The New Apple Watch Flirts With Bio-Computing

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

Apple Watch header

The Apple live event is over and their iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch have been revealed. Many blogs and news pages will be covering the phones and watch, top to bottom, in which case a need for us to do so similarly would appear pointless. Instead, as a futurist magazine, I feel it’s more prudent to instead look at its future applications. And what better way of doing so than by looking at their new sleek looking wearable – the Apple Watch!

“Apple Watch is the most personal device Apple has ever created.” – Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc.

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The Robot Cleaner War Has Begun!

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

robot-cleaner-war

We’ve all come to know and enjoy Roomba by advanced technology company iRobot Corporation. With thousands of reviews online, both positive and negative, including those cute Youtube videos of our feline friends hopping a ride on top of one – iRobot’s Roomba has changed forever the way we clean our homes. Now comes the competition!

Say hello to our new cleaner ‘bot overlord – the Dyson 360 Eye!

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H+ Poetry: Real Girl

real girl img

Dark night in a futurescape,
Only one room, no lights, with no escape.
The sound of ambience could be heard over
     the sound of the ambulance.
Real girl, you have me in your trance.
Tell me, is this fate?
I see the dim red light shining through your corset,
Recording in your forehead, the two of us on floor beds.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing,”
     I said in whispers as you’re whirring.
“But does it matter who I’m wearing,”
     she replied, glowing all red.
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Telepathy is Now a Thing Thanks to Technology

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

Telepathy 3

Guess what, folks? Telepathy is now a thing! No, we didn’t discover the supposed “secret worlds” of telepaths; rather researchers at Harvard University and their colleagues in Spain and France have demonstrated the first ever – and, might I add, non-invasive – brain-to-brain communication between humans. This experiment was helped funded by the European Commission under their HIVE project (Hyper Interactivity Viability Experiments).

Four human subjects took part in the experiment. One was assigned to the brain-computer interface (BCI), where the messages would originate, and the other three were assigned to the computer-brain interface (CBI), in which they’d receive the messages being transmitted to them. From India to France, nearly 5,000 miles apart, the binary translations of “hola” and “ciao” were mentally transferred with great success.

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Biohack Experiment: The Neil Harbisson Effect (Hearing, Rather Than Seeing, Colors)

Sound-of-Colors-edit

Earlier today, on September 4, 2014, I decided to conduct a science experiment using items no more than $300. The experiment was done to replace the ability to see colors for the ability to hear colors. And yes, if you’re as deep into the worlds of science and technology as much as I am, then you’d know this was already achieved by UK cyborg citizen Neil Harbisson. 

Who is Neil Harbisson? Harbisson is, first and foremost, the first officially recognized cyborg in the world. Unfortunately, he was born with complete achromatopsia, which prevents him from seeing any colors other than those within the grayscale (shades of gray, with black and white). To help him transcend his condition, he engineered a cyborg antenna, known as the “Eyeborg,” and was able to convince an anonymous surgeon to surgically attach the antenna to the back of his head. 

As a result, this antenna helps translate color frequencies, which are nothing more than the frequencies of electromagnetic waves, into sound frequencies. These sound frequencies can then be heard via bone conduction – the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the skull. Where most people see the difference in colors, Harbisson instead hears the difference. Which is why I’ve labeled this experiment of mine as the “Neil Harbisson Effect.” 

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Try On Wedding Dresses With New Augmented Reality App

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

App weddingreality-icon 2

Despite the happiness and fun planning for your own wedding can be, sometimes it can be a real hassle. One of the biggest hassles being trying to find the right suit and dress to wear for your big day. It’s a monotonous task, which normally takes up a lot of time. What if you didn’t have to do this anymore, and instead relied on augmented reality to find the right dress for you from the convenience of your own home?

Thanks to newcomer app developer Wedding Reality, Inc., a new augmented reality app is now available which does just that. Say hello to the Wedding Dress Studio!

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Richard Feynman’s Lectures…Now Online…For Free!

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

Richard Feynman feature

Great news, my fellow nerds: Richard Feynman’s infamous lectures on physics is now available online, for FREE! Richard Feynman is probably one of the greatest minds of the 20th century since Einstein. And now that his entire lecture notes are available online for your satisfaction to read, perhaps a little bit of Feynman will be unleashed in all of us.

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Doctor Who Philosophy: “Life prevails over Death; Resistance is Futile”

Doctor Who into the dalek

Journey Blue (rebel fighter): “Why should we trust a Dalek? Why would it change?”

The Doctor (Time Lord): “Good question. Rusty, what changed you?”

Rusty (Dalek): “I saw beauty.”

Doctor: “You saw what?”

Rusty: “The silence and the code. I saw worlds burning.”

Blue: “That’s not beauty; that’s destruction.”

Rusty: “I saw more.”

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Wealth for a Struggling Planet: The Sky is Not the Limit!

My following article below was originally published by SERIOUS WONDER:

Wealth in spacefaring

Yesterday, soon after publishing the article “NASA Aims for Mars with World’s Most Powerful Rocket,” I noticed a small, but noticeably frequent, reaction that went as followed: Why are we spending so much money to go to space, let alone other planets, when Earth still has its own problems needing to be dealt with first? This is a common view held by many people, to which I don’t blame them for having.

Yes, there are still many problems here on Earth that, quite frankly, we’re not spending a lot of time, effort, or capital to help address. But then is State funding of NASA’s budget really to blame, or even adding damage to an already beaten up planet? Astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson would beg to differ:

“The NASA budget is four-tenths of one penny on a tax dollar. If I held up the tax dollar, and I cut horizontally into it, four-tenths of one percent on a tax dollar does not even get you into the ink! So I will not accept a statement that says, ‘We can’t afford it!’” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Donate to Anti-Aging Research (+more) By Using Amazon Smile!

Smile Amazon Sens

The ALS #IceBucketChallenge was a great event which brought in a million new donors and millions of dollars in donations for ALS research. But what about the other diseases out there, and other charities needing your help? What if you could donate to them every time you shopped online?

Thanks to Amazon, this is now possible. Their relatively new service program Amazon Smile allows people to choose a charity they’d like to donate to and then have a percentage of each purchase you make on Amazon donated to said charity. It doesn’t charge you extra, it simply reserves 0.5% of each purchase for the charity of your choosing. Granted, it’s not a lot, but for someone like me who uses Amazon a lot for most of my shopping, I’m just glad that part of that money is going somewhere important.

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