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date Tue, 03 Jun 2014 15:31:19 -0400
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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 - stage magic rituals :: rituals should incorporate elements of stage
35 magic. Foe example in Teller's tempest, they have a scene where
36 they levitate a crown in front of someone, then put it on his
37 head. They also have a wedding ceremony where they levitated the
38 bride as well. Actual weddings and other ceremonies should
39 incorporate stage magic as an enhancement.
41 - isotope time dilation :: use a cyclotron to speed up rare isotopes
42 developed in nuclear fusion experiments. The relativistic time
43 dilation will stop the isotopes from decaying, and allow time to
44 study them. This is based on radioactive isotopes that fall
45 through the earth's atmosphere that take hundreds of times
46 longer to decay than normal.
48 - marsupial stimulation :: You take a freshly pouched marsupial baby,
49 and show it videos and other interactive things while it matures
50 in the pouch. What mental effects would this have?
52 - dynamic re-keying :: Some older ways of tuning insturments sound
53 better, but we use the even-tempered scale today because it makes
54 it easier to switch keys. With electronic music, why not make
55 key-annotations and dynamically re-tune the piece to sound good
56 in the current key? Coule be done as a midi+annotation -> midi
57 compiler for experimentation.
59 - death always implies damage :: is is possible for a corpse to differ
60 from a living person only in the fact that one is dead and the
61 other is alive? NO! A corpse must always have some sort of
62 molecular damage which causes the loss of function!
64 - inner eye :: Surgically install a bunch of tiny cameras inside a
65 person. Then, you can activate them all and get a
66 picture of your internal organs for diagnostic
67 purposes.
69 - chaos rails :: should make a visulazation of the homoclinic tangle,
70 it's truly beautiful.
72 - context gobbler :: this would be in "inside-out macro" that takes
73 the context (like you use for things like error, continuations,
74 and friends) and transforms it to something else. Maybe useful?
76 - cryonics middle ages :: some people say that cryonics is an
77 experiment and that it is foolish to wait until we have revived a
78 human. There is a middle ground where the procedure has a dismal
79 success rate on humans, say 1 in 20, so that you'd be a fool to
80 try revival. Nonetheless, this very risky procedure could be the
81 legal proof of concept needed to create a new class of life
82 between "living" and "dead": "stasis".
84 - philosophy of the mirror :: neat thought experiment -- if you take a
85 mirror of someone by actually reversing a person's chirality
86 molecule by molecule, then will the only be able to read mirror
87 writing? The answer is yes, by analogy to a purely mechanical
88 scan-tron device. This is one of the only interesting transforms I
89 know that can take a human brain and change it in subtle,
90 non-destructive ways. It's also an argument against dualism.
92 - biosphere in a bottle :: There are around 15 million species. 15
93 million stem cells will fill only a tiny size, far less than a cubic
94 inch. Preserve a single cell from every species on earth in this
95 small space, and you will have a record of our current biosphere
96 that can be protected. "Hold the genetic data of all species in
97 your hand!"
99 - chaos lock :: The "arrow of time" points in the direction of
100 increasing entropy. The time evolution of chaotic
101 systems depend exquisitely on their initial state. If
102 you take a measurement of a chaotic system at any
103 given point of time, you can evolve that system
104 backwards or forwards based on your measurement. So
105 let's say you start the chaotic system in a VERY low
106 entropy state, then let it run for a while, then take
107 a measurement with some uncertainty. Your
108 measurement is pretty good, but obviously not
109 PERFECT. If you evolve the chaotic system back in
110 time, then you will see that you don't really reach
111 a state with low entropy an hour before (the entropy
112 is easy to measure with surrogates like alignment,
113 etc). So use this technique to SEARCH for a more
114 accurate measurement! This potentially can give you
115 many more orders of magnitude than you could get alone
116 just using an instrument. Sometimes it will give you
117 bad results, the the odds of it doing that are
118 infinitesimal, and you can just measure a couple of
119 times.
121 - cryo-evolution :: perhaps there would be a way to rapidly evolve a
122 symbiotic bacterial organism that could protect
123 human tissues from freezing damage.
125 - suicide parasite :: sometimes, people kill themselves for no good
126 reason. We often explain this with things like "hidden
127 depression" or we say that they had something like chronic jaw or
128 back pain. I think that smells of rationalization. I don't buy
129 it. I propose that in many suicide cases there is a disease that
130 causes the suicidal behavior. We already know that certain
131 parasites have mind-bending properties in other animals, even
132 mammals like mice. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a
133 parasite that causes suicides in humans. Some problems:
134 - What does the suicide parasite get out of it? :: This might be
135 answered by the whole thing being a glitch caused by
136 cross-species contamination. Toxoplasma works this way.
137 - What predictions does a disease model make :: suicide should
138 be more common among people who share a contagion
139 vector. There should be suicides that don't make any
140 sense : people who weren't really depressed, who had no
141 reason to kill themselves. People who have killed themselves
142 should have a higher incidence of some unknown parasite in
143 their brains.
145 - domestic insects :: People should eat more bugs because they're much
146 more efficient, so why not do some major domestication research
147 to make very appealing bugs? Beetles, in particular, seem to be
148 excellent targets for domestication because they have extreme
149 levels of genetic malleability.
151 - birth-clones :: What if each person was intentionally split at birth
152 into a normal embryo and a few "backup" cells which
153 is then frozen. The backup cells are created just
154 the same way as natural identical twins. The backups
155 can be used to regenerate organs. etc. Also, it
156 would be a good sci fi concept, because you could
157 have a culture where people reward people who were
158 especially awesome are "reborn" from their
159 backups. Imagine having a young Bach every
160 generation, etc.
162 - pronunciation guide :: a simple webpage where you type in a word and
163 it returns a simple, English sentence describing exactly how to
164 pronounce the word. For people who don't want to learn IPA.
166 - cortex-search :: use the repertoire of actions learned to limit the
167 search space of possible actions.
169 - learning to teleport :: scifi idea, this is a story about a person
170 who is struggling with his/her society's ideas about
171 teleportation. It's considered a fundamental part of being a
172 member of that society (after all, the difference between animals
173 and humans is that humans are creatures of pure information while
174 animals are burdened with base matter, "that's how you travel the
175 stars, etc") Humans are born normally, grow up, and then
176 eventually transcend via destructive upload. Analogies to jumping
177 off a diving board into a pool (which I simply /could not do/ for
178 a long time), etc.
180 - no-float-ice :: cup that has cross beams at the bottom where ice
181 forms. Then when you drink liquid from the glass,
182 the ice stays at the bottom and doesn't hit your
183 lips. For bars and fancy things.
185 - bitcoins for immigrants :: A common case with Mexican immigrants
186 (illegal or not) is that they want to send money they've earned
187 in the US back to their families in Mexico. They currently do this
188 through things like Money Gram or Western Union, and they get
189 fleeced in the process with fees. Bitcoin could greatly reduce
190 the cost of sending money from America to Mexico, but I don't
191 believe that it's currently used for that among Mexican
192 immigrants currently due to lack of knowledge. I bet you could
193 set up physical locations like those obnoxious Western Union huts
194 in places like Texas, Arizona, etc, and greatly undercut
195 them. Or, perhaps some educational seminars about bitcoin might
196 be in order. There's some money to be made there because there is
197 great demand, and it's a good thing to boot!
199 - reverse eye-tracking :: A painting that is actually a digital screen
200 with a camera. It records people's eye tracks permanently. It's
201 "artistic" because paintings are normally these things that you
202 look at without changing, but this one is changed the second you
203 look at it, recording where /you/ looked forever for others to
204 see. Make it be a painting of a woman and see the trolling as the
205 breasts and groin area light up with interest from all the males
206 passing by.
208 - smart toilets :: Instead of using indirect measures like infrared
209 detectors of the presence of a person, use computer
210 vision to directly measure whether the toilet needs
211 to be flushed. I think a lot of things will end up
212 going this way as we get better computer vision.
214 - validate chemopreservation :: chemopreservation is difficult to
215 validate because it destroys the functionality of a brain, and
216 brain simulation will take a long time to mature as a
217 technology. However, one very powerful way to validate
218 chemopreservation would be to have a person/animal learn
219 something with high complexity such as a number or the solution
220 to a maze, or a flashbulb memory. Then you preserve their brain
221 chemically, slice it up, and read /that specific memory/ from the
222 detailed brain scan. Much more difficult, but much more doable.
224 - candy screw :: edible candy screw with candy nuts that you can screw
225 as well.
227 - better bibliography :: when writing a thesis or paper, have the
228 bibliography not just be an opaque list of resources, but have it
229 be a list of /summaries/ and /qualities/ that each paper has in
230 the context of the paper being written. When examining a
231 bibliography, I want to know if reading the papers in the
232 bibliography are worth my time, and I also am probably also
233 interested in exactly the things that are being discussed in the
234 paper I'm reading. The bibliography is the perfect place to
235 provide information about the referenced papers from the
236 author's perspective. I will use this biographic form in my own
237 thesis.
239 - digital inter-library loan :: libraries at universities already do
240 inter-library loans for books, so why not do the same for access
241 to stupid paywalled digital papers? All the universities could
242 allow access to articles for registered students to all the files
243 available through any participating university. This could be
244 achieved by sending requests through proxies at participating
245 universities. Each university would decide who at the university
246 can access the proxy network. Access to the proxy network could
247 be made easy using something like http://libx.org/.
249 - chess visual :: to show the vast size of the game trees considered
250 by computers, show two people playing chess in a
251 void. They are floating in space, and there is a
252 simple chess board between them. Then, as they play,
253 the game tree's they are considering are drawn
254 behind him. The root of the tree starts centered in
255 their heads or whatever they use to think, and the
256 tree grows out from behind, never crossing the
257 dividing plane between the two players. Each
258 player's tree is a different color. As they grow,
259 there are animations for pruning, etc. Eventually,
260 they look like the hemispheres of a brain, wings,
261 etc. A human's tree might occasionally have a long
262 chain, while the computer tree would be more
263 uniform. You could compare deep blue and a modern
264 laptop. Use actual data when fighting two computers!
266 - time verification :: some standard way to verify that some piece of
267 data was recorded at a specific time. Might involve a time
268 server, a key for each time period, something like that.
270 - tamper proof gold bars :: [[http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html][this site]] offers gold plated tungsten bars
271 as "novelty" items. One reason to prefer coins is because they
272 are much harder to counterfeit because there is less surface area
273 to mass ratio. However, gold bars are still a great design
274 because they can hold a lot of value in a small space. A gold bar
275 could be given the same protections (and more) that gold coins
276 have to offer by changing it into a "gold book", which would have
277 hundreds of "pages" of gold bound together. This could be
278 implemented with multiple steel rods going through the book which
279 can be removed, or some more classier mechanism for holding the
280 pages. The point is that the bar can be EASILY subdivided (and
281 people would perform this test before buying), thus guaranteeing
282 it's authenticity.
284 - aurellem shirt :: I should make an aurellem star symbol tee-shirt.
286 - touch vision :: inspired by GelSight, I want to reexamine cortex and
287 see if I could implement touch as a very low range
288 form of vision.
290 - high school science :: this is a lesson in scientific ethics. The
291 goal is to calculate /g/, the local gravitational
292 acceleration. The students are told that the textbook says it's
293 /exactly/ 9.81 before they start the experiment. See how they
294 doctor their results to get closer to the textbook value. It's
295 neat because for any given school, /g/ is probably *not* exactly
296 equal to 9.81, because that is just an average!
298 - opencourseware subtitles :: there are ladies who type up lectures
299 while they are being given. These recordings should be kept and
300 given to OCW for subtitles. If the timestamps of keys are
301 recorded, then it is easy to make subtitles.
303 - screen locking timing :: you use your computer camera to see if you
304 are sitting in front of the computer. If you are, then the screen
305 will never lock. If you are, then the screen will lock with a
306 30-40 second timeout. It's an extension of using inactivity to
307 initiate the countdown, just with more information.
309 - mirror toilet :: a toilet with a square basin made or mirror instead
310 or porcelain. That way, you can see how good of a
311 wipe job you have done / watch how your excretion
312 system works.
314 - test dummies :: why don't we clone anencephalic humans and use then to
315 test /in vivo/ human organ systems and drugs? It
316 would be ethical as long as there are women who are
317 willing to host the clones, and it would be a
318 tremendous resource for studying the human body. I
319 see nothing wrong with it morally, since no one is
320 suffering, and it stands to save many lives throughout
321 more advanced technology.
323 - X-ray telepresence :: given that a doctor is operating on a patient
324 via telepresence, one cool things you can do is shine X-rays into
325 the patient to view the insides during real time. If the system
326 was coupled with a Bayesian model of the layout of the structure,
327 and the x-rays were only fired whenever the uncertainty of the
328 model reached a certain threshold, then the radiation damage
329 and surgery risk could be minimized.
331 - superfluid vascular system :: I wonder what would happen if you
332 replaced the blood in a human with a superfluid. What would the
333 physical dynamics be? Would the superfluid flow through the
334 vasculature, or would it ignore it and travel through the cells,
335 or something else entirely. Since superfluids need to be cold to
336 retain their superfluidity, how would the dynamics change during
337 perfusion of a superfluid, where the fluid gains and looses
338 superfluidity as it goes deeper into the body and is cooled by
339 superfluid from upstream. In summary there are two things to
340 simulate 1.) replace all blood in human with superfluid
341 instantly. 2.) perfuse superfluid into human.
343 - projective guessing :: I think that we read and see things by
344 making a really good guess about what we're expecting to see,
345 and then searching for our guess in what we see. If it really
346 doesn't match, then we start to make more guesses / analyze the
347 image from first principles, but most stuff is projective
348 guessing.
350 - Intestinal flora maintenance :: why not inoculate babies at birth
351 with "ideal" gut flora instead of whatever bullshit they
352 naturally get, thus giving them optimal digestive/nutrient
353 extraction capabilities. Might also be able to make their farts
354 not stink for life, too. MORE IMPORTANTLY, might help to
355 preventatively stop some forms of /colic/, which affects 1 in 5
356 babies and causes constant screaming and pain for about 5 weeks.
358 - server culture : mirrors :: make a distributed system where people
359 can mirror the websites of people they like -- essentially cover
360 the server costs of favored websites. This could make popular
361 websites run at no cost. The system would require that the
362 mirrored content be the same as the official source. Sort of like
363 bit-torrent for websites.
365 - map programming :: one problem with functional programming is that
366 in order to remain functional, you have to pass up arguments up
367 into each calling function to get the full range of behavior
368 from the lower level functions. Normally people come to a
369 compromise involving abstraction and sparing use of dynamic
370 variables to configure runtime behavior. What would be the
371 advantages of making a programming language where every function
372 receives one argument, a map, which contains all the symbol
373 bindings it would ever need? This map is passed on to all
374 subordinate functions. This way, you could replace functions on
375 the fly, and arrange for there to be sensible defaults,
376 etc. Might cause more harm than good but is an interesting idea.
378 - rest nest :: a small EEG device you would attach to your head when
379 you go to sleep at night. ML algorithms would determine
380 your particular sleep cycles. This would mostly be an
381 alarm clock that you could give a time range, say
382 7:00AM - 7:15AM, and it would wake you up during an
383 ideal time corresponding to then end of one of your 90
384 min sleep cycles. You would feel much more rested upon
385 waking up, and would wake up faster. There might be
386 some other uses for the EEG data as well.
388 - image compression :: use a library like gimp or opencv to process an
389 image to make it have less entropy, then store the reverse of
390 those operations along with the compressed simpler image as a
391 super-compressed image file (possibly accepting some
392 losses). Trades file size for decompression time, and allows one
393 to cheat by using information in gimp/opencv to compress the
394 image.
396 - fixed cryopreservation :: why not use a fixative to buy enough time
397 to ramp up cryoprotectants to an acceptable level at room
398 temperature? Then, the whole system can be rapidly cooled and
399 vitrified. This method "severs the biological link" in that the
400 fixatives are highly toxic, but current vitrification procedures
401 do this anyway since there can be a lot of freezing damage.
403 - dilated security camera :: a security camera that would capture
404 full video footage of everything at 60fps but then decide to keep
405 only every 1 frame every 5 seconds unless there's something
406 "interesting" happening.
408 - bitcoin wallet :: Part of "server culture", this would be something
409 like "coin.your-domain.com" which would serve as
410 your personal trusted access to your own bitcoins
411 from anywhere.
413 - libpay :: this would be a free library which would enable
414 micro-donations to software projects and other projects,
415 so that you could donate a penny to "emacs" and it would
416 be automatically split up to every person who has ever
417 contributed to emacs in proportion to the amount of
418 community esteem, code quantity, bugs fixed, whatever the
419 community decides. This might make it possible for
420 programmers to live entirely off of free programming.
422 - distributed graphics :: Browser based graphics-card accelerated
423 distributed computing API.
425 - pronouns :: use capital letters A-Z instead of pronouns. They solve
426 pronoun referents and gender neutrality, are short to
427 say, and you can encode useful information into the
428 choice of letter. For example, instead of "Meetings
429 shall be presided over by the president, unless she is
430 absent." USE "Meetings shall be presided over by the
431 president, unless P is absent." We already use this a
432 little, since I and U are reserved for the subject and
433 object respectively.
435 - phone DSP :: software app that inserts an audio DSP between the
436 input to a phone and the output. The DSP is delicious
437 and configurable, and can allow men to make their
438 voices deeper, etc. The app would allow you to hear
439 your own voice as others hear it. Most people hate how
440 their own voice sounds. The app would also allow one to
441 immediately change the parameters of the DSP using good
442 presets.
444 - predestined body learning :: a good example of predestined learning
445 might be the mirror neurons.
447 - restaurant receipt :: use a carbon copy receipt instead of two stupid
448 copies.
450 - anti google glass :: glasses with mounted lasers and computer vision
451 that targets the cameras in google glass and destroy them.
453 - wearable towel :: towel with clasp, velcro, whatever, that allows
454 one to wear the towel more securely than just
455 wrapping it tightly and hoping for the best.
457 - crossdressing :: Easiest way to disguise oneself as a woman is to
458 wear a burka.
460 - book-mode :: intelligent color highlighting for books and
461 articles. It would disambiguate pronouns and involved
462 references. For example, if "Rachael" was assigned the
463 color red, and "the blonde haired girl" refers to
464 "Rachael", then "the blonde haired girl" would be
465 colored red. Also, you could disambiguate multi part
466 run-on sentences by highlighting each
467 subcomponent. Maybe would also have applications to
468 scientific reading.
470 - Handheld light Rain measurement :: this would be a clear, teflon
471 coated plastic disk with a camera underneath the disk. You would
472 be able to hold the device out and it would measure the rate of
473 accumulation of water droplets from fine mists and light rain by
474 using computer vision to measure the diameters of the drops.
476 - Big Brother Farming :: This would be a vision system that would
477 individually monitor each plant and turn on water, etc to ensure
478 maximum/uniform growth for each plant.
480 - Discrete Faucet :: A faucet with discrete ticks instead of
481 continuous.
483 - Laser Circle :: take a glass microfiliment and shine a laser at one
484 end at an oblique angle. It will make a perfect,
485 large circle on the wall, converting a laser beam
486 into a laser cone, preserving most of the energy of
487 the laser.
489 - Invisible Glass :: Take a container of liquid and embed a
490 glass sculpture made out of glass that has exactly the same index
491 of refraction and color of the liquid. Then the sculpture will be
492 totally invisible in the container, and will only be revealed
493 when the liquid is drained. The container might be a fancy
494 wine/spirit bottle or an hourglass.
496 - Caterpillar people :: A race of caterpillar like creatures gains
497 intelligence after eons of predation by birds, etc. These
498 caterpillar creatures still undergo metamorphosis into a large
499 butterfly-like creature. The metamorphosis process turns the
500 caterpillar's brain into mush and reforms it into a minimal,
501 dumb, truly insect-like mind, completely destroying the person
502 the caterpillar was. The society develops all sorts of customs and
503 religious interpretations of the metamorphosis. It is viewed as
504 good and natural by some since it is part of their life cycle and
505 necessary to propagate the species, as only the butterflies can
506 mate. Some think that the butterflies are still the same person
507 because they have the same soul, even they no longer posses the
508 memories or personality of the original caterpillar. Some see the
509 butterfly form as the "true form" of the species, since the
510 butterflies can fly, mate, and are beautiful. Many make a big
511 deal out of the fact that 1-2% of the caterpillar's mind is
512 actually preserved in the butterfly. Some see it as a terrible
513 tragedy and argue that the caterpillars should try to stop the
514 metamorphosis by technology. Practically, some very important
515 members of society undergo hormone therapy and/or surgery to
516 prevent metamorphosis so that they can live longer as themselves.
518 This is a continuation of Marvin Minsky's ideas about pain being
519 something that preserves our bodies while destroying our minds,
520 something that is a remnant from our too harsh animal days that
521 hasn't caught up to the fact that we have very complex brains
522 now. It's a worst-case scenario about a maladaptive genetic
523 legacy. Also, it's inspired by "There She Is!!!", which makes a
524 compelling point about homosexuality by introducing a second
525 gender characteristic (bunny/cat, male/female), which makes
526 homophobia look very silly. Here, our own biological legacy of
527 pain and death is made to look like the tragedy it is through the
528 lens of the the caterpillar people.
530 - relationships as a business :: [[http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Up-or-Out-Solving-the-IT-Turnover-Crisis.aspx][Turnover-Crisis]] is an excellent talk
531 about the "culture of quitting," which is about better business
532 by letting people go instead of keeping them around past their
533 "apex". Focuses on information transfer. Cool idea of an alumni
534 network, which for relationships would be a group of satisfied
535 ex-lovers, who would recommend new people your way, and who might
536 consider coming to you again, refreshed from their time away with
537 new stories/experiences. I should look for examples of this and
538 how they worked out.
540 - coffee with tea :: /rlm-tea/ contains 2% sugar, 10% cream, and 20%
541 dylan coffee. /dylan coffee/ contains 5% sugar,
542 20% cream, and 10% rlm-tea. Start your mornings
543 with recursion!
545 - psychic crystal :: in a science fiction story, this would be an
546 object that is very easy to move physically but is extremely
547 difficult to move with telekinesis.
549 - http://betsofbitco.in/ :: what a great place for an AI/person to
550 prove themselves as a good predictor. I wish this could be
551 automated.
553 - true reflection :: don't forget about that mirror in the student
554 center!, it's two mirrors at right angles, like staring at a
555 corner of a room. The light reflects so that it shows you what
556 you actually look like, instead of your mirror image.
558 - remote control wasp :: use computer to drive wings with remote
559 power/logic.
561 - encrypted email phone book :: public (distributed?) database of
562 email->private-key pairs, to enable automatic encryption.
564 - universal eye color :: every equivalent creature will see each
565 others' eyes as black -- it's universal. Even if the creatures
566 see in radio waves, and their eyes are 2m long pieces of jagged
567 metal, when those creatures look at each other, they will see
568 black, the absence of light and color (since it's being absorbed
569 by the sensor array).
571 - intelligent microwave :: it learns where the hot nodes of its fields
572 are, and uses them to evenly heat any food item. It has an infrared
573 camera or something to keep track of how hot the food is. That way,
574 you don't get bowls where the edges are boiling, while the center is
575 still frozen. Requires a little bit of intelligence/vision, since
576 the exact pattern of heating totally depends on the exact shape of
577 the food. Wouldn't need a carousel, and wouldn't need a timer,
578 just a desired temperature. Could also detect ice, and automatically
579 defrost the parts which are frozen. Might be able to work much
580 faster since it can avoid overheating; might have problems with
581 heating the insides of thick things, might need a weight sensor too.
583 + Would be much cleaner than other microwaves, since food would
584 "sputter" and splash liquid much less.
586 + Throw in some SIFT+R processing to match previously cooked foods
587 and learn the exact heating profiles for things that have been
588 cooked before -- it can get faster the more it's used.
590 - compression :: brain-aware image compression algorithm
592 - Credit card proxy :: would be a company which works like paypal
593 except for real world transactions
595 - Flesh pillow :: a pillow like the arm or torso of a human, complete
596 with simulated temperature, bones, and heartbeat.
598 - super screw :: a screw which has only one or two threads and instead
599 uses compression to fit into a hole (the whole shank
600 of the screw is split into multiple pieces to
601 accomplish this; the tip is a point, then the middle
602 bulges out and gets compressed when screwed in.
604 - light filter :: (like light tweezers) to mechanically separate
605 fluids with different index of refraction
607 - chalk eraser project :: maybe make a directional eraser, for easy
608 release of chalk dust, like fur, and how it likes to rest in a
609 certain direction.
611 - silver socks :: socks laced with silver for the antimicrobial
612 properties.
614 - UROP :: magnet gear/metal teeth tape
616 - Rod of Moses :: device to distill urine through evaporation and
617 easily dispose of urea crystals for use in desert --
618 produce drinkable water.
620 - UROP :: Make the LED in line with the flow for the micro injector, so
621 that it may transmit maximum flow. Motor that changes
622 distance of internal magnet from windings depending on
623 desired speed so as to obtain maximum power efficiency.
625 - lottery scraper :: web scraper which monitors various lotteries,
626 looking for "special" gimmick changes in the rules (like 4x
627 winnings on Wednesdays) and computes expected value...
629 - Memristiors novel design :: make an evolutionary algorithm to make
630 old stuff using all four basic circuit elements.
632 - Conductive concrete :: concrete that has embedded metal fibers so
633 that it can conduct electricity.
635 - little bitty melting pot :: might be useful for some types of
636 manufacturing/3D printing -- how small can an induction melter be
637 made, for example.
639 - power strip/timer programmable combination :: meh
641 - algorithms :: which learn what their inputs are and in what order,
642 and can adapt to changing circumstances -- they
643 remember previous arguments and adapt so as to respond
644 to different connections.
646 - true pure tones :: hear a true pure tone by direct stimulation of the
647 nerves of the ear
649 - mechanical analogue to the electrical op-amp :: would be an object
650 with two levers -- you pull on one lever and the other moves the
651 same way, no matter what's in the way or what it is driving. This
652 analogy could be useful to teach op amps to people.
654 - paper folding device :: make it convenient to fold lots of papers in
655 various ways.
657 - concrete epoxy :: epoxy with sand/ some other solid material.
659 - light capacitor :: suspend some ball of material with a high index
660 of refraction and shine light into it so it gets stuck -- would
661 the light stay trapped forever? Could you build up unlimited
662 quantities of light inside the sphere (which could then be
663 released slowly by frustrated internal reflection?
665 - movie screening :: Movies always are too long at first. One way to
666 shorten them ``scientifically" is to record blink rate during the
667 move and then remove / shorten the frames of the parts in which
668 there are a lot of blinking (average this over multiple people)
669 better yet, put it online and do it across thousands of people. I
670 got this from youtube in which there is an episode of kill bill
671 which is composed entirely of the parts in which people had their
672 eyes closed. slogan: want to make a movie people can't take their
673 eyes off of? Just take those parts out!
675 - optimize an article :: capture reading of a scientific article via
676 screen capture while people read it, then use it to make the
677 article better. like the movie-pruning idea.
679 - super reading program :: teaches people the ideal mental mask to
680 apply during reading so as to read very fast.
682 - explosive thermite epoxy putty :: one part would contain the rust,
683 one part the aluminum.
685 - reading comprehension :: use the above screen capture routine to
686 make a quiz program that constructs questions about the content
687 you seemed to gloss over while reading. could be easy if the pdf
688 came with embedded questions. Dylan: automatically generate
689 word-cloud about the parts you found most interesting; help
690 others who read the same stuff by drawing attention to the
691 interesting parts.
693 - hard sword :: make a samurai sword, but use osmiridum instead of
694 martensite for the cutting part; it should be a better
695 sword.
697 - close range wireless :: use the induction technology used to
698 recharge electric toothbrushes with no metal links to send data
699 without any metal at all!
701 - reading :: is a form of synsethesia
703 - DNA printer :: A machine which translates the text eg, "ACTGAC" into
704 actual DNA
706 - black generator :: ferro-fluid magnetic field suspended micro
707 generator to make electricity
709 - alcohol battery :: alcohol/fluid flow powered battery
711 - folding razor blade sword ::
713 - perfect pitch :: learn perfect pitch using another sense in
714 combination (sight or touch)
716 - kaleidoscope projector ::
718 - razor blade de-sharpener :: for guilt free disposal
720 - bricks :: filled with luminescent plant material
722 - bio metallic structure :: metal grids with seeds inside, which grow
723 together and form a durable biological matrix. The metal
724 substrate delivers water. (maybe use plastic instead of metal?)
725 Dylan: enrich plants with inorganic compounds; electrical
726 interfaces in cellular plant matter => remote-controlled
727 photosynthetic/bioluminescent structures.
729 - conducting extracellular matrix :: to allow better control of
730 organic systems and an enhanced nervous system.
732 - cross-modal memory hashing :: a way to retrieve memories more
733 robustly.
735 - flossing thimble-guards :: (these actually exist)
737 - rules + lattice learning :: integrate lattice learning with rules by
738 generating hypothetical examples
740 - wooden refrigerator :: to give food a better taste Dylan: like
741 barrels for wine, or planks for salmon. Maybe just have "flavor
742 planks" for your pre-existing fridge. Need to mitigate effect of
743 temperature on volatility?
745 - radioactive transmutation molecule by molecule :: create precious
746 metals or something else economically advantageous.
748 - crowd preservation :: inoculate food with tons of harmless
749 bacteria so that there's no room for bad bacteria as a method of
750 preservation
752 - old school preservation :: Pasteur - style holding jar with siphon
753 as a way to store liquids at room temperature indefinitely w/o
754 refrigeration.
756 - restaurant policy :: Throw rude people out of restaurant as a matter
757 of course -- make ambiance much better.
759 - clean windows :: make something that mixes soap with fire hydrant
760 water (and reduces the pressure a bit) and use it
761 to clean windows of buildings.
763 - ocarina :: make an ocarina out of pure silver
765 - fire pen :: pen which burns words on to the page, thus never needing
766 any ink. Is there a way to make it runnable from the
767 human's energy?
769 - website to design your own soda :: and label, and have it mailed to
770 you / sell it from your own online store.
772 - solar panels :: that float on the ocean
774 - handcuffs with more than two cuffs (3?) :: great for daisy chaining
775 people, binding them to environment, etc.
777 - vector based SOUND files :: like the pictures but with SOUND. codify
778 sound in a language with enough symbols so that it can describe
779 everything and encode it in that. would be like going from speech
780 to text or smtg. Could also store sound as an image of the
781 wavefront encoded as a vector image.
783 - Mouse :: with a horizontal scroll wheel in addition to the vertical
784 scroll wheel
786 - logic maintenance system for big institutions :: to make sure the
787 things they are thinking about doing are not retarded
789 - http://www.regulations.gov/ :: cool site
791 - genetically engineered glowing fruit :: sell seeds?
793 - memory slide :: IF memories are encoded using particular sensory
794 impressions, what happens if the sensory organ
795 itself changes? those memories would become
796 inaccessible. maybe this is why we can't remember
797 much from our childhoods. also, could this happen
798 throughout life as well? Could S remember stuff from
799 his childhood?
801 - make a completely indestructible phone :: no moving parts or display
802 you should be able to slam it around all you want, and it will
803 just work. brutally simple. aerogel around the battery, minimal
804 interface - never gets too hot, and can be dropped into water. no
805 holes -- uses field effects for everything from the buttons to
806 inductive charging and data transfer.
808 - midi to ocarina "tabs" program :: (online website? buy ocarinas from
809 it too)
811 - 3d printing with sound pulses (or just patterns) :: like the 8.03
812 lecture
814 - lighter flint on spring :: make hot, throw it at something, and it
815 makes sparkles!
817 - nuclear energy :: Rebranding New+Clear Energy with informational
818 campaign and public debate forum to enforce its
819 transparent and open nature. France needn't be the
820 world leader in nuclear energy. (Dylan)
822 - bubbles :: Engineer a material which has both ductility and high
823 surface tension to make the "third"
824 minimal-surface-energy solution to a bubble suspended
825 between two equal-diameter rings. (Solutions are
826 cylindrical catenary curve, two separated half-bubbles,
827 and a double-cone)
829 - Textbook whose content can be varied continuously :: alter level of
830 difficulty, rigor, diction, emphasize crossover with certain
831 other discipline, etc. Content generated dynamically from
832 knowledge base, along with questions that are moreover altered to
833 guide knowledge acquisition. Motivation: One book of
834 knowledge. /One./
836 ** From Jacob's idea list
838 - Roommate-canceling headphones: uses roommate's laptop mic to seed
839 noise cancellation alg in your headphones (would this
840 work?). -Update on sound canceling headphones that take feed from
841 tv: how about ones that cancel people talking on the phone by
842 receiving the phone signals and playing inverse sound
843 waves. #signalprocessing ~jcole@mit.edu
845 - ClackerAlert -- tells if you slam the keys too hard using sound data
846 (and speed/jerkiness data)!.Prevents RSI ~jcole@mit.e
848 - Panic Pin :: separate pin that you can tell someone if forced to
849 identify your PIN (idea from idea about credit cards)