Hello, I am Robert G. Male. Welcome to TechStop™. Here you will find links that I think are of interest. Furthermore these are links that I want to keep track of because they have given me either ideas or some other form of inspiration for my writing. Links are listed in order lowest to highest both in the date they are given and the order in which they appear (meaning: read them from the bottom up for a certain day's list). Some of these sites may require you to sign up for free. Without further ado, the links...

September 2009.

September 24, 2009

• This is the stuff tech-dreams--and some tech-nightmares--begin with. Functional machines built at the nano-scale level have been a staple of sci-fi for a long time. That such an advancement may finally see the light of day is nothing but exhilarating. There has been some doubt thus far and there are still hurdles to be overcome. From the writer's standpoint the real thing coming to fruition brings much greater verisimilitude, and can bring in ideas that haven't been thought of yet for fiction based on properties and qualities not imagined but discovered in the practical applications.

• Taking Space Invaders from a television screen to the side of a building, controlling the lights, is a proposition that frightens cyber security people and paints the aforementioned apocalypse. Is it that much of a big deal? It can certainly be made into one. Even though this video is supposed to be faked, and though it would be a harmless prank, the possibilities are still there. The smart home is a likely target in the small scale bringing to mind several possibilities. Scaling up leads to the fear evinced in the people cited in this article.

• This is an article about creating your own reality with augmented reality, knowing who to dislike based on the cyber sixth sense. This is a different kind of virtual reality than previously envisioned. Imagine substituting Coke for Pepsi, CSI for Grey's Anatomy. The darker side could involve bigots replacing the people they talk to, Neo-Nazi skinheads walking down streets suddenly filled with swastikas and pictures of Hitler. What effect will this have on people? On interactions between people, and society in general?

September 03, 2009

• This could one of the holy grails of augmented reality, at least on the back end, the hardware end. It carries a little more privacy than glasses as the display technology, and a lot more than projector based systems, holographic or not. This is wild stuff. Beyond the whole heads up display capabilities there are also biometric sensor possible. The immediacy and ease of use of a display system like this could be the foothold needed for ubiquitous computing.

• Leave it to China to figure out how to mobilise a massive propaganda effort online. Whether it is a terrible challenge or potential blow to Web 2.0 remains to be seen but the potential is there. What happens when any group loyal to any idea sets it mind to influence the system? It doesn't have to be sinister, but it would have to be counter to the normal rules of popular determination, otherwise popular determination is all it would be and that would be indicative of the will of the people or consumer base. This sort of spectre looms over the stock market as well. There is lot of potential here for conflict and shading or flavour to settings and plots.

• That packets fail and requests don't always get an answer, the bits lost somewhere in transit, is not surprising. Physical failures or software causes don't matter, but the idea that these spots of incommunication reach a level worth comparing to a black hole is interesting. Even if it's horribly expansive hyperbole to compare these failing spot to the gargantuan super powerful space phenomena, consider the implications if it was a figuratively precise comparison.

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