What is Next Nature?

Today, the human impact on our planet can hardly be underestimated. Climate change, synthetic biology, mass urbanization – ‘We were here’ echoes all over. Although many people have tried to improve our relationship with nature, few have asked the elementary question ‘what is nature?’.

This website will radically shift your notion of nature. Our image of nature as static, balanced and harmonic is naive and up for reconsideration. Where technology and nature are traditionally seen as opposed, they now appear to merge or even trade places.

We must no longer see ourselves as the anti-natural species that merely threatens and eliminates nature, but rather as catalysts of evolution. With our urge to design our environment we create a ‘next nature’ which is unpredictable as ever: wild software, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us!

HERE

By year’s end, Google glasses to stream info to eyeballs

When smartphones came out, it seemed like a leap in convenience to be able to carry important information on us at all times, instead of leaving it with our computers.

But soon, it may seem onerous to reach for your phone, turn it on and find the right app to get a piece of information, when you could instead just wear a pair of glasses that directly stream information to your eyeballs.

By year’s end, the New York Times reports, Google is set to release glasses that do exactly that in real time, so you won’t constantly have to reach into your purse or pocket.

The glasses, which will be Android-based, will cost about as much as a smartphone ($250-$600) and feature a 3G or 4G data connection and GPS and motion sensors. And, of course, they’ll sport a screen a few inches away from the eye.

Here are some other key features:

Skynet Becomes Aware, Launches Nuclear Attack On Humanity

Skynet's Mobile Aerial Ground Support unit (left) vs. the Big Dog (right) of Boston Dynamics. Art imitating technology, or technology imitating art? VIA

Cisco Announces Internet Will Quadruple by 2015!

VIA

Digital Keys for Unlocking the Humanities’ Riches

"Members of a new generation of digitally savvy humanists argue it is time to stop looking for inspiration in the next political or philosophical “ism” and start exploring how technology is changing our understanding of the liberal arts. This latest frontier is about method, they say, using powerful technologies and vast stores of digitized materials that previous humanities scholars did not have."

the whole article from N.Y. Times

O'Reilly MySQL CE 2010: Tim O'Reilly, "O'Reilly Radar"

For internet die-hards only!!!

On Tim O'Reilly
On oreilly.com

On MySQL

On Open Source

On Open Data

On Cloud Computing

On Make Magazine

On whatever