watching the actors for the new TMNT run around in giant mocap suits in public might be the funniest goddamn thing
look at this shit
3D Printed Robohand creates a functioning prosthetic at an affordable price -> http://goo.gl/rNxqZ
(via cruisingwithgunhead)
"On these pages you can find the reflections and working notes of the Resilients, people who imagine possible futures and prototype them as artistic experiments in living and working environments. We transform the concept of resilience into concrete practice by designing experimental social structures and situations and stress-testing them in real-life labs – our case studies in possible futures."
“Ahead of this morning’s #nestahottopics here’s a graphic on how new materials are reshaping our homes”
Memorial to UTA Flight 772 in Niger, as seen in google earth (more picures in the gallery here)
"Imagine a mesh network of stratospheric drones functioning as high-altitude Internet infrastructure. One HAP every 600 miles or so would be sufficient to cover the globe."
The geopolitics of Google’s autocomplete | FP Passport
On Wednesday, a German federal court ruled that libelous autocompletes are a violation of privacy.And this is far from an isolated case. The BBC goes on to report:
“The ruling could also have a bearing on another case involving auto-complete. Bettina Wulff, wife of former German president Christian Wulff, sued Google because auto-complete suggested words linking her to escort services. Mrs Wulff denies ever working as a prostitute and has fought several legal cases over the accusation. The case against Google is due to be heard soon in a Hamburg court.”
Stanislaw Lem: On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction | will-ellwood.com
“If SF is something more than fairy tale fiction, it has the right to neglect the fairy tale world and its rules. It is also not realism and has the right to neglect the methods of realistic description. Its generic indefiniteness facilitates its existence, for it is supposedly not subject to the whole range of criteria by which literary works normally are judged. SF is not allegorical, but then it says allegory is not its task: SF and Kafka are quite different. It is not realistic, but then it is not a part of realistic literature. The future? How often have SF authors disclaimed any intention of making predictions! Finally, it is the Myth of the 21st Century. But the ontological character of myth is anti-empirical, and though a technological civilization may have its myths, it cannot itself embody a myth, for myth is an interpretation, an explication, and you must have the object that is to be explicated. SF lives in but strives to emerge from this antinomical state of being. It becomes more and more apparent that its narrative structures deviate more and more from any real processes, having been used again and again since they were first introduced and having thus become frozen, fossilized paradigms. SF involves the art of putting hypothetical premises into the very complicated stream of socio-psychological occurrences. Although this art once had its master in H.G. Wells, it has been forgotten and is now lost. But it can be learned again”
Ganked from facebook and I have no source or further info about this. (google and tineye were no help..)
LieDar is a fake lidar sensor that you can attach to the top of your car to instantly turn it into a self-driving vehicle. Whereas some companies have spent millions of dollars developing the technology to have conversations about the future of transportation, you can butt in for a mere fraction of the cost. To join the multimillion dollar conversation all you need is a 3D printer, and a little gumption.
When your car sports fashionable technology you can experience first-hand what it is like to be a leader in innovation. Everywhere you go people will stop dead in their tracks in wonder and admiration. Children will look back and remember the day they first encountered a self-driving car — your self-driving car! Overnight you can go from merely being a terrible driver to a well-respected and beloved ambassador of the future.
“Impress your neighbors. Meet new people. Become more attractive to members of all sexes. Own the road! The LieDar can do all of this for you and more. Retrofit your car today!”
via fffff.at
"
Change hurtles ever onward, and the only thing more corrosive than the fact that the future isn’t evenly distributed is the fact that there are plenty of humans who don’t want this future at all. It’s all too much change, it may be literally too much change to process for human hardwiring. Many older humans are living future shock, right now. It was ever thus.
But the difference now is that those people are alive.
In 1900 the percentage of the American population over the age of 45 was 17.8%. In 1950 it was 28.4%. As of the last census the share of the US population over 45 is 36.4%. Hell, the 65+ share’s gone from 4.1% in 1900 to 13.3% in 2010. More and more people still in the society, with greater and greater influence, still constructing societal and legal norms based on emotional, psychological, cultural and technological frames of reference that are less and less relevant.
We’d all like to think we’d reinvent ourselves, re-assimilate, learn and grow along a constantly regenerative learning curve. But most of us wouldn’t. We’re just not cognitively wired for it. We crave stasis, because our lizard brains crave safety and security.
…
Imagine it now. A functional lifespan of, say 200 years. Working with people who owned slaves. Trying to negotiate international trade treaties to deal with global warming by reconciling voters who watched their brother’s head get spun into a fine red mist by a Boston infantryman or a Georgian cavalryman. Getting funding for stem cell research from voters who grew up believing not only were black people a genetically inferior race, but other versions of white people were, too. 200 years is what Bruce Sterling posits in Holy Fire, a gerontocracy, and it’s a goddam mess.
"http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2013/04/arcanum-immortality-is-so-so-creepy.html (via grinderbot)
Serious current this week
(via wolvensnothere)(via wolvensnothere)
“These are paintings which know that they will be Googled as well as seen. It’s not at all hard to imagine someone stood in front of another C-M-Y-K painting, ‘Give You My Lovin’’ (2012), smartphone in hand, listening to the song the title refers to.”
