Brains: An End to Paralysis with Artificial Brain-to-Muscle Connectors

Brains: An End to Paralysis with Artificial Brain-to-Muscle Connectors

This is related to my previous posting in some ways. With this kind of science being done (actually applied) right now, how long will it be before we can virtual sensory applications?

I used to think that we would have to develop a body suit to get sensory (mostly tactile) feedback virtually, but this type of research makes me believe that we are getting closer to the ability to do this with a simple headset. Maybe this won't be done well in my lifetime, but I'm sure that my son will have this at his disposal sometime in his life.

How is it related to my previous post? Again, just as you can be in a place without actually being there, with this technology, you can feel the place without actually being there. A sort of virtual immersion. Brave New World.

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia

This is a neat collection of memorabilia from the Hard Rock Cafe collection. I think that it's neat that it's online like this. However, I am completely underwhelmed with the "Zoom" navigation.

Don't get me wrong, the navigation is smooth and the picture quality is great. The download time on the image wasn't bad, but this is missing the mark. This is little more than a fancy image map. For Silverlight to promote this as some kind of design advantage over Flash is really quite wrong. I've seen this same thing done in Flash before.

Raskin talking about a zooming interface quite a bit and wrote about it extensively in his book, The Humane Interface. If this is what we are shooting for, this example misses the mark. The zoom interface is more than just zooming in on a picture. The zoom interface is more like zooming in on layers. If they really wanted to do something interesting here, they would have had the information accessible on the actual picture instead of on a sidebar.

We often hear about worlds within worlds and this is what the zooming interface would do for navigation. So, unless you are going to take me in that direction, don't talk to me about Zoom navigation.

Dan