future technology

The Kitchen of the Future Concept Video

by Socrates
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This short 2 min video shows a concept for the kitchen of the future. As demonstrated, the future kitchen has no pots or pans or recipes — just an all-in-one cocking surface, acting also as a kitchen table or a bar. Its surface is totally malleable and can adjust itself to re-create any cookware as required, analyze the ingredients for freshness or bacteria, and suggest alternative cooking recipes. I have only 2 questions: 1. What is the first meal you feel like cooking after watching this video? 2. What do you do with your futuristic kitchen table after the introduction of table-top personal nano-fabricators?

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Can you TRANSCEND biology and live long enough to live forever?

by Socrates
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In 2004, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, MD, published Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Their groundbreaking book marshaled thousands of scientific studies to make the case that new developments in medicine and technology will allow us to radically extend our life expectancies and slow down the aging process. In 2009, Ray and Terry published Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever where they present what they believe to be a practical and enjoyable program which readers can follow in order to live long enough (and remain healthy long enough) to take full advantage of the biotech and nanotech advances that have already begun and will be occurring at an accelerating pace during the years ahead. The program aims to help us TRANSCEND biology and live long enough to live forever. In 2010, Ray and Terry give us [...]

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Regenerative Medicine on TEDMED

by Socrates
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Dr. Anthony Atala from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in an amazing video demonstrating the promise of regenerative medicine in general and artificially grown organs, in particular. Here is the timeline description of the video as posted by Singularity Hub. 1:46 – Atala alerts the audience to the scope of the problems with organ transplants and limited organs. Starting with the quote from above. 2:28 – An interesting time-elapsed video of a salamander regrowing a fore-limb. 3:55 – Biomaterials can act as a bridge to encourage tissue growth over damaged areas or gaps. The bridge length, however, is limited to about 1 cm. 5:15 – Using cells that are cultured outside the body, Atala can take an artificial scaffold and create a new organ. 6:20 – Atala uses a bio-reactor to exercise and condition muscle tissue before it [...]

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Remote Car Stopper by Eureka Aerospace

by Socrates

Here is a video demo of a prototype for a remote car disabling or car stopping Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) device called HPEMS (High Powered Electro Magnetic System). The device is currently being developed by Eureka Aerospace for the US Police, Airforce, Marine Core and other interested parties. It has the ability to stop cars within a 200 meter range and the goal is to make the prototype light enough so that it can be easily carried by a single soldier or police officer. One of the major weaknesses of the device is that it will not be able stop vintage cars that lack an on-board computer or microprocessor. This means that, once the device is introduced, it will be vehicles built before the mid 1970s that will make the best get-away cars. Related articles by Zemanta Car-stopping electropulse cannon [...]

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Artificial Intelligence: Its Meaning and Its Future

by Socrates
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Professors Noel Sharkey and Kevin Warwick discuss what AI is, and what it might become… Video: Artificial intelligence: Will machines ever out-think us? | silicon.com Related articles by Zemanta the Rise of Robotic Artificial Intelligence (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) Call for debate on killer robots (news.bbc.co.uk) Military killer robots ‘could endanger civilians’ (telegraph.co.uk)

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Best of CES Awards

by Socrates

Many of you are following or even visiting the annual Consumer Electronics Show held each January in Las Vegas, Nevada. The CES show is considered to be the largest annual consumer electronics trade show in the world. Each year at the end of the show CNET presents the best CES product awards. Here is the video of this year’s awards ceremony:

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Smart Weapons for the 21st Century

by Socrates

Continuing on the topic of future military technology here is a CNN video report about the future of smart infantry weapon-systems. In the video below Col. Doug Tamilio takes CNN to the testing grounds for a first look at the Army’s newest infantry weapon. Can we foresee the impact of such “smart weapons”? (by “smart” what we really mean to say is that they are more “deadly” because for example they possess “fire-and-forget” type of capabilities). Can we prevent them from falling into the “wrong” hands? (Of course, the “wrong” hands are any hands other than those of “our” soldiers.) Will those smart weapons decrease the loss of innocent life (i.e. civilians, women and children) or will they increase it? What happens when we pair the above “smart weapons” with the “smart machines” from the Dawn of the Kill-Bots blog [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 5)

by Socrates

Part 5: The Future of (Military) AI — Singularity While being certainly dangerous for humans, especially the ones that are specifically targeted by the kill-bots, arming machines is not on its own a process that can threaten the reign of homo sapiens in general. What can though is the fact that it is occurring within the larger confluent revolutions in Genetics, Nanotechnology and Robotics (GNR). Combined with exponential growth trends such as Moore’s law we arguably get the right conditions for what is referred to as the Technological Singularity. In 1945 Alan Turing famously predicted that computers would one day play better chess than people. Fifty years later, a computer called Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion Gary Kasparov. Today, whether it is a mouse with a blue-tooth brain implant that directs the movements of the mouse via laptop, [...]

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