I have become a regular reader of 'The Future Of Things' that always contains something interesting for the Sci-Fi mind.

Today they linked to a study on a new drug called propranolol that "is usually used to control blood pressure" but has been found to have the possibility of reducing "strong fearful memories" for people suffering from traumatic events, xenophobia and so forth in a human study.

Read here in full, the article has the catchy title 'Drug banishes bad memories' which isn't really what it's about as the researchers themselves assert that one of the results was to confirm that the drug did not remove the memory itself but the fear to the object shown to the study participants (a spider). Quote: "the drug treatment didn't affect how well the participants remembered the link between the spiders and the shock. They could recall the link clearly, but the fear response had gone."

I thought this article, entitled "Future Watch: A.I. comes of age" from ComputerWorld might be worth posting that i found on Slashdot.

Reading how the robot would understand a natural language query, move about in the real-world to look for an object, pick it up, bring it back to the person who had requested it in the first place with the words ""Here is your stapler," says Stair, handing it to the man. "Have a nice day." might not sound like such a big deal at first glance as this would be something that any human (from the age of 4+ :) ) would consider to be a mundane task. However the fact that this robot can understand, learn and adapt to his environment have been formidable challenges that have gone unsolved for a very long time and it is encouraging to see strong progress being made.

What really reminded me of the book "The Singularity Is Near" from Ray Kurzweil was a quote from one of the researchers Tom Mitchell from Carnegie Mellon saying: "Suddenly, we have ways of observing what the brain is really doing, via brain imaging methods like functional MRI. It's a way to look into the brain while you are thinking and see, once a second, a movie of your brain's activity with a resolution of 1mm."

It's been exactly those sort of trends that Ray says have exponential qualities to them as in the discoveries and advancements we make in important fields such as genetic or robotic research and this will ultimately lead to an ever increasing speed of evolution. There might be hope that he could be right and we could end up getting the 'benefit' of for example drastically increased lifespans.

Without comment.

Taken from physorg.com and the article "Internet Growth Follows Moore's Law Too".

Another day, another step closer to "Sci-fi Today". Fascinated by an item on the BBC on bionic eyes, I dived in a little deeper into the whole range of technologies that we might have within our reach rather sooner than later. Stumbling across this wonderful message board that seems to track technology related news I arrived back on the website of the wonderful Ray Kurzweil. If you have a moment to spare to be awed, click on and understand the realities of tomorrow.

Haptic simulation of virtual textiles

" ...It is easy to choose colors and sizes of clothes on many websites, but it's impossible to touch the material. So, European scientists are using a virtual reality technology, haptic simulation, to reproduce the sense of touch when interacting with virtual textiles. In 'Getting a feel for the fabric -- virtually,' IST Results describes the HAPTEX project (HAPtic sensing of virtual TEXtiles) which will end in November 2007 and is funded by the European Union with 1.66 million euros..." 

 After the "Virtual try-on" or "Virtual fit" challenge here come the "Virtual touch" ! And what's next ... virtual smell and virtual taste?

 About the virutal-try-on , My Virtual Model  proposes interesting solutions for the apparel shops online.

Smart Mobs: Scan This Book! Imagine the day when you 'll be able to load in a microsec. the full world library's 50 petabyte of content (32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages...) into your brain.... OR alternatively, for the backward folks (sic!), on their ipod... A hell of a headache !

Wouldn't it be terrific if the holo-deck from Star Trek would actually exist? It seems that it already does. Sure, we've read what kind of advanced simulations the US army is running. But how about being able to access something akin to Star Trek ourselves?

Something called the VirtuSphere might bring us closer to that.

Pack on some VR goggles and enjoy the show. Conveyer belts within the sphere rotate with your every movement and make the VR in front of your eyes update accordingly, giving you the illusion that you are walking through real space.

Throw in radical new interface devices such as the one Sony showed of for its upcoming console (see for yourself) and baby you have me playing.

And the new game consoles are already changing much more than the videogame landscape. They are becoming the new home-theater entertainement centers. Plus with Xbox Live! and the rumored Playstation online service there are $$$ to cash in.

I wonder when some of them - such as zslide - are going to have their breakthrough. Would love to be part of it; there's just so much you could do in improving user experience when using the power todays (and tomorrows) consoles have available.

news @ nature.com - Computer users move themselves with the mind - Electrode cap allows users to think themselves along a virtual street.

"Computer scientists have created a hat that can read your thoughts. It allows you to stroll down a virtual street. All you have to do is think about walking.

Called a brain-computer interface, the device detects activity in certain brain areas linked to movement, and uses the signals to mimic that movement in a virtual world. The technology could one day help paralysed patients to move robotic arms, or help sufferers of motor neuron disease to type out words on a virtual keyboard.

"Just thinking about movement activates the same neurons as actually moving," explains Gert Pfurtscheller of Graz University of Technology in Austria, who has been working on the device for around four years. By picking up on these bursts of nerve activity, the computer can decide whether you are thinking about moving your hands or feet, and react accordingly."

Let's create a new label here: "technopathic"!

Slowly starting to come out of the project that occupied me for the last year, I am going to start posting entries to our blog again. The theme will be 'living in a sci-fi world'.

There are an astonishing number of discoveries and things we already take for granted in our daily lifes that were unthinkable only a ten years ago. Only sci-fi authors went beyond the boundaries of everyones imaginations. However we now live in the world they created.

The posts will first and foremost be simply links away from our sites. Some issues I might take up and argue with myself about. We'll see how it evolves (or not if I jump right into the next big project).

Face transplants. Ever thought that he/ she looked better than you? Well, how about...

read more...

One thing lead to another. On the search for implants of all kinds, I tripped over this fascinating article. The author is in my opinion a bit too optimistic about what the likely implications will be for humanity in case of adoption of the proposed devices. I could imagine telepathic abilities to be used by only a few in the beginning, creating an elite. What he doesn't discuss is how we would interface with such devices. Would there be only one-to-one links or many-to-many? In the latter scenario, I would like to be in the position to reject an incoming message. Maybe the channel would be opened externally through an exterior device I would carry around with me. Intriguind ideas.

Ever wanted to sniff a bit of the future? This article is for sure going to give you the feeling you had been transported into the future.
But now, it is the year 2004 and we are living the future. I let the judgement up to you. I find it fascinating to see that implants have become a reality.
This article led me to search for other implants we can wear these days. I found:

Hearing aid, cochlear implant

Breast implants (of course we are all aware of those)

Retina implants to make the blind see; here's a chart listing suppliers of those

There must be other types of implants available. What I would like to know is if there are some being developed for non-medical application.

Oh wait, googled it. :) How about a tooth implant instead of carrying your cellular around with you? It could connect with an earbud over bluetooth.