Techno-Files

TECH CRAZE

Imran H. Khan

Soccer, commonly called football, is definitely the most played and watched team sports in the world. I am sure that every now and then, when you are walking in the streets, you would hear crowds cheer in unison, 'Goal!' Yes, it surely is a magical word and the magic lies in the fact that goals are so hard to, well, score and achieve, depending upon its usage. Remember there was a time when people would get together to have a 'friendly' game of soccer and somehow things would always go out of hand. I can remember one time when a friend of mine accidentally 'miss-kicked ' and hit someone on his shin. Even though the wound healed, the memories didn't. Quite surely in another match, my friend ended up with a broken elbow after having been accidentally tripped. Well the Japanese people have come up with a wonderful strategy to help people to build friendship, rather than break it (along with some bones perhaps). A new breed of humanoid robots are in the process of being made available that would be able to simulate a game of soccer, without anyone having to lose a foot over the game. In a press preview of the RoboCup championships in Osaka, western Japan, over 400 teams from 35 countries took part in a five-day event that started from July 13, 2005. Electronic giants from all over took part to take home the top position. I must say that I am a little overwhelmed that no one will have to bleed for the 'Love of the Game' but I must say that I am a little nostalgic. What if soccer is taken over by robots in the future and the game is transformed? Will we never again see the likes of Maradona, Pele and Ronaldo? Or will the names of the future be MaraDona ver 2.3 and Microsoft Ronaldo 3?

As our wallets get wider, mostly with business cards and the likes, our need of carrying cash is inversly proportional to the weight. Voila! The invention of the credit along with ATMs and the like. But after you have shoved all your money into a little card, what more could you shove into a three-inch card. What about a television? Would that fit your fancy? Well Japan's computer giant Fujitsu has come up with a prototype model of an electronic paper display, film-based flexible mono-colour LCD, enabling it to display the same image continuously without electric power. The company is hoping to commercialise the new electronic paper next year. Maybe the next step would be to put in some wireless recipient for receiving data from television stations, even the Internet. This particular prototype paper display is 3.8-inch in width with a QVGA 512-color LCD. Maybe the next time you are at the dentist's, waiting for your appointment, you could quickly google 'root-canal' and let all the horrific images leave you senseless. You may even save some money on local anaesthesia.

Photos : AFP

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