No, this is not a video from Deus Ex—though it certainly looks and sounds like one to me. Scientists from the US, UK, and Israel have developed a minimally invasive procedure to implant a chip that restores vision to people suffering from macular degeneration. ‘Bio-Retina incorporates various nano-
Big things come in small packages, they say. And as it turns out, toymaker littleBits won’t be so little for much longer. They’ve just secured $3.65 million in funding and will soon be ramping up production. The toys are as easy to assemble as Legos—but as sophisticated as you would expect from the
Research earlier this year from the Advanced Virtuality Lab at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel demonstrated that it is possible to control a virtual or robotic avatar with only your mind. While EEG human-computer interaction—like Emotiv—as well as eye-tracking and neural implants have been in
NASA has just released a new game for the Xbox 360 that lets you simulate a landing on the Martian surface—the same landing that the Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’ will be making early next month. It may seem strange to hear that NASA is in the videogame business, but it’s not all that surprising. In fact,
As if it weren’t clear by now, we love talking about gender and race issues in videogames. Recently, people like Anita Sarkeesian have shown us that the greater gaming community is simultaneously willing and unwilling to discuss these issues seriously. In addition to all the sideline commentary, th
If you’re looking for a fun project to put together, check out this programmable music game that will test your ear. Spikenzie Labs’ latest kit, the Music Game, is a great beginning soldering project that’s also fun (and addicting) to play. Solder up the components, then challenge yourself to press
The CERN lab in Geneva, Switzerland, has been alight the past few weeks with news of the Higgs boson, which has captivated and confused millions of people around the world. Little attention has been given to the artistic side of this scientific discovery, though. In order to comb through all the dat
You probably already associate colors, letters, and numbers more than you realize. When you were a child, you learned that A is a red apple and C is a yellow cat. If you were weird when you were a child, like me, you might have imagined backstories and personalities for your alphanumeric friends. Th
Humor is poorly understood—and frequently misunderstood. Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor for The New Yorker, posted an article yesterday that touched upon play and humor. And that episode of Seinfeld. Whether we find a comic funny or not, he says, is determined by the degree and nuance with which th
Motion-sensing gloves—like the ones from Minority Report—may have finally found a practical use at this year’s Imagine Cup, Microsoft’s annual student competition. The first prize went to a group of Ukrainian students who have been engineering a new kind of glove that interprets and verbalizes sign
This new music video for electronic duo MNDR is an interesting concept—it’s about you. The interactive video serves to reimagine music in the same vein as our own Soundplay features over at Pitchfork. Rather than using a game, though, the directors at Fourclops have crafted the narrative of the vide
Foundd, a new Berlin-based media recommendation service, just launched this week. Rather than focusing solely on mathematical predictions, unlike Netflix’s recommendations, Foundd looks at the bigger picture and makes broad strokes with its suggestions, including content from multiple content provid
This new game console was announced only a week ago and already seems to have the gaming community rallying behind it—or at least hyping it. Led by former IGN executive Julie Uhrman, designed by Yves Behar, and advised by Ed Fries (who wrote for us in Issue 2), Ouya is being touted as the console t
Wired recently did a profile on a company called California Skateparks—comprised of architects, designers, and skateboarders alike—explaining the balance of play, difficulty, and art that a good skatepark requires. Every park that California Skateparks builds has certain fundamental features, like
Artist Ruganzu Tusingwire is creating a movable playground for Ugandan children entirely out of recycled water bottles. An artist and community organizer, Tusingwire has a…more imaginative idea for how to engage and empower the children of his home country: Play. Tusingwire became the first City 2.0
The CEO of Wargaming.net, developers of the free-to-play, tank-based MMO World of Tanks, recently discussed the history of the company and its unlikely path to success, as well as its plans for the future. Kislyi has come a long way since first designing physical games directly on the bare floor of
Chris Baraniuk, over at The Machine Starts (an allusion to the excellent short story by E. M. Forster), eloquently explains the “fifth wall” of games that some players always feel the need to transgress. Like many other games of the era, Super Mario 64 set each level on a kind of pixelated island s
An interactive exhibit designed by Usman Haque and showcased at Specialmoves aims to “empower people to reconfigure their city.” Using an array of projectors, phones, and laptops, DIY City 0.01a is an “experiment between two independent interactive specialists who are keen to push the boundaries of
Rob Fahey has just posted a sobering piece about maturity in videogames that’s as critical as it is optimistic. Video games are a creative medium, and as such they intersect with many different fields of human experience – but they’re also still exploring the bounds and possibilities of technology
According to an article at the BBC, children may be teaching themselves to read in the near future with the help of technology. MagicTown is a “world that unites books and gameplay,” designed for children on the web and the iPad, that is trying to preserve the tradition of storytelling for a future
Kes Sampanthar recently discussed the effects of stimulus-reward conditioning (i.e. Pavlovian conditioning) from a neuroscientific standpoint. It turns out that your brain gets a dopamine burst whenever you receive the signal for a reward, not the reward itself. This presentation was not for the sci
It doesn’t hurt to take a step back and re-evaluate our assumptions every once in a while. In his article today at the Verge, Paul Miller ponders the eternal mystery, “What is the Internet?” Since I don’t “use the internet,” according to my dial-up definition, I’m frequently longing for my friends t
A new game console based on the Android platform is in the works, according to the Verge, and it’s being designed by Yves Behar. And “all games will be free to play.” The project’s advisors also include Ed Fries of Xbox fame, Amol Sarva of Peek, Peter Pham of Color, and counts Julie Uhrman of IGN as
The European courts ruled today that downloadable software can be resold by users, which delivers a blow to current DRM policies in use by Steam, EA, and other content providers. From the opinion of the court: The first sale in the EU of a copy of a computer program by the copyright holder or with h
