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| Ray Kurzweil |
I went to an interesting talk at the Commonwealth Club a few days ago by Ray Kurzweil, the well known author, inventor and futurist who has spent decades studying human intelligence and machine intelligence and trying to enhance them both, and who is especially known for his work on the "technological singularity". He was discussing his latest book, "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed", in which he attempts to reverse engineer the human brain to figure out how it works, and then find ways to apply that knowledge to make both men and machines more intelligent than ever before, perhaps merging the two to create a new kind of being altogether. Although he has his critics, Kurzweil's past predictions have proven to be surprisingly accurate, and he's certainly one of today's most interesting and stimulating futuristic thinkers. I'll have more to say when I finish reading his book.
One of the most perplexing issues for designers of mobile computing devices is how big to make the screen. On the one hand, we want it to be as big as possible so it can contain more information, and on the other hand we want it to be as small as possible so it's easy to carry. Some have suggested that the solution is to create a screen as thin as a piece of paper that you can fold up and put in your pocket, or roll into a tube. Now, researchers at the University of Cincinnati's Novel Devices Lab have demonstrated that it's possible to do just that! In a breakthrough "proof of concept" experiment, using a technology called "electrofluidic imaging film," they've demonstrated that such thin film displays can indeed work. In addition to the advantage of being easy to carry, they can display sharp colors even in bright sunlight, and require very low power and no heavy batteries, since they get their energy directly from ambient light. Of course, there are many issues still to resolve, and it will probably be years before these devices are commercially available. But it's a big step forward.
