The Internet of Things assumes ubiquitous sensate environments. Without these, the cognitive engines of this everywhere-enabled world are deaf, dumb, and blind, and cannot respond relevantly to the real-world events that they aim to augment. Advances over the past decade have been rampant, as sensors tend to exploit Moore’s Law. Accordingly, sensors of all sorts now seem to be increasingly in everything, indicating an approaching phase transition once they are properly networked, as we saw when web browsers appeared and our interaction with computers fundamentally changed. This shift will create a seamless electronic nervous system that covers the planet—and one of the main challenges for the computing community now is in how to merge the rapidly evolving “omniscient” electronic sensoria onto human perception. This article tours aspects of this coming revolution guided by several recent and ongoing projects in the author’s research group at the MIT Media Lab that approach this precept from different perspectives. We give examples that range from smart buildings to sports, exploiting technical trends ranging from wearable computing to wireless sensor networks. […]
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What is a robot? What is a smart material? How can these two have so much impact on our future lives? In this article we will examine the true potential of robotics, and soft-smart robotics in particular. These technologies are set to turn our perceptions of what a robot is, and how it can help us and the world we live in, upside down. Instead of thinking of robots as large, rigid, and resilient machines, we can view future robots as artificial robotic organisms that have properties mimicking, and greatly extending, the capabilities of natural organisms. The unique properties of softness and compliance make these machines highly suited to interactions with delicate things, including the human body. In addition, we will touch upon concepts in emerging robotics that have not been considered, including their biodegradability and regenerative energy transduction. How these new technologies will ultimately drive robotics and the exact form of future robots is unknown, but here we can at least glimpse the future impact of robotics for humans. […]
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Since the dawn of medicine, aging has been doctors’ foremost challenge. Three unsuccessful approaches to conquering it have failed: treating components of age-related ill health as curable diseases, extrapolating from differences between species in the rate of aging, and emulating the life extension that famine elicits in short-lived species. SENS Research Foundation is spearheading the fourth age of anti-aging research: the repair of age-related damage, that is, rejuvenation biotechnology. What follows is an outline of the divide-and-conquer approach to restoring the body’s molecular and cellular structure to that of a young adult, and thereby greatly postponing all aspects of age-related disease and disability. […]
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Neuroscience has emerged as a new form of philosophy in recent years, with implications far beyond healthcare. At a time of divisive and turbulent politics, the study of the way the brain functions has opened the way for a new understanding of ourselves and our societies. The tools of neuroscience, and especially functional magnetic resonance […]
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Origins of the Debate Neuroscience has had limited disciplinary connectivity to the field of International Relations (IR) and Politics. The field of IR is traditionally understood to be about the relations between states, competition, power and resources. As a result, the findings of neuroscience appear to hold little relevance for IR scholars. At the […]
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Why do certain ideas and political paradigms endure while others become obsolete or are rejected? This question has preoccupied political and philosophical scholarship for millennia. This article puts forward four conditions for the survivability of ideas. It argues that modern tools for understanding human nature, such as those offered by neuroscience, provide us with unprecedented […]
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Europe and Asia may be geographically distant from one another, but they have strong ties with one another, not least due to their mutual dependence on trading with one another. Over the past two decades, this relationship has become institutionalised in multiple ways. This chapter charts the nature of inter-regional cooperation between the EU and its Asian partners, while also identifying the obstacles that both sides have had to confront. This discussion is put into the context of the internal difficulties and external challenges that the EU has had to confront in recent years. The chapter argues that despite these adverse conditions, EU-Asia relations are on good foundations and will continue to strengthen in years to come. […]
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The weight of the world is moving
east, and Europe has not been at the centre for years now. In this context, Member States alone cannot compete with large emerging powers. There is only one way for European countries to participate in global decision-making: together. This need for greater integration in foreign policy is enhanced by the major risks which arise along all of the Union’s borders. We must create foreign policy strategies tailored to each different scenario, and which involve all Member States, leaving aside the particular interests of each of them. […]
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European integration has become an increasing challenge to national democracies. As more and more policy decisions are taken at the EU level or removed to technocratic bodies, national politics has been gradually emptied of substance. The Eurozone crisis has made such matters worse not only because of the economics and politics of hard times but also because EU governance processes and policies have themselves become less ‘democratic’. How can national democracies be reinvigorated while rebalancing the EU’s ‘democracy’ in ways that enable both levels to interact productively within the new EU realities? […]
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Europe’s economic model continues to benefit countries both at the core and at the periphery. However, not all have benefited. The countries in Europe that have come out well from the global economic and financial crisis are those that have harnessed the forces of economic integration most effectively, and have addressed weaknesses in the organization of work and welfare in particular. But in understanding why in parts of Europe the crisis has been so protracted, it is necessary to look beyond structural deficiencies emphasized in Golden Growth and consider the role of money, and specifically the functioning of the Eurozone. […]
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