Archive for the ‘media & arts’ category: Page 88
Mar 23, 2018
The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: business, entertainment, media & arts, space travel
Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.
One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.
After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.
Continue reading “The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market” »
Mar 20, 2018
A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place
Posted by Derick Lee in category: media & arts
Why should you care about the well-being of people half a globe away?
Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz
Continue reading “A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place” »
Mar 1, 2018
Google’s new Song Maker tool lets you create original music right in your browser
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: media & arts
Google believes you don’t have to be a virtuoso to make decent music as evident by their Chrome Music Lab initiative. If you’re not aware, Chrome Music Lab is, in Google’s own words, “a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments.”
The latest of these experiments is Google’s “Song Maker” tool which, as the name suggests, allows you to create your own unique melodies quickly and easily from within your mobile or desktop browser. To use Song Maker, simply visit the official experiment page and begin “painting” notes on the large grid provided by Google.
What are the principles behind Homeopathy and does it work?
Kurzgesagt Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cRUQxz
Feb 21, 2018
DNA data storage system is on the rise — find out how to store yours
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, media & arts
Scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft are improving their system for preserving digital data in strands of synthetic DNA — and they’re giving you the chance to participate.
The UW-Microsoft team laid out the method in a research paper published this week in Nature Biotechnology.
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Feb 15, 2018
Transcending Politics Preview
Posted by Mark Larkento in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI
“There’s no escape: the journey to a healthier society inevitably involves politics.”
Starting with these words, David Wood, Executive Director of Transpolitica and Chair of London Futurists, introduces his book “Transcending Politics: A Technoprogressive Roadmap to a Comprehensively Better Future”.
Feb 11, 2018
It’s transhuman life, but not as we know it
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: cyborgs, life extension, media & arts, neuroscience, transhumanism
#Transhumanism in the Sunday Times of London. 750,000 copies out today. My pres campaign in it briefly, as well as other transhumanists.
The new Netflix series Altered Carbon is set in a dystopian future where the super-rich can avail of technology that allows them to upload their consciousness to a new body every time they die, in effect giving them immortality.
It’s science fiction, of the kind previously explored in the novels of Philip K Dick and William Gibson, movies such as RoboCop and The Terminator, manga comics like Ghost in the Shell and even the Man-Machine album by German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk — but only until it comes to pass.
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Feb 10, 2018
Cleo Robotics Demonstrates Uniquely Clever Ducted Fan Drone
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: drones, media & arts, robotics/AI
A personal drone that i could eventually see as something that will follow you around all day and be rigged up as an AI assistant. Have it equipped with solar power skin so it could operate indefinitely. The video has the music cranked so it is probably super loud. Drones need to solve noise and power issues before this becomes practical, no one will want something as loud as a vacuum cleaner buzzing around their head.
This donut-shaped drone, not technically known as a dronut, offers a tasty combination of safety and ease of use.
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Feb 8, 2018
New ‘4D goggles’ allow wearers to be ’touched‘
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in categories: entertainment, media & arts, neuroscience, space travel, virtual reality
A team of researchers at UC San Diego and San Diego State University has developed a pair of “4D goggles” that allows wearers to be physically “touched” by a movie when they see a looming object on the screen, such as an approaching spacecraft.
The device was developed based on a study conducted by the neuroscientists to map brain areas that integrate the sight and touch of a looming object and aid in their understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of multisensory integration.
But for the rest of us, the researchers said, it has a more practical purpose: The device can be synchronized with entertainment content, such as movies, music, games and virtual reality, to deliver immersive multisensory effects near the face and enhance the sense of presence.
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