Editor's note: CNN's "The Next List" will feature Brian O'Hanlon, founder of Open Blue, on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET.
By The Next List Staff, CNN
(CNN) - The lure of the open ocean has long been the stuff of poetry. For Brian O’Hanlon, it led to his life’s work.
O’Hanlon is the founder and president of Open Blue, the largest open-ocean fish farm in the world. He’s also a pioneer in raising fish far out at sea. O’Hanlon believes that the depth of the water and swift currents make for a much healthier environment to raise fish than traditional farms near shore or on land. Aquaculture in the open ocean also avoids damaging sensitive coastal ecosystems.
O’Hanlon’s team raises the fish from eggs so they control their diet at every stage of development. FULL POST
Editor's note: Ben Kaufman is the CEO of Quirky.com, which helps inventors bring their ideas to the market. Kaufman is the subject of Sunday's episode of "The Next List," on CNN at 2 p.m. ET.
By Ben Kaufman, Special to CNN
I am headed to London on Friday. Yes, for the Olympics. This will be the first time for me and the feeling is kind of amazing. Sure, I have always grown up looking forward to and watching the Olympics. But since the opening ceremonies last week and every moment since then, I feel something different.
Maybe its because I am 25 - making me about the age of many competitors. I look at these athletes and think about their commitment, dedication and powerful accomplishments. I think (and hope) that watching these marvels makes everyone think about their own potential and what could be. It’s inspiring to no end.
I think about the Quirky community and how there is something there that feels just a bit like the Olympics. There are these creative people from different countries bringing their best to one place and sharing it with the world, and some of them end up really winning. There’s definitely a little magic in that.
And then there is just Quirky - and the monumental game-changing things that I have seen since its launch. We have developed a brand new way of thinking about product development and made invention accessible. We have taken an industry, shaken it up and created this whole new kind of company that has never existed. This year, we started manufacturing in the United States and nothing makes me prouder.
I think about the impact Quirky is having on these U.S. manufacturers: creating jobs and revitalizing factories. I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but we are part of a group of companies who are going to revitalize the U.S. manufacturing industry. We did it with Crates and we will continue developing relationships and bringing more jobs home.
I will relish in the choices we made as a company as I sit and watch the Olympic games this weekend. In the coming years, I hope our uniforms will be made at home, too. Even better, maybe the Quirky community can come up with something great. How cool would that be? Maybe then we could see this headline: U.S. Olympic Uniforms Invented Together.
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - Watching the Olympics, which kick off in earnest Friday with the opening ceremony in London, is more fun when you know the stories behind the Games.
No doubt, sports broadcasters will hammer on plenty of rags-to-riches, against-the-odds backstories about the Olympic athletes. (You can also find plenty of them on CNN's London 2012 page). And that's all good. But knowing the technological underpinnings of the Games is perhaps just as intriguing.
Here's a quick look at 10 of the most interesting tech stories to watch at the London Olympics:
By Richard Galant, CNN
(CNN) – Years before Bill Nye became the Science Guy, he was a mechanical engineering student at Cornell University, where he took a course with astronomer Carl Sagan.
Sagan, who was instrumental in the planning of NASA missions to other planets and became widely known for his research, writing and public television series, was one of the founders of the Planetary Society. And his student dutifully signed up to become a member.
"I've been a member for over 30 years. And now I'm the head guy, it's quite odd," a surprised-sounding Nye told CNN in an interview in March at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, California.
By Heather M. Higgins, CNN
Los Angeles (CNN) – Perched high above Glendale, Calif., in the dry heat of the Verdugo Mountains sits an octagonal room that houses a musical instrument with a storied past and an uncertain future.
“There's no question about it that the pipe organ will always be the most revered of the organs, but it doesn't reach the masses now like the digital organ will,” said Robert C. Tall, PhD., 74, an organist who has played many of the great organs around the world.
If you've never stepped inside a church like the magnificent Milan Cathedral, or if you've never attended a concert at a hall like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, chances are you haven't heard live organ music. All of that could change. The fledgling digital organ, which has been relegated to second class, has a new generation of champions.
One of those champions is virtuoso and traveling sensation, Cameron Carpenter.
“The organ is in a kind of crisis. I think it needs radically outsider approaches to reestablish its connection with the world at large. And that's what I'm doing,” said Carpenter at the TED 2012 conference in Long Beach, Calif. earlier this year.
Carpenter is embracing new technology to design a digital touring organ invented specifically for the 21st century.
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - First Tupac. Now this.
The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey announced this week that digital projections of "virtual customer care representatives" will appear this summer in three New York-area airports, guiding flyers to their gates and providing other logistical info.
The 2-D projections can't respond to travelers who ask them questions, said Ron Marsico, a spokesman for the authority. But that kind of technology may be added if the 6-month pilot project goes well, he said in a phone interview. "We’ll see if it works, you know," he said. "If people keep walkin' by it, then we wouldn’t renew (the contract for the avatars)."
He added: "Maybe customers will feel more comfortable listening to an avatar than a live person." FULL POST
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - This almost doesn't require comment. Check out David Goldman's CNNMoney story about a new white paper commissioned by Intel, in which researchers say it is inevitable - inevitable! - that smarpthones will plug into brains.
Here's Goldman's explanation of what could happen:
... Step one: a lag-free operating system that anyone can use intuitively to perform any computing task.
Step two: Interfacing with the body. These kinds of interfaces are already operating in a relatively rudimentary way, with implants and pacemakers. But in its paper, Intel suggests that the link-up will be much more robust.
How robust? Well, have you seen "The Matrix?" FULL POST
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - If you take Adam Harvey's advice, here's what you might wanna wear to a party this weekend: A funny hat, asymmetrical glasses, a tuft of hair that dangles off your nose bridge and, most likely, a black-and-white triangle taped to your cheekbone. Optional: Cubic makeup patterns all around your eyes.
All of these otherworldly fashion accessories – which could leave a person looking kind of like an opulent villain from "The Hunger Games" - have a singular goal: to stop your face from being detected by cameras and computers. Called CV Dazzle (short for "computer vision dazzle;" more on the name later), Harvey's project is a provocative and largely theoretical response to the rise of surveillance cameras on street corners and face-detecting technology that's been incorporated into social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr.
If you employ these techniques, Harvey, 30, hopes computers won't even know you have a face:
I don’t want to be unrealistic about it. It’s a pretty conceptual project but it seems to touch on a subject that people are still trying to figure out, which is how to adapt to living in surveillance societies, where not only are you being watched by government surveillance but by citizen surveillance and social-media-type surveillance. FULL POST
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - Harvard PhD student Daniel Nadler is trying to bring a really rudimentary version of the movie "Inception" to life with a new iPhone app that aims to help you "program your dreams."
Called Sigmund, the 99-cent app builds off of pre-existing sleep science to help people "program" the content of their dreams from a list of 1,000 keywords. After you select one to five words from the list, a sorta-soothing, sorta-robotic female voice reads the words you select during the deepest moments of your sleep cycle - the REM cycles - when you're most likely to dream vividly. In a sleep study that was the basis for the app, 34% to 40% of participants' dreams were memorably altered by the suggestive readings, he said.
"Obviously what goes on in the sleeping brain is not entirely remembered so it could actually be a higher incorporation rate," he said. FULL POST
By John D. Sutter, CNN
(CNN) - Think video games are evil? Spend some time with Jane McGonigal.
McGonigal - a designer who's queen of a genre called "Alternate Reality Games," or ARGs - believes games make us better people. They can be used to combat climate change, reduce poverty and, as she knows personally, help victims of conditions like depression, head injuries and cancer recover more quickly.
"Games are an extraordinary way to tap into the best version of yourself, the most determined, the most creative, the most resilient in the face of failure, the most likely to collaborate with other people - sort of heroic qualities," she said in a recent interview with CNN's "The Next List," which will feature McGonigal on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET. "And it seems that if we play more games - games that we love - these qualities can actually spill over into our real lives." FULL POST
Each week, CNN's "The Next List" profiles innovators, visionaries and agents of change. They’re not household names just yet, but they’re movers and shakers in their own worlds. We’re introducing them to you because these individuals are steadily mapping the course to the future with their new ideas.
WHO: Host Dr. Sanjay Gupta
WHEN: Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. ET - All new time!
WHERE: Only on CNN
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Advertising practices | Advertise with us | About us | Work for us | Help
