31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Homo Laborans and Homo Faber
Homo Laborans sails in the sea of “making things” where work is an end in itself, and is dictated by the needs imposed by technology. Subjected to technology or pleasantly attracted by it, we are ‘Animal laborans’, as Arendt would say, being enslaved to the tasks we are immersed in by the will of technology. Our doing is comparable to the manual work of past industrial revolutions. Think, for example, of the smartest machines, which can alert their human handlers when they will need m...Folksonomies: two cultures
Folksonomies: two cultures
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notes10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Microcosm of Imagination
Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. 1 notes
notes09 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
The Machine
Vashanti"s next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one"s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month.
To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that acce... 1 notes
notesA world where everyone lives in isolated rooms underground and communicates through social networking tools. Very prescient for 1909.
24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Prescience of Genetic Engineering
As a matter of fact it was not until 1940 that Selkovski invented the purple alga Porpbyrococcus fixator which was to have so great an effect on the world's history. . . . Porpbyrococcus is an enormously efficient nitrogen-fixer and will grow in almost any climate where there are water and traces of potash and phosphates in the soil, obtaining its nitrogen from the air. It has about the effect in four days that a crop of vetches would have had in a year. . . . The enormous fall in food prices...Folksonomies: futurism science fiction
Folksonomies: futurism science fiction
1 notes
notesA science fiction vision.
07 NOV 2014 by ideonexus
Computronium
In programmable matter, the same cubic meter of machinery can become a wind tunnel at one moment, a polymer soup at the next; it can model a sea of fermions [elementary particles], a genetic pool, or an epidemiology experiment at the flick of a console key. Ten times as large a simulation will simply require ten cubic meters of machinery, instead of one. Flexibility, instant reconfigurability, variable resolution, total accessibility, and handling safety make such programmable matter worth a ... 1 notes
notes15 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
Bacillus Vampiris
Bacteria could be the answer to the vampire.
Everything seemed to flood over him then. It was as though he’d been the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, refusing to let the sea of reason in. There he’d been, crouching and content with his iron-bound theory. Now he’d straightened up and taken his finger out. The sea of answers was already beginning to wash in.
The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires had spread it?
Could their nightly marau...Folksonomies: science fiction horror
Folksonomies: science fiction horror
1 notes
notesA bacteria that fuels the muscles even after the heart stops pumping blood, that instills a repulsion of the sun and garlic to survive.
18 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
An Example of the Joy of Hard Science Fiction
If they are going to sink below, then the pressure on the vessel is going to rise as Verne talked about in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. If the pressure on the vessel is going to rise, then it's going to collapse unless the pressure within the vessel rises. So the captain is slowly letting the vessel sink into the Moon dust, while the crew is not letting onto the tourists that anything is wrong, but the pressure is slowly going up.
Now just as we don't typically notice the pressure go up or ...
1 This example from a Clarke novel illustrates the fun of Hard-SF in how it leaves it up to the reader to figure things out from their scientific literacy.
14 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Journey of a Fossil
One hundred million years ago, an ammonoid lived in the sea that then separated India from Asia. It died and fell into limy sediments on the seafloor. These sediments grew deeper and hardened into rock. The shell calcified, becoming part of the rock, though maintaining every detail of its structure. India was on the move, drifting on a slab of the Earth's mobile crust toward Asia. The floor of the intervening sea was forced under the Asian continent, back into the hot interior of the planet. ...Chet Raymo describes the epic journey of a fossil from the bottom of the ocean to the top of a mountain.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Wonder of X-Rays Affecting a Photographic Plate
But in its [the corpuscular theory of radiation] relation to the wave theory there is one extraordinary and, at present, insoluble problem. It is not known how the energy of the electron in the X-ray bulb is transferred by a wave motion to an electron in the photographic plate or in any other substance on which the X-rays fall. It is as if one dropped a plank into the sea from the height of 100 ft. and found that the spreading ripple was able, after travelling 1000 miles and becoming infinite... 1 notes
notesBragg compares it to a wave traveling 100 feet to knock a board out of a ship.
14 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Evidence That India Was Once Under Sea
But if you have seen the soil of India with your own eyes and meditate on its nature - if you consider the rounded stones found in the earth however deeply you dig, stones that are huge near the mountains and where the rivers have a violent current; stones that are of smaller size at greater distance from the mountains, and where the streams flow more slowly; stones that appear pulverised in the shape of sand where the streams begin to stagnate near their mouths and near the sea - if you cons... 1 notes
notesAnd filled up by debris carried by streams.
