In the latest edition of TIME, the venerable publication features “10 Questions for Ray Kurzweil,” in which they ask him about how technology will change the way we live, including the role of artificial intelligence, food production, longevity, and even whether we’ll discover extraterrestrial intelligence. A sample: You predict we’ll reach a point with artificial [...]
Posts under ‘Computers’
Hacked Kinect delivers on “Minority Report” style computer interfaces
In the movie Minority Report, precrime chief John Anderton is able to interact with a holographic display using a series of gestures, as seen here: When Microsoft recently released its Xbox 360 peripheral, called Kinect, they intended it to be primarily used for gaming. However, a number of enterprising hardware hackers have re-purposed Kinect for a [...]
“What if the doctor was your cell phone?”
Many people around the world (and in the United States) do not have reliable access to medical care. This may be due to geographical factors, financial factors, cultural factors, or a combination thereof. However, mobile phone adoption continues to grow rapidly in both developed and underdeveloped countries. With fast rates of adoption and increasing levels [...]
MIT develops software to decipher ancient text
Archaeologists have uncovered many examples of ancient written languages yet to be deciphered. In most cases, the trick to deciphering extinct writing systems is to trace the evolution of that system backward – for instance, the Cyrillic alphabet evolved from the Greek alphabet, itself an evolution of the Phoenician alphabet. In order to assist with [...]
Toshiba chooses Kurzweil’s Blio for its e-book store
Of all the technologies that enable us to read books on electronic devices – including Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks – I’ve been most impressed with Blio, the e-reader software developed by noted singularitarian Ray Kurzweil. Word comes in from Engadget that Toshiba will be using Blio to power its forthcoming e-book store, which will [...]