cybernetics

ooh, nice. Just saw this company mentioned in the comments of an HN thread.

Velocity was on last week, and I was following along enviously on twitter - I'm making a promise to myself that I'll be along in person next year!

Quite a few of the talks now appearing online - here's a couple I've watched so far..

“The SLB-10 is the latest generation of ORB manufactured by Ono-Sendai, utilizing state of the art EM pulse powered flotation; archive-quality audio and visual recording capabilities; fully CMYK coloured, tactile holographic capability; and guaranteed always-on connection to your personal encrypted data storage facility.

ORBs have become so integral to our life and yet they are barely a 7 year old technology. It is worth reflecting on the brief history of these astounding devices, upon which we now rely so heavily.

In 2027, a group of engineers, skaterboarders and film-makers came together to work on a project utilizing the first commercial Shawyer/EmDrive propulsion system released by the British National Space Centre. Their early device was designed initially as a simple anti-gravity camera to be able to follow a moving person, while filming and streaming the data. It was a personal project for their own use, but they also expected it would be useful for other filming niches. What they hadn’t expected was the enormous demand from the general public, as real-time life-recording and live-blogging quickly took off, finding a multitude of personal and business uses. They formed a company to market their ORB devices, calling themselves Ono-Sendai, in joking homage to William Gibson.

The market for ORBs exploded, with feature upon feature being added in response to consumer demand: multiple cameras, higher definition a/v recording, voice control and audio speakers, automated laser protection systems, and crucially - the visual feed became integrated with in-Frame overlays. In those days Frames were still competing with handheld devices, before we perfected the means to spatially interact with data.

Two more pieces were necessary to bring us up to date with the contemporary ORB experience - the addition of the holo-projector in 2030, in order to finally disperse with a physical interface; and, more recently in 2032, the first mature ultrasound-based haptic holographic interface was introduced to provide a truly tactile experience.

As many imitators as there are on the market, Ono-Sendai manages to stay one step ahead of the competitors due its truly innovative operating system, SOLX - Son Of LinuX, the most advanced and personable decision-taking, realtime smart O/S. With Ono-Sendai and SOLX assisting your life, you be sure of trusted network access, personal security, and reliable data archive - Get on with enjoying your life!”

// reblog from old Drawing B0ard post

I've started reading George Dyson's “Turing's Cathedral”, and really enjoying it - I love reading the historical context of technological progress, feels like a lot of sociological reading, filling in another of the endless jigsaw pieces of a larger all-encompassing narrative.

Here's George Dyson doing a lecture on the material in the book :

Ah, see, my comic is all true! :D

Fabulous piece and video chat with George Dyson over at the always reliable Edge -

A Universe Of Self-replicating Code | Conversation | Edge.

I finished reading James Gleick's The Information tonite - so good!

Really, the central character is Claude Shannon, who I'm ashamed to admit I didn't previously know much about. Had a quick search when i finished it and found this decent little 30 min documentary which gives a good overview -

I started reading James Gleick's “The Information” last week and haven't been able to put it down yet - so good!
I just found this video of a talk he presented at Google last year on the book, looks ace, i'll save it for watching this evening.

crazy short film Jim Henson did for the Bell Business Communications Seminar back in 1963 -

// found via Laughing Squid //

After hearing Ken Hollings read an excerpt from Welcome To Mars at the Atom Town screening last week, I borrowed a copy at the weekend and began reading it. I'm only 47 pages in so far, but it's already amazing. One of the things referenced in it was John Von Neumann's 1948 paper ‘The General and Logical Theory Of Automata' which “enlarges upon Turing's idea of a Universal Machine by proposing a tape-driven, self-producing ‘automaton whose output is other automata'” -

A swift google search turns up a pdf of the published paper here