Minding The Planet is Nova Spivack’s weblog on emerging technologies and trends. It focuses on ways in which the Web is becoming more present, personalized and precise.
Nova Spivack is a technology futurist, entrepreneur, angel investor, and a leading voice on search, collective intelligence and the Semantic Web. More...
There’s a very interesting event taking place at MIT tonight — the first (and only?) Time Traveler Convention. The organizers are inviting anyone in the future who is capable of time travel to travel back to the geo coordinates of this event (to be held at MIT) and attend it, along with proof that they [...]
Watch the Simpsons version of the classic Powers of Ten film. Related Posts:British Ministry of Defense Chief Resigns; Cites Concerns About UFO'sNew Photon Thruster: Get to Mars in 1 Week!Speed of Light Broken?The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on CameraThis Guy is Funny
This is funny — a new site called www.talktoaliens.com now offers intergalactic long-distance telephone service. Simply dial their toll number and record your message. They will then beam it towards a region of high-density stars on a common frequency in the hopes of reaching any intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations that be may listening. Assuming aliens are [...]
I found this delightful series of drawings of the skeletons of popular cartoon characters at The Unreasonable Man, a blog I read. Very smart, take a look! Related Posts:The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on CameraThis Guy is FunnyThe Next Sexual Revolution?Moments of Past Geekiness: Shatner Commercial [...]
A Chinese satellite rudely crash-landed in a villager’s house. The villagers were unhurt but the house was demolished in the freak accident. The homeowner was quoted as speculating that perhaps this indicated they would have good luck in the coming year…yeah, like maybe a new house will fall from the sky too? Related Posts:British Ministry [...]
This meme is spreading rapidly across the Net. Someone figured out that the latest Kryptonite U-Locks can be picked in under 30 seconds, using an ordinary ballpoint pen! Yikes. Bikers beware. Related Posts:British Ministry of Defense Chief Resigns; Cites Concerns About UFO'sThe State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script [...]
Note: This experiment is now finished. (GoMeme 3.0 – Note: This is not an ordinary article. We have added some special information at the end. Read this entire article, and then follow the instructions at the end to pass it on in a new way…) Related Posts:Fun With CoolWhip: The Twine Crunchies VideoThe Honor of [...]
The US Army has developed a new way to enable soldiers to carry less water. They have created rehydratable food rations that come in a wrapping that is actually a sophisticated semi-permeable membrane. So to rehydrate the food, soldiers can simply pee on it, or even pour dirty water on it if that’s all that [...]
This just in from Jack Park at SRI… Get this: a macaque got really sick, darn near died, and when it was all over, the monkey started walking upright like a human. Doctors think it was brain damage. Maybe all upright walking humanoids are similarly “brain damaged?” Go figure… Here is the article and picture [...]
A Japanese inventor has figured out how to vibrate the leaves and stems of ordinary houseplants so that they can be used as audio speakers. The basic idea is that you can hear music coming directly from the plant itself. Weird. It would be a fun prank though — you could make a remotely operated [...]
This is a funny article about a virtual reality church on the Internet in which worshipers can participate as avatars in a simulated church service. Unfortunately, some people have been logging in as …. you guessed it… Satan! Related Posts:British Ministry of Defense Chief Resigns; Cites Concerns About UFO'sSimulated Universes and the Nature of ConsciousnessBrain [...]
It turns out that pets really do resemble their owners, but in fact it’s the other way around! A recent study found that dog-owners choose pets that resemble themselves, rather than owners and their dogs growing to resemble one another over time. Related Posts:Fun With CoolWhip: The Twine Crunchies VideoThe Honor of a Lifetime!The State [...]
Erik T. Ray is a creative genius, in the classical sense of the word. I first heard about him when I was studying CS at Oberlin College. Many of my classmates were obsessed with something called The Lambda Expressway — an amazing and bizarre serial novel in the tradition of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, [...]
A Florida fire station burst into flames while the firefighters were out.. Gives new meaning to the phrase, “fighting fire with fire” … Related Posts:Fun With CoolWhip: The Twine Crunchies VideoThe Honor of a Lifetime!The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on CameraMy Week Was IntenseFunny Cartoon — [...]
Good news for American Express customers — you can now use those extra points from your Membership Awards Program to fly to SPACE!!!!!. Full sub-orbital flight only costs a mere 20,000,000 points! That’s NOTHING — all you have to do is purchase a single skyscraper, or an F-18 fighter jet, or 2,000,000 movie tickets, and [...]
As I’ve said all along, “The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth.” Here’s more proof. A Michigan couple has just named their new baby as if it were a software upgrade. Read the article. Jon Blake Cusack, from Holland, Michigan, told local newspapers the US practice of adding “Junior” or “II” after a boy’s name was [...]
In a conversation today with my friend Bram, a really smart cosmologist, I suggested that maybe the universe is just the output of a software error in a high dimensional program — basically it’s just a big bug! The owner of the computer could at any time detect the bug and simply reboot — that [...]
A Japanese telecom has introduced a cell-phone that does bone-conduction to transmit audio through your skull. You are supposed to hold it up to your head so you can hear the phone vibrating through the bones of your skull. Gee, just what I always wanted! One catch though — they say it works best if [...]
This site collects phone numbers from payphones around the world, so you can lookup any payphone anywhere and call it — for example, to practice a foreign language or just to have random conversations with bewildered strangers. Some people have too much free time! Related Posts:The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris [...]
I just came across a wild story about a recent New Year’s prank in which a group of guys used tin-foil to completely cover every object in their victim’s apartment — right down to the individual CD’s in his music collection, individual coins in his spare change, etc. See this page for pictures of what [...]
What a great idea — Bush is going back to the Moon where he belongs! Related Posts:Fun With CoolWhip: The Twine Crunchies VideoThe Honor of a Lifetime!The State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on CameraMy Week Was IntenseFunny Cartoon — Lisp, the Language of the Gods
Our advisor Paul Ford, has replied to Clay Shirky’s critique of the Semantic Web with a truly excellent articleabout why the Semantic Web is indeed practical. I found Clay’s article to be very one-sided. Like Paul, I agree with Clay that the futuristic goals of some Semantic Web researchers in academia are well…futuristic. Here at [...]