This exact idea is being developed right now.
Take a look at Scholarpedia. Its a direct extension of scientific publishing in its traditional sense to the wiki world.
IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.
OK, I'm going to rain on the sarcasm parade.
Just to point out that damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not just about sarcasm (thank you very much). Damage to this area is known to impair a wide range of things like decision making skills and social abilities. It's NOT like the authors are claiming this is the one place that sarcasm lives in the brain, or that this is all that bit of brain does.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled/. banter.
So everyone's first instinct is to make some disparaging remark about how combining buzzwords --> profit!!!! I don't think that's what this is about. This has nothing to do with consumers, and presumably therefore little in the way of profit for Intel. This is about adapting a consumer technology for a research area in a highly useful way.
Mobile robotics has been hard hit recently, when one of the main companies making robots (Nomadic Technologies) was acquired by 3COM in 2000 for their wireless networking technologies. Obviously 3COM had no interest in research robots that cost thousands but sell only hundreds of units. Since then there's been a bit of a hole in the market for somebody to sell prepackaged wireless robot stuff to researchers, especially those that work in the software/AI/algorithms end of things don't care to spend effort developing hardware.
Intel's Centrino blah blah is supposed to make connected mobile computing easy and increase battery life. Well guess what drives my ancient Nomad Scout robot? A laptop connected to the robot's power supply in a hack'd fashion, communicating using a USB-driven RF link. This platform could have saved a couple of months development of things which aren't exactly shining examples of engineering anyway.
This hardware isn't the sort of thing that the average/.'er is going to drool over and plot how to justify purchasing it to their spouse. But it is very useful for the couple of thousand mobile robotics researchers around the planet.
Although its not commonly known, there were "behavior-based" robots even earlier than W.G. Walters' work. Jacques Loeb, an outspoken proponent of the mechanistic view of animal behavior, cites a J.H. Hammond as having built an "artificial heliotropic machine" in 1918.
In other words, Braitenburg was gazumped by some electrical hobbyist over 60 years before he wrote about Vehicle 2.
And of course you can always point to Descarte as the originator of the view of animals as simple machines. Or probably someone even earlier than that.
Loeb, J. (1918). Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct. -- widely available in several reprints.
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This exact idea is being developed right now. Take a look at Scholarpedia. Its a direct extension of scientific publishing in its traditional sense to the wiki world.
IANAA (I am not an Aussie) but Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National seems to me to have some of the best science podcasting out there. Blows Science Friday away in terms of depth, seriousness, and presentation. I am a particular fan of All in the Mind(Neuroscience, Psychology, & cognitive science) and Ockham's Razor and The Science Show (both general interest). They also do other health + science podcasts that are linked from those pages.
OK, I'm going to rain on the sarcasm parade. Just to point out that damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex is not just about sarcasm (thank you very much). Damage to this area is known to impair a wide range of things like decision making skills and social abilities. It's NOT like the authors are claiming this is the one place that sarcasm lives in the brain, or that this is all that bit of brain does. We now return you to your regularly scheduled /. banter.
Oh well, good news for the international circulation department at The Guardian,, I suppose.
So everyone's first instinct is to make some disparaging remark about how combining buzzwords --> profit!!!! I don't think that's what this is about. This has nothing to do with consumers, and presumably therefore little in the way of profit for Intel. This is about adapting a consumer technology for a research area in a highly useful way.
Mobile robotics has been hard hit recently, when one of the main companies making robots (Nomadic Technologies) was acquired by 3COM in 2000 for their wireless networking technologies. Obviously 3COM had no interest in research robots that cost thousands but sell only hundreds of units. Since then there's been a bit of a hole in the market for somebody to sell prepackaged wireless robot stuff to researchers, especially those that work in the software/AI/algorithms end of things don't care to spend effort developing hardware.
Intel's Centrino blah blah is supposed to make connected mobile computing easy and increase battery life. Well guess what drives my ancient Nomad Scout robot? A laptop connected to the robot's power supply in a hack'd fashion, communicating using a USB-driven RF link. This platform could have saved a couple of months development of things which aren't exactly shining examples of engineering anyway.
This hardware isn't the sort of thing that the average /.'er is going to drool over and plot how to justify purchasing it to their spouse. But it is very useful for the couple of thousand mobile robotics researchers around the planet.
In other words, Braitenburg was gazumped by some electrical hobbyist over 60 years before he wrote about Vehicle 2.
And of course you can always point to Descarte as the originator of the view of animals as simple machines. Or probably someone even earlier than that.
Loeb, J. (1918). Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct. -- widely available in several reprints.