Wearable Tech: Pattie Maes demos "the 6th sense"

Steve M. sends in a great video reminiscent of "Minority Report" that deals with wearable technology capable of interacting with the wearer in real time and imparting useful information and communications about our surroundings. The argument here is that the tech does nothing more revolutionary than your present cell-phone. However in truth, the cell is not real time. One must stop and interface with the device. But if your tech were real time, gave you functions, features and information pertinent to your environment and was interfaced with natural gestures, you start to see where these researchers are heading and what our near future tech will operate like.

Brain Music - the Composer & the Composed

Writes the publicist for the American Department of HomeLand Security:

"Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back -- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter -- it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward." 

Robert Burns of DHS' s Science & Technology Directorate is evaluating neurotraining or "Brain Music", using music created in advance from listeners' own brain waves. The concept is to use the frequency, amplitude, and duration of musical sounds to move the brain from an anxious state to a more relaxed state (or vice versa, though Burns is not too keen to write about THAT).  Here is a sample brain music track from DHS   said by them to trigger an 'alert' feeling.

While Emergency responders and firefighters may benefit by, or at least be obligated to take part in, this sort of brain muzakery, why would it stop there?   Prisons may become oases of tranquility, if each inmate has his own personal pacifying music playing at appropriate times.

How long before arrestees must give a 'brainprint" as well as a fingerprint? You may have the right to remain silent, but your brainwaves won't.

Review: Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Altered Carbon
Richard K. Morgan
Ballantine / De Rey 7.99
pb 526pp

Taikeshi Kovacs is an X U.N. Envoy which can best be described as a mix between Batman and a T-800. In a future where RD (real death) is something only the very poor have to experience. Personality, memory, a person's very consciousness can be saved electronically and restored into a cloned body or a completely different “sleeve”.

Since humans no longer have to physically travel between the stars (one only needs to transmit themselves to their destination) they have now been able to inhabit far flung planets in the galaxy.
Earth, by contrast, has stratified and ossified along scocio-economic lines. However instead of pure wealth, the true elite of Earth (Meths short for Methuselahs) people who have, through their wealth, extended their lives by backing up then restoring themselves into newer bodies.

Kovacs, due to his previous line of work, is a pariah on many worlds and faces long term storage, finds himself given the chance to avoid hundreds of years of storage and possibly gaining a reprieve on his home planet, is called to Earth to solve a suicide, by the very Meth person who committed suicide. But within minutes of downloading and re-sleeving on Earth, Taikeshi is attacked. He soon finds that this is not an isolated instance as it would seem almost every group is bent on stopping Kovacs at any cost.


Altered Carbon is one of the rare books that starts on a high note and continues to escalate! The action starts within the first few pages and never stops. The experience is somewhat like learning to drive by being dropped into the drivers seat of an Indy racer doing 140mph! You learn the plot line and the characters while ducking punches and avoiding hails of bullets. All the while the plot continues to coil and twist . You quite literally learn nuances in the plot and characters in the final pages!

Morgan had postulated a future Earth that Robinson or Gibson would be comfortable with. The tech is well realized and the milieu is believable. I know I bandy the “couldn't put it down” a lot however you will understand after reading a few pages, when I say that you really can't easily close the book and walk away.

Altered Carbon is not for everyone. Kovacs is certainly every bit the anti hero. Not that he is written unpleasant, but Morgan made the choice to put Taikeshi Kovacs in the middle of what combat vets know as a shit storm, and has him familiar with the level of violence and able to dish it out every bit as well. If your tastes run to military / war science fiction then you will get a large uncut dose with Altered Carbon. But be forewarned, Morgan doesn't pull any punches and neither does Kovacs.

If your an action/adventure war sci-fi aficionado, I give this a recommended read.

Nebula Award winners for 2008 announced

Here are the 2008 Nebula Award Winners straight from Boing Boing

Best Novel: Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin

Best Novella: "The Spacetime Pool" by Catherine Asaro

Best Novelette: "Pride and Prometheus" by John Kessel

Best Short Story: "Trophy Wives" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

War of the Worlds Gets Zombiefied!

Crystalwizard over at Abandoned Towers always has something interesting going on. Latest news is that Eric Brown who, "writes the articles on comics for Abandoned Towers", is in fact the same Eric Brown that writes his science fiction with a healthy dose of Zombies mixed in.

Now if you're a zombie fan then you have got to be interested in Eric's newest venture "War of the Worlds get Zombiefied" which is part of a growing trend of retelling the classics with a twist. Brown's book is "The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies" pretty much says it all!