Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

Cognitive Daily posted an interesting article today about the potential for human-robot marriage and how our relationships with robots seem to be growing.

From the article:

My first instinct upon reading this is to believe that people won’t get as much satisfaction from such relationships as from “normal” human relationships, but I’m not sure this will be the real problem with human-robot marriage. People need much less feedback in a relationship than you might think. They assign emotions to their pets (and robots) that these creatures simply don’t possess.

Emotional attachment to non-sentient items is a pretty scary thought, but entirely real. When we are in heightened emotional states, many of us seem to attach ourselves to whatever nearby is responsive, especially if that item performs a specific function or interacts with us and our environment. How these interactions will play out as technology advances is anyone’s guess, but they will without a doubt play out.

An article over at EcoGeek discusses the invention of a new approach to wind power generation utilizing vibrating fabric and a magnet. Its prime purpose is to generate a small amount of cheap, efficient power. It is much less expensive and requires far less maintenance than conventional wind turbines.

From the article:

So Shawn built a kind of birdge out of taught kite fabric. The fabric vibrates in the wind, and a magnet, attached to the fabric, creates electricity at one end of the device. He says that, in a 10 mph wind, the generator is up to 30 times more efficient than the best rotary turbines.

I hope that we begin to focus more on these types of technological advances to work on the smaller scales necessary in developing and poorer countries.

I recently joined Kiva, a non-profit organization which “… lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world.” After joining the site, you can look at a list of owners of small businesses in developing countries and choose to loan them money for a length of time. The loan lengths are generally about a year and currently you can only loan $25 at a time.

Once the loans are made, the money is distributed to a lending agency in the country the business owners originate from. The money is then distributed from these lending agencies. There are reviews of the different lending agencies, including a trust value, and how often the loans have been paid back. You are able to cross reference the trust level of the lending agency with each business owner.

Occasionally the individuals that have accepted the loans will post journals of the progress they’ve been making since receiving the loans and what they are doing with the money. Though some businesses post more often than others, it is an interesting way to stay connected with the people you’ve loaned too.

It was started by a group of people who have worked at a wide variety of different companies like Google, PayPal, and TiVo and has been operating as a non-profit since 2004. I’ve created an account at http://www.kiva.org/lender/ezkl and have made 3 $25 loans to a few different businesses in Azerbaijan, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

I hope to see more and more of these kinds of organizations springing up. I believe that if we begin to focus more on the intangible human interest accrued when people are able to support themselves and not so much on the interests in our own bank accounts, we can end a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Ryan Stewart made a post on his blog regarding the ongoing battle of words between the open source/open web community and large development companies. The open community has always asked demanded that large developers open up their source so that the entire development community may benefit and make progress towards better products. Obviously, when RIA (Rich Internet Applications) are involved, this becomes even more of a hot issue because the web is involved.

In the post, Ryan says:

It’s a funny thing to think about but I think it’s indicative of wider problems between the “open web” and RIA vendors. The basic issue is that everyone’s too combative. I wish more open web people would look at what both Microsoft and Adobe are doing and see that all in all, the RIA solutions are becoming more open, not less. In fact, I’d argue that RIAs have moved the entire web in a more open direction.

I agree that the level combative speech on the web regarding these sorts of issues helps no one in the end. As Ryan states later in the post, a lot of the big boys are beginning to open up chunks of their proprietary work to help the open source community in adapting their software onto other platforms. They’ve been forced to realize the efficacy in doing this.

Whether or not the proliferation of RIAs will occur in all sectors of business is yet to be seen, but I’m confident that even if the largest development companies choose to keep their code closed, there will be open source alternatives. The conceptual foundation of the RIA is far too impressive to be left alone.

Just noticed this over at The Long Now Foundation’s blog:

Continue reading →