I’m going reveal my geeky roots… When I was a kid, my friends and I would play Star Trek. Homemade wooden phasers, climbing trees for pretend planets, and creating stories as we went. Not a lot of technology involved — it was just us, goofing around, having fun. I’m not sure I could convince my friends today to play it, but Artemis may be close to the modern equivalent. Artemis simulates a spaceship bridge by…
 
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In a recent post Golan Levin writes about how adding the term “computational” to various non-science fields allows you to imagine all sorts of new subjects. Specifically, he “created” Computational Gastronomy, only to realize that the field sort-of actually exists (!), and so started an interesting list of articles and research in the emerging field. That got me thinking about how we use, or fantasize about using, technology to interact with food — specifically how…
 
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Iron Man 2 opens today! And Engadget has posted a great collection of pictures and videos of interfaces that are used the film. Sure, we’ve seen a lot of this before — multi-touch Surface-like tables, Star Trek transparent screens, complex layered windows (any standard windowing os — mixed with a bit of old-school Unix), micro-projectors, and even a little magic — but who’s to say it’s not fun? The NYTimes review of the film describes…
 
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On the eve of the rumored announcement of an Apple Tablet, I started thinking about similar devices in Star Trek. In Trek lingo they are referred to as PADDs. For a show made in the 60s and 80s it’s interesting to see how their conception changed over time. In the original show the earliest padds were pretty basic, like clip-boards that the crew could carry around — making notations with a stylus. In The Next…
 
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