Google may know your desires before you do

Amit Singhal, one of Google's veteran search algorithm engineers, wants to develop a search engine that second-guesses users' needs well ahead of time.
In future, your Google account may be allowed, under some as-yet-unidentified privacy policy, to know a whole lot about your life and the lives of those close to you. It will know birthdays and anniversaries, consumer gadget preferences, preferred hobbies and pastimes, even favourite foods. It will also know where you are, and be able to get in touch with your local stores via their websites.
At other times, SWS could give its users a personalised and frequently updated news service by gathering information from social media sites. Singhal points out that Twitter can beat newscasters to warn you of events that might affect you: an earthquake that hit San Francisco in January sent ripples through Twitter 10 minutes before a news alert from the US Geological Survey alerted the professional news media.

The Dangers of Neuromarketing

The future of transportation

A driverless car is an autonomous vehicle that can drive itself from one point to another without assistance from a driver; in other words, with an autopilot system. Some believe that autonomous vehicles have the potential to transform the transportation industry while virtually eliminating accidents, and cleaning up the environment. According to urban designer and futurist Michael E. Arth, driverless electric vehicles—in conjunction with the increased use of virtual reality for work, travel, and pleasure—could reduce the world's 800,000,000 vehicles to a fraction of that number within a few decades.[1] Arth claims that this would be possible if almost all private cars requiring drivers, which are not in use and parked 90% of the time, would be traded for public self-driving taxis that would be in near constant use. This would also allow for getting the appropriate vehicle for the particular need—a bus could come for a group of people, a limousine could come for a special night out, and a Segway could come for a short trip down the street for one person. Children could be chauffeured in supervised safety, DUIs would no longer exist, and 41,000 lives could be saved each year in the U.S. alone.[copy from wikipedia}

lethal drone use deemed legal

Harold Koh, legal adviser for the U.S. Department of State, explains why the Obama administration views its use of drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan as lawful and justified.
Harold Koh is a Korean American lawyer and legal scholar. He currently serves as the Legal Adviser of the Department of State.

Computer capabilities to read minds

An computer system designed to read people's minds by analysing expressions will be featured at a major London exhibition.
Visitors to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition are being invited to help "train" the computer how to read joy, anger and other expressions.

Its designers say there are potential commercial uses, such as picking the right time to sell someone something.

The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition runs from Monday 3 July to Thursday 6 July at The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG.

Magnets that modify our moral brain functions

Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.

They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.

And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.

The key area of the brain is a knot of nerve cells known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ).

While subjected to these magnetic pulses subjects were unable to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions.

Previous work has shown the RTPJ to be highly active when people think about the thoughts and beliefs of others.

Dr Liane Young
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

the legendary BILL HICKS

2009 The year of technology invention

Invisibility cloak created in 3-D

Scientists have created the first device to render an object invisible in three dimensions.

The "cloak", described in the journal Science, hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans.

Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible.

This is a very early but significant step towards true invisibility cloaks.
Tolga Ergin
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology