In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. So Glass from Google helps people see what you see, in a hands-free way that’s simpler to use than a handheld camera. To me, that could lead to an [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. A powerful benefit of Glass from Google is how it could help people see what you see at the same time you are seeing it. I believe this could [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. Google aims to help change the way we see the world with Glass, a transparent video display that rests lightweight in front of your eyes and whispers into your [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. The very first post for this blog had to do with conjecture that it might one day be possible to manufacture brains, or people. This was no idle speculation, [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. So I had earlier suggested the idea of a brooch like the communication badge seen on Star Trek that one can tap for an otherwise hands-free way of talking [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. Laser scanning of fossils to create 3-D models of them is becoming increasingly common. These models are key to computer simulations exploring how dinosaurs might have moved, and serve [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. Mobile devices are unquestionably more powerful than PCs of a generation ago. However, desktop and laptop computers still remain useful because of their peripherals, such as monitors, keyboards and [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. So last month Google unveiled What’s-the-Score, a project funded by a Google award where Oxford’s main research library digitized a set of 4,000 popular piano pieces from the mid-Victorian [...]

In the series “A Modest Proposal,” my colleagues and I will propose inventions and projects that I think are eminently doable and would love made real. I’ve written before about how a virtue and vice of iPhones and other mobile devices is that they use the same surface for inputting and outputting data. This means [...]

I’ve talked about how Star Trek-like communicator badges might help open new vistas of voice interaction with our mobile devices. I think they could easily allow any of us to record all our conversations for everyday lifelogging. Lifeloggers wear computers to capture their entire lives, or most of them. It encompasses more than just recording [...]