When robots rule the world…

“Grossman pointedly questioned Kurzweil about the potential loss of our “human nature” in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. But Kurzweil linked the future of our “human-machine civilization” to the full sweep of human history: “Ever since we first picked up a stick to reach a tree branch,” he said, we have been creating tools to aid our existence. So he sees the futuristic nanotechnology and artificial intelligence purely as tools that will serve as extensions of our humanity. Also: Just as today the data one access on their iPhone exists both within the phone and out in the cloud, he envisions a future where not only are nanobots being added to our bodies but where our brains being augmented by processing power in the cloud. Where search engines do not need to be prompted to offer helpful information, but instead grow intuitive, providing us information as we need it. As Kurzweil sees it, this is about expanding our intellect, and our capabilities, not deferring all this to machines.” - Time Techland

futuristgerd:

(via Inside the Mind of Futurist Ray Kurzweil: When Robots Rule the World (and Humans are Immortal) | Techland | TIME.com)

Worth watching … if a bit scary:))

#robots #tech #technology #computing #computers #kurzweil #artificial intelligence #history #genetics #iphone #nanotechnology #future #futurist #sci fi #science fiction #intellect #thinking #ideas #innovation
When robots rule the world… “Grossman pointedly questioned Kurzweil about the potential loss of our “human nature” in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. But Kurzweil linked the future of our “human-machine civilization” to the full sweep of human history: “Ever since we first picked up a stick to reach a tree branch,” he said, we have been creating tools to aid our existence. So he sees the futuristic nanotechnology and artificial intelligence purely as tools that will serve as extensions of our humanity. Also: Just as today the data one access on their iPhone exists both within the phone and out in the cloud, he envisions a future where not only are nanobots being added to our bodies but where our brains being augmented by processing power in the cloud. Where search engines do not need to be prompted to offer helpful information, but instead grow intuitive, providing us information as we need it. As Kurzweil sees it, this is about expanding our intellect, and our capabilities, not deferring all this to machines.” - Time Techland futuristgerd: (via Inside the Mind of Futurist Ray Kurzweil: When Robots Rule the World (and Humans are Immortal) | Techland | TIME.com) Worth watching … if a bit scary:))

Floris Dreesman: Sci-Fi Audi Future

How does one write the future, not for a novel but for one of the largest transportation companies in the world?  At the Terminal Competence Centre they work closely with science fiction writers such as Bruce Sterling.

Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology helped shape the cyberpunk genre.  It was a compilation of short stories and the first was by Williams Gibson, entitled “The Gernsback Continuum”.  The story is about a photographer in the future who has been given the assignment of photographing old architecture.  The architecture, though largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied the concept of the future for the generation that built it.

Sterling is also known for coining the term “slipstream” which is a type of speculative fiction between traditional science fiction fantasy and mainstream literature. Together with William Gibson, Sterling has written The Difference Engine, an alternate view of a fictional history that won several literary awards.

Get the book Mirrorshades here 

Bruce Sterling’s blog Beyond the Beyond on WIRED

#science #science fiction #sci-fi #sterling #cyberpunk #future #futuristic #gibson #audi #slipstream #information age
Floris Dreesman: Sci-Fi Audi Future How does one write the future, not for a novel but for one of the largest transportation companies in the world?  At the Terminal Competence Centre they work closely with science fiction writers such as Bruce Sterling. Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology helped shape the cyberpunk genre.  It was a compilation of short stories and the first was by Williams Gibson, entitled “The Gernsback Continuum”.  The story is about a photographer in the future who has been given the assignment of photographing old architecture.  The architecture, though largely forgotten at the time of the story, embodied the concept of the future for the generation that built it. Sterling is also known for coining the term “slipstream” which is a type of speculative fiction between traditional science fiction fantasy and mainstream literature. Together with William Gibson, Sterling has written The Difference Engine, an alternate view of a fictional history that won several literary awards. Get the book Mirrorshades here  Bruce Sterling’s blog Beyond the Beyond on WIRED

Robot Family by Helmut Newton
#robots #robot #helmut #newton #photography #blackandwhite #vintage #transportation #future
Robot Family by Helmut Newton

A Fugitive from the Future

In this witty silent film, “The Fugitive Futurist” by Gaston Quiribet made in 1924, a man sits on a bench and describes his invention - a machine that allows one to see “beyond the limits of ordinary life.” He shows the man various London landmarks through his box and they magically reveal the future.  It’s intriguing to see footage of Trafalgar Square from almost 100 years ago.  But it is even more entertaining to see concepts of the future blasting from the past - on how to improve Parliament, how to solve traffic, and how to revolutionise the methods of building.  In this charming film, the low-fi special effects are strangely prophetic to the current day - and makes one wonder, what secrets does the future of the city hold?

IMDB: The Fugitive Futurist

BFI Mediatheque

#futurist #future #futurism #london #city #quiribet #1924 #film #silent film #vintage #trafalgar square #parliament #bfi #cinema

Flying Pixels

“Something very interesting happened in Formula One racing, if you wanted to win, you used to bet your budget on a good car and a good driver.  Nowadays, to win the Formula One race, you need a team of people to monitor the car in real time, thousands of sensors collecting information from the car transmitting this information into the system and then processing it and using it in order to back to the car with decisions and changing things in real time, as information is collected.” - Carlo Ratti

Architect Carlo Ratti shares a series of innovative projects that incorporate affective and sensory architecture. No longer are buildings static forms that house our activities. New technology allows us to implant sensors into our space and give us information about how we live.  No longer is the computer located in a shell on our desktops but rather is a network of small nodes hidden throughout the open air, just like molecules of water that make a cloud.  Ratti runs the MIT Senseable City Lab - which uses sensors and small electronics to infiltrate our built environment and give back data that describes how people move and operate within the city.  He notes that cities are only 2% of the earth’s land mass, but contain 50% of the earth’s population, account for 75% of our energy consumption and 80% of our CO2 emissions.

In this short talk, he cites the example of tracking cell phone use in Rome during the final World Cup game when Italy won, visualising surges of communication and radio silence, climaxing in a giant party in the city’s main square. His lab tracked thrown away cell phones and realized they didn’t end up where you would think they would.  He also describes projects that take this data to create interactive environments, such as a pavilion with walls made of water and a flexible three dimensional “screen” made up of thousands of LED pixels flown on mini-helicopters.

Carlo Ratti’s website

Sensable City Lab at MIT

Gizmodo: Watch Where Your Gadgets Go When They Die

TED: Ideas worth spreading

#architecture #ted #carlo ratti #ratti #sensor #electronics #technology #future #lab #mit #experiments #data #research #city #urban

Retro Futuristic Spoon

An object as mundane as a soup spoon is something that we might take for granted.  However it’s simplicity in form and function makes it a crucial arbiter of good design.  Nowadays, Arne Jacobsen is best remembered for his contributions to product design. However, he considered himself first and foremost an architect.  When commissioned to design the SAS Hotel, he thought of it as a “gesamtkunstwerk” or an epic all embodying art project that required him, the creator, to carefully consider every aspect of the hotel experience.

“It may sound affected - but it is the act of creation itself, and it is equally exhilarating whether one is working on a teaspoon or a national bank.” - Arne Jacobsen

He designed a full cutlery set that emphasised his commitment to simplicity and efficiency by using only the absolute minimum amount of steel needed to produce each knife, fork, or spoon.  He considered factors such as surface area to volume ratio and the speed at which the soup would cool to determine the ideal form.  The hotel manager, the media and guests poked fun at the designs that were way ahead of their time.  However, Stanley Kubrick who included the cutlery as prominent props in his 1968 sci-fi classic “2001: A Space Odyssey”.  Most of the props and set were designed specifically for the film to indicate that it was taking place in the future, but Jacobsen’s cutlery was already appropriate.

Get the film

Get the cutlery

NYTimes, “Reflections on a soup spoon”

Arne Jacobsen’s website

Design Museum on Arne Jacobsen

SAS Hotel

#design #arne jacobsen #jacobsen #spoon #future #retro #2011 #space odyssey #architect #kubrick #cutlery

Paul Noble, Welcome to Nobson

From Gagosian Gallery press release of his last show in 2011:

Noble’s intricate graphite drawings describe Nobson Newtown, a place composed of labyrinthine edifices and deserted topography embedded with modules of dense detail. Employing cavalier projection—a cartographical method characterized by a high viewpoint—Noble meticulously delineates a wealth of elaborate architecture and open urban spaces. These phantasmagorical landscapes allude to sources as diverse as ancient Chinese scrolls, Fabergé eggs, Henry Moore’s sculptures, and paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. The encrypted fictions of Nobson Newtown are dizzyingly complex—visual articulations of the tensions between disorder, perversion, and logical schema.

“I use the devices of technical drawing. These devices help shine the sharpest light on the things I depict. I am against hierarchies and perspective. I arrange the objects of my drawings on a spatial plane using cavalier projection. The origins of this projection lay in military cartography - fore, mid and background are got rid of and everything depicted is equally close and far. The viewer becomes the architect and the drawing, an architectural plan. He or she is no longer earthbound but hovers like an angel over the described scene, taking in the entire design.

I was raised on the north-east coast of England, and this has conditioned my aesthetic. I think like the flat, grey skies of wintery Whitley Bay - tonally. I use very hard pencils, very rarely softer than 4H. Sometimes the pencils are so hard it seems they would rather scratch a hole in the paper than give up their pale graphite.” - Paul Noble

The Guardian, “Artist Paul Noble on how he draws”

The Guardian, “Life in Paul Noble’s excremental city”

The Arts Desk, “Paul Noble: Welcome to Nobson”

Artist’s page on Gagosian Gallery’s website

#art #paul noble #noble #nobson #architecture #drawing #graphite #pencil #city #utopia #dystopia #landscape #cartography #perspective #future