The weirdest tech stories of 2014 – Part 2

There’s never a shortage of weird stories in the high-tech world, there is everything from drug-smuggling drones to real holograms! With the year almost over, let’s take a look at some of the stories that have caused most people a double take so far in 2014!

Drug-smuggling drone

Probably the most widespread tech topic in 2014 was drones! They made news throughout the year, but in July, people at the maximum security Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina reported on a new drone development. It seems someone attempted to fly a small drone loaded with contraband (marijuana, tobacco and mobile phones) over the walls and into the prison yard! The genius scheme didn't work though, because the drone crashed short of the prison walls.

Internet telepathy
Another strange trend in 2014 involved news stories about an emerging kind of online telepathy, really. In November researchers at the University of Washington sent direct brain-to-brain transmissions over the internet and amazingly one test subject was able to move the hand of another, just by thinking about it!

There was a similar study in August, scientists from several different countries employed internet-linked neural devices to try and broadcast one person’s thoughts to other people around the world. The single word thoughts (like “hola” and “ciao”) were detected by electroencephalogram units (electrical activity along the scalp) and translated in binary code, then they were reassembled in the other person’s brain by way of transcranial magnetic stimulation technology (a non-invasive technique that can induce increases or decreases in excitability of large populations of neurons in deep areas of the brain.)

Google Glass brainwave control
The MindRDR system uses Google Glass plus a commercially available EEG (Electroencephalography) headset to let users take pictures and post social media – using brainwaves! The dermal patch on the Google Glass headset can be positioned to detect when you’re concentrating hard on something particular in your field of view. When the indicator reaches a threshold, MindRDR snaps a pic via Google camera and uploads it automatically to whatever online destination you choose! In July the news broke about MindRDR, people observed that the effect is definitely telekinetic!

Real holograms
This story is more on the nerdy side of things, the movie Star Wars featured one of the most iconic images in all of science fiction: R2-D2 projecting a free-floating hologram of Princess Leia. Hope for actual free-floating holograms has decreased in the years since – the technology is further away than we may have thought, or maybe not. In June there was a funded project to create a hologram projector chip small enough to fit into a smartphone. The report even featured video evidence – a short clip of the technology generating a 3D hologram of floating dice!

The year 2014 was full of odd, weird and wacky tech stories, and as the year comes to an end its entertaining to be able to look back and escape the stress of it all in 2014!

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Written By: Christine Romans
Copy Writer at The Computer Guyz Cape Town