Kara Visits TEDMED (Featuring Synthetic Skin and Heart-Scanning iPhones!)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:05:11 +0000

Can your cellphone check your blood sugar? What does a wireless BandAid do? Is my pill networked? Can a videogame cure cancer? Will a robot care for my mom? Can an Apple (AAPL) iPhone save my life?

And, of course, does synthetic skin feel gross?

The answer to the last question is yes, but it is also pretty astonishing to touch, as noted in one of the many tech-heavy talks at TEDMED, the medical and health-care conference, which has returned after a five-year hiatus, to Hotel Coronado near San Diego.

The four-day gathering is being helmed by RIchard Saul Wurman, the legendary creator of the original Techonology, Entertainment and Design conference. After he sold it, Wurman struck a deal to license the name for this independent event from TED.

Speakers include famed inventor Dean Kamen, pioneering genomic scientist J. Craig Venter, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta and Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Paul Jacobs.

Here’s a video I did, which includes interviews with Wurman, as well as his new conference partner, Marc Hodosh, and clips from presentations by Intel (INTC) Fellow Eric Dishman comparing mainframe computers to hospitals, and actress Goldie Hawn, who talked about the benefits of a happier classroom:

[ See post to watch video ]

Geek Alert: Babbage Difference Engine at the Computer History Museum!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:54:45 +0000

For those who love a five-ton mechanical computing device, Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum recently installed a Babbage Difference Engine.

Designed on paper by English inventor and mathematician Charles Babbage (pictured here with his creation) and built to his specifications, it is on loan for one year from former Microsoft (MSFT) tech guru Nathan Myhrvold.

(Myhrvold will be a speaker at our sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, taking place in exactly two weeks.)

Babbage was one of the great stories of the early computing age, a man who intricately designed one of the first automatic computing engines to battle the inaccuracies endemic in figures calculated by hand.

As the overview of this video relates: “Engineering, astronomy, construction, finance, banking and insurance depended on printed tables for calculation. Ships navigating by the stars relied on printed tables to find their position at sea. The stakes were high. Capital and life were thought to be at risk … it was not only the grindingly tedious labor of verifying a sea of figures that exasperated Babbage, but their daunting unreliability.”

Despite his laborious and detailed designs, though, Babbage never actually built his creation.

But other geeks took up the task and there are two now, both called Difference Engine No. 2, one in London and one now at the museum. Each has 8,000 parts, weighs five tons and measures 11 feet long and seven feet high.

Check out the video:

BoomTown » inventor

Kara Visits TEDMED (Featuring Synthetic Skin and Heart-Scanning iPhones!)

Geek Alert: Babbage Difference Engine at the Computer History Museum!