I think a month ago the Today show talked about this toy. sounds
like a great toy, isn't it cute when it's scared? it'll be so much
fun to come up with different ways to scare it. what if it starts to
find ways to scare us? doo doo doo doo... :)
cindy
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Cheap Chips Enable Active Things
By Jeffrey R. Harrow, TechWeb contributor
I bet there was a time when the word "Pentium" brought computing stars
to your eyes. But now, with 450-MHz Pentium IIs already on store
shelves and with faster chips just over the horizon, the "lowly"
original Pentium is following a classic path down into the elements
around us -- a path that will help computing disappear from our
notice.
According to Embedded Processor Watch, a journal dedicated to reporting
and analyzing advances in microprocessors, the low-power Pentium
processor with MMX technology that used to sit at the heart of
notebooks is now bringing its 266 MHz, 64-bit bus, cache, and ability
to run older x86 software to the world of controllers, appliances, and
other elements around us. And as this trend continues, powered by
embedded chips from many other manufacturers, too, our expectations of
the world around us are going to change radically.
Consider, for example, our kids. The enabling technologies of embedded
chips won�t only affect elevator controls and thermostats -- they�re
already tugging at the heartstrings of our littlest consumers. Take
Furby, a new toy brought to our attention by RCFoC reader Steven
Singer.
According to the Oct. 12 edition of U.S. News Online, these toys have
light, motion, touch sensors, microphones, "reward switches," and the
ability to speak with people in the room (first in Furbish, and later,
as they learn, in English). And if there's more than one Furby nearby,
they communicate between themselves using an infrared port, leading to
forms of group behavior.
Each Furby, which knows and responds to its unique name, will
communicate with up to 800 phrases in a combination of English and
Furbish. If you scare your Furby, its ears snap erect and its eyes pop
open in alarm. But it may not scare the same way again, because Furby
learns and adapts to its environment.
So what's the result of this high-tech wonder? The U.S. News article
says the writer who field-tested Furby with his 8-year-old daughter
heard, "Dad, I know you have to send it back [lip quivers] and I know
it's just a toy, but [sniffle] it told me [sob] it loved me [sob,
sob]."
This is a toy!?!
According to expert Alan Macksworth in an Oct. 12th CTV News (Canadian
TV) interview, "This is just an example of the technology we'll see all
over very soon: embedded computers in little devices like this that can
sense and act in the environment."
Today a toy, tomorrow a wall switch, an appliance, and an industrial
machine. Consider this viewpoint from Kevin Kelly�s book New Rules for
the New Economy:
"A single silicon transistor today can only be seen in a microscope. In
a few years, it will take a microscope to see an entire chip of
transistors. As the size of silicon chips shrinks to the microscopic,
their costs shrink to the microscopic, as well. In 1950, a transistor
cost $5. Today, it costs one-hundredth of a cent. In 2003, one
transistor will cost a microscopic nanocent. A chip with a billion
transistors will eventually cost only a few cents."
Kelly continues, "What this means is chips are becoming cheap and tiny
enough to slip into every object we make. � There are 10 million
objects manufactured in the world each year, and the day will come when
each one of them will carry a flake of silicon.
"This is not crazy, nor distant. Ten years ago, the notion that all
doors in a building should contain a computer chip seemed ludicrous,
but now, there is hardly a hotel door in the United States without a
blinking, beeping chip in its lock."
Hotel doors and now toys. But beware -- Furby doesn't have an "off"
switch. (You thought you got tired of Barney?)
Come to think of it, if we don't get some form of "broadcast power"
going soon, it may be this trend toward billions of "active things"
will make battery manufactures the biggest winners of all.
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