Over the weekend at Javits Center, Wired magazine held its NextFest--“A festival of innovative products and technologies that are transforming our world.”
I’m thinking Michael Crichton’s Westworld, circa 1973. I never could understand Yul Brynner’s leap from grumpy King to malfunctioning Cowboy, but I found the movie disturbingly captivating even if I didn’t exactly comprehend the story.
Like most of Crichton’s tales, Westworld follows a premise of failing, flailing technology.
Rumors have spread about a remake of Westworld with “The Cell” director Tarsem Singh for 2007. No surprise, the closer technology gets the more we fear it until it’s unknowingly become a part of our regular lives.
Sort of like 15 or so years ago when home automation was in its infancy. Homeowners could remotely fill up their tubs as they were on their way home from work, quite often to find a flood waiting for them. Now, who would expect that to happen?
NextFest showed some amazing stuff that we may think of as novelty today but before we realize it will be a part of our lives. Sure, there’ll be kinks. But it’s all about getting in step with behavior. We were intrigued by these exhibits:
The Shadow Hand is the closest robot hand to the human hand.
The Future Warrior Concept (FWC) from the US Army’s Natick Soldier Center is a tailored integrated system from an electro-spun Combat Uniform to a biomechanically engineered Headgear Subsystem.
In MobZombies, the player's movement in the physical world correlates to the game space blurring the line from fiction to reality.
A Flower Lamp ‘blooms’ when energy consumption in a household has been low for some time, reflecting the cycles of local energy use.
Created by using a suspended fog generating device, the FogScreen makes objects seem to appear and move in thin air. It works with standard video projectors.
The Hug Shirt (F+R Hugs) allows people to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance. Sensors feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators recreate the sensation to the shirt of the distant loved one.
Accenture’s interactive wall is a scalable, networked, high resolution, touch screen interface that tracks usage patterns and user preferences.
And, finally of course, Hanson's humanoids. Check out Android World.
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