Adventures in Convergence XVI: Eye Have a Funny Feeling About This One…

Normally I’d have a snarky picture ironically illustrating today’s feature, but this one is crazy enough. 

Engineers at the University of Washington have come up with what essentially is a contact lens mounted display. The lens, imprinted with an electronic circuit and lights, could in the future be used to mount any display you’d expect to see in the real world on the eye. The circuit could pack a punch – receiving information wirelessly, and power via solar cell and/or radio-frequency. Currently a prototype they may have one capable of displaying a couple of pixels soon. Right now they’re just making sure rabbits aren’t completely freaked out by them.

Potential uses: enhancing the video game experience; displaying vehicle speed and GPS info; watching youtube in church.

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Adventures in Convergence XV: Just When You Thought Your Home Theater Was Safe…

…Japanese scientists come around to tell you your HDTV isn’t big enough.

The Japanese government has been funding research into new 33 megapixel, or “Super Fun Joy Vision,” TVs. See left for a comparison of how this future screen stacks up with your puny monitor.

No matter that they haven’t developed a camera to capture such high-res, nor a device to decode a 24Gbps stream. The Japanese are pouring their millions of yuan into this project to see if they can make something viable by 2015 (or about when Marty MacFly will be coming back to the future with Doc Brown to save his future son).

What? You think a screen capable of airing 7680 x 4320 moving images is beyond superfluous? What kind of anti-capitalist neo-Luddite are you? Why don’t you go join an Amish cult? (Of course I’m still watching TV on a 1986 Magnavox and sending my blogs via carrier pigeon.)

Skeptics can take a look at this research to get an idea of how far they’d have to be from such a huge TV for it to be worthwhile. So start booking seats to watch Superbowl XLIX from the other side of the Grand Canyon! Add infinite contrast ratio to that TV and the Bills might as well be right in front of you!

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Adventures in Convergence XIV: Predorktions for 2008

Home for the holidays where the pace is slow and the internet is slower.

And speaking of slow internet, tech dorks are forecasting a gridlock in internet traffic in 2008. As Web 2.0 evolves more internet dependent gadgets and applications are popping up. While casual web surfing may slow down, P2P will also grow and networks will become more packed than Beijing on Chinese New Year.

Of course, forecasters have been predicting every year that progress would be killed by infrastructure limitations, and the truth is that the limitations are merely inhibiting. If the cable companies or Congress don’t do something, Google inevitably will. And is.

Anyway, the Dear Sirs at Economist are much more eloquent on this matter than I. Personally, I need to predict that I can make this website finally look pretty in 2008.

Surprise Prediction of the Year from Accenture: Innovation will drive growth! Could be the panacea we’re looking for. Way to go geniuses.

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Adventures in Convergence XIII: All Your Votes Are Belong To Us

Mark Penn may have identified “soccer moms,” “nascar dads,” “caffeine crazies,” and over 70 other groups of potential voters, but I guarantee robots were not even for consideration on his list.

NBC has this footage of a robot-like something or other protesting an appearance by former President Bill Clinton for comments he made in 1992 about rapper Sister Souljah. Could robots be the next big vote?

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Adventures in Convergence XII: Sonic the…Mind Reader?

It’s rare that I have two Convergence reports in one day. Wired reports that Sega is teaming up with a company called Neurosky to create and market a line of toys relying on “wearable bio-sensor and signal processing systems” to create a brain interfaced gamer experience.

Yes, the makers of that sad Mario knock off “Sonic the Hedgehog” are not dead. They’ve just been patiently lying dormant until the right technology came along that would allow them to harness the brain power of children to blow up tanks and make avatars dance on screen. Great, just as DDR and the Wii started getting gamers to begin moving Sega rises from the grave to take out all external movement altogether. Well, you can’t have it all.

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Adventures in Convergence XI: How We Power Ourselves

Toshiba’s new battery has a lifespan of ten years or 5000+ charges. But more importantly, it charges up to 90% capacity in under 5 minutes. Which is great for car batteries, laptops, and cell phones. But it will ultimately prove useful when our metabolism and appetites are replaced by an androidic energy management system.

More info on that soon..

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Adventures in Convergence X: New Report Reveals Human Brain Has a "Jennifer Aniston" Neuron

Brain researchers at the University of Leicester (pronounced “Lester” ’cause they’re British) have uncovered a way to identify almost exactly what a person is looking at or thinking about based on how their neurons fire.

Dr. Quian Quiroga used photos to prompt brain activity in test subjects implanted with intracranial electrodes. “In these experiments we presented a large database of pictures, and discovered that we can predict what picture the subject is seeing far above chance. For example, if the ‘Jennifer Aniston neuron’ increases its firing then we can predict that the subject is seeing Jennifer Aniston.”

“So, in simple words, we can read the human thought from the neuronal activity.”

Dr Quiroga and his team of altruistic researchers envision a world where this discovery could be used to help paralyzed patients – for instance, thinking about a cup of tea could prompt a bionic limb to reach for the item for you. Literal Dr. X-style brain power.

Alternately, it could help marketers know every time you are thinking about Jennifer Aniston.

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Adventures in Convergence IX: You Read My Mind

Things have been busy for the last couple of weeks, but I had to come out of my self-imposed silence for this one.

According to the BBC neuroscientists have developed a software which, when combined with neural electrodes, can literally let your brain do the talking.

After a car crash that locked Eric Ramsey in a conscious but paralyzed state eight years ago, scientists began researching his brain. They started looking at the areas of his brain involved in speech and attempting to interpret the impulses into literal words. They think they’ve found the formula, and for the next few weeks they’re going to try to coax his brain into having conversations, which would be a huge leap forward in our understanding of how the brain functions.

This is still a ways from literally reading minds. It’s similar to Christopher Reeves’ using his muscles to create speech – only in this case, the brain is the muscle. That means Eric will be in control of what words he shares with the community and what he keeps to himself (though he still had better not let his internal monologue get too vivid).

It is also unidirectional. That is, the words can come out, but he still has to use his ears and eyes to understand other people’s words. Keep checking back though – eventually they have to come up with the technology to replace this human shell entirely.

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Adventures in Convergence VI.1: More of the Mice

So I wrote this blog on Saturday about human-computer interfacing, and how mice might be going out of style, and I asked if there were any other interfaces that folks might see on the horizon. Sure enough, I got an email about a new 3D mouse actually exists and is being heavily pushed, especially in the gaming world. While the demo makes it look more useful for 3D gamers, obviously there are options that go beyond those obsessed with Halo. Design applications and mapping apps like Google Maps are a couple. But imagining a web browser or desktop that uses a third-dimension leads to some interesting possibilities. As crappy as it supposedly is, Windows Vista’s new Flip3D is one place where the dimension of depth is already coming into play.

While I’m talking about 3D mice, I should mention that I completely neglected the ring mouse. It appears to be a predecessor to the “Minority Report” interface. Extremely primitive it may be. It is a single click device, bulky, and dependent on ultrasonic waves. But apparently it works flawlessly, and it only took 21 weeks and $700 to make the prototype.

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Adventures in Convergence VII: Think Your Blues Away

In the spirit of “Eternal Sunshine” Christopher deCharms runs Omneuro, a California startup practice that uses brain scanning to help patients deal with chronic pain, as well as psychological conditions like addiction and depression. And much like the fictional Lacuna, Inc. it uses brain imaging to identify the location of activity when the pain is being experienced; the patient is guided to channel his or her mental energy to dissipate the activity in that region. It’s no surprise that other startups are entering the scene using brain imaging for other purposes, for example, to identify when someone may be lying, or how a consumer responds to a marketing message. What excites the owners of these companies (besides the profit potential) is how the technology will empower people to have a better relationship with their own brains and thoughts. But if we learn to truly lasso the lightning rod will we actually want the control?

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