superconcepts

A controller I “designed” during Art class, 1994 I think I’ve used every game controller that has ever existed. The first one I used was a handle with a knob on the end which you twisted to move the bat in Pong up and down. What about today’s 3 controllers? They all have such major pros and cons. If someone could put all the good features into one controller, it would be amazing. Xbox I owned the Duke , and I didn’t mind it, but I have decent sized hands and it still felt like a bowl with buttons so when they brought out the newer controller I felt it was a good move. Ever since then Xbox controllers have been the most natural, comfortable controller out there, without question. I had a 360 controller for over a decade and a half across the Xbox 360 and PC, and it just worked. I love the concave thumbsticks. None of this slippery nubs like the Playstation. I’m cool with the offset sticks, the buttons have always felt solid and the triggers get smoother with every release. It’s a so...

  ‘Silent walking’ is a movement taking Gen Z by storm, but it’s copping criticism https://www.tiktok.com/@ariellelorre/video/7190821620087393582 In yet another groundbreaking show of innovation, Gen Z has created a new trend. This time, they’ve invented walking - without any technology. Imagine, going for a walk, without a podcast blasting dopamine in your ears. No camera to capture those Instagram moments. No Strava to announce your exercise and home address to the world. No speakerphone call to share with other pedestrians who you’ll ignore. Just you, the wind, and the birds. Ms Maio said the first two minutes of her walk were “mayhem”, until she hit a “flow state”, when “suddenly you can … hear yourself.” So stunning and brave was podcaster Maio that she was able to endure 2 whole minutes of anxiety before she was able to mellow into a state of “flow”. Whether she then realised the anxiety reducing effects of technology-absent walking is not ...

 Maybe a new platform isn’t what we need *Other Data includes times you picked your nose, phobias, and broken pinky promises Here we go again, yet another Twitter clone, claiming to have what it takes to steal the doomscrolling crown from Elon Musk’s increasingly evident clusterfuck. Only this time, it has the advantage of a familiar pedigree, a “trusted” brand — that of none other than Mark “Cambridge Analytica” Zuckerberg. It’s what we’ve all been waiting for, an already heavily populated microblogging platform which doesn’t require a working knowledge of Linux to join. A chance to be an early adopter — perhaps even an influencer(!) of the next greatest social media platform, as if it was 2011 when these things still mattered. Meta’s stocks have soared, many have finally ditched their Twitter accounts, and after the ill fated metaverse excursion , Zuckerberg is relevant again. So please excuse me, for not giving a shit. I’ve been an addict, I mean user, of Tw...

Are you ready? If you thought the Social Media fueled era of narcissism, fake news, and attention economy was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet. When it first came out, we had high hopes for Social Media and its ability to democratise thought. In many ways, it has delivered - but in the end, the nefarious forces who run the world bastardised it for their own advantage. Now, social media is a negative force, fueling addiction, abuse, and manipulation. We could rid the world of Social Media today and we would be no worse off. AI has finally, after many false starts, made its splash into the world - yet this is only the beginning. As with Social Media and the Web before it, we have no idea of the potential that it could unleash, though we all know it’s going to be big, and it’s going to change all our lives. So why do I automatically assume it’s going to be a negative force? Is it because I’m scarred by the impacts of Social Media and the Web? Well, they have certainly shown me how human...

I started this blog in the late 00s to write about Transhumanism, Technology, and Virtual Reality. Technology has always been a passion. Growing up in the 80s I lived through an incredible evolution of electronics and computing. Mass mobile communication was a science fiction wonder I read about in the technology magazine Quest . My internet was Teletext , I wrote letters to pen pals. It was a time of hope and wonder for what the future of technology could bring. Until the last few years, this wonder has continued. Smart phones have brought us closer together, and the digital world has matured into a significant piece of our lives. I think it was the Apple watch when things changed for me. The iphone was an incredible, though incremental, world changing gadget. We all know that. But when the Apple watch was announced it became obvious that these technology companies had peaked. They were no longer about pushing boundaries, they were no longer interested in trying to evolve society with...

Photo by Raychan on  Unsplash As most of us have, I’ve grown addicted to the conveniences and dopamine hits of smartphones. So I decided to see how, and if, I would function without one. The night before I was due to go into the office, I took the SIM out of my Pixel and inserted it into my old Nokia E63. In the morning, I got up, grabbed both phones, and headed for the train station. I had the Nokia in my pocket and my Pixel tucked away safely in my bag. I decided to take the Pixel too in case there was something urgent that I had forgotten about that I might need my phone for. I had no intention of using it. Also, I don’t have wifi at work, and I’m not sure if you’ve realised, but smartphones are almost useless without internet. Almost all apps require it, and those that don’t are not apps that you would generally spend a lot of time on. So without the SIM, I wasn’t likely to use the Pixel at all. I arrived at the station and had to check my train pass balance at the machine, an...

I recently visited Zero Latency — a Virtual Reality company specialising in free-roam experiences. I was expecting a fun, entertaining, but overall gimmicky experience. I was blown away. From the moment you put on the headset, you are immersed . What makes the experience so unique is the way that you have to physically interact. It starts when you pick up your gun. It’s really there, physically in front of you on the ground. And when you pick it up, you can see it in the game. You can see it and you can feel it. Then, you look around at your teammates. They are really there — physically and virtually. How far away they look is how far away they really are. You’re even guided by proximity warnings to stop you bumping into them. This actually increases your senses, essential when your eyes and ears are completely covered. The social element makes it so much fun. It’s hard to believe that’s a real person standing next to you. Not like in an online game where they’re miles ...

  The creative potential of Hololens and "Mixed Reality"is huge. There are a wide variety of applications we can develop for it. I believe the demos shown so far are barely scratching the surface of what we can do with the Hololens. Once the imagination of the development community warms up, we're going to see world changing ideas. Industries will be turned upside down, lives will be changed, and millionaires will be made. I'm going to make some assumptions on its abilities, but try and highlight some of the many directions we can take in creating for the interface of the future. Presence Sharing One of the most interesting uses for the Hololens is allowing others to share your experience, and interact with it. This opens up many prospects for communication and collaboration in virtually every industry. Think about how cool GoPro cameras are and what we're able to do with them. Now imagine seeing the video live and being able to interact with...

I've been a gamer for 3 decades, seeing the games industry mature from dots on a screen into a prolific mainstream industry. I'm not afraid of controversy in games. I want to make it abundantly clear: I'm not advocating banning anything.  I've seen many disturbing titles, far worse than Grand Theft Auto. But this was when games were a cult market, and the technology was so basic, it was easy to dismiss the phenomenon. Now, games have matured. They can do more and they reach more people. Like movies and other entertainment, they have the power to influence society. With this influence comes some level of responsibility. It's not an obligation - games are art and should be able to push boundaries - but rape in a video game is not art. It's gratuitous indulgence in a sickness, a sickness that hides behind freedom of expression. If we're going to get philosophical about it (and I guarantee the proponents will) you could ask “where does it end? Should we ...

Whatever side of the gun debate you sit, it's important to remember why this is such a potent issue. It's not so much that guns kill, it's that they empower. Weapons have always elevated humans above other species and their peers, but none quite so much as the gun. And the ability to instantly kill without fail has been a game changer in our social order. This empowerment goes a long way in shaping our entire civilisation. In some countries, it is used to completely control the population in fear, in others, the same idea but a more subtle effect, we are forced to pay taxes and obey the law for threat of arrest at gunpoint. Guns tip the balance of power because of the ability they afford us. That it's the ability to kill is in no way insignificant, but the ability could be anything. They are an enabling technology. Enabling technology elevates individuals and shifts society's order. In the past, this has been fairly limited to weapons; guns, nuclear mis...

George Dvorsky's article about How to Build a Dyson Sphere was absolutely fascinating and I feel the concept deserves much further exploration. "By enveloping the sun with a massive array of solar panels, humanity would graduate to a Type 2 Kardashev civilization capable of utilising nearly 100% of the sun's energy output. A Dyson sphere would provide us with more energy than we would ever know what to do with" Now, this is the kind of ridiculous, overambitious idea that that really captures my imagination. It would be a hyper structure, like the Hoover dam but on steroids, where we would create unfathomable devastation, calling on the skills and labour of thousands, enduring the harshest that nature can throw at us in order to tame it - all in the name of energy. Where the Hoover dam transformed a country, this would transform our entire solar system. But it's not without cost. And that's what I want to discuss. In order to get the materials to...

As image memes gain popularity on social networks and forums, they are fast securing their place as a defining cultural aspect of the early tweenies...(unlike the word "tweenies", thankfully). Most of these images are humourous, as this is great for virality, many are profound, some just witty nuggets of wisdom. And then there is the propaganda. Intended to illicit an emotional response to a political idea, propaganda memes are used to affirm or reaffirm a political bias or dogma. They are often aimed at a very particular niche. If you have any particular political or activist persuasion, you will no doubt have seens endless streams of these one-sided affirmations. At best, they are intellectual masturbation. At worst, it's pseudo-scientific social engineering. The worst form of this that I have seen is data correlation inferences. Just because something happened on a certain date does not mean it caused something else that happened around the same time. It...

Distributed infrastructure, such as that provided by the internet, allows for more reliability - if one node is damaged, it barely affects the rest of the network. It affords more freedom - less reliance on a centralised 'grid' controlled and manipulated by the elite. It is more in-line with nature, creating a symbiotic entity where the sum is greater than its parts, and each participant compliments the rest with cooperation but doesn't burden the whole either. However, the centralised systems we are used to, those which provide our public infrastructure, still have a place, because they can often be more efficient than a distributed system. For example, it would be difficult to run a train system with solar panels on the station roof, so the train taps into the main grid. When assessing and managing the Earth's resources, a global inventory would be important. We would need to decide on the most efficient solution between distributed and centralised infrastructu...

Every day seems to see new reports about incredible robots being developed. Robots that carry stuff for soldiers, robots that perform surgery, and robots that play football. It's all very exciting, but what we really need are robots to make our lives easier. To give us more time to do what we want. To do the mundane jobs and free us up to take on more creative work that robots can't do. But how do we go about this? How do we bring robots and automation into our everyday lives, unless robot intelligence is significantly improved? Well, while this intelligence is improving at a rapidly accelerating pace, there is a huge potential for solving problems using simple, task repeating, programmable robotics. The key is to standardize everything . We have to "put it on rails". As an example, let's look at making an automated dish washing system. We have dishwashers, but we still need to load and unload them. We need to develop 2 things. Firstly, we need a robot tha...

  Photo by Alazar Kassahun on Unsplash Matter Evolution Since the first particles were set in motion, every action has been part of a chain reaction. At first, there were the simplest of elementary particles in an empty universe. Hydrogen atoms — single electron entities, were the pinnacle of complexity. Eventually, a few of them collided, stuck together, and f o rmed more complex atoms, and then molecules. Well, it was a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. These molecules accumulated until there were so many that gravity and magnetism began to have a significant effect. As the gravity increased, the mass increased, and nuclear fusion commenced. Star systems were born. The planets continued a sequence of their own. Eventually molecules increased in complexity by way of chemical reactions in order to form amino acids which then combined to create proteins. These proteins and amino acids increased in complexity until living cells emerged from the chem...

https://www.osvehicle.com/ It should be obvious that Product Longevity is incompatible with capitalism as we know it. Our system relies on continuous consumption to perpetuate the workforce, grow enterprise, and maintain profits. While there may be a capitalist incentive to produce long lasting products in some industries, the fact remains that breaking down just outside of the warranty period is the most profitable circumstance. Constant technological advancements seem to be a licence for excessive consumption, ongoing changes justifying the buy-and-throw-away culture. Things, in general, are not designed to be upgraded, they are designed to be superseded and replaced. How do we address this from a sustainability perspective? It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the decoupling of monetary gain from production is imperative. Would it be possible (profitable) for a company to start up, complete a production run of one very long lasting product, and then move onto another, different ...

The question of designer babies is usually met with disdain. You don't even have to be religious to object to the idea of customising a human before it's born. Indeed, this concept doesn't just "go against nature", it makes us question what it means to be human. The possibility of customising an embryo with the view to having an "enhanced" child opens up a veritable test tube of questions. What are the implications of being able to set a child's intelligence, their strengths, their abilities? Then there is the questions that really hit a nerve: "Would people chose not to have a black baby when they know it will be subject to persecution and prejudice?" The whole issue is surrounded by frightening dilemmas. The problem is, it's already here. We currently screen embryos for birth defects such as spina bifida, and many would argue that prevention or removal or deficiencies is a form of enhancement. Of course, we can try to sep...