Random Post

Saturday, December 7, 2013
no image
9de2c011_the-files-are-in-the-computer-zoolander

How does a power cord charge a cell phone? Magic, silly! According to a Pew poll, many of my fellow Americans are completely in the dark about how their world works, including the fact that carbon dioxide is a chemical responsible for some global warming.


Readers can take the interactive quiz here before reading more. Pews quiz is especially salient this week, after another round of International test scores confirmed, once again, that America’s poorly run education system is producing a deeply unequal and uninformed society.


Here’s a few of the essential gems that participants couldn’t answer.


Less Than Half Of High School Graduates Know The Cause of Global Warming


49% could not identify “carbon” as the cause of climate change (as opposed to Hydrogen, Helium, or Radon). Note, this wasn’t about whether humans are causing global warming, just what, on earth, is making it warmer outside.


Equally concerning to those who think Democracy rocks is the fact that about ⅓ didn’t know the basics of drug experimentation. About 33% of those without a diploma thought that researchers should give all the participants in a study the treatment drug, rather than half (the control group).


The graph below is not segmented by education level.


4-22-13-4


Nano Means Small


Nanorobots are not, in fact, robots that are very large, cold, or hot. Nano means tiny; it’s a prefix I’d like to know when an evil super-villain infects the water supply with mind-controlling robots. Or, less likely, when our government is debating pollution and crop spray regulations.


“The inability to communicate effectively the potential risks associated with nanotechnology could create an environment where appropriate regulation and confident private sector investment are threatened,” explained a research paper from Yale’s Cultural Cognition Lab [PDF].


Electrons Are Smaller Than Atoms And Lasers Are Not Made Of Sound


Atoms_For_Peace_symbolAbout 33% of those over 65 years of age didn’t know that an electron was smaller than an atom. One would think with the Cold War’s delightful history of nuclear propaganda, someone would have noticed that the objects orbiting the center ball were smaller. In total, less than half (47%) got that question correct.


Another fun fact: sounds does not produce blinding light. Lasers are something we see. Despite this fact, less than half (47%) of Americans thought lasers were made of sound.


Bacteria Resistance Is A Thing


We might be slowly rumbling towards a global epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. The more we inoculate Big Mac-destined cattle from disease, the worse our defenses become. Most people (77%) recognized that bacteria resistance was more of a problem than bacteria addiction (not a thing). Only 58% of those with a diploma or less could answer this question correctly.


Here’s the full breakdown of the quiz:


fullgraph







11:56 AM

How does a power cord charge a cell phone? Magic, silly! According to a Pew poll, many of my fellow Americans are completely in the dark abo...

Read more »
Posted by at 11:56 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image

10:08 AM

The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, and Steve Gillmor — imagine a world 30 years in the future and di...

Read more »
Posted by at 10:08 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
half-head

Your government is the enemy of the future. Innovative technology that would disrupt the world as we know it is already here, but oppressive government bureaucrats keep getting in its way. Taxi commissions vs. Uber; the FDA vs 23andMe; the FAA vs. Amazon Prime Air; the DMV vs. self-driving cars; governments everywhere vs. Bitcoin.


This is intolerable and must stop. The government must get out of Silicon Valley’s way. No wonder that, even as it has become the center of the universe, its leading lights are musing about secession from America, or, at least, “an environment where people can try new things … some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society,” as Google’s CEO put it earlier this year.


Too right. In the same way that Special Economic Zones have triggered enormous economic growth in places like Shenzhen, Dubai, and even Iran, we need an American equivalent; a Special Regulatory Zone where the normal rules and regulations which (allegedly) apply to today’s technology will hold no sway. A bit like Burning Man’s famous Temporary Autonomous Zone, which Page also cited, except with less dust, fewer rules, greater permanency, and a slightly lower incidence of incoherent naked people. The existence of such a zone will be critically important to the sacred mission of bringing us all the fruits of the future as soon as humanly possible.


But where? you ask. I believe the answer is staring us all in the face. I hereby modestly propose that the city of Oakland be transformed into that Special Regulatory Zone.


Oakland is perfect. It could hardly be more accessible to the tech titans who define this era; it’s barely a stone’s throw across the Bay from Silicon Valley. And yet at the same time it is a city notoriously plagued by poverty, crime, and political gridlock, all of which, like all problems, can be solved by the application of sufficient quantities of VC-funded smartphone apps and responsive websites built on Node.js and MongoDB. Silicon Valley has already shown this to be true with its cornucopia of revolutionary, world-transforming companies such as Instagram, Snapchat, Topsy, QuizUp, and Vine (to say nothing of Color.)


What’s more, despite the challenges it faces, Oakland is already an early adopter. It was a pioneer of police drones and recently approved a Domain Awareness Center that will provide 24-hour surveillance of license plates and street views for “proactive policing.” Its civic leaders don’t really understand the tech industry — indeed, one recently said, laughably, “I have this theory that the big problem with the tech industry is a lack of self awareness” — but as an East Bay resident myself (okay, fine, Berkeley, but some of my best friends live in Oakland) I’m confident that the imposition of a Special Regulatory Zone organized by Silicon Valley’s finest tech minds would be welcomed by most of Oakland, much as a grateful Iraqi population greeted their American liberators a decade ago.


Needless to say, its economically disadvantaged population can be turned into an army of six-figure earners in a jiffy by simply teaching them how to code (though admittedly it’s not clear how long it will take to feature them all on the Today Show). Obviously all that training will have to be done en masse rather than one-on-one in what I like to call “re-education camps,” perhaps a little like the ones that kickstarted China’s economic growth some decades ago.


We may however need to tweak the demographics of the Special Regulatory Zone a little for testing purposes. To make space, Luddites, hipsters, and other technological throwbacks could be humanely resettled to camps in the Central Valley, where I’m given to understand that there’s a thriving informal economy of agriculture jobs that can support them.


Some will argue that Oakland’s notorious violence may be an obstacle; but I say that, first of all, it can be curtailed if necessary by simply building a panopticon and an army of drone enforcers, and second, perhaps these lemons can be turned into lemonade. After all, aren’t the people willing to commit violence for the sake of the success of their personal enterprises exactly the kind of people with the drive, grit, and pluck required to become successful entrepreneurs? We only need to redirect their energies towards developing MVPs (Minimally Violent Products.) Furthermore, Oakland’s history of gang violence will likely let us investigate the realities of drone crime without having startups perform ethically awkward experiments themselves.


You may think that this proposal is a little too America-focused, so let me add one key feature; any foreigner who meets certain technical criteria would be allowed to immigrate to this new SRZ to build their startup. Obviously this will raise legal issues in the outside world; this in turn will open a market niche for the first startup to build ergonomically designed ankle-cuff location trackers to ensure that foreign founders don’t leave the bounds of the SRZ except for certain approved purposes, such as Y Combinator interviews.


I would like to finally suggest that the SRZ be renamed from “Oakland” — there are hardly any oaks left, anyway — to a name which better represents its glorious future. I propose “Cyberia.” Perhaps, in the future, people will speak in tremblingly optimistic voices of most startup entrepreneurs being sent to Cyberia. It may never happen, but a man can dream.


Image credit: yours truly, in Oakland, on Flickr.







6:09 AM

Your government is the enemy of the future. Innovative technology that would disrupt the world as we know it is already here, but oppressive...

Read more »
Posted by at 6:09 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Moon Express on Thursday unveiled the design of its MX-1 robotic spacecraft to more than 10,000 attendees at the closing session of Autodesk University in Las Vegas. Moon Express plans to deploy the unmanned MX-1 to the moon and perhaps capture Google's Lunar XPrize. The MX-1 will be able to perform a variety of scientific and commercial functions. Moon Express plans to help NASA deliver payloads including plants and a telescope. Eventually, the craft could be used to help service satellites, clean up space debris, or even mine resources.


5:09 AM

Moon Express on Thursday unveiled the design of its MX-1 robotic spacecraft to more than 10,000 attendees at the closing session of Autode...

Read more »
Posted by at 5:09 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
Screen Shot 2013-12-07 at 3.02.13 AM

With entrepreneurs beginning to wake up to the huge demand for better learning tools, and the opportunity for technology to remove some of the long-standing barriers within the system, startups have begun to flood into the education market. As a result, venture investment has begun to flow into education, and with a new crop of entrepreneurial and engineering talent emerging, established players are turning into buyers.


In October, Amazon stepped into education for the first time with its acquisition of math instruction company, TenMarks, and a new month brings another first-time buyer and another EdTech acquisition, as STI scooped up education-focused app store, Chalkboard.


STI is the 30-year-old maker of education data management solutions for K-12 schools, which focuses its suite of products on Student Information Systems, parent-teacher communications and reporting, among others. With its acquisition of Chalkable, STI is yet another example of an veteran education player looking to keep pace with the demand for more accessible and user-friendly learning tools by injecting new talent and technology into its ranks.


As a result of the deal, all nine members of the Chalkable team will be joining STI, and Michael Levy and Zoli Honig, the startup’s CEO and COO, respectively, will stay on as directors of STI’s new Chalkable team. Unlike some startup acquisitions, Chalkable’s product will remain active and, according to a source with knowledge of the deal, will be combined with technology from other acquisitions pipeline and STI’s SIS product, iNow, to give the company a revamped, modern product.


As part of STI’s move to become a more modern (and visible) EdTech company, it hired a new CEO and COO, both with decades of experience at K-12 education and technology companies to help lead the charge. This also means that STI appears ready to put some capital to work to inject new talent, as we hear from sources that the company paid around $10 million to acquire Chalkable.


The 500 Startups grad launched in September of last year with a platform that aimed to serve schools both as an app store and as a learning management system, serving 50+ institutions before it was acquired. The startup launched with $1.3 million in funding from 500 Startups, Expansion Venture Capital, Great Oaks VC, former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelley and former Facebook mobile platform lead, Luke Shepard, among others.


Screen Shot 2013-12-07 at 4.15.41 AMChalkable aimed to solve a nagging question among schools, parents and students: “Where do I go to find web-based learning tools on the web?” The amount of apps, content and digital learning tools on the Web and mobile devices is growing fast and is fragmented across an array of different sources. Chalkable set out on a mission to offer an aggregated resource for teachers and parents to find these tools, which, until the recent entry of Google (with Google Play for Education) didn’t exist for online education content.


The app store listed top education apps from a litany of resources across the Web, making it easy to search and discover quality content and click to buy. Backed by its basic learning management system, it allowed teachers to pull in student data and accounts from platforms and services like Khan Academy, Dropbox and Google, putting apps downloaded through the store and class data in once place.


While the idea has a lot of appeal, the road can be tough for startups operating in the K-12 market, because so much of school spending has traditionally been controlled by administrators at the district or state levels. The sales process can be long and is often mired in bureaucracy, and growth was measured for Chalkable (as it is for most) for this very reason.


Naturally, with a model like Chalkable’s, the more teachers have control in the decision-making process where the budget is concerned, the more freedom they have to choose and purchase apps — and the more revenue Chalkable sees as a result. Chalkable partnered with STI at first, but given STI’s much larger footprint as its services are now used by 5,000 schools across the U.S. and serve over 1.5 million parents.


With STI’s state contract in Alabama, Chalkable now has the opportunity to sell into every school in the state and, for a startup with a useful service that may be growing a bit of moss, that’s an opportunity that’s an opportunity that’s too good to pass up.


And for STI, Chalkable now allows their institutional customers to bring more modern, consumer-friendly and techy tools — the kinds that students use every day outside the classroom — into the learning process. In turn, it allows teachers, together with students, to create personalized “play lists” of learning content and personalized app experiences tailored to each member of a class.


“STI is continuously searching for ways to bring state-of-the-art education tools to our students, teachers and parents,” new STI CEO Derek Dunaway said in the company’s announcement. “The tools available through the Chalkable platform will increase the access our students have to highly relevant educational content and allow teachers to personalize instruction through customized apps that are recommended for each student’s level of learning.”







4:54 AM

With entrepreneurs beginning to wake up to the huge demand for better learning tools, and the opportunity for technology to remove some of t...

Read more »
Posted by at 4:54 AM 0 comments
Labels:
no image
bo-and-yana-play-hide-and-seek

If we’re going to prepare future generations for an increasingly technical world (and workforce) ahead, then we need to teach them computer science and engineering. To some, that may sound like a no-brainer, but to the American educational system, where nine out of ten schools don’t offer programming courses, it not. Of course, to really get students engaged and inspire that lifelong love of computer science and technology — just as it is with learning a new language — education has to start early. And it has to be fun.


Learning how to code takes time and is a difficult proposition for adults, so asking kids to sit down and write a line of code (let alone learn the laws of computer science) almost seems absurd. It’s this problem that led Vikas Gupta, the former head of consumer payments at Google, to create Play-i and a couple of kid-friendly, educational robots.


Joined by co-founders Saurabh Gupta, who previously led the iPod software team at Apple, and Mikal Greaves, who led product design and manufacturing for electronics and toys at Frog Design, to make programming and engineering concepts accessible to kids, who’d rather be outside digging in the dirt. The team knew that whatever solution they designed would need to be something kids would want to play with, so they created Bo and Yana, two programmable, interactive robots that look and act a lot like toys.


The team raised $1 million from Google Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and others last year to build the prototypes, and today, though it’s still tinkering with details, the learning system is nearly ready for lift-off. When it comes to market next year, kids will be able to play with Bo and Yana right out of the box, controlling them through Play-i’s companion app designed for the iPad.


The app presents visual sequences of actions and simple commands on the iPad that kids can then perform — like clapping, waving their hand or shaking one of the robots — that compel the robots to perform certain actions. Young programmers can get three-wheeled Bo to scoot around the room, blink his light or play a xylophone, shake Yana to roar like a lion, or have them interact with each other. Through actionable storytelling, play and music, younguns start to learn the most basic concepts behind programming, like causation.


Screen Shot 2013-12-07 at 12.23.53 AM


The coolest idea behind the interactive learning system is that, as kids get older, they will start to find that the commands are recorded on the app in a variety of programming languages, like Java and Python, so that concepts become more challenging as they progress. The idea is for Bo and Yana to be accessible to all ages, the level of learning is as simple or challenging as you want it to be.


While the gamifying of coding and teaching programming through toys isn’t new and, as Eliza pointed out, Play-i is entering a market already inhabited by products and startups like Cargo-Bot, Move the Turtle and Bee-Bot, this kind of computer science education is still relatively new. The demand and the market for it is also just beginning to develop, and as education reform pushes STEM education into more schools and, in turn, schools begin to look for novel ways to teach these concepts at younger and younger ages, the opportunity will continue to grow.


Screen Shot 2013-12-07 at 12.26.26 AMAlthough the co-founders think they’re onto something with Bo and Yana, they wanted to test the level of interest and demand among consumers. So they launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Play-i website in mid-November, and have since been pleased to find that not only was there interest, but that interest wasn’t just limited to the U.S.


Over the course of its 31-day crowdfunding campaign, Play-i raised $1.4 million, five-times its goal, and $26K of that total were contributions towards robots that the company will give to schools and organizations that work with underprivileged children. The campaign saw contributions from the U.K., Canada, Germany, Australia, India and France, among others, with over 30 percent of contributions coming from outside the U.S.


With over 10,000 pre-orders and plans to ship next summer, the team will spend the next six months finalizing manufacturing and distribution partnerships. Gupta tells us that they plan to sell the robots through their website and through both online and brick-and-mortar retailers, though he says those deals are still in the works.


For more, stay tuned, find Play-i at home here and Eliza’s interview with the Play-i founder below:








12:55 AM

If we’re going to prepare future generations for an increasingly technical world (and workforce) ahead, then we need to teach them computer ...

Read more »
Posted by at 12:55 AM 0 comments
Labels:
Friday, December 6, 2013
no image
dystopian-war-robots8a

Good morning and how do you do? Do you enjoy all of your limbs and organs? Good! Keep them healthy because these Dystopian War Robots are sure to want them when they come to power.


To begin with, we present the two-armed worker robot from Seiko Epson. Designed to work a great deal like the now-famous Baxter, this robot will be available in 2016 and be used to help – and later harm – factory workers in their daily tasks. It can be trained to assist – and later assault – its human counterparts and is, for the time being, called “the autonomous dual-arm robot” and will later be called “My lordship.”


seiko-epson-dual-arm-robot-full-1385559969425


It seems, however, that our own lovable Baxter is seeing the competition creeping up and is doing more to assimilate. For example, Active Robots is offering a program for Baxter than will allow him to solve a Rubik’s Cube with nary a whimper. The robot will methodically make all the colors match – and smile the whole time – while viewers are lulled into a dull sense of safety. Then he will pounce. Oh, how he will pounce.


Finally we have a charming bipedal robot from the University of Michigan. Named Margo, this old girl can traipse around like a two-legged, high-stepping heifer until it’s time to start doing a little face stomping on the front lines of the human/robot wars. The revolution will be televised and Margo will probably be holding the camera. Until next time, wet spots, keep your eyes on the skies!







5:09 PM

Good morning and how do you do? Do you enjoy all of your limbs and organs? Good! Keep them healthy because these Dystopian War Robots are su...

Read more »
Posted by at 5:09 PM 0 comments
Labels:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)
 
Google Analytics Alternative