So yes, we've seen a lot of these but somehow this just moves it on a bit and therefore makes it noteworthy here. I try to imagine the mind thinking this through and getting to the vision from design and concept to the final act of painting the hands. Great stuff...
Incredible almost science fiction technology can be a real distraction. It can create a bit of a yawn - if its too far off. Also I guess we have become a bit blasé as so much has actually come to be real in our life times.
Recently I came across this over at MEMS. "MEMS is an emerging technology which uses the tools and techniques that were developed for the Integrated Circuit industry to build microscopic machines. These machines are built on standard silicon wafers." This is not science fiction this is real and now so what will it mean? Whatever we can imagine can become a reality?
So, and I know you've heard this before:
"Imagine a machine so small that it is imperceptible to the human eye. Imagine working machines no bigger than a grain of pollen. Imagine thousands of these machines batch fabricated on a single piece of silicon, for just a few pennies each.
Well, if you have Quick Time and can handle your left clicks, ctrl's and drag techniques plus some nifty zoom tricks, all on screen, then this is well worth knowing about. And be sure to check out thes other amazing panoramas. Menu in the top right. Plenty to choose from but here is one on Rio De Janeiro just to get you into the spirit.
WOW! Incredible ART!!! - More free videos are here
From an early age I've been fascinated by the fundamental act of drawing.
Here is a master technician drawing for 10 hours and his effort compressed into one minute. The fact that he is illustrating a timepiece makes it all the more memorable and wow what a skill. For all those for whom the skill is as tantalising as it is for me. Enjoy.
I was fascinated to learn about left and right hand brains at first.
See this amazing test. Let me know what you are. Then I gradually understood the many ways to think about thinking and what wonders we have to unravel just in our own heads. More recently I have begun to understand so much more and here is yet another example of astonishing insight and logic that teaches us so much.
Temple Grandin is an assistant professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She is the author of the book Thinking in Pictures. Television appearances include 20/20, CBS This Morning, and 48 Hours. Dr. Grandin has autism, and her experiences have helped her to understand animal behavior. She teaches a course in livestock handling at the university and consults on the design of livestock handling facilities. She gives us unique insights from a person with a singular understanding.
Thinking the Way Animals Do. By Temple Grandin, Ph.D. Department of Animal Science. Colorado State University
As a person with autism, it is easy for me to understand how animals think because my thinking processes are like an animal's. Autism is a neurological disorder that some people are born with. Scientists who study autism believe that the disorder is cause d by immature development of certain brain circuits, and over development of other brain circuits. Autism is a complex disorder that ranges in severity from a mild form (such as mine), to a very serious handicap where the child never learns to talk. The m ovie Rain Man depicts a man with a fairly severe form of the disorder.
Every now and then I have to resurrect this amazing piece of work. Few things change in the world of media or advertising and human behavior but this did.
In the third quarter of the 1984 Super Bowl, a strange and disorienting advertisement appeared on the TV screens of the millions of viewers tuned in to the yearly ritual. The ad opens on a gray network of futuristic tubes connecting blank, ominous buildings. Inside the tubes, we see cowed subjects marching towards a cavernous auditorium, where they bow before a Big Brother figure pontificating from a giant TV screen.
But one lone woman remains unbroken. Chased by storm troopers, she runs up to the screen, hurls a hammer with a heroic grunt, and shatters the TV image. As the screen explodes, bathing the stunned audience in the light of freedom, a voice-over announces, "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. And you'll see why1984 won't be like "1984."
This commercial, designed by the advertising agency Chiat/Day to introduce Apple's Macintosh computer and directed by Ridley Scott fresh off his science fiction classic Blade Runner, has never run again since that Super Bowl spot. But few commercials have ever been more influential. Advertising Age named it the 1980s' Commercial of the Decade. You can still see its echoes today in futuristic ads for technology and telecommunications multinationals such as AT&T, MCI, and Intel.
The 1984 commercial was a critical moment in the development of the American public's conception of the proper uses and cultural implications of personal computers. PCs were introduced in the 1970s as tools - utilitarian objects designed to facilitate specific tasks. In the 1980s, they became full-fledged commodities - shiny consumer products defined not just by their use value, but by the collection of meanings, hopes, and ideals attached to them through advertising, promotion, and cultural circulation.
With the 1984 ad, Apple identified the Macintosh with an ideology of "empowerment" - a vision of the PC as a tool for combating conformity and asserting individuality. And while Apple's own fortunes have waned of late, its vision of the power and potential of the personal computer has triumphed, becoming the ideological underpinnings of techno-boosterism in the 1990s.
