In the last ten years, video gaming has gone from being a peripheral social phenomenon for young and teenage boys to a central factor in today’s media and entertainment.  Movies based on video games have been produced. TV executives talk about bringing the interactive gaming experience to television programming.  Advertisers create games for brand positioning of their product. Advertising in video games is growing at a faster rate that almost any other medium today. The sales revenue of the video game industry is greater than theatrical movies.  Virtual worlds, one of the biggest things in today’s Internet world can be traced to video games.  Simply put, gaming is a major part of today’s media and entertainment.

As all gamers, and anyone consuming media today knows, there is a new console war going on.  Last year Microsoft came out with the Xbox 360, the most powerful, integrated game console ever.  With global on-line connectivity, it allowed gamers around the world to play and compete together.  It was embraced and deemed a huge success.  Now a year later, the other two major players in the console wars have introduced their products.  Sony, the winner five years ago with its PlayStation 2 came out with its much anticipated and delayed PlayStation 3.  The same week, the number three player, Nintendo, came out with its radically different Wii.  In a surprisingly short time, a winner has emerged, and it is the Wii.

The PlayStation 3 was a year late, made promises it did not deliver on …

It can be argued that the three most transformative technologies of the last twenty years are the personal computer, the Internet and the cell phone.  I have written often in Evolution Shift about the first two, but not of the third, until now. 

As is often the case, a look into the future first entails a look back to the past.  In 1984 there were 25,000 cell phones sold in the U.S.  In 1990 that number had grown to1,888,000 units sold, and in the year 2000 52,600,00 units were sold – a million phones a week!  That number has continued to go up.  Today, in a country of 300 million people – including infants, young children, and the aged – there are over 210 million active cell phone accounts.  We all have them.  A number of people, like me, have two. So, the cell phone is truly ubiquitous in the U.S. This of course means that the phones are a commodity; in fact a great number of people get them free with a service plan.

Twenty years ago, most of us had two phones, one at work, one at home, both connected to the wall.  Our phone conversations were therefore placed based, and if we were out and about, there was always the pay phone.  Remember using those? Back then, no one ever called you up and said “Where are you?” which is now one of the most frequently asked questions when the phone is answered. I don’t need to talk about …

The first interactive game we play with infants is ‘peekaboo’.  Once they can walk we move on to hide and seek.  There is absolutely no one I know that can say that they never played hide and seek.  This primitive, universal children’s game is where we often first use our intelligence in three dimensional space to search, choose and find.  So it comes as no surprise that the first step in creating life like robots would be to teach them the game of hide and seek.

Robotics is now moving from the operation of robots remotely to the interaction of robots with humans.  In order for robots to become more human like, they must interact with humans and not jut be operated by humans.  In a number of locations that conduct robotic research and development, people are working with robots in new ways.  A recent newspaper article described how George the robot is learning the game of hide and seek at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, where Alan Schultz is the Director.  George is an ‘off the shelf’ robot that has been reprogrammed for the game of hide and seek.  When Schultz tells George to go hide, he pauses, then moves on his wheel base to go behind a stack of boxes.  Obviously Schultz quickly finds him, but of course it takes longer for George to find Schultz.  After rounds and rounds of this children’s game, George becomes a bit more skilled in hiding and seeking.

For decades, …

This post goes into that age old category of ‘learn something everyday’. As regular readers of this blog know, I believe that we must do everything we can to both find alternative sources of energy and slow down the accelerating global warming trend. One of the key ways to accomplish both of these is through technological innovation.

The other day I read an article in the New York Times that was nothing less than thrilling regarding technology and global warming. Six years ago the architect Richard Meier designed a church in Rome. The dominant design element was curvilinear white concrete. To preserve the whiteness the primary technical sponsor worked on coming up with a coating for the concrete. Six years later, the coated concrete is as white as it was when constructed, while other parts of the building have grayed due to atmospheric pollution. Now the thrilling part: the white pigment used actually ‘eats’ surrounding smog!

It was determined through testing that construction materials that contain titanium dioxide, the key ingredient in the pigment, destroy the pollutants found in car exhaust and heating emissions. In other words, titanium dioxide breaks down the nitrogen oxides that are emitted by burning fossil fuels. It is called photocatalytic cement. The maker of the pigment, Italcementi, has conducted numerous tests that have determined that some pollutants could be reduced by 20 to 70 percent. The reduction of pollutants is greatest within a distance of 8 feet. …