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As discussed by Jean_No about this iSee mannequin that can detect the number of people in a shop using a camera located in its head:
J’ai l’intuition que la motivation technologique et mercantile qui a abouti à la création des mannequins EyeSee n’est qu’un prétexte, une manière de nous rassurer — ce n’est que de l’informatique, ce n’est que pour vendre des vêtements — sur la santé mentale de ceux qui en ont eu l’idée et dont le projet est, à mon avis, d’une toute autre nature, poétique ou névrotique, qu’il est plutôt mû par l’envie de donner une réalité effective, matérielle, à la magie, de donner des yeux à des statues.
“But all of that boredom, all of that watching, finally paid off. One day, out of exhaustion, the research team surreptitiously spilled some coffee grounds while visiting an elderly test subject. Rather than breaking out a mop, the host swept up the grounds with a broom and then proceeded to use a damp paper towel to clean up the rest of the fine dust. It was in that moment that the idea for the Swiffer – a $500M category killer – was born.” — The birth of Swiffer at P&G as explained here.
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“Yet when it was finally my turn to approach the rows of white urinals, my world came screeching to a halt. There they were, a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals, peering their head from side to side, blinking or winking, as they relieved themselves”. (via At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom - NYTimes.com)
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“When you’re reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by philosophers, here is a quick trick that may save you much time and effort, especially in this age of simple searching by computer: look for “surely” in the document and check each occurrence. Not always, not even most of the time, but often the word “surely” is as good as a blinking light locating a weak point in the argument.
Why? Because it marks the very edge of what the author is actually sure about and hopes readers will also be sure about. (If the author were really sure all the readers would agree, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning.) […] Just the sort of place to find an ill-examined “truism” that isn’t true!”
” — “The ‘surely’ klaxon” by Daniel DennettDaniel Dennett's seven tools for thinking
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Interactive infographic about the evolution of browsers and the web. This infographic features major web browsers since 1993 such as Mosaic, Netscape, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, as well as key developments in web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.