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Ten Years Of Technovelgy
I just wanted to take a moment at the start of this year to note that I've been doing the Technovelgy site for ten years already! It doesn't seem that long.
Although longtime readers have their own favorite stories, I thought I'd link to a few of mine. With over 4,000 stories, I can't really pick the best ten.
Thanks, readers, for your interest and your contributions. Have a great 2014!
Bill Christensen
And don't forget the 2400+ science fiction inventions and ideas from over 750 different sf works.
Is a wrestling robot possible?
RoboShiko!
(HOAP-2 image courtesy CEATEC Japan 2003)
Philips FluidFocus - a variable-focus lens system with no mechanical moving parts - was demonstrated at CeBIT (Hannover, Germany) on March 3rd, 2004.
(See Philips' Fluid Lenses Bring Things into Focus.)
In his excellent 1999 novel Starfish, science fiction writer Peter Watts wrote about "cultured brains on a slab" - a "head cheese" - that could pilot a plane as well as a person. Now, University of Florida scientist Dr. Thomas DeMarse has created a "brain in a dish" that can interact with a computer flight simulation.
(From Science Daily)
VirtuSphere provides a mechnical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking.
(From VirtuSphere immersive virtual reality machine)
Scientists and science fiction athors have been thinking about emergency rescues in space for almost as long as they have thought about voyages in space.
(From Von Braun Rescue Vehicles)
Truly light and flexible displays like those shown below from Plastic Logic in Britain are now in the pipeline, but were not quite ready for the current trials.
(Flexible e-paper news article with graphics)
A paralysis beam based on a 7.5 million candlepower strobe light from Peak Beam Systems is under development by the US Army.
(Maxa Beam from Peak Beam Systems)
A robot chef was cooking octopus balls autonomously at the Osaka Museum of creative industries last month. The device was created by Toyo Riki of Japan.
(Robot chef makes octopus balls)
In their recent Living Planet Report for this year, the World Wildlife Federation is suggesting that this planet's resources won't be enough for us.
(Living Planet Report [pdf])
Behold: PlantBot - solar seeking botanical augmentation.
(PlantBot by the Play Coalition: Neil, Dane and Joe)
When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship's information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world's major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him...
(Read more about Clarke's Newspad)
Japan's robots are facing massive layoffs as a result of a deep recession; customers all over the world are buying fewer cars and other products that manufacturing robots build to perfection.
Chief Technovelgist
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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