Minority Report trend & tech watch: object recognition with mobile devices

from Steven Schroeder/Mashable:

How would you like to be able to point your iPhone towards an object – the Eiffel Tower, for example – and instantly see the admission price, working hours, its height and other information? We’ve been hearing about such concepts for quite some time now – and we’ve been able to visualize it better since the movie Minority Report< – but Apple’s latest iPhone related patents might make it a reality sooner than one would think..... More>>

Minority Report Trends and Technologies Watch, item #5

Here's another installment of the"Minority Report" thread, this time from the BBC's Discovery program (sorry... programme). Pamela Rutherford interviews Irene Tracy (Oxford University), John Dylan-Haynes (Max Planck Institute), and Tom Mitchell and Marcel Just (Carnegie-Mellon) about neuroimaging, neurosemantics and neuroethics.

"Once something new like this is discovered, there's no going back. With modern brain imaging and modern computational techniques, we can identify the patterns that correspond to particular thoughts. We always knew thought was something in the brain, but now we know what it is. We can measure it, we can identify it, and we can tell when another one is coming along." - Tom Mitchell, CMU

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 8 October 2008, 12:32 GMT

Date of first transmission: 2008-10-07T23:32:00-00:00 (audio available for approximately 1 week)

What if it was possible to read someone’s mind, their exact thoughts by reading out their patterns of brain activity?

In this week’s Discovery Pamela Rutherford explores how rapid advances in brain scanning technology have started to get a window on some of our innermost thoughts; from predicting our intentions to interpreting the meaning of exactly what we’re thinking about.

As brain scanning technology advances, what sounds like a science fiction scenario is becoming closer to reality. MORE >>

Minority Report-style trends & technologies watch, item #4

Terry Gross interviews Stephen Baker, author of The Numerati:

Our Digital Lives, Monitored By A Hidden 'Numerati'

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Fresh Air from WHYY, September 29, 2008 · Most people generate an immense amounts of digital data during a single day — often without a second thought. But Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek, warns that the information generated by email messages, credit card purchases, cell phones calls and Internet shopping is being monitored by a group of entrepreneurial mathematicians, who are poised to use it to control human behavior.

Stephen Baker has written for BusinessWeek for over twenty years, and is the coauthor of Blogspotting.net.

Minority Report-style trends & technologies watch, item #3

Thanks to ProPublica for flagging this story from Popular Mechanics.

Minority Report-style trends & technologies watch, item #2

Coming through Sea-Tac last week, I noticed advertisements for Zappo's Shoes in the bottoms of the plastic bins at the TSA security checkpoint. Snapping casual photos wasn't an option, but the graphics are what you would expect -- outlines of shoes, in just the place where travelers put their... shoes. Check out the website to see how the system works.

It is a brilliant concept, provided you don't object to public agencies selling advertising space.

Here's another article about the program.

Minority Report-style trends & technologies watch, item #1

Thanks to TechRepublic for this one. From the fogscreen.com website:

"Using nothing more than tap water and ultrasonic waves, FogScreen projection screen machines employ a patented technology to create a smooth foggy airflow that captures images just like a screen. You can walk right through a FogScreen projection screen without getting wet. The microscopic fog droplets actually feel dry to the touch, just like air."

"The beauty of FogScreen projection screen is that anything you can see on a computer screen can now float in the air. Otherwise it’s like any ordinary projection screen; installation couldn’t be any easier. Just replace your conventional screen with FogScreen projection screen. It works with still pictures, moving images and lasers. With two projectors, different images can be shown on both sides of the screen."