Engadget reports on Airbus’ plan on intalling robots to control planes in emergency situations. Emphasis is original.
Pilots, not suprisingly, are none too pleased with the move; Air Line Pilots Association safety offical Larry Newman says it’s leading to pilots getting further and further away from the process of responding to emergencies themselves (well duh). Not [...]

Link via BoingBoing

Two items:
Asimo turns to telepathy
Japanese automaker Honda has developed technology that uses brain signals to control a robot’s moves, hoping to someday link a person’s thoughts with machines in everyday life.
In a video demonstration in Tokyo, patterns of the changes in the brain taken by an MRI machine, like those used in hospitals, were relayed [...]

New on the blogroll: Robot Gossip. I was linked via Engadget’s coverage of India’s new plan for building a gigantic robot army. While I was trying to think of a tech support joke, though, I found a whole page full of much more interesting tidbits.
For instance, this guy:

which can manipulate otherwise awkward objects with the [...]

Interesting interview with William Gibson by PRI about the NSA wiretapping scandal. You can listen to the entire interview here. Gibson comes in about 35 minutes in.
I can’t explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future [...]

about the singularity.

One of my biggest problems in philosophy is that not very many people do what I do. The Cyberneticists in the 50s came close, but the continental philosophers are prone to use ‘technology’ as shorthand for a discussion about whatever aspect of society they want to talk about, and consequently they never really engaged the [...]

Give me my Metaverse now.

The product is equipped with a pair of liquid crystal display (LCD) screens, roughly the size of a human pupil _ 4.2 millimeters by 4.8 millimeters _ in both lenses.
“Weighing just 2 grams each, this micro LCD would be the world’s smallest and lightest screen available. The weight of the [...]

From the OED:
obsolescence, n.
1. a. The process or fact of becoming obsolete or outdated, or of falling into disuse.
b. spec. The process whereby or state at which machinery, consumer goods, etc., become obsolete as a result of technological advances, changes in demand, etc. Cf. planned obsolescence s.v. PLANNED ppl. a. 2.
2. Biol. and Med.a. The [...]

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a theory of obsolescence. I dont have it very well developed, but I’ve been talking about it, if only to spread around the fact that I am working on it now, lest I be credited as a copycat after someone else comes out with a fully [...]