Nahil Sharkasi

We've all suspected this, but now there's proof! Rutgers and DePaul Universities conducted a study on what people say, or rather what people are willing to say in email rather than in handwriting. In their experiment, they concluded people lied more than 92% of the time.

Well: E-Mails and Lies, The New York Times

E-mail: To Lie or Not To Lie, BBC World Service

Spykee is a toy spy robot built for surveillance. He wanders around recording photos and video to report back to its owner. Notice Spykee Miss, in pink, has different capabilities than the other Spykees.

http://www.spykee.org/

With all our talk about photo real rendering, and the uncanny valley we seem to have missed this bizzare manifestation of our cultural desires for "real fakes." Real Dolls and now, Real Babies are a growing phenomena. They are inanimate, but extremely life-like figures of grown women and babies that people buy to, essentially, take the place of a real person in their life. Men describe having very real emotional relationships to the dolls, and women describe experiencing the same emotional attachment to the babies.

The question we need to deal with is not how to creat "real" renderings of people and places for our entertainment media, but what happens when we do? Seemingly sane, normal people are leaving the tv on for the roomba, and let Pleo tug at their heartstrings, but what happens when these smart toys take on a human shape?

http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/245/index.jsp

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26970782/

It was mentioned at this weekend's 5D Conference that Architecture, of all art and design disciplines, has always been the farthest ahead of the curve. It be because of the nature of architecture, it might be because the scope and scale of architecture projects, or building a building, are so large that architects have to think so far ahead in order for the work to still feel modern by the time it's built. The point was made as a matter-of-fact, and after seeing these examples it's hard to disagree.

Evan Douglis
Design and the Elastic Mind, MOMA
Greg Lynn, New City

1. Circulation -
The higher up you are in the building the more open your field of view is. The lowe floors, street/sea level are quite dark with tall visual boundaries and a definite sense of constriction, in the top floors, however there is access to open views and more a sense of freedom

Entrance to the islands is highly regulated by tolls. The tolls are meant to be prohibitively expensive for those who don’t ‘belong’ there – the idea taken from the $50 toll bridge to Burj Alarab hotel in Dubai. Those who work in the islands are encouraged to live onsite rather than commute. Their lives are rather like the crews of a cruise ship. Their entrances and exits to the building are different from those of the Residents and Guests. The lowest floor of the building, known as the docks is where residents keep their boats, though those in the penthouse are increasingly using the roof heliport as an exit.

As I’ve mentioned, the main artery of a vertically oriented space is the elevator. The elevators go directly from the docks to the top floor then drop off the other residents on the way down. Service elevators keep staff separate from Residents and Guests.

2. Laws

National Laws:
• The 28th Amendment – defines marriage as a bond between a biological XY Male and a biological XX Female
• The 29th Amendment – life begins at conception of egg and sperm
• Tax cuts for Motherhood

Local Laws
• You must pay $60 to enter the Islands
• You must separate trash into compostable and recyclable items
• Non-compostable or recyclable items are prohibited from sale
• Tax on imported, and non-sustainable food

Social Code
• Don’t take the elevator if you’re on floors 1 – 10
• You need to make at least a million dollars a year to live in the top five floors
• Don’t engage in a relationship (sexual, business, platonic, or romantic) without establishing clear roles and boundaries first

3. Blank Space
The lower floors are a blank space for the Residents on the top floors. Similarly, the top floors are a blank space for the bottom dwellers that don’t have clear reason to venture up. The rest of the country (red states, fly over country) is a blank space. The average city resident knows more about Morocco than Minnesota.

SEE Toys are environmentally safe electronic toys that never need batteries. They're powered by a hand crank that generates light and sound. With nearly all the best-selling toys running on batteries or an electrical outlet, it's worth noting that SEE Toys are one of the only kid-powered electronic toys available.

SEE Toys

Neuroscientist Gary Small thinks the internet is changing the way our brains work. His new book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Human Mind posits that millenials/ "digital natives" are really good at making swift connections and decisions, but bad at recognizing subtle facial gestures. Small predicts that natural selection will favor these brains, and traditional interpersonal/non-verbal communications skills will become extinct.

The Modern Brain, Newsweek
iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Human Mind