This is a moving and engaging presentation given by Karen Sandler, executive director of the GNOME foundation, at OSCON 2011. After she received a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy diagnosis, she realized that the source code running her defribrillator implant was closed, proprietary, and unregulated by the FDA. She does a great job outlining the numerous implications closed-source [...]
Category Archives: computing
“I want my heart to be open”
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Genetic Premunition
BUENOS AIRES — An Argentine laboratory announced that it had created the world’s first transgenic cow, using human genes that will allow the animal to produce the equivalent of mothers’ milk. “The cloned cow, named Rosita ISA, is the first bovine born in the world that incorporates human genes that contain the proteins present in [...]
Interview with Ben Fry (Where 2.0 2011)
I found this on Nathan Yau’s excellent blog, Flowing Data. The video link comes from Ben Fry’s firm Fathom Design, and features a talk on data visualization with Mac Slocum, O’Reilly Radar’s editor. One of Fry’s answers will get anyone into media history, media ecology or mediology to watch the whole interview: Q: A point [...]
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Excerpt from “Transhumanism Meets Design”, an Interview with Natasha Vita-More
What do you think are interesting nascent signals of biology extended through technology taking shape in current apps/services/products? Usually a signal is a flashing red light, or a sharp sound. The nascent signals my brainwaves are picking up are somewhat invisible, but exceedingly active. For example, it is as if the human body’s cells have [...]
Imagination, the Self and Mathematical Reasoning, according to Peirce
§1. Ground, Object, and Interpretant†1 227. Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotic ({sémeiötiké}), the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs. By describing the doctrine as “quasi-necessary,” or formal, I mean that we observe the characters of such signs as we know, and from such [...]
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Parallel Processing and Open Science
“As a society, we dont understand biology yet,” says Melanie Swan, a genomics researcher and principle at MS Futures Group in Palo Alto, California. As she sees it, there are all sorts of problems with the way we conduct biological research en masse. Individuals can gain huge amounts of information about their own genetic makeup, [...]
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Biotic Games
One of Riedel-Kruse’s recent article abstract states: Games are a significant and defining part of human culture, and their utility beyond pure entertainment has been demonstrated with so-called ‘serious games’. Biotechnology – despite its recent advancements – has had no impact on gaming yet. Here we propose the concept of ‘biotic games’, i.e., games that [...]
DNA Sequencing Cost Falls
I found the news first on Slashdot to realize they’re a little everywhere. Although they misleadingly tend to depict the contemporary cost of sequencing a genome as a cheap affair compared to what it was, the graphs, coming from the National Human Genome Research Institute, look surprising. Details available on the NHGRI’s website.
Designing Complexity
The point is that there is no ‘easy energy future’. We’ve got to stop trying to sell people the idea that there are obvious ways to deal with the kinds of complex systems that govern both our social and environmental lives. It is often expressed that it is the task of designers to “make things [...]
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Uncanny Valley
Last Saturday, I was reading an article from Le Devoir about a reconstructed carthaginian man who died 2600 about years ago. Journalist Pauline Gravel’s description of dermoplasty was the most interesting thing about it: Une fois la tête posée sur le corps, Élisabeth Daynès a entrepris le moulage de l’ensemble de la sculpture de terre. [...]
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