Artificial

Wednesday October 12, 2005 - 3:05PM EDT

New iPOD with video support came out today. Not that exciting, not even new as far as portable video goes but its Apple so people make a big deal. The design is exactly the same as the nano except it is bigger. Although it is bigger than the nano it is smaller and thinner than any previous regular iPOD. Screen is slightly bigger too. What would have been really impressive is having the whole face of the thing be a screen and get rid of that ridiculous wheel. They can make the whole screen touch sensitive and I know there are platics that scratch much less than the screen for the iPOD nano. I think they were just being cheap there. I just think about how you can't scratch polished grantie with a really sharp knife. Some kind of plastic with that kind of durability would be great. But seriously revealing a video iPOD that was all screen would have been cool. Lets take that coolness to a next step. A whole screen iPOD capable of displaying holograms. Its possible. The technology exists just not in that kind of size yet. That would be a movie viewer. The LCD screen could be like a window into viewing a movie. You really have to had read some about holograms to be excited as I am about these things I am throwing out. Get some books from the library and read up on how they work.

Some technologies that excite me the most right now are polymers that glow. I forget the name for it. But basically it is plastic that glows when you run electricity through it. Another one is thin plastic solar cells that convert infrared light to electricity. Again basically a solar cell that converts heat into electricity using the photovoltaic effect, not just heating water to make steam. Also new battery technologies such as fuel cells, whether they be hydrogen or methane or something and the thin plastic battery research that I hear is coming out of some company in Israel. Advances is photo capturing technology. So that eventually a digital camera will be able to capture a picture at the same and greater resolutions than the human eye. Although the human eye doesn't see images the same way as a camera, getting a device that could at least make something look as good as what the human eye sees is one step closer to artificial eyes. Replacement eyes will happen eventually. Maybe in my lifetime. I also think about artificial replacement parts and real replacments body parts grown in labs. Which will come first? Which will dominate? Will one way be better for certain things than the other way? Which is more difficult to do? You see the two battling today, kind of. We have heart transplants and we have artificial hearts. So far I think transplants are winning out, but is it just a matter of time before the artificial heart becomes ubiquotous. Or will we simply grow another heart using our DNA in a lab when we need another? Which is better? Which will people want? Will it simply be a matter of preference?