Artwatch: Memory Helmet by Seungjoo Lee

Protection is the fundamental purpose of the helmet. This helmet, a conceptual design project by Seungjoo Lee, enables the storage and protection of memories.
From www.seungjoolee.com.

Lifenaut Brings Historical Figures Back To Life

Lifenaut's Historic Lives project aims to bring historical figures back to life as conversational avatars. Although their speech abilities are still developing, the avatars have the potential to become excellent educational tools. With time, a student may be able to use a historical avatar like a sophisticated, entertaining search engine, calling up detailed information (from the mundane to the epic) about how these historic figures lived. The applications extend beyond the classroom however. Businesses equiped with conversational avatars of past CEOs could quickly reference parts of the companies history, not through the objective lens of a search engine but through the subjective and insightful lens of the CEO's memory.
In a variety of forums the organization of historic information in these conversational avatars has the potential to change the way we think about information organization and acquisition.
Are you a historic expert or buff? You can help Lifenaut assemble their avatars.

Techno-Thriller TransBeMan Premiers At Galapagos

Last weekend marked the premier of the much anticipated techno-thriller, TransBeMan.

From the Brooklyn Heights Blog:

The movie started at 7:30 p.m. TransBeMan is produced by Transformer Films, and directed by my friend, Richard Kroehling. Completely shot in New York, its a techno thriller set in the near future about the creation of the world’s first post-human. To find out exactly what that means, the film is set for a summer/fall 09 release. If you like your sci fi served up with intelligence and out of this world art direction, check it out. It stars James Remar who played Samantha’s architect boyfriend in Sex and the City.

New Mind Control Games Teach You To Use "The Force"

The good people at Neurosky have collaborated with Uncle Milton games to create a revolutionary new game called Force Trainer, out this fall (USA Today article here). The game comes with a simple headset that monitors brainwave activity. As you learn to concentrate and control your brain wave activity you gain greater control over a small ball that moves through a Star Wars themed gaming device.
The game, which will no doubt be a blast just from its novelty alone, will be one of the first mass-market games to utilize EEG technology. There's no telling where this paradigm will take us or if it will have long term effects on a child's ability to concentrate. Could the Force Trainer or something like it (a similar game by Mattel is due out) actually help distracted individuals learn to become more focused thinkers?

"Thought Identification" Featured On 60 Minutes

We previewed this exciting new technology in December in a post called: "Scientists Extract Images Directly From The Brain." Now the concept is receiving major network attention in a 60 minutes story.

CNET's 5 Technology Predictions For 2009

CNET's top 5 predictions for the new year include:

5  The decline of portable GPS

4  Mind control video games go commercial!!

3  Devices with Google's Android operating system will outsell the iphone

2  Bandwidth riots 

1  Biggest security breach ever

Check out the video explanations here.

Typealyzer Analyzes Blog Personality

The Typealyzer applies the Meyers-Briggs personality test to blogs.  Try it here.

Scientists Extract Images Directly From Brain

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed a breakthrough process of analyzing changes in a participants cerebral blood flow to reconstruct and display viewed images. This breakthrough process of extracting images directly from the brain has so far been used only with black letters on a white background. However, researchers say that as the technology improves and the computer program learns to associate nuanced cerebral states with complex mental images, we could, within, the decade learn to extract these complex images directly from patients' brains. Full story at the pink tentacle.

"Eyeborg Man" Plans To Replace Eye With Video Camera

Wired reports today that Rob Spence, a 36 year old Canadian filmmaker who lost his eye in a childhood shooting accident, plans to replace his current prosthetic eye with an ocular video camera. The original cyborg man, Steve Mann, help Spence on his quest to become the Eyeborg man. Spence will literally have the potential to film everything he sees (except for his dreams), making him a superb candidate for personality capture. The trick, once again, is going to be organizing the bountiful video footage. A feat that becomes possible with the arrival of the semantic web in all its multimedia-savvy, search engine glory.

10 Year Old USB Gets A Makeover

Wired reports on the USB 3.0. The devices will likely first start showing up on HD video cameras but the 10-fold speed increase will start greatly reduce transfer time of all kinds of uploads: images, sounds, videos, memories...

Brainwave Sensors Enable Thought Control

A brief intro to brainwave capture:

1 Neurons communicate with electrical impulses

2 Research has shown that certain frequencies of electrical impulses (or brainwaves) correspond to unique emotive states

3 The development of bio-sensor headgear products (see Neurosky) for the consumer market promises to make it possible for an individual to measure, observe, play video games, and archive brainwaves (and emotive brain states)

4 The nascent technology can currently identify brain states of: awareness, meditative, or drowsiness, but as the technology progresses it should be able to identify increasingly nuanced brain states based on the unique brainwave patterns

Implications:

Low-cost brainwave sensors would take personality capture to the next level. If designers make these devises discrete or stylish enough, the average consumer could record a variety of unique brainwaves throughout their day and upload them to a personality capture website (like lifenaut) in realtime - like a much advanced Twitter.

These devices have a great potential to bring the power of biofeedback to the masses. If you can see your brainwaves in real time, you can over time, learn to have greater control of moving in and out of these mindstates. Like the art installation Simmer Down Sprinter, the user could learn, through biofeedback, to enter a state of relaxation. Over time, the individual could become fluent in moving from a state of anxiety into a state of relaxed awareness.