Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Technology Science

Where Are The Edges Of Today's Technology World? 509

Posted by timothy from the cold-fusion dept.
Veeru writes "As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago. Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'. The secretive Wright Brothers allowed Amos to publish the article in his own Gleanings Bee magazine instead. Because of his objective account, other experimenters may not have received the credit they deserved. I recently realized that Amos was intent on investigating the highest tech advances of the day and that the airplane was the most advanced phenomenon he could find. If Amos were alive today, what obscure technology would he be pursuing?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Where Are The Edges Of Today's Technology World? More

Where Are The Edges Of Today's Technology World?

Comments Filter:

  • The edge? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xeno_gearz ( 533872 ) * on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:18PM (#7721089) Journal
    While this is an interesting point to ponder, the viewpoint of Bill Joy [wired.com] is a valid counter-argument as well. I realize this has been discussed on Slashdot before but still, do we draw a line as to where the edge of technology is? I suppose we make these choices everyday but are they always the right ones? While I don't immediately subscribe to a theory of a robot takeover [susx.ac.uk], as some fear, I wonder about the possibility of technology reaching points "out of control" of humanity.

    Those points aside, I have been amazed by the research in nanotechnology and find the realm of mapping the human genome to be interesting as well. Perhaps subjects such as these would interest Amos? Perhaps these are not as obscure as other fields but these are certainly interesting studies.

    • Re:The edge? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DAldredge ( 2353 ) <SlashdotEmail@GMail.Com> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:35PM (#7721177) Journal
      I think people like Bill Joy, Ester Dyson and others draw/redraw the line depending on what will most help them sell books/sell talks/stay in the spotlight.

    • Re:The edge? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:07AM (#7722600) Homepage Journal
      I think the really interesting technologies will come from out of nowhere.

      Too many people kept waiting for AI to produce "thinking computers" and they are still waiting.

      Too many people think nano-technology to work wonders and they are still trying to make simple gears do something useful.

      Too many people think that Microsoft invented computing and don't realize that most of what we have today is simply re-hashing of things from the 60's, but in smaller cases.

      Too many people think that Howard Dean invented the Internet (3 years ago they thought it was Al Gore) and don't realize that most of his policies were borrowed from Pat Buchanan.

      We basically suffer from short term memory, short attention span and hero-worship that expects someone to come along and magically fix things without disruption to our lives. Fortunately there are some real thinkers who are not constrained by these stumbling blocks and are off doing real work. I expect them to come up with things that we haven't even considered, and then Microsoft or Howard Dean, or the like will take credit for it (and get away with it for the most part).

      Am I a cynic? Yeah, but only based on past experience.

  • Amos's interests in the 21st centure (Score:5, Funny)

    by atommoore ( 720369 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:21PM (#7721105) Journal
    Well, if your grandfather were still alive today, I imagine he would be most interested medical technology.

    specifically, in the next generation of Viagra, Rogaine, and the technology to keep human heads alive in jars as foretold by Futurama.

  • Time travel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WinterpegCanuck ( 731998 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:26PM (#7721132)
    As far out as it seems, there are real efforts in making a time machine. I forget what university was doing the research, but it involves using lasers crossing each other at 90 degree intersects to create a column or vortex of light. While this cannot let them travel back in time, it is theorized it will let particles travel through the time that the machine is turned on. I apologize for the specifics, but am sure the slashdot effect can find the specifics.

    • Re:Time travel (Score:5, Informative)

      by WinterpegCanuck ( 731998 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:29PM (#7721146)
      A quick google answered my own memory gap. Here [uconn.edu] is a short article on it. Yeah, bad karma for posting without researching better the first time, but I have an exam tomorrow. Back to the books. Cheers.
    • Well, according to Dr. Peter Venkman, crossing the beams would actually undo the very fabric of the world we live in.

    • Re:Time travel (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "but am sure the slashdot effect can find the specifics"

      No, the Slashdot effect is akin to quantum mechanics in that as soon as you try to look at something, it disappears.

      No lasers required...


    • For christ sake "Don't Cross the Streams!"

    • Re:Time travel (Score:4, Insightful)

      by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:32PM (#7721523) Homepage
      Not sure what this would be, sounds rather funky. When you say time travel however be very careful with that label, since to a casual observer it invariably means travel into the past.

      <OT rant>

      The whole idea of taking traveling to the past seriously is pretty annoying. Quite simply, time travel into the past is not possible without abandoning the idea of causality. We (individual human beings) are a product of a society and environment which is also a product of human beings. What we do impacts the world, and the world impacts us. Therefore, any human being sent back in time would be a product of an unaltered environment. He/she would alter the environment in some way (by their physical presence if nothing else, even if there were no human interaction) and impact the world around them. However, the exact world which created the time traveling human no longer exists, so that exact person can no longer exist, either. Paradox, violation of causality. Not allowed.

      To forstall any comments like "I'm not impacted by an air current somewhere in Brazil's forests" consider a scenario like this: the very slight change in air currents eventually leads to a change in a weather pattern in the future, which causes a thunderstorm to develop, which produces a tornado, which runs over your house and uses you for a dartboard. Yes it is fanciful, probability may be 0.000000000000000000001% or less, but it is NOT impossible. And since it is not impossible, and since we assume causality is an absolute, any path which allows the possibility of violation of causality is forbidden. Ergo, no time travel which involves any kind of interaction with the past. Period.

      Of course, this rules out a lot of situations that human beings find entertaining, but suspension of disbelief in movies doesn't ususally cause me problems. If trying to do real research in time travel however, you're gonna have to get around causality. If we throw out causality, the foundations of our understanding of our existance crumble, so the arguements had better be darn good.

      </OT rant>

      • Re:Time travel (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tha_Big_Guy23 ( 603419 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @02:48AM (#7722739)
        Well, according to the theory presented in the parent post about the possibility of travelling to any time in which the maching had actually been turned on, one could in-fact travel farther into the past if there were a naturally occuring event that produces the same results, yet has been around for significantly longer. That being the case, then you could theoretically travel backwards from now using one of those naturally occuring corridors.

        About causality, it's generally thought that no, you can't change your own past. The whole point of H.G. Well's book was that he couldn't change the past, because it was the past that caused him to create the time machine. Now if we throw into the equation the possiblity of a multiverse, then we have a whole new way of looking at the problem. Sure, time travel is possible, but it wouldn't be time travel per-se, it would be multiverse travel. Since the multiverse that you travelled to, never intersects the multiverse you came from, then you wouldn't have any fear of screwing up past events, because anything that you did would only affect the future of that multiverse, and not the multiverse that you originated from. The problem with that is, in order for you to be able to return to your proper time, you would have to locate exactly which multiverse that you came from, and follow the progress of that multiverse foward the amount of time you had been gone.. with billions of possiblities, then you're pretty well screwed because in those billions of possiblities, you will have only actually returned in one.

        Okay, now my head hurts...
      • The whole idea of taking traveling to the past seriously is pretty annoying. Quite simply, time travel into the past is not possible without abandoning the idea of causality.

        This is simply not correct. Time travel does not contradict causality, only some people's concept of "free will".

        To explain: You cannot "change" history, simply because it "is already there". The notion of going back and "overwriting" one history with another a la Back To The Future suffers from the "Second Time Around Fallacy". H

  • Obscure technologies (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .NET

  • Moderation (Score:4, Funny)

    by gantzm ( 212617 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:28PM (#7721141)
    As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago.

    Score:-1 Buffing my own pole.

  • Is obscurity still possible? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kautilya ( 727754 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:29PM (#7721144)
    We are living in an age quite different from 100 years ago. Information travels pretty fast. It is difficult for something that important to remain obscure so long today. Further, people more or less stopped noticing technological advances and taking them for granted. If any individual inventor/scientist gets some success he would want to approach venture capitalists, news papers, journals before he/she turns it into something great and useful. So, in my opinion it is difficult to find something obscure which is great. Yes, it is certainly possible that things people earlier thought wouldn't work becoming something great.

  • Promises... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:30PM (#7721152)
    In the 50s and 60s, we were all under the impression that it'd be flying cars, robots and automated kitchens that cooked for you. Robots would be really smart and virtually be home helps.

    None of this has happened.

    This is one of the reasons I'm skeptical of current nanotechnology and genetic solutions actually being major breakthroughs. It'll be like Moore's Law for technology - things will just progress, rather than achieve sudden overnight success. I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly. Once you've conquered that you can improve on it. Nanotechnology I feel really needs advances in AI and other technology fields which I feel are being neglected - batteries, vision systems, sensors - they all need to improve before nanotechnology takes off big time.

    So maybe it's a disparity thing. Maybe we'll be held back in certain areas because other technologies aren't available yet - like Civilization :o) So maybe, just maybe, we need to revisit some of those older ideas to progress?

    • Re:Promises... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:35PM (#7721176) Homepage Journal
      I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly. Once you've conquered that you can improve on it.

      Maybe that hints that the X prize winner might be where we ought to be looking - theres something that has a nice boolena value: You get into space cheaply in a resusable vehicle, or you don't... and there's plenty of room for improvement once someone wins the X prize challenge: Higher (LEO would be nice), and with more payload.

      Cheap and easy spaceflight could well be the teach that really reshapes the next century.

      Jedidiah.
    • I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly.

      Flying's the easy part. It's the soft landing that's the bitch to get right...

    • I mean flying - it's boolean - you fly or you don't fly.

      I'd argue there's at least one shade of grey - gliding.

    • Re:Promises... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ChrisMaple ( 607946 )
      TV dinners and microwave ovens are pretty close to a kitchen that cooks for me. I suppose I could put a hot food vending machine in my kitchen, but I prefer things the way they are.

    • Re:Promises... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by carambola5 ( 456983 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:26PM (#7721491) Homepage
      current nanotechnology and genetic solutions


      Please, can we stop calling it "nanotechnology" and start calling it what it really is?

      CHEMISTRY!

      I'm not trying to be funny. That new stain-defender stuff in pants? Apparently it's called nanotechnology. No! Chemistry! It's just chemistry! Stop subjecting your minds to buzzwords.

      • Nanotech (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:40PM (#7721563) Journal

        Please, can we stop calling it "nanotechnology" and start calling it what it really is?

        CHEMISTRY!

        I'm not trying to be funny. That new stain-defender stuff in pants? Apparently it's called nanotechnology. No! Chemistry! It's just chemistry! Stop subjecting your minds to buzzwords.

        Brief history:

        • Some people came up with a very interesting idea, and called it "Nanotechnology"
        • The word got very popular, and so people started calling all sorts of other things "Nanotechnology" in the hopes that some of the coolness would rub off.
        • People who knew about the original idea got annoyed by this, and people who didn't know about it fell into two groups: the ones who had no clue said "Gee, buzzwords, swell!"; the more cluefull noticed that the word was being applied to stuff that wasn't all that special and got annoyed without realizing that the orginal idea even existed.
        Nanotech (in the original sense--what is now being refered to as eutachtic chemistry and/or machine phase chemistry) is to clasical chemistry what semiconductor technology is to leyden jar and cat fur electrical science. We aren't there yet (and may never be) but the idea doesn't deserve the glib dismissal it gets from the hipply cynical.

        -- MarkusQ

    • Re:Promises... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mike3411 ( 558976 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @11:12PM (#7721747) Homepage
      This is one of the most ill-thought out and contradictory posts I have read. This guy complains about how some technologies are insufficiently "boolean"; he cites flying cars, robots, automated kitchens, nanotechnology, and "genetic solutions" as examples. Flying, he suggests, is the opposite, in that "you fly or you dont fly". The absurdity here is that by his definition all these other technologies batch this boolean ideal, in that there have been flying cars, there exist robots that clean the house, automated kitchens, nanotechnologies, and certainly genetic research has yielded vast numbers of new knowledge and applicable treatments.

      The idea he fails to grasp is that flight is not really an all-or-nothing technology, at least not in terms of its impact and importance. Would it have been particularly useful if planes remained what they were at their conception? The original flying machine built by the Wrights was celebrated when it flew a distance most of us would walk. For this tech to be really meaningul took many, many years of work and continous research, both directly applied to aviation and general research with no specific applications, such as materials science, mechanical engineering, etc. It is only through a great deal of progress that flight has become as important a technology as it is today.

      Similarly, the technologies the parent poster mentions require extensive work and research to bear fruit. While there are robots that can clean a whole house, they are proof-of-concepts that cost more than my car. Similar to flight, advances need to be made before it has practical applications.

      I find it somewhat humorous that he states "I'm skeptical of current nanotechnology and genetic solutions actually being major breakthroughs" when if you talk to anyone receiving current chemotherapy their lives may have been saved by these breakthroughs for which he has so much skepticism. While I encourage a healthly degree of distrust, this needs to be well directed. The fact is that new technologies and new research needs to continue in every field, and if new knowledge is being obtaining by good scientific methods, and someone is willing to spend their time obtaining it, it is hard to say that that is worthless or should be stymied.

      Nanotech needs AI? WTF?

      I wish all technology followed moore's law ; )

  • The fringes of the neo-techno age (Score:5, Funny)

    by dankdirk77 ( 690855 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:30PM (#7721153)
    I think Billy the Bigmouth talking bass would really blow that dudes mind...

  • The real edge lies elsewhere... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gregwbrooks ( 512319 ) * <gregb@@@west-third...net> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:30PM (#7721156)
    You can explore the edge of technology, but you're chasing a chimera. Things change fast, they're going to change faster and future generations will think of astounding things to do with the technologies we're only now beginning to explore.

    The technologies of the last 200 years have so far outstripped past human progress that the real action in the coming years/decades/centuries will be the philosophical, moral and political assimilation of technology. We've done an increasintly poor job of it as the pace of advancement has quickened; it'll be interesting to see what (if anything) causes a tipping point after which we'll really explore the full impacts of new technologies.

    (Disclaimer: I think Bill Joy is an alarmist.)

    • The technologies of the last 200 years have so far outstripped past human progress that the real action in the coming years/decades/centuries will be the philosophical, moral and political assimilation of technology. We've done an increasintly poor job of it as the pace of advancement has quickened;

      Do you mean to suggest that Reality TV, Hum-vees, DRM, 150 year plus copyrights, mini-nukes, "intellectual property rights", and "Fair and Balanced News" aren't the right philosophical and moral ways to util

  • Sage Words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Caveman Og ( 653107 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:32PM (#7721164) Homepage Journal
    The article ends thus:
    "No drinking man should ever be allowed to undertake to run a flying-machine."
    This may seem obvious to us today, but in 1905, many a carriage would be driven by a drunkard whose horses "knew the way home".

  • Heh... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by herrvinny ( 698679 )
    "As mentioned on Nova, my great-great-grandfather Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago.

    And now you're a techie too, huh? Like father, like son, like grandson... Good for you.

    Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'.

    Too bad. Scientific American would have benefited hugely today if it just had printed the article... Imagine the commercials they could make...

    The secretive W
  • I see articles rejected here all the time, and then several days later they show up. Things have not changed.

    • Re:Funny thing about that rejection (Score:5, Interesting)

      by electrichamster ( 703053 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:49PM (#7721279) Homepage
      Just a thought, but why doesn't slashdot implement a feature that lists all of the rejected submissions on another page.
      Obviously people would submit spam, so the reviewers would also have to have a "spam" (and possibly a "duplicate submission") button as well as a "reject" button.

      It would provide an interesting read for all of the smaller bits of news whizzing around that none of us get to see due to the tight reviewing process.

  • What the future does not hold (Score:3, Insightful)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:37PM (#7721190) Journal
    The future probably does not hold any technology that is perpetually 20 years off. Thus, in the future, we will not have:

    - Practical fusion energy
    - Human-capable artificial intelligence
    - Flying cars
    - Space tourism
    - The end of Moore's Law
    • Ah hem. Space tourism is already here... you know, Dennis Tito?

      Flying cars? Depends what you mean by 'car'- plenty of millionaires run helicopters; as I say depends.

      End of Moore's law? We'll see.

      Practical fusion energy? Good news on that front! After more than 50 years of it being 50 years away, it's now only 30 years away!

      Human capable AI? See Moore's law.

  • Safe Nuclear Batteries (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:38PM (#7721198)
    Strontium Nuclear Batteries are one. Known about and succesfully demonstrated since the early 90s, a single 5gram piece can put out enough SAFE radiation to be turned almost directly into energy, that it can supply 75 watts for months on end. It's not harmful to animals, it's not expensive, it's no more expensive than sterodent.

    It's also a technology that nobody believes has any use because of the words "nuclear" and "radiation"

    It'll come soon enough

    • Rename it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by herrvinny ( 698679 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:41PM (#7721217)
      What about renaming them? MRI (Magnetic Reasonance Imaging) came from NRI (Nuclear RI), renamed because doctors thought patients might not like the word nuclear.
    • 5 grams put out 75 watts? That doesn't sound right.

      Besides, we can't have people throwing radioactive materials in dumpsters now.

    • Re:Safe Nuclear Batteries (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HalfFlat ( 121672 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:31PM (#7721515)
      Is there any more information about this on the web? The only link I could find was on rexresearch [rexresearch.com], which while very interesting, does unfortunately taint it with associations with less plausible technology.

      How much strontium-90 is currently being produced in commerical electricy-generating nuclear reactors? (and how expensive is it to extract?)
      This sort of technology has huge potential, not least of which being that it can be used to extract energy from other alpha- and beta- emitters (ie a fair chunk of nuclear waste.)

      Strontium-90 isn't completely benign (it is a beta source after all, and its one radioactive decay product, Yttrium-90, I think is an even more energetic beta emitter.) It behaves chemically much like calcium, so if it's inhaled or ingested, it can be incorporated into bones, etc.

      On the other hand, I get the impression that it is less dangerous than oven cleaner. You wouldn't eat that either, and like strontium-90, bare skin exposure is ill-advised.

  • They're right there under your table, whenever you open your computer case to install a new card and you cut your finger to the bone with the rough cut inner edges of the PC's case.

    Pentium X, XYZ Ghz, super-huge hard drive, roaringly fast computer, yet still clad in crappy sheet metal from some pervert Taiwanese case manufacturer that seems bent on making products designed to hurt you ...

  • Things to Come.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Braintrust ( 449843 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:40PM (#7721214)
    1. Practical Immortality
    (it's right around the corner, hell, we could do it now if not for those damned ethics... that's a joke, son...)

    2. Sustainable Fusion
    (again, right around the corner. ITER WILL work, and unlimited, non-polluting energy is here... think what that means...)

    3. The Ion Drive
    (already proven, power being ramped up monthly by orders of magnitude, will open up solar system for exploration, mineral harvesting, golden age begun...)

    Dozens more... it's a great, great time to be alive... although many people would have you believe different.

  • Anti Wireless Technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:43PM (#7721230)

    Wireless technologies provide endless ways to invade privacy - RFID, Credit Cards, Cell Phones, EZPass, PDA, GPS, subcutaneous transponders implanted when you walk through a mall entrance, Microsoft License activation, whatever.

    Clearly the most important technology of the future will be the development of personal jammers to silence the RF nattering of the post-PC era world of gizmos carried about one's person, implanted under skin (overtly or surreptitiously) or attached into clothing. Everyone will be looking for RF cones of silence, ways to use a taser like device to EMP a wireless spybot picked up by walking into a movie theatre (or implanted by the Selective Service) or shielded pouches to prevent RF attacks on credit cards or other payment/identification devices.

    If I was looking to report on bleeding edge tech, this is where I would look.

    You think spyware like Gator is bad? You haven't seen nothing yet.

    • Problem is, how do we jam them? I'm not an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but an EMP permanently disables an electronic device. Better watch where you're aiming that thing, so you don't hit a guy with an artificial heart!

      Perhaps flooding the air with bogus data/static would work, but wouldn't that take up quite a bit of energy?
  • Amos Ives Root published the first eye witness account of the Wright Brothers flight almost 100 years ago. Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable'

    I told them to report that I saw a large white commercial supersonic airliner called Concorde only yesterday and they didn't believe me either.
  • Scaled [scaled.com] is doing leading edge - cheap transport to space. While not a clear 'first', they could be pointed to in the future as having been the first to demonstrate cheap space flight.
  • If guys like Robert Bussard can't even get serious air-time [geocities.com] would Langley-equivalents fare much better than the Wright-equivalents today?

  • Where technology appears to be magic. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Sunday December 14, 2003 @09:54PM (#7721304) Homepage Journal
    Just look at any technology that appears to almost be magic. This is where the edge is. Bluetooth and WiFi are up there, guesture-based interaction is close. Imagine being able to unlock the door to your house with a (specific) wave of your hand, all worked out using sensors built into a ring or glove and relayed to the house's security system using an encrypted RF data technology. Personal Area Networking is a group of technologies with a lot of potential. There are many more examples, I'm sure.
  • The possibilities are there to cure or prevent diseases and famines. They're just getting started.

  • Social Engineering (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:01PM (#7721348) Homepage Journal
    Amos would probably be studying the next step in "productivity" which will be the design of entire social systems from religion to the line at the DMV. Like it or not, we are manipulated every day by hucksters, salesmen, advertisers, even charities.

    It's not going to be all that long till governments apply the same principles to "mind persuasion." Yes, the attempts in the past have been laughable, from WWII's Rationing Slogans to the War On Drugs.

    But sooner or later they are going to get it right. Just look at DeBeers, who managed to invent an entire social custom wrapped around crystalized carbon. And clear, colorless crystals at that.

    No imagine that persuasion in the hands of Uncle Sam.

  • Unbelievable article rejected (Score:5, Funny)

    by Afrosheen ( 42464 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:14PM (#7721433)
    Scientific American had rejected his article as 'unbelievable' and 'having no practical application'.

    Hmmm, and you are the great-great-grandson of Mr. Root? I wonder...the reason why all of my good slashdot story submissions get bounced every freakin' time. Maybe CmdrTaco and pals are the great-great-grandsons of those same Scientific American editors!

  • Your gramp was late, Ader was first (Score:5, Informative)

    by SysKoll ( 48967 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:37PM (#7721545)
    Maybe your gramp should have traveled to Europe. There, he would have found that the first powered flight occured in France on October the 12th, 1897 [monash.edu.au]. Clement Ader flew his steam-powered (!) Avion on about 150 ft in front of his military patrons.

    The French army brass, disappointed that they couldn't already have a B-52, cancelled the funding, and a bitter Clement Ader stopped his aeronautical experiments.

    The real innovation introduced by the Wright brothers was an effective way of controlling the plane. The Avion was using a crude wing-warping system that didn't prove efficient. However, the Wright machine was just as unbalanced as Ader's Avion.

    The steam engine was the only available motor at the time of Ader's design, and its shortcoming prevented the Avion from flying for more than a few minutes because of the water and fuel weight.

    However, flight historians should say that the Wright brothers made the first powered, guided flight, wereas Ader made the first powered flight.

  • Imaging immunity and virology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aadkms7016 ( 29860 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @10:38PM (#7721554)
    The coolest seminars I've seen on campus this
    semester have been virologists and immunologists
    making real-time movies of cells under attack
    (virology) and pre-empting attack (immunology).
    To sit there in the audience and watch a movie
    of a flu virus (tagged with a flourescent marker
    to look red) tricking its way into a cell, maneurvering
    to the nucleus, and attacking it, is just stunning.
    And the immunologists have the same sort of
    movies with dendritic cells dancing with antigens.
    Yes, I realize its a long way from having the movie
    to understanding the science behind the movie
    sufficiently to reach the clinic, but that fact
    doesn't make it any less stunning ...

  • Information. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @11:18PM (#7721775)
    I think we are still at the very beginning of the information age... I can't imagine what kind of information storage and retrieval devices we will have in 100 years.

    I'm not talking star-trek here.. let's look at what is technically feasible now, even if it's not economically viable.

    Storing terabytes of information per cubic inch of some material, with picosecond access times.

    Communication - Despite regulatory stifling of the internet.. the concept that if we follow standards, and cooperate, we can leverage all kinds of communication mediums, is here now. Speeds are going up and up.. the "last mile" problem is just momentary.

    So.. as our ability to store and move information goes up and up.. so what?

    We are getting good at digitizing things, too.

    Movies. Audio.
    3d scanners. Motion capture. Auto-generated 3d meshes from image analysis of 2d images...

    Despite no real big noise about it now, there is ongoing progressive work in the field of image recognition.

    Teleconferencing.
    VoIP.
    Wireless... look at what's happenign there. Look how much 802.11b stuff is changing how we think about wireless.. how many mom & pop outfits are providing services over it.. and that's a TINY, TINY slice of spectrum.. what would happen if we REALLY got serious about open wireless communcation?

  • Give me an ethernet jack in the back of my skull (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danlyke ( 149938 ) on Sunday December 14, 2003 @11:19PM (#7721779) Homepage
    I think the next big advances are going to be in biology. No, I don't think we're going to live forever in the near future, there's not enough room for healthcare as a percent of GNP to make that a reality. The two big advances are going to be in:

    1. Biology for manufacturing. Call your "nanotech" what you will, simulating large scale mechanics at a small scale just has too many problems. However, revamp bamboo to grow me a house, or corals to grow me dishes, and we're talking something that's got a market.

    2. Computer interfaces. Right now we've got a few monkeys controlling robotic arms (and world superpowers, but I digress), and there are definitely parallels to be drawn to the world of various gliders and steam powered aircraft that were burgeoning around 1903. Something with huge economic and social potential, that can completely "change the world" in the way aviation promised to, is a moderate bandwidth back that bypasses our current sensory system.
    • What you would end up creating are a set of parallel senses to the natural senses, or at least a great big "digital" sense.

      Remember, sensory processing begins at the nerve endings in the sensory organs. Much of your brain's interpretation of what the eye sees is handled in the first few layers of cells in the retina.

      A second problem is that of resonance. Your brain produces a reference wave and measures sensory input as an interference pattern to that wave. While you could easily exploit that phenominon to transmit data to the brain, it would be nearly impossible to make it believe the information is coming from the sensory organs.

      That is not to say you could not produce very vivid images using this new sense. I recall an experiment where researchers were able to teach a blind man to see using pressure transducers on his back. They had a camera that would translate a signal from a black and white CCD into pressure intensities laid out like a grid. The subject was able to adapt that system into a crude form of vision. There are also reports of deaf people who "hear" by feeling the vibrations of speakers, at least enough to enjoy music.

      This sense would have to be developed in people. But I could see it as a powerful tool. It would be cool if my car could translate data from proximity radar system into my brain. Instead of relying on mirrors I could "feel" the road around me. Know where the curb is. Sense that Kia in my blindspot. Vibe that cop over the next hill with the radar set.

      Would it be sense like we know them? No. Instead it would be sensations the likes of which we had never known before.

  • Taonology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EvilTwinSkippy ( 112490 ) <yoda AT etoyoc DOT com> on Sunday December 14, 2003 @11:30PM (#7721845) Homepage Journal
    We are about at the end of what the pure, objective, scientific method can tell us about ourselves. To delve any deeper into Sociology or Psychology forces us as the observer to interact with the system. It's not just "brain" studies. Physics has the same problem too. To study an atom requires bouncing a magentic field, a light beam, an electron, basically something that alters its behavior.

    Whatever methodolgies we develop for dealing with this problem is going to be the successor to the scientific method. It will also put to bed a lot of the crackpot UFO and ESP crap.

    Well, at least the parts that don't pan out under scrutiny.

  • Psychological Camoflage and Anti-camoflage? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Artifakt ( 700173 ) on Monday December 15, 2003 @12:34AM (#7722194)
    Given things we are just learning, from a number of fields that appear initially very far apart, I think we might be able to do some very subtle things to keep people from interpreting what they see in an undesired way, or steer them towards a desired interpretation.

    I can imagine this working in a lot of ways, some good, some not so good:
    You come to an intersection in a hallway. Even though there are no signs, you are normally not a person with a good bump of direction and you are deep inside a very large building, you immediately get a feeling that left leads towards the shortest route to an emergency exit. Each time you come to another junction, this feeling adjusts to the new location.
    You are outside a building. There is an unlocked door there, but unless you are supposed to go inside the building, it looks so uninteresting that you ignore it. If you were actually planning to rob the building, the door looks extremely dangerous in some ill defined way.
    A highway crew re-grades a stretch of interstate, and installs some new reflective edging and lane markers. Traffic flow rate increases by 50% and traffic jams during rush hour are greatly reduced. Accident rates drop. Close observation reveals that people planning to use the exits or business bypass-loop are getting over into the best lanes much sooner than before, and are somehow more prone to pick good times to pass or make lane changes.

    Obviously, if this is doable, it could also be abused:

    "Our country allows free emmigration. These people could leave if they wished. Unless you think they can't see the crossing gate at the border."

    "It's funny, but until I made up my mind to vote for Geefler, I hadn't even noticed those new "polling place here ->" signs. They really stand out, don't they."

    While all this may sound far fetched, there are already some modest examples. Disney has built a "Tiger Hunt in India" themed ride in one of its parks, and uses decorative pictograms on a mock up crumbling ancient temple to tell a story of a race who angered the generic Disney "mother earth goddess" by ecological shortsightedness. They are punished by natural disasters, and then clean up their acts and the disasters stop happening. While most visitors don't have nearly enough time to puzzle out all the pictograms consiously, supposedly this ride has the lowest littering rate of any ride in the park.
    I can see how this might become a much more robust and reliable technology, but given some of the examples, I'm not at all sure I want it to. A lot of it sounds like extensions of what some advertisers are using to overcome resistance to ads, and some of it sounds Orwellian, but either way, it may be possible to go a lot further towards mind control than most expect.

  • Clarke's Law (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sydbarrett74 ( 74307 ) <<sydbarrett74> <at> <gmail.com>> on Monday December 15, 2003 @01:27PM (#7725929)
    Arthur C. Clarke posited a statement that has come to be known as Clarke's Law: 'We tend to OVERestimate short-term changes and UNDERestimate long-term changes.' If you look at sci-fi from the 1950's, you see starships that travel faster than light, but all of the astrogation and calculation of co-ordinates being done by teams of humans. They simply didn't foresee 50 years ago that computing power would become too cheap to measure. My Sprint PDA phone has an embedded processor with more computing power than a 50's-era mainframe. This would be simply unfathomable to someone from back then. The problem with foreseeing the future is that most people simply extrapolate from the present, and are unable to anticipate second-, third-, and nth-order effects. That's not how the real world works.

Slashdot Top Deals

2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League

Close