I was thinking about the future of display technology. I imagine that it will become cheap enough, at some point, that we will cover our walls, ceilings, and tables with displays (possibly 3D displays). One consequence of this would be that we’d have practically zero possessions. Most of what we have — decorative items, books, [...]
Categories: future
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Is there a future in hydrogen powered vehicles? Toyota announced a new car with a 516 mile range [guardian.co.uk]. It uses a single tank of fuel stored at -22 degrees Fahrenheit. But is this practical or dangerous? Would Americans ever be willing to drive one of these vehichles? Maybe not, but hydrogen power is already [...]
Categories: future
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I’m generally optimistic that cancer will be eradicated in a decade or so — based on the frequency with which interesting potential cures are reported. Just today there were rather two (possibly synergistic) ideas that surfaced in my news reading. The first is a method of delivering cancer-killing drugs selectively, and deep inside the tumors. [...]
Categories: future
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I have been thinking about the struggle to build large computing systems. The major challenges of the current age of computing are power, cooling and scalability. The machine room and energy costs are dwarfing everything else. This concern has even spawned the creation of a new ranking of supercomputers, the Green 500, which ranks machines [...]
Categories: Programming, future
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We are heading for a brave new tech world. Most of these predictions are things that could probably happen in ten years, but I’m giving them a little extra room to be on the safe side. Some of these predictions are rather scary when taken in combination — some are even scary by themselves. It [...]
Categories: future, thursday thirteen
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Stanford’s entry into the Darpa Urban Challenge is a car named “Junior”. It is capable of reading road signs, reflective markers on the road, and avoiding other cars. This suggests to me that we are on-track for self-driving cars in 10 years. Let me elaborate on a point I made in a previous post: A [...]
It occurred to me that something like the “Universal Translator” of Star Trek could be constructed without very advanced technology. I call my more primitive device a “Drongo.” If you have two technologically advanced races, and they meet, there is a need to construct a basic vocabulary quickly. One can sit in a room, point [...]
Categories: Programming, future, science fiction
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The Singularity institute has a post describing what it calls the upcoming “inteligence explosion.” The concept is that once we learn to start modifying the brain to make ourselves smarter we get a positive feedback loop — more intelligence gives us the ability to construct a better human/brain interface, which makes us smarter, which makes [...]
There are so many promising alternative energy sources just around the corner, I thought I’d start maintaing a page for them, and update it as I come across links of interest. Bio-Fuel LS9: Using microbes to generate hydrocarbons Plastic that grows on trees Seashore Mallow as biodiesel source Hydrogen Efficient method for Water + Sun [...]
Categories: future
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This may not be a new observation, but a large set of science fiction problems must solve a set of common problems in order to proceed: Getting around: This may involve faster than light drive, or some alternative. In the Firefly universe there was a single system with “dozens of planets, hundreds of moons” — [...]
Categories: future
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