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30 Oct 07
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07 Oct 07
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As the chartered Circle Line tour boat made its way across the Hudson last Friday, Michael Dubno barked orders into his cellphone, in an attempt to control a white blimp overhead.
“Can you get right overhead,” he asked, “before we get to the Statue of Liberty?”
There was no real point to the blimp. It didn’t do anything other than float above several hundred middle-aged men and women — mostly men, actually — and a few well-pampered children. They had assembled for an event known as Gadgetoff, a daylong attempt to prove that the Jetsons world we thought we would grow up into may really still come to pass.
So the blimp, like so many things on display that day — robots, cameras, vehicles, games, toys, chemical cocktails, weapons and wacky contraptions of all sorts — was not so much about showing off the latest technology, per se. The overriding goal of the whole thing was to see how many times attendees would say “neat” for whatever reason.
Gadgetoff was started in 2002 by Michael Dubno’s brother Dan, then a producer with CBS News, and Greg Harper, a technology consultant, as a gathering of friends who tried to impress each other with the coolest gadgets. Over time, it has grown, become a bit more commercial, and added a pinch of how advanced technology can save the world.
This year’s event began at the Chelsea headquarters of IAC/InterActiveCorp to gawk at its block-long video wall. (A quick building tour allowed me to note Barry Diller’s new executive floor as well, complete with a terrace with a long conference table and prime views of both the Hudson and the Empire State Building.)
Jeff Han talking in front of the video wall at IAC/InterActiveCorpAfter that came the boat ride to Liberty State Park for some outdoor demos and lunch, followed by a blinding array of presentations at the Liberty Science Center.
It was at times infuriating: No one seemed to be able to get the audio-video presentations to work. And speakers were allocated so little time that talks were more of a tease. Aubrey de Grey, a Cambridge gerontologist, made a convincing case that I should stop accepting the inevitability of aging and try to focus on longevity. But he had to stop just before he revealed the secret of everlasting life
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For every tease, though, I found a thoroughly unexpected surprise. Sitting next to me as I ate my box lunch was Joshua Klein, who would later show off a machine he designed to train crows to pick up spare change. It’s a gizmo that first gives crows peanuts and coins together. Over time, it is meant to show them how to drop coins in a slot to get the nuts. Don’t call this useless, he insisted.
“There is $216 million in lost coins every year,” he said.
There certainly were lots of demonstrations of dubious utility. A rocket-powered motorcycle jetted around the parking lot. Meanwhile, others experimented with an instant barbecue using a huge welding torch. (Watch out, Iron Chef.)
The Department of Homeland Security showed a device I hope it never uses: a gun that blasted a pattern of colored light in a pattern meant to make someone start vomiting.
But there was also real science, still mixed with offbeat humor. Joy Hirsch, the director of the Columbia Functional MRI Research Center, did have enough time to show her scan of Dan Dubnow’s brain, which monitored his reaction to various subjects.
“When he got engaged in Gadgetoff, his brain went nuts,” she said.
There were a few commercial products on display, such as iRobot’s new devices. One was a slender device with a propeller in the front meant to root out clogged gutters. The other was a flat rolling disk — much like its Roomba vacuumbot — with a Webcam, microphone and speaker. Hook it up, they said, so you can drive it around Grandma’s house to chat with her every morning, see how her poodle is doing, and look around to see if she has fallen anywhere. The possibilities for mischief are endless.
In the saving-the-world department, the Mobile Fab Lab was an attempt at techno-economics. It is truck outfitted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with four computer-controlled machines that can shape material by cutting it with knives, lasers and so on. It is heading for the Bronx, where it will be used to train people to make furniture and other products.
View out the back of the Mobile Fab Lab
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