The 10 Coolest Technologies You've Never Heard Of

This is a great article. I just watched "Irobot" today, (which was interesting, but certainly not as good as the book) and I couldn't help but think about it as I read through this list. The two most striking comparisons to the movie that I can make come with the Silicon Brains project and the Chaos Computing project.

The Silicon Brains portion of the article basically discusses the invention of artificial brains, for a many different purposes. One reason for the development is to help scientists to truely understand the inner workings of the human brain. I saw more on this exact study in a documentry on The Learning Channel. God help us if there were no learning channel. The idea is phenominal, while it would help us to understand the inner workings of the human brain, it could aslo revolutionize the medical world, aiding those with neurological handicaps in ways that we would have never thought to be possible. The extent of what we could learn from this may be limitless. This is what brings me back to the rediculously hokey but not altogether impossible movie I watched today. While it is not possible for any man to survive as many car crashes or building explosions as Will Smith did, the basic premise of the movie is not so far fetched. It begs the question. If we were to create the equivalant of our own human brain, is this where it would end? Would there be a point of no return? A point where we as creators no longer have control over what we have created?

The Chaos Computing portion was also interesting. The idea of creating a piece of hardware that can morph, and can perform an incredible number of funcions seems impossible, and yet here we are, reading that it is not. It seems to me that as we go along, we are less involved in the things which we create. We are now creating things that we no longer need to manipulate, but simply operate themselves, and in this case, morph themselves. Even the cars we used to see in futuristic movies, the ones that drive themselves, are not becoming so farfetched. A few months back I saw a commercial for a car that can parallel park itself. How wonderful.

At any rate, I have to say, that I will always hold a special place in my heart for the Science Fiction writer. Although I respect any writer who can produce inciteful and publishable material, it seems to me that it is the SciFi writer who is the most inventive of all writers. We are now seeing novels such as "Irobot," which thirty years ago seemed proposterous in content, coming to the forefront with ideas that are not entirely legitimate. The recreation of a human brain, for medical puposes as well as commercial purposes seems wonderful indeed, but certainly will not come without debate. It will be a debate over the consequences of such a step forward in technology. The same consequences that were carried out in a Science FICTION novel written decades ago.