From rough machines to a piece of Art

Marinetty, Founder of the Futurism.

Technology and its advances are not only matter of Science and Math; in fact, during the early XX Century, an Italian poet named Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, published a Manifesto defending the qualities of the progress and announcing an artistic, social and literary movement based on this field: the Futurism had appeared.

The first idea that comes to my mind when I see the word futurism is an old cartoon called "The Jetsons" (I guess most of you remember it); anyway, this movement is much more than flying vehicles and odd clothes; it is about machines, speed, pollution, big cities, CHANGE! Futurists rejected the past and tradition, basing their beliefs on the new world full of inventions and alternatives. They tried to reflect the dynamic movement of the world in their masterpieces, incorporating bright new colors and techniques to their work.

We can say that modern chauvinists who believe women and technology are not compatible were born during this period since they loved sports, violence and war as a possibility to confirm the power of the machines and its energy. In any case, these men transformed the society and incorporated their thoughts to arts, literature, music and politics, being  members of the National Fascist Party since they were pationated Nationalists.

What do you think about creating something as beautiful as these pieces of arts using machines as a source of inspiration?  

As pig as a human

Throughout the years and with the help of technology, humans have found new ways of stopping the degradation of our internal organs; the use of artificial mechanisms to keep people alive, studies to find cures for cancer, animal testing, among others. But experiments with animals have gone very far even to discover that the skin of some animals has the same characteristics than the human.

More recently, a group of scientists from Tokio, Japan discovered that organs of a particular animal could be grown inside others without any problem; a happy finding for the ones who are awaiting an organ transplant, but the situation seems not to be that simple. The first step into the creation of new organs available for humans to be used in transplants, is the creation of an animal without organs. Mice have been the chosen ones for this new science experiment,  with the use of rats 'embryos' that are injected in the mouse, creating a mouse with rat embryos.

Studies with pigs have revealed that pigs and humans share some similarities and particularly talking about internal organs there are some important things to say: they have almost the same size and texture; that is why, they have been used for many different studies in the transplant field.
Now that the experiments with rats and mice have drawn some good results, the cultivation of human organs  in pigs' bodies  might become true; moreover, pigs' bodies have been already managed to generate human blood in their bodies; it seems that it is just a matter of time and also a matter of legalizing this experiment.

How would it be...?

There are situations that make me stop for a second and make me think how would my (or our) lives be without daily things that seems to have been around us since always.

This is how, several weeks ago I wanted to call a friend of mine and I had no minutes left in my cell phone. I tried to contact her by facebook, twitter and Whatsapp and nothing worked. After a few hours I was desperate and I started wondering how would my parents communicate when they were teenagers and needed or wanted to talk if they were far away from each other.

So, after that day I started to appoint my dates as soon as possible and not to left it to the last minute were something can go wrong and make me pass a bad moment.  I also learned to not depend on my cell phone or on my computer, because suddenly the internet may fail, your battery may die or your minutes may be gone and all the plans that you had in your mind might simply be in vain if you did not talked to that person in advanced. So, the next time you schedule something do not trust 100% on the technology and start wondering right now how would your life be without something as simple and as important as a cell phone.

The engineering of art

The work of art that lives its own life.

A Dutch artist called Theo Jansen has been working for over sixteen years in one of the most impressive art projects that any human being has ever witnessed. It is called "Kinetic sculpture" and consists on the creation of different sculptures -or "creatures" as Jansen calls them- using unconventional materials.

In 1998, Theo Jansen started creating animals made out of PVC; he not only tried to create a realistic representation of animals but he also tried to create living animals. The interesting aspect of this plastic "creatures" is that they could move by themselves powered by the air that blew along the seasides of Ireland and provided with legs.

The idea of representing life by creating wind-walking sculptures started its evolution through the use of different materials; materials to be considered a bit unconventional among sculptures, such as: lemonade bottles, plastic tubes or anything made out of PVC. Moreover, the most critical stage of building these animals is not the selection of materials, but the process of adapting them to the sandy environments in which Jansen decided his creatures to live. Although these "creatures" have been able to react to different surfaces, they have been proved to be more efficient in the seashore thanks to an ordinary wheel that touches every single inch of the ground.

"Animaris Curren Ventosa" is the name of one of the most interesting pieces of art that Jansen has created until now.This creature was built with an stomach that keeps the air in the body in order to be used when there is an absence of wind; this allows the animal to move without problems in windless days.

During sixteen long years, Jansen has been creating life by assembling different pieces of plastic together to create animal sculptures. He has also been improving his creations by making them more everlasting and including new things, but there are lot of work to do in this field and he is not going anywhere: whenever there are some enemies to weaken, Theo Jansen will be there because art and engineering create a new way of seeing the beauty of life one that assures that not only humans are alive.

Our Almighty Lord, The Remote Control!

Did you know that this marvelous invention was created more than a hundred years ago?! Let's thank Nikola Tesla for this great invention that has made our lives easier for so long!

We all know that, in some way, this simple device represents power in our homes; just try to remember one of the times you fought against your brother or sister over it, or your father saying “I put the rules here, so the remote control is mine!” We all want to have it! Maybe the first thing you thought was "I don't watch television", first, we both know that's not true and second, I can tell you that the remote control can be use to control many different things apart from T.V. such as DVDs, toys, the electric lighting at your house, and even long distance mechanisms like the "Curiosity".  What I want to say is that this ordinary apparatus represents all what technology is about: Simplifies our lives, and even when it goes unnoticed, it is a fundamental tool!

So tell me if you think the same way as I do! Or maybe you've not think in how important this invention is because nowadays it’s so ingrained to us that, as I said before, it goes unnoticed.

And now let’s get retro! Watch this old-fashion TV commercial about the very first Television with remote control. Have a laugh while you exercise your listening!

Video Here

Put and Gone

 Imagine having the ability to create and put electronic devices in your body that simply disappear within a few days. What about medical supplies or a health meter that provide information about your organism, or a small camera to have an endoscopy; there is no need of surgery or using bothering tubes through your body, just use degradable devices. 

   Scientist have developed devices using a mixture of silicon, magnesium and silk to build degradable objects; the silk proteins are used to control the lifetime of such devices, it could a day, a month, even a year, when the time has come the silk packing starts to dissolve until it is completely vanished. As an example, think about a temporal pacemaker, there is no need of a second intervention because it would disappear from the body by itself.  

   Using this principle companies could use this mixture to every gadgetry, in order to avoid an overproduction of technological garbage; this will reduce the ecological impact of technological wastes, as simple as "set" the condition for the degradation process to the device and, Puff!  Your device is no longer with you. It would something great to keep our planet clean; think about how many plastics items could simply disappear from streets and dump? Useful, isn’t it?   

Can Facebook worsen love relationships?

Can Facebook worsen love relationships?

Have you ever arrived home very tired of work or university, and wanting to have a break from problems of real life? Many times Facebook has played the role of our entertainment; however, we don´t know how much it can affect our personal relations. Recent studies have shown that there are certain features of Facebook that make it a source of problems among couples. Many people have confessed that they have had problems because of the information that is shared on Facebook.  One of its characteristics is related to time; not only the time that they spend on the social network, but also what are they really doing on it during that period of time. Another important aspect is the over-informative attribute that is related to Facebook. This means that you can control what you write; yet you can´t control what other people write about you, what they write on your wall, and what they read about you.  For instance, a girl notices that her boyfriend has accepted five friends requests of girls that she doesn´t know, so they have an argument.  Of course that jealousy itself as well as self-esteem and emotional health are starting points in these situations. What do you think is to blame? Is it technology that influences our relations, or is our own personalities that we can´t control? 

Seeing What is Not There

Imagine yourself walking down the street, and as you advance many notifications pop up in front of your eyes. They tell you names of restaurants, how far away your friends are, or ask if you want to take a video recording of what is happening in front of you.

This may be reality in a couple of months as Google finishes work on “Project Glass”. The project is a set of glasses that has no lenses at all, just a camera and a screen. They described this product as an “augmented reality” or a “wearable computer”.

“Project Glass* sets up a small video screen set in front on the right eye, as well a a little speaker and microphone near the right ear. This device will probably work with a cellphone that will be connected by bluetooth and you can share all this information through the different social networks.

Technology is advancing quickly these days; maybe this new invention will depose Apple’s vice-grip on novel technology. However, there is more to consider than just the purchasing desires of virtual reality geeks around the world. While this kind of technology may be very useful, it also brings up the question Are we isolating ourselves too much? How much virtual reality and digitalization of life is too much? Are we destroying the real-life connections that hold our societies together?

I'd like you to watch this video, and tell me if you are willing to live in a society as the video shows.

It all began with Dolly.

Fifteen years later Dolly sheep's clonation, cell nuclear transfer is back on lab tables.
generally speaking, cell nuclear transfer consists in replacing an embryonal cell's genes which nucleus was removed by the genes of an adult cell. 
Since then, many researches have clonated different animal species such as mice, pigs, horses and cows. equally, there has been scandals for example the case of Woo Suk Hwang who in 2004 announced that he cloned a human embryon, but it turned out to be false and of course there is the ethic dilemma over its use.
Human clonation is supossed to be useful to develop  new healthy cells or tissues and in this way help people treat incurable diseases such as parkinson by using the cellular reprogramming technique which consists in inserting one or more genes within an adult cell, for example the skin in order these elements to be the ones which start reprograming internally that cell with no need to use an embryo or an ovule, leaving behind any possible ethic debate. from this point of view clonation seems absolutely positive, the problem is when human ambition could raise the idea of clonating a whole human being. would this be ethic? would this person be as normal as you and me? some religious people think that cloned humans will have no soul, what do you think about this? would you like to have another you?

In this video there is a cloned cat which glows in the dark, maybe cloned people would have special features too.

Is Here "The Matrix"?

   Billions of dollars have earned the Wachowski brothers since the film “The Matrix” had its premiere in 1999; the background plot was taken from the Japanese “Anime” called Ghost in Hell, and tells us about a virtual world in which humans live believing that it is a real world; actually it isn’t, this reality it’s just to keep humans subdue to be used by AI machines. This idea of keeping people under mental control using technology it’s not a fallacy, it is real, we must thank to the new implant chip that controls the brain. 

     Scientists at University of Southern California, where is placed the Department of Homeland Security’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, have successfully developed a brain implant chip that allows to managed the long-term memory in order to implant, download and also transfer to other host (another people with the same chip implanted) memories and thoughts, can you believed that?

    With this new device could be possible to give a properly treatment to criminals or people mentally insane, in order to get them well. Also to be used as a sort of evidence in judgments using memories from witnesses. What about keep your loved ones alive using their clones plus their memories? Is it too much?