So you Want to Be a Venture Capitalist? An Interview with David Beisel

So you Want to Be a Venture Capitalist? An Interview with David Beisel

Starting a new company is challenging, exhilarating and something you never forget. It can also be very rewarding. In 1999, David Beisel co-founded the email marketing company Sombasa Media. After a successful exit, he shifted in the the venture capital world, spending three years with Venrock. Nowadays, Beisel is co-founder and partner at NextView Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm that invests in internet-enabled startups. Beisel specializes in helping entrepreneurs build successful digital media and internet companies.

#MindControl: BCI Games For Autism Spectrum Disorder

#MindControl: BCI Games For Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that affects a child's ability to communicate and interact with others. Symptoms also include repetitive behaviors and activities. The CDC estimates that 1 in 68 children are affected by ASD.

3 Latest News Breaks in Emerging Tech – July 14, 2014

3 Latest News Breaks in Emerging Tech – July 14, 2014

Google Glass Adds Mind Reading App

Google intends to make mind control a thing of the present by introducing a new app for Google Glass. Daily Digest News announced that the company has collaborated with UK tech startup The Place in the development of a new app that allows users to take photographs and share them online simply by thinking. The aptly named MindRDR, receives information from an EEG headband and translates it into instructions, which are sent back to Google Glass. As the user focuses, a white line appears on the display screen. The line grows as the user concentrates, when it's full, the built-in camera will take a picture.

How Visions of the Future Can Mold Reality: An Interview with Ariel Waldman

How Visions of the Future Can Mold Reality: An Interview with Ariel Waldman

Whether it's literature, science fiction movies or other forms of art, can the visions of a possible future actually help to mold or influence actual future outcomes? According to Ariel Waldman, people do look to fiction as a means of stimulating change.

#MindControl: Translating Brain Signals to a Voice Synthesizer

#MindControl: Translating Brain Signals to a Voice Synthesizer

Within the rapidly growing field of brain-computer interface (BCI) research, we have already begun to see devices that can help amputees control prosthetic limbs and paraplegics move their hands and arms just by thinking, but the latest BCI research involves giving speech to patients who are unable to voluntarily vocalize.

Lego 'Fuses' with Augmented Reality - This Generation of Kids Have it Better Than We Did

Lego ‘Fuses’ with Augmented Reality – This Generation of Kids Have it Better Than We Did

Whether as kids, adults or both, most of us have played with Lego bricks at some point in our lives. If you have children, odds are your children play with them now, too (and, as a parent, the odds are even better that you've had the pleasure of stepping on a stray Lego with your bare feet, but I digress). And though their product line has expanded exponentially in the last 20 years, according to a recent article on The Verge, those little Danish bricks are now the building blocks of a new augmented reality experience.

3 Latest News Breaks in Emerging Tech – July 7, 2014

3 Latest News Breaks in Emerging Tech – July 7, 2014

Autonomous Vehicles to Join the Army 

According to a report at Gizmag, the US army is set to deploy a number of unmanned tactical vehicles. The vehicles have already made a test run at the US Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The convoy of seven different vehicles kept up a pace of over 40 miles per hour. The robotic vehicles utilize two distinct forms of technology. One is known as an "autonomy kit," and utilizes sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology to construct a map of the geographic location and keep the vehicle on course. The other known as "by-wire drive," is the technology that controls the driving mechanisms. The vehicles should be joining soldiers in the field by 2025.

Transhuman Impact on Gender and Human Potential – with Dr. Patrick Hopkins

Transhuman Impact on Gender and Human Potential – with Dr. Patrick Hopkins

Dr. Patrick Hopkins is a philosopher and bioethicist. In this interview, we don't contemplate traditional bioethic concerns of animal testing or disease treatment. Instead, we discuss some important considerations of how emerging technologies might alter our bodies, minds, personalities and gender – and, indeed, what "human" might imply in the first place.

Uploading Human Minds – How Close are We? With Randal Koene, PhD

Uploading Human Minds – How Close are We? With Randal Koene, PhD

Randal Koene, PhD, is CEO and founder of CarbonCopies.org, and one of the world's foremost experts on neurology as it relates to uploading human minds. "Uploading" is still the stuff of science fiction, but it's a life mission for Koene – and legendary futurists and scientists such as Ray Kurzweil expect it to be possible within just a few decades of progress.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence According to Ben Goertzel

The Future of Artificial Intelligence According to Ben Goertzel

Since the inception of the discipline of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 1950s, progress in the field has advanced at a rapid pace. We have seen the development of early neural networks, game AI, the Turing Test, and theories involving expert systems and intelligent agents, but according to Ben Goertzel, there is a specific element of AI today that is significantly missing.