Posts

Biotechnology

Image
     We trace ourselves through the history of the Universe as a continuously evolving specie, intelligent and creative, but no bigger than a cell under a microscope against the vast imperium of galaxies. We could have evolved from a "soup" of non-living cells and chemical elements, we could just be a growing disease or we could be a simple code in a huge matrix, either way, we are tiny. But as "intelligent" as we are, we discovered that the Universe tends to self replicate by design deep into the cellular level and Microbiology was born. Afterwards, our "creative" trait helped us become demigods. We tweaked the cells, we edited genes, we rewrote the code and we have applied it in many fields we thought they needed fixing; and we called it Biotechnology.         Etymologically it transliterates as "the study of techniques of life" (gr. bios = life, tehnikos = technique and logos = study), but by definition it means "the   technolog...
Post a Comment
Read more

Design For The New Climate Era

Image
                      The increasing number of global population in the last few centuries, alongside the technological developments and innovations, has led to an extremely significant surge in carbon footprint production. There is a direct proportionality between the thinning of the ozone layer and the raise in Earth's temperature. Only in the last two decades major changes can be observed in terms of record high temperature occurrences. Consequences are obvious: sea levels raise, seasons change, natural disasters are more frequent and much more violent, species become extinct, draughts, poverty, scarcity, etc. The acceleration of the  anthropogenic activity turns the Earth into a gigantic microwave oven; and all together we spin around in it daily, struggling to delay this global warming. Some are non-believers of the climate change, some are keen environmentalists, while some argue that it is all part of Earth's natural ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Smart Cities, Smart Living

Image
From Evolution to R e volution                   Observing the context in which humanity finds itself currently through Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, it is very simple to identify a "crescendo" in terms of capabilities of improving our lives on this planet. From microscopical organisms to homo sapiens-sapiens, chemically and biologically,  we evolved. Eating meat for the first time has forever transformed our brain and this major "upgrade" has taken us from natively curious beings to creative/innovative ones. The wheel, the speech and language formation, the metallurgic era - we evolved. We created tools and systems to cover our needs.                     Our eco-system on the other hand, has remained almost the same for billions of years. When we identified that this was not the perfect match for the human race anymore, we started "upgrading" it too. Because w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning

Image
Whether it lies within our human nature as a psychological underlay, or it is some sort of a nurtured habit copied from the world's religious myths, our race has always manifested a powerful tendency to "play" God. A child's first drawing will, 95% of times, be of a human. We create in our own image and likeness. A drawing, a doll, a Frankenstein or an actual robot - but our work is incomplete if it is incapable of interacting with us, if it cannot accomplish tasks given by us, the patrons, if it cannot make decisions on its own. So we attached to it a computer, an artificial brain. Feeding it with information, we took a step back to watch it developing. Elon Musk reacting on social media to Sophia's (the robot) statement. Source: Twitter.com The ethics around AI are at debate on a regular basis nowadays, as we protrude more and more through the Ubiquitous Computing found in nearly every daily human task. Very interesting points of view are raised withi...
Post a Comment
Read more