Practical Ethics:
Enlightened Surveillance? Surrendering on surveillance might be the least bad option – of all likely civil liberty encroachments, this seemed the less damaging and hardest to resist. But that’s an overly defensive way of phrasing it – if ubiquitous surveillance and lack of privacy are the trends of the future, we shouldn’t just begrudgingly accept them, but demand that society gets the most possible out of them.
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 18, 2013 -
23 comments
Undecided on election day? Sat through all the debates and still not sure who's right and who's wrong? What you're really looking for is an endorsment by people you can trust completely, you can look up to, true heroes? Well, J. Caleb Mozzocco has taken the trouble to interview
a representative cross section of superheroes and is starting to see a pattern.
[more inside]
posted by MartinWisse
on Nov 6, 2012 -
35 comments
The Animal Architecture Awards have just announced the winners of their 2011 contest. Taking first place is Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, a (speculative) augmented reality game inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s notion of the animal umwelt. Not truly architectural, Theriomorphous Cyborg instead shifts how a human participant relates to space and the landscape. Each level in the free-form game takes the player through different modes that relate to the sensory capacities of various animals. (
via)
[more inside]
posted by infini
on Sep 1, 2011 -
3 comments
This is Zombotron. You can scavenge for items and kill the undead in this Flash game. Your less-advanced mechanical brethren may even shoot you on site, as they are only programmed to detect motion. Welcome to Zombotron.
posted by Smart Dalek
on Jul 14, 2011 -
29 comments
"The contemporary setting and concerns of "
The Steam Arm" are a very great distance from the Gothic setting and tropes of much 1830s horror fiction, and its science fictional content makes it possibly unique."
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Jul 6, 2011 -
16 comments
PossessedHand is ostensibly a training system for students of stringed musical instruments. It teaches fingering positions by means of electrodes that stimulate muscles in the forearm, forcing the hand into the correct configuration.
posted by contraption
on Jun 27, 2011 -
31 comments
50 Posts About Cyborgs. "September 2010 is the 50th Anniversary of the coining of the term 'cyborg'. Over a month, this site will update 50 times with links to material — most of it new — celebrating 50 years of one of the 20th Century's more enduring concepts. Then it'll go dark."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Sep 6, 2010 -
15 comments
Cyborg Spy Beetles are no longer a thing of the future. UC Berkeley (funded by DARPA) has created cyborg beetles guided wirelessly via laptop. These spy beetles were created with the intent of bugging actual conversations, literally acting as the "fly on the wall".
[more inside]
posted by scrutiny
on Oct 27, 2009 -
56 comments
Editor Marty Halpern looks back at the career of George Alec Effinger (
part 1,
part 2,
part 3), a prolific author best known for his work set in the
Budayeen, a walled city in a future Islamic state, teeming with gangsters, hustlers and transsexual prostitutes, many of them habitual users of plug in personality modules. The noirish tone and exotic technology of the
Marîd Audran books (When Gravity Fails, A Fire In The Sun, The Exile Kiss) made Effinger one of the leading lights in the cyberpunk movie, and spawned a
videogame - a rare attempt at a graphical adventure from Infocom - and
an RPG setting. Sadly Effinger
faded from prominence after that, and he suffered from a number of health and financial setbacks before
passing away in 2002. His work has had somewhat of a resurgence in popularity of late, with the Marîd Audran books coming back into print in 2007, a long with a
collection containing The Wolves of Memory, Effinger's personal favourite amongst his novels.
posted by Artw
on Jun 9, 2009 -
32 comments
Amal Graafstra has implanted two rfid chips
into his hands to permit himself keyless access to his computer, car and home. He's also written a
book about the experience and the various rfid "toys" he's devised.
This Valentine's Day, he and his girlfriend expressed a
"modern declaration of their affection for each other, with implanted electronic chips that allow them unfettered access to each other's lives".
Interested in something similar? The
company Amal used is selling a kit. Though they don't actually recommend it for use with medical implants.
So, cool, crazy or inevitable?
posted by darkstar
on Feb 17, 2006 -
21 comments
Cyborgs in Canada? When you first meet Steve Mann, it seems as if you've interrupted him appraising diamonds or doing some sort of specialized welding. Because the first thing you notice is the plastic frame that comes around his right ear and holds a lens over his right eye.
posted by edmcbride
on Jan 12, 2004 -
19 comments
Who else thinks we could use some of
these now.
Seems a shame they're not quite ready to help with this disaster.
"
...like crawling through earthquake rubble to search for victims..."
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger
on Sep 17, 2001 -
11 comments
The cyborg manifesto scares me. I first read it in this month's
adbusters magazine, then online. It paints a provocative picture of our future. Will we look back on this as the just the beginning or is it vapor-futurism?
flash 4 required
posted by will
on Mar 20, 2001 -
23 comments
