Protecting your ideas!

Protecting your ideas/work is generally a good practice nowadays. Unfortunately, turning to big organizations in order to protect your work can take a lof of time and effort, not to mention registration fees. Right now we are trying our best to find a better solution so you can protect your ideas when you submit them here at EnvisioningTech.

Until we come up with a proper solution, you could use the lincensing schemes provided by CreativeCommons.

Here is a small excerpt taken from their website:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.


We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

In case some of you might be well informed regarding this matter, please contact me ASAP.


Andrei~

Brain Controlled Computing – Random Thoughts?

How far are we from controlling the computers around us simply by using thoughts? It’s just a matter of time until someone will reverse engineer the brain electrical impulses, mapping the signals to real actions. But then what? While I can’t really answer these questions, I can think of some issues that would make the actual interaction between humans and computers more difficult than imagined.

Let’s take the example where a user wants to send a simple text message. The question is how would the software make the difference between what the user is trying to “type” and the random thoughts going through his/her mind? Let’s face it, the human thinking process is so complicated and messy that we usually find it hard to deal with it ourselves! Maybe the answer to this question can be found if we analyse the way we decide when to speak when we communicate with other people.

Some of you may say that we could probably focus just enough to “type” a sentence in a text field. However the possibility of inserting a “random” word inside the sentence must be considered. In this case there should be a mechanism to validate that our text does not contain any undesired words or characters. Maybe we can use a neutral thought like “happy birthday to you” or a visual area to interact with, like in the following example:

This is just a simple example and I know for sure that it is just a temporary and inelegant solution. As I have said earlier, the way we normally control whether or not we are going to say what we think could prove to be the key to this validation issue.


Andrei~

Neuromancer

I’ve recently come across a SF novel by the name of “Neuromancer”. Maybe some of you have heard about it, or maybe not. The point is that if you are into SF and you like technology/computers, then this is a “must read” book!

I found so many connexions to recent and past SF movies that I can’t even start counting them. For example: the world envisioned by William Gibson looks pretty much alike the scenario in Matrix: humans can enter the cyberspace, also known as the “matrix”. And it doesn’t stop here! Cybernetic implants, stim packs, firewalls referred to as “ice” and later on “Black Ice” (ring a bell?) and much, much more.

Here is a short description of what awaits you:

Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway–jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way–and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance–and a cure–for a price….

If you are interested in getting a copy, then you can find them pretty cheap at Amazon.

Read it and tell me what you think about it. I’m always here for a discussion! :)

Andrei~

Update: Apparently there’s a movie based on the book, coming out in 2011. Check it out on imdb.

Starting with the vision

What is your vision about this little piece of space rock we all call Earth? You see it pretty much like everyone else. A spheric blue object, covered partially in clouds, spinning around the sun long before any of us were born.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much we are used to seeing the universe through the pictures provided by the media? Have you noticed how 2D our image of Earth and space is?

What if you took some time to close your eyes and “zoom out” from your chair? Imagine you are getting further away from your desk, house, city….continent. Try to picture yourself floating in space, looking down to where you started. How do you imagine Earth would look like?

Seriously now, try closing your eyes for a minute and imagine this voyage.

What if this is what you see (on the right side)?

What if everything you have imagined is changed now? How about we take this to the next level…the universe.

When we think of our solar system we usually imagine something like this:

But that is nothing like the real solar system we live in. It is actually a rather messy and entangled universe. If you wish, you could use this photo as reference.

Loosing our frame of reference in this entangled universe can cause quite the confusion. Imagine being an astronaut 1000 years from now, when everyone can have a spaceship, just as we have cars nowadays. You’re taking off from Earth, and before you know it you’re 40 million kilometers away  (about half the distance from Earth to Mars). You’re taking your eyes away from the window just for a second, but enough to loose sight of Earth. Right now the Earth looks pretty much like any glittering dot around you. Just try to imagine being there, in the middle of nowhere, with no map and compass. Which way would you go? You can’t really just head somewhere hoping you would hit a highway. Heh, it really gives a new meaning to the term “lost”, doesn’t it?

My point is that before mankind decides to send people to Mars, maybe they should very well take some time to figure out an orientation system. I’d hate to wake up in the middle of the trip and find that I’m completely lost!

What are your opinions on this matter?

Andrei~

Hello and welcome to EnvisioningTech!