Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ars's Skeptical Take on Wired's NextFest

Posted by timothy on from the everyone's-a-critic dept.

jamestech writes "Over the weekend, Wired magazine held its 'NextFest' in Chicago, a demonstration of what the future supposedly holds. Arstechnica's Hannibal visited NextFest, and was not impressed. Regarding a dolphin-shaped water vehicle and exoskeletons for the old, he notes, 'if you're being pursued by a senior citizen then you can use the dolphin to escape.' Wired's been more about style rather than tech since the late 90s, but have they finally dropped science in favor of science fiction?"

1 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. NextFest offered great glimpses, unusual mixes by billmil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The naysayers are wrong. NextFest was a lot of fun. It was like a science museum on steroids--with real live engineers and scientists there to answer your questions. The Nasa exhibit rocked--especially since the mars-rover programmers were there. Yes, it was subsidized by and represented the military-industrial complex, but that subsidy allowed the art-and-design institutes, the grad students, and even high schoolers to participate.

    Here's a copy of my original post from last weekend. I don't think people fully appreciated the wealth of talent that was present:

    I spent yesterday at NextFest and had really interesting conversations with the scientists and engineers behind the technologies. Whereas most trade shows have marketing-folk, NextFest had the "real deal" folks there. Conversing with them about their projects was quite easy:

    Example interesting conversations:
    * Electrical Engineers from Sweden working on innovative devices for monitoring power use
    * Doctoral CS candidates preseting their thesis projects.
    * Art/Design professors from Tokyo and Vienna working on interactive media projects.

    * Undergrads from Dublin working on a video game (controlled by breath) which they found equally popular with boys and girls.
    * The Mars Rover programmers were there. (I didn't get a chance to talk w/ them, however, but could have).
    * The La Vida Robot guys and their teacher (who bested MIT in the underwater bot contest).