One of the most amazing and unexpected experiences I had at the TED conference a couple weeks ago was getting to do one of Gage’s experiments myself. I tracked him down after reading that he was one of 25 invited TED fellows, and before I knew it, I was in a random hallway in the bowels of the convention center, wrestling a squirmy cockroach into my own experiment.

First, Gage had me anesthetize a cockroach by dousing it in a glass of ice water, then sever one of its legs (they grow back), plug in a couple of electrodes, and then listen and watch neurons through an app on his iPad.

There’s actually a really great video of this same experiment, taken from when Gage performed it for an audience of kids. TED just released it today, as part of its new education initiative.

In the video, Gage shows how the living neurons in the cockroach leg can be pulsed with bass from music, and then brings out a live beatboxer on stage to show the cockroach leg dancing to the beat. Read that last sentence again, or just watch the video. It’s pretty crazy.

What’s wackier than a dancing severed limb? A cyborg cockroach. The next product from Gage’s neuroscience education company, Backyard Brains, helps kids surgically attach to a cockroach’s back an electronic pack that can be remote controlled. Then, sending a stimulus to either the right or left antenna nerve prompts the cockroach to turn in that direction. More on that here.

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Here is a very cool — if slightly creepy — video that debuted at the Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco.

Made by the Paris-based Quantic Dream, developers of the groundbreaking Heavy Rain game, the “Kara” concept video is a look at the future of gaming, using full-body motion capture and a new computer-graphics engine. It is running in real time on Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform.

Mostly, it is just heartbreaking, as a robot comes to life and is quickly scared by the idea of how precious that can be.

Enjoy:

Memo to all Cyborg Geeks:

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology….We can make him better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.”

Wait, that’s “The Six Million Dollar Man” motto!

But it might as well apply to the entertainment outfit that owns the “Terminator” movie franchise.

Today, according to blogger Nikke Finke of Deadline Hollywood, the Halcyon Holding Group, after recently filing for Chapter 11 protection, has hired FTI Capital Advisors “to evaluate strategic alternatives for the company.”

In other words: Selling off Skynet!

Halcyon, which made the most recent “Terminator Salvation” film and “owns the first-look rights to the works of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick,” has been fighting with a hedge fund that gave it money to buy the famous series that takes a very bleak view of the future.

Almost as bleak as that of Halcyon if it doesn’t come up with a plan to bring me my annual dose of cybernetic organisms, which is–of course!–living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.

It better be back.

Here’s the original trailer for the very first “Terminator” movie, which pretty much rocks:

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

Big, giant and prolonged sigh–as well as a cranky-old-lady shake of the fist–to our distant cousins over at the Fox television network, who dinged BoomTown’s favorite sci-fi show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” today.

I am officially in a Summer Glau funk, with major gadget withdrawal.

After much fake agonizing over the fate of “Sarah Connor,” Fox programmers finally stuck a fork in the series after two seasons. Loosely based on the movie franchise, the show garnered a passionate fan base online and off, but not enough to merit being renewed.

It’s ironic since the latest film in the cyborg-versus-man epic, “Terminator Salvation,” will open this Thursday.

It is the next blockbuster in a tech-heavy summer movie season, following the boffo reception that the new “Star Trek” has gotten (next up: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”).

But the arrival of “Terminator Salvation,” with its noisy, Armageddon-is-nigh theme, could not save the more thoughtfully dark “Sarah Connor.”

Thank goodness, then, for YouTube and a very pissed-off and half-naked young actor named Thomas Dekker, who plays a teenage savior of humanity, John Connor, in the TV series.

In this perfect online video clip he did himself, the real-life (and very wild-eyed) Dekker calls Fox’s viewer comment line to express his support for the show in no uncertain terms:

Full disclosure: News Corp. (NWS) owns Fox, as well as Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.

With bootleg copies ripped on the Internet or not and with an $87 million opening weekend for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” it looks like the nerdiest summer movie season ever is off the races.

Hollywood, caught in the digital maelstrom, certainly is fine and dandy making bank by co-opting all the techie themes, gadgets and special effects, with a slate of movies over the next months that are like catnip to geeks of all kinds.

Including BoomTown, for example, which plans to fork over a lot of dough to pay for all the techtastic entertainment that those old media moguls can dish out before they collapse.

Here’s the roster and video trailers of key movies this summer:

Star Trek, May 8

It looks sassy enough with a hot, young cast in what is, like “Wolverine,” a prequel from when the crew of the Starship Enterprise were mere pups.

But one funny quibble comes from a post on the Mania.com blog called “10 Reasons to be Worried About ‘Star Trek’”:

“The New Bridge Looks Like an Apple Store: I love my iPod, but all the Apple Stores I’ve visited are located in the 21st century, not the 23rd. Made of frosted plastic shades and lawn furniture borrowed from the local Pinkberry, the bridge looks built to handle scenes of Kirk negotiating a kegger with the Vulcans more than the sparking explosions and flying bodies of the original.

One can imagine Kirk, trying to sweet-talk his latest alien conquest, and the bridge’s iTunes shuffle mode kicks in.”

Angels & Demons, May 15

Mathematical formulas, hidden puzzles to figure out the path of light through Rome, antimatter, Galileo?

Oh, I am there, except for Tom Hanks’s (playing Robert Langdon) shorter but nonetheless unfortunate haircut from “The Da Vinci Code.”

That and all the glaring but entertaining inaccuracies about science, religion and art from author Dan Brown. As if, I care.

Terminator Salvation, May 21

I am still in mourning over life without Summer Glau, given that the television show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” might be canceled after lackluster ratings in its second season.

I will have to trade that superb show for the grumpy grumbles of Christan Bale as John Connor in this fourth outing of the killer-cyborgs-from-the-future series of movies.

This one is set in the post-Judgment Day time, so it will have a lot of dusty, oily fighting with machines and grim grimaces about the dire situation (which, to be fair, bites).

Still, as always with my beloved “Terminator” movies, I’ll be baaaaaack.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, June 24

More machines noisily battling it out while humans get stomped. Sometimes, I think these movies have been thought up by people who hate their cellphones.

Still, the first “Transformers” was funny about all the tech, and this one looks like it could be amusing too.

Also, given that I have two young boys, I have played with a lot of Transformer toys since the last movie came out and they really are cool.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, July 15

I. Love. Harry. Potter.

I cannot control this fact and I am a wee bit perturbed by it.

But it is so, especially with all the creepy special effects that seem to get super-creepy in this sixth outing.

These movies just have gotten better and better, as have the young actors who play the main parts, so it’s hard to imagine it not being completely excellent.

Also, the whole pensieve thing rocks. The whole Dumbledore thing, not so much.

[PhotoShopped "Star Trek" publicity still courtesy of Mania.com]

After posting the hot new trailer for the fourth in the cyborg series, “Terminator Salvation,” yesterday, someone pointed out BoomTown was remiss in not including the one for the new “Star Trek” movie.

No longer!

“Star Trek” is out in May and will look at the early lives of James Tiberius Kirk and his sidekick and Vulcan-phenom, Spock, along with the rest of the future crew of the Starship Enterprise.

It’s directed by J.J. Abrams and looks really good, with the best opening I have seen in a trailer thus far.

Here it is: