Chris Gill

Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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They Came from the Sky

In Science, Technology on August 12, 2012 at 5:14 pm

Ancient Aliens

NASA’s Curiosity reignites hope for extraterrestrial life, but does age-old evidence suggest that we have been visited already?

Recent news that NASA’s Curiosity rover had successfully landed on Mars sparked over-night global interest in the possibilities of space discovery.

The car-sized vehicle landed on the red planet last Monday after an epic nine-month voyage across 350,000,000 miles, and has since sent high-resolution colour images from the planet’s Gale crater back to earth.

Curiosity’s objectives include determining any evidence that could prove whether life has existed – or still does exist – on Mars.

So what better time to discuss and debate the potentials of life outside of our own planet?

Ancient Aliens

One theory I have been fascinated with for some time now is the suggestion that extraterrestrial beings once visited the Earth and influenced the development of human cultures, religions and technologies.

Absurd as it initially sounds, there is actually an enormous amount of potential evidence that supports the ancient astronauts theory, most of which comes from studying archaeological artefacts and looking at how religious teachings might have been misinterpreted throughout history.

Swiss author Erich von Däniken was a pioneering advocate of this theory in the late 60s and early 70s, causing mass controversy through the release of his best-selling book, Chariots of the Gods?

In this book von Däniken argues that many artifacts and monumental constructions, such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza, would have required far more sophisticated technologies to be created than what actually existed at the time.

The book also claims that much of the ancient art and iconography that has been discovered in different parts of the world displays these otherworldly beings coming down from the sky, whether in chariots, flying boats or on dragons.

Von Däniken, and many modern day supporters of the ancient astronauts theory, suggest that ancient civilisations depicted real events that were occurring in a way that they could comprehend at the time.

Therefore, a spaceship that projected fire could have easily been recorded in ancient China as a fire-breathing dragon. Or extraterrestrials making contact from other galaxies could have been interpreted as angels from heaven in Christian societies.

Von Däniken interprets many religions as reactions to encounters with an alien race that, according to him, helped humans move from primitive cavemen to a more sophisticated species.

Sound like nonsense to you? You’re not alone, as many critics have argued that von Däniken’s theories are based on misrepresented data and pseudoscience.

However the author is not alone with his theories, and there have been many others put forward that could be considered as far more extreme.

Shape of the Spirits

Many ancient cultures, particularly in Egyptian and Mayan societies, performed acts of cranial deformation that led to humans having an elongated skull shape. Significant historical figures such as King Tutankhamen and Queen Nefertiti are often depicted with these elongated heads.

It is argued that this bizarre occurrence could have been aimed at creating a skull shape that was more aesthetically pleasing at the time. For instance in the Nahai-speaking area of Tomman Island, a person with an elongated head was thought to be more intelligent and “closer to the world of the spirits.”

Some advocates of the ancient astronauts theory believe that many of these civilisations were actually imitating beings from another world. Some even believe that the elongated skulls that have been found belonged to these extraterrestrials.

So what if there was some truth behind these controversial theories? We would then be faced with countless other questions like, why did they come? Will they return? Have they returned already?

Going around in Circles

Many supporters of the ancient aliens theory believe we are still being contacted today, for instance in the form of crop formation.

There have been many sightings throughout history of what could today be described as crop circles, however the most documented cases have been occurring since the 1970s.

Two hoaxers claimed authorship of crop circles found throughout England in 1991, and since then many others have come forward to say the same thing. However many still believe that crop formation is either linked to communication from other beings, or even other realms.

Another suggestion from advocates of the ancient astronauts theory, is that earth was actually visited from beings from another time. Therefore, these beings might actually be humans from the future travelling back in time.

Although this concept sounds far-fetched, one interesting piece of potential evidence is that most of the ancient art and iconography found across the world presents us with humanoids that came down from the sky.

These beings usually have two arms, two legs and a head, although with slight physical differences that could be put down to future evolution.

The argument that we are ancestors of our own future selves is almost too much to comprehend, although infinitely thought-provoking.

When it comes to the concept of ancient astronauts, the most important thing is to keep an open mind. I’m not saying that I’m a firm believer of the theory, however I also think stranger ideas have been put forward and are still perceived to be true in modern society.

Sadly, it is often humanity’s arrogance that suggests we must be the only life in our universe, or simply mankind’s fear of the unknown and things that we cannot understand.

However in honour of NASA’s Curiosity rover, that was given its name by a 12 year old girl from Kansas who wrote “curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives,” we should all allow our minds to boldly go where no man has gone before.

But perhaps where something else once has…

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Virtual Growing Pains

In Personal, Technology on May 17, 2012 at 8:16 pm

As this website reaches its two year anniversary, I explore how online communication has allowed me to progress personally and professionally 

This week marks the two year anniversary of this website’s launch, which is a true milestone for me. During this time, I have gone from a career-hungry yet self-doubtful graduate, to an employed writer with almost a year’s experience under my belt.

Throughout this journey, in which there have been many highs and lows, this site has been a platform for me to express myself. In many ways it’s also been a form of cathartic creative release when I’ve needed it to be.

So this week I got to thinking about how fortunate I am to not only live in an age where technology allows such accessible communication, but to live in a part of the world where free speech (to a certain degree) is entirely permitted.

I’ve grown up in an age where using a computer comes as naturally to me as tying a shoe lace. I went through my adolescence while social media began its infancy through websites such as Friendster and MySpace. Technology has very much been a part of my own evolution from child to young adult.

This contemplation was not only aided by my website’s second birthday, but also by spending time with my 92-year-old grandmother over the last couple of weekends.

Speaking to her baffled me to think of an era where people socialised without updating their “status” and responding to “friend requests”.  A time when people discovered each other’s interests through conversation and not just noticing what they have “liked” on each other’s “timelines.”

Although I envy this age, to an extent I was a part of it. I feel fortunate to have enjoyed a childhood and early adolescence free from an online presence or identity. Today they are as important as qualifications or experience.

On the flipside, there are so many things to thank this age of scalable interaction for, including the transmission of my work. I remember the first time I published my poetry online at the age of about 13 on a website called MyPoetry.com.

I wrote anonymously, of course, as like many teenagers I was extremely unsure of myself and my work at the time. Still, I remember so clearly the feeling of validation when other poets, or “users”, would comment on my prose, pointing out the parts they liked and analysing the hidden symbolism. This was something I had never experienced, which beat any praise a school teacher could have provided, hands down.

Next came picture comments on MySpace. Anyone from the “MTV Generation” knows what these are and whether they admit it or not, how they made them feel. What could have been more self-gratifying than having complementary comments left by friends (or often slight acquaintances) boosting your self-confidence at a time when it was so needed.

As “Generation Y” has grown older, we’ve begun to look for this same validation in the steps our careers take. MySpace became Facebook and our biggest concern now is how many “likes” the companies we work for have. It seems that whether we like it or not, the online social revolution is here to stay and it will be interesting to see what its next phase will be.

The other online phenomena we have seen emerge throughout the late 90s and early 00s is of course, blogging. A portmanteau of the term “web log”, the phrase “blog” was first used by founding partner and president of Adaptive Path, Peter Merholz, in 1999. “To blog” means “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”, which is essentially a personal journal published online.

When I was studying Journalism at university, the idea of blogging never appealed to me as the market seemed so oversaturated. We were encouraged to do so by our tutors, which is how this website was originally created. I published it for a project, but vowed to never continue it as I did not want to follow the cyber-crowd.

I wasn’t wrong about the oversaturated market. As of February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence, a number that made my feeble blog seem like a needle in a thousand haystacks. However it wasn’t until I had a conversation with a good friend over coffee one day that something sparked inside my mind.

“What I look for in a blog is a writer’s personal touch,” she explained to me over her skinny cappuccino, “not just your usual cut-and-paste job.” It was then I realised what had really put me off about the “blogosphere.” It was its lack of credibility through the increase of “Churnalists” putting their work online. I vowed to never become one of them, but instead to make my site my own.

I therefore dropped the term “blog” and now simply refer to this creative platform as a website. Instead of posting daily posts to please, I produce a monthly feature that I dedicate a lot of time and thought to, researching my topic widely before even reaching for my keyboard.

As of today, CWGill.com has had 33,066 unique views, 69 comments and this is my 89th post. Thank you to everyone who has supported its growth, from teething to the (not so) Terrible twos.

I can’t wait to see what its next year will bring.

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Poetry is dead. Long live poetry.

In Literature & Poetry, Technology on June 4, 2011 at 5:09 pm

“Literal people scare me / out there trying to rid the world of its poetry.”

 - Literal, Ani Difranco

How many times have you been asked who your favourite musician is?  I’m guessing plenty. How about your favourite author, actor or artist?  Again, undoubtedly nothing out the ordinary. However, how many times has somebody asked you who your favourite poet is? And if they did, would you honestly have an answer? You will have to excuse my sweeping generalisation, but the answer is most probably that you don’t have a favourite poet, nor do you overly care about having one. The reason for this appears to be as clear as glass: Poetry is dead.

Long live poetry.

What I have personally always enjoyed about the literary art is how hard it is to actually define. In a paper on the concept of poetry by a Polish historian of aesthetics, it is pointed out that “Poetry [...] is an art based on language. But poetry also has a more general meaning [...] that is difficult to define because it is less determinate: poetry expresses a certain state of mind.” I think this is one of the best descriptions of the concept of poetry I have ever come across. In my eyes, poetry is a form of art produced to make us feel something. To open our minds and make us see completely different dimensions to the world around us.

I guess my love for verse parallels my love for language and lyrics.  I loved studying poetry in my English classes at school and thoroughly enjoyed analysing each stanza and exploring the hidden meanings behind them. Still to this day nothing touches me more in lyricism than the clever use of imagery or a metaphor. In the same vein, although my love for music is obviously influenced by its sound, I have always been drawn specifically to a song’s lyrical content. Once I discovered Ani Difranco at fifteen-years-old my perspective of poetry was widened even further. Her reflective, agile way with words inspired me immeasurably and blurred the boundaries between poetry in music and poetry in print.

Despite my personal feelings, there is no denying the fact that poetry is essentially insignificant in modern-day culture. So what killed it?

It could be argued that the answer to this question is either enormously layered or entirely transparent. Perhaps postmodernism is to blame; many people who don’t read poetry (undeniably the majority of society) feel it is hard to understand or relate to. Fictional books about wizards and vampires go on to become worldwide bestsellers while poetry books find it hard to even make the printers. It’s no secret that poetry does not pay the rent, leading many poets to abandon the craft altogether.

Perhaps this is the issue. There is no commercial viability to poetry. No gloss, no hype, no image. In our society, music is often a product that can be bottled up and sold with a great big marketing campaign wrapped around it like a ribbon. It’s about how much revenue Apple or Amazon can make from ‘Little Monsters’ – or ‘Little Consumers’ – downloading Lady Gaga’s latest single for the latest iPod. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that makes poetry appear invisible and irrelevant in comparison. In an age where nearly all communication is made through screens and wires, people just don’t have the patience to sit down and unravel the mysteries behind a Sylvia Plath or a Judy Grahn.

However, it would appear that there is still potential for poetry to experience a rebirth in the 21st century. In 2002, heiress Ruth Lilly made a $100 million donation to the Poetry Foundation that produces Poetry Magazine, the most widely read magazine of its kind in the world. This gift allowed for the Poetry Foundation to establish the Poetry Slam in America, where hundreds of thousands of young poets compete against one another each year. They recite their work in expressive and powerful ways, bringing the skill right up to date.

It also appears that poetry is continuing its evolution into the Digital Age, with a focus on how literary arts can intertwine with technology. The publishing company Faber recently took TS Eliot into a whole new digital dimension with the launch of an iPad app based on his iconic monolithic poem, The Waste Land. The exciting app includes a video performance of the poem, notes, commentaries, and readings from Ted Hughes, Viggo Morensen, and Eliot himself.

As a huge fan of Eliot and his said legendary creation, I was more than a little sceptical about the piece being turned into an electronic spectacle. Call me old-fashioned, but in my eyes there really is no substitute to the smell and feel of an old book. In spite of this, I can say I was pleasantly surprised at how the touch-screen tablet presented the classic in an entirely new light. Suddenly, the prospect of bringing something as organic and emotionally raw as poetry into a futuristic realm filled me with enthusiasm and artistic stimulation. It goes to show that the time-honored literary art could still have relevance and exist graciously in today’s world.

More than ever before, the possibilities for creation are becoming limitless. Over the last century poetry has been drowned out and crucified by social media, music videos, and the galactic blogosphere. However, perhaps now truly is the time for it to have its second coming and unite with a world that functions predominately through wires.

Cities of the Future

In Environmental, Interior Design & Architecture, Technology on January 8, 2011 at 6:56 pm

One of man’s greatest concerns for the future is how it will cope with the problem of the ever-growing population. This year the seven-billionth person will be born, and in my lifetime alone the planet’s population has increased by an astounding 2 billion people. Living in a city like London I am constantly reminded of this, whether it be through the claustrophobic chaos on the tube or simply trying to make my way through the crowded streets. It appears that Japan is light years ahead of the rest of the world as usual, with developments already under way to create super cities built to tackle this issue.

Constantly intrigued and inspired by how the world will look in the future, I was delighted to stumble across a documentary on a Pyramid City being planned for construction in Tokyo that will be finished by the year 2110. The Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid is a project being proposed for construction over Tokyo Bay in Japan, and would be about 14 times higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza. It would house 750,000 people and if built, would be the largest man-made structure in Earth’s history by a very vast percentage.

The fascinating documentary, part of the Extreme Engineering series shown on the Discovery Channel, goes into fascinating detail about the structure which would stand 730 meters above sea level. The pyramid would help to solve the issue of Tokyo’s increasing lack of space, although it will still only handle 1/47th of the cities population. Due to their weight, the structure would be so large that it could not be built with currently available materials. The design is relying on the future availability of super-strong lightweight materials based on carbon nanotubes.

Another example of Tokyo avoiding the dilemma of its over population, is the proposal of creating Sky City 1000. The possible future urban skyscraper would be a fantastic way of ending the extreme congestion and lack of greenspace in the city. The project’s plan consists of a building 1,000 metres tall and 400 metres wide at the base. The structure would house between 35,000 and 36,000 full-time residents as well as 100,000 workers, meaning civilians could potentially spend their entire life within the super city.

Sky City 1000 would be made up of 14 concave dish-shaped stacks upon one another. The bionic architecture’s interior would contain greenspace and apartments, which would be on the edges and sides of the structure. It would also include theatres, schools and other modern amenities and commercial facilities. Researchers have started to speculate that a building such as Sky City 1000 could be possible in the next 20 years, and the triple-decker high speed elevators which would be used in the building are  already being designed in labs outside Tokyo.

Some of the main issues that surround these super cities, are the environmental dangers that could put them at enormous risk. An example of this in Japan is the threat of tsunamis and other momentous weather conditions that could threaten to destroy the futuristic structures. However researchers are certain that a structure made of a material as strong as one based on nanotubing will be able to withstand such colossal natural disasters. Therefore super cities of the future such as The Shimizu Mega-City and Sky City 1000 could actually protect the rest of the city and save thousands of lives.

So what do you think? Are Tokyo’s visions of the future fantastic remedies for the planet’s over-population, or potential death traps in the sky?

The Digital Revolution

In Music, Technology on May 31, 2010 at 5:06 pm

Since the early 80s leading up to present day, the Digital Revolution has seen the change from analog mechanical and electronic technology to digital technology. The term also refers to huge changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology. The Digitial Revolution marked the beginning of the Information Age; which is very much what we are living in today.

Here is an example of a piece of technology that this digital revolution has brought us today called Skinput:

Have you ever found the keypad on your phone or music player to be slightly restricting? Perhaps your forearm would allow more room for the buttons. It could effectively support a skin-based interface that helps turn your own body into a touch screen.

Skinput is a system that combines two technologies, the ability to sense the ultralow-frequency sound produced when tapping the skin with a finger with the microchip-sized projectors that are now found in many phones.

A keyboard or menu is beamed onto the user’s forearm and hand from a projector, where an acoustic detector works out which part of the display you want to set in motion.

This piece of technology fascinates me as even though it doesn’t seem very useful, it displays an incredible level of technological progression from what I have already seen in my lifetime; making me even more excited about what the future could bring.

The Digital Revolution has also made its way into music; particularly electronica. Kraftwerk, who were at the forefront of this, display their digital advancement and how it can be used in music throughout their entire discovery. Here is a fantastic example of the pioneers of electronic music doing what they do best in The Robots:

Kraftwerk were incredibly ahead of their time exploring this genre of music, influencing the likes of Daft Punk and many other modern day electronic artists. The in-your-face yet fantastic electropop singer/producer/DJ Peaches has also broken new ground in her work. Here is an awesome example of Peaches and her feelings on the Digital Revolution and its place in music. I highly recommend watching this. The clothes she wears during her performances are also worth checking out: this legend’s been doing it long before the others.

What is your take on how Peaches explores music technologically and visually? Personally it gives me goosebumps; I adore how she uses technology to express herself and cross boundaries. I look forward to what she could accomplish in the future.

I was also interested in when she mentions holograms as I have always hoped to see this development in technology during my lifetime. Which leads me onto this article I stumbled upon about how “string theorists” are exploring a possible scenario in which people and the world around us are actually a 3-D holographic projection of two-dimensional data that exists outside the accessible universe. Confused yet!? Read on!!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gkJ2w3ihVuGevuUO4Mg5LyBm975wD9G0L6587

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Artificial intelligence: friend or foe?

In Technology on May 14, 2010 at 4:02 pm

Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, scientists started building intelligent machines in a different way than ever before. This was due to different discoveries in neurology, an understanding of control and stability known as cybernetics, and the creation of the digital computer, a machine invented using mathematical reasoning.

Flash forward to the nineties and early 21st century, and it became clear that Artificial intelligence (AI) had become extremely successful and widely used throughout the technology industry. This included areas such as stock trading and medical diagnosis.

Alongside the development of AI, humanoid robots have also been constructed to assist scientific research. However over time humanoid robots have found their way into having other purposes. These include Sony’s small humanoid entertainment robots, dubbed Sony Dream Robot, in 2001. Or Wakamaru, the Japanese domestic robot made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with the purpose of providing companionship to elderly and disabled people.

This is iCub, an advanced European robot that is modelled on a three-and-a-half-year-old child. It is capable of object recognition, human-like eye and head motion and leg and grasping movements according to scientists. The plan for the five-year project that has cost around £7.5m is to cultivate an exceedingly realistic humanoid child robot. Scientists are planning to give iCub the capability of crawling on all fours and sitting up, as well as handling objects and having head and eye movements that mirror those of humans.

However exciting all of this progression in the technological universe is, it also raises questions about what the future holds for Artificial Intelligence and the dangers it could bring. Whether you see visions of a world like the one in futuristic cartoon The Jetsons where everything is done by robots, or you imagine AI to cause the eventual downfall of the human race much like in the Terminator films, either way it is an exciting subject that looks to hold far more intrigue in its evolution.

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