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Spherical Motor Creation
There's an interesting story concerning the development of a circular based-motor. What's interesting about this motor is that it can spin to apply force in three dimensions -- some researchers at Johns Hopkins unveiled it recently. It looks pretty cool -- many magnets involved in it.
If you didn't mind sacrificing a tiny bit of the spherical motion, you could have a pair of cup-shaped low-friction supporters on either side of the ball. Maybe, though, you still couldn't get the torque to move the arm around...really powerful magnets come to mind.
"spin to apply force in three dimensions " Won't gyroscopic effects make it hard to manage?
and at what end do I light it?
There are few things that humans need. A good smack upside the collective head would be a good start. Robots are ok, and graceful robots will be fun, but they won't change the stuff that really matters, and more leisure time (for whom? the rich who own the robots, that's whom) is not going to solve our problems.
Technology as a panacea has fallen flat on its ass, and I don't think anybody here can name me a technology that has fulfilled this oft-repeated promise of turning our lives from Pb into Au.
More involvement and commitment to building up the fund of the Common Good is the only "solution" to improving life for everyone. And no system that produces these machines is going to care much about that. So, three guesses what this technology will be use for?...
You got it. Weapons.
Isn't it nice to have a mechanism that can accurately track a moving object in three dimensions without the "wiggle" of traditional solutions? Whether its on the nose of a refitted A-10 or on a mobile SDI particle beam carrier, this will give Air Force-types around the world wet dreams and the cold sweats.
Sure, you could use it for telescopes and civilian rocket motors and benevolent articulated thingamadoohickies, but this stuff will be expensive in its first couple of generations, and by the time it gets down to us it will have been heavily patented. (Even though public money was invested in the research phase.) The forms we will be allowed to use it in will be tightly-controlled by corporations. Nothing unprofitable may exist.
What we need isn't dancing robots. It's the freedom to rip off these ideas for ourselves, and pass along the benefits. We need to grow up, take some fucking responsibility, and stop playing "Hollywood" and "Wall Street"... two of the sickest games we've ever dreamt up. I support the theft of intellectual property. I would like some anarchist group (Open Source will do) is hard at work reverse-engineering this as I write. Hope springs eternal.
thex23
Thieves. Liars. Poets.
Spherical joint? Cool! How do I roll one?
I don't find it surprising or difficult to believe at all. A lot of the best problems in mathematics and computer science are very easy to state while being difficult to solve.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
(Granted, it sort of depends on how you define "technology".)
Medicine certainly qualifies as technology. We wouldn't know a fraction of what we do today without such technological advances as microscopes and radiology.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I don't care what you say - look at the driving force behind computing and the internet:
pr0n.
Once it becomes possible to build a realistic sex droid, (oops - already there, realdoll.com, well, for necrophilliacs that is) it will be THE driving force behind robotic technological development. Unfortunately, the cost of use will probably be so high that they'll be more expensive than human hookers for some time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think they are counting roll, pitch, and yaw as three dimensions.
OpenSourcerers
(The submit button wasn't the default button for enter was it? If so sorry for the empty post)
:)
:(
Anyway, this'd make a really cool propulsion system for Robot Wars (or whatever it's called, I haven't seen it enough). Especially (mostly) symmetric designs would benefit, such as a HypnoDisc-like design with a heavy rotating disc and some sharp edges. Or maybe a HypnoCone would be better to allow for the electronics underneath, but still. The only control that you need is a trackball
Of course the controlling electronics (and software) are hell to build... think about compensating for that heavy, rotating disc
--
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
Dwarf wheet.
Land survay and scientific laying of irragation (my great grandparents could barely make a living on 100 acres of farm land, their decendents use the exact same 100 acres and have not just plants but also dairy cows)
A vast many other improvments that allow the current population to live (twenty years ago we couldn't have made enough food). .
Oh, fire was good. The wheel wasn't bad either, but not as good as fire.
Go read slouching towards utopia if you want more examples, and a well reasoned argument about where technology is taking us (some slower then others).
Whould make a great dildo-top!
FRA: STFU GTFO
Suddenly the engine is the tires. :-) The only engine you'd need on the car itself would be something to generate the power for the magnets.
Remember, you saw it here first. So dig back here when someone tries to patent this. :)
- the Crazy Fraggle
There are basically two applications that spring to my mind:
First, an "omnidirectional" wheel. Ok, for this you do not need 3D as 2D will be sufficient. Plus you need a pretty clean surface, else the motor suspension = drive axis will be clogged up with dirt. A smooth "wheel" (=ball) will be better for high motor efficiency, but will increase slipperiness, too. So I guess directly using this drive as motored wheel is not the best choice.
Second, yu can cinstruct a spherical joint similar to the human hip or shoulder joint. With this you limit the movement arc to a cone with ~140 degrees opening. Spherical joints are especially interesting for major static/suspending joints - like hip or shoulder. But there are the shortcomings of this design:
The major problem will be the low torque and missing self-locking. Self-locking means, that the system does not have to use energy to keep the joint in that position. Excellent example for this is the worm-gear: nearly completely self-locking and high torques possible. In comparison this 3D-"freely spinning" joint is a (low power) direct driven, low-torque, non-locking.
As you have to use distributed permanent (=low power) magnets, the torque cannot be increased much (compared to classical e-motors with exclusively electro-magnets). Plus - as you need a high number of e-magnets - the motor is quite heavy.
All in all a nice idea, but not a good choice for most current uses IMHO.
Looks like you could balance a camera in the sphere and move it around, requiring a minimum of reaction force.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
I don't understand the point of having such a wide range of motion if your still limited to how you pass power and control to the other articulating segments in something like a robotic limb. Induction might be the solution to transferring power, but I don't know how that might effect that might have on these speherical motors. Low torque really has an impact on the usefulness. The only practical application I can see is perhaps force feed back mice & exoskeletons, virtual terrian surfaces, and direct drive systems for mobile robots. The other drawback is the complexity of control. You would need either a high speed computer or at least a custom programmed FPGA for controlling each joint.
The article speaks about using the motor to run robotic arms - Without an ridged axis (it's a unconnected ball) how exactly would that work? There no force to hold the weight of the arm up, is there?
There might of course be lots better ways than a real stirling engine at that scale. Perhaps even a microwave antenna pickup (then you could use a maser). This still would introduce inefficiencies, and it doesn't address the locking problem (brake shoes, perhaps?) And the absolute torque would be partially dependent on the amount of power transmitted (and that could be lost as heat).
A tricky design problem with lots of room for incremental improvements. Could eventually be quite interresting. Probably only suited for certain scales of activity, but it could eventually get to be quite useful for things between the size of a match-head and a terrier (caution: This is a wag with no calculation behind it!)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I get tired of people insisting that we built robots that look and act like humans, upright posture on a bilaterally symmetric torso, with mobility provided by a precarious active-balance system built around two extensible, very power-intensive, mechanically complex struts. Four legged animals get around just fine, and they are inherintly more stable when at rest.
I accept that the sensors for light, sounds, ambient/atmospheric chemicals should be up high to get more range, so some kind of a head is useful, but a low center of gravity aids stability, reducing power requirements for balance and fine position control.
If you want to use these spherical motors for propulsion, they should be used as feet at the end of four (or more) legs. On level terrain, they can be powered so the robot rolls along on them, like castors on a chair; on rough terrain, they would be locked onto their supports and the robot would climb like a goat or an ant. Dinging the rotor out of true with an especially hard step would be a problem, but perhaps that could be corrected by changing the strength/firing pattern of the magnets.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Heh, this is initially what I thought "IT" was. It was a natural progression from whathisname's wheelchair technology. Imagine platform with a single spherical wheel, and that platform balances itself by rotating that wheel in any direction. You can make that plaform move simply by shifting your balance. It's cool, but the technological revolution would come from the spherical wheel, not the futuristic go-kart.
--
Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
I disagree on the second point. Machines do really save time, which is then spent on other activities. What, you want spend the day sleeping in bed and enjoying "saved time"? What a waste of time.
And slaves are expensive. The southern states of the U.S. confederacy were all industrially backward and committed to their slaves because that was where all their money was wrapped up. A free man operating a capital investment in machinery is far more productive than a slave. Pre-industrial revolution societies are the only instances you will find of slaves being economical for a slave holder.
Growler
"To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individu
You mean like that Jamiroquai video?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Somebody get this guy a PlayStation!
Normal motors can apply a lot of force using a relatively weak motor and a gearbox. Can they do the same with this thing? Could they make a small ball that turns quickly, and connect it to a large ball that turns slowly with more force?
Otherwise, the strength of the motor depends entirely on the strength of the magnets, which would limit its usefulness.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The article noted that the idea of creating a spherical motor has been around for a while, but that the placement of the magnets was what was holding it back. They go on to say that the key was equidistant placement of the magnets...
This sounds wrong to me - they have great minds working on this, but no one in a long time thinks about placing the magnets equally distant from each other (sorta like, uh, I don't know - like a NORMAL AXIAL MOTOR?)...
They also go on to say that the math to equidistantly place the magnets was difficult, but did anyone see that the pattern looked similar to that of the vertices of a geodesic sphere? The math for creating geodesic spheres has been around for quite a while...
I am not saying this couldn't be a useful invention - but something just seems odd that it took so long to create (looking at it, I bet you could build one yourself using parts from a hardware store, All Electronics, and the pet store - for hamster play balls)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
World Wide Web, sorry to break it to you, but different parts of the world are in different timezones.
I'm curious if anyone has ever worked with ligament-based motors; basically simulating the arm by having a ball-join with dozens or hundreds of fibrous "ligaments" or tendons. A computer could control which fibers to pull in order to achieve semi-universal motion.
Of course one of the biggest limiting factors would be a highly limited range of motion, but unlike the human arm, it's possible for this configuration to be locking (through the use of worm drives for the wheels tugging on each ligament.
The main reason I bring this up is because the space shuttle's robotic arm was mentioned, which I don't believe requires continuous circular motion.
Course I'm still waiting for the mechanical tenticles with whip-like mobility, and the strength of locking steel. Still sci-fi I guess.
-Michael
-Michael
here's a picture of one: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~hl/c.nextstation.html
I don't ever remember hearing that claim, but I'll take a stab* at it.
Immunization.
(Granted, it sort of depends on how you define "technology".)
A couple of days ago, I had to go to the emergency room after attempting to prepare dinner myself. As the nurse was sticking a needle in my arm, all I could think of was, "Boy, I sure am glad I'm not going to die of tetanus." I'm also glad I'm not going to die of influenza, measles, etc. like so many of my ancestors.
* This is a pun. You have to read the whole post to get it, though.
You like it better now?
http://www.millnet.se/ GO/U d- s+:+ a C++ UL++++ P- L+++ E W+++ N+ w++ M-- PE+ t+ X++
If they make drag race cars out of them will they be called Draggin Balls?
It looked to me like the ball was set into a hemispherical cavity with roller bearings at the rim preventing the magnet hold-down force from sucking the ball down against the cavity. I build linear motors with neodynium iron boron magnets (NeFeB), and I don't think you'd have trouble getting 300 pounds of holddown force in a ball that size with the newest permanent magnets at a 3 mm magnetic gap. (off the cuff, but one based on some experience) If that was a major concern, I'd bet you could make it even larger, thus supporting moderate robotic arms. Now the lack of a self locking mechanism seems easily overcome by making those roller bearings mounted at the tips of hydraulic cylinders, and retracting them to ground out the ball in the cavity. with a normal force on the order i'm talking about, and a decent coef. of friction, that ball can be pretty solidly locked with very little energy expendature. I want to empasize that some of these new magnets are incredible, making even the NeFeB magnets you can buy in Radio Shack, or on Ebay, seem like toys. Inductive power transfer is of course an option, but running a motor off it would require a *load of power, and negates the free joint locking you can get with permanent magnets.
Here's the angle from the more interesting pen of the Beyond 2000 online editors. http://www.beyond2000.com/news/Jan_01/story_975.ht ml
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
but Pong!! I mean, come on, this guy should stay at home more.
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This isn't the first spherical motor. A similar device has been built as an eyeball-like pan-tilt mechanism for robotic cameras. That's a nice application for a spherical actuator, and yields small, steerable cameras. So far, though, nobody has produced such devices at Webcam/surveillance camera prices. There's a product for somebody.
I wonder if this could eventually replace surgen's hands at the OR table? Or if it could be eventually used for prostetics? That would be very interesting (and probably very very expensive ;)
--Dark|||Knight
They also confuse 2 and 3 dimensions of movement. A spherical engine provides 2.
mmmmmm .... robotics technology with fluid, human-like motion ; )
Now I can finally have a mouse that move's itself!
But that's not all of them.
Think about entertainment industry, or very very simple human tasks (not that they must be that simple for the robot, but they are wayyy too boring for a human, still, a 'human presence' is somewhat 'required') like opening an hotel door. Things like that.
Anyway, I think the best applications (in the robot field) will be the ones using this motor to asist human rather than replace them. This should sometime lead to some much better prothesis, or to 'enhancments' (not talking about arm replacement, but rather some sort of strong armor.
For example, to work very deep under sea, or in outer space, or whatever, having a human working, but assisted, in the way the armor he wears is 'active'.
oh well.. you get the picture
I'm terrified they talk about one great math problem they had to solve to build the motor: :)
How to uniformaly place n points on a sphere.
And has much as 80 !! wow !!
Now years ago, lots of us RPG fans were playing with the famous 100 faces dice.
So I suppose those guys never played RPG
Now how are we supposed to trust that kind of people ??
They probably have only evil uses for their motor
Wait wait !!! they admit it !!!
They pretend to have us play pingpong on our computers.. Arrrgggggg
I wonder why nobody thought of it... Such an arm can be used for making artificial limbs (for humans and robots). One of the problems of the existing motors is that they achieve too few degrees of freedom.
For a look at a different solution to this problem check out Yosi Bar-Cohen's article on surface wave motors at http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs//Dec00/NPO20735.htm l
This type of motor -- sometimes called an ultrasonic motor -- has the advantage that it's hard to backdrive, even under low or zero power, because the rotor is actually touching the stator. They produce a lot of torque for their size. In robotics the application is obvious: the motor is the joint. These motors work best at low rpm so the ball-and-socket joint could actually drive the arm. Imagine a dancing skeleton.
How about they fit one of these motors to each corner of my car instead of the wheels it currently has, with them motors turning giant beachball like wheels. That way you could drive in any direction you wanted, and using the beachball like tyres you could take it out in the surf!......:>
mv
Oh, the possibilities if this were produced using superconductor technology. Remember the iBot article at http://slashdot.org/articles/00/09/13/2249233.shtm l
A self-balancing uniball-driven scooter - forget the Razor. I want one of these!
Sign me - Ingnanamous Cowherd
"What about the children? Doesn't anyone care about the children?"
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
Perhaps a battery, capacitor, or something of that nature could be used inside the ball, along with a coil of sorts, so that induction could power internal electromagnets. The coil would input the energy into the battery/capacitor, (with a AC to DC rectifier) wich in turn would smooth the current flow, then on from there to the coils inside the sphere. There surely has to be a way to do that without interfering with the magnetic fields associated with motion. A high frequency switching between the motion magnets and the charging magnets perhaps? That may even allow the electromagnets themselves to recharge the battery, a regenerative system of sorts. As the AC current switches between posative and negative current, a simple diode could allow one way to charge the battery, and the other swing to charge the magnets. I suppose that some inefficency has to be accounted for, that would be almost like perpetual motion, so some coils could do double duty while others are strictly charging coils, and could provide current to the battery/capacitor on both cycles.
It may help extract more torque from the system, but without some sort of physical gear reduction, it will probably still consume high power while having the ability to do very little work. Still and all, it's range of motion and accuracy may prove to be more important in many applications than sheer power.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
science is a religion
By mounting a straight "arm" on a spherical motor, is it easier to set the end of that arm to a given (x,y,z) on that sphere that the end of that arm moves through than it is to do the same with the more complex robot arm?
I would imagine that yes, it is, but you are also only capable of positioning the end of the arm on a sphere, so even if you were searching, the dimension of the search space is reduced from the more general robot arm, so does this matter, really?
Basically, what I'm getting at it is that I took a neuroscience class once, and it's really amazing how easily the brain can position your limbs with such great precision. Apparently, most of the computational horsepower needed to walk is located in the base of your spine, just fairly small bundle of neurons. I always wondered how brains and such could solve this IK problem with such ease while computers struggled with it so. Could it be because biological systems use this different limb-positioning method?
jeb.
Someone once told me that he read that all memes are false.
I admit that it's a really cool idea, but how much torque would you be able to generate with the sphere? As far as I know, most electric motors rely upon intense magnetic fields concentrated closely about an axial rod. With the use of these 16 electromagnets that are a considerable distance from the permanent magnets in the sphere, I can't see someone being able to exert too much force.
The BusinessWeek article constantly confuses the term "circular" with "spherical". Circular motors already exist, it's the spherical motor that is new.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I'd like to see a better picture of the device and how it's used. I don't understand how you would actually mount one of these motors as a joint in a robotic arm. What's the range of motion before the arm collides with whatever it is anchored to?
You would have to have a special pair of super clean, sticky VR shoes. But I get your point. The morning jog/excersize might turn into a game of Unreal. Actually a VR suit would make sense here. If you get hit, the magnetic balls could throw you down then ping you where you were shot. You would need a VR helmet, of course... to protect your head!
Children, remember, there are no stupid questions - only stupid people.
What we have here, ladies and gentleman, is the first technology superior to the human limb. Minus the fact that it can't heal itself, the limb is completely independant of ligaments and muscles leaving only the nesesity to bind the two pieces, socket and joint with some material -- if you want to. Being magnets these balls and sockets could be removed with a certain applied force. Interchangable arms for prostetics. Interchangeable arms for robots. Pretty interesting concept.
Children, remember, there are no stupid questions - only stupid people.
Think about it, you couldn't just have loose bearings beneath you - you'd need something that held its position and could move any direction to correct your movement to make it feel as if you're on solid ground.
If you could make them about half the size of marbles, wow, the possibilities would be endless. That one idea of the spinning discs on tables to rearrange things is already outdated. This would rock!
That's going to happen to humanity eventually. We keep packing more and more into less and less (for example, more schooling in shorting time frame - you easily knew twice as much by your senior year in HS than your parents).
We're going to need to take the smaller and more trivial tasks off our hands. There will be no alternative. What's the solution? Certainly not a group of people engineer to be simple/stupid (Brave New World), but rather, machines.
Right now, robots are unfriendly, imposing, and insanely clumsy. We *need* them to be able to move and act naturally as we do. We need them to not be scary. We need them to be more fluid. They'll inevitably have to interact with us in a personal fashion.
And if you're still unconvinced, think about the applications of robotics technology with fluid, human-like motion in medicine. Wouldn't it be nice to give amputees brand new arms that move flawlessly when compared to the real thing?
I'm tired, so I'm not going to go on any longer... but wow, the possibilities!
thanks in advance to the replies.
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
As much as we need sexbots.
Have you ever wondered about the rate in which our technology increases? It keeps doubling. Do you ever ponder that there might be a threshold where we reach critical mass? Something moving so fast and so furious... it simply falls out of our control?I think this is the reason why we have Luddites.
That's going to happen to humanity eventually. We keep packing more and more into less and less (for example, more schooling in shorting time frame - you easily knew twice as much by your senior year in HS than your parents).I see your point. Unfortuneately, the reason why we're packing so much info into our heads is because the educational system is flawed. Parents these days want their kids to experience everything there is to this world so that those children can achieve their full possibilities as scientists, engineers, etc. Yet, educators have failed in allowing kids to sample these careers without packing all that knowledge into the ciriculum. The point is, nowadays, people need to specialize in something and work as a cog in this machine we call society because of all that knowledge to soak up. Much like robots are made specialized in one activity (welding metal, placing resistors, etc.)
We're going to need to take the smaller and more trivial tasks off our hands. There will be no alternative. What's the solution? Certainly not a group of people engineer to be simple/stupid (Brave New World), but rather, machines.Right now, robots are unfriendly, imposing, and insanely clumsy. We *need* them to be able to move and act naturally as we do. We need them to not be scary. We need them to be more fluid. They'll inevitably have to interact with us in a personal fashion.
Or, what we need are robots to replace humans. That way, workers won't call in sick, slack off (ie read Slashdot), sue the company, etc. It's easier that way.
And if you're still unconvinced, think about the applications of robotics technology with fluid, human-like motion in medicine. Wouldn't it be nice to give amputees brand new arms that move flawlessly when compared to the real thing?I still think people would rather have sexbots.
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. -Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't know if this spherical motor would be of much use for it, but as far as human-like motion goes there is a lot of research being done on artificial muscle made from ionized polymeric gels.
There's a lot of interesting info available at the Artificial Muscle Research Institute (free registration required).
Spherical motors could also be used to create omni-directional gears, even tactile sensations. For example, a computer trackball that uses a spherical motor could actually provide resistance against pushing fingers to create the impression of raised braille dots. "You could create the sensation of bumping into a wall in a maze game, or even the feeling of a ball hitting a racket in a game of computer Pong," says Chirikjian, whose basic science research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
This is, theoretically, the solution to the technical gap betwen us and realistic movement.
But is realism, the mimicry of non-motorized movement, where we want to go?
I for one would not care for Data the android, whose humanlike motions can now be created with these motors. I want robots that perform a task well and are kept separate from human intellectual, athletic and creative work.
No basketball playing robot.
No ballerina robot.
The Braille application is the sort I support. Use the third dimension to convey more information in computerized systems, instead of using it to conform technological devices to human standards.
Goat sex free since 2001
I think it would be really fun to make large sphere that you could ride around inside. Power would be a problem, but you would need weight to keep from spinning. It would be a cross between a dune buggy and a bumper car... I wonder if this could get up to speed, sounds like it's mostly for slower movements. You vision would be cut down by the magnets flying round you also.
120 chars of filth!
Commercial applications likely remain years away, depending on when scientists can shrink the control mechanism and eliminate the need for a PC to guide the motor.
If they can use a PC to guide the motor, I'm sure they could find something much smaller right now that's capable of doing the job. Apart from that, sounds like there could be many applications in the control systems area - and I don't mean gaming systems, although a healthy mass-market will help to push the costs down.
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
i think the best think about this announcement is that the probelm was given over to the mathemeticians. it sounds loke those guys made the most profound discovery, i think, because their design/the method they used to get the design might possibly be used (probably in conjunction with some other technology) for a multitude of applications. space travel (well, maybe not)? underwater navigation? i think that sounds good. it sound like these engines could also be used for aircraft. "jump-jet harrier? those are for the 3rd worlders. we've got flying balls of death! hahahahaha!!!" here i mean a sphere with its surface composed of these engines. whatever, i'll stop rambling.
You get paid *how much* to misspell common words like "magnet" on a daily basis?
Nonsense. We know as little as our parents did. In any case, technology is non enhancing most people's understanding of the world at all-- it is decreasing it. All these new advanced communications media are just overloading us with information. A person now has much more information available in very little time, but doesn't understand more than previous generations.
We're going to need to take the smaller and more trivial tasks off our hands. There will be no alternative. What's the solution? Certainly not a group of people engineer to be simple/stupid (Brave New World), but rather, machines.
Anthropologists who study technology have found this to be a total myth. Machines don't really save time. They alter the fabric of daily life in many manners, and the time they "save" ends up being used for some other thing-- for instance, working to pay for the machine, commuting, and many other things. A more concrete example-- washing machines don't really save time, because they bring not only a decrease in the time needed to wash cloths, but new social standards of what is acceptable cleanliness in dress, manufacture of clothing, and many other things that neturalize the time "gained".
And anyway, it will always be cheaper to enslave people to miserable jobs than to make machines do them.
Vive le Québec libre, 'sti!
He writes about tons of stuff he knows shit about to an audience which typically includes a fair number of people who know more than him about whatever he's talking about (assuming that what he's talking about is not the senseless "g**ks" crap). He never says anything that hundreds of people have not said before much better than him.
Vive le Québec libre, 'sti!
As I don't want to comment usefullness of this machine, I want to notice, taht THIS is only TWO dimensional engine. I now, it's populat to talk about 3D, but here ?