Global Future: Creating Gods Among Us?

I had seriously intended to restart Tech Gestalts today, because I have a backlog of ideas that just grows faster than I can weed them out. Or move over to gaming news and maybe talk about the Origins Games Fair and Shadowrun Fifth Edition (seriously, buy the damn game. It’s awesome and you want it.) But at the last minute, I heard about the transhumanists at Global Future 2045. For those who don’t know, GF2045 is a conference founded by Russian businessman Dmitry Itskov, best known for his involvement with the 2045 Initiative, a program aimed at human immortality by 2045.

E3 X-Box One: X-Boneheads

It’s been awhile since we covered some purely gaming news, but it’s E3 time, that wonderful time of the year when the big names in electronic gaming see just how much suffering they can inflict on their loyal fanbase without driving it away. Every year, we crawl back hoping it will be better than the last time, like an abused divorcee who just can’t let their crazy partner go. Last year, we got a bunch of disappointing Sequel-Fu, a sad promise of the same monotony we had the previous year. This year, the Big Three in gaming are locked in the latest console war as the new generation of systems’ launch dates approach. Only, for once, there’s a good bit of independent competition as well, in the form the Ouya and the Steambox, among others. Which is why I’m baffled….nay, I’m fucking frustrated as a color-blind quadriplegic playing Twister, by whatever the hell Microsoft thinks they’re doing.

Tech Gestalts 5: Lettuce, Falling Skyward

Not a lettuce. Courtesy of gizmag.com

My writing schedule is increasingly erratic as I work on samples and pieces elsewhere; I’m still going to  be able to update every week from now on (thank you, public internet), but the “tech-articles-are-a-Friday-thing” is over. Which is good and bad, because I’ve got a long backlog to go through.

Like this little gem: Upwardly Falling Agriculture.

Tech Gestalts 4: Welcome Back, Welome Back, Welcome Back

This did not happen. Unfortunately.

It’s a new year, and more importantly a new Sixth World.  Now, you may think that means an asteroid plummeting through the atmosphere to burn the flesh from our bones and incinerate our comic book collections, or some kind of New-Age hippy stuff that I’m sure I’d be interested in if I still possessed a single ray of optimism. Or maybe it’s all a load of malarkey. Meh.

One thing it does mean is that we are back at the Datahaven, and we are going to hit the ground running like our (unfortunate) hiatus never happened. So without further ado….

WAR ZEPPELINS OF SCIENCY DEATH

(and driving)

Tech Gestalts 3: The Matrix is Here

This week, we’ve got three tech-toys that go together (at least in my deranged imagination), to create a world so much worse than the World Without Privacy I talked about before: a world without free will, at least for the unlucky SOB’s that are dumb enough to volunteer for this crap. Or it may just let you pilot a super-shark through hurricanes, cutting wicked aquatic kick-flips of toothy awesome.

Tech Gestalts 2: Assuming Direct Control

For the second installment in this series, I’m going to take two things that can’t possibly be more different: hunting cats and jewelry. Unless you like making jewelry out of the bones of endangered beasts, because nothing says opulence like destroying entire ecosystems.

Tech Gestalts 1: Hack the Planet

After a meatspace hiatus that has given the Datahaven a burst of new life and creativity (and 4 new staff members, covering everything from local tech news to miniature gaming), we’re back with the first of a weekly series: Tech Gestalts.

DNA Data Storage: World Without Piracy or Privacy

Courtesy of DepositPhotos.com

Last Friday, a team of what I only imagine are mad-scientists at Harvard figured out how to store computer data on DNA strands. Before you start worrying, George “Captain Chromosome” Church and the Binary Brigade didn’t use a living creature. Instead, they managed to attach fake human DNA to a microchip to create a storage device they claim could fit the entirety of the Internet on a flash drive.

US Army: Captain America, Space Marines, or the Clone Wars?

Courtesy of Halo Wiki

Recently, DARPA announced a plan to create genetically-modified shock troopers for the United States military.

Oxford Datahaven: What we’re about

Oxford Datahaven wants to be your resource for technology, cyber-political, and especially RPG news. Our Contributors and assorted other mooks (a group in flux at the moment) each have their own interests and angles, and hopefully we will bring all of that in-fighting to you.  We’re going to cover new, high-tech real-world technologies you may not have heard of (like this one) that are either going to revolutionize our world, or turn us all into government/corporate robots. We’ll also discuss their effects on the wasteland that is the political landscape, with help from friends currently writing for chiefly political sites.