This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas brought another bumper crop of tech for geeks and gearheads alike.
As usual, this year’s show was more about evolution than revolution. That, and the proliferation of sensors in everything from hairbrushes to toothbrushes. But one technology was clearly the belle of the geek prom: Amazon’s digital assistant, Alexa.
Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
Amazon’s Alexa Shines At CES 2017
4-D printing remains in its early stages, It’s certainly too early to tell if it’s anything more than a buzzword, let alone if its promise will translate into practicality. But the sorts of people who bet on these kinds of things are betting on it.
And why not? Suppose a structure could unfold itself, like origami. Imagine if walls could flex or stiffen in response to shifting loads, or if a buried pipe could change shape to accommodate varying water flows — or to pump water via peristalsis, like your digestive system. Through 4-D printing, nothing is set in stone unless you want it to be.
Left to our own devices and allowed to live without constant fear of death by hunger or violence, we devise some pretty startling stuff.
Sure, some of our better efforts don’t outlast our calamities, or go obsolete before their time or simply never get their chance to shine because no one yet recognizes the need for them. But you can’t keep a good idea down forever, as I explore in this list of …
Trend forecasters project everything from staffing and hiring needs to next year’s “it” color. Through a combination of instinct, experience, statistical modeling and not a little bit of finger-crossing, they tell clients where best to place their billion-dollar bets. Even granting the occasional self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s never been an easy gig, and the consequences of failure can be ruinous.
Today, big data is changing the field, providing unprecedented amounts of information even as it churns out predictive algorithms no one quite understands. In this article, I take a look at the past and future of this prognosticative trade and examine …
Not terribly long ago, do-it-yourself projects were the province of shade-tree mechanics and people who kept wood lathes in their garages. They dealt with grease and iron, wood and wiring, and left anything biological to the experts.
But today, body-modifying grinders implant jury-rigged biotech via the kitchen cutting board. Elsewhere, basement biohackers collaborate to build a better biological mousetrap, while volunteers teach basic genomics in community biotech spaces. Little by little, small pockets of enterprising people are working to make the long-promised post-human, cyborg, genomic future a reality.