Grow-your-own remote controls

One minor bane of modern life is the plethora of remote controls needed: one for the tele', one for the DVD, another for the VCR, yet another for the Mac , not to mention mobiles that need answering etc.. By the time I've found the remote(s) wanted, it would often have been quicker to walk over to the kit and poke it (very subtle geeky pun intended) directly.

Voice control probably isn't the answer, if only because it will always be possible to lose your voice or play stuff too loud.

Thought control is a more promising option. Some sort of cap to read brain emanations and transmit them as codes over Bluetooth might work. Better still, embed the 'cap' directly in the brain. Not a viable option for adults, perhaps, but for newborns, whose skull bones are soft and unfused, it would be a relatively minor operation. Babies thus equipped would learn their remoting in exactly the same way as talking and walking: by experiment. At first, the codes they emit could be used to flash lights or bang drums. Those same codes would later be used to control their whole environment, just by "willing" things to happen.

Dumbed down? Not Melvin :-)

BBC Radio 4's "In Our Time", hosted by Melvin Bragg, is far and away my favourite (always streamed across the net, but you get the idea) radio program. Where else would you get a discussion of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics mixed with depictions of Hell (a much more modern notion than many might think) next to an examination of anarchy (also a much misunderstood ideal, being more Semco than Sodom) near by the Abbasid Caliphs and, last but never least, Greek comedy.

Well worth the licence fee :-)

Weird materials

It's not water, but you can run on it. Walk tho', and you'll sink. And it's not an exotic substance at all!

3D UI not enough - Autonomic Computing the key

You may or may not recall my wittering on about 3D interactive whiteboards and stuff earlier on. To make such a beastie work, you either need to identify a "broad enough" algorithm, a "close enough" heuristic, or - the exciting new option - make it autonomic.

This really is exciting stuff. And having recently read works like John McCrone's "Going Inside", I believe it's possible, too.