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1. • CommentAuthorwhat?
   • CommentTimeJun 13th 2006 edited

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   The picture of Spock and his tricorder in the feng shui thread reminded me of a segment on Australian radios 'The Science Show'. This show is hardcore hard science. Apparently a chap in North America has slapped together a DVD laser and some mobile phone parts, along with some flash software to make a spectrometer that can read the chemical composition of anything through anything. Doing in effect everything a Voyager generation tricorder can do...geological, chemical or biological. They never mentioned the word tricorder but thats what they were describing.
   Now the only link I have to corroborate this is to a site inside my head...So I go try find some.
2. •  
     CommentAuthoridoru345
   • CommentTimeJun 13th 2006 edited

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   Using the information you provided, I performed a Google search with the following criteria:
   
   "tricorder invented"
   
   This led me on a merry link chase that ended, after some sharpening of the search term (that is, replacing "invented" with "science show" and adding a plus symbol to invoke the boolean AND) to this site (linked, appropriately enough, from a Star trek fan site):
   
   http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/index/index2003.htm
   
   Which is a link to the 4 March 2006 edition of the Science Show.
   
   Here's an excerpt:
   
   NASA plans to launch their next mission to Mars in 2009, and onboard will be the Mars Science Laboratory, a bigger, better incarnation of the two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2004. On board will be a tiny laser devise about the size of a cell phone, which will be able to fingerprint minerals in the Martian soil and rocks. The results will be put into a data base which reside on Mars.
   
   [...]
   
   This looks to be it.
3. • CommentAuthorwhat?
   • CommentTimeJun 13th 2006 edited

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   Wow, bullseye! Did you read the transcript? My memory is an alien place, I hope the transcript has been edited because I think I'm sure I remember a joke about mating a DVD with a mobile phone...nevertheless, it sounds like a tricorder to me, all for $2-5,000. All this information at our fingertips......oh for sleep and blessed forgetfulness.
   So much for sleep, I googled raman detector, what fun.
   And thankyou idoru, I can now structure my memories around a timeline defined by the science show.
4. •  
     CommentAuthoridoru345
   • CommentTimeJun 13th 2006 edited

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   Ah, my pleasure.
   
   
   And by the by, I posted the wrong link (though I had the date right)...
   
   I gathered so many links in the course of the search there was a better than zero probability of picking the wrong one.
   
   Here's the correct spot:
   
   <http://abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1581469.htm#>
   
   Did a search of the transcript for the "DVD" joke - it appears to have not made it to the final version.
5. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeJun 13th 2006 edited

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   I love it when consciousness finds a new tool to manifest itself through.
   
   Humans take the minerals out the Earth and carefully invent new devices to incorporate them in. The devices become so advanced that they are capable of telling the humans which minerals they are being pointed at.
   
   Circular conscious craziness!
   
   In related techno news:

   Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed what they call a “Smart Petri Dish” that could be used to rapidly screen new drugs for toxic interactions or identify cells in the early stages of cancer circulating through a patient’s blood.
   
   Their invention, described in the June 20 issue of Langmuir, a physical chemistry journal published by the American Chemical Society, uses porous silicon crystals filled with polystyrene to detect subtle changes in the sizes and shapes of the cells.
   
   “One of the big concerns with any potential new drug is its toxicity,” says Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry at biochemistry at UCSD who headed the research team...
   
   In addition, says Michael Schwartz, a postdoctoral scholar in Sailor's laboratory and the first author of the paper: “The potential of our technique for fundamental studies of cell toxicity is exciting, Since we can monitor cells in real time without removing them from their natural environment, the observed changes provide a time course for performing more detailed tests to find out why drugs are toxic.” - smart petri dishes

   Our senses extended to new realms - but this is just the beginning - in nanotech's omniscience plenty more of this kind of 'self aware' matter will begin to coat our world to the point where every artifical system will have some degree of autonomy built into it. Perhaps the tricorder and smart petri dish will make way for new senses we will have built directly into the surface of our skin. Why carry a tricorder around when you can stroke your index finger over a surface and get a readout directly on your retina of the chemical composition of the material in hand.
   
   Star Trek, in all its uber-coolness, missed out a few simple ideas like this (a big thing which always bothered me abotu away missions - why no cameras?! Surely Starfleet had the capacity to record every moment of experience their crew was to live through... I suppose the omnipresent camera doesn't make for good drama).
6. •  
     CommentAuthorDanieru
   • CommentTimeJun 14th 2006 edited

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   A step too far? How about The Intelligent Spoon:

   Developed by a couple of presumably not-too-good cooks at MIT, it's packed with sensors that let it monitor the temperature, acidity, salinity and viscosity of your mixture. The info goes back to a computer that uses this to make "helpful" suggestions on how to improve you're recipe. A bit like trying to cook with your mother looking over your shoulder.
   
   The spoon is just one part of a research project aiming to create a "self-aware kitchen with knowledgeand memory of its activities", by which I think they mean your activities. You can imagine this kind of wired kitchen system could integrate well with microchips in groceries. - link

   Something tells me this one might not catch on so readily...