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NextFest
anzha writes "This Saturday and Sunday between 9 and 6 pm at the Fort Mason Center's Festival Pavilion in San Francisco, NextFest will be taking place. Organized by Wired and sponsored by HP, The SF Chronicle, General Electric, General Motors, and many others, this is an expo on 'almost there' technologies. Ranging from [in]famous Moller aircar to a 'transparent cloak' from the Tachi Lab at Tokyo University to antibacterial powders from Canada to many, many others. Read more here."
This is what's next?
I guess, if the nextfest.net website is anything to go by, that in the future all websites will be based solely on ultra-annoying Macromedia Flash! A page focused on this type of event should be slim and trim and have a large section devoted to easily viewable/editable/blownupable (to make bigger) pictures of every single device at this convention. Or at least has a large chunk of the site like that.
Casual Games/Downloads
My first thought on what this was involved Steve Jobs and black boxes!
The raincoat-like cloak is made out of "retro-reflective'' material covered with tiny beads that reflect light back in the same direction it came.
The cloak is designed to make whatever it is covering, a body or object, appear transparent by projecting video shot with a camera from behind the cloak onto the front of the cloak.
Hold on a sec, these are two very different things. Are they talking about two different cloaks? If so, it's not very obvious from the article. Also, wouldn't the first cloak be a mirror, as opposed to transparent?
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
Was I the only one that saw the headline and immediately thought of a gathering of NeXT computer users?
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
wait for the next nextfest. The last nextfest didn't leave me looking forward to the next nextfest.
Actually, I think its pretty funny, given that NeXT Computer played such a pivotal role in making the word "vaporware" part of the common lexicon.
In one vision of the future, the world will have flying cars, coats that make people "transparent,'' digital cameras that translate foreign signs and robots that can attend classes for sick children.
The exhibits include the Moller Skycar, a four-passenger vehicle from Moller International of Davis. The Jetsons-style craft is small enough to drive on the ground, but can take off vertically and fly as fast as 380 mph
They're still promising me the flying car, spiffy.
This thing is actually pretty cool:
http://www.moller.com/
the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. Awesome.
http://www.moller.com/skycar/
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
"For fun and games, there's Brainball, which is best described as an anti- game, because the goal is to achieve nothing."
.. Ah screw it I'm going back to bed ..
Woohoo, I won I won!
Transparent cloaks? I knew Harry Potter was real.
Moller website.
Links are good, people!
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That transparent cloak is not just for wearing!
The inventor, Professor Susumu Tachi from Tokyo University, believes that it has practical applications that range from surgery, where the surgeon could be wearing this cloak on his hands to be able to 'see through them', to pilots who wish to be able to see the ground underneath the cockpit, for when they are landing.
Really, the possibilities are endless. Military, Medical, Transportation, Commericial products.
Hell, even the napkin holder could use this, so you can have a huge frivolous artsy napkin holder in the center of the table (or a center-piece, something along those lines), and be able to talk to the other person across the table as if nothing were there.
Of course the technology has to improve until the applications become a reality, but just think what this could enable us to do!
Conesus.
Don't eat your soul to fill your belly.
conesus.com
Drill baby drill - on Mars
They're trying to make it a future-tech world's fair event, but looking at the event website, it looks more like demos and marketing. Although it does look really cool, it's not cool enough for me to pay to see their advertisements!
Sorry, but I'm not paying $15/person/day (even if there's really only one day's worth of stuff according to the schedule), to see a bunch of companies throw their future-tech marketing at me. It doesn't seem that cool (and yes, I live in the area, so I could go, and I'm employed, so I could afford to go).
But then, maybe I'm just in a bad mood.
Meow. Now!
First of all, the site has a Flash intro that's more epilepsy-inducing than the latest Japanese cartoon craze.
Second of all, it's sponsored by Wired. I remember picking up one of the early issues and there was all this stuff about VR. If this were the early 90's, VR would be all over NextFest or whatever it's called.
Anyways, it sounded like a cool idea and all until the inventor dude talked about the actual applications. He had had a party the last night, and everyone had to pretend they were lobsters. They wore the low-res headsets and had to use the special gloves to make pincer movements with their hands.
It was then that I concluded that VR wasn't what it promised to be. Also that Wired was basically a newer Omni, but without the virtue of being published by a pr0n baron.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Moller's been been taking investors' money for decades, and has exactly squat to show for it. Credible aerospace engineers say that, unless Moller's invented a radically new, ultra-compact engine, there's no way you can move enough air mass to actually lift the thing.
The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Each day. Around the world. The future is born.
While NextFest seems to showcase some cool stuff, it does not seem to highlight the innovative underpinnings to these gadgets, which are often created/discovered by individuals, independent groups and academics. The science behind the gadgetry (i.e. The Robotics Institute) is often more interesting, IMHO.
While I know that's not the purpose of NextFest, it's just interesting to me to think that "the future is born" of smart individuals collaborating (obvious example == F/OSS), not necessarily from "leading visionary companies".
So. Fscking. Cool.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Like digestion for example???
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The only game known to mankind that you play better after you die.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Took a quick swing by Fort Mason (the location) and saw some vendor trucks, but also saw the floor space being curtained off -- not a good sign for attendance, either by exhibitors or by teh curious. Of course, this is sponsored by Wired, the magazine for people who think they're cool because they read Wired.
Not bitter, just tired of it.
To all of the posters that are critisizing the expo as a vapor-fest, I say to you, why not let your imagination run wild? Decades ago we had Worlds Fair and the famous Futurama in New York. People were left in awe of possible future technologies that improve quality of life. People came back wide eyed and filled with imagination. The closest thing I experienced to something like this today was a showcase at Disney Expo 12 years ago when I was 10... It had on display futuristic cars and possible technologies that openned my youthful imagination. It made a big impact on me and got me interested in technology. I hear people complain about the lack of innovation today and I'm personally disappointed at the lack of creativity in a lot of industries. In the 40s and 50s people got to see glimpses of the future presented by GE and Ford where everything is automated. People were happy and it gave them something worthwhile to look forward to. It gave us faith in technology. We have nothing like this today. I for one welcome conventions that inspire us, especially at a time when the future looks so bleak. Sure, it's funded by big corporations but so were the World Fairs in the past and they turned out great!
It's true that he has been taking money from investors for decades, but he's been pouring his own money into it as well. He made about $20 million from real estate investment and millions more from his invention of the SuperTrapp muffler. He invested that in his company. So while it's true that he has been taking money from others, he hasn't been getting rich from it, as the word "scam" implies.
Dr. Moller is a credible aerospace engineer. He is the started the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at UC Davis. And he has invented a new type of engine for the SkyCar.
As someone else pointed out, there have been tethered tests that have shown that the thing can at least hover.
Don't get me wrong. I think that Moller's claims are continually over-optimistic, even to the point that he got in trouble with the SEC for misleading investors. He's been over-promising and under-delivering for decades. But he has made slow, painful progress, and I've seen every indication that he really does believe in what he's doing.
To call it a scam is completely unfair.
People who were living during the 1950s and 1960s saw advances that would have been considered acts of magic fifty years before; if someone from the 1890s or 1900s were transported into the 60s, they would have been totally caught off-guard. Vehicles that could allow you to travel on any road at 55 mph? Devices that allow you to see and hear images of people thousands of miles away? A large tower that could put someone on the moon? It would be a fantasy world.
Now, take someone from the 1950s or 1960s and put them into the current 21st century. Imagine this conversation:
"So, do you have your hovercar now?"
No, but now we have cars that can run on electricity, some of the time!
"Well, how about the Moon or Mars? Do you have friends who live on bases up there?"
No, we went to the moon a few times with a couple dozen people, and that was it. We have had a couple of space stations, but only one is left because the others crashed after funding was cut.
"What about diseases? Have you cured cancer?"
No, we have had some progress, but there are some even worse diseases now.
"Is there any new technology that is actually good, then?! Jetpacks? Super-buildings? Contact with aliens?"
Well, we did shrink the size of computers and made them hundreds of times faster, and anyone can communicate with anyone else in the world real-time. We can store large quantities of data on small disks. Here, check this out...
(The computer accidentally gets rerouted to Goatse.)
"AAUAAUAGGHHH! My word, what is wrong with that man's bottom?"
Face it, the future largely sucks. I want my hovcercraft.
--Chag
... not unless they want to carry projectors in front of themselves, and know that their enemies are going to be in one specific direction, and don't mind low quality images... (etc)
"She was out of her depth in a shallow pool." -- Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin
Yeah baby: 33 and 40Mhz of pure power . With that "mainframe on a chip" Digital Signal Processor.
Ok, one of the NeXTs has booted open source, but then I figured why run NeXT if not for the OS?
So lets all show up with our NeXT slabs under our arms and start a commotion!
Yeah ok Moller has been promising the moon for ages and hasn't delivered yet. But at least he's Doing Something (TM). You can see prototypes, I've seen the video of the tethered flight. How many of you people bitching about his lack of progress have a flying car doing test flights in your back yard? Anyone? Until someone else shows me at least the same amount of progress he has you can shut up.
As for the transparent cloak... it's spiffy yes. All you need is a visible camera behind you and a visible projector in front of you and you can be invisible to people who can't spot cameras or projectors and come at you from one direction. Yay.
You know what I want to see? I want to see a PDA that doesn't suck i.e. lack a HD, or wireles connection, or ability to run mainstream software. I want to see an OS that can be both stable and play the latest games without screwing around with drivers and compiling shit all day or getting "Well it plays MOST games under emulation, except the ones YOU want." I want to see a broadband connection at a reasonable price that doesn't have shitty upstream or fulltime forced NAT or get capped as soon as you actually use the damn thing. Why doesn't anyone invent any of that stuff?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
It's called a Wankel engine and is conventiently ignored by the majority of engineers because they remember the engine sealing problems with the early NSU Ro80 in the late 60's that almost bankrupted them.
Talk to most people about the Wankel engine and the chances are they've never heard of it. Many engineers laugh when you mention it, because they remember 1967 and haven't heard of all the developments since then. My old (1983) Mazda RX7 did 127000+ miles before the engine wore out.
The spiffy model on the showroom floor is nothing more than a stage prop. It doesn't fly, it never did, and it probably never will.
Unless the man is a bare-faced lier, you can find out all sorts of things about it at moller.com.
Need I remind you that VTOL aeroplanes have been built before (albeit with jet engines).
Stick Men