John’s Blog-o-Rama

Two things on the web that are REALLY annoying:

* People with blogs that blog about blogging. I know that people’s blogs are their own business and they can write what they want, but honestly, it is SO BORING to read a blog entry about blogging. I don’t watch TV shows that talk about how cool TV shows are, or read magazine articicles about magazine articles, so why would ANYONE be interested in reading a blog entry about blogging? Please, enough already.

* Podcasting Overhype. I’m still waiting for people to shut up about podcasting. Really, who cares??? A bunch of people recording themselves talking, then posting that into an RSS feed so that others can automatically download it to their music player isn’t interesting, and I don’t see why it is so hyped right now. Any VC firm that gives venture funding to a “podcasting company” is made up of idiots. It’s just another way to distribute content, nothing more and nothing less. It’s not a big deal, so please don’t treat it as such. And please don’t blog about it either.

One of these days microsoft will figure it out: their Windows desktop operating systems are now a commodity. In the news today is the announcement that Microsoft has released Windows XP Starter Edition, which is a stripped-down, limited-capability version of Windows XP. Why would anyone ever pay for this trash, when you can get the full Windows XP for free via pirating? Or you could get a fully-featured Linux distribution with more software than you could ever get with Windows? I see no reason why anyone in a developing country would ever shell out any money for that. I think the days are numbered for Microsoft riding the Windows cash cow. My prediction is that for their next OS after Longhorn, they’ll be giving it away for free, and that Office will be included for free as well.

Or maybe this is just a smokescreen to say that they tried?

Found an interesting article about the possibilities of human evolution on MSNBC. The article breaks the possibilities into five categories:

• Unihuman - through reproduction, all races merge into one race
• Survivalistian - post-apocalyptic humans
• Numan - genetically-engineered humans to add capabilities or remove limitations
• Cyborg - man/machine combinations
• Astran - re-engineered humans for space travel and to inhabit new worlds

These are all very interesting possibilities, and certainly all of them *could* happen, but some are more likely than others. I have no doubt that two of them will happen in parallel: Cyborg and Numan. Both are already in the works, such as bionic eyes, bionic ears, and prosthetic limbs, and all of the genetic engineering work going on with animals. I really believe that these two together are the future of humanity over the next several centuries. Astran is a long-term possibility that I also believe will happen eventually. Unihuman is an interesting concept, but I really don’t see that ever happening completely, and let’s just hope that Survivalistian never comes.

This article has really piqued my interest in evolution…I’m going to have to start studying it again. Seems like you need to know more about where we’ve come from if you’re going to influence where we’re going.

Over the last several weeks there have been a number of articles focusing on new “cyberbonic” (my word for it) techologies:

• A robotic suit controlled by electrical signals detected on the skin by sensors
• a non-acoustic sensor that detects speech without sound by picking up the changes in capacitance in the vocal cords
• bionic eyes that will allow the blind to see

R&D into technology used to remove people’s limitations or give new capabilities really seems to be picking up steam, and I believe this is the future of technology. Technology is being “personalized”, meaning that it is becoming an integral part of the normal functioning of people’s bodies. Over the coming decades, I see the development of a “cyberbonic system” (system in the sense of the cardiovascular or nervous system), where technology and humanity are more tightly integrated, so that we can fully reap the benefits or machines and computing. These are some of the first steps toward that realizatoin.

So I gave in 2 weeks ago and exchanged my Time Warner HD cable box for a HD DVR. I’ve wanted this for a long time, but I had heard the early boxes weren’t very good, and I didn’t feel like adding the extra $10 per month to an already overinflated cable bill. But I finally got tired of missing my favorite shows and being held hostage of sitting through commercials. This has turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made lately.

Time Warner gave me the new Scientific Atlanta 8300HD, and now I’m hooked. I love being able to schedule recordings and watch them later, and now I rarely watch live TV anymore since it’s a total waste of time…I don’t have patience for it. The only problem is that I can’t get recorded shows off the box and save them to my computer. I’d love to be able to archive the entire season of Battlestar Galactica, but no dice so far. I’m thinking of settings up a MythTV box, and then just re-recording shows I want to save from the DVR to Myth. Hopefully I’ll figure out or find a solution and talk about that in a later blog entry

Several interesting and related stories in the news recently: one about infantry robots that will carry weapons, another about robotic attack jets, and finally an interview with Ray Kurzweil about the technological future of the military. While this technology is really exciting, it makes me ask a number of questions: Will future wars be won by the side that has the best robots? Will countries show restraint when making a decision to go to war, when they don’t have to worry about human casualties of their own soldiers? When will this type of technology be used by the police? When will SkyNet become self-aware, and can John Connor stop it?

Two interesting articles about the current state and future of bionics: this story about war amputees getting high-tech arm and leg prosthetics, and this article about scientists trying to create artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. In the next 10-20 years, bionics should become a HUGE industry, not just to replace lost arms and legs, but to replace lost hearing, eyesight, and even memory and neural functions. Once brain-machine interface technology matures and becomes more commonplace, the sky will be the limit for what lost human functionality can be restored, and even (gasp!) augmented.

My friend and former co-worker Gary Lerhaupt was interviewed by the Broadband Daily recently about his new Prodigem service. I was the first invitee to Prodigem, and I was really impressed with the works that he’s done; it truly is a very simple way to get your content hosted and distributed. I look for this to really grow and become extremely popular over time. Congrats Gary!

There’s an interesting article on news.com extra about Toyota’s R&D into robotic pods and wearable exoskeletons. The devices in the demo are pretty useless right now, but it’s really good to see more companies putting effort into wearable exoskeletons. Critics quoted in the article are correct in saying that the devices have little use right now, but I think the wearable exoskeleton market will be HUGE in a decade or two, especially for the military. Just image being able to wear a suit over your body that automatically makes you stronger and faster. This would really be useful for the military in that soldiers would be able to carry bigger and more powerful weapons, run faster, jump higher and farther, and be able to cover large distances without a vehicle. As the article points out, it would also be very useful for the elderly, but coupled with a brain-machine interface, it could be extremely useful for the disabled as well.