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“When the zeitgeist is moving, art usually goes hand-in-hand with it,” says Rossin, describing a world in which we’re constantly glued to our iPhones, Androids, laptops, and tablets as much if not more than we are to the faces of fellow humans. Mediums have historically risen from the predominant technology and social relations of the time in which they exist

“Because of the level of sensory overload we experience on a day-to-day basis, we need to have this fully arresting experience in virtual reality in order to get a total sense of vertigo from a work of art,”

Enveloping, consciousness-bending experiences aren’t “just to escape life,” says Rafman. “But to create a total experience that will create a feeling that is qualitatively new. That is ultimately the most radical thing.”

Netherlands first to establish nationwide Internet of Things network

Three initial projects give a sense of the scope and types of application that will make up the Internet of Things. At the port of Rotterdam, depth sounders have already been outfitted with sensors and network connections. An experiment at Utrecht will connect all railway switches so they can be monitored centrally. And at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, a major European hub busier than JFK and Miami International combined, tests with baggage handling are already underway. If you think of the number of pieces of luggage moving through the worlds sixth-busiest international airport you begin to get a sense of the scale of applications for IoT. If each piece of luggage has an IoT tag, nothing should be unaccounted for.

What makes this device very interesting is that it is extremely cheap to make. Replicating the human skin involves creating a device that can detect pressure, touch, proximity, temperature, humidity, flow, and pH levels all at the same time. In order to achieve this, one would expect that highly sophisticated sensors and circuits will be used. That does not happen to be the case. This team used common household items such as sticky notes, napkins, aluminum foils and sponges to create the paper skin. The whole device cost only $1,67 to make.

“My vision is to make electronics simple to understand and easy to assemble so that ordinary people can participate in innovation.”

Compared to various pricey sensors out there, the paper skin looks to be a good alternative with many potential applications. According to test results, it has already been seen that the paper skin performs on the same level as the more expensive sensors currently available.

- Honda Motor plans to offer cars that can drive themselves on highways by around 2020

With Toyota Motor and Nissan Motor having announced their plans, the three largest domestic carmakers now have timelines for self-driving vehicles.

Honda this year started adopting what it calls Sensing technologies

The University of Canterbury team, led by Christoph Bartneck of the university's Human Interface Technology Lab, wanted to explore one way Lego might be influencing children through play. Toys, and play time, are considered vital to the development of emotional understanding in children, and with an average of 75 Lego blocks per human on Earth it makes sense to see what kinds of emotions Lego is presenting to children

On average, heads displayed 3.9 different emotions, which means that for a lot of the faces their emotional state is reasonably complex and ambiguous.

We cannot help but wonder how the move from only positive faces to an increasing number of negative faces impacts how children play

Non-intrusiveness aside, another reason why the idea of not having to wear special 3D movie glasses is so welcomed is because we want to see images in 3D with our naked eyes (or with our glasses or contacts) where we just don’t feel “artificial”.

we would naturally be more intrigued by otherworldly universes which we don’t encounter in our daily lives, and thus crave to experience them in their fullest glory (i.e. in 3D or 4D).

“Otherworldly” here applies to the many computer-animated, Sci-Fi and any other movies where their settings are not what you see every day (e.g. Titanic and Avatar

Merging SEGA technology and BBC Earth content, the new attraction takes visitors on a multi-sensory journey to explore animals and nature through sight, smell, touch and sound.

The venue includes one of Japan’s largest screens (131 ft W x 26 ft H) with remarkable visual and sonic resolution and 12 separate walk-through entertainment zones

evolve into large-scale public attractions becoming urban theme parks, where cinema is only part of the experience

The technology has changed but the basics of the job haven’t. It is still about storytelling, about juxtaposing images, about creating a feeling with images and music. Only the technical details have changed

I think there will be movie thea­ters in 1,000 years. People want the group experience, the sense of going out and participating in a film together

I think it will be standard in 4 years, not 40. We will have a glasses-free technology in five years at home and three years for laptops. The limiting factor is going to be content. You can’t rely on a few films a year for this. It is going to have to be 3-D broadcast sports, scripted television, non-scripted television and reality television

they were able to show that automated facial expression recognition could be nearly as accurate as human recognition in analyzing a wider range of student movements and gestures.

emotionally-aware software isn’t without ethical and privacy questions, but it opens the door to technology that’s even more engaging and that fits more seamlessly into our lives.

types of technologies could be used to generate more personalized digital experiences

the decline in popularity of the iconic Barbie doll, sales of which fell 12% — the fourth quarter in a row that Barbie turnover declined year-over-year.

One possible explanation is body image

“There was a sense that you wanted to expose little girls to role models that were a little more diverse and not so stereotypical, so they tried to make Barbie active and gave her all kinds of activities to do and tried to make her more interesting than a beauty queen.”

Our tastes and impulses are hyper-visual, which contributes, some say, to a flattening of experience, dulling what would otherwise be enriched by the input of our other senses

Her “Scentography” camera aims to introduce other sensory channels into the mix that would more vividly capture memories--namely, through smell

Just place the plastic dome over the object whose scent you want to extract, then attach an “odor trap” over the central mechanism. The unit is connected to the dome and trap via a set of tubes that suck the scents from the former to the latter

many developers are concerned about the dangers (physical, mental, or cultural) of asking their audiences to strap on a vision-obscuring headset for hours at a time. 

Long-time game designer and current Google game design chief Noah Falstein's personal favorite is "transmogrified reality" --  an approach to game design that relies on new 3D-sensing phones and tablets, combined with inexpensive head mounts, to seamlessly integrate the virtual with the real.

making robots look like humans or cute animals, we may develop emotional affinity toward the machines

. This could help promote trust with users—but perhaps also overtrust?

Robots are tools, but they are tools that sometimes hold meaning for people that interact with them, or through them, as when robots are teleoperated at a distance

When Car Sharing Makes Sense

M-Pesa’s success has been phenomenal. Recent statistics show that fully one-quarter of the Kenyan economy flows through M-Pesa.

Other countries are taking a crack at a similar mobile digital currency. Vodacom

has launched M-Pesa in other African nations, as well as India and parts of Eastern Europe. In Latin America, Ecuador recently announced it would launch a nationwide digital currency, residing largely on people’s smartphones