Clippings

Posts for Tag: technology

More Monitoring Devices

I was just speaking with another reviewer here about how surprisingly common it is for manufacturers to copy each other’s designs. To ‘port an entire line of products, though, is a little more unusual: iHealth has just announced an app-enhanced digital scale, blood pressure monitor and baby monitor that mirrors Withings‘ entire lineup, gadget for gadget.

The first of the trio is the iHealth Blood Pressure Monitor, available now through their site for $100. In October, the company will ship their iBaby Monitor ($200) and the iHealth Digital Scale ($70). It’s interesting to note that two of the iHealth gadgets are priced lower than their Withings counterparts (Withings have not yet settled on pricing for their baby monitor).

via CultofMac

Bionic Men and Women

It's fair to say that I watched the NewsHour's feature on prosthetic devices in rapt attention. I'm at the low end of devices and often laugh at myself as the $6,000 Man, but I can't help but marvel at what's available to help people who need it. It's amazing and inspiring to think not just of how much better this technology will get but how much more users will be able to do. 

Doing Battle with the Luddites

More than once I've listened to friends and acquaintances scold me about how evil technology is and how it's destroying our social culture. I was glad the see the New York Times take up the theme today. After acknowledging the argument, they take it straight on.

THEN again, this is not the first time that the appearance of home media has caused an outcry — perhaps needlessly, in hindsight.

“If you go back 200 years, there were similar complaints about technological devices, but it was books at that time,” Dr. Koepnick said. “The family room filled with different people reading books created a lot of concerns and anxiety, particularly regarding women, because all of a sudden they were on their own, their minds were drifting into areas that could no longer be controlled.”

Likewise, the emergence of television led to decades of hand-wringing over the specter of American families transformed into sitcom-addicted zombies. Dr. Koepnick also points out that those evenings of family television usually involved a struggle over the channel knob, or later, the remote.

I have to admit I've spent a few too many evenings watching the people I'm with pore over their phones or laptops and leave me craving engagement. But maybe the long term effect isn't so bad.

Even before iPads, there was evidence that Web-centric home life might not, in fact, be eating away at family unity. Barry Wellman, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the effect of technology on social communities, said that his research supports the findings of studies like a 2009 survey of 4,000 people by a Canadian market research company indicating that people believe technology is bringing the family together, not pulling it apart, by a substantial margin.

Wish we could lay this battle aside and just get on with our lives

Interfacing Your Brain with Computers

What's the Most Recent Development?

Renowned scientist and professor of neurology at Brown University, John Donoghue has made incredible advances in interfacing the human brain with computers, allowing paralyzed people to move objects by simply using their imagination. A small chip implanted in the brain picks up the right neural signals and beams them into a computer where they are translated into moving a cursor or controlling a computer keyboard. "By this means, paralysed people can move a robot arm or drive their own wheelchair, just by thinking about it."

What's the Big Idea?

The implications of a brain-computer interface are formidable, from transferring human consciousness onto a computer—in other words, immortality—to using the technology to read people's minds. Military establishments are interested in Dr. Donoghue's research in order to enhance interrogations methods. Were interrogators able to interface the mind of a prisoner with a computer, perhaps information could be extracted they could use to prevent criminal acts and save lives. It seems the next phase of evolution will be synthetic, rather than purely biological. 

Read it at The Guardian

via bigthink.com

I am so thankful for ideas like this. So much is available to us now that patients could not take advantage of ten years ago or so. What ideas like this will become commonplace in another ten years? Bioness is unbelievably helpful to me, and in a short time it will probably be outdated, just old technology.