Shared by Daniel This is a pretty brilliant nudge. For the most part, Americans don’t like the simple, boring act of putting money in a savings account. We do, however, love to play the lottery. So what if you combined the two, creating a new kind of savings account with a lottery payout? …

Oh, sure — Masdar City’s driverless pods may not make nearly as many stops as your average metro, but it essentially matches the usefulness of the subway station in Pyongyang. And with a lot less energy waste, to boot. If you’ll recall, these driverless pods were planned years ago, and while the ambitions have been quelled somewhat thanks to the economic crunch, that hasn’t stopped students and engineers from using 2GetThere’s pods, magnets and a fiber optic system to create a two-stop transfer system at the university. For now, they’re whisking students between a pair of drop points that are 800 meters apart, traveling 15 miles per hour and instilling fear into everyone who dares step inside. As for the future? Only The Jetsons truly know, but you can take a glimpse in the video just past the break. Continue reading Masdar City’s driverless pods now whisking students around on a limited basis (video) Masdar City’s driverless pods now whisking students around on a limited basis (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink Autoblog Green | | Email this | Comments

In a piece for Slate titled “My Puny Human Brain,” former-Jeopardy-greatest Ken Jennings talks briefly through his experience playing against IBM’s Watson. If you were hoping for some sour grapes, you won’t find it here, but Ken gives a great insight into what it feels like to be an underdog human up against a PR darling supercomputer. “Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.” Ken wraps it up on an uplifting, humans-are-going-to-be-alright-after-all note, and we seem to have something in our eye… Ken Jennings talks about losing to Watson, being human after all originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source Slate | Email this | Comments

Shared by Daniel haha what the hell The insane epicness of this movie cannot possibly be overstated. And somehow, the fact that it’s overdubbed in Russian makes it just that much more awesome. It’s called Robot, and if you get a copy, send it to me. Immediately. Update: the full movie is here on YouTube (all 2+ hours of it), with English captions! VIA [ Laughing Squid ]

Watch these two TED Talks from robot researchers Heather Knight and Cynthia Breazeal, on interactive robot comedy and why we don’t have robots in our homes yet

This thread is a mess, filled with too many analogies and lofty idealistic rhetoric that is appropriate to the dramatic circumstances but fail to help us think clearly through them. Forget this consciousness stuff, it isn’t helping. Let us start again. On the one hand, we have Uglycat arguing that we are experiencing a fundamental shift in social organization, a shift made possible by the democratizaton of incredibly powerful networked technologies. On the other hand, we have Petey’s much more moderate claim in the main Revolution thread: Petey posted: – social media played some unknown but presumably nontrivial role in both a) spreading the word about the self-immolations among sympathetic citizens and b) facilitating the organization of collective action protests I think everyone will agree with Petey about the nontrivial role of social media and internet organization. The operative question in this thread is what substantial role these new technologies have played, and does this represent a fundamental shift in the narrative, or is this just a continuation of old themes in slightly new packaging. I think the key to understanding this is being specific about what would count as a ‘fundamental’ shift. I’m going to point to Deep Hurting’s latest comic to give a sense of what fundamental means in this context. Ignore Deep Hurting’s political comment for a second, and just think about the appropriation of the famous painting of Lady Liberty in the throes of revolution, holding a smartphone in her outstretched hand. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the protestors today is their use of these social devices. It is a badge of self-identification, it distinguishes and marks off as unique the revolutions currrently underway from those in the past. The causes are the same (liberty), but the defenders of that cause are equipped differently. In […]

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