Robotic Insects?

Back in 2007, antiwar protesters in Washington, DC noticed they said appeared to be insect-sized drone surveillance aircraft hovering over them. As a Washington Post article reported:

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

The Post consulted various government agencies, none of which admitted to having deployed robotic insects.  The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, however, had actually tried to develop such a device back in the 1970s--the insectothopter robotic dragonfly, which contained a tiny gasoline engine that powered four flapping wings. Reportedly, the insectothopter actually managed to fly, but reported was scrapped because it could not handle crosswinds. Perhaps as a result, Pentagon researchers veered off in a different direction, and began looking at attaching micro-electrical mechanical systems, or MEMS, to insects to create swarms of tiny, remote-controlled cyborg secret agents, capable of flying or crawling into enemy territory. (Here's a blog post that I wrote on that idea, a few years back.)

The Future As We See It

For years, 3D displays have been used as a gimmick. Millions of the old red and blue 3D glasses were distributed for the 2009 Superbowl and Tupac's hologram appearance at Coachella was promised to be the next big thing. But there's always something off about current 3D implementations. Even RealD 3D movie displays cause headaches and nausea for some movie-goers -- a big enough problem that 2D Goggles were developed to counteract the 3D illusion. Why has technology continued to develop in two dimensions in our 3D world? And why is the Hollywood version of a hologram so hard to turn into reality?

As we move toward new and improved ways to interact with our 3D world new technologies will certainly change our daily lives. What are the implications on human interaction in the future? Check out the video below as Jonathan Strickland explains one possibility for the future of holograms.

Learn more about this series and catch more future-tech videos at the FW:Thinking website.

 

Should school children have tracking chips?

If conspiracy theorists on the web had been on target, by now we'd all have microchips implanted in our bodies that would give the federal government the ability to identify us and track our movements, thanks to a loophole created by an obscure provision of Obamacare that was supposed to kick in on March 23, 2013. That arbiter of Internet fact vs. fiction, Snopes.com, has refuted the meme--though not to the satisfaction of action movie star-turned-political activist Chuck Norris, who hinted in this 2012 commentary that the tracking chips were "a bit too close" to the "mark of the beast" mentioned in the Biblical Book of Revelation.

While I've written in the past about civil libertarians' concerns about RFID chips, I was tempted to poke fun at Norris for his conspiracy-minded alarmism, and question whether he'd been conked on the head a bit too hard while fighting a bear. That is, until I saw a recent article in the International Business Times, entitled "Invasion Of Privacy? RFID Tracking Kids On School Buses." The latter describes the Gordon Counta, Ga. school district's new pilot program to keep track of students on school buses through a system called StudentConnect, IBT reports that the technology combines Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology with a "passive" RFID chip--the sort that doesn't have its own power source and will only respond to a signal from a receiver device when it is nearby, rather than broadcasting a signal. (Here's a HowStuffWorks article on how RFID tagging works.)

Having a Clear Head--Literally

You've probably heard self-help gurus talk about the importance of clearing your mind, but Stanford University researchers have figured out a way to do that, literally. In a just-published paper in the scientific journal Nature, they describe a new process that they've invented for making a cadaver mouse brain transparent, so that scientists can get a three-dimensional look inside it without a computer simulation. To greatly simplify, the CLARITY process, as they've named it, involves washing away the fat that normally blocks the view of the brain's cells and replacing it with a see-through gel that holds the brain's structures in place so that they can be studied.

As a Stanford press release explains, neuroscientists no longer will have to make do with slices of brain tissue. Instead, they can examine brain's fine wiring of nerves and molecular structures, and measure and probe them at will with both visible light and chemical tests. So far, they've only tried the process on slivers of human brain tissue, but it's only a matter of time before they render a cadaver human brain transparent as well. 

A Los Angeles Times story on the research predicts that it will have a massive, transformational effect on neuroscience, generating mountains of data what will enable researchers to understand the brain's anatomy and how it is altered by diseases such as Alzheimer's or schizophrenia. Already, researchers have used CLARITY to peruse a tissue sample from the brain of a person with autism, and discovered a deeply buried neuron that "looped back on itself," in the words of Karl Deisseroth, the Stanford bioengineer who led the team. Though it will take a lot more work to figure out whether that abnormality has genuine significance, there's at least a glimmer of hope that it might turn out to provide an explanation for the disorder.

Here's a video from Nature's YouTube channel that illustrates how it all works.  

 Pretty amazing, huh? Probably the only thing that would be cooler would be if we could peer into a living brain. I'm waiting for transhumanist body hackers to come up with a clear plastic replacement for the skull and the skin that covers it, so that some adverturous soul can transform himself into something akin to the Revell Visible Man model that I had when I was a lad.

A Real Version of Marty McFly's Hoverboard?

If you're a fan of the Back to the Future movie trilogy of the 1980s and early 1990s, you undoubtedly remember that when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels to the year 2015 in the second movie in the series, he discovers something more state-of-the-art--a hoverboard, which floats above the ground. From YouTube, here's the scene. Notice that Marty's new nemesis Griff (Thomas F. Wilson) also has one, a macho version with a pitbull emblazoned on the board. You always wanted one of those, didn't you? I did.

I was reminded of this when Griff's hoverboard recently turned up on eBay, where it's being offered for the bargain price of $9,995. (There already have been a number of presumably lower offers, all declined by the seller.)

The drawback, of course, is that the hoverboard is just a prop, rather than an actual working hoverboard. Back in 2001, when inventor Dean Kamen was on the verge of announcing what he promised would be a revolutionary new transportation device, there were rumors across the webisphere that he had developed an actual working hoverboard. Instead, to our disappointment, he gave us the Segway.

Reanimating Abe Lincoln (With Just a Few Improvements)

  The box office success and critical acclaim garnered by Lincoln present filmmaker Steven Spielberg with an odd dilemma. Unlike other huge hits of recent years — say, Sherlock Holmes or The Avengers — Spielberg can't pick up another big payday by churning out Lincoln 2, because (Spoiler Alert!) his main character dies at the end of the movie. It's a tough problem for a screenwriter to work around.

That is, unless he shifts from historical drama into the realm of science fiction — a genre that Spielberg has worked in a few times, I seem to remember. Here's a plot premise: Lincoln does die, but doctors save and preserve a frozen sample of his body for posterity. Then, 150 years later, scientists figure out how to extract his DNA and use it to clone him. Then they collect every bit of information that they can amass about Lincoln from both his own speeches and historical accounts, digitize it, and transfer all of it to the brain of our Lincoln clone. Voila! The 16th President is reanimated. Plus, maybe he's even better than the original, thanks to the powered exoskeleton, jet pack and augmented-reality contact lenses that they equip him with. 

Here's a more detailed walk through of how cryogenics are used to essentially freeze and preserve living tissue for long periods of time in case you're interested (for perfectly normal and law-abiding reasons, of course...).

  

Is Internet Anonymity Doomed?

It's been 20 years since New Yorker ran this cartoon, which was the origin of the meme that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." But it's still pretty much true, as we recently were reminded, thanks to the unfortunate recent case of a star college football player whose online girlfriend--stricken tragically with leukemia, or so he thought--turned out to be a fake, perpetrated upon him by an online hoaxster.

But there are more and more signs that Internet anonymity--once heralded as one of the essential building blocks of the online world's freedom-loving anarchistic spirit--is destined to go the way of dialup modems. Instead, we' may be peering into a future in which everybody will be continually, instantly identifiable online, no matter what device you use, or what elaborate layers of ambiguity you seek to fashion.

One sign of this paridigm shift is the news that Google is exploring the possibility of eliminating passwords, and replacing them with identifiable hardware. One way to do this would be pocket-sized USB devices containing cryptographic cards, which users would carry around with them and plug into their PCs (for handheld devices or smart phones, they'd use a wireless NFC connection). As this Wired article explains: 

Predictions by Tesla, Verne and others that may come true in 2013

As a long time blogger for the Science Channel, I cover a bizarre beat: Technological extremes, outlandish notions, controversial proposals and sheer "what if" speculation, from creating human-animal hybrids and building a space elevator to the idea of floating aquatic cities as a way to deal with climate change. A lot of the crazy stuff that I write about has actually been advocated or even developed by visionary technologists. But on slow days, I sometimes have no choice but to pretend to be a low-rent reincarnation of late 19th-early 20th Century inventor Nikola Tesla, and induce a few hallucinatory daydreams of my own, from giant ant farms (with giant ants) to continuously recording everything that happens on the Earth and uploading it to YouTube. Granted, I've yet to come up with anything as brilliant--or as wacky--as the venerable Serbian.

That's why I'm turning over this blog over to venerable futurists: Tesla, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Philip K. Dick. Instead of my own lame predictions, let's look at five predictions that they made, which might possibly come true in 2013 or soon after.

1. Mind pictures

Tesla envisioned a gadget that would capture the ideas in his mind and project them as pictures. University of California, Berkeley researchers actually have made some progress in this quest. In 2011, they demonstrated how the ability to monitor subjects' neural activity while watching the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther and then convert the data into crude images of Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau. I'd like to see them make further progress and develop an actual device of the sort envisioned by Tesla. It not only would allow communication with disabled people who are unable to speak or otherwise communicate, but possibly unleash a creative revolution, in which artists and inventors could translate their imaginative visions directly into a medium that could be shared with the world.

Top 5 Tech Fails of 2012

 It's that time of year when we celebrate the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the previous 12 months. But we'd be remiss if we didn't also highlight some of 2012's epic FAILs, kludgemonsters that went so outrageously awry that they might merit a spot in the Valhalla of failed inventions occupied by the likes of Microsoft Clippy, New Coke, CueCat, and the Hindenburg.

Okay, time for one of you out there to play the paint-can drum roll...

1. Apple Maps

When you have two global tech giants, each with dreams of global domination and competing smartphone platforms, it's no surprise that they don't much like each other. So it wasn't much of a shock when Apple deleted Google Maps from its roster of pre-installed iPhone apps, and replaced it with a clone, Apple Maps. The problem was that Apple Maps had a disturbing tendency to give users directions that were, well, ah, not always correct. In Australia, police actually admonished motorists not to use the new app at all, after four incidents in which drivers trying to reach an Australian town were guided errantly into the sun-scorched bush of a national park. Ultimately, Apple's CEO Tim Cook had to apologize to customers, who then uploaded the new iOS 6 in droves--after Google unveiled its own new map app.

Robot Dogs of War in Development Now

It says something about the human-canine relationship that once scientific visionaries came up with the idea of anthropomorphic robots, it didn't take them long to dream up mechanical dogs to keep them company. One of the big hits of the Westinghouse Electric pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, for example, was Sparko, the cute little metal terrier who did tricks while Elektro the robot stared at the audience and uttered his handful of recorded words. And who could forget Rags, the four-legged cyborg in Woody Allen's 1973 futuristic comedy Sleeper, who scampered around at the feet of the household automatons and inspired the wisecrack: "Is he housebroken or will he be leaving little batteries all over the floor?"

 More recently, from 1999 to 2006, electronics giant Sony produced Aibo, a $2,000 computerized mechanical dog that not only could bark, nuzzle a ball and lift its leg as if to relieve itself, but could utter 1,000 words and provide a dog's-eye perspective on the world through a video camera implanted in its head. Sony actually managed to sell 150,000 of the artificial creatures; one California engineer reportedly owned 56 of them.

But not all robot dogs are designed to be cute and cuddly. For roughly a decade, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been pushing to develop what it calls "biodynotics" — that is, multifunctional mobile robots that mimic various animals.  This technological analog of evolution has spawned bizarre devices such as a robotic lobster that may someday protect U.S. Navy craft by hunting for mines buried  in shallow water, and also cyborg insects, which I wrote about in this blog post back in 2009.