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I would agree that the review is somewhat off the mark, claiming that this is a new field of research. I've just finished reading Out of control - The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World by Kevin Kelly which covers artificial evolution in some depth (up to 1994 when the book was written).

If you're a layman who wants to find out more about this fascinating field then it's well worth a read (for free, online).

Loren Carpenter launches an airplane flight simulator on the screen. His instructions are terse: "You guys on the left are controlling roll; you on the right, pitch. If you point the plane at anything interesting, I'll fire a rocket at it." The plane is airborne. The pilot is...5,000 novices. For once the auditorium is completely silent. Everyone studies the navigation instruments as the scene outside the windshield sinks in. The plane is headed for a landing in a pink valley among pink hills. The runway looks very tiny.

There is something both delicious and ludicrous about the notion of having the passengers of a plane collectively fly it. The brute democratic sense of it all is very appealing. As a passenger you get to vote for everything; not only where the group is headed, but when to trim the flaps.

But group mind seems to be a liability in the decisive moments of touchdown, where there is no room for averages. As the 5,000 conference participants begin to take down their plane for landing, the hush in the hall is ended by abrupt shouts and urgent commands. The auditorium becomes a gigantic cockpit in crisis. "Green, green, green!" one faction shouts. "More red!" a moment later from the crowd. "Red, red! REEEEED!" The plane is pitching to the left in a sickening way. It is obvious that it will miss the landing strip and arrive wing first. Unlike Pong, the flight simulator entails long delays in feedback from lever to effect, from the moment you tap the aileron to the moment it banks. The latent signals confuse the group mind. It is caught in oscillations of overcompensation. The plane is lurching wildly. Yet the mob somehow aborts the landing and pulls the plane up sensibly. They turn the plane around to try again.

How did they turn around? Nobody decided whether to turn left or right, or even to turn at all. Nobody was in charge. But as if of one mind, the plane banks and turns wide. It tries landing again. Again it approaches cockeyed. The mob decides in unison, without lateral communication, like a flock of birds taking off, to pull up once more. On the way up the plane rolls a bit. And then rolls a bit more. At some magical moment, the same strong thought simultaneously infects five thousand minds: "I wonder if we can do a 360?"

Without speaking a word, the collective keeps tilting the plane. There's no undoing it. As the horizon spins dizzily, 5,000 amateur pilots roll a jet on their first solo flight. It was actually quite graceful. They give themselves a standing ovation.

The conferees did what birds do: they flocked.

From Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control"
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html

a) Sure, of course Lego is pretty neat. You can make things from it.I especially like large-scale models with difficult engineering skills on offer (suspension bridges, etc).

b) Under most circumstances, I really do mean *you* can make things from it. For most purposes, I'd much rather have plain wooden blocks, or tinkertoys, or a box full of random vaguely stackable stuff-thing-items.

Lego are too 90-degrees, snap-to-grid oriented. Just like in a drawing program, snap-to-grid is sometimes nice, but I usually get annoyed by it, and would rather give it up as an option than have it on full-time. Blocks and other things can be manipulated to the degree of precision the user has to apply.

I wish these blocks (Kapla) weren't so expensive:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000620.php

Also, I feel bad about any permantization of lego constructions -- it's like building models out of pennies, then welding them all together. If something's made out of scrap and leftovers, I feel no such compunction.

And the colors! Sure, the enthusiast will have barrels of all the right colors he needs for a 3D Mona Lisa reconstruction, but mostly I've seen piles of cloying, crayon-pack colors. Never enough black, never enough grey, never enough light blue.

Hmm. Maybe I should put in action my plan to buy lego whenever I see them in thrift stores, so I could have enough to not feel bad if they're tied up in one thing rather than another, and to get enough of a decent color choice.

But still, that limited range of motion! The perpendicular angles thing!

Also, I don't know if lego tech has vastly improved, but as a kid I always wanted the interlocking sections to be just slightly grippier. After all, if we're going to live with them, might as well get the maximum benefit! It's too easy for a lego skyscraper to crack in the middle -- they're too susceptible to lateral force!

timothy

Standing sounds like a good idea, but walking? I keep getting this hamster image in my head.

It's surprisingly good for some things. I bought a treadmill off Craigslist and added a sheet of wood where I can put my laptop. I really like it for reading and replying to email and reading stuff on the web. For things where I have to type a lot, 1.5 mph plus or minus seems good. For pure reading, I'll go up to 3.3 mph if I'm feeling peppy.

It's specially nice first thing in the morning when I'm still a little groggy. I'll put on one of the Run to Cadence albums, pop open Google Reader, and do two or three miles of news and email.

For some reason, though, I usually can't walk and code at the same time. (I can chew gum while coding, though.) For coding I just stop the treadmill and use it as a standing desk. If I do that continuously for a couple of hours, I'll switch between the standing position and sitting at a table with a regular chair or an exercise ball.

>>How hard would it be to design devices that would set themselves up in a self-managed mesh network which requires no centre?

You might want to check this out : http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php - esp chap#2. He talks about sefl-managed 'entities' without any central control.

Its a good read - esp in the light of web2.0 and social networking. So apt.

And this is what Kevin Kelly says in his excellent book Out of Control (The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World). Start with small and dumb machines, follow nature and gradually build up the complexity. The efforts of creating one machine which does it all is going to fail.

You can make one out of money:

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001118.php

It's kind of cool, but for me, it still fits into the 'They make what?' category.

Link here: Speculations on the Future of Science - it's a movable type blog, so moderated comments welcome...

How much power is being used even though that appliance is off? Measure with this: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001067.php -- Kill-a-watt.

Use this to turn off power to external peripherals when you turn your PC off: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001087.php -- "hen you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets."

These are tiny amounts of power, but they add up.

How much power is being used even though that appliance is off? Measure with this: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001067.php -- Kill-a-watt.

Use this to turn off power to external peripherals when you turn your PC off: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001087.php -- "hen you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets."

These are tiny amounts of power, but they add up.

You plug your PC into the main socket, and then plug your printer, scanner, monitor etc into the other sockets. When you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets.

I'm not sure if they're trying to say that our bodies don't naturally glue themselves back together or that we don't apply glue to cuts, but either way, they're wrong.

Yes, but until my car stereo accepts USB connections, I'll be burning CDs.

Check out the VR3 ( http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000855.php ) or the MP3OnChannel (http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050324/ ).

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools never fails to give me ideas for spending my money.

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/index.php

Just from reading the review, this reminds me of Out of Control, which may be a bit outdated but is still a very relevant look at similar concepts.

now this is a cool clock - it is mechanical and keeps time for 10,000 years ! http://www.kk.org/tools/page6-9.pdf

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• The Daily WTF - A daily look at source code that can make one cringe, laugh, and/or cry (site, feed)
• Astronomy Picture of the Day (site, feed)
• Stupid Security (site, feed)
• Cool Tools - "A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true." (site, feed
• EFF's minilinks - see tomorrow's Your Rights Online posts today (site, feed
• Your Gmail inbox (atom feed)

Wood pellet stoves are an alternative way to heat a home. The stoves use wood pellets, which look exactly like rabbit food, and are made out of dried recycled compressed sawdust from lumber mills that otherwise ends up in landfills.

Because the stoves are so efficient, there is almost no smoke or creosote produced, in fact the exhaust is barely even hot so the stove doesn't need a masonry chimney and can be installed anywhere a tin metal liner can be put in, either directly into the roof, or sideways out a wall. They can be stand-alone stoves on legs in the corner of a room, or chimney inserts using an existing chimney. Unlike wood stoves, pellet stoves work well in urban environments because of little exhaust and no need for a chimney and can be installed in any room.

The stoves require electricity to run so if you loose power it won't work, which is a notable drawback, although there are solutions such as a generator or battery back up. I personally have a long extension cord to an inverter in my car in the driveway in case of a heating emergency. The pellet stoves also make noise with the blower fan and turning augur, this has become less an issue with more recent stove technology which is significantly quieter.

Or, your could combine the spoon and fork and get a SPORK!

You wanna know what I think? Maybe not. Anyway, here's what I think...

I think a bunch of marketting types have been watching Star Trek twenty-four hours a day for several years now in an effort to get to know their most covetted target audience, the alpha geeks. They've come to the conclusion that we technical types fantasize about an all-knowing, all-powerful tricorder type of device which confers success, smartness, and admiration upon its owner.

And I think they're mostly right. Most of us want success, smartness, and admiration, and we'll happily pay for a device that'll bring it instantly. The perfect all-in-one gadget is the holy grail that geeks sought long before the invention of the transistor. It's the reason for the constant evolution of the Swiss Army knife, and the Leatherman. It's the reason that people keep building cars that fly, sort of. The gadget that beats all other gadgets is the nerd version of a no-hassle weight loss system, hair growing tonic, love potion #9, etc.

But ultimately, they're wrong. When we get over our dreams of world domination and ultimate hipness, most of us realize that what's really important is having the right tool for the job, not some feature-laden gadget that flies, sort of.

After all, true fans realize that even on Star Trek, the tricorder, camera, phaser, etc. are all different devices.

The fact that you have to ask slashdot means your security is weak and needs a serious audit, pronto.

re: shiny things, consider a biometric fingerprint scanner.

Kevin Kelly also recommended a website for this type of work; you can see his recommendation at his "Cool Tools" page for a company called Pictopia. I haven't used them (yet) but they look good from here.

There is a good article by Kevin Kelly on "Printing small quantities of books cheaply."

In addition to heavy-duty self-production he also talks about his experience of

I recently produced a 120-page book that reproduced a sketch journal I kept while bicycling across America. I scanned the images and sent the printer the files of the completely designed book. They sent me back 200 copies at $3.23 per copy. And I could have ordered as few as 10 books.

There is also a longer descrition of Kelly's Latest Publishings in Wired - Kell's Catalaog of Cool.

The -thing- about personal websites is they aren't supposed to be geared towards any audience other than the author (and possibly the author's friends). If you come across a personal website you think is bland and boring, you're not the audience. If you find one you find amazingly interesting, you might jive with the author.

I think what you propose, while the ideal, is idealistic and probably a bit unrealistic. Asking people to write about their lives without focusing on themselves is a bit of a contradiction.

to have been influenced by matrix.

And the matrix was heavily influenced by these two books:
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
&
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly (you can read the whole book online)

Just though I'd share, I found both these books amazing and giving me better insight into the Matrix, as well as introducing me to new topics.

to have been influenced by matrix.

And the matrix was heavily influenced by these two books:
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard
&
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly (you can read the whole book online)

Just though I'd share, I found both these books amazing and giving me better insight into the Matrix, as well as introducing me to new topics.

Not all of it requires a plug, and not all of it meets your "expensive" criteria, but it's full of great, high-quality stuff you didn't know you needed.

--H

This is the All Species Foundation, Kevin Kelly's latest brainchild.

Kevin Kelly basically figured out how to give away a billion dollars.

This is the All Species Foundation, Kevin Kelly's latest brainchild.

Kevin Kelly basically figured out how to give away a billion dollars.

I assume you noticed, but WIRED has no clue whatsoever about anything that has happened/will happen in the world.

They were the never-ending boom crowd. They were wrong.

Besides, NASA hardly follows its own roadmap, so why should it care about some second rate rag way behind its prime pouting in the dark about how the world economy will be so wonderful and strong forever, so that the US government will even adequately fund space travel---wow that would be nice, wouldn't it?

I can see it now, the NASA officials before Congress: "But we promised Wired Magazine! This isn't fair, you idiot politicians!" (They would be right about the second part)

Addendum: you might say that less funding is "adequate".