By: Matthew Battles

They’ve always been with us

By: Matthew Battles

AUTO­NOMOUS CITY EXPLORER, or “Ace,” is a robot built by researchers at the University of Munich that navigates city streets by asking passers-by for directions. New Scientist has the story.

By: Matthew Battles

VENETIA PHAIR (née Burney), who named the planet Pluto, died on April 30 in Banstead, Surrey. She was 90. In March 1930, Eleven-year old Venetia was talking to her grandfather, Falconer Madan, about the discovery […]

By: Matthew Battles

The catalogue of the MIT Press arrived in the mail today. One of my favorite university presses, MIT publishes books that are terrifyingly smart, but often audacious and surprising as well. (last year’s Digital Apollo […]

By: Matthew Battles

CB2 has one job: to win your heart. With its silicone skin, its bark-like cooing calls, and its lurching, needy gestures, the robot stimulates people to reach out in caring supplication, just as evolution has […]

By: Matthew Battles

Thomas Horvath’s kites are like every kite you’ve ever seen, and like no kite you’ve ever seen. They’re what kites dream of when they lie sleeping in a tangle of string at the bottom of […]

By: Matthew Battles

Today, at long last, I saw the Ether Dome. It’s not a fan remix of a Mad Max movie, nor is it a fancifully named head shop. One of Boston’s most neglected historic sites, the […]

By: Matthew Battles

Here’s a quick post pointing to Hulu’s Cosmos channel, where Carl Sagan’s entire groundbreaking PBS series may be streamed for free. Sagan’s series introduced a generation to a universe that was both comprehensible and mystical–an […]

By: Matthew Battles

The concept of the Uncanny Valley was proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, author of Buddha in the Machine (in which Mori asserts that a robot can achieve enlightenment). Mori noted the revulsion many observers […]

By: Joshua Glenn

HiLobrows are emotional, yes; sentimental, (mostly) no. Which means that although we may worship, we try not to fetishize. Or scapegoat, which is the negative form of fetishization. Which brings us to Kindle, and the […]

By: Matthew Battles

Among the radio transmissions winging its way to other galaxies from Earth is “Are We Alone,” a program hosted by Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life) Project. Recent topics include “The Emergence […]