Phoneblocks

THE PROBLEM
A phone only lasts a couple of years before it breaks or becomes obsolete. Although it's often just one part that killed it, we throw everything away because it's almost impossible to repair or upgrade.

DESIGNED TO LAST
Phoneblok is made of detachable bloks. The bloks are connected to the base which locks everything together into a solid phone. If a blok breaks you can easily replace it; if it's getting old just upgrade.


BLOKSTORE
It's like an app store for hardware. In the store you buy your bloks, read reviews and sell old bloks. Small and big companies develop and sell their bloks. You can buy a pre-assembled phone or assemble it yourself by selecting the brands you want to support. The choice is yours.


MAKE IT YOUR PHONE

OTHER DEVICES
The platform can be adapted into other sizes to create new devices like tablets, cameras etc.

ACCESSORIES
Keeping your phone also means you can keep your accessories. No new docks, covers or cables.

SUBSCRIPTIONS
Get a subscription so you don't get outdated. Receive a new blok every now and then to stay updated. Install it and send back the old one.

YOU CHOOSE
Looking for a camera blok? Choose the brand you like. Prefer the sharp Nikon, the fast Canon or support a startup company? The choice is yours.

MADE BY THE USERS
Bloks can be developed for specific needs. Solar powered batteries, sensitive screen for blind people, lightweight for travelers etc.

SUPPORT
We need your voice to show the world there is a need for this phone. Join our thunderclap and let's start a revolution.

JOIN THE THUNDERCLAP

Frequently Asked Questions

What is thunderclap?
A crowd-speaking platform. People can join together and let their voices be heard. This video explains it all. It's pretty cool.

Who made this?
I did, Dave Hakkens. Everything, from idea, prototype, website, video to logo, except for the great British voice that's done by my friend Matt and tech help from Gawin.

Why did you make this?
The market of electronic devices is growing rapidly, but it feels like we are building disposable stuff. Every time we make something new we completely throw away the old one. Imagine all the good displays, bluetooths and speakers we have thrown away. I love the connected world that we live in and it's time to set up a universal modular platform that companies work on together.

When is it ready?
Totally depends if companies think there is a market for it, so the more people that are interested the sooner companies start working on it.

Why don't you crowdfund it?
Raising money wouldn't bring it further, setting up this platform is too big for one company. We need to gather partners to work together with us.

Can I help more?
After you've joined the thunderclap, shared it with your friends and followed us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, there isn't much more to do other than promoting your arse off.

Is it profitable?
Easily. The blokstore is set up just like an appstore for hardware. Third party companies can develop and build their bloks for the platform. In the blokstore they are sold and the money is divided between the companies and phonebloks.

Copyright?
No, if you want to set up this platform please do, the sooner the better. Would appreciate it if you would keep us updated though, we might have some ideas for it!

Can I stay updated?

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for the latest updates.

Press
Please send your press requests to press@phonebloks.com, we have press releases and high-resolution images available!

Contact
Drop us an email at hello@phonebloks.com or connect with Twitter, Facebook and Google+.




Visit http://www.phonebloks.com for more information.

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ORIGINAL: Phoneblocks

Engineers solve a biological mystery and boost artificial intelligence

ORIGINAL: Science Blog

By simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers have discovered why biological networks tend to be organized as modules – a finding that will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity. (Proceedings of the Royal Society, Jan. 30, 2013.)

The new insight also will help evolve artificial intelligence, so robot brains can acquire the grace and cunning of animals. From brains to gene regulatory networks, many biological entities are organized into modules – dense clusters of interconnected parts within a complex network. For decades biologists have wanted to know why humans, bacteria and other organisms evolved in a modular fashion. Like engineers, nature builds things modularly by building and combining distinct parts, but that does not explain how such modularity evolved in the first place. Renowned biologists Richard Dawkins, Günter P. Wagner, and the late Stephen Jay Gould identified the question of modularity as central to the debate over “the evolution of complexity.”

For years, the prevailing assumption was simply that modules evolved because entities that were modular could respond to change more quickly, and therefore had an adaptive advantage over their non-modular competitors. But that may not be enough to explain the origin of the phenomena.

The team discovered that evolution produces modules not because they produce more adaptable designs, but because modular designs have fewer and shorter network connections, which are costly to build and maintain. As it turned out, it was enough to include a “cost of wiring” to make evolution favor modular architectures.

Fig. 1. Main hypothesis. Evolving networks with selection for performance alone produces non-modular networks that are slow to adapt to new environments. Adding a selective pressure to minimize connection costs leads to the evolution of modular networks that quickly adapt to new environments. Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.2743

This theory is detailed in “The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity,” published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society by Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; Jean-Baptiste Mouret, a robotics and computer science professor at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris; and by Jeff Clune, a former visiting scientist at Cornell and currently an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Wyoming.

To test the theory, the researchers simulated the evolution of networks with and without a cost for network connections.

“Once you add a cost for network connections, modules immediately appear. Without a cost, modules never form. The effect is quite dramatic,” says Clune.

The results may help explain the near-universal presence of modularity in biological networks as diverse as neural networks – such as animal brains – and vascular networks, gene regulatory networks, protein-protein interaction networks, metabolic networks and even human-constructed networks such as the Internet.

“Being able to evolve modularity will let us create more complex, sophisticated computational brains,” says Clune.

Says Lipson: “We’ve had various attempts to try to crack the modularity question in lots of different ways. This one by far is the simplest and most elegant.”