In this issue: WHAT'S GOOGLE SEARCHING FOR? BOYFRIEND MATERIAL AUXETIC MATERIALS NORMCORE And much, much more... --------------------------------- BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL BRAINMAIL *Feeding hungry minds since 2004 --------------------------------- Issue 93 --------------------------------- Brainmail is a free monthly (usually) newsletter dedicated to intellectual miscellany and ephemera. A file of hand picked curiosities, cerebral snacks and fortuitous facts. To subscribe or unsubscribe (or to search the whole ten year brainmail archive) visit: http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/ Like it? - then surely share it on Twitter and Facebook. --------------------------------- : INSIGHTS & IDEAS > Thicker not thinner Have you heard of auxetic substances? These are new and really interesting materials that get thicker, rather than thinner, when stretched. Not only does physical form change when subject to external force, the material stores energy very quickly too. What could you possibly do with such materials? How about blast-resistant curtains or dental floss that gets the tricky bits? Ref: Economist Technology Quarterly (UK) > What's Google searching for? It's not been widely reported but Google has been buying roughly one company per week since 2010. Not surprisingly, many of the companies and technologies are involved in search, or devices that one way or another discover more about you, although a great many are in robotics and artificial intelligence. Ref: Business Insider/CBC News > Miniature motes Ever fancied a computer the size of a snowflake? Scientists around the world are working on tiny computers with skeleton operating systems that can report on conditions nearby. Powered by sunlight, vibrations or temperature change, such dot-sized devices could monitor buildings or be injected into a tumour to monitor growth. Perhaps people could embed motes into everything they owned in the physical world and then be able to conduct searches from them in virtual worlds. Ref: New Scientist (UK) > Cute or creepy? Is your boyfriend or girlfriend becoming more trouble than they're worth? Or perhaps you're not in a relationship, but the social (media) pressure to be coupled is just too much. Well a solution (some say) is at hand. For $24.99 a month, a Minnesota-based app allows you to have a relationship with an invisible boyfriend/girlfriend that not only texts you back, but will engage with you in conversation. Ref: Daily Mail (UK) > H2 Oh A study by Ilsedore Cleeves at the University of Michigan says that half the water on Earth is older than the Sun, having been carried here as interstellar ice. The study also claims that water is far more common than we previously thought out in deep space. Ref: New Scientist (UK) > Flushed with success You've no doubt heard of Toms Shoes and perhaps One Water. How about Who Gives a Crap (sorry, but that's what it's called). 2.5 billion people (roughly 40% of the world's population) don't have regular access to a clean toilet, which means that diarrhoea-related diseases kill 2,000 children under 5 every day. Three enterprising Aussies have come up with a way to help. Order their toilet paper online, it gets delivered to your door and 50% of profits go to WaterAid to build clean toilets in the developing world. Ref: Grapevine (Aus) > Seeing the woods instead of the disease It seems that some people feel better inside if they spend time outside. Ecominds is a scheme run by the mental health charity Mind in the UK. Projects use nature, especially woodland activities, to help people with mental health problems improve their confidence and self-esteem. Ref: http://www.mind.org.uk/ecominds > Too much information? If you're a scientist drowning in digital data then Sciencescape might be for you. The site is essentially a "Twitter-like experience" that allows academics to filter science stories using chosen categories. One aim is to allow people to "follow" specific geographical places or even individual buildings. Ref: The Scientist (US) > Google your tears Following news that Google has withdrawn its Google Glass prototype from the market comes news that Google X is developing smart contact lenses that can analyse a user's tears to detect medical problems. Ref: International Business Times (UK) --------------------------------- : THE NUMBERS Danes that drink regular Sprite are 10% less likely to support the welfare system than Danes that drink Sprite Zero. Ref: Harper's (US) 6% of people living in New York that own a smartphone admit to having used it to make an online purchase during a funeral. Ref: Harper's (US) In 1975, the cost of the fastest supercomputer was $5,000,000. You can currently buy a used iPhone 4, which is roughly equal in performance (MFLOPS), for $80 on eBay. Ref: McKinsey/Brainmail The cost of factory automation relative to human labour has fallen by half since 1990. Ref: Der Spiegel (Germany) The average automobile now contains 60 microprocessors. Ref: MIT Tech Review (US) There are now more Christians in China than members of the Communist Party. Ref: Financial Times magazine (UK) Worldwide, three times as many people die of obesity than die of starvation. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) Since 2007, the number of prisoners in solitary confinement in the New York area has risen by 63%. Ref: Harper's (US) It took 76 years for 50% of US homes to acquire a landline telephone. With cellphones it took just 7 years. Ref: PWC (UK) As a proportion of the US economy, the finance sector has more or less doubled in size since 1980. Ref: Harper's (US) --------------------------------- : QUOTE OF THE MONTH "True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence." - Alain de Botton --------------------------------- : BOOK OF THE MONTH From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner (2006) --------------------------------- : WORD DETECTIVE Normcore (noun): A trend that involves wearing unfashionable clothing as a fashion statement. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) --------------------------------- : WEB SIGHT OF THE MONTH The Wayback Machine: What the web used to look like back in the day: http://archive.org/web/ --------------------------------- : PREDICTION OF THE MONTH Projections suggest that the trillion-sensor barrier will be reached in less than 10 years' time and the 100-trillion-sensor milestone in around 20 years' time. Ref: Thomas Frey, Da Vinci Institute. --------------------------------- : STILL HUNGRY? Not a lot of people know this, but brainmail is put together using some of the leftover bits from the What's Next trends report. So if this snack-sized newsletter is leaving you a bit hungry, go to nowandnext.com for something more substantial (and that's free too). --------------------------------- : BRAINMAIL LIVE If you are looking for an interesting speaker for your next conference, workshop, or event ask your speaker agency about Richard Watson or contact him direct via nowandnext.com. Richard, who is based in London, is the creator of brainmail (along with Matt Doyle and Phil Beresford, both of whom had the good sense to stay in Australia). --------------------------------- : SMALL PRINT The material appearing in brainmail is sourced from a variety of usually reliable publications worldwide. However, we cannot guarantee the truthfulness of stories and a degree of commonsense should be applied before quoting or using any material in a commercial context. If something appears to be too good to be true it probably is.