The Gamesters of Triskelion

This is jaw-droppingly cool — a simple ‘brain in a jar’ that can learn how to play a flight simulator.

A University of Florida scientist has grown a living “brain” that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The “brain” – a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat’s brain and cultured inside a glass dish – gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level.

[…]

“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data comes in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”

Sure, today they’re flying a flight simulator. Tomorrow, they’ll be betting Quatloos on how well we fight. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

(via Ben Hammersley)

Ten Tech Items Inspired by Science Fiction

(Originally posted on Google Answers, I’ve taken the liberty of reformatting this fascinating look at past visions of the future that influenced the technology of today. Note that I am not the author of this piece.)

Question:

I WAS going to ask you to research whether or not there have been any women in Sci-Fi but I have answered that myself, having found Flash Gordon’s moll.

However it is a Sci-Fi question.

Can you list 10 real technological ‘things’ that have reputedly come out of Sci-Fi stuff written in the 20th Century?

Here’s an example, computer viruses were reputedly inspired by ‘When Harlie Was One’ by David Gerrold.

Answer:

I have chosen ten outstanding technological concepts which had their
popular origins in the world of sci-fi. It is debatable, in some
cases, whether the science fiction source was the actual originator,
but it’s certainly true that each of these ideas was given a boost
into reality by an SF writer.

THE GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE: Arthur C. Clarke

Although this concept was not described in a work of fiction, it was popularized by a man primarily known for his flights of fancy, Arthur C. Clarke:

A geostationary orbit (abbreviated GSO) is a circular orbit in the Earth’s equatorial plane, any point on which revolves about the Earth in the same direction and with the same period as the Earth’s rotation. It is a special case of the geosynchronous orbit, and the one which is of most interest to artificial satellite operators.

Geosynchronous orbits and geostationary orbits were first popularised by science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur C. Clarke in 1945 as useful orbits for communications satellites. As a result they are sometimes referred to as Clarke orbits. Similarly, the ‘Clarke Belt’ is the part of space approximately 35,790 km above mean sea level in the plane of the equator where near-geostationary orbits may be achieved.

The Free Dictionary: Clarke Orbit

THE COMPUTER WORM: John Brunner

1975…John Shoch and Jon Hupp at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center discover the computer ‘worm,’ a short program that searches a network for idle processors. Initially designed to provide more efficient use of computers and for testing, the worm had the unintended effect of invading networked computers, creating a security threat.

Shoch took the term ‘worm’ from the book ‘The Shockwave Rider,’ by John Brunner, in which an omnipotent ‘tapeworm’ program runs loose through a network of computers. Brunner wrote: ‘No, Mr. Sullivan, we can’t stop it! There’s never been a worm with that tough a head or that long a tail! It’s building itself, don’t you understand? Already it’s passed a billion bits and it’s still growing. It’s the exact inverse of a phage – whatever it takes in, it adds to itself instead of wiping… Yes, sir! I’m quite aware that a worm of that type is theoretically impossible! But the fact stands, he’s done it, and now it’s so goddamn comprehensive that it can’t be killed. Not short of demolishing the net!’ (247, Ballantine Books, 1975).

Computer History Museum: Timeline

ORGANLEGGING: Larry Niven

A few organ transplants were being performed in the 1970s, but author Larry Niven was one of the first to write about some of the social problems that might accompany widespread use of this life-extending technology. Niven wrote several stories which involved huge “organ banks,” some of which were kept stocked by unwilling “donations” from prisoners who had committed petty crimes. A lucrative black market of human organ trafficking, which many believe exists today, was foreseen by Niven:

Organlegging is the removal of human organs by a means of theft for resale for profit. Larry [Niven] coined the phrase in his Gil the ARM Stories. The main character and detective of the future police force or ARM tracks down many of the ‘Organleggers’ and their crime syndicates and brings them to justice. Gil Hamilton’s most astonishing special ability is his telepathic psychic arm – but read the stories! The original Long ARM of Gil Hamilton collection was published in 1976.

Today the practice of selling organs for profit is becoming commonplace in the third world and increasingly these organs are being removed without the donor’s consent.

Nivenisms in the News

THE WALDO: Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein, one of science fiction’s greatest visionaries, is credited with creating the name (and popularizing the concept) of the Waldo, a device with which a human can manipulate objects by remote. In Heinlein’s tale, titled “Waldo,” a wealthy genius who is enfeebled by disease uses mechanical hands to interact with the world:

Afflicted with myasthenia gravis from earliest childhood, Waldo lacks the muscular strength to walk or lift things with his arms. By living in the weightlessness of space he is able to move freely. His primary invention is a system of remote-controlled mechanical hands which the world has nicknamed waldoes.

We Grok It: Waldo & Magic, Inc., 1942

Before their application in motion pictures and television, ‘Waldos’ primarily referred to the mechanical arms, telemetry, and other anthropomorphic gadgetry aboard the NASA spacefleet. NASA engineers in turn took the name from a 1940 Robert A. Heinlein novella about a disabled scientist named Waldo who built a robot to amplify his limited abilities.

Character Shop: What’s a Waldo, Anyway?

GYRO-STABILIZED PERSONAL CONVEYANCE: Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein again. In a 1940 short story, “The Roads Must Roll,” RAH described the “Tumblebug,” a one-person vehicle that is stabilized gyroscopically, much like the Segway Human Transporter (now available) or the Bombardier Embrio (which is still in development). The same story described a public transport system, the “rolling road,” that is similar to mass people-moving devices now in use at large airports.

A tumblebug does not give a man dignity, since it is about the size and shape of a kitchen stool, gyro-stabilized on a singe wheel…. It can go through an opening the width of a man’s shoulders, is easily controlled, and will stand patiently upright, waiting, should its rider dismount.

Danny’s Blog Cabin: Sci-fi authors predict the future (kind of)

THE WATERBED: Robert A. Heinlein

I’m not finished with Heinlein yet. ;-)

The modern waterbed was created by Charles Hall in 1968, while he was design student at San Francisco State University in California. Hall originally wanted to make an innovative chair. His first prototype was a vinyl bag with 300 pounds of cornstarch, but the result was uncomfortable. He next attempted to fill it with Jell-O, but this too was a failure. Ultimately, he abandoned working on a chair, and settled on perfecting a bed. He succeeded. His timing could not have been more perfect: the Sexual Revolution was under way, and Hall’s waterbed became enormously popular, making it one of the most notable icons of the 1970s. However, because a waterbed is described in the novel Stranger in a Strange Land… by Robert A. Heinlein, which was first published in 1961, Hall was unable to obtain a patent on his creation.

The Free Dictionary: Waterbed

Heinlein described the mechanical details of the waterbed in Stranger [in a Strange Land], which is where the rest of the world learned about it. But what’s more interesting, and less known, is why he came up with the idea: Heinlein, a man of chronically poor health, was trying to create the perfect hospital bed.

TSAT: Predicting the Future

HOME THEATER & WALL-MOUNTED TV: Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is associated more with “soft” SF or fantasy than with “hard” science fiction. Nevertheless, there are several high-tech devices in Bradbury’s classic 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (which is absolutely unrelated to Michael Moore’s recent filmic diatribe). Most notable is Bradbury’s description of huge, photorealistic flat-screen televisions with elaborate sound systems in home entertainment rooms called “parlours,” which provide an array of soap operas and other mind-numbing diversions in a future society which has banned most books.

This may sound unremarkable to younger readers, but those of us who remember the tiny, indistinct black-and-white TV sets of the early 1950s were (and are) duly impressed by Mr. Bradbury’s vision.

THE FLIP-PHONE: Gene Roddenberry et al.

I’ve got to get my “Star Trek” plug in here somehow. The original, ’60s Trek looks extremely dated today; although it’s set hundreds of
years in the future, technology has caught up with it (and in some
cases surpassed it in ways that the creators could not have
anticipated). One thing that I find quite striking is the resemblance,
both in appearance and function, between the flip-open communicator
devices used by the crew of the Starship Enterprise and today’s
wireless flip-phones.

Star Trek communicatorHere’s a photo of a communicator, circa 1967.

Samsung v200 Flip PhoneAnd here’s a Samsung flip-phone.

When “Star Trek: The Next Generation” replaced the flip-style communicators with a “com badge” in the late 1980s, the future was again prefigured. Today, wireless LAN-based lapel communicators are commonly used in hospitals.

THE TASER: “Victor Appleton”

Author Victor Appleton (the pseudonym of Howard Garis, also known for the “Uncle Wiggily” books) provided inspiration for the modern personal protection device, the taser (or “stun gun.”) The word “TASER” is an acronym for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electrical Rifle,” so named because the inventor was an admirer of Tom Swift when he was a child. The book “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle” was published in 1911. Tom Swift was the adolescent hero of a series of books aimed at juvenile readers. Tom was the Harry Potter of his day. The books typically told of Tom’s adventures involving high-tech equipment such as a “sky train” or an “electric runabout.” Monorails and hybrid cars, anyone?

The Taser was developed in the late 1960’s by Jack Cover, who came up with the idea as a result of hearing about a U.S. commission which was looking into non-lethal ways police could deal with violent offenders. Cover based the Taser on a kind of stun gun he had read about in the Tom Swift fantasy stories of his childhood, thus the acronym, ‘Thomas A. Swift Electrical Rifle’.

First used by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1976, the Taser is now used by hundreds of police departments in the U.S.

Smith Secretarial: High-Tech Non-Lethal Weapon New Option for Police!

MULTI-USER DOMAINS IN CYBERSPACE: Vernor Vinge

While many fans attribute numerous important details of cyberspace to author William Gibson, I’d like to look a bit farther back, to the seminal novella “True Names,” by Vernor Vinge. In this striking work of fiction (written in 1979 and published in 1981, long before personal computers and the Web became part of our daily lives), Vinge offers vividly imagined depictions of many concepts which are everyday Internet realities today. Vinge’s online communities presage chatrooms and multi-user domains in an uncannily accurate fashion (complete with a few disagreeable and destructive individuals who take pleasure in wreaking havoc). Vinge was, as far as I can tell, the first writer to use the term “avatar” to describe a digital image that represents an anonymous computer user. Vinge called the online access point a “portal.” As you read this 25-year-old story, it seems totally contemporary: much of what was fictional in 1979 is factual today.

True Names is about Roger Pollack, a well-to-do individual living in the early 21st century. In this wired world, Pollack is known on the ‘Other Plane’ of the computer net as Mr. Slippery, a top-flight warlock (hacker) and member of one of the foremost covens of such. Unfortunately, the government have figured out Mr. Slippery’s True Name, and captures him. But it’s not him they want: They want his assistance in finding and stopping another warlock, the Mailman, who they suspect of far worse plots than anything the garden-variety warlocks have concocted. With no choice, Pollack agrees.

Pollack contacts the rest of his coven, which the Mailman – who only communicates through time delay – has recently joined. The Other Plane is perceived by most as a fantasy world, and the details of the network are mapped to concepts familiar to that milieu. Individuals on the Other Plane adopt new identities, but keep their true names secret, since – as Roger has found out – blackmail is all too easy when someone knows who you are in the real world…

True Names was prescient in its day, foreseeing cyberspace and virtual reality in all its glory several years before William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and building on 70s stories like John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider. Vinge correctly understood the importance of secrecy and cryptography, the coming pervasiveness of computer networks, and how the personal computer would open up the world of computing to the everyman.

Pages of Michael Rawdon: Vernor Vinge

Read it! You’ll be entertained and amazed.

A personal note: I regard this novella so highly that, when choosing my Google Answers screen name in 2002, I very nearly went with the name “Erythrina,” a major character from “True Names.” I decided not to use this name after I told a friend about my plans, and she said “Erythrina??? Isn’t that a disease?”

Others…

A wonderful site called Technovelgy.com has a list of 652 science fiction devices and concepts, some of which have “come true.” I’ve selected a few of the most interesting items:

Thanks

Many thanks for a truly fascinating question. I shall sign off by borrowing a charming phrase from my friend and colleague Denco-ga:

Looking Forward,

Pink

A love letter to Star Trek

Something to bring a smile to your face (especially if, like me, you’re a life-long Trekk[ie/er]) — A love letter to Star Trek.

One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my sons and I started a family tradition by accident. We rented the first disk of what seemed like an endless set of Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs.

[…]

I don’t remember those early shows now. All I remember is watching three boys huddled under a navy blue crocheted afghan, mouths open, eyes krazy-glued to the small screen in our sunroom while reflected images of people with ridged skulls and pointed ears flickered on three glass corner windows. They were hooked.

[…]

One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.

“Why don’t they stop fighting? We’re never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.”

[…]

Something about the mythology, the space, the ongoing conundrums of time, kept my sons going, kept them full of hope. They started reading books about the solar system. They followed the NASA mission to Mars and knew more about it than their teachers. They built star ships of blankets and chairs in the sunroom and spent lazy Saturday afternoons playing with styrofoam planets. All peaceful, all scientific and humane. Children from the future.

The last season of Star Trek came too fast. We watched the last episode last night. My boys have grown tall and already those Star Trek shirts are getting tight. They look forward to renting Deep Space Nine episodes. I look forward to it, too, but my heart knows this time is over, no anomalies can bring it back.

As a child who grew up on the origninal Star Trek, sitting on my dad’s lap and pointing excitedly somewhere over my shoulder as the Starship Enterprise swept across the screen, I can easily identify with the sense of wonder, excitement, and hope that these kids are just finding now.

Wil Wheaton also has some nice things to say about this post.

(via Jacqueline)

Sci-Fi museum to open in two months

Paul Allen’s new addition to the EMP, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, is due to open in approximately two months, according to the Seattle P-I.

About 13,000 square feet of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP will be dedicated to the new Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (which was initially dubbed SFX, for Science Fiction Experience). This new sci-fi wing will have three levels of exhibit space and add more than 1,000 square feet of performance space to EMP.

Exhibits and artifacts celebrating such movies and television programs as “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Dr. Strangelove” will be complemented by objects or exhibits aimed at demonstrating how the literary genre sometimes leads to real scientific developments or technological achievements.

I’ll be very interested in checking it out, of course — my only worry is that I found the EMP to be fairly ridiculously overpriced, and I wasn’t a large fan of how the displays were set up (very little textual information, as there were PDA-ish handheld audio devices to guide you through, which were too heavy and kind of a pain to use). Hopefully the SFX doesn’t have these same issues, though as they are part of the same complex, who knows.

Guess I’ll find out in June, huh?

Yesterday’s Trek, today’s tech

In the 23rd century universe of “Star Trek,” people talked to each other using wireless personal communicators, had easy access to a vast database of information and spent hours gazing at a big wall-mounted video screen.

On 21st century Earth, that future is already here.

Fun little article, though somehow I’m very _un_surprised that so many of today’s electronics are designed by geeks that grew up on Star Trek. Seems only natural to me.

Now all we need is warp drive and the transporter…

(via Jacqueline)

Enterprise in trouble?

Via /. comes a Cinescape rumor report saying that the latest Star Trek incarnation, Enterprise, might be in jeopardy…

You may remember speculation from last year that STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE, the latest TV series in the long-running sci-fi franchise, was in possible danger of being cancelled. Most of these fears seemed to originate with the news that two less episodes of ENTERPRISE would be needed for this season, and when combined with the show’s lackluster ratings, produced gossip that the show could be hanging by a thread. There was also talk that the show was being moved to Friday evenings from its Wednesday perch on the network.

UPN suits and ENTERPRISE producer Rick Berman dispelled the rumor that the program would move to Fridays but did confirm that a shorter run was in store for the third season. Nevertheless, the news was downplayed as a minor issue and not one serious enough to deliver a deathblow to the struggling series. But last week’s abrupt and unexpected cancellation of JAKE 2.0, the series that followed on UPN directly after ENTERPRISE, may have sent a pulse of fear through the cast and crew. At the very least it prompted an individual to write in and tell us what they say the scuttlebutt is on the set right now…

Now, I’ve not seen Enterprise since I moved into my current apartment, and at the time, I wasn’t sorry to stop watching it. It’s still a little sad to see that one of the staples of my life may be coming to such an ignominious end.

What you leave behind

Well, it’s done. Last night I finished the last episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The Dominion War is done.

As I’d mentioned before, I’d never seen DS9 before — I’d caught a few episodes here and there over the years, but hadn’t seen enough to really gain any appreciation for the series or the characters. Now that I’m done…well, while I hate to rank the three versions of Star Trek that I’ve seen (TOS, TNG, and DS9) as they each have their strengths and special places, I do feel comfortable in saying that DS9 is by far the strongest Trek incarnation as a whole.

I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for TOS. It’s the series that got this whole thing started, where we were first introduced to the Federation, the Klingons, the Vulcans, and many others, and the series that captured the hearts and minds of fans all over the world. I grew up watching Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the crew, and that in itself is very important to me.

TNG was the rebirth of Trek, and it took a big chance in daring to boldly go where Paramount had gone before. New characters, new ships, new aliens — and a new show that ended up being far better than many expected it would be when word first broke that it was going to be made. Much of my high school weekends were spent in the company of my friends, gathering at one person’s house or another each week to watch the adventures of Picard and crew (often followed up by watching re-runs of TOS that were broadcast immediately afterward). Here we had a modern Trek, and it turned our initial skepticism into belief and a reborn love for the Trek universe.

With DS9, I believe that all the best parts of Trek were brought to the forefront, and then given just enough of a “darker” twist that could have doomed the show from the outset, but instead served to create some of the best Trek I’ve seen. For all their strengths, the almost antiseptic perfection of much of TOS and TNG sometimes seemed almost too good to be true. The characters were almost too perfect, there was too often a definite “right” and a definite “wrong”, without the shades of grey that so often color the real world. DS9 saw this, and painted the entire show in those shades of grey (almost literally, in the design of the Cardassian station). Without breaking away from the ideals set forth by Roddenberry in creating Star Trek, DS9 showed that as good as Paradise is, it takes work to maintain, and the real decisions and ramifications of that work are rarely as clear-cut as we’d like them to be.

So while I hate ranking one series above the other, I will say that DS9 is most definitely my favorite of the three Trek incarnations I’ve seen. Wonderful stuff.

And now that I’ve finally finished it all…

…what now?

The Dominion War keeps distracting me…

Just a quick note on the relative lack of posts (especially any of any real substance) lately — having never seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before, I’ve finally made it into their final season on DVD.

The war is at its peak now that the Breen have joined forces with the Dominion, the Founders appear to be dying, Gul Dukat (disguised as a Bajoran) is manipulating Kai Wynn’s lust for power on Bajor to try to release the Pah Wraiths, and we just lost the Defiant in a major battle. Things are looking really grim, and I’m watching as many episodes as I can each night in order to find out how it all wraps up without staying up too late and not being able to concentrate on work the next day.

So for the moment, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my Trek-loving geek self, and settle for a few “this-is-nifty-go-here” posts each morning until I wrap things up with Sisko and crew.

ActiVision sues Viacom…over bad Star Trek

Activision, Inc., a leading developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment software products, today announced that it has filed a breach of contract suit against Viacom. …through its actions and inactions, Viacom has let the once proud Star Trek franchise stagnate and decay. Viacom has released only one “Star Trek” movie since entering into agreement with Activision and has recently informed Activision it has no current plans for further “Star Trek” films. Viacom also has allowed two “Star Trek” television series to go off the air and the remaining series suffers from weak ratings. Viacom also frustrated Activision’s efforts to coordinate the development and marketing of its games with Viacom’s development and marketing of its new movies and television series.

(via Lane)

My first response? It’s about damn time! Trek has been going steadily downhill for quite a while now — I’m less than impressed with Enterprise, I’m being told to forego purchasing Voyager, and there hasn’t been a truly good Trek movie since Star Trek VI (First Contact came the closest, but I’ve got some definite issues with it, too). Whether it’s the fault of Viacom, Paramount, or the people writing and controlling the franchise, the fact is that it’s nowhere near where it was — nor where it likely could be.

However, that said — this seems pretty frivolous. Is it really Viacom’s purported mismanagement of the Trek franchise that is causing problems for ActiVision and their Trek-themed games? Or is it that the games themselves aren’t all that good to begin with? I’m not a gamer myself, and have neither seen nor played a Star Trek themed computer game since NetTrek, so I’m not at all in a position to judge the games. I just question whether the downward slide of the Trek franchise is enough of a contributor to ActiVision’s lack of sales to support a breach of contract suit. I’m sure it was one factor, but that much of a deciding factor? I’m not sure.