How Psychedelic Virtual Reality Can Help End Society’s Mass Bad Trip

Jenny Valentish, writing for The Guardian:

So tonight there’s the opportunity to try out virtual reality and augmented reality experiences that go beyond recreational use – there’s no diving with sharks or rollercoaster rides here. But users should strap in tightly anyway: these experiences are designed to expedite a different kind of journey.

Mimicking synesthesia, visual meditation apps leveraging biofeedback, exposure therapy, and a full-blown near-death experience—this is the kind of stuff that makes VR interesting.

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FDA Explores Using Blockchain to Track Drug Supplies

Jon Fingas, writing for Engadget:

The US Food and Drug Administration wants to be sure sketchy drugs don't find their way to hospitals and pharmacies, and it's mulling a technological solution to keep medicine safe. The agency has launched a pilot program that will let the drug supply chain explore ways to track prescription medicine. While the FDA isn't specific about what tech companies would use, it noted that blockchain was one example. The same decentralized trust system that can trace the origins of your lettuce could also verify that your pills come from a legitimate source.

Blockchain has a ton of potential. But don’t expect this FDA pilot program to start anytime soon—its not supposed to get going until 2023.

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A Robot Teaches Itself to Play Jenga. But This Is No Game

Matt Simon, writing for WIRED:

Researchers at MIT report today in Science Robotics that they’ve engineered a robot to teach itself the complex physics of Jenga. This, though, is no game—it’s a big step in the daunting quest to get robots to manipulate objects in the real world.

These MIT researchers are teaching a new robot some brand-new tricks. It’s easy to see how a machine that has perfected skills like accurately assessing and maneuvering Jenga blocks could move around in a physical environment, interacting with and manipulating any objects (inanimate and inanimate alike) it comes across.

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Waymo's Self-Driving Cars Are Near: Meet the Teen Who Rides One Every Day

Tom Randall and Mark Bergen, writing for Bloomberg:

The Jackson family, along with some 400 neighbors in their Phoenix suburb, are volunteers in an ongoing test of Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing business, which is expected to launch for paying passengers in the area by the end of the year. The Jacksons, who Waymo made available for this story, have largely ditched their own cars and now use self-driving vehicles to go almost everywhere within the 100 square-mile operating area: track practice, grocery shopping, movies, the train station.

Kyla acts like a diva with a private chauffeur, laughs her mom, Samantha Jackson, in an interview in Chandler last week. Access to robotaxis has even managed to convince this 17-year-old to put off an American rite of passage: getting her driver’s license. As Kyla puts it, “What’s the point?”

What's the point, indeed. I'm almost twice as old as Kyla, but I have felt the same way for a long time. This comprehensive update on autonomous vehicles is well worth a read.

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Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not

Joi Ito, writing for WIRED:

As a Japanese, I grew up watching anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, which depicts a future in which machines and humans merge into cyborg ecstasy. Such programs caused many of us kids to become giddy with dreams of becoming bionic superheroes. Robots have always been part of the Japanese psyche—our hero, Astro Boy, was officially entered into the legal registry as a resident of the city of Niiza, just north of Tokyo, which, as any non-Japanese can tell you, is no easy feat. Not only do we Japanese have no fear of our new robot overlords, we’re kind of looking forward to them.

It’s not that Westerners haven’t had their fair share of friendly robots like R2-D2 and Rosie, the Jetsons’ robot maid. But compared to the Japanese, the Western world is warier of robots. I think the difference has something to do with our different religious contexts, as well as historical differences with respect to industrial-scale slavery.

The Western concept of “humanity” is limited, and I think it’s time to seriously question whether we have the right to exploit the environment, animals, tools, or robots simply because we’re human and they are not.

A fascinating take. The Japanese are really onto something here.

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