Thursday Links - Robot Overlords Edition
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Written By Reprise Media | March 16, 2006 | Share This
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For some reason there’s lots of robot all over our feeds today, much of it cute and Japanese, some of it alarming and creepy. Here’s a bit of both, with some non-robot links thrown in for scale.
“I, for one, welcome our robot masters” When the robots come, what appearance will they take? A New York Times feature today discusses the shape of the modern bot, concentrating on fuzzy, child-freindly models that disguise their machine-like aspects or sleek, roomba-style bots whose form fits their function. And BoingBoing has two stories on robots that mimic the look of living things: one shows video of a robotic (ok, remote controlled) carp, and the other shows a picture of a square-headed, mohawked humanoid automaton. The latter is designed to care for the elderly, and can see, hear and smell (by the looks of it, it can also scare the heck out of the elderly).
Alternately, says Engadget, the next wave of robots could resemble a cloud of bees flying at your head. Although this is technically cyborg and not robot news, we thought you should know that the Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) - the people that brought you the “armed attack dolphin” - wants scientists to submit proposals for the implantation of devices in pupil-stage insects that would later allow humans to control them for purposes of “monitoring, attacking, and generally confusing our enemies.” Sure, ok. But we must ask: how long ’til the bugs turn against their human oppressors?
They eat what-now? Fueling hi-tech armies of unnatural machines could pose a problem, though; that’s why Rice University and USC researchers think we should teach robots to consume bacteria. News.com says that the microorganism Shewanella oneidensis excretes electrons in its waste; in other words, it “spits lightning.” Scientists think that they could develop fuel cells with the bacteria to power “spy drones.”
And now, over to our non-robot correspondent Lifehacker points us to a search engine, Tunefind.com, that wants to “become the Internet’s comprehensive list of music and songs appearing in television and movies.” The interface is cluttered and the selection of “recent movies” is sorely lacking, but if you’re jonesing for the name of the song you heard playing on the latest OC, chances are they’ve got it.
Heartwarming story or cynical marketing ploy: You decide! SE Roundtable found a thread in the DigitalPoint forums about an 11-year-old girl who makes the switch from Google to Yahoo! The story is framed as a conversation between father and daughter, who was thwarted by Google in her attempts to complete her social studies homework. Trying Yahoo!, she exclaims, “I was able to find 2 sites on the first page of Yahoo last night that helped me a lot on my project!” Uh-huh. Now we’re definitely not saying that we don’t think this doesn’t happen to people; on the contrary, we’re sure Google devotees regularly find that Yahoo! hits the spot better in certain situations, and the same goes for Yahoo! fans, MSN lovers and Ask-tronauts. You’ll just have to excuse us if we smell something a little fishy with this too-cute scene - and we don’t mean a robotic carp.
Topics: Technology |