Category Archives: Computing

The future ain’t what it used to be

Puzzle pieces
Photo by CrazyPhunk.

As anyone who’s played the ponies, visited Tomorrowland or flipped through an old issue of Popular Mechanics can tell you, predicting the future is no mean feat. Even when we get the broad strokes right, we often misgauge society’s responses. Scientists reveal, inventors dream, engineers build and marketers flog, but human nature has the final say.

Prediction is a sucker’s game, but we have to play: If we don’t predict, we can’t plan. In this article, I look at how the field of futurology developed – and how it works.

How Futurology Works

You don’t know jack about optical audio

Photo by Hustvedt, via Wikimedia Commons

If the back of your entertainment system looks like a cross between mission control and a 1960s Manhattan switchboard, you could probably use a little help separating your composite from your component video. In this article, I’ll explain the oxymoronic mystery that is optical audio, with stops along the way to explore the evolution of inputs, outputs, standards and jacks that led to it. I’ll also tell you how this fiberoptic system stacks up against HDMI.

What is Optical Audio?

Molecular biologists bring gamers into the ‘fold’

The Foldit computer program
Image courtesy University of Washington

Playing video games isn’t exactly rocket science but, thanks to a crowdsourcing computer game developed by University of Washington researchers, it can be molecular biology – and can offer hope to sufferers of tough-to-crack diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and HIV.

Like John Henry versus the steam hammer or Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue, Foldit players show that humans still have a thing or two to teach machines; unlike Henry, who died, or Kasparov, who lost in a rematch, protein-folding gamers still have an edge over the brute-force number crunching of supercomputers.

Has a Video Game Cured HIV?

I, Robonaut

Robonaut 2 (on left) became the first nonhuman to visit the International Space Station
Robonaut 2 (on left) became the first nonhuman to visit the International Space Station

Space is as hostile as environments come. Astronauts encounter temperatures that swing from 248 F (120 C) to -148 F (-100 C), and that’s just near Earth. The temperature of deep space plummets to -454 F (-270 C). Even the relative comfort of a space station—with its carefully regulated temperature, pressure and mix of gases—offers no escape from the ravages of prolonged exposure to microgravity.

If ever a setting called for robotic assistance, space is that place; but working in place of and, particularly, alongside humans requires a combination of strength, gentleness and dexterity unequaled by robots found anywhere else. Let’s take a look at …

How Robonauts Work

Putting the green in nanomachines

Carbon nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

We tend to think of nanotechnology as the stuff of the future, but it’s already here, in hundreds of consumer products and industrial applications. As progress in this minuscule world has accelerated, concern for the environment and for public health has led to a call for green nanotechnology—approaches that accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. In this article, we’ll take a tour of how these many approaches are playing out.

How is green nanotechnology being used?