Instant photorealistic 3D cloud computing
You may think that’s a photograph of the interior of a car but your wrong. Not about the interior but about the photograph. It’s not real. It’s a rendered 3D model.
Big deal. Any powerful desktop computer fitted with the latest powerhouse graphics card can render a photorealistic 3D model given enough time. You’re absolutely right. But this photorealistic image was rendered in real-time using ray tracing. But it’s more, a lot more. You can render it real-time on any computing device that supports a browser or standard Web services calls, including netbooks and smartphones. How is that possible? Read more
Could a tiny pellet power the world?
One small pellet for man, one giant leap for mankind
Next year might just be the best year mankind and for that matter Mother Earth too, has had in ages. If scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab succeed our energy problems will be history after 2010. They are planning to shoot world’s most powerful laser at a tiny pellet containing a few milligrams of deuterium and tritium, isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from water. If all goes well they will create a reaction like the one that takes place at the center of the sun, producing an endless supply of safe, clean energy.
This would mean nuclear fusion, the holy grail of clean energy, would finally become reality. But doesn’t this sound too good to be true? Some scientists think so. They warn it’s all ’snake oil’. Newsweek visited the lab about an hour’s drive east of San Francisco.
Focus on the future: the Bionic lens
Even though I’m nearsighted I don’t see myself wearing contact lenses in the near future. It’s a love-hate relationship. I hate them because they irritate my eyes and yes, I’ve tried them for several years. So I wear glasses but would love to be able to wear contact lenses. Not so much because a choice of shades would be nice but but because of what the future of contact lenses may hold in store for us. Let’s take a brief look at what the labrats are working on. Read more
Singularity and the art of mobile evolution
UK based designer Kyle Bean’s Russian Babushka doll style design of the evolution of the mobile phone is not only original, it’s also very telling. He beautifully objectified a piece of recent technological history. His ‘Mobile Evolution’ could be an illustration straight out of futurist Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 bestseller, “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology”.
Biology merged with machine
In the book Kurzweil examines the next step in the evolutionary process, the singularity, a moment in the future when humans and machines merge and become one. Kurzweil believes this will happen rather sooner then later because exponential growth in scientific and technological developments drives us toward the singularity at an almost unimaginable high pace. Read more
Human Area Network 2.0
Click, BBC’s flagship technology program recently traveled to Japan showing a phone that transfers data through your body to a computer. This technology is called RedTacton and has been developed by Japanese scientists of Nippon Telegraph & Telecom. In a nutshell: RedTacton technology turns your body, your clothes, your shoes and even the floor your standing on into an ‘adsl cable’ that transfers data wirelessly to other RedTacton enabled devices.
Nearly two years ago I was fortunate enough to visit the RedTacton lab in Japan for the Dutch Television show ‘In de Ban van het Ding’…
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Who is David?
Easy boys, easy!
Welcome to my personal site. Though I’m a jack of all trades in essence I’m a storyteller. Whether it’s in print, on television, on the radio or live before an audience I thoroughly enjoy sharing my passion for science and technology.
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