Watch this: Future of StoryTelling: Paul Zak
The Neurochemistry of Empathy, Storytelling, and the Dramatic Arc, Animated
Stories are powerful because they transport us into other people’s worlds but, in doing that, they change the way our brains work and potentially change our brain chemistry — and that’s what it means to be a social creature.
h\t to brainpickings
(by FoST org)
A new device called the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator), just became available for retail, and it promises a bit of power away from the wall, harvested from the kinetic energy created by your own activity — walking, running, etc. (The video above will give you a pretty good idea of how this works.)
Weighing nearly a pound and requiring a ton of motion for a little bit of power (11 minutes of walking will get you one minute of talk time on a 2G call on an iPhone), the PEG may have limited real-world uses and a high price point ($200).
That said, it’s pretty cool to see something out there in the world, capable of collecting all that energy we create and recycling it back into electricity for our daily lives.
(via Charge Your Phone by … Walking? - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic)
Beyond the viral-ready novelty, listen to the serenades of defunct hard drives, flatbed scanners, and garage sale-rescue computers and you might just hear a sense of urgency. As the discs whir, the chips bleet, and the solenoids ping percussion, this chorus of obsolete electronics seems to plea, save us from landfill doom.
The latest breakout hit from repurposed retro machines is Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Here, it’s covered by a set of glockenspiel-playing solenoids and an HP ScanJet as the angst-ridden whine of the now-infamous vocals. An Amiga rounds out the band. Even the robotics can be counted as chip music, of sorts – a PIC16F84A (a simple microprocessor) acts as the brains. (Kids, ask your parents. Before Arduino, there was PIC programming.)
(via Gotye to Queen to Radiohead, The Songs of Hard Drives, Robotics, and Retro Gear)
