Sixth Sense Brain Tool

MIT's Media Lab has always been on the forefront of designing new interfaces between human action and computers. A large part of their study has been motion and gesture as a command for using computers. Since its beginning, Media Lab has always had a bit of a Hollywood complex, relating many of its exploration to movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and other science-fiction fantasies.

Utopian Visions: One Laptop Per Child

If utopia has returned in these cynical times it is the buzz around the technology of this little machine being developed at One Kendall Center in Cambridge. One Laptop Per Child. Of course, cynics would like to say that Western culture technogeeks are looking through rose colored glasses and pronouncing what third world kids "need." What poor kids need, says Nicholas Negroponte, is the OX laptop computer and they will be raised out of poverty.

Aside from the underlying assumption OLPC that this will be good for poor kids, the design challenges the XO computer are formable. The case needs to be very tough. Power consumption must be minimal. It must be water and dirt proof. The hard drive cannot be mechanical - no moving parts. The wifi antenna must be powerful enough to work in a range of circumstances. The goal was to make it for $100 (although they've only been able to get it to $188). And it needs quality software and educational "content" delivered to it every where in the world.

As one employee of Red Hat, the Cambridge based company developing OLPC, said this is not a product it is a global humanitarian cause. In this case, the team in Cambridge is trying to apply difficult design concepts, mesh networks, open source software communities and social networking to solve world problems of poverty. And it should look freaky cool also.

Futurist Design

Jacque Fresco designed conceptual models based on futurist notions of where we might be progressing toward with Global Climate Change threatening our shorelines. Fresco designed cities and housing in the ocean and talked about the "Future by Design" an utopia to elevate the human condition. Perhaps this all seems far-fetched and it is, however, there is a fine line to be draw between delusional and visionary.

There are many design movements inspired by science fiction and fantastical visions of the future from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY to Ray Bradbury's speculative fiction to Futurama, Populux and Googie architecture. They too might be just as crazy but provided a generation of computer designers at MIT Media Lab grist for their inventions mill.

Recently, some of these ideas might have re-emerged in Dubai and with oil-rich Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum has set out to break architectural records for highest, largest and first residental, office, hotel, stadium and spaceport buildings of the world.

This film trailer was shot by William Gazecki: