Mercurial > thoughts

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    96 <h1><em>aurellem</em>.org</h1>

    97 </div>

    98 

    99 

   100 <h1 class="title">Ideas</h1>

   101 <p>

   102 This is a list of all the ideas I've had that I felt like writing down

   103 for the past ~ 8 years. Some of them could be practical inventions and

   104 are "just" waiting the that 95% perspiration to bring them to

   105 fruition, some are ideas for science fiction, and some are simple

   106 observations. Some are really only for my own personal notes and are

   107 not meant to be comprehensible. They are arranged roughly in reverse

   108 chronological order, with the most recent ideas at the top of the

   109 list. The ones at the bottom of the list are heavily influenced by my

   110 time at MIT.

   111 </p>

   112 <p>

   113 If you find some of these interesting and would like to collaborate on

   114 them with me or discuss them in more detail, I'd love to hear from

   115 you. You can email me at <a href="mailto:ideas@aurellem.org">ideas@aurellem.org</a>.

   116 </p>

   117 <p>

   118 If you want to use one of these ideas as your own and run with it,

   119 please feel free. I'd love

   120 to <a href="mailto:ideas@aurellem.org">hear about it</a> if you do.

   121 </p>

   122 <blockquote>

   123 

   124 <p>There's no end to what a man can accomplish if he doesn't care about

   125 getting credit.

   126 </p>

   127 </blockquote>

   128 

   129 <hr/>

   130 

   131 <div class="ideas">

   132 <div class="project"><h2>the great computing slow-down</h2><div class="description">In general, our computers are

   133      getting faster and faster. However, eventually our brains will be

   134      made of the same stuff our computers are made of! This has very

   135      interesting consequences &ndash; I can add 2+2 and get four in about a

   136      second. Since my neurons actually work at around 10-60 hertz in

   137      parallel, this means that it takes me around 10-30 operations to

   138      do this addition. That's actually not bad in terms of computing

   139      time. If my neurons were as fast as the latest transitors, then

   140      most calculators would be SLOWER than me at adding numbers. Only

   141      the newest, most optimized calculators would be faster, and then

   142      only about 10 times faster! This means that once we begin to

   143      think at the speed of our technology, that technology will

   144      suddenly seem pitifully slow in comparison to how it seems

   145      now. And no amount of technical progress will remedy it, because

   146      that same progress will also make us all think faster. We'll

   147      either have to settle with living in "slow time" to do some

   148      computations, or learn to make smarter hardware with special

   149      optimizations. But this is actually really hard, because we'll be

   150      working with machines that will appear to us about as fast as

   151      MECHANICAL computers. So, in the future, all the cool parties

   152      will be in cyperspace at vastly accelerated speeds compared to

   153      how we exist now. But at these parties, the computers will SUCK!

   154      Of course, this is one of the few things that can save us from AI

   155      risk, because those AI's won't seem so scary when the're build

   156      out of rickety mechanical parts form our perspective. 

   157 

   158 </div></div>

   159 <div class="project"><h2>unitary reverse evolution of chaos+minds</h2><div class="description">Chaotic systems diverge

   160      exponentially in state space. Do you get anything interesting

   161      when part of the physical system associated with the chaotic

   162      system is a object that performs some sort of computation? Is it

   163      possible for the computational system to play a

   164      percision-enabling role in determining the final/initial

   165      conditions of the chaotic system, just by tracing out thoughts in

   166      its decision paths? This is probably too vague of an idea right

   167      now, I just wanted to write it down.

   168 

   169 </div></div>

   170 <div class="project"><h2>microwave time</h2><div class="description">the cooking time you enter on most microwaves is

   171      insane. It's expressed in what I call a "hybrid base", a

   172      combination of base 10 and base 60. You can get absurd things

   173      like 100 &lt; 61, and 120 == 80! I wonder if these hybrid base

   174      systems could be very useful for some purposes!

   175 

   176 </div></div>

   177 <div class="project"><h2>three-eyes</h2><div class="description">if you had three eyes, would you still draw cubes like

   178      we currently draw them? Or would all 2D-representations of 3D

   179      space always look hopelessly fake?

   180 

   181 </div></div>

   182 <div class="project"><h2>visual taste/smell assay</h2><div class="description">get a grid of bacteria, each expressing

   183      a human taste/smell receptor linked to some sort of fluorscent

   184      activity or ion pump. Use a camera / electrical grid to transduce

   185      the smell / taste signal into bits!

   186 

   187 </div></div>

   188 <div class="project"><h2>carabiner mushroom lock</h2><div class="description">you can take a trapazodial carabiner and

   189      make it so that a chain link is caught between the wide end of

   190      the carabiner and another chain attached to the carabiner. 

   191 

   192 </div></div>

   193 <div class="project"><h2>children's tool shop</h2><div class="description">I think that kids should be provided with

   194      tool shops &ndash; these would be nice sheds with a good collection of

   195      tools to do various things &ndash; circuit components and soldering

   196      irons, wires, a small lathe, drill press, belt sander, a

   197      centrifuge, microscope, and telescope, etc. The idea is that the

   198      kid can now think, "I could use X to do this thing that I'm

   199      thinking about" &ndash; the building becomes an extension of the kid's

   200      body &amp; mind.

   201 

   202 </div></div>

   203 <div class="project"><h2>fluid display</h2><div class="description">like the previous idea about matching refractances

   204                    between glass and liquid, except you make a lot of

   205                    switchable glass tubes in various patterns in the

   206                    glass, and actively pump colored liquid through the

   207                    tubes (the tubes have glass-like fluid in them by

   208                    default.) The result is that you can cause the

   209                    tubes to appear and dissappear, and vary their

   210                    colors as well!

   211 

   212 </div></div>

   213 <div class="project"><h2>immunoincompatibility</h2><div class="description">take the human genome, and refactor it so

   214      that it doesn't use a particular codon at all. Then remove the

   215      support from our ribosomes for that codon. What does this do for

   216      us? It makes us immune to almost all viruses!

   217 

   218 </div></div>

   219 <div class="project"><h2>life cycle</h2><div class="description">it's called a cycle, right? So, the thing that repeats

   220                 itself over and over, right? Not much of a cycle if

   221                 you don't come back after you die, if you ask me!

   222 

   223 </div></div>

   224 <div class="project"><h2>car with no blind spots</h2><div class="description">use some cameras in the back of the car

   225      to augment the rear-view mirror so that you never have to turn

   226      around in order to lane change.

   227 

   228 </div></div>

   229 <div class="project"><h2>partial cell death</h2><div class="description">you freeze a set of cells using some cryo

   230      protocol and 60% survive. How can this be explained? It seems to

   231      me that if the cells are the same, and the conditions

   232      homogoneous, then all the cells should either die or

   233      live. However, suppose that there is a metabolic cycle that needs

   234      to be in a certain phase for the cell to survive. If the cells

   235      are asynchronous, then you might end up with some cells dying

   236      because there were in the wrong part of their cycle. This implies

   237      that you might be able to cryoprotect cells by causing them to

   238      enter a certain metabolic mode before freezing.

   239 

   240 </div></div>

   241 <div class="project"><h2>cryonics color appeal</h2><div class="description">perfusate used by cryonics companies should

   242      have red food coloring in it. It's just a nice touch so that the

   243      cryonics patient looks more life-like than with clear CPAs, and

   244      hopefully might get treated with more respect.

   245 

   246 </div></div>

   247 <div class="project"><h2>paramagnetic CPA</h2><div class="description">you take a CPA that can be influenced by

   248      magnetic fields so that its degrees of freedom are limited. Then,

   249      you release the field, instantaly increasing the size of the

   250      state space of the system and dramatically decreasing the

   251      temperature enough to plunge the system past homogenous

   252      nucleation temperature and directly to the glass transition

   253      temperature, creating a doubly unstable glass at much lower CPA

   254      concentrations than possible at conventional CPA concentrations. 

   255 

   256 </div></div>

   257 <div class="project"><h2>room temp noodles</h2><div class="description">how does the physics of cooking noodles work?

   258      Could you use a vacuum instead of heat to force water into the

   259      noodle?

   260 

   261 </div></div>

   262 <div class="project"><h2>personal carbon offset</h2><div class="description">feel bad about contribuiting to global

   263      warming by using electricity / driving a car? Forget trying to

   264      "conserve" or "minimize your carbon footprint". Follow the

   265      Platinum rule &ndash; make the world BETTER off than you found it!

   266      This would be a small, self contained system that sucks C02 out

   267      of the air. It uses electricity, but it's so efficient at

   268      removing CO2 that it more than offsets the CO2 produced by even a

   269      coal plant to produce that electricity. This way, you can still

   270      drive even a gas guzzler, but have a net negative carbon

   271      footprint! Maybe something cool could be done with the carbon as

   272      well. Use as much electricity as you want, but negate the damage

   273      to the enviroment with more technology. 

   274 

   275 </div></div>

   276 <div class="project"><h2>undoing spermogenesis</h2><div class="description">with enough sperm, you can derive the

   277      donor's entire genome. You gain more confidence in the alleles

   278      for a particular gene the more sperm you have. Each additional

   279      sperm gives you the same sort of information you'd get flipping a

   280      coin and trying to decide whether the coin is H/T of H/H. Is

   281      there enough sperm in the the average load for you to be as

   282      confident as mitosis?

   283 

   284 </div></div>

   285 <div class="project"><h2>mars life</h2><div class="description">we could engineer life that could survive on mars

   286                (probably some non-vascular photosynthetic

   287                poikilohydric creature like a lichen) by taking an

   288                extremophile from Antarctica and evolving it in

   289                increasingly Martian conditions. This could be an easy

   290                start to a terraforming process. 

   291 

   292 </div></div>

   293 <div class="project"><h2>problem with Aubrey de Grey's ideas</h2><div class="description">Aubrey de Grey says that we

   294      might be able to live forever by continually repairing our bodies

   295      at the cellular level &ndash; he details 7 different mechanisms of

   296      damage and says that if all of them are dealt with <i>together</i>

   297      that it would stop aging. (You can't miss even one because

   298      they're all fatal.)  However, it doesn't take into account that

   299      we are also beings of information and that there is a very real

   300      software component to our existence. Even if our biological

   301      chassies can be maintained forever, I think it is unlikely that

   302      our minds will operate well far outside of the design constraints

   303      that we've evolved to handle. Say I programmed a webserver with

   304      the express goal of it being able to serve webpages for month on

   305      some stock server. I'll do fairly rigorous testing to make sure

   306      that it can handle the expected load then then some. Now say that

   307      you want to keep a particular instance of this webserver running

   308      indefinitely. (The program instance is like your mind and the

   309      computer it's running on is like your body). You might very well

   310      be able to keep the physical computer infrastructure running for

   311      forever by replacing hard drives / ram / CPUs, etc. However,

   312      since I designed the webserver to work for a month, it probably

   313      has memory leaks, rare stochastic bugs, or other built in limits

   314      / constraints (think log files or some date rollover shenanigans)

   315      that will ultimately kill the webserver even with eternally

   316      perfect hardware. Do you really expect that a webserver

   317      engineered to work for 1 month will run for 10 years without

   318      catastrophically crashing? Not even Apache can do this! In fact,

   319      if I put in the extreme effort to make it that robust, I've

   320      wasted time that I could have spent on other projects by pursuing

   321      an unnecessary engineering goal. Likewise, human minds have only

   322      ever run for at most 122 years before they are destroyed due to

   323      hardware degradation. Fixing the hardware doesn't change any

   324      software bugs that are almost certainly present in the human

   325      mind. Think of all the pathological things that can go wrong with

   326      a webserver, multiply it by a million, and that likely how

   327      evolution has designed our minds. For example, consider memory :

   328      why should you expect that we have evolved the ability to

   329      coherently organize memories past say 150 years? There's been

   330      absolutely no selective pressure for this ability, so you can bet

   331      that if there's any fitness to be gained from not having

   332      unlimited memory potential (such as better metabolic efficiency),

   333      we have it! You might think that maybe we would just forget

   334      things the same way that we sort of forget things that happen

   335      earlier in our lives, but complicated information processing

   336      systems don't have to fail gracefully when they're pushed far

   337      past their design constraints. A 150 year old person is just as

   338      likely to suffer a catastrophic psychosis due to software

   339      limitations associated with memory as he is to do something with

   340      all those memories we might consider reasonable. More likely, in

   341      fact, since there are so very many ways for a complicated

   342      software system to break and so few ways for it to run

   343      successfully. Therefore, I think Aubrey de Grey's "hardware-only"

   344      approach is missing a very important component of longevity

   345      science, and any successful effort to make people live orders of

   346      magnitude longer than they do naturally will need to deal with

   347      people's software as well as their hardware.

   348 

   349 </div></div>

   350 <div class="project"><h2>validating neurocryopreservation</h2><div class="description">Problem : you want to test

   351      whether a brain is functionally preserved through vitrification,

   352      but you don't want to figure out how to preserve all the other

   353      organs in the animal. It might be possible to keep the rest of

   354      the body at almost 0C and vitrify just the head for only a few

   355      minutes. Induce hypothermia, then separate out the head's blood

   356      supply from the rest of the body, then just cryoptotect and

   357      vitrify the head. Might need some sort of thermal guard to keep

   358      the outer head / neck from becoming too cold. You leave the

   359      spinal cord intact! Then you devitrify to 0C, remove

   360      cryoprotectant, and then reattach the blood supply. You can

   361      determine brain preservation using behavioral assays!

   362 

   363 </div></div>

   364 <div class="project"><h2>freezing water purifier</h2><div class="description">you slowly freeze water, but also run

   365      liquid water over the frozen mass. This takes away basically all

   366      impurities and creates "washed ice" then you melt the ice. Maybe

   367      you could re-use the heat from creating the ice to melt the ice?

   368 

   369 </div></div>

   370 <div class="project"><h2>ultra strength</h2><div class="description">allow a person to visualize their muscle

   371                     recruitment patterns. Give them adrenaline and let

   372                     them feel what it's like to have the normal limits

   373                     removed. See if they can replicate the effects.

   374 

   375 </div></div>

   376 <div class="project"><h2>phone names</h2><div class="description">make a PX record for domain names that's like the MX

   377                  record, except that it is a phone number instead of

   378                  an IP address. That way, you can use the domain name

   379                  registration system to provide names for phone

   380                  numbers. Then, as long as you control the domain, you

   381                  can point people to your current phone number by

   382                  updating that record. 

   383 

   384 </div></div>

   385 <div class="project"><h2>edible flowers</h2><div class="description">Edible white flowers that you put in a colored

   386                     solution with flavor. When the flower turns the

   387                     right color, it is also flavored and ready to eat! 

   388 

   389 </div></div>

   390 <div class="project"><h2>suicide cryonics</h2><div class="description">according to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html">this</a>, people who commit impulsive

   391      suicides have a newfound sense of the importance of life. Perhaps

   392      they are good cryonics targets.

   393 

   394 </div></div>

   395 <div class="project"><h2>lead bone</h2><div class="description">Could you fill in all the empty spaces in a bone with

   396                lead? Might be cool.

   397 

   398 </div></div>

   399 <div class="project"><h2>the quest for life </h2><div class="description">Every stupid story has the "immortal who

   400      wants to become mortal" or some other such idea. I want to story

   401      where the protagonist loses their immortality and feels <i>angry</i>

   402      and ashamed about losing something that's so absolutely crucial

   403      to their identity. A reverse of "death makes life worth living",

   404      they feel that living forever is what makes life worth

   405      living. Now they've "lost their sunrise" or their "connection to

   406      the timeless universe" or something. So they go on a quest to get

   407      it back, learning about themselves along the way, and regaining

   408      the precious thing they lost in the beginning.

   409 

   410 </div></div>

   411 <div class="project"><h2>world-map</h2><div class="description">take a small table and paint the continents in

   412                toothpaste on the table. Make a slightly raised barrier

   413                around the table. Slowly pour water onto the table, and

   414                it will form the oceans!

   415 

   416 </div></div>

   417 <div class="project"><h2>stage magic rituals</h2><div class="description">rituals should incorporate elements of stage

   418      magic. Foe example in Teller's tempest, they have a scene where

   419      they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his

   420      head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the

   421      bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should

   422      incorporate stage magic as an enhancement. 

   423 

   424 </div></div>

   425 <div class="project"><h2>isotope time dilation</h2><div class="description">use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes

   426      developed in nuclear fusion experiments. The relativistic time

   427      dilation will stop the isotopes from decaying, and allow time to

   428      study them. This is based on radioactive isotopes that fall

   429      through the earth's atmosphere that take hundreds of times

   430      longer to decay than normal.

   431 

   432 </div></div>

   433 <div class="project"><h2>marsupial stimulation</h2><div class="description">You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby,

   434      and show it videos and other interactive things while it matures

   435      in the pouch. What mental effects would this have?

   436 

   437 </div></div>

   438 <div class="project"><h2>dynamic re-keying</h2><div class="description">Some older ways of tuning instruments sound

   439      better, but we use the even-tempered scale today because it makes

   440      it easier to switch keys. With electronic music, why not make

   441      key-annotations and dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good

   442      in the current key? Could be done as a midi+annotation -&gt; midi

   443      compiler for experimentation.

   444 

   445 </div></div>

   446 <div class="project"><h2>death always implies damage</h2><div class="description">is is possible for a corpse to differ

   447      from a living person only in the fact that one is dead and the

   448      other is alive? NO! A corpse must always have some sort of

   449      molecular damage which causes the loss of function!

   450 

   451 </div></div>

   452 <div class="project"><h2>inner eye</h2><div class="description">Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a

   453                person. Then, you can activate them all and get a

   454                picture of your internal organs for diagnostic

   455                purposes. 

   456 

   457 </div></div>

   458 <div class="project"><h2>chaos rails</h2><div class="description">should make a visualization of the homoclinic tangle,

   459                  it's truly beautiful.

   460 

   461 </div></div>

   462 <div class="project"><h2>context gobbler</h2><div class="description">this would be in "inside-out macro" that takes

   463      the context (like you use for things like error, continuations,

   464      and friends) and transforms it to something else. Maybe useful?

   465 

   466 </div></div>

   467 <div class="project"><h2>cryonics middle ages</h2><div class="description">some people say that cryonics is an

   468      experiment and that it is foolish to wait until we have revived a

   469      human. There is a middle ground where the procedure has a dismal

   470      success rate on humans, say 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to

   471      try revival. Nonetheless, this very risky procedure could be the

   472      legal proof of concept needed to create a new class of life

   473      between "living" and "dead": "stasis".

   474 

   475 </div></div>

   476 <div class="project"><h2>philosophy of the mirror</h2><div class="description">neat thought experiment &ndash; if you take a

   477      mirror of someone by actually reversing a person's chirality

   478      molecule by molecule, then will the only be able to read mirror

   479      writing? The answer is yes, by analogy to a purely mechanical

   480      scan-tron device. This is one of the only interesting transforms I

   481      know that can take a human brain and change it in subtle,

   482      non-destructive ways. It's also an argument against dualism.

   483 

   484 </div></div>

   485 <div class="project"><h2>biosphere in a bottle</h2><div class="description">There are around 15 million species. 15

   486      million stem cells will fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic

   487      inch. Preserve a single cell from every species on earth in this

   488      small space, and you will have a record of our current biosphere

   489      that can be protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in

   490      your hand!"

   491 

   492 </div></div>

   493 <div class="project"><h2>chaos lock</h2><div class="description">The "arrow of time" points in the direction of

   494                 increasing entropy. The time evolution of chaotic

   495                 systems depend exquisitely on their initial state. If

   496                 you take a measurement of a chaotic system at any

   497                 given point of time, you can evolve that system

   498                 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So

   499                 let's say you start the chaotic system in a VERY low

   500                 entropy state, then let it run for a while, then take

   501                 a measurement with some uncertainty. Your

   502                 measurement is pretty good, but obviously not

   503                 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in

   504                 time, then you will see that you don't really reach

   505                 a state with low entropy an hour before (the entropy

   506                 is easy to measure with surrogates like alignment,

   507                 etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more

   508                 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you

   509                 many more orders of magnitude than you could get alone

   510                 just using an instrument. Sometimes it will give you

   511                 bad results, the the odds of it doing that are

   512                 infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple of

   513                 times. 

   514 

   515 </div></div>

   516 <div class="project"><h2>cryo-evolution</h2><div class="description">perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a

   517                     symbiotic bacterial organism that could protect

   518                     human tissues from freezing damage.

   519 

   520 </div></div>

   521 <div class="project"><h2>suicide parasite</h2><div class="description">sometimes, people kill themselves for no good

   522      reason. We often explain this with things like "hidden

   523      depression" or we say that they had something like chronic jaw or

   524      back pain. I think that smells of rationalization. I don't buy

   525      it. I propose that in many suicide cases there is a disease that

   526      causes the suicidal behavior. We already know that certain

   527      parasites have mind-bending properties in other animals, even

   528      mammals like mice. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a

   529      parasite that causes suicides in humans. Some problems:

   530 

   531 <dl><dt>What does the suicide parasite get out of it?</dt>

   532 <dd>This might be answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by cross-species contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.

   533 </dd>

   534 <dt>What predictions does a disease model make</dt><dd>suicide should

   535           be more common among people who share a contagion

   536           vector. There should be suicides that don't make any

   537           sense : people who weren't really depressed, who had no

   538           reason to kill themselves. People who have killed themselves

   539           should have a higher incidence of some unknown parasite in

   540           their brains. 

   541 

   542 </dd>

   543 </dl>

   544 </div>

   545 

   546 </div></div>

   547 <div class="project"><h2>domestic insects</h2><div class="description">People should eat more bugs because they're much

   548      more efficient, so why not do some major domestication research

   549      to make very appealing bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be

   550      excellent targets for domestication because they have extreme

   551      levels of genetic malleability.

   552 

   553 </div></div>

   554 <div class="project"><h2>birth-clones</h2><div class="description">What if each person was intentionally split at birth

   555                   into a normal embryo and a few "backup" cells which

   556                   is then frozen. The backup cells are created just

   557                   the same way as natural identical twins. The backups

   558                   can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it

   559                   would be a good sci fi concept, because you could

   560                   have a culture where people reward people who were

   561                   especially awesome are "reborn" from their

   562                   backups. Imagine having a young Bach every

   563                   generation, etc.

   564 

   565 </div></div>

   566 <div class="project"><h2>pronunciation guide</h2><div class="description">a simple webpage where you type in a word and

   567      it returns a simple, English sentence describing exactly how to

   568      pronounce the word. For people who don't want to learn IPA. 

   569 

   570 </div></div>

   571 <div class="project"><h2>cortex-search</h2><div class="description">use the repertoire of actions learned to limit the

   572                    search space of possible actions.

   573 

   574 </div></div>

   575 <div class="project"><h2>learning to teleport</h2><div class="description">scifi idea, this is a story about a person

   576      who is struggling with his/her society's ideas about

   577      teleportation. It's considered a fundamental part of being a

   578      member of that society (after all, the difference between animals

   579      and humans is that humans are creatures of pure information while

   580      animals are burdened with base matter, "that's how you travel the

   581      stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, and then

   582      eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to jumping

   583      off a diving board into a pool (which I simply <i>could not do</i> for

   584      a long time), etc.     

   585 

   586 </div></div>

   587 <div class="project"><h2>no-float-ice</h2><div class="description">cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice

   588                   forms. Then when you drink liquid from the glass,

   589                   the ice stays at the bottom and doesn't hit your

   590                   lips. For bars and fancy things.

   591 

   592 </div></div>

   593 <div class="project"><h2>bitcoins for immigrants</h2><div class="description">A common case with Mexican immigrants

   594      (illegal or not) is that they want to send money they've earned

   595      in the US back to their families in Mexico. They currently do this

   596      through things like Money Gram or Western Union, and they get

   597      fleeced in the process with fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce

   598      the cost of sending money from America to Mexico, but I don't

   599      believe that it's currently used for that among Mexican

   600      immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I bet you could

   601      set up physical locations like those obnoxious Western Union huts

   602      in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly undercut

   603      them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin might

   604      be in order. There's some money to be made there because there is

   605      great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!

   606 

   607 </div></div>

   608 <div class="project"><h2>reverse eye-tracking</h2><div class="description">A painting that is actually a digital screen

   609      with a camera. It records people's eye tracks permanently. It's

   610      "artistic" because paintings are normally these things that you

   611      look at without changing, but this one is changed the second you

   612      look at it, recording where <i>you</i> looked forever for others to

   613      see. Make it be a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the

   614      breasts and groin area light up with interest from all the males

   615      passing by.

   616 

   617 </div></div>

   618 <div class="project"><h2>smart toilets</h2><div class="description">Instead of using indirect measures like infrared

   619                    detectors of the presence of a person, use computer

   620                    vision to directly measure whether the toilet needs

   621                    to be flushed. I think a lot of things will end up

   622                    going this way as we get better computer vision.

   623 

   624 </div></div>

   625 <div class="project"><h2>validate chemopreservation</h2><div class="description">chemopreservation is difficult to

   626      validate because it destroys the functionality of a brain, and

   627      brain simulation will take a long time to mature as a

   628      technology. However, one very powerful way to validate

   629      chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn

   630      something with high complexity such as a number or the solution

   631      to a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain

   632      chemically, slice it up, and read <i>that specific memory</i> from the

   633      detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.

   634 

   635 </div></div>

   636 <div class="project"><h2>candy screw</h2><div class="description">edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw

   637                  as well. 

   638 

   639 </div></div>

   640 <div class="project"><h2>better bibliography</h2><div class="description">when writing a thesis or paper, have the

   641      bibliography not just be an opaque list of resources, but have it

   642      be a list of <i>summaries</i> and <i>qualities</i> that each paper has in

   643      the context of the paper being written. When examining a

   644      bibliography, I want to know if reading the papers in the

   645      bibliography are worth my time, and I also am probably also

   646      interested in exactly the things that are being discussed in the

   647      paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the perfect place to

   648      provide information about the referenced papers from the

   649      author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in my own

   650      thesis. 

   651 

   652 </div></div>

   653 <div class="project"><h2>digital inter-library loan</h2><div class="description">libraries at universities already do

   654      inter-library loans for books, so why not do the same for access

   655      to stupid paywalled digital papers? All the universities could

   656      allow access to articles for registered students to all the files

   657      available through any participating university. This could be

   658      achieved by sending requests through proxies at participating

   659      universities. Each university would decide who at the university

   660      can access the proxy network. Access to the proxy network could

   661      be made easy using something like <a href="http://libx.org/">http://libx.org/</a>.

   662 

   663 </div></div>

   664 <div class="project"><h2>chess visual</h2><div class="description">to show the vast size of the game trees considered

   665                   by computers, show two people playing chess in a

   666                   void. They are floating in space, and there is a

   667                   simple chess board between them. Then, as they play,

   668                   the game tree's they are considering are drawn

   669                   behind him. The root of the tree starts centered in

   670                   their heads or whatever they use to think, and the

   671                   tree grows out from behind, never crossing the

   672                   dividing plane between the two players. Each

   673                   player's tree is a different color. As they grow,

   674                   there are animations for pruning, etc. Eventually,

   675                   they look like the hemispheres of a brain, wings,

   676                   etc. A human's tree might occasionally have a long

   677                   chain, while the computer tree would be more

   678                   uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern

   679                   laptop. Use actual data when fighting two computers! 

   680 

   681 </div></div>

   682 <div class="project"><h2>time verification</h2><div class="description">some standard way to verify that some piece of

   683      data was recorded at a specific time. Might involve a time

   684      server, a key for each time period, something like that.

   685 

   686 </div></div>

   687 <div class="project"><h2>tamper proof gold bars</h2><div class="description"><a href="http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html">this site</a> offers gold plated tungsten bars

   688      as "novelty" items. One reason to prefer coins is because they

   689      are much harder to counterfeit because there is less surface area

   690      to mass ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design

   691      because they can hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar

   692      could be given the same protections (and more) that gold coins

   693      have to offer by changing it into a "gold book", which would have

   694      hundreds of "pages" of gold bound together. This could be

   695      implemented with multiple steel rods going through the book which

   696      can be removed, or some more classier mechanism for holding the

   697      pages. The point is that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and

   698      people would perform this test before buying), thus guaranteeing

   699      it's authenticity.

   700 

   701 </div></div>

   702 <div class="project"><h2>aurellem shirt</h2><div class="description">I should make an aurellem star symbol tee-shirt. 

   703 

   704 </div></div>

   705 <div class="project"><h2>touch vision</h2><div class="description">inspired by GelSight, I want to reexamine cortex and

   706                   see if I could implement touch as a very low range

   707                   form of vision.

   708 

   709 </div></div>

   710 <div class="project"><h2>high school science</h2><div class="description">this is a lesson in scientific ethics. The

   711      goal is to calculate <i>g</i>, the local gravitational

   712      acceleration. The students are told that the textbook says it's

   713      <i>exactly</i> 9.81 before they start the experiment. See how they

   714      doctor their results to get closer to the textbook value. It's

   715      neat because for any given school, <i>g</i> is probably <b>not</b> exactly

   716      equal to 9.81, because that is just an average!

   717 

   718 </div></div>

   719 <div class="project"><h2>opencourseware subtitles</h2><div class="description">there are ladies who type up lectures

   720      while they are being given. These recordings should be kept and

   721      given to OCW for subtitles. If the timestamps of keys are

   722      recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.

   723 

   724 </div></div>

   725 <div class="project"><h2>screen locking timing</h2><div class="description">you use your computer camera to see if you

   726      are sitting in front of the computer. If you are, then the screen

   727      will never lock. If you are, then the screen will lock with a

   728      30-40 second timeout. It's an extension of using inactivity to

   729      initiate the countdown, just with more information.

   730 

   731 </div></div>

   732 <div class="project"><h2>mirror toilet</h2><div class="description">a toilet with a square basin made or mirror instead

   733                    or porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a

   734                    wipe job you have done / watch how your excretion

   735                    system works.

   736 

   737 </div></div>

   738 <div class="project"><h2>test dummies</h2><div class="description">why don't we clone anencephalic humans and use then to

   739                   test <i>in vivo</i> human organ systems and drugs? It

   740                   would be ethical as long as there are women who are

   741                   willing to host the clones, and it would be a

   742                   tremendous resource for studying the human body. I

   743                   see nothing wrong with it morally, since no one is

   744                   suffering, and it stands to save many lives throughout

   745                   more advanced technology.

   746 

   747 </div></div>

   748 <div class="project"><h2>X-ray telepresence</h2><div class="description">given that a doctor is operating on a patient

   749      via telepresence, one cool things you can do is shine X-rays into

   750      the patient to view the insides during real time. If the system

   751      was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,

   752      and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the

   753      model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage

   754      and surgery risk could be minimized.

   755 

   756 </div></div>

   757 <div class="project"><h2>superfluid vascular system</h2><div class="description">I wonder what would happen if you

   758      replaced the blood in a human with a superfluid. What would the

   759      physical dynamics be? Would the superfluid flow through the

   760      vasculature, or would it ignore it and travel through the cells,

   761      or something else entirely. Since superfluids need to be cold to

   762      retain their superfluidity, how would the dynamics change during

   763      perfusion of a superfluid, where the fluid gains and looses

   764      superfluidity as it goes deeper into the body and is cooled by

   765      superfluid from upstream. In summary there are two things to

   766      simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with superfluid

   767      instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.

   768 

   769 </div></div>

   770 <div class="project"><h2>projective guessing</h2><div class="description">I think that we read and see things by

   771      making a really good guess about what we're expecting to see,

   772      and then searching for our guess in what we see. If it really

   773      doesn't match, then we start to make more guesses / analyze the

   774      image from first principles, but most stuff is projective

   775      guessing.

   776 

   777 </div></div>

   778 <div class="project"><h2>Intestinal flora maintenance</h2><div class="description">why not inoculate babies at birth

   779      with "ideal" gut flora instead of whatever bullshit they

   780      naturally get, thus giving them optimal digestive/nutrient

   781      extraction capabilities. Might also be able to make their farts

   782      not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might help to

   783      preventatively stop some forms of <i>colic</i>, which affects 1 in 5

   784      babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5 weeks.

   785 

   786 </div></div>

   787 <div class="project"><h2>server culture : mirrors</h2><div class="description">make a distributed system where people

   788      can mirror the websites of people they like &ndash; essentially cover

   789      the server costs of favored websites. This could make popular

   790      websites run at no cost. The system would require that the

   791      mirrored content be the same as the official source. Sort of like

   792      bit-torrent for websites.

   793 

   794 </div></div>

   795 <div class="project"><h2>map programming</h2><div class="description">one problem with functional programming is that

   796      in order to remain functional, you have to pass up arguments up

   797      into each calling function to get the full range of behavior

   798      from the lower level functions. Normally people come to a

   799      compromise involving abstraction and sparing use of dynamic

   800      variables to configure runtime behavior. What would be the

   801      advantages of making a programming language where every function

   802      receives one argument, a map, which contains all the symbol

   803      bindings it would ever need? This map is passed on to all

   804      subordinate functions. This way, you could replace functions on

   805      the fly, and arrange for there to be sensible defaults,

   806      etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an interesting idea.

   807 

   808 </div></div>

   809 <div class="project"><h2>rest nest</h2><div class="description">a small EEG device you would attach to your head when

   810                you go to sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine

   811                your particular sleep cycles. This would mostly be an

   812                alarm clock that you could give a time range, say

   813                7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an

   814                ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90

   815                min sleep cycles. You would feel much more rested upon

   816                waking up, and would wake up faster. There might be

   817                some other uses for the EEG data as well.

   818 

   819 </div></div>

   820 <div class="project"><h2>image compression</h2><div class="description">use a library like gimp or opencv to process an

   821      image to make it have less entropy, then store the reverse of

   822      those operations along with the compressed simpler image as a

   823      super-compressed image file (possibly accepting some

   824      losses). Trades file size for decompression time, and allows one

   825      to cheat by using information in gimp/opencv to compress the

   826      image. 

   827 

   828 </div></div>

   829 <div class="project"><h2>fixed cryopreservation</h2><div class="description">why not use a fixative to buy enough time

   830      to ramp up cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room

   831      temperature? Then, the whole system can be rapidly cooled and

   832      vitrified. This method "severs the biological link" in that the

   833      fixatives are highly toxic, but current vitrification procedures

   834      do this anyway since there can be a lot of freezing damage.

   835 

   836 </div></div>

   837 <div class="project"><h2>dilated security camera</h2><div class="description">a security camera that would capture

   838      full video footage of everything at 60fps but then decide to keep

   839      only every 1 frame every 5 seconds unless there's something

   840      "interesting" happening.

   841 

   842 </div></div>

   843 <div class="project"><h2>bitcoin wallet</h2><div class="description">Part of "server culture", this would be something

   844                     like "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as

   845                     your personal trusted access to your own bitcoins

   846                     from anywhere.

   847 

   848 </div></div>

   849 <div class="project"><h2>libpay</h2><div class="description">this would be a free library which would enable

   850             micro-donations to software projects and other projects,

   851             so that you could donate a penny to "emacs" and it would

   852             be automatically split up to every person who has ever

   853             contributed to emacs in proportion to the amount of

   854             community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the

   855             community decides. This might make it possible for

   856             programmers to live entirely off of free programming.

   857 

   858 </div></div>

   859 <div class="project"><h2>distributed graphics</h2><div class="description">Browser based graphics-card accelerated

   860      distributed computing API.

   861 

   862 </div></div>

   863 <div class="project"><h2>pronouns</h2><div class="description">use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve

   864               pronoun referents and gender neutrality, are short to

   865               say, and you can encode useful information into the

   866               choice of letter. For example, instead of "Meetings

   867               shall be presided over by the president, unless she is

   868               absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the

   869               president, unless P is absent." We already use this a

   870               little, since I and U are reserved for the subject and

   871               object respectively.

   872 

   873 </div></div>

   874 <div class="project"><h2>phone DSP</h2><div class="description">software app that inserts an audio DSP between the

   875                input to a phone and the output. The DSP is delicious

   876                and configurable, and can allow men to make their

   877                voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you to hear

   878                your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how

   879                their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to

   880                immediately change the parameters of the DSP using good

   881                presets.

   882 

   883 </div></div>

   884 <div class="project"><h2>predestined body learning</h2><div class="description">a good example of predestined learning

   885      might be the mirror neurons.

   886 

   887 </div></div>

   888 <div class="project"><h2>restaurant receipt</h2><div class="description">use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid

   889      copies. 

   890 

   891 </div></div>

   892 <div class="project"><h2>anti google glass</h2><div class="description">glasses with mounted lasers and computer vision

   893      that targets the cameras in google glass and destroy them.

   894 

   895 </div></div>

   896 <div class="project"><h2>wearable towel</h2><div class="description">towel with clasp, velcro, whatever, that allows

   897                     one to wear the towel more securely than just

   898                     wrapping it tightly and hoping for the best.

   899 

   900 </div></div>

   901 <div class="project"><h2>crossdressing</h2><div class="description">Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to

   902                    wear a burka.

   903 

   904 </div></div>

   905 <div class="project"><h2>book-mode</h2><div class="description">intelligent color highlighting for books and

   906                articles. It would disambiguate pronouns and involved

   907                references. For example, if "Rachael" was assigned the

   908                color red, and "the blonde haired girl" refers to

   909                "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be

   910                colored red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part

   911                run-on sentences by highlighting each

   912                subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications to

   913                scientific reading.

   914 

   915 </div></div>

   916 <div class="project"><h2>Handheld light Rain measurement</h2><div class="description">this would be a clear, teflon

   917      coated plastic disk with a camera underneath the disk. You would

   918      be able to hold the device out and it would measure the rate of

   919      accumulation of water droplets from fine mists and light rain by

   920      using computer vision to measure the diameters of the drops.

   921 

   922 </div></div>

   923 <div class="project"><h2>Big Brother Farming</h2><div class="description">This would be a vision system that would

   924      individually monitor each plant and turn on water, etc to ensure

   925      maximum/uniform growth for each plant. 

   926 

   927 </div></div>

   928 <div class="project"><h2>Discrete Faucet</h2><div class="description">A faucet with discrete ticks instead of

   929      continuous. 

   930 

   931 </div></div>

   932 <div class="project"><h2>Laser Circle</h2><div class="description">take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one

   933                   end at an oblique angle. It will make a perfect,

   934                   large circle on the wall, converting a laser beam

   935                   into a laser cone, preserving most of the energy of

   936                   the laser.

   937 

   938 </div></div>

   939 <div class="project"><h2>Invisible Glass</h2><div class="description">Take a container of liquid and embed a

   940      glass sculpture made out of glass that has exactly the same index

   941      of refraction and color of the liquid. Then the sculpture will be

   942      totally invisible in the container, and will only be revealed

   943      when the liquid is drained. The container might be a fancy

   944      wine/spirit bottle or an hourglass.

   945 

   946 </div></div>

   947 <div class="project"><h2>Caterpillar people</h2><div class="description">A race of caterpillar like creatures gains

   948      intelligence after eons of predation by birds, etc. These

   949      caterpillar creatures still undergo metamorphosis into a large

   950      butterfly-like creature. The metamorphosis process turns the

   951      caterpillar's brain into mush and reforms it into a minimal,

   952      dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely destroying the person

   953      the caterpillar was. The society develops all sorts of customs and

   954      religious interpretations of the metamorphosis. It is viewed as

   955      good and natural by some since it is part of their life cycle and

   956      necessary to propagate the species, as only the butterflies can

   957      mate. Some think that the butterflies are still the same person

   958      because they have the same soul, even they no longer posses the

   959      memories or personality of the original caterpillar. Some see the

   960      butterfly form as the "true form" of the species, since the

   961      butterflies can fly, mate, and are beautiful. Many make a big

   962      deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the caterpillar's mind is

   963      actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see it as a terrible

   964      tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try to stop the

   965      metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very important

   966      members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery to

   967      prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as themselves.

   968 

   969 <p>

   970      This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being

   971      something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,

   972      something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that

   973      hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains

   974      now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic

   975      legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a

   976      compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second

   977      gender characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes

   978      homophobia look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of

   979      pain and death is made to look like the tragedy it is through the

   980      lens of the the caterpillar people.

   981 </p>

   982 </div></div>

   983 <div class="project"><h2>relationships as a business</h2><div class="description"><a href="http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx">Turnover-Crisis</a> is an excellent talk

   984      about the "culture of quitting," which is about better business

   985      by letting people go instead of keeping them around past their

   986      "apex". Focuses on information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni

   987      network, which for relationships would be a group of satisfied

   988      ex-lovers, who would recommend new people your way, and who might

   989      consider coming to you again, refreshed from their time away with

   990      new stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and

   991      how they worked out.

   992 

   993 </div></div>

   994 <div class="project"><h2>coffee with tea</h2><div class="description"><i>rlm-tea</i> contains 2% sugar, 10% cream, and 20%

   995                     dylan coffee. <i>dylan coffee</i> contains 5% sugar,

   996                     20% cream, and 10% rlm-tea. Start your mornings

   997                     with recursion!

   998 

   999 </div></div>

  1000 <div class="project"><h2>psychic crystal</h2><div class="description">in a science fiction story, this would be an

  1001      object that is very easy to move physically but is extremely

  1002      difficult to move with telekinesis.

  1003 

  1004 </div></div>

  1005 <div class="project"><h2><a href="http://betsofbitco.in/">http://betsofbitco.in/</a></h2><div class="description">what a great place for an AI/person to

  1006      prove themselves as a good predictor. I wish this could be

  1007      automated. 

  1008 

  1009 </div></div>

  1010 <div class="project"><h2>true reflection</h2><div class="description">don't forget about that mirror in the student

  1011      center!, it's two mirrors at right angles, like staring at a

  1012      corner of a room. The light reflects so that it shows you what

  1013      you actually look like, instead of your mirror image.

  1014 

  1015 </div></div>

  1016 <div class="project"><h2>remote control wasp</h2><div class="description">use computer to drive wings with remote

  1017   power/logic.

  1018 

  1019 </div></div>

  1020 <div class="project"><h2>encrypted email phone book</h2><div class="description">public (distributed?) database of

  1021      email-&gt;private-key pairs, to enable automatic encryption.

  1022 

  1023 </div></div>

  1024 <div class="project"><h2>universal eye color</h2><div class="description">every equivalent creature will see each

  1025      others' eyes as black &ndash; it's universal. Even if the creatures

  1026      see in radio waves, and their eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged

  1027      metal, when those creatures look at each other, they will see

  1028      black, the absence of light and color (since it's being absorbed

  1029      by the sensor array).

  1030 

  1031 </div></div>

  1032 <div class="project"><h2>intelligent microwave</h2><div class="description">it learns where the hot nodes of its fields

  1033   are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared

  1034   camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,

  1035   you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is

  1036   still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since

  1037   the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of

  1038   the food.  Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer,

  1039   just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically

  1040   defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much

  1041   faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with

  1042   heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.

  1043 

  1044 <ul>

  1045 <li>Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would

  1046     "sputter" and splash liquid much less.

  1047 

  1048 </li>

  1049 <li>Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods

  1050     and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been

  1051     cooked before &ndash; it can get faster the more it's used.

  1052 

  1053 </li>

  1054 </ul>

  1055 

  1056 </div></div>

  1057 <div class="project"><h2>compression</h2><div class="description">brain-aware image compression algorithm

  1058 

  1059 </div></div>

  1060 <div class="project"><h2>Credit card proxy</h2><div class="description">would be a company which works like paypal

  1061      except for real world transactions

  1062 

  1063 </div></div>

  1064 <div class="project"><h2>Flesh pillow</h2><div class="description">a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete

  1065                   with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.

  1066 

  1067 </div></div>

  1068 <div class="project"><h2>super screw</h2><div class="description">a screw which has only one or two threads and instead

  1069                  uses compression to fit into a hole (the whole shank

  1070                  of the screw is split into multiple pieces to

  1071                  accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle

  1072                  bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.

  1073 

  1074 </div></div>

  1075 <div class="project"><h2>light filter</h2><div class="description">(like light tweezers) to mechanically separate

  1076                   fluids with different index of refraction

  1077 

  1078 </div></div>

  1079 <div class="project"><h2>chalk eraser project</h2><div class="description">maybe make a directional eraser, for easy

  1080      release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a

  1081      certain direction.

  1082 

  1083 </div></div>

  1084 <div class="project"><h2>silver socks</h2><div class="description">socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial

  1085                   properties.

  1086 

  1087 </div></div>

  1088 <div class="project"><h2>UROP</h2><div class="description">magnet gear/metal teeth tape 

  1089 

  1090 </div></div>

  1091 <div class="project"><h2>Rod of Moses</h2><div class="description">device to distill urine through evaporation and

  1092                   easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --

  1093                   produce drinkable water.

  1094 

  1095 </div></div>

  1096 <div class="project"><h2>UROP</h2><div class="description">Make the LED in line with the flow for the micro injector, so

  1097           that it may transmit maximum flow.  Motor that changes

  1098           distance of internal magnet from windings depending on

  1099           desired speed so as to obtain maximum power efficiency.

  1100 

  1101 </div></div>

  1102 <div class="project"><h2>lottery scraper</h2><div class="description">web scraper which monitors various lotteries,

  1103      looking for "special" gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x

  1104      winnings on Wednesdays) and computes expected value&hellip;

  1105 

  1106 </div></div>

  1107 <div class="project"><h2>Memristiors novel design</h2><div class="description">make an evolutionary algorithm to make

  1108   old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.

  1109 

  1110 </div></div>

  1111 <div class="project"><h2>Conductive concrete</h2><div class="description">concrete that has embedded metal fibers so

  1112      that it can conduct electricity.

  1113 

  1114 </div></div>

  1115 <div class="project"><h2>little bitty melting pot</h2><div class="description">might be useful for some types of

  1116      manufacturing/3D printing &ndash; how small can an induction melter be

  1117      made, for example.

  1118 

  1119 </div></div>

  1120 <div class="project"><h2>power strip/timer programmable combination</h2><div class="description">meh

  1121 </div></div>

  1122 

  1123 <div class="project"><h2>algorithms...</h2><div class="description">which learn what their inputs are and in what order,

  1124                and can adapt to changing circumstances &ndash; they

  1125                remember previous arguments and adapt so as to respond

  1126                to different connections.

  1127 

  1128 </div></div>

  1129 <div class="project"><h2>true pure tones</h2><div class="description">hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the

  1130      nerves of the ear

  1131 

  1132 </div></div>

  1133 <div class="project"><h2>mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp</h2><div class="description">would be an object

  1134      with two levers &ndash; you pull on one lever and the other moves the

  1135      same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is driving. This

  1136      analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.

  1137 

  1138 </div></div>

  1139 <div class="project"><h2>paper folding device</h2><div class="description">make it convenient to fold lots of papers in

  1140      various ways.

  1141 

  1142 </div></div>

  1143 <div class="project"><h2>concrete epoxy</h2><div class="description">epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.

  1144 

  1145 </div></div>

  1146 <div class="project"><h2>light capacitor</h2><div class="description">suspend some ball of material with a high index

  1147      of refraction and shine light into it so it gets stuck &ndash; would

  1148      the light stay trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited

  1149      quantities of light inside the sphere (which could then be

  1150      released slowly by frustrated internal reflection?

  1151 

  1152 </div></div>

  1153 <div class="project"><h2>movie screening</h2><div class="description">Movies always are too long at first. One way to

  1154      shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the

  1155      move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which

  1156      there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)

  1157      better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I

  1158      got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill

  1159      which is composed entirely of the parts in which people had their

  1160      eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their

  1161      eyes off of? Just take those parts out!

  1162 

  1163 </div></div>

  1164 <div class="project"><h2>optimize an article</h2><div class="description">capture reading of a scientific article via

  1165      screen capture while people read it, then use it to make the

  1166      article better. like the movie-pruning idea.

  1167 

  1168 </div></div>

  1169 <div class="project"><h2>super reading program</h2><div class="description">teaches people the ideal mental mask to

  1170      apply during reading so as to read very fast.

  1171 

  1172 </div></div>

  1173 <div class="project"><h2>explosive thermite epoxy putty</h2><div class="description">one part would contain the rust,

  1174      one part the aluminum.

  1175 

  1176 </div></div>

  1177 <div class="project"><h2>reading comprehension</h2><div class="description">use the above screen capture routine to

  1178      make a quiz program that constructs questions about the content

  1179      you seemed to gloss over while reading. could be easy if the pdf

  1180      came with embedded questions.  Dylan: automatically generate

  1181      word-cloud about the parts you found most interesting; help

  1182      others who read the same stuff by drawing attention to the

  1183      interesting parts.

  1184 

  1185 </div></div>

  1186 <div class="project"><h2>hard sword</h2><div class="description">make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of

  1187                 martensite for the cutting part; it should be a better

  1188                 sword.

  1189 

  1190 </div></div>

  1191 <div class="project"><h2>close range wireless</h2><div class="description">use the induction technology used to

  1192      recharge electric toothbrushes with no metal links to send data

  1193      without any metal at all!

  1194 

  1195 </div></div>

  1196 <div class="project"><h2>reading</h2><div class="description">is a form of synsethesia

  1197 

  1198 </div></div>

  1199 <div class="project"><h2>DNA printer</h2><div class="description">A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into

  1200                   actual DNA

  1201 

  1202 </div></div>

  1203 <div class="project"><h2>black generator</h2><div class="description">ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro

  1204      generator to make electricity

  1205 

  1206 </div></div>

  1207 <div class="project"><h2>alcohol battery</h2><div class="description">alcohol/fluid flow powered battery

  1208 

  1209 </div></div>

  1210 <div class="project"><h2>folding razor blade sword</h2><div class="description">

  1211 

  1212 </div></div>

  1213 <div class="project"><h2>perfect pitch</h2><div class="description">learn perfect pitch using another sense in

  1214                    combination (sight or touch)

  1215 

  1216 </div></div>

  1217 <div class="project"><h2>kaleidoscope projector</h2><div class="description">

  1218 

  1219 </div></div>

  1220 <div class="project"><h2>razor blade de-sharpener</h2><div class="description">for guilt free disposal

  1221 

  1222 </div></div>

  1223 <div class="project"><h2>bricks</h2><div class="description">filled with luminescent plant material

  1224 

  1225 </div></div>

  1226 <div class="project"><h2>bio metallic structure</h2><div class="description">metal grids with seeds inside, which grow

  1227      together and form a durable biological matrix. The metal

  1228      substrate delivers water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)

  1229      Dylan: enrich plants with inorganic compounds; electrical

  1230      interfaces in cellular plant matter =&gt; remote-controlled

  1231      photosynthetic/bioluminescent structures.

  1232 

  1233 </div></div>

  1234 <div class="project"><h2>conducting extracellular matrix</h2><div class="description">to allow better control of

  1235      organic systems and an enhanced nervous system.

  1236 

  1237 </div></div>

  1238 <div class="project"><h2>cross-modal memory hashing</h2><div class="description">a way to retrieve memories more

  1239      robustly. 

  1240 

  1241 </div></div>

  1242 <div class="project"><h2>flossing thimble-guards</h2><div class="description">(these actually exist)

  1243 

  1244 </div></div>

  1245 <div class="project"><h2>rules + lattice learning</h2><div class="description">integrate lattice learning with rules by

  1246      generating hypothetical examples

  1247 

  1248 </div></div>

  1249 <div class="project"><h2>wooden refrigerator</h2><div class="description">to give food a better taste Dylan: like

  1250      barrels for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor

  1251      planks" for your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of

  1252      temperature on volatility?

  1253 

  1254 </div></div>

  1255 <div class="project"><h2>radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule</h2><div class="description">create precious

  1256      metals or something else economically advantageous.

  1257 

  1258 </div></div>

  1259 <div class="project"><h2>crowd preservation</h2><div class="description">inoculate food with tons of harmless

  1260      bacteria so that there's no room for bad bacteria as a method of

  1261      preservation

  1262 

  1263 </div></div>

  1264 <div class="project"><h2>old school preservation</h2><div class="description">Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon

  1265      as a way to store liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o

  1266      refrigeration.

  1267 

  1268 </div></div>

  1269 <div class="project"><h2>restaurant policy</h2><div class="description">Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter

  1270      of course &ndash; make ambiance much better.

  1271 

  1272 </div></div>

  1273 <div class="project"><h2>clean windows</h2><div class="description">make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant

  1274                    water (and reduces the pressure a bit) and use it

  1275                    to clean windows of buildings.

  1276 

  1277 </div></div>

  1278 <div class="project"><h2>ocarina</h2><div class="description">make an ocarina out of pure silver

  1279 

  1280 </div></div>

  1281 <div class="project"><h2>fire pen</h2><div class="description">pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing

  1282               any ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from the

  1283               human's energy?

  1284 

  1285 </div></div>

  1286 <div class="project"><h2>website to design your own soda</h2><div class="description">and label, and have it mailed to

  1287      you / sell it from your own online store.

  1288 

  1289 </div></div>

  1290 <div class="project"><h2>solar panels</h2><div class="description">that float on the ocean

  1291 

  1292 </div></div>

  1293 <div class="project"><h2>handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?)</h2><div class="description">great for daisy chaining

  1294      people, binding them to environment, etc.

  1295 

  1296 </div></div>

  1297 <div class="project"><h2>vector based SOUND files</h2><div class="description">like the pictures but with SOUND. codify

  1298      sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe

  1299      everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech

  1300      to text or smtg. Could also store sound as an image of the

  1301      wavefront encoded as a vector image.

  1302 

  1303 </div></div>

  1304 <div class="project"><h2>Mouse</h2><div class="description">with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical

  1305            scroll wheel

  1306 

  1307 </div></div>

  1308 <div class="project"><h2>logic maintenance system for big institutions</h2><div class="description">to make sure the

  1309      things they are thinking about doing are not retarded

  1310 

  1311 </div></div>

  1312 <div class="project"><h2><a href="http://www.regulations.gov/">http://www.regulations.gov/</a></h2><div class="description">cool site

  1313 

  1314 </div></div>

  1315 <div class="project"><h2>genetically engineered glowing fruit</h2><div class="description">sell seeds?

  1316 

  1317 </div></div>

  1318 <div class="project"><h2>memory slide</h2><div class="description">IF memories are encoded using particular sensory

  1319                   impressions, what happens if the sensory organ

  1320                   itself changes? those memories would become

  1321                   inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember

  1322                   much from our childhoods. also, could this happen

  1323                   throughout life as well? Could S remember stuff from

  1324                   his childhood?

  1325 

  1326 </div></div>

  1327 <div class="project"><h2>make a completely indestructible phone</h2><div class="description">no moving parts or display

  1328      you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will

  1329      just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal

  1330      interface - never gets too hot, and can be dropped into water. no

  1331      holes &ndash; uses field effects for everything from the buttons to

  1332      inductive charging and data transfer.

  1333 

  1334 </div></div>

  1335 <div class="project"><h2>midi to ocarina "tabs" program</h2><div class="description">(online website? buy ocarinas from

  1336      it too)

  1337 

  1338 </div></div>

  1339 <div class="project"><h2>3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns)</h2><div class="description">like the 8.03

  1340      lecture

  1341 

  1342 </div></div>

  1343 <div class="project"><h2>lighter flint on spring</h2><div class="description">make hot, throw it at something, and it

  1344      makes sparkles!

  1345 

  1346 </div></div>

  1347 <div class="project"><h2>nuclear energy</h2><div class="description">Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational

  1348                     campaign and public debate forum to enforce its

  1349                     transparent and open nature. France needn't be the

  1350                     world leader in nuclear energy. (Dylan)

  1351 

  1352 </div></div>

  1353 <div class="project"><h2>bubbles</h2><div class="description">Engineer a material which has both ductility and high

  1354              surface tension to make the "third"

  1355              minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended

  1356              between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are

  1357              cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles,

  1358              and a double-cone)

  1359 

  1360 </div></div>

  1361 <div class="project"><h2>Textbook whose content can be varied continuously</h2><div class="description">alter level of

  1362      difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain

  1363      other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from

  1364      knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to

  1365      guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of

  1366      knowledge. <i>One.</i>

  1367 </div></div>

  1368 </div>

  1369 

  1370 

  1371 

  1372 </div>

  1373 

  1374 <div id="outline-container-1-1" class="outline-3">

  1375 <h3 id="sec-1-1"><span class="section-number-3">1.1</span> From Jacob's idea list</h3>

  1376 <div class="outline-text-3" id="text-1-1">

  1377 

  1378 

  1379 <ul>

  1380 <li>Roommate-canceling headphones: uses roommate's laptop mic to seed

  1381   noise cancellation alg in your headphones (would this

  1382   work?). -Update on sound canceling headphones that take feed from

  1383   tv: how about ones that cancel people talking on the phone by

  1384   receiving the phone signals and playing inverse sound

  1385   waves. #signalprocessing ~jcole@mit.edu

  1386 

  1387 </li>

  1388 <li>ClackerAlert &ndash; tells if you slam the keys too hard using sound data

  1389   (and speed/jerkiness data)!.Prevents RSI ~jcole@mit.e

  1390 

  1391 </li>

  1392 <li>separate pin that you can tell someone if forced to

  1393                identify your PIN (idea from idea about credit cards)

  1394 </li>

  1395 </ul>

  1396 

  1397 </div>

  1398 </div>

  1399 </div>

  1400 </div>

  1401 

  1402 <div id="postamble">

  1403 <p class="date">Date: 2015-02-04 23:52:02 EST</p>

  1404 <p class="author">Author: Robert McIntyre</p>

  1405 <p class="creator">Org version 7.7 with Emacs version 23</p>

  1406 <a href="http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer">Validate XHTML 1.0</a>

  1407 

  1408 </body>

  1409 </html>
author	Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date	Thu, 26 Feb 2015 18:03:15 -0800
parents	94e03d638078
children