Archive for the ‘Matrix’ Category

Microsoft’s Illumi-Room Is Baby-Step To Holodeck

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

There’s really not much to talk about here with a bunch of words. They’ll just get in the way of you pressing play and smiling like a little kid as your brain sort of automatically speculates on the possibilities of this in peoples’ homes.

We’ve all dreamed of the Holodeck being a part of our secret lair at home. Microsoft’s new IllumiRoom is a lot like watching a baby take its first steps in the direction of Holodecks becoming a standard part of any man-cave.

Sure we’ve seen mapped projections before like at Walt Disney World’s Magic, Memories and You show at the Magic Kingdom…but nothing on a consumer level and nothing with this kind of customization. Using a Kinect, a couple of cameras and some software, this is something that, while in its newborn stage, could lead to some truly innovative projects and ideas…or just mean that we’re going to be leaving our mother’s basements way less than we already do.

[GizMag]

I Know Kung-Fu: Super Fast, Unconscious Matrix-Style Learning Possible

Monday, December 12th, 2011
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New research out of Boston University and the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan suggests that the kind of super-fast “information upload” style learning upgrades imagined in the Matrix films could be a reality.

…researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks…

The finding brings up an inevitable question. Is hypnosis or a type of automated learning a potential outcome of the research?

“In theory, hypnosis or a type of automated learning is a potential outcome,” said Kawato. “However, in this study we confirmed the validity of our method only in visual perceptual learning. So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future. At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”

In fact, the results during experimentation were most prominent on those who did not know what skills they would be learning from their fMRI. In testing, they showed an improved aptitude at the tasks after the treatment.

[NSF.gov]