Update

It's been a busy past two weeks. Most of it was in Chicago enjoying the fruits of a year's work at the Wired NextFest, our World's Fair-like festival  of technology, which was a huge success. We had 35,000 visitors, up from 25,000 last year in San Francisco. Twice the space as last year, half again as many exhibits (more than 120 in all), and three times as well organized. Next year: NYC, which will be bigger yet.

There are loads of pictures here if you want to get a feel for it. My favorite exhibits included David Hanson's robotically animated head of Philip K. Dick, complete with voice recognition and pre-programmed AI of all things Dick.  Spooky. Another mesmerizing display was a pair of Juke Bot DJ robots, which were beautifully choreographed, even if you couldn't (yet) dance to their mixes. And the leaping dolphin submarine was the talk of the show.

Next week I begin a two-month sabbatical to actually write the book. In the meantime, I've got a half-dozen posts to add here on some of the new ideas and research we've been working on for the past two weeks. I hope to get to them over the weekend, so stay tuned.

Comments

[csven]

>And the leaping dolphin submarine was the talk of the show.

iirc, the creators of the watercraft are careful to not call it a "submarine" for regulatory reasons. However, this vehicle is pretty compelling. I happened across it through a link from another site - someone else building their own watercraft. Build-it-yourself is catching on. And there's something to consider in that: as suppliers find more outlets beyond their corporate customers, how does their "curve" change to reflect the Long Tail? I don't recall seeing that anywhere. Has someone already started linking the two?