Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Guardian Angel: iDrone

How long will it take before all of us have our own personal drone, flying around us as a guardian angel: our personal iDrone?


A human made artifact that:
  • Sees as an owl
  • Hears as a whale
  • Smells like a wolf
  • Tastes likes a foot taster
  • Touches like a bat
  • Navigates as a bird
  • Detects electric fields as a fish
  • Monitors the condition of the body (e.g. blood pressure, heart beat and temperature)  as a doctor
  • Emotionally balances as a psychologist
  • Communicates as a secret agent
  • Translates as a polyglot
  • Fights as a Gurkha
  • Plans as a scout
  • Takes care as a best friend
  • Advises as an old philosopher
  • Remembers like The Internet
  • Back-ups like NSA
  • ... - there must be more
To protect. To look ahead. To plan. To guard. To monitor. To communicate. What else?

All of us as extended human beings. Our weak spots strenghthened. (Mark that I don't say 'being repaired'.) Will it be a better world? What is the definition of "better"? Says who?

P.S. Skip the Google Glass or other 'optical head-mounted display'. Connect our iDrone via our iCorneal and those artifacts will feel like inseparable 'I'. 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Riddle. Close To Ground

Any idea what these stones are? I've collected these ones in the past and will continue to collect them.


Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Smiley Around Year 0

Saturday I went with my youngest daughter C to Amsterdam. It was a warm and sunny day. After a walk of twenty minutes we arrived at the Allard Pierson Museum. Only a handful of people inside.

Lovely exhibition 'The Crimea - Gold and secrets of the Black Sea'. C liked the dolphin - made of rock crystal and gold - very much too. (I wrote on this before: here.) Did you know that back then the Black Sea was full of fish? Including dolphins?


I was surprised by the golden eyes- and mouth plates. Found in graves at the exact site of the eyes and mouth of the deceased.  Smileys around year 0 BC/ AD. Those plates are identified as "ritual" plates. A word that hides more than it clarifies. What ritual(s)? For what purpose(s)? How do we know?

What surprised me most was the international and various gifts in grave 620 in Oest'-Al'ma from the first century AD. (I guess at a site near the river Alma.) In this grave of a woman, next to a lot of gold, gifts from Egypt (scarab) and China (Han Dynasty lacquerware). Including an iron tuber and two fossils. She must have liked old and distant. Or did she just like expensive? Did she know that those fossils were many of million years old? Did she know that the lacquerware came from China and travelled a distance of 5,000 kilometres? Did she know that the Egyptians believed that the scarab renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon?