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Ten Years Of Technovelgy
I just wanted to take a moment at the start of this year to note that I've been doing the Technovelgy site for ten years already! It doesn't seem that long.
Although longtime readers have their own favorite stories, I thought I'd link to a few of mine. With over 4,000 stories, I can't really pick the best ten.
- HOAP-2 Robot Masters Sumo And Linux. RoboShiko!
Is a wrestling robot possible?
RoboShiko!
(HOAP-2 image courtesy CEATEC Japan 2003)
- Philips FluidFocus: Variable Focus Fluid Lens
Philips FluidFocus - a variable-focus lens system with no mechanical moving parts - was demonstrated at CeBIT (Hannover, Germany) on March 3rd, 2004.
(See Philips' Fluid Lenses Bring Things into Focus.)
- Rat Neurons In A Dish Now Playing Flight Simulator
In his excellent 1999 novel Starfish, science fiction writer Peter Watts wrote about "cultured brains on a slab" - a "head cheese" - that could pilot a plane as well as a person. Now, University of Florida scientist Dr. Thomas DeMarse has created a "brain in a dish" that can interact with a computer flight simulation.
(From Science Daily)
- VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality
VirtuSphere provides a mechnical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking.
(From VirtuSphere immersive virtual reality machine)
- Space Rescue Technology In Fact And Fiction
Scientists and science fiction athors have been thinking about emergency rescues in space for almost as long as they have thought about voyages in space.
(From Von Braun Rescue Vehicles)
- News E-Papers From Plastic Logic
Truly light and flexible displays like those shown below from Plastic Logic in Britain are now in the pipeline, but were not quite ready for the current trials.
(Flexible e-paper news article with graphics)
- Paralysis Beam From Peak Beam Systems
A paralysis beam based on a 7.5 million candlepower strobe light from Peak Beam Systems is under development by the US Army.
(Maxa Beam from Peak Beam Systems)
- Robot Chef Makes Octopus Balls
A robot chef was cooking octopus balls autonomously at the Osaka Museum of creative industries last month. The device was created by Toyo Riki of Japan.
(Robot chef makes octopus balls)
- Earth Now Needs Agricultural Worlds
In their recent Living Planet Report for this year, the World Wildlife Federation is suggesting that this planet's resources won't be enough for us.
(Living Planet Report [pdf])
- PlantBot: Humans Provide Gift Of Greater Mobility With 'Skrodes'
Behold: PlantBot - solar seeking botanical augmentation.
(PlantBot by the Play Coalition: Neil, Dane and Joe)
- In-Flight Wi-Fi Gives Me Clarke Moment
Kind of like Heywood Floyd did in Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the novel, Dr. Heywood Floyd is in flight:
When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him...
(Read more about Clarke's Newspad)
- Unemployed Robots Should Seek Work Autonomously
Japan's robots are facing massive layoffs as a result of a deep recession; customers all over the world are buying fewer cars and other products that manufacturing robots build to perfection.
And don't forget the 2400+ science fiction inventions and ideas from over 750 different sf works.
Thanks, readers, for your interest and your contributions. Have a great 2014!
Bill Christensen
Chief Technovelgist
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction
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