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""We're going to transfer power without any kind of wires," says Dr Hall, now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity -- a start-up developing wireless "resonance" technology. "But, we're not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air.""

I remembered it this morning when I drove past a Google self-driving car and then again a few minutes later when a Tesla whipped past me and a third time during the same commute when I dictated an email to my mobile phone. Sometimes living in the Bay Area does feel like the living in future. But to Gibson's point, not every region can claim to have self-driving cars on its highways or electric car ownership or smart phone penetration rates as high as the Bay Area. Why not?

"The success of San Jose State University's (SJSU) incorporation of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) into their curriculum is indisputable: in side-by-side comparisons of two traditionally-taught sections of an introductory electrical engineering course with an edX-provided MOOC variant, the pass rates went from 55-59 percent to 91 percent.[1] This mirrors results that the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University has been achieving for years. However, interestingly, SJSU incorporated MOOCs as a course supplement in a flipped classroom. If you think about that, it is the beginning of disaggregation of MOOCs into technological (big data), content and pedagogical (peer learning) components."

" Instructors will offer a "special 'flipped' version of an electrical engineering course ... where students watch online lectures from Harvard and MIT at home." So the good is the flipped part because it's more interactive and dynamic and there's less lecture-based didacticism in the classroom due to watching videos at home? Really? The 1970s just called: they want their Open University courses back. This model perhaps moves the Cal State system forward as it offers more accessibility to content for working adults in a hybrid format. I wish they would just step away from the MOOC terminology, which is, let's be honest, copying and lending out a videotape in another name."

"I think that's what electracy instruction might look like as an evolution of the literacy instruction that was once, in a past century, primarily the domain of English Studies."

Pig farmers, electricians, plumbers, bridge painters, jam makers, blacksmiths, brewers, coal miners, carpenters, crab fisherman, oil drillers…they all tell me the same thing over and over, again and again - our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce. We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

The company, founded in 2006, uses an ultra-low electrical current to charge very thin durable coatings (made of a proprietary substance that can be applied to "almost any surface of any size") on a standard touchscreen. This creates a small attractive force to finger skin that can be modulated; sensations such as texture, edges and vibrations can be felt by the user.

Plug any electric guitar or bass into your PC, Mac, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3, and join over 1.5 million people who have learned to play guitar with award-winning Rocksmith method. Learn to play guitar in 60 days. Get started, now!

"Progress in computers and the Internet helps with communications, and it's enabled us to make things far more efficient. On the other hand, most other fields of engineering have been bad things to go into since the 1970s: nuclear engineering, aero- and astronautical engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, even electrical engineering. We are living in a material world, so that's pretty big to miss out on. I don't think we're living in an incredibly fast technological age."

"The two industrial giants aren't so much showing off as signalling transformation. Both firms are going through the most profound change in their corporate histories, attempting to switch from being makers of machines into fully digital businesses. GE's chief executive, Jeff Immelt, says the plan is to join the world's top ten software firms with sales of programs and services worth $15bn as early as 2020."