Sealed Air Corp, which invented bubble wrap back in 1957, announced on July 1 what the internet believed to be the be killing off of one of life’s simplest pleasures. The company’s new line of bubble wrap will not make a popping sound when it’s squeezed. Alas, fear not: The old-fashioned bubble wrap is sticking around.
This post has been corrected.
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Forget BattleBots. In the future, our primetime entertainment will feature massive robots in giant arenas, harking back to the gladiatorial bloodsports of the Greco-Roman era. But with rocket launchers full of paintballs.
Facebook will soon roll out a new logo. It’s not the ubiquitous “f” in a squared circle that the company updated June 30, but its word mark.
Usually when boomerangs are tossed into the air and don’t return, there’s a problem. But NASA may soon send a boomerang-shaped aircraft to Mars in the hope that it stays there, so that it can check the planet out ahead of an eventual manned mission to the surface.
The future of wearables might be at your fingertips.
One constant on London’s labyrinthine streets over the last century has been its iconic red double-deckers buses—but they may soon be going green. The city announced plans Monday to trial its first all-electric double-decker bus in October.
There are robot reporters and robot chefs, but for the most part, the creative world has been free from the rise of the robots. One definition of art is ”something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.” Can something that does not feel create art?
On June 21, the star of the newest opera at Berlin’s Komische Oper gave a stilted, lifeless and slow performance. But this was to be expected, as the four-foot tall star was a robot called Myon.
Drones tend to trigger very visceral emotions in the US—as well as, apparently, a few shotgun blasts. Ars Technica reported that a man in Modesto, California shot a neighbor’s son’s drone out of the sky, because he thought it was a CIA surveillance drone.
Quadcopter drones are everywhere these days—Amazon will soon be delivering our packages with them, and Microsoft is trying to combat malaria with them. There’s even a sport based around racing them, in the style of a first-person video game, with participants on the ground getting a drone’s-eye view of the world. But for all the people flying drones these days, there has been no way to actually fly on a drone.
“Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”
This post has been updated.
“OK Google, drive me to work.”
Google’s wearable devices haven’t really taken off. Google Glass was clunky, and its current status is uncertain. Android Wear watches have not exactly been selling like hot cakes. But the company has also been working on a smart contact lens in its Google X research lab that potentially wouldn’t suffer from previous wearable tech’s awkwardness problem—and Google might soon be bringing it to a wider audience.
As the doors close behind him on the Mars lander, he looks out onto the dusty red surface of the planet and puts his foot down. Back at Mission Control in Houston, the crew lets out sighs of relief and cheers of joy. He doesn’t say much, however, as he’s a robot.
In the future, limbs may be disposable.
Sometimes, inspiration comes from the strangest places. Even kitchen floors, bathtubs, and dumpsters.
Amid a growing debate over humanity’s place in the world alongside artificial intelligence, a Japanese telecom company has released a robot that it says has emotions. But rather than run in fear from it, we’ve welcomed it into our homes: Pepper, the “emotional robot,” sold out within a minute of going on sale.
While we have not quite figured out interstellar travel yet, nor built any fully armed and operational off-Earth battle stations, we have gotten closer to the sci-fi trope of robots that can help out humans in space. NASA now has an award-winning robot on board the International Space Station.
Just like many pizza restaurants have attempted over the years, Amazon may soon be able to deliver to impatient American consumers in 30 minutes or less.
Apart from finding mundane facts about Mars, one of NASA’s Curiosity rover’s tasks is to search for life on the red planet. But new research suggests that, if there is indeed life on Mars, our rovers may not be able to see it.
This post has been updated with a comment from AT&T
