Saw this photo on Facebook.
Thought this was just too excellent.
Yes, a new hybrid car.
– The chassis goes one way.
– The passenger compartment goes the other way.
Was the engineer on hallucinogenics?
Or perhaps, this is some super secret new technology for easy parallel parking.
Think about it, if the car is driverless than what difference does it make anyway? 😉
(Source Photo: Facebook)
Wow, I love this retro digital Computron watch from Bulova.
I remember when the first digital LED watches with the red numbers like this first came out in the 1970s.
They were quite expensive then!
Part of the computer revolution. LOL
I remember my uncle had something like this and I thought how cool it was–no moving hands to read.
Also, has a little of that sci-fi Battlestar Galactica red (moving) light effect from the cybernetic enemy, Cylon visors.
What’s old is what’s new. 😉
I am seeing this all the time now…
Parents of little children, or even older children, who are too busy working to pay much, if any, attention to their families.
Call it a disease of the industrial revolution + information technology.
Whether people worked on the assembly line making widgets or nowadays on the computer and smartphone answering their bosses and colleagues compulsively–it’s become a global obsession.
On one hand, with the impending robot and AI revolution taking over jobs, people need to be grateful to even have a job to earn a living for the families.
On the other hand, with the connections to each other and our work 24/7, the depression-era saying of:
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Has morphed into:
Brother, can you spare some time?
Yes, we all need to be responsible adults, earn a decent living and pay our bills.
But in the end, it’s not money or things that we give to our families that is the most important.
I would argue money and things are the least important, and what is truly most precious is the love, time, and attention you give to yours.
As the old saying goes:
Money can’t buy love.
But time and attention given to your loved ones can build meaningful relationships that last a lifetime and beyond.
Yes, of course, people need to work to earn a living and productively contribute something to society, but it is also true that work is used as an excuse to run away from parental and familial responsibilities.
It’s easier to give an Amazon gift certificate or a Gameboy then to actually spend the afternoon with the kids.
These days, people say ridiculous things like:
I love going into the office to get away from home.
But you can’t run away from your problems at home–you need to work on them and solve them.
The diabolical murderous Nazis used work as a tool to enslave, torture, and exterminate their victims as the sign over the gate of the Auschwitz (and many other) concentration camps read:
Arbeit Macht Frei (or Work Sets You Free)
But as we all know inside, true freedom is being able to give generously from your time and effort to your loved ones, and slavery is not being able to let go of your work.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We’re so close yet so far…that’s my feeling as I grow ever impatient with the pace of technological progress.
We have cloud computing, but still everyone has their own private computing setups everywhere.
We have mobile computing, but still can’t get get reliable service in the Metro and all the other “dead zones.”
We have social computing, but still people are so cliquey and nasty and troll and bully each other online and off.
We have the Internet of Things, but still things don’t really talk to each other regularly (except our smart meters).
We have robots, but still they’re relegated to factory assembly lines.
We have natural language processing, but still can’t get a meaningful conversation going with Siri.
We have 3-D printing, but still can’t get dinner or a pair of Nikes to appear from the Star Trek like “Replicator.”
We have augmented and virtual reality headsets, but still can’t go anywhere with them without getting motion sickness.
We have biometrics, but still have to sign the check.
We have driverless cars, but still there is a driver inside.
We have networks of information, but still it’s subject to hacking, malware, identity and data theft, and even big time EMP knockouts.
We have immunotherapy, but still haven’t beaten cancer.
We have nanotechnology, but still we travel through life loaded down with material possessions.
We have food and biotechnology, but still one in eight people are going hungry.
We have space shuttles and stations, but still can’t get a colony going on Mars.
We have big data, but still information is corrupted by personal biases and politics.
We have knowledge management, but still more than 780 million adults are illiterate.
We have artificial intelligence, but still it’s devoid of emotional intelligence.
We have bigger, deadlier, and more sophisticated weapons systems and smart bombs to “protect us”, but still are no closer to living in peace and brotherhood.
All this technology and advancement is great, except that we’re left hungrier than ever for the realization of the promised technology land, and are really only halfway there, maybe. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
What beauties these purple flowers are?
Tall on the thin green stem.
And then ballooning and budding out into these futuristic spherical lattice-shaped flowers.
Almost like soft clouds that we can reach out and touch (and touch too hard, and the flowers just fall off into the breeze).
But think again with technical imagery and these can be an advanced interconnected living neural network that with “big data” can solve all our information and artificial intelligence needs.
Each flower computing, sensing, processing, analyzing, and problem-solving.
A swarm of living and dying nodes and sprouting forth again with a natural processing function.
A gorgeous flower, but you can imagine it as so much more. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So here’s the monitor in the “modern” and beautiful Fort Lauderdale International airport.
Can you see the number of electrical plugs, wires, connections, input/output ports, etc. on this device?
Obviously, it is comical and a farce as we near the end of 2015.
Think about the complexity in building this monitor…in connecting it…in keeping it operational.
Yes, we are moving more and more to cellular and wireless communications, to miniaturization, to simple and intuitive user interfaces, to paperless processing, to voice recognition, to natural language processing, and to artificial intelligence.
But we are not there yet.
And we need to continue to make major strides to simplify the complexity of today’s technology.
– Every technology device should be fully useful and usable by every user on first contact.
– Every device should learn upon interacting with us and get better and better with time.
– Every device should have basic diagnostic and self-healing capability.
Any instructions that are necessary should be provided by the device itself–such as the device telling you step by step what to do to accomplish the task at hand–no manual, no Google instructions, no Siri questions…just you and the device interacting as one.
User friendly isn’t enough anymore…it should be completely user-centric, period.
Someday…in 2016 or beyond, we will get there, please G-d. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
While da Vinci is fully controlled by the surgeon, this Drone from Drexel University that can turn valves, or door knobs and other controls, is on the road to doing this autonomously.
Think of robots that can manipulate the environment around them not on a stationary assembly line or doing repetitive tasks, but actually interacting real-time to open/close, turn things on/off, adjust control settings, pick things up/move them, eventually even sit at a computer or with other people–like you or I–and interface with them.
Drones and robots will be doing a lot more than surveillance and assembly line work–with artifical intelligence and machine learning, they will be doing what we do–or close enough. 😉
andyblumenthal 