East Coast Research and Development Conference 2015
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 9:30 amAll,
Mikado and I have been pretty quiet this past week - I don't know about him, but I have been recuperating from the 2015 East Coast Research and Development Conference (I know - already another year). This year we had it in Brunswick, Maine, which is really a beautiful town if any of you have been to Maine. Aside from the history, of course, Bowdoin College is there, and nearby Bath has a rich history of shipbuilding. Not to mention the seafood ! That's my advertisement for Maine, and since I had the pleasure of pulling together the speakers for the conference, I have to admit that I voted for Brunswick.
I wanted to summarize a bit of the conference, because it really was a great time ! Our keynote speaker gave a presentation on a field called total immersion virtual reality. If any of you have access to Netflix, there is an anime on there called Sword of Art Online that uses a helmet as a device to allow players to interact fully with a virtual world. It's actually a fairly well-made anime series. In any case, I'm sure several significant obstacles are immediately obvious - the first of them being to paralyze the physical body, while allowing neural functioning to continue, and the second being the sensory linkage to the virtual world (sight, sound, hearing, touch, smell).
At lunch, after the presentation , the conversations were dominated by how significantly the structure of civilization would change if people could "upload" their minds into a virtual world, or similar to the movie, Surrogates (with Bruce Willis), in which people could upload their minds into sophisticated robots. If you remember the movie, Avatar, there were cases afterwards in which people went into depression because that world didn't exist. Civilization would be radically altered.
On Sunday morning, after the conference, a small group of us were invited to a BBQ in Kennebunkport. It turns out the couple had a place just up the lane from the Bush family compound ! The photo here is of me and Mikado in front of the compound by the anchor memorial. Mikado looks a little nonplussed because I am teasing him about his hand, which is bandaged (Kim may have a better photo). The evening before, we had a demonstration of electrostatic vs. magnetic containment systems. We were all standing around the devices, and someone stumbled against the table fairly hard. Mikado reached out quickly to stabilize one of the machines and cut his hand in the webbing right next to his thumb. We had someone take him to a nearby ER for some stitches, but they were back in time for dinner. Needless to say, he got teased a bit about it, but the presenter really felt bad ! She said that she would design better guard plates around the core in the future !
The NDA on these conferences is pretty tight (sorry for the lack of any photos). Mikado will be able to confirm that - he knows his NDAs ! Lol. A few other topics were effective means to shield our deteriorating power infrastructure from solar aberrations/flares; storage systems for alternate energy source for off-peak consumption; and the nuclear battery of Dr. Paul Brown.
I don't know how many people actually read these forums aside from the usual regulars here, but there is an amazing universe out there, and if you are willing to put in time, energy, and finances, there are groups of like-minded people who have done just that. I wish that younger people could gain some inspiration and direction, and not get all tangled up in the Brown/Leach mess that I did when I was 19 years old !
It doesn't take a lot to get far if you just do a little bit every day and stick to it. This group is only for those who have done just that - put their money where their mouths are - no armchair philosophers !
Cheers,
Andy
Mikado and I have been pretty quiet this past week - I don't know about him, but I have been recuperating from the 2015 East Coast Research and Development Conference (I know - already another year). This year we had it in Brunswick, Maine, which is really a beautiful town if any of you have been to Maine. Aside from the history, of course, Bowdoin College is there, and nearby Bath has a rich history of shipbuilding. Not to mention the seafood ! That's my advertisement for Maine, and since I had the pleasure of pulling together the speakers for the conference, I have to admit that I voted for Brunswick.
I wanted to summarize a bit of the conference, because it really was a great time ! Our keynote speaker gave a presentation on a field called total immersion virtual reality. If any of you have access to Netflix, there is an anime on there called Sword of Art Online that uses a helmet as a device to allow players to interact fully with a virtual world. It's actually a fairly well-made anime series. In any case, I'm sure several significant obstacles are immediately obvious - the first of them being to paralyze the physical body, while allowing neural functioning to continue, and the second being the sensory linkage to the virtual world (sight, sound, hearing, touch, smell).
At lunch, after the presentation , the conversations were dominated by how significantly the structure of civilization would change if people could "upload" their minds into a virtual world, or similar to the movie, Surrogates (with Bruce Willis), in which people could upload their minds into sophisticated robots. If you remember the movie, Avatar, there were cases afterwards in which people went into depression because that world didn't exist. Civilization would be radically altered.
On Sunday morning, after the conference, a small group of us were invited to a BBQ in Kennebunkport. It turns out the couple had a place just up the lane from the Bush family compound ! The photo here is of me and Mikado in front of the compound by the anchor memorial. Mikado looks a little nonplussed because I am teasing him about his hand, which is bandaged (Kim may have a better photo). The evening before, we had a demonstration of electrostatic vs. magnetic containment systems. We were all standing around the devices, and someone stumbled against the table fairly hard. Mikado reached out quickly to stabilize one of the machines and cut his hand in the webbing right next to his thumb. We had someone take him to a nearby ER for some stitches, but they were back in time for dinner. Needless to say, he got teased a bit about it, but the presenter really felt bad ! She said that she would design better guard plates around the core in the future !
The NDA on these conferences is pretty tight (sorry for the lack of any photos). Mikado will be able to confirm that - he knows his NDAs ! Lol. A few other topics were effective means to shield our deteriorating power infrastructure from solar aberrations/flares; storage systems for alternate energy source for off-peak consumption; and the nuclear battery of Dr. Paul Brown.
I don't know how many people actually read these forums aside from the usual regulars here, but there is an amazing universe out there, and if you are willing to put in time, energy, and finances, there are groups of like-minded people who have done just that. I wish that younger people could gain some inspiration and direction, and not get all tangled up in the Brown/Leach mess that I did when I was 19 years old !
It doesn't take a lot to get far if you just do a little bit every day and stick to it. This group is only for those who have done just that - put their money where their mouths are - no armchair philosophers !
Cheers,
Andy