Nature > Man > Technology

It's been a long time since I posted here but I always watch your debates with interest. I feel that my bad English is a big obstacle enough and with everything going on I just can't find the time to attribute my voice to this glorious community. But a recent discovery has forced me to write this post.
Amongst all other things I'm doing now is involvement in building a replica of a famous WWII dive-bomber aircraft. And my part is to help digitally replicate the wing and to construct tools and aluminum cutting patterns for it's assembly. And in many hours I have devoted to this task, with all the numbers I have feed into the machine, I could never understand why is the wing shaped like that and what drove the pre-war engineers to the conclusion that this shape will serve best for this specific porpoise, neither did any of us.
The shape has finally emerged and wings are now near complete all do a lot of other things need to be done before test flight can take place, we never came up with the answer.
Today, after a phone call I glared without a porpoise to a vast field In the back of our house. Suddenly, I spotted a hawk hunting a mouse in the snow cowered plow. As he approached ground, in a down-stroke, It's wings bended and stretched under load and in an flash I saw an image of the wing I was working on for so many days.
In that split second, I finally realized: all that the engineer did was to imitate a bird hunting in the field.

We must never forget that all that we do with technology is to imitate nature. And whenever we feel lost, we must return to the nature to seek our guidance again. And whit today's busy world, it's easy to forget from where all things come and to what all things strive.

Sun, Jan 30, 2011  Permanent link

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VD 2: Tree Of Prediction

This is a sequel on "Virtual democracy", but software described can have a lot of uses.
In short: even if we managed to make "vote on decision" reality, still here a problem lies: majority of the peoples voting doesn't have the time or the ability to predict how such an decision will further develop (what will be the consequences), and again here we have a subjective angle on which corruption prospers: you are forced again to trust some people that this decision will bring that events and so on. How do we overcome this?
I propose this software, which I call "The tree of predictions", which can be used in any kinds of predictions:



And here is the second image which I hope will save me tons of explanation on my bad English:



As U can see here, everyone can add an prediction on what will happened - just click "add sub event" and type-in a title and a brief description of your prediction, as well as probability of event, and then everybody adds their probability of event too.

Now, here lies the trick of this software: when everything is over, you click on the events that DID happened and then software calculates everybody's ability to predict things and adds them a certain weight index, for example:

user Monolith
successful predictions: 10%
weight index in average calculations: 0.1

now if user Rene, for example, has a bigger index of 4.23 clearly his predictions will value more in machine's calculating average prediction percent.

So, when posting a new issue to vote on - you make a new tree of predictions and everyone can get a better picture on what they are voting on.

Sun, Apr 6, 2008  Permanent link

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Car That Runs On Air?

After years of expecting better electric cars, much better result emerged from an older energy storing method: compressed air.

Here's the link to BBC article describing this car:

Thu, Feb 14, 2008  Permanent link

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Virtual Democracy

Yes, I do believe that true democracy is possible, but only now: trough internet, it's finally possible to include all opinions in a ruling process, and to gather all the votes from general public almost instantly.
Today's democracy is a mockery: U vote for people based on their's election video and some rumors you hear (probably created by their opponents) and those people represent your opinion in a parliament.
I want to vote for LAWS, not PEOPLE! I want to say: "I agree, I think that's a good Idea", instead of "Oh, I trust you - you can make my decisions". I trust no one to make my decisions!
But here lies a trap: If I got to vote, every Tom, Dick and Harry would and we would probably end up in a war in a matter of seconds!
One of our modern poets, Rambo Amadeus, once said something like: "a voter's ticket shouldn't be something any fool can properly fill". I agree on that, meaning that I also wouldn't like to trust some fool with important decisions.
But how then to do this? Do we fill an IQ test before voting? Or do we trust the true ideology behind democracy and let everyone vote, hoping for good outcome? It would all end up again in lies: we would go door to door explaining to our neighbors why they should vote our law just to find some richer schmuck smooth-talked them into his way.

Sun, Dec 30, 2007  Permanent link

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Chris Foss illustration

I remember his work being s popular when I was a kid.

Thu, Dec 20, 2007  Permanent link

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