborn in the face of futures so alien to most of us that they might as well be dread Cthulhu sleeping beneath the waves.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. If you want the jetpack future? Find the other people who want it and make it. If you see the people around you stand mute while the dreams of human accomplishment are ground into the dirt and they instead run over each other to embrace steaming mediocrity and you don’t think that’s a fair trade? Say something. Contrary to slick movie quotes, the Devil never even bothered to pretend he didn’t exist – instead he made so many of us believe the lie that our voices and actions don’t matter.
Fuck the Devil. Put on your tophat and latex gimp suit or Rocketeer jacket and carve out that future – Jetpacks and all if that’s what floats your boat – and don’t let me or anyone else get in your way.
Fashion designers recently went all out and put together a weird mix of creations for the China Fashion Week which was held in November 2009. A bi-annual event, the Fashion Week showcases the latest creations of prominent brand names as well as the works of the upcoming folk.
