The Maker Faire

The Maker Faire is one of the largest "do-it-yourself" gatherings in the world. The annual event took place last weekend at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, with about 1000 exhibitors and over 100,000 attendees. The event has grown explosively in the seven years since its founding, and is now in several other cities as well. I went with my camera crew to record material for an upcoming episode of Future Talk and was not disappointed. From homebuilt helicopters and submarines to robotic kits used for making your own robots at home, to 3-D printers and soldering classes for kids, there were ingenious devices and eye popping art and sculpture as far as the eye could see. It's all part of the Maker movement (which some prefer to call the Maker subculture), which also includes a flagship publication, Make Magazine. The goal is to encourage people to master technology, learn from each other, and "do-it-themselves". It wouldn't surprise me if some really useful inventions were to come from the people who exhibited at the Faire.

Thinking About Thought

Doing research on artificial intelligence has got me thinking about thought. What are thoughts? Are they mere electrical impulses, or something deeper? Perhaps thought is one of the basic substances of the universe, more basic than matter or energy. Perhaps matter and energy come into being through the action of thought, rather than the other way around. 


If this is true, it might open some interesting avenues of inquiry. For instance, how do thoughts connect to one another? Can we program our minds to attract the thoughts we do want and reject the thoughts we don't want? Is "inspiration" the process of being receptive to ideas that are already floating around us?  And why do certain types of undesirable thoughts, the kind that lead to conflict and war, appear to be so contagious? Gaining insight into these questions may be more important than many of the other things we spend billions of dollars to study.

What is Neurobotics?

Yoky Matsuoka

Neurobotics is a relatively new branch of science that combines neuroscience with robotics. One of its goals is to build prosthetic limbs that have all the functionality of natural limbs and that are controlled by brain power alone. One of the pioneers in this field is Yoky Matsuoka, who appears as a guest on the current episode of Future Talk. Yoky is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" as well as many other prestigious awards. She was the founder of the Neurobotics Lab at the University of Washington, and she has her own nonprofit foundation, YokyWorks, which seeks to develop ingenious engineering solutions to help people overcome their physical limitations. She has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from M.I.T. 


Born in Japan, she originally aspired to be a champion tennis player. A series of injuries ended her tennis career, but observing the process by which her mind and body worked together to heal her injuries inspired her to enter her current field.  To view the episode in its entirety, click here. To view it divided into 3 shorter segments, click here.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is one of the most interesting areas of scientific research. One of the things that makes it interesting is that building machines that can mimic human intelligence requires gaining more insight into human intelligence itself. The truth is, intelligence is poorly understood and not well defined. Is it mostly memory, the ability to store information and retrieve it at will? Is it the ability to recognize patterns, to see how different things are similar and how similar things are different? Is it openness to new ideas? And where do ideas come from anyway? We don't say "I just created an idea." We say "An idea just came to me." Came to me? From where? Are we swimming in an ocean of ideas, most of which bounce off of us and some of which stick to us? If so, how can we attract the ones we want and filter out the ones we don't want? And are there different kinds of intelligence, such as mathematical intelligence and emotional intelligence? I hope to do a series of programs very soon on artificial intelligence, and what it teaches us about actual intelligence. Watch this blog for developments.

Searching for Einstein's gravity waves

Illustration of laser interferometer

According to Einstein's theory, gravity is not a force, but is the result of the curvature of space which occurs in the vicinity of large objects such as stars and planets. Einstein postulated that when large scale violent events occur, such as collisions between stars, space is deformed in such a way as to cause gravity waves.


Scientists are now seeking to prove the existence of these waves using laser interferometers, which can detect tiny changes in the length of an object which might be indicative of gravity waves. Project LIGO, funded by the National Science Foundation, has build two laser interferometers, each one consisting of two perpendicular laser tunnels two and a half miles long. This is obviously extremely expensive and one may wonder if it's worth the cost. But some of the technologies developed for the interferometers have other uses as well, so there's definitely a payback of sorts, even if gravity waves are never found.


Project LIGO is examined on the current episode of Future Talk, which features two Stanford physicists who work on the project. Brian Lantz has his Ph.D. from MIT, and Riccardo Bassiri has his Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. In addition to showing some fascinating video produced by the National Science Foundation, they also give in-studio demonstrations of some of the equipment used in Project LIGO. If you'd like to view the entire episode, click here. If you'd like to view it broken down into three shorter segments, click here.

Agora Startup Idol

For several days this week I worked as a volunteer on Agora Startup Idol at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View. It's a series of four hour live webcasts modeled on "American Idol", except that the contestants are all founders of startup companies and most of the judges are venture capitalists. I worked two days as director and one day as program host. We had lots of technical glitches, especially with the audio and with the video conferencing software, but it's been very interesting nonetheless.

I met some people in the studio from a company called Blueseed, which plans to refurbish a large ship and anchor it outside of San Francisco beyond the twelve mile limit, to serve as a base for foreign entrepreneurs who want to live in Silicon Valley but can't get visas to do so. It may sound like a wacky idea, but they've thought it through pretty thoroughly. When they heard I was a director, they said they were looking for a director to help them put together a fund raising video about their company. We chatted a bit about their company and their proposed video and exchanged business cards. Maybe it will become an opportunity.

My visit to Hacker Dojo

Hacker Dojo is a living example of the computer culture of Silicon Valley. For a modest monthly fee, entrepreneurial-minded software developers can get workspace, high speed Internet access, a place to mingle with like-minded folks and share ideas, and perhaps even start new companies. But even though I'm a veteran software developer myself, my reason for visiting had nothing to do with this. Rather, I was there because I've gotten involved with something called "Startup Idol", which will be a series of live webcasts similar to the "American Idol" TV show, except that all the contestants will be founders of startup companies and all the judges will be venture capitalists, and the Hacker Dojo will be the venue for the webcasts. It's a shoestring production that's underfunded and understaffed, and it's not quite certain that the webcasts will even happen on schedule. Still, it seems to have some interesting possibilities, so I've offered to lend them a hand.