Ever wanted to text-chat with a bottlenose dolphin? Or collaborate with a bonobo on a chart-topping blues-rock anthem? I’m not promising it’ll happen, but… something like it might. A reader and friend passed along this bizarre and intriguing article from NPR: Peter Gabriel’s Interspecies Internet. The “interspecies internet” project is actually led by Neil Gershenfeld, … Continue reading
What will the future be like? If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you’ll know a few details: massive cities, robot drivers, and computers that connect directly to your brain. But what about the big picture? What’s the whole world going to be like in 1,000 years? As the saying goes, ask 10 different … Continue reading
Picture this: it’s the near future, and you’re on a first date. You’re at an average restaurant in the suburbs, somewhere in the US. Your date, like half the people in the restaurant, is wearing a flat pin the size of a postage stamp on one lapel. As if you didn’t have enough reasons to … Continue reading
Imagine you could build the city of the future, from scratch, right now. What would it look like? What would it do? It’s not a hypothetical question. According to this Salon article, software developer Plan IT intends to do exactly that: “Plan IT Valley” will be a new city located in northern Portugal, and is … Continue reading
Imagine you’re on a long train ride. Bored, you turn to the landscape rolling past the windows, and decide to dress it up a bit. You conjure up some flocks of exotic birds to hang in the sky, and a few horses that appear to be running alongside. Before you know it, you’ve arrived at … Continue reading
Social networks like Facebook and G+ are great, but they all harbor a major bias: they’re restricted to human users only. Robots, tired of the lack of access and the blatant discrimination, have taken matters into their own hands and created a social network of their own. When the machines eventually rise up in revolt, … Continue reading
It’s no surprise that this preview for the book Present Shock, called “Why Futurists Suck,” would catch my eye when someone passed along the link: It’s hard not to take it personally when someone goes so far out of their way to denigrate futurists! But a quick read through the article on Good.is suggests the … Continue reading
You know what smartphones are about. They’re the shiny, techie status symbol of the decade; they Google bizarre factoids when you need them in conversation; and if you’re reading this column there’s a 78% chance you’re using one right now to order scallion pancakes or play “quiz” on a triple word score. But is that … Continue reading
Welcome to Cosmic Revolutions’ Topic Guides, where we wrap up all the CR articles on a particular subject and serve them to you in a nice neat package with a bow. Today’s topic is a big one: The Singularity. The term became popular thanks to sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge, who called it an “intellectual transition” … Continue reading
(That’s Pinoccio without the “h”, for reasons that remain unclear. The reference to the little wooden boy does appear to be intentional, perhaps because it helps your otherwise inanimate objects acquire a life of their own). Anyway, never mind what it’s called. Just what is this wonky little circuit board we’re looking at? It’s a … Continue reading
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