Cutting Edge

During his keynote address at CES Thursday, Ford CEO Alan Mulally--along with several other Ford executives--emphasized that the car giant is interested in being a leader in in-car connectivity.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

LAS VEGAS--Ford on Thursday announced a series of innovations aimed at giving drivers more a higher degree of Internet connectivity as well as a slew of tools devoted to helping them get to where they're going in the most efficient way possible.

The car giant's new initiatives were unveiled as part of CEO Alan Mullaly's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show here. And while some of the technology Mulally and a series of subordinates discussed was part of Ford's previously announced and available Sync partnership with Microsoft, much was all-new.

Mulally began his talk by touting the fact that Ford is nearing 1 million Sync-equipped cars on the road. Then he set the tone for the keynote by explaining that the company's major technological goal for the near future of its vehicles is to load them with as much connectivity as possible, all in a bid to bridge the gap between drivers' homes and their ultimate destinations.

One surprise early in the address was the unexpected arrival on-stage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who gave his own keynote talk Wednesday evening here.

Ballmer was really just window dressing, though, for an hour-long advertisement for the latest elements of the Sync program and the ways Ford hopes to bring a never-offline state of existence to the owners of its vehicles.

Highlighting the Sync partnership between Ford and Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, joined Mulally on stage during the keynote. Click on image for more photos.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

"We are a car company," Mulally said, "but we are learning to act like an electronics company."

Connectivity was definitely the watch-word Thursday as each Ford executive to speak talked about a different piece of the puzzle that the company is working on to make sure its customers are always-on.

First up was Derrick Kuzak, Ford's group vice president for global product development. He explained that the company's goal is based on three things: beamed-in connectivity, such as from satellite; brought-in connectivity, such as from drivers' own cell phones; and built-in connectivity, such as dash displays.

And all together, Kuzak said, Ford wants to build a platform for drivers that emphasizes speed, scale and affordability.

Kuzak talked about one innovation the company has been working on at its Virtual Test Track Environment, or Virttex, called MyKey. This, he said, is a technology designed to promote safe driving habits for teenagers by allowing parents to program an ignition key to limit a car's top speed, as well as the volume of its sound system.

Another advance Ford is promising is the ability to synchronize applications from mobile devices like Apple's iPhone with the car. That would mean, apparently, being able to run applications like Pandora, via the iPhone, by using control buttons on the car's steering wheel. Similarly, it should be possible for drivers to get access and manipulate their Facebook or MySpace accounts using voice commands.

Later in the keynote, Jim Buczkowski, Ford's director of electrical and electronics systems engineering, explained how the company plans to incorporate human machine interfacing (HMI) into its cars. The first application of that, he said, would be something called SmartGauge.

So, for example, a driver of a Ford with this feature would find him or herself coached by the system on how to get maximum fuel efficiency out of their hybrid vehicle.

This, of course, is essentially hypermiling, but with an educational assist from the vehicle itself.

Buczkowski also unveiled a futuristic prototype of a car dash that is packed with smart digital features, as well as an avatar companion known as the Emotive Voice Activation (EVA) system.

EVA, Buczkowski explained, would allow drivers to speak voice commands and basically interact with the car, getting intelligent directions--including those between point A and B that are most fuel efficient--as well as recommendations for music appropriate for any given situation and much more.

Much of what was on display Thursday seemed like it wouldn't be ready any time soon. But on the other hand, it was a fascinating glimpse of what is surely just around the corner, not just for Fords but for all vehicles.

And it's interesting to see such advanced technology coming from a company that has seemed in other ways to be anything but ahead of the times.

Still, with a company as large as Ford, there is bound to be some cutting edge thinking, and it was definitely on display Thursday.

NASA said Thursday that it has tested a balloon that ultimately will be able to carry one ton of research equipment to more than 100,000 feet.

(Credit: NASA)

NASA said Thursday it has performed a test of a prototype super pressure balloon that could carry as much as a ton of research equipment to heights of 110,000 feet or more for up to 100 days.

The balloon, which was launched on December 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, is 7 million cubic feet and is said to be the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully sealed balloon ever flown. When the project--which NASA is conducting in coordination with the National Science Foundation--is completed, the space agency should have a 22 million cubic foot balloon to work with.

NASA said that long-duration high-altitude balloon missions are far more cost-effective than satellites and that a chief benefit is that the instruments used can be easily retrieved and re-used.

The test flight made it to an altitude of 111,000 feet and has been at or near that height for 11 days so far.

"The flight tested the durability and functionality of the scientific balloon's unique pumpkin-shaped design and novel material," NASA said in a statement. "The material is a special lightweight polyethylene film, about the thickness of ordinary plastic food wrap."

Editor's note: This is a transcript of a segment of 60 Minutes that aired Sunday. You can also view the video directly using the embedded player.

How often have you wondered what your spouse is really thinking? Or your boss? Or the guy sitting across from you on the bus? We all take as a given that we'll never really know for sure. The content of our thoughts is our own--private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. Until now, that is.

As correspondent Lesley Stahl reports, neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The technology that is transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. It makes it possible to see what's going on inside the brain while people are thinking.

"You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl.

He calls it "thought identification."

Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts.

They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about 10 objects--5 of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and 5 of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each.

"The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked.

"Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained.

He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places.

When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said.

"We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's...incredible, just incredible," he added.

"Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked.

"Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.

60 Minutes asked if his team was up for a challenge: would they take associate producer Meghan Frank, whose brain had never been scanned before, and see if the computer could identify her thoughts? Just and Mitchell agreed to give it a try and see if they could do it in almost real time.

Just said nobody had ever done an instant analysis like this.

Inside the scanner, Meghan was shown a series of ten items and asked to think for a few seconds about each one.

"If it all comes out right, when she's thinking 'hammer,' the computer will know she's thinking 'hammer'?" Stahl asked.

"Right," Mitchell replied.

Within minutes, the computer, unaware of what pictures Meghan had been shown and working only from her brain activity patterns as read out by the scanner, was ready to tell us, in its own voice, what it believed was the first object Meghan had been thinking about.

The computer correctly analyzed the first three words--knife, hammer, and window, and aced the rest as well.

According to Just, this is just the beginning.

"Who knows what you're gonna be able to read," Stahl commented. "A little scary, actually."

"Well, that's our research program for the next five years," Just said. "To see what, you know--we're not satisfied with "hammer."

And neither are neuroscientists 4,000 miles away in Berlin at the Bernstein Center. John Dylan-Haynes is hard at work there using the scanner not just to identify objects people are thinking about, but to read their intentions.

Subjects were asked to make a simple decision--whether to add or subtract two numbers they would be shown later on. Haynes found he could read directly from the activity in a small part of the brain that controls intentions what they had decided to do.

"This is a kind of blown-up version of the brain activity happening here. And you can see that if a person is planning to add or to subtract, the pattern of brain activity is different in these two cases," Haynes explained.

The future of crime-solving?
"I always tell my students that there is no science fiction anymore. All the science fiction I read in high school, we're doing," Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, told Stahl.

To Wolpe, the ability to read our thoughts and intentions this way is revolutionary. "Throughout history, we could never actually coerce someone to reveal information. Torture doesn't work that well, persuasion doesn't work that well. The right to keep one's thoughts locked up in their brain is amongst the most fundamental rights of being human."

"You're saying that if someone can read my intentions, we have to talk about who might in the future be able to do that?" Stahl asked.

"Absolutely," he replied. "Whether we're going to let the state do it or whether we're going to let me do it. I have two teenage daughters. I come home one day and my car is dented and both of them say they didn't do it. Am I going to be allowed to drag them off to the local brain imaging lie detection company and get them put in a scanner? We don't know."

But before we've even started the debate, there are two companies already offering lie detection services using brain scans, one with the catchy name "No Lie MRI." But our experts cautioned that the technique is still unproven.

In the meantime, Haynes is working on something he thinks may be even more effective: reading out from your brain exactly where you've been. Haynes showed Stahl an experiment he created out of a video game.

He had Stahl navigate through a series of rooms in different virtual reality houses.

"Now I would put you in a scanner and I would show you some of these scenes that you've seen and some scenes that you haven't seen," he told her.

Stahl recognized the bar. "And right at this moment, we would be able to tell from your brain activity that you've already seen this environment before," Haynes explained.

"And so, this is a potential tool...for the police...in the case of break-ins?" Stahl asked.

"You might be able to tell if someone's been in an al Qaeda training camp before," Haynes replied.

Haynes said while U.S. national security agencies had not been in touch with him, the Germans had.

"So there are people who are considering these kinds of possibilities," Stahl commented.

And some are using them. In India last summer, a woman was convicted of murder after an EEG of her brain allegedly revealed that she was familiar with the circumstances surrounding the poisoning of her ex-fiance.

"Can you through our legal system be forced to take one of these tests?" Stahl asked Paul Root Wolpe.

"It's a great question. And the legal system hasn't decided on this yet," he said.

"But we do have a Fifth Amendment. We don't have to incriminate ourselves," Stahl pointed out.

"Well here's where it gets very interesting, because the Fifth Amendment only prevents the courts from forcing us to testify against ourselves. But you can force me to give DNA or a hair sample or blood even if that would incriminate me. So here's the million dollar question: if you can brain image me and get information directly from my brain, is that testimony? Or is that like DNA, blood, semen, and other things that you could take from me?" Wolpe asked.

"There will be a Supreme Court case about this," he predicted.

For now, it's impossible to force someone to have his or her brain scanned, because the subject has to lie still and cooperate, but that could change.

"There are some other technologies that are being developed that may be able to be used covertly and even remotely. So, for example, they're trying to develop now a beam of light that would be projected onto your forehead. It would go a couple of millimeters into your frontal cortex, and then receptors would get the reflection of that light. And there's some studies that suggest that we could use that as a lie detection device," Wolpe said.

He said we wouldn't know if our brains were being scanned. "If you were sitting there in the airport and being questioned, they could beam that on your forehead without your knowledge. We can't do that yet, but they're working on it."

Scary as that is, imagine a world where companies could read our minds too.

Light beams may be a bit far off, but fMRI scanning is already being used to try to figure out what we want to buy and how to sell it to us. It's a new field called "neuromarketing." One of its pioneers is neuroscientist Gemma Calvert, co-founder of a London company called Neurosense.

Asked if she has a lot of clients, Calvert told Stahl, "Yes, such as Unilever, Intel, McDonald's, Proctor & Gamble, MTV or Viacom."

And she says it's a growing field. "What we've seen is a sort of snowballing effect over the last few years. I think there are about 92 neuromarketing agencies worldwide."

Proceed with caution
But some experts question whether it's ethical to scan the brain for commercial purposes, and say neuromarketers may be promising more than they can really deliver.

"If you image my brain, and you say, 'Ah-ha! Paul craves chocolate chip cookies,' and I say, 'No, I don't,' now are you going to believe the brain over me? You can only do that if you have proven that that part of the brain lighting up means in all cases that that person desires chocolate chip cookies. And what a lot of people are doing is they're just imaging the brain, and then they're declaring what that means, and they're never proving that it actually translates into behavior," Wolpe said.

"You know it's very interesting. When you show someone a brain scan, people just believe it. It just reeks of credibility," Stahl commented.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," John Dylan-Haynes agreed.

"And you telling me, 'That's the area where people add and subtract,' I thought, 'Well, of course. He knows,'" Stahl said.

"But I could have told you anything," he pointed out.

So as brain imaging continues to advance and find its way into the courts, the market, and who knows what other aspects of our lives, one message is: be cautious. Another is to get ready. Back at Carnegie Mellon, Just and Mitchell have already uncovered the signatures in our brains for kindness, hypocrisy, and love.

"It's breathtaking," Stahl said. "And kind of eerie."

"Well, you know, I think the reason people have that reaction is because it reveals the essence of what it means to be a person. All of those kinds of things that define us as human beings are brain patterns," Just replied.

"We don't wanna know that...it all boils down to, I don't know, molecules and things like that," Stahl said.

"But we are, you know, we are biological creatures. You know, our limbs we accept are, you know, muscles and bone. And our brain is a biological thinking machine," he replied.

"Do you think one day, who knows how far into the future, there'll be a machine that'll be able to read very complex thought like 'I hate so-and-so'? Or you know, 'I love the ballet because...'?" Stahl asked.

"Definitely. Definitely," Just said. "And not in 20 years. I think in three, five years."

"In three years?" Stahl asked.

"Well, five," Just replied with a smile.

Produced by Shari Finkelstein

This is an artist's rendition of Ares I in the assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center. Ares I is a two-stage rocket configuration topped by the Orion crew vehicle and its launch abort system. It is designed to carry crews of four to six astronauts and has a 25-ton payload capacity.

(Credit: NASA)

President-elect Barack Obama appears to be gearing up for a space race 2.0, this time with China.

Obama's transition team is considering doing away with some of the barriers that separate the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, according to Bloomberg.

Citing people who've discussed the idea with the Obama team, Bloomberg says they believe collaboration between the country's civilian space agency and the military's space program would speed up the time in which the U.S. is able to send people back to the moon.

The main--and very costly--goal is to build a rocket that can carry Orion, NASA's next-generation spacecraft, to the International Space Station, the moon, and further out into the solar system. NASA has planned to use its new Ares I rocket for that purpose. Last year, it completed preliminary design review for the Ares rocket, which is slated to launch for the first time in 2015.

But Obama would like to get Orion in the air before then. Getting a working rocket system up and running will be critical to getting the U.S. back to self-sufficiency with its space programs. As it stands now, the current space shuttle is scheduled to retire in 2010. So if Orion launches with Ares as planned in 2015, this leaves a five-year period of time in which the U.S. will have to pay Russia to fly astronauts to and from the ISS. And that's assuming Orion (and Ares) are delivered on time. If history is any indicator, delays are likely if not guaranteed. And with added demands for federal funds due to the recession, it's unclear where NASA and some of its programs stand.

Bloomberg's sources suggest the Obama team believes the Defense Department (which spent about $22 billion in the last fiscal year) can share some of its resources to give NASA a boost--and that they're even considering scrapping development of the Ares rocket entirely in favor of using the Pentagon's Atlas or Delta rockets, which are much further along in development.

Whatever they decide, the incoming administration is likely feeling some pressure from China, which plans to land a robotic rover on the moon in 2012, with a manned mission to follow a few years later.

I have proof from an expert that the iPhone interface really is better. Who's the expert? My 3-year-old son.

Over the years, I've seen countless newbies struggle to use the latest gadget, computer, or software. I like new technology, but it's been work hauling myself up learning curves.

But I'm convinced that after years stuck with only modest tweaks to the WIMP interface--windows, icons, menus, pointing device--real change is upon us. That's chiefly because the pointing devices now can be your own fingers.

Levi types random words on the iPhone's notepad application.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Within moments of his first crack at an iPhone, my son, Levi, had figured out how to flip from one photo to another by flicking his finger across the screen. He understood with no coaching how to steer the simulated steel ball around the holes in the Labyrinth game by tilting the phone. He loves to type nonsense words on the notepad application using the virtual keyboard, deleting them once they've been read. In the three months since I got the iPhone 3G, Levi has learned to take photos, browse them, change the phone's wallpaper, and, unfortunately, turn off Wi-Fi and switch on airplane mode.

My proudest moment came when Levi issued his first tweet, borrowing my account: "Eesfrrgjlphdvlksxnjjktwsdvnjmmkbvvnn." Though it was largely a matter of chance, of course, he could do it because he likes the cute bluebird icon of the Twitterific application, and touching it with his finger triggers entertaining interactions.

And I was intrigued when Levi tried unsuccessfully to use the phone's accelerometer to play JellyCar, trying to spur the car by tipping the iPhone so the car would "roll" downhill faster. Note to JellyCar developers: your user interface needs work.

Levi's first tweet

(Credit: CNET News)

As a parent, of course, it's tempting to assume that Levi's accomplishments are the result of his astounding intelligence. But of course much of the credit has to go to Apple and others who've advanced the state of the interface art.

"Human beings are a lot more programmed to manipulate things with our hands and fingers," said Dan Saffer, a founder of Kicker Studio and author of Designing Gestural Interfaces. "I was at a party with a Microsoft Surface table. There was an infant playing with it, not even a year old, pushing photos around and squealing. It's amazing how much it makes sophisticated computing power accessible to a hugely wide segment of the population."

Keyboards and mice aren't being replaced--they offer speed and precision for typing words, entering data, navigating documents, and issuing commands. But they are becoming just one of a host of mechanisms.

Touch screens, available on some Hewlett-Packard computers, are a big part of the revolution, letting people interact more directly rather than relying on a mouse, joystick, or other indirect pointing device. Multitouch sensors, which can detect multiple fingers simultaneously, add more sophistication, such as the ability to shrink a photo by making a pinching gesture on a trackpad. Newer Apple laptops offer more extensive use of multitouch, though at this stage only through the trackpad rather than a touch screen.

Levi took this picture of his feet with my iPhone while he was sitting in his car seat.

(Credit: Levi)

Computing devices also are getting ears and eyes. Speech recognition is available in rough form to power phone search on various phones with services from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Vlingo. FluidTunes lets you control your iTunes library by waving your hands in front of a Mac's video camera.

Intuitive, physical interfaces aren't just for kids. I was stunned to see my technophobic mother-in-law gleefully bowling with a Wii last year. Sure, she couldn't have installed Nintendo's still-popular gaming device if we'd paid her, but using it was as easy as tossing a pebble in a pond.

"There are Wii bowling tournaments now for elders. It takes a sport they love, but there's no weight of the ball anymore. They can play it in a wheelchair. It's a huge hit at nursing homes," Saffer said.

It's not just that devices are easier to use when you can touch the interface, he said. It's that it's easier to learn by watching others use them.

"One interesting thing about touch screens is there's this whole realm of observation you don't have with standard computer setups, where the icons are smaller, and it's hard to tell what people are doing by watching," he said. "You can learn how to use an iPhone by watching people flip through it for a second. You can get it in a way you can't with a standard phone, where you're watching people push buttons to get through menus."

Of course, immersion helps, too. Levi's parents spend altogether too much time punching at keyboards and staring at screens, so he's got plenty of examples to emulate his elders. As a camera buff, I'm delighted when Levi pretends to take pictures--he made a toy camera out of Lego once.

A view of Microsoft's Surface device at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel shows a list of entertainment options for hotel guests.

(Credit: Stefanie Olsen/CNET News)

But I vacillate between pleasure that he's learning how to use technology and fear that he'll grow up ignorant of the non-electronic world. I'm prone to inordinate "screen time," a term heavily freighted with negative baggage in our household, and Levi's childhood will be far more digitally immersed than mine.

And perhaps worse, there's the prospect of losing my status as resident guru. There are plenty of more technically proficient people in my orbit, but none of them live in my house, and Levi doesn't ask any of them to read his typed nonsense words.

Most families come to some sort of reckoning when their son beats their dad in basketball. Ours will come when my wife asks Levi for technical support.

So this is Christmas. A time that we all take our gifts for granted. iPods, laptops, Wiis and other manifestations of our comfortably numb self-indulgence.

While Josh Silver, a retired physics professor from Oxford University, tries to find a way for the world's poor to see as clearly as the most screen-glued nerd.

Professor Silver's invention is so simple that you wonder why no one has thought of it before. He knows that poor people don't exactly have an optometrist on their doorstep or within their means. So he invented glasses with lenses that the wearer can adjust for his or herself. And he wants to find ways to give these glasses to the world's poor.

Professor Silver believes that half the world's humans needs their sight adjusted. So he created glasses that have plastic lenses, filled with clear liquid in sacs. Each of these sacs connects to a syringe housed in each arm of the glasses.

The syringe injects more fluid into the sacs--making them 'fatter' and therefore stronger--or sucks some out, until the wearer is happy with the visual effect. A subsequent couple of twists of a screw and the removal of the syringe delivers perfect sight without the need for health insurance or the slightly fishy breath of your local eye expert.

Some 30,000 of the Silver Glasses have been given out in 15 countries. But Silver is something of an ambitious man. He wants to find a way to get his remarkable invention onto 1 billion heads by 2020.

(Credit: CC Kalandrakas)

He's still working on the design, as currently the glasses resemble Woody Allen's rather sexless pair re-imagined by a Baroque artist.

However, their impact is already being felt by those to whom it matters most.

Major Kevin White, a former US humanitarian worker, discovered the Silver Glasses on Google and began to distribute them. He told The Guardian newspaper that the reaction was utterly moving: "People put them on and smile. They all say 'Look, I can read those tiny letters.'"

As you read these tiny letters, imagine Silver's insight that led to his ambition. While we Twitter away our lives, his imagination was captured by the thought of giving the simple gift of vision to so many who could only previously imagine what it might feel like.

One day, these people might be able to play with the software and hardware (donated by foundations, of course) that so many others will expect to find beneath their Christmas trees this year. One day, these people might be able to navigate their way around malware.

But without eyewear, their world is but a blur and many of their ambitions are merely blind.

Much good effort is put behind donating computers and other electronic wizardry to poorer countries. But without Silver's ingeniousness the inventions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are just apples beyond reach and windows looking out to nowhere.

While we might sit around our plasmas this Christmas sniffling at It's a Wonderful Life, one tenacious physicist will be actually trying to give people a wonderful life.

There may finally be a compromise between the world of ever-shrinking electronic devices and our ever-expanding fingers.

A prototype device called the NanoTouch features a 2.4-inch screen and a touch-sensitive pad of the same size on the back, according to a video demonstration on NewScientist.

Using the touch pad on the back, users can manipulate icons on the screen in front without obscuring the target with their fingers, creating an experience resembling transparency.

Researchers say tests showed that targets as small as seven-tenths of an inch wide were easy to select using the NanoTouch. Targets on conventional touch screens are typically at least twice that size.

The NanoTouch is intended to demonstrate an evolving technology that focuses on making user interfaces practical on small devices. Developed by Microsoft Research and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, the technology is expected to be unveiled in April at the Computer/Human Interaction conference in Boston.

The space shuttle Discovery touching down at Kennedy Space Center on June 14, 2008. NASA now says it is going to solicit proposals for how to display the shuttles once the program ends in 2010.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Want your very own authentic space shuttle?

Well, if you're part of the community of "educational institutions, science museums and other appropriate organizations," NASA just might have something for you after the shuttle program ends in 2010.

On Wednesday, the space agency issued a request for information (RFI) soliciting ideas for what to do with the shuttle orbiters and main engines once the program ends.

Sponsored by NASA's Office of Infrastructure, the RFI seeks input from appropriate officials and decision makers from museums, science centers, institutions, and other organizations dedicated to education or educational outreach with experience in public display of space hardware and nationally-recognized historical artifacts," NASA said in a release. NASA will use information gained from this RFI to develop strategies for eventual placement of two space shuttle orbiters and a minimum of six unassembled space shuttle main engine display "kits."

The agency said the purpose of the initiative is to decide whether institutions or other members of the community have the appropriate wherewithal to display a shuttle or engines, including the ability to fund such efforts.

Interested applicants have until March 17, 2009 to respond.

It's probably safe to say, however, that NASA doesn't intend for the recipients of the shuttles to fly them, and as such, probably won't be providing astronauts with the delivery of the spacecraft.

Step aside, keyboards, laptops, and 9-to-5 jobs. A survey of more than 1,000 Internet activists, journalists, and technologists released Sunday speculates that by 2012, those quaint relics of 20th century life will fade away.

It's not a formal survey of the sort that, say, political pollsters use. Nor are computer journalists especially known for their prognosticative abilities. Still, the Pew Internet and American Life Project hopes the effort will provide a glimpse of the best current thinking about how online life will evolve in the next decade or so.

Lee Rainie and the other Pew researchers asked their survey respondents to respond to a series of questions about 2020 future scenarios, including whether the mobile phone will be the "primary" Internet connection (most agreed), whether copy protection will flourish (most disagreed), and whether transparency "heightens individual integrity and forgiveness (evenly split).

The rough consensus was that "few lines divide professional time from personal time," and that professionals are happy with the way work and play are "seamlessly integrated in most of these workers' lives."

Another, which also met with broad agreement: "Talk and touch are common technology interfaces. People have adjusted to hearing individuals dictating information in public to their computing devices. In addition 'haptic' technologies based on touch feedback have been fully developed, so, for instance, a small handheld Internet appliance allows you to display and use a full-size virtual keyboard on any flat surface for those moments when you would prefer not to talk aloud to your networked computer."

One respondent was Google chief economist Hal Varian, who said: "The big problem with the cell phone is the (user interface), particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough."

It's easier to read the report itself, which you can find here (PDF). This is Pew's third report in the series; further reading can be found in its 2005 first survey (PDF) and 2006 second survey (PDF).

On July 8, 2007, Boeing officially unveiled its 787 Dreamliner, an event that was largely symbolic, since the date corresponded to the plane's name: 7-8-7. But on Thursday, Boeing said that the plane won't make its first flight until at least the second quarter of 2009.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but on Thursday Boeing announced revised first flight and first delivery dates for its long-awaited and much-anticipated, but also troubled 787 Dreamliner.

The aviation giant said it now expects the first 787 flight during the second quarter of 2009, and the delivery of the first Dreamliner in the first quarter of 2010.

Prior to Thursday's announcement, Boeing had said the first flight would be in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first delivery in the third quarter of 2009. But even those dates differed from what Boeing had predicted on July 8, 2007 (07/08/07) when it suggested at the roll-out event for the 787 that the first flight would be in August or September of 2007 and the first commercial passengers in May of 2008.

In its announcement, Boeing pinned the blame for the latest 787 delays on a machinists strike that shut the program down from early September to November of this year.

Now, the company says it is trying to figure out how the latest delays will affect its delivery plan, and what the financial impact will be.

But one thing is clear: Boeing needs to get the 787 program on its feet and up in the air, to mix metaphors. Yet, while the program has had its share of delays, there was recently a sign that at the very least, it is a fundamentally sound project: an intended-to-be-secret dossier recently put together by Boeing's archrival Airbus about the 787 Dreamliner seemed to indicate that the program was solid.

"(T)ake a look at the document," wrote aviation blogger Jon Ostrower on Flightblogger. Nowhere does it say that the program isn't going to work or that the plane isn't going to fly. At the end of the day, the report is a vindication of the program."

Now, Boeing just needs to follow through on that promise. The world is watching.