blurring the line between real life and science fiction

-
Back in the day, Jurassic Park was one of the most fascinating films I've seen because it said that the reel-life scientists were capable of getting DNA from extinct dinosaurs, of inserting them in frog DNA, and, in so doing, resurrect dinosaurs. Yes, it was science fiction; but a few years later, real-life scientists presented Dolly, the sheep. She's the first cloned mammal.Dolly had repercussions in various sectors because the possibilities stemming from developments in DNA technologies suddenly became not so fiction anymore.

This was my sentiment during the JST 20th anniversary forum and the 2016 Science Agora, which were held in Tokyo recently. Scientists and artists collaborate to make technology-based artworks, musicians "collaborating" with computer-generated anime characters... things I thought were far-fetched and made very real to me in the presentations. 

Rochie, you're not in a third world country anymore. Indeed.

But the most compelling presentation I had seen during my brief stay in Tokyo was by Dr Chieko Asakawa. She's an IBM Fellow based in Carnegie Mellon, I think. And she's blind. Yes, blind! But she never made her disability limit her; she has used it to make innovations that someone like me would have considered as science fiction many years ago... before the Internet era.

See, she contributed in the development of mobile apps that allow text-to-audio... these technologies are crucial to the improvement of the quality of life of the blind. Now, they can "read" books, learn new recipes, and not be limited to Braille. Blind seeing people? There's an app for that too. It uses facial recognition and then it tells the blind user who the face is and what the person's facial expression is. Blind walking through a maze? Possible too, because scientists have further upgraded navigation tools to include audible instructions and accuracy is now good enough that it can tell you exactly where you are and how far you are from obstacles and your destination.

But here's the most amazing technology I've seen: scientists have developed a technology that will, one day, allow the blind to drive! That's so science-fiction-like until I saw the demonstration video. It was so cool!

If only Helen Keller can sense what the world is like right now. She'd be raring to explore the world in ways that she couldn't have imagined possible! And it's all in real life!

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more