23
Mar
2008
spectacular geekdom
I’ve spent my easter Sunday tucked up in the sial lab with two of my urban best friends, my laptop for doing some work, and a whole load of video lectures.
‘Target Earth’ by James Martin – a high speed trip through the possibilities and problems facing the human race in the next century, and what the 21st century school is doing to try and increase our chances of living through it!
Ted Nelson: ‘A very general lecture’ – from the oii Ted Nelson Invented hypertext (a much as he tries to hide it), this is a terrific lecture in which he gets dressed up in a funny suit, sings songs and explains the history and future of the internet.
Genomics: From humans to the environment – this was Craig Venter’s talk that he gave for the Lames martin 21st century school at the sheldonian. lots of interesting stuff, and quite easy going considering that it’s about sequencing genomes! here’s his TED talk too
Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas – Alan Kay talks a bit about the sort of stuff that Seymour Papert talks about, giving children tools to learn with. a fascinating 20 minutes.
I think that officially makes me a mega geek.
15
Dec
2007
post modern? fuck off, i want to be post human
having been to a few of the james martin institute lectures and seminars this term I’ve been getting really interested in the idea that we may be approaching a singularity point in human development. technology is getting to the point that whatever it is that sucks about being a human, we have the power to do something about it.
take a look at Nick Bostrom’s papers and see what it’s all about!
It’s be really interesting to see where an interest in the post human condition will take me if I apply it to some architectural design work… lets find out!
10
May
2007
TAKEAWAY FESTIVAL 2
the dana centre has put on a really interesting (but sadly under attended) series of workshops and talks.
there is still one more day tomorrow, so it might well be worth dropping in. it’s free, so that’s good i suppose!
i was supposed to be doing an arduino workshop, but ended up in the wrong room doing a processing workshop with a chap[david muth] who was at soda for a while.
he showed some cool stuff, so i thought i’d share some of them
http://www.hektor.ch/
http://festival2007.lovebytes.org.uk/
http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/
http://toxi.co.uk/blog/
12
Apr
2007
EMRoS + helmet or ã‹ã¶ã¨
i love google translate, i thought that this was so cool that it deserved a post all of it’s own!
the EMRoS: EPSON Micro Robot System was announced in 1993, and is the kind of thing i’d like to have in my collection of fine art objects in 2093. it’s stunning
you train it by getting it to follow a light source, and then once trained, it can replay the path.
take a look at the translated page in beautiful engrish
12
Apr
2007
links for laters
here’s some links, cool eh, we all love links.
ENESS make some fun product/art stuff,like this zen robot, and cloned logs
.jpg "zen robot")
these are a couple videos of a super cool elastic tensegrity dome by Chris Chalmers
trackstar are lovely people in New York who sell bike courier stuff, and make my favourite hoodie ever
the digicult forum is the home of the Oxford Brookes digital culture module, but i rant here a lot, and I quite like the idea of it being a cult.
