Futurism, imagining what might be....

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by 4X4

I think that it wont be long before the capability is there to significantly alter the Earth's weather patterns to better suit humankind.

Then there's always the legal implications of causing an "unnatural" event.

e.g. hurricane control.

But here’s where it gets sticky. Even if we could steer a violent storm away from a metropolitan area and let it take it anger out on a rural area, for example, lawyers warn that purposefully diverting a hurricane could result in multi-billion dollar lawsuits from towns that bear the brunt that nature never intended.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...n-control.html

Would possibly come down to a cost benefit analysis from the insurance companies.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by jydk

"bold" To me it reads a bit pretentious and arrogant. On the other hand I do agree with your thought and enjoyed the insight.

When I was in school, I would give no effort whatsoever and was an honor student throughout school. In grade 9, I wanted a spare so I did the entire math course in a week and had a spare for the rest of the year.

I've also already had practical experience with two legal battles and I was in school briefly to become a psychologist (which is the doctorate that i was going to choose). If it wasn't for my shift to design, I would have become a registered psychologist.

I am working on trying to improve my communication skills so I can minimize the arrogant and pretentious side of it.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

When I was in school, I would give no effort whatsoever and was an honor student throughout school. In grade 9, I wanted a spare so I did the entire math course in a week and had a spare for the rest of the year.

I've also already had practical experience with two legal battles and I was in school briefly to become a psychologist (which is the doctorate that i was going to choose). If it wasn't for my shift to design, I would have become a registered psychologist.

I am working on trying to improve my communication skills so I can minimize the arrogant and pretentious side of it.

Well, in university, my entire class would do an entire engineering course in 5 hours. We all did this regularly, at least with 2 classes a semester. I did a Royal Conservatory of Music History exam (memorizing the lives of 30 composers) in a night. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that could do it. In fact, I would be hard pressed to find anyone in the 6000 or whatever faculty size that couldn't pound through a university coarse in a week.

I was probably in the same class you were ... self directed program, right? I did that with grade 7 math and grade 9 math. I wasn't the only one that did that. In fact, I think just about every single person I know (since all are university educated) could do that. I personally know a few people on this board, and I'm pretty sure they could all do it too... forget a week, probably a couple hours.

That doesn't mean that any of my 121 electrical engineering graduating class could be doctors or lawyers. Especially doctors, where the intangibles are so much more important then actually being "smart"

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

I am working on trying to improve my communication skills so I can minimize the arrogant and pretentious side of it.

You might want to work harder because the arrogance didn't go away.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

You might want to work harder because the arrogance didn't go away.

It's a process, and it just takes time.

[Thor]

Great discussion so far, some very interesting opinions and ideas.

[Caged Great]

Sorry for getting it slightly off track.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

I did a Royal Conservatory of Music History exam (memorizing the lives of 30 composers) in a night.

[photon]

One of my favorite pet ideas is the whole notion of augmented reality.

We already see it in use to some degree.. devices with GPS give us a topdown view of our surroundings that is augmented with data, names of streets, places, etc. Other things like software that you take a picture of a mountain range and it sends you back a picture with the names of the peaks, stuff like that.

Take that out to the extreme.. conact lenses with the ability to display anything overtop your field of vision, combined with huge bandwidth and processing capabilities, combined with the ability to know where someone is along with the orientation of their view.

Now you can have an entire reality that you can see and interact with that exists ONLY in a network. Google details hovering over the head of the guy you're talking to. Important information about everything around you.

Or even better, you could customize your personal avatar to look like you wanted, and reality around you to look like you wanted. Have a party and everyone has to "dress up" a specific way, you can decorate your house beyond what is even physically possible.

There could be an infinite # of "layers" of reality, each with its own purpose (or no purpose).

That would be pretty awesome IMO.

[The Fonz]

edit

[photon]

All the chicks would be hot, and all the guys would be chicks, who wants to look at guys. All the dogs would be chicks too, just small ones.

Cats would still be cats though.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by The Fonz

...so in your augmented reality Photon, would all chicks be hot?

He likes the green women from star trek.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by photon

One of my favorite pet ideas is the whole notion of augmented reality.

We already see it in use to some degree.. devices with GPS give us a topdown view of our surroundings that is augmented with data, names of streets, places, etc. Other things like software that you take a picture of a mountain range and it sends you back a picture with the names of the peaks, stuff like that.

Take that out to the extreme.. conact lenses with the ability to display anything overtop your field of vision, combined with huge bandwidth and processing capabilities, combined with the ability to know where someone is along with the orientation of their view.

Now you can have an entire reality that you can see and interact with that exists ONLY in a network. Google details hovering over the head of the guy you're talking to. Important information about everything around you.

Or even better, you could customize your personal avatar to look like you wanted, and reality around you to look like you wanted. Have a party and everyone has to "dress up" a specific way, you can decorate your house beyond what is even physically possible.

There could be an infinite # of "layers" of reality, each with its own purpose (or no purpose).

That would be pretty awesome IMO.

Which software offers that service?

The idea you suggest ... that would be really frickin cool. The limiting factor here is obviously the hardware to support such an idea (esp hardware as small as the function you suggest) ... but that would be really frickin cool.

With technology like this, it usually begins in military research before moving to consumer goods. We've seen many examples of this, internet and mobile phones for instance. In fact, military cutting edge products usually enter the common day marketplace unless it posses some sort of threat to society (i.e. invisible cloak, negative refractive index) - thus military science is usually a good indication of where consumer electronics is going.

[The Fonz]

edit

[photon]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Which software offers that service?

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/

Though I don't see the picture capability, it just seems to use GPS to generate the names.

I was sure I'd read that you could take a picture to get them.. oh well, if theirs doesn't do it then I guess there's a really oblique business idea.. a cell phone app that will give you the names of mountains just in case you happen to be out mountain climbing and don't know where you are.

[photon]

The first down line at football games is a good example of augmented reality.

http://www.enkin.net/

A very very basic demonstration of the idea.

Just found this link on wikipedia, looks cool!
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/09/se...on_help-2.html

[Phanuthier]

^ I was talking to a imaging engineer at Nvidia about a month ago, it seems like image recognition like what Picasa just released is about as cutting edge it gets in consumer products. GPS coordinates I know they have had for a while though.

Anyways, that app would be really useful. I went hiking/scramble this summer and at the top, realized ... , wrong mountain.

[photon]

Yeah, I can't imagine the kind of processing power required to be able to determine and overlay a realtime view of reality, not to mention you have to get a 3D map of reality in there to begin with, unless part of it is a mesh network of small sensors to generate a realtime 3D map of the area..

With huge bandwidth and distributed computing that'd be less of an issue, have super powerful computers that compute the reality distributed around everywhere and as long as the bandwidth between my wearable computer and the network is sufficient I don't need to process it locally.

Not totally beyond current capabilities, but certainly not economical or practical.

[Five-hole]

A couple more "augmented reality" ideas.

- Borrowing from your first-down-football-overlay mention, imagine a car GPS that had a sort-of HUD-overlay for your windshield displaying colored arrows on the road telling you where to turn and making your destination building a bright orange.

- Heh, if you had contact lenses that could HUD information for you they'd certainly have to figure out a new way to give tests.

- As computer-brain interfaces improve it's not impossible to assume that within 25 years people will have wireless internet info links directly into either their optical nerve or some deeper intellectual function of the brain. How would the world function when you had Google functionality within your head? Potentially the entire scope of human knowledge would be accessible within your own consciousness instantaneously. Gives a new meaning to the "collective unconscious".

- Following from the same idea, wireless robotics linked to a brain-computer interface would make something akin to telekinesis possible.

- "Video conferencing" could take place in such a way that direct visual and auditory simulations of the people you're interacting with appear to be in the room with you. Not virtual reality but like a webcam inside your mind, with the information "green screened" into reality in front of you.

- If my wishes come true maybe, finally, they'll make convincing sex robots.

[alltherage]

When I came into this thread it kinda blew my mind. I thought we were going to talk like...