Lifeboat Foundation

A write-up from Popular Science on the bioethics conference I was a part of recently and the corresponding 2-min highlight video. It was truly a fascinating event, inspired by Deus Ex! http://www.popsci.com/augmented-reality-or-augmented-humanity And here’s the video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4p7uld_human-by-design-conference-recap_tech

With the release of the new video game, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Human By Design holds a conference to discuss the future of human augmentation.

Engenheiros da Universidade de Washington introduziram uma nova forma de comunicação que permite que dispositivos como implantes cerebrais, lentes de contato, cartões de crédito e pequenos eletrônicos vestíveis falar com aparelhos de uso diário, como smartphones e relógios.

Este novo” Comunicação interscatter” funciona convertendo sinais Bluetooth em transmissões Wi-Fi através do ar. Usando apenas reflexões, um dispositivo interscatter como uma inteligente de lentes de contato converte sinais Bluetooth a partir de um SmartWatch, por exemplo, em transmissões Wi-Fi que podem ser apanhados por um smartphone.

“Waves of virtual reality and augmented reality startups have their funding. Venture capitalists invested $1.7 billion in the AR/VR sector in the 12 months ended March 2016, and $1.2 billion of that was invested in the first quarter of this year alone, according to Digi-Capital.”

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“You can take any anatomical part and show any of it. You can move it around you can make it kind of translucent so you can see through the outside”

VR again helping people and their fears.

Actual crowds may be replaced by what we might call distributed crowds, with virtual and augmented reality’s help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjoe3LrkiIk

Microsoft’s amazing HoloLens is the world’s first stand-alone headset that lets users see virtual objects and environments as if they existed in the real world. This device’s entertainment potential is practically unlimited, but as a Hackathon team recently demonstrated, it can also be used to rewire a malfunctioning brain.

A Microsoft employee suffering from myoclonus-dystonia —a condition where the misfiring of the brain causes uncontrollable muscle spasms—discovered that she could regain control during a spasm by looking at her partner’s feet rather than her own. And that’s how she got her great idea: Why not use the HoloLens to retrain the brain and get it to act differently? To that end, she recruited the Microsoft Hackathon team to put the idea to the test.

Continue reading “HoloLens Hack Fools the Brain Into Fixing Itself” »

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced today that it will build an “innovation train” for Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, the largest railway operator in Europe. The train will not be a super-fast hyperloop, in which pods are propelled through aluminum tubes at speeds of up to 760 mph, but a conventional train that includes some of the futuristic technologies the startup has been showcasing at tech conferences around the world.

As a startup that relies on crowdsourcing and volunteer engineers, the collaboration with Deutsche Bahn may allow HTT to start generating revenue while it works toward the larger goal of building passenger-ready hyperloop systems. Indeed, HTT’s CEO Dirk Ahlborn said in a statement that the partnership will help create “new monetization strategies and business models” for his company.

Continue reading “The Hyperloop is bringing some of its futuristic tech to Europe’s biggest railway” »

While the virtual reality headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are quite impressive already, there is no doubt that the technology will be developing rapidly, becoming more immersive, lighter, and less intrusive. Leap Motion, a company known for their motion tracking software and cameras has close ties with many of the larger VR manufacturers, and this last week the company’s CTO David Holz spoke a bit about his vision for future VR/AR headsets, based on some of the discussions he’s had with various big-name manufacturers. While Leap Motion likely won’t be producing hardware for these future headsets, it is very possible that their software could play an integral part in future generations VR and AR products.

Holz discussed some of the technology that may be found in third generation headsets of the future, and while he didn’t say when such technology would be available, my guess is perhaps 5–7 years. These third generation headsets will likely be transparent, look a lot like a pair of sunglasses, be extremely light weight and rely on Holographic OLED displays which will be able to switch between both AR(transparent) and VR(opaque) capabilities.

“They’re slightly funny-colored,” he said as he described these future headsets. “But they’re pretty reasonable, something that I might wear all day, all the time. And that’s something that, to me personally, is the most exciting. That’s getting into the age of AR… I’m seeing lots of things ahead of everybody. Behind the scenes, these things are starting to appear more and more.”

Continue reading “Leap Motion Predicts Amazing 3rd Generation Holographic OLED Virtual Reality Headsets” »

Maybe time to create “Fashion’s Tech Golden Rules”.

Mistakes You Cannot Make.

Continue reading “Fashion Technology 2016” »