view org/ideas.org @ 93:0ca6c9f0da01

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author Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date Mon, 14 Apr 2014 13:01:27 -0400
parents 7fee358e5b70
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1 #+title: Big List O' Ideas
2 #+author: Robert McIntyre
3 #+email: rlm@mit.edu
4 #+description: list of ideas from the last ~ 7 years
5 #+keywords: aurellem ideas half-baked random
6 #+SETUPFILE: ../../aurellem/org/setup.org
7 #+INCLUDE: ../../aurellem/org/level-0.org
8 #+babel: :mkdirp yes :noweb yes :exports both
10 * Ideas
12 This is a list of all the ideas I've had that I felt like writing down
13 for the past ~ 8 years. Some of them could be practical inventions and
14 are "just" waiting the that 95% perspiration to bring them to
15 fruition, some are ideas for science fiction, and some are simple
16 observations. Some are really only for my own personal notes and are
17 not meant to be comprehensible. They are arranged roughly in reverse
18 chronological order, with the most recent ideas at the top of the
19 list. The ones at the bottom of the list are heavily influenced by my
20 time at MIT.
22 If you find some of these interesting and would like to collaborate on
23 them with me or discuss them in more detail, I'd love to hear from
24 you. You can email me at ideas@aurellem.org.
26 If you want to use one of these ideas as your own and run with it,
27 please feel free. I'd love to hear about it if you do.
29 #+begin_quote
30 There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about
31 getting credit.
32 #+end_quote
34 - cryonics middle ages :: some people say that cryonics is an
35 experiment and that it is foolish to wait until we have revived a
36 human. There is a middle ground where the procedure has a dismal
37 success rate on humans, say 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to
38 try revival. Nonetheless, this very risky procedure could be the
39 legal proof of concept needed to create a new class of life
40 between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
42 - philosophy of the mirror :: neat thought experiment -- if you take a
43 mirror of someone by actually reversing a person's chirality
44 moleculue by molucule, then will the only be able to read mirror
45 writing? The answer is yes, by analogy to a purely mechanical
46 scantron device. This is one of the only interesting transforms I
47 know that can take a human brain and change it in subtle,
48 non-destructive ways. It's also an argument against dualism.
50 - biosphere in a bottle :: There are around 15 million species. 15
51 million stem cells will fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic
52 inch. Preserve a single cell from every species on earth in this
53 small space, and you will have a record of our current biosphere
54 that can be protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in
55 your hand!"
57 - chaos lock :: The "arrow of time" points in the direction of
58 increasing entropy. The time evolution of chaotic
59 systems depend exquisitely on their initial state. If
60 you take a measurement of a chaotic system at any
61 given point of time, you can evolve that system
62 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So
63 let's say you start the chaotic system in a VERY low
64 entropy state, then let it run for a while, then take
65 a measurement with some uncertainty. Your
66 measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
67 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in
68 time, then you will see that you don't really reach
69 a state with low entropy an hour before (the entropy
70 is easy to measure with surrogates like alignment,
71 etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
72 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you
73 many more orders of magnitude than you could get alone
74 just using an instrument. Sometimes it will give you
75 bad results, the the odds of it doing that are
76 infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple of
77 times.
79 - cryo-evolution :: perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a
80 symbiotic bacterial organism that could protect
81 human tissues from freezing damage.
83 - suicide parasite :: sometimes, people kill themselves for no good
84 reason. We often explain this with things like "hidden
85 depression" or we say that they had something like chronic jaw or
86 back pain. I think that smells of rationalization. I don't buy
87 it. I propose that in many suicide cases there is a disease that
88 causes the suicidal behavior. We already know that certain
89 parasites have mind-bending properties in other animals, even
90 mammals like mice. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a
91 parasite that causes suicides in humans. Some problems:
92 - What does the suicide parasite get out of it? :: This might be
93 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by
94 cross-species contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
95 - What predictions does a disease model make :: suicide should
96 be more common among people who share a contagion
97 vector. There should be suicides that don't make any
98 sense : people who weren't really depressed, who had no
99 reason to kill themselves. People who have killed themselves
100 should have a higher incidence of some unknown parasite in
101 their brains.
103 - domestic insects :: People should eat more bugs because they're much
104 more efficient, so why not do some major domestication research
105 to make very appealing bugs?
107 - birth-clones :: What if each person was intentionally split at birth
108 into a normal embryo and a few "backup" cells which
109 is then frozen. The backup cells are created just
110 the same way as natural identical twins. The backups
111 can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it
112 would be a good sci fi concept, because you could
113 have a culture where people reward people who were
114 especially awesome are "reborn" from their
115 backups. Imagine having a young Bach every
116 generation, etc.
118 - pronuncation guide :: a simple webpage where you type in a word and
119 it returns a simpe, English sentence describing exactly how to
120 pronounce the word. For people who don't want to learn IPA.
122 - cortex-search :: use the repertoire of actions learned to limit the
123 search space of possible actions.
125 - learning to teleport :: scifi idea, this is a story about a person
126 who is struggling with his/her society's ideas about
127 teleportation. It's considered a fundamental part of being a
128 member of that society (after all, the difference between animals
129 and humans is that humans are creatures of pure information while
130 animals are burdened with base matter, "that's how you travel the
131 stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, and then
132 eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to jumping
133 off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not do/ for
134 a long time), etc.
136 - no-float-ice :: cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice
137 forms. Then when you drink liquid from the glass,
138 the ice stays at the bottom and doesn't hit your
139 lips. For bars and fancy things.
141 - bitcoins for immigrants :: A common case with Mexican immigrants
142 (illegal or not) is that they want to send money they've earned
143 in the US back to their families in Mexico. They currently do this
144 through things like Money Gram or Western Union, and they get
145 fleeced in the process with fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce
146 the cost of sending money from America to Mexico, but I don't
147 believe that it's currently used for that among Mexican
148 immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I bet you could
149 set up physical locations like those obnoxious Western Union huts
150 in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly undercut
151 them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin might
152 be in order. There's some money to be made there because there is
153 great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
155 - reverse eye-tracking :: A painting that is actually a digital screen
156 with a camera. It records people's eye tracks permanently. It's
157 "artistic" because paintings are normally these things that you
158 look at without changing, but this one is changed the second you
159 look at it, recording where /you/ looked forever for others to
160 see. Make it be a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the
161 breasts and groin area light up with interest from all the males
162 passing by.
164 - smart toilets :: Instead of using indirect measures like infrared
165 detectors of the presence of a person, use computer
166 vision to directly measure whether the toilet needs
167 to be flushed. I think a lot of things will end up
168 going this way as we get better computer vision.
170 - validate chemopreservation :: chemopreservation is difficult to
171 validate because it destroys the functionality of a brain, and
172 brain simulation will take a long time to mature as a
173 technology. However, one very powerful way to validate
174 chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
175 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution
176 to a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
177 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
178 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
180 - candy screw :: edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw
181 as well.
183 - better bibliography :: when writing a thesis or paper, have the
184 bibliography not just be an opaque list of resources, but have it
185 be a list of /summaries/ and /qualities/ that each paper has in
186 the context of the paper being written. When examining a
187 bibliography, I want to know if reading the papers in the
188 bibliography are worth my time, and I also am probably also
189 interested in exactly the things that are being discussed in the
190 paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the perfect place to
191 provide information about the referenced papers from the
192 author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in my own
193 thesis.
195 - digital inter-library loan :: libraries at universities already do
196 inter-library loans for books, so why not do the same for access
197 to stupid paywalled digital papers? All the universities could
198 allow access to articles for registered students to all the files
199 available through any participating university. This could be
200 achieved by sending requests through proxies at participating
201 universities. Each university would decide who at the university
202 can access the proxy network. Access to the proxy network could
203 be made easy using something like http://libx.org/.
205 - chess visual :: to show the vast size of the game trees considered
206 by computers, show two people playing chess in a
207 void. They are floating in space, and there is a
208 simple chess board between them. Then, as they play,
209 the game tree's they are considering are drawn
210 behind him. The root of the tree starts centered in
211 their heads or whatever they use to think, and the
212 tree grows out from behind, never crossing the
213 dividing plane between the two players. Each
214 player's tree is a different color. As they grow,
215 there are animations for pruning, etc. Eventually,
216 they look like the hemispheres of a brain, wings,
217 etc. A human's tree might occasionally have a long
218 chain, while the computer tree would be more
219 uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern
220 laptop. Use actual data when fighting two computers!
222 - time verification :: some standard way to verify that some piece of
223 data was recorded at a specific time. Might involve a time
224 server, a key for each time period, something like that.
226 - tamper proof gold bars :: [[http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][this site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars
227 as "novelty" items. One reason to prefer coins is because they
228 are much harder to counterfeit because there is less surface area
229 to mass ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design
230 because they can hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar
231 could be given the same protections (and more) that gold coins
232 have to offer by changing it into a "gold book", which would have
233 hundreds of "pages" of gold bound together. This could be
234 implemented with multiple steel rods going through the book which
235 can be removed, or some more classier mechanism for holding the
236 pages. The point is that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and
237 people would perform this test before buying), thus guaranteeing
238 it's authenticity.
240 - aurellem shirt :: I should make an aurellem star symbol tee-shirt.
242 - touch vision :: inspired by GelSight, I want to reexamine cortex and
243 see if I could implement touch as a very low range
244 form of vision.
246 - high school science :: this is a lesson in scientific ethics. The
247 goal is to calculate /g/, the local gravitational
248 acceleration. The students are told that the textbook says it's
249 /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the experiment. See how they
250 doctor their results to get closer to the textbook value. It's
251 neat because for any given school, /g/ is probably *not* exactly
252 equal to 9.81, because that is just an average!
254 - opencourseware subtitles :: there are ladies who type up lectures
255 while they are being given. These recordings should be kept and
256 given to OCW for subtitles. If the timestamps of keys are
257 recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.
259 - screen locking timing :: you use your computer camera to see if you
260 are sitting in front of the computer. If you are, then the screen
261 will never lock. If you are, then the screen will lock with a
262 30-40 second timeout. It's an extension of using inactivity to
263 initiate the countdown, just with more information.
265 - mirror toilet :: a toilet with a square basin made or mirror instead
266 or porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a
267 wipe job you have done / watch how your excretion
268 system works.
270 - test dummies :: why don't we clone anencephalic humans and use then to
271 test /in vivo/ human organ systems and drugs? It
272 would be ethical as long as there are women who are
273 willing to host the clones, and it would be a
274 tremendous resource for studying the human body. I
275 see nothing wrong with it morally, since no one is
276 suffering, and it stands to save many lives throughout
277 more advanced technology.
279 - X-ray telepresence :: given that a doctor is operating on a patient
280 via telepresence, one cool things you can do is shine X-rays into
281 the patient to view the insides during real time. If the system
282 was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,
283 and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the
284 model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage
285 and surgery risk could be minimized.
287 - superfluid vascular system :: I wonder what would happen if you
288 replaced the blood in a human with a superfluid. What would the
289 physical dynamics be? Would the superfluid flow through the
290 vasculature, or would it ignore it and travel through the cells,
291 or something else entirely. Since superfluids need to be cold to
292 retain their superfluidity, how would the dynamics change during
293 perfusion of a superfluid, where the fluid gains and looses
294 superfluidity as it goes deeper into the body and is cooled by
295 superfluid from upstream. In summary there are two things to
296 simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with superfluid
297 instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
299 - projective guessing :: I think that we read and see things by
300 making a really good guess about what we're expecting to see,
301 and then searching for our guess in what we see. If it really
302 doesn't match, then we start to make more guesses / analyze the
303 image from first principles, but most stuff is projective
304 guessing.
306 - Intestinal flora maintenance :: why not inoculate babies at birth
307 with "ideal" gut flora instead of whatever bullshit they
308 naturally get, thus giving them optimal digestive/nutrient
309 extraction capabilities. Might also be able to make their farts
310 not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTALY, might help to
311 preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1 in 5
312 babies and causees constant screaming and pain for about 5 weeks.
314 - server culture : mirrors :: make a distributed system where people
315 can mirror the websites of people they like -- essentially cover
316 the server costs of favored websites. This could make popular
317 websites run at no cost. The system would require that the
318 mirrored content be the same as the official source. Sort of like
319 bit-torrent for websites.
321 - map programming :: one problem with functional programming is that
322 in order to remain functional, you have to pass up arguments up
323 into each calling function to get the full range of behavior
324 from the lower level functions. Normally people come to a
325 compromise involving abstraction and sparing use of dynamic
326 variables to configure runtime behavior. What would be the
327 advantages of making a programming language where every function
328 receives one argument, a map, which contains all the symbol
329 bindings it would ever need? This map is passed on to all
330 subordinate functions. This way, you could replace functions on
331 the fly, and arrange for there to be sensible defaults,
332 etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an interesting idea.
334 - rest nest :: a small EEG device you would attach to your head when
335 you go to sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine
336 your particular sleep cycles. This would mostly be an
337 alarm clock that you could give a time range, say
338 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an
339 ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90
340 min sleep cycles. You would feel much more rested upon
341 waking up, and would wake up faster. There might be
342 some other uses for the EEG data as well.
344 - image compression :: use a library like gimp or opencv to process an
345 image to make it have less entropy, then store the reverse of
346 those operations along with the compressed simpler image as a
347 super-compressed image file (possibly accepting some
348 losses). Trades file size for decompression time, and allows one
349 to cheat by using information in gimp/opencv to compress the
350 image.
352 - fixed cryopreservation :: why not use a fixative to buy enough time
353 to ramp up cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room
354 temperature? Then, the whole system can be rapidly cooled and
355 vitrified. This method "severs the biological link" in that the
356 fixatives are highly toxic, but current vitrification procedures
357 do this anyway since there can be a lot of freezing damage.
359 - dilated security camera :: a security camera that would capture
360 full video footage of everything at 60fps but then decide to keep
361 only every 1 frame every 5 seconds unless there's something
362 "interesting" happening.
364 - bitcoin wallet :: Part of "server culture", this would be something
365 like "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as
366 your personal trusted access to your own bitcoins
367 from anywhere.
369 - libpay :: this would be a free library which would enable
370 micro-donations to software projects and other projects,
371 so that you could donate a penny to "emacs" and it would
372 be automatically split up to every person who has ever
373 contributed to emacs in proportion to the amount of
374 community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
375 community decides. This might make it possible for
376 programmers to live entirely off of free programming.
378 - distributed graphics :: Browser based graphics-card accelerated
379 distributed computing API.
381 - pronouns :: use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve
382 pronoun referents and gender neutrality, are short to
383 say, and you can encode useful information into the
384 choice of letter. For example, instead of "Meetings
385 shall be presided over by the president, unless she is
386 absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
387 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a
388 little, since I and U are reserved for the subject and
389 object respectively.
391 - phone DSP :: software app that inserts an audio DSP between the
392 input to a phone and the output. The DSP is delicious
393 and configurable, and can allow men to make their
394 voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you to hear
395 your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
396 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to
397 immediately change the parameters of the DSP using good
398 presets.
400 - predestined body learning :: a good example of predestined learning
401 might be the mirror neurons.
403 - restaurant receipt :: use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid
404 copies.
406 - anti google glass :: glasses with mounted lasers and computer vision
407 that targets the cameras in google glass and destroy them.
409 - wearable towel :: towel with clasp, velcro, whatever, that allows
410 one to wear the towel more securely than just
411 wrapping it tightly and hoping for the best.
413 - crossdressing :: Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to
414 wear a burka.
416 - book-mode :: intelligent color highlighting for books and
417 articles. It would disambiguate pronouns and involved
418 references. For example, if "Rachael" was assigned the
419 color red, and "the blonde haired girl" refers to
420 "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be
421 colored red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part
422 run-on sentences by highlighting each
423 subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications to
424 scientific reading.
426 - Handheld light Rain measurement :: this would be a clear, teflon
427 coated plastic disk with a camera underneath the disk. You would
428 be able to hold the device out and it would measure the rate of
429 accumulation of water droplets from fine mists and light rain by
430 using computer vision to measure the diameters of the drops.
432 - Big Brother Farming :: This would be a vision system that would
433 individually monitor each plant and turn on water, etc to ensure
434 maximum/uniform growth for each plant.
436 - Discrete Faucet :: A faucet with discrete ticks instead of
437 continuous.
439 - Laser Circle :: take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one
440 end at an oblique angle. It will make a perfect,
441 large circle on the wall, converting a laser beam
442 into a laser cone, preserving most of the energy of
443 the laser.
445 - Invisible Glass :: Take a container of liquid and embed a
446 glass sculpture made out of glass that has exactly the same index
447 of refraction and color of the liquid. Then the sculpture will be
448 totally invisible in the container, and will only be revealed
449 when the liquid is drained. The container might be a fancy
450 wine/spirit bottle or an hourglass.
452 - Caterpillar people :: A race of caterpillar like creatures gains
453 intelligence after eons of predation by birds, etc. These
454 caterpillar creatures still undergo metamorphosis into a large
455 butterfly-like creature. The metamorphosis process turns the
456 caterpillar's brain into mush and reforms it into a minimal,
457 dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely destroying the person
458 the caterpillar was. The society develops all sorts of customs and
459 religious interpretations of the metamorphosis. It is viewed as
460 good and natural by some since it is part of their life cycle and
461 necessary to propagate the species, as only the butterflies can
462 mate. Some think that the butterflies are still the same person
463 because they have the same soul, even they no longer posses the
464 memories or personality of the original caterpillar. Some see the
465 butterfly form as the "true form" of the species, since the
466 butterflies can fly, mate, and are beautiful. Many make a big
467 deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the caterpillar's mind is
468 actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see it as a terrible
469 tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try to stop the
470 metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very important
471 members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery to
472 prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as themselves.
474 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
475 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
476 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
477 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
478 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
479 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
480 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second
481 gender characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes
482 homophobia look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of
483 pain and death is made to look like the tragedy it is through the
484 lens of the the caterpillar people.
486 - relationships as a business :: [[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx][Turnover-Crisis]] is an excellent talk
487 about the "culture of quitting," which is about better business
488 by letting people go instead of keeping them around past their
489 "apex". Focuses on information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni
490 network, which for relationships would be a group of satisfied
491 ex-lovers, who would recommend new people your way, and who might
492 consider coming to you again, refreshed from their time away with
493 new stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and
494 how they worked out.
496 - coffee with tea :: /rlm-tea/ contains 2% sugar, 10% cream, and 20%
497 dylan coffee. /dylan coffee/ contains 5% sugar,
498 20% cream, and 10% rlm-tea. Start your mornings
499 with recursion!
501 - psychic crystal :: in a science fiction story, this would be an
502 object that is very easy to move physically but is extremely
503 difficult to move with telekinesis.
505 - http://betsofbitco.in/ :: what a great place for an AI/person to
506 prove themselves as a good predictor. I wish this could be
507 automated.
509 - true reflection :: don't forget about that mirror in the student
510 center!, it's two mirrors at right angles, like staring at a
511 corner of a room. The light reflects so that it shows you what
512 you actually look like, instead of your mirror image.
514 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote
515 power/logic.
517 - encrypted email phone book :: public (distributed?) database of
518 email->private-key pairs, to enable automatic encryption.
520 - universal eye color :: every equivalent creature will see each
521 others' eyes as black -- it's universal. Even if the creatures
522 see in radio waves, and their eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged
523 metal, when those creatures look at each other, they will see
524 black, the absence of light and color (since it's being absorbed
525 by the sensor array).
527 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields
528 are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared
529 camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,
530 you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is
531 still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since
532 the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of
533 the food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer,
534 just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
535 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
536 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
537 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.
539 + Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
540 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
542 + Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods
543 and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been
544 cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
546 - compression :: brain-aware image compression algorithm
548 - Credit card proxy :: would be a company which works like paypal
549 except for real world transactions
551 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete
552 with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
554 - super screw :: a screw which has only one or two threads and instead
555 uses compression to fit into a hole (the whole shank
556 of the screw is split into multiple pieces to
557 accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle
558 bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.
560 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically separate
561 fluids with different index of refraction
563 - chalk eraser project :: maybe make a directional eraser, for easy
564 release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a
565 certain direction.
567 - silver socks :: socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial
568 properties.
570 - UROP :: magnet gear/metal teeth tape
572 - Rod of Moses :: device to distill urine through evaporation and
573 easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --
574 produce drinkable water.
576 - UROP :: Make the LED in line with the flow for the micro injector, so
577 that it may transmit maximum flow. Motor that changes
578 distance of internal magnet from windings depending on
579 desired speed so as to obtain maximum power efficiency.
581 - lottery scraper :: web scraper which monitors various lotteries,
582 looking for "special" gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x
583 winnings on Wednesdays) and computes expected value...
585 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make
586 old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.
588 - Conductive concrete :: concrete that has embedded metal fibers so
589 that it can conduct electricity.
591 - little bitty melting pot :: might be useful for some types of
592 manufacturing/3D printing -- how small can an induction melter be
593 made, for example.
595 - power strip/timer programmable combination :: meh
597 - algorithms :: which learn what their inputs are and in what order,
598 and can adapt to changing circumstances -- they
599 remember previous arguments and adapt so as to respond
600 to different connections.
602 - true pure tones :: hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the
603 nerves of the ear
605 - mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp :: would be an object
606 with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the other moves the
607 same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is driving. This
608 analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
610 - paper folding device :: make it convenient to fold lots of papers in
611 various ways.
613 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
615 - light capacitor :: suspend some ball of material with a high index
616 of refraction and shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would
617 the light stay trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited
618 quantities of light inside the sphere (which could then be
619 released slowly by frustrated internal reflection?
621 - movie screening :: Movies always are too long at first. One way to
622 shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the
623 move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which
624 there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)
625 better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I
626 got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill
627 which is composed entirely of the parts in which people had their
628 eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their
629 eyes off of? Just take those parts out!
631 - optimize an article :: capture reading of a scientific article via
632 screen capture while people read it, then use it to make the
633 article better. like the movie-pruning idea.
635 - super reading program :: teaches people the ideal mental mask to
636 apply during reading so as to read very fast.
638 - explosive thermite epoxy putty :: one part would contain the rust,
639 one part the aluminum.
641 - reading comprehension :: use the above screen capture routine to
642 make a quiz program that constructs questions about the content
643 you seemed to gloss over while reading. could be easy if the pdf
644 came with embedded questions. Dylan: automatically generate
645 word-cloud about the parts you found most interesting; help
646 others who read the same stuff by drawing attention to the
647 interesting parts.
649 - hard sword :: make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of
650 martensite for the cutting part; it should be a better
651 sword.
653 - close range wireless :: use the induction technology used to
654 recharge electric toothbrushes with no metal links to send data
655 without any metal at all!
657 - reading :: is a form of synsethesia
659 - DNA printer :: A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into
660 actual DNA
662 - black generator :: ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro
663 generator to make electricity
665 - alcohol battery :: alcohol/fluid flow powered battery
667 - folding razor blade sword ::
669 - perfect pitch :: learn perfect pitch using another sense in
670 combination (sight or touch)
672 - kaleidoscope projector ::
674 - razor blade de-sharpener :: for guilt free disposal
676 - bricks :: filled with luminescent plant material
678 - bio metallic structure :: metal grids with seeds inside, which grow
679 together and form a durable biological matrix. The metal
680 substrate delivers water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)
681 Dylan: enrich plants with inorganic compounds; electrical
682 interfaces in cellular plant matter => remote-controlled
683 photosynthetic/bioluminescent structures.
685 - conducting extracellular matrix :: to allow better control of
686 organic systems and an enhanced nervous system.
688 - cross-modal memory hashing :: a way to retrieve memories more
689 robustly.
691 - flossing thimble-guards :: (these actually exist)
693 - rules + lattice learning :: integrate lattice learning with rules by
694 generating hypothetical examples
696 - wooden refrigerator :: to give food a better taste Dylan: like
697 barrels for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor
698 planks" for your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of
699 temperature on volatility?
701 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious
702 metals or something else economically advantageous.
704 - crowd preservation :: inoculate food with tons of harmless
705 bacteria so that there's no room for bad bacteria as a method of
706 preservation
708 - old school preservation :: Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon
709 as a way to store liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o
710 refrigeration.
712 - restaurant policy :: Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter
713 of course -- make ambiance much better.
715 - clean windows :: make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant
716 water (and reduces the pressure a bit) and use it
717 to clean windows of buildings.
719 - ocarina :: make an ocarina out of pure silver
721 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing
722 any ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from the
723 human's energy?
725 - website to design your own soda :: and label, and have it mailed to
726 you / sell it from your own online store.
728 - solar panels :: that float on the ocean
730 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining
731 people, binding them to environment, etc.
733 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify
734 sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe
735 everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech
736 to text or smtg. Could also store sound as an image of the
737 wavefront encoded as a vector image.
739 - Mouse :: with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical
740 scroll wheel
742 - logic maintenance system for big institutions :: to make sure the
743 things they are thinking about doing are not retarded
745 - http://www.regulations.gov/ :: cool site
747 - genetically engineered glowing fruit :: sell seeds?
749 - memory slide :: IF memories are encoded using particular sensory
750 impressions, what happens if the sensory organ
751 itself changes? those memories would become
752 inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember
753 much from our childhoods. also, could this happen
754 throughout life as well? Could S remember stuff from
755 his childhood?
757 - make a completely indestructible phone :: no moving parts or display
758 you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will
759 just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal
760 interface - never gets too hot, and can be dropped into water. no
761 holes -- uses field effects for everything from the buttons to
762 inductive charging and data transfer.
764 - midi to ocarina "tabs" program :: (online website? buy ocarinas from
765 it too)
767 - 3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns) :: like the 8.03
768 lecture
770 - lighter flint on spring :: make hot, throw it at something, and it
771 makes sparkles!
773 - nuclear energy :: Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational
774 campaign and public debate forum to enforce its
775 transparent and open nature. France needn't be the
776 world leader in nuclear energy. (Dylan)
778 - bubbles :: Engineer a material which has both ductility and high
779 surface tension to make the "third"
780 minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended
781 between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
782 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles,
783 and a double-cone)
785 - Textbook whose content can be varied continuously :: alter level of
786 difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain
787 other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from
788 knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to
789 guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of
790 knowledge. /One./
792 ** From Jacob's idea list
794 - Roommate-canceling headphones: uses roommate's laptop mic to seed
795 noise cancellation alg in your headphones (would this
796 work?). -Update on sound canceling headphones that take feed from
797 tv: how about ones that cancel people talking on the phone by
798 receiving the phone signals and playing inverse sound
799 waves. #signalprocessing ~jcole@mit.edu
801 - ClackerAlert -- tells if you slam the keys too hard using sound data
802 (and speed/jerkiness data)!.Prevents RSI ~jcole@mit.e
804 - Panic Pin :: separate pin that you can tell someone if forced to
805 identify your PIN (idea from idea about credit cards)