What a great day October 4, 2006
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so farEver since I moved into my apartment there’s been an enormous spider behind my stove. I was never really sure what to do with it. It almost never moves and it’s always in the same place. I figured as long as it wasn’t bothering me, I wouldn’t bother it. So I left it alone.
Today I came home and discovered that it had caught some huge, freaky bug with fifty creepy-crawly little legs. Whatever it was, it was way more disgusting that the spider. I’m happy with my decision.
Your thoughts?Back to basics October 1, 2006
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so farDeparting from my current routine of patronizing girl-friendly venues, I decided to return to my roots this morning to attend the sausagefest that is Wired magazine’s Nextfest. If the point of the expo was to portray the world of the future, it fell a little short. But if the point of the expo was to say, “Look at the cool, impractical stuff we can do with technology!” it did a pretty damn good job.
I particularly enjoyed the video game that digitized me and let me punch George Bush in the face.
The most disconcerting part of the expo were the humainoid robots. Although they weren’t intelligent and their movements were prerecorded, they were incredibly lifelike. There was one whose face was running through the gauntlet of human emotions, and another who was standing and moving around. They were real enough that they could have passed me on the street and I wouldn’t have picked them out. Watching them, all I could think about was the fact that if you peeled back their synthetic skin, you’d expose hundreds of metal actuators. The thought is unsettling. If the line between human and machine is blurring now, what is going to happen fifty years from now?
Your thoughts?