PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE: As some posts can be, this one may – I emphasize *may* – be a sensitive subject for some. However, it is not a place to denigrate or debate others regrading their beliefs. Anyone is welcome to express their personal feelings or beliefs about the topic and that is welcome, but arguing with others about what they believe is not. I just wanted to get that out there. This is also going to be somewhat of a precursor discussion on the ethics of technology, something we will cover later in the semester.

Remember the post about Skyping with the deceased? Well here we go again, except this involves something many take much more seriously; this one involves none other than demons possessing humans. Like several of our previous blog topics, this one has also been the plot and subject of many, many books, movies, TV shows, songs, and artworks. If someone believes they have been afflicted by a demon or other unwanted guest, one option is to apply for an exorcism to be conducted. It is, according to those who believe, the only way to cleanse the person possessed. But simply getting approval for the procedure can be a lengthy, involved endeavor in which medical causes have to be ruled out, and valid signs of a true possession need to be present.

However, and I’ll interject some opinion here as I tend to do, there are those who would exploit believers as well. I don’t claim to know one way or the other about demonic possession, but I know what I’m about to tell you seems very suspect. According to the Huffington Post, and I’ll forewarn you there is some intolerance expressed in this article, there is now a Reverend in Arizona who will conduct exorcisms via Skype.

He charges almost $300 per session, and donates the money to a charity. He claims it’s a real exorcism and the people are truly afflicted, while others feel a true exorcism can’t be performed in this way. It should also be noted that the reverend’s web page sells many products, he’s trying for a TV show, he goes on tour, and his daughter along with her exorcist-peers tout their abilities as though they’re advertising for a teen drama on the Lifetime Channel. Prepare to be offended by the video on that page.

Again, I’m no expert, but it seems something as serious as an exorcism would require personal contact and involvement. As was mentioned in the linked article, someone truly possessed by a demon wouldn’t sit in front of a monitor and allow themselves to be vanquished via videoconference. I find the claim of using Skype to rid someone across the world of a demon more unlikely than the possession itself.

Can’t sleep? This should help!

If you’re like me, your mind is flying all over the place all the time and it can sometimes be hard to concentrate. What is needed in that case is something to level out your thought process, focus your attention, and allow you to be productive. For me, the only thing that works is brown noise. Brown noise is a low-frequency non-specific tone similar to what a radio station gives when there’s no signal.

There are other types of noise, including white noise and pink noise, each with their own sound signature and characteristics, ultimately for us it boils down to different ‘colors’ of noises having a higher pitch while others have a lower pitch.

It’s why people listen to sounds of ocean waves or have a fan running (both generally a brown noise) when they want to fall asleep. I personally can’t sleep without it myself.

But rather than listen to me go on and on about it, you can experiment with it yourself. Simplynoise.com is a website that has white, pink and brown noise and you can select between them. If you need a little cognitive balance every once in a while, this website will serve you well.

If we’re going to go in to the future, we should also, on occasion, go into the past. Here then, topical to our recent discussions about prosthetics, are a couple of images from a prosthetic limb, circa 1880. I think we have it much better now. You can even print your own! 

I’ll be dating myself here, but The Bionic Woman was a show from the late seventies about Jamie Sommers, who is saved from near death by bionic implants that giver her superhuman abilities. It was an offshoot of The Six Million Dollar Man, in which main character Steve Austin is given extraordinary abilities such as superhuman speed, vision, sight, and jumping ability from the same type of procedure. It also, incidentally, contains one of the most well-known opening scenes/monologues in television history. Both of them were fascinating shows back then, when we could only imagine a future in which human beings could be enhanced by bionics.

Well guess what? Some of you may remember back in mid-2102, a tragic story made national news in which 24-year old Aimee Copeland fell from a zip line and contracted flesh eating bacteria through a gash in her leg. Afterwards, she lost both arms below the elbow and one of her legs to the infection.

Well, believe it or not there is a bionics-related upside to the whole thing. She was the first person in the world to be fitted with the most advanced, articulate prosthetic arms available at that time, the iLimbs, created by Touch Bionics. Their web page has some amazing information about where this kind of thing is going. They cost $100,000 each, and they take training to use, but ultimately they move the same way we all move our hands *now.* Our brain sends a signal saying ‘move your arm’ and our arm moves thanks to electrical signals stimulating the muscle. Same for her, except the electronic signals move her prosthetic.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Watch the video below for a real glimpse of the future.

There may be some terms in this post not everyone is familiar with, and that’s ok, and it presupposes some knowledge of Star Wars among others. To be honest, I’m not actually sure how related this is to tech or even to this class, but I thought these were pretty incredible, and they involve a great contribution to tech from a pop-culture perspective. Over on Etsy is a jeweler who makes science-fiction themed jewelry, and the ring I noticed first is one based on the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Here’s the picture from the artist’s Etsy shop:

Pretty nifty, yeah? If your significant other presents you with one of those, they’re a keeper! But it gets better, this ring isn’t the only one. Browsing through his collection you’ll also find rings based off of R2-D2 and Boba Fett, Chewbacca’s bandolier, my personal favorite Han Solo in carbonite, Wonder Woman, the Triforce, and even a Pokeball (that one should give you second thoughts about whoever gives it to you). Of course, if pendants/necklaces are more your thing, well, say it with the Enterprise or go more Han Solo style, although that can be had in cufflinks as well, complete with pictures! Some versions of the rings are available as pendants, as seen in the image below.

Some of them are serious jewelry items, with prices as high as $3,000. Other are more reasonable at the $100 range or thereabouts.

So back to my initial mention of Star Trek, before I got carried away with all the rest. It turns out Star Trek, which only ran for three seasons between 1966 and 1969, was a surprisingly astute predictor of future trends. Communicators emulated years later by flip-phones, flat-screen monitors, in-ear communicators like today’s Bluetooth headsets, phasers (Tasers) set to stun, and on and on and on. In fact, it was so good at these predictions that a television show was created called “How William Shatner Changed the World,” and it focused on all the technology we have today that was predicted or inspired by Star Trek.

Look familiar?

Of course, subsequent entries in the series made predictions of their own. Here we see a scene from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where they accurately predicted the future release of the Android phone.

It was hardly the only show to do that, however; another, well known predictor of future trends and technologies was The Twilight Zone, full episodes of which can be seen here if you’re interested, which tackled issues such as robotics, space travel, technology overload and bioengineering. 2001: A Space Odyssey brilliantly predicted intelligent machines, the very thing we’ve been discussing recently. In fact, many shows, books, movies, even songs made surprisingly astute predictions about what the future would hold. I could write lengthy dissertations on each title I just linked.

We’re all familiar with trolls. No, not those trolls, or those, or even those. We’re talking about those people who antagonize others with hateful, violent, racist, misogynistic, and bilious comments on seemingly every single web page that allows comments. Their attempts to stir readers and garner a response are often quite obvious, which has led to the Internet refrain “Please don’t feed the troll!” That simply means don’t react to a clear attempt to get a reaction.

Trolling, and idiots posting to comment threads in general, has become so bad that Google, along with many, many other sites, now requires users to use their real – or at least G+ – names when commenting on YouTube videos, YouTube being the prime example of base-level Neanderthals provided with anonymity to say whatever they want. Many people went crazy about this requirement but I understand where they are coming from. In case you missed it, read this and prepare to be amazed. Rotten Tomatoes stopped allowing comments altogether because they became such a cesspool. CNN’s story about the Affordable Care Act famously garnered ultra-violent comments as described in this article covering the phenomenon, and the YouTube channel featuring a Cheerios ad with an interracial couple had to close the comments altogether they were so atrocious. In fact, Go to any national news site, any one at all, pick a random story and start reading the comments. I dare you. Trolling can occur in other on-line domains as well, just head on over to fatuglyorslutty.com as proof.

Now, a team of researchers in Canada have discovered that online trolls are actually classifiable sadists! I personally prefer the term troll, but both are good. Either way, they showed all the personality traits – including Machiavellianism which I’ll let slide because it sounds cool – of true sadists. I personally support the idea of discovering their identities and outing them, but I’ll leave that up to the pros.

What? Stop the presses!

Moral of the story: Don’t be a troll, or you might end up like this!

Can’t find your pointer? PointerPointer.com can!

By pointing at it.

Apologies in advance if I sound irked or irritated, but you’ll know why in short order. Remember the posts about the repeal of Net neutrality regulations, and the follow-up discussion of how it’s just getting worse? Well time to pile more on the heap! On Wednesday of this week, news started flying around that Comcast is in a shares-only (meaning no cash involved) bid to buy Time-Warner cable for $45 billion, which would result in what is easily the largest cable company *and* ISP in the country, covering approximately 80 million customers.

Anyone want to guess my opinion on this? Anyone at all? You don’t need to guess because you already know! I’m not sure where to begin in my criticism of this, it stinks on all levels. First, it would create an absolutely massive monopoly of sorts right after the nullification of the Net neutrality regulations. It scares me to think of the control that would hand to this new entity. I had the same issues way back in 2000 when AOL bought Time-Warner in a $160-billion stock-only deal – which was an absurd price especially back then – to form what was at that time the largest entertainment company on earth. The problem I had with it is that that single company would control the entirety of your experience; the content you viewed, the software you used to view it, the channels on which the content was carried, almost every aspect of your TV/Internet experience would be controlled by them. The companies have since parted ways, especially since it was a bad deal to begin with.

Now, this. We already have the concerns about Comcast throttling Netflix, which is a competitor to Comcast-invested Hulu. They also acquired NBC-Universal last year for $45 billion further cementing their monopoly and control over the industry, and the FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, who will be a significant part of the approval process of the merger was once the cable industry’s most powerful lobbyist, which is why it’s no surprise he’s not too keen on issues like Net neutrality. Comcast also wants to muscle in on Netflix with their own streaming service, which I wouldn’t have a problem with except for one major issue: Netflix doesn’t control the channels over which their content is delivered. Comcast does. Comcast could throttle Netflix to give themselves an advantage, but not the other way around. To play devil’s advocate, one of the reasons cable companies feel the need to do this is because of the record number of people cutting their cords, and that article is from 2011! In fairness, 4th quarter 2013 is the first time in six years those numbers didn’t increase for Comcast.

On top of all of this, the EU is now saying it wants one of the major Internet regulatory agencies wrested from U.S. control. I see their perspective, but that could set the Internet back 30 years.

There is still some hope. Comcast will likely be forced to include agreements assuring it will practice Net neutrality, at least for the near future, as an extension of similar agreements it made when it acquired NBC-Universal. Additionally, there has been a lot of unwillingness on Capitol Hill regarding the potential merger between AT&T and T-Mobile, although strangely enough, that one doesn’t bother me. It would be good for both companies, since neither is in the overly-powerful position Comcast is. So it may face significant scrutiny, although lawmakers don’t actually get to say one way or the other if the deal goes through.

All these issues are so serious it actually makes me feel a little sick. I try to be open-minded and see things from all perspectives, but it seems pretty clear to me – and this is just my own point of view – that this whole thing is a control and monopoly issue, and the FCC chairman’s waffling on the related issues is because of his previous ties to the cable companies.

I’ll keep hope alive, perhaps there will be a positive outcome, and we won’t know the results for months. Fingers crossed.  

Someone mentioned nano-machines, which are tiny, sometimes microscopic machines, in a previous comment, and now look what I found. This story on CNN describes how for the first time scientists have been able to deploy microscopic machines, essentially tiny gold rods, into a cell’s interior to destroy the cell.

Why would you want to do that? As the article states, if they could be injected into cancer cells specifically and destroy them, it would be a milestone moment in the fight against that insidious disease. Not only that, while all you’d want to do is destroy cancer cells, if the motors could be enhanced so they could carry out more specific tasks, they could be used for other beneficial purposes. Again, quoting the article, ‘surgery within the cell.’ I don’t know why that would be desirable, but I’ll leave that up to the doctors. I aso believe, although I can’t say with certainty, that this is based on previous research, also done at Penn state by chemists back in 2007, that involved the manipulation of 2-micrometer gold rods.

Any time we get closer to better ways for fighting illness and disease, I’m always amazed, and while the practical application of this technology is a long way off, it holds promise.