Watch “A Day Made of Glass” and take a look at Corning’s vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.
Open Source Ecology - Global Village Construction Set
Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.
Could 3D Printing Change the World?
Could 3D Printing Change the World? Technologies, Potential, and Implications of Additive Manufacturing explores the technology of AM and its broader implications, which include:
- Assembly lines and supply chains could be reduced or eliminated for many products. AM can produce the final product—or large pieces of a final product— in one process.
- Designs, not products, would move around the world as digital files are printed anywhere with any printer to meet design parameters. A “STL” design file can be sent via the Internet and printed in 3D.
- Products could be printed on demand without the need for inventories.
- A given manufacturing facility would be capable of printing a huge range of products without retooling—and each printing could be customized without additional cost.
- Production and distribution of material products could become de-globalized as production is brought closer to the consumer.
- Manufacturing could be pulled away from “manufacturing platforms” like China back to the countries where the products are consumed, reducing global economic imbalances as export countries’ surpluses are reduced and importing countries’ reliance on imports shrink.
- The carbon footprint of manufacturing and transport as well as overall energy use in manufacturing could be reduced substantially and thus global “resource productivity” greatly enhanced and carbon emissions reduced.
- Reduced need for labor in manufacturing could be politically destabilizing in some economies while others, especially aging societies, might benefit from the ability to produce more goods with fewer people while reducing reliance on imports.
- The United States, the current leader in AM technology, could experience a renaissance in innovation, design, IP exports, and manufacturing, enhancing its relative economic strength and geopolitical influence.
Future of Technology - ‘Artificial leaf’ makes real fuel | msnbc.com
The ‘artificial leaf,’ a device that can harness sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen without needing any external connections, is seen with some real leaves, which also convert the energy of sunlight directly into storable chemical form.
It doesn’t look like the leaves changing colors and piling up on the lawn, but a nature-inspired “artificial leaf” technology has taken a notable step toward the goal of producing storable and clean energy to power everything from factories to tablet computers.
The leaf is a silicon solar cell coated with catalytic materials on its side that, when placed in a container of water and exposed to sunlight, splits the H2O into bubbles of oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can be stored and used as an energy source, for example to power a fuel cell.
“The device both captures the solar energy and stores it in the chemical bonds of the hydrogen and oxygen that are produced from the water,” Steven Reece, a research scientist with Sun Catalytix and lead author of a paper describing the breakthrough, told me Friday.
Built like the Dreamliner: 2013 debut of carbon composite cars | Physorg.com
The revolutionary material used to build the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the Airbus A350 super-jumbo jet, and the military’s stealth jet fighter planes is coming down to Earth in a new generation of energy-saving automobiles expected to hit the roads during the next few years. That ultra-strong carbon fiber composite material — 50% lighter than steel and 30% lighter than aluminum — is the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’s weekly newsmagazine.
Step into the Smarter Planet Time Machine!
For a little Friday Fun, try one of these three settings:
Or to really rev up your Flux Capacitor, try the Random button to sample one of the more than 3600 posts about All Things Smarter since we went back to the future in Nov. 2008.
Want to hold Smarter Planet in your hand? Get the mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Of course, you can always browse through the misty mountains of Smarter Time via the Archive. Or for a real time warp, scroll through all the Time Machine posts.
How will we design products for the Internet of things? —GigaOM
As revolutionary as the mobile ecosystem is, it’s the interactions of more intelligent connected devices with people outside of the context of phones or computers that will drive more innovation, says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer at Frog Design. Rolston, speaking at the Mobile Future Forward conference Monday in Seattle described a future where devices become more contextually aware thanks to embedded and connected sensors.
Instead of thinking about the buttons on a phone or a laptop, manufacturers and designers need to think about what will happen when computers are embedded in everything and connected all the time. Instead of computing confined in a box on a desk or in the hand, computers will be everywhere pulling data from a variety of places. Understanding how those computers will pull information about their environment, relay that data to users and then interpret what users want them to do creates a web of interaction that will require new ways of thinking and design.
Mobile Internet Usage to Top Wireline Surfing by 2015: IDC Report | eWeek.com
People are using mobile devices and notebooks to access the mobile Web more than ever before, according to an IDC report.
More U.S. Internet users will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices by 2015, according to a report from IT analytics firm International Data Corporation. The company’s Worldwide New Media Market Model (NMMM) forecast that as smartphones begin to outsell simpler feature phones, and as media tablet sales explode, the number of mobile Internet users would grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.6 percent between 2010 and 2015.
The report noted that the impact of smartphone and, especially, media tablet adoption will be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs will first stagnate and then slowly decline. Western Europe and Japan will not be far behind the United States in following this trend, the report noted.
Worldwide, the total number of Internet user will grow from 2 billion in 2010 to 2.7 billion in 2015, when 40 percent of the world’s population will have access to its resources.
Smallest Electrical Motor Now Just a Nanometer Wide | CNET
Way back in the early days of 2011, the world’s smallest electric motor was so…big. At 200 nanometers wide, it was a whopping 1/300th the size of a human hair.
Now, chemists at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences have smashed that record, which was set in 2005, with this weekend’s unveiling of their single-molecule electric motor, which at 1 nanometer wide could be the first in an entirely new class of devices with potential use in medicine and engineering.
Verbally is an amazing, comprehensive assisted speech solution for the iPad. Verbally is a top-selling Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) iPad app and it’s totally free. Unlike all other AAC solutions available, Verbally’s unique, simple design allows users to communicate quickly and effectively in any setting.
Verbally enables creative communication, self-expression, and, most importantly, conversation.
Sony’s head-mounted 3D visor is real, HMZ-T1 arrives in Japan November 11th - Engadget
Remember that crazy wearable 3D display concept Sony was showing off at CES 2011? Turns out the company is actually going to make it, and the HMZ-T1 is scheduled to be released in Japan on November 11th. While the design has changed slightly since we first laid our eyes, and heads, on it, the specs appear to be the same, with two 1280x720 0.7-inch OLED panels mounted in front of each eye giving the wearer an experience similar to viewing a 750-inch screen from 20m away, as well as 5.1 surround sound from headphones integrated into the Head Mounted Display (HMD). You can see the helmet above, as well as the processor unit (complete with HDMI input and output, so you can take off the helmet and watch on TV) that it must remain tethered to. Pricing is expected to be 60,000 yen ($783 US). Check out the press release and our hands-on video from CES after the break and decide if living out a Geordi La Forge-style fantasy is worth it.
The Battery of the Future
What is the future of battery materials and construction?
Batteries have the potential to more efficiently power our portable devices, fuel our vehicles, and disrupt the way the electric grid works. But advances in battery technology have been slow to respond to the power demands of modern life.
Moore’s Law sees computer chips double in performance and drop their price by 50 percent every 18 to 24 months. But batteries adhere to much slower experience curves that typically see them double in performance perhaps every ten years. The stubborn refusal of battery materials to yield in price and size explains the high cost of electric vehicles and grid storage
IBM VP : My Three Essentials For Creating Innovative New Products | Co. Design
BM’s Lee Green provides a road map for generating disruptive technologies, objects, and experiences.
No matter the forum or platform, designers, executives, and consumers love to discuss (and use) products and services that seem to break the mold. These ideas are disruptive, creative, and often counterintuitive. A decade ago, who could have predicted that mobile phones would take the place of digital cameras, for both still and video images, in the minds and hands of consumers? Or that serious chefs would consider food-truck businesses, once the domain of low-end services but now a trendy, fast, and cost-effective way to open a “restaurant”?
Onlookers often think that such marketplace and marketing successes are products of one-off “aha” moments of inspiration or unique research methods. But there are actual strategies that designers and businesses can follow to create such disruptive technologies, objects, and experiences. Here are my three tried-and-true tactics:
1. Support what is likely to fail.
By this I don’t mean prioritize experiments and concepts that look like they might not sell; I mean consider technology and designs that might not seem to work for their intended purposes. This is the approach of James Dyson, the British engineer and vacuum entrepreneur, and the company that bears his name. While developing breakthrough products, such as the energy-saving hand-drying machine known as the Airblade, Dyson and his team take note of what ideas and prototypes aren’t achieving their goals and then find new uses for them.
Self-inflating vehicle tires on the way - Motoring, Life & Style - The Independent
Drivers could soon be traveling in cars with self-inflating tires, according to reports from the US.
Tire manufacturer Goodyear confirmed last week that it is currently working on a tire with an automatic pump embedded, which could keep the internal air pressure at the recommended level.
The firm told Edmunds’ AutoObserver that its Air Maintenance Technology (AMT) tires will be able to keep themselves at the optimum pressure with no need for external pumps or trips to the garage.
The system is made possible by a miniature internal pump, which is connected to pressure sensors in a self-contained unit inside each tire.
