Disordered Cogitations

Following on the theme of bionics, my friend Mandy pointed me to Stelarc, a performance artist who specializes in machine control of the human body. In one case, he connected his arm electronically to the internet and let the web control its movement. He has also had a cell-cultured ear implanted on his arm.

Bionics, or Body Hacking

2009-02-11T18:26:00.003-05:00

Human performance augmentation (bionics) was one of the themes at the TED conference last week. I recently listened to a podcast of Tim O'Reilly's eTech2008 keynote speech. He mentioned Quinn Norton and her I Sing the Body Electric talk about body hacking. Brain augmentation is going to be significant over the next few years. Combining these two with ambient computing is a path to the singularity.

TED Overview

2009-02-11T18:18:00.006-05:00

I went to TED last week. See my Flickr set.

I was impressed at how upbeat, optimistic, and energized this conference was. There was general and specific recognition of the current recession, but a general feeling was that innovation and entrepreneurship are the solution. TED was about innovation and entrepreneurship, and thus TED sees itself as leading the country back to better days. These are people of genuine good will, of superior vision, and ample means to make things happen.

I was also struck by some trends across a number of talks. Robotics: surgical robots, artistic robots, military robots, brain science robots, animal robots. In all, I believe there were seven talks that were in whole or in part about robots. This is a trend well worth investigating.

Another trend was human performance. There were several talks about bionics or “smart” prosethics that don’t just bring the disabled back to normal, but give superior abilities to “normal” humans. Bio-engineering is closely related. Not just in growing replacement tissue, but in creating new human tissues that have never existed before. In essence, creating new human DNA for superior performance. Together these two disciplines have tremendous implications for how we will work in the near future.

I have a sense that some of these trends are on a logrithmic growth trajectory. That is the impact seems very small now, but when it takes off, it will engulf us. People and organizations that can hop on to these growth curves ahead of others with have tremendous advantages over their competitors.

OK, It REALLY begins

2008-10-14T10:10:00.006-05:00

Parallel Kingdom is a geo-located mixed-reality warcraft-like game. See the videos.

Social Software Map

2008-07-23T13:46:00.000-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredcavazza/2564571564/sizes/o/

Designing Interactions

2008-01-31T07:22:00.000-05:00

Just listened to an iTunesU lecture given by Bill Moggridge, of IDEO, to the Human-Computer Interaction Seminar at Stanford. He talked about his book, Designing Interactions. Three models he talks about are:

"Enthusiast - Professional - Consumer"
"Manipulation - Locomotion - Conversation"
"Feel - Do - Know"

CES Summary

2008-01-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick video overview I made of CES.

Now, just which singularity are we talking about?

2007-12-19T21:37:00.000-05:00

Eliezer Yudkowsky gave a great overview of the three competing theories of technological singularity at the 2007 Singularity Summit.

Five Scraps of Paper

2007-12-17T18:37:00.000-05:00

Here are five suggestions, made to me by my friends, which I have carried around on slips of paper for a couple of months. I put them here just to remember them.

SwapDrive - for sharing files over the internet
Google Webmaster Tools - just what you think
HandBrake - for converting my home movie DVDs to my iPod to show my mom
Bones - get the complete first season DVDs
The Third Man - watch it before going to Vienna

Now I just need to find time to do something with this list!

Into the Virtual Blue Yonder

2007-12-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

My friend, Bob, pointed me to a book I am putting on my reading list:

Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality

by Edward Castronova

Larry Lessig at TED

2007-11-10T21:16:00.000-05:00

I just watched Larry Lessig's TED talk. WOW! Not only was the content of his talk brilliant, his use of historical analogy was stunning, and the presentation slides were pure genius. It was a masterful production. I am going to practice his style in my next presentation.

Don't let the Bozos Grind you Down

2007-11-08T07:38:00.000-05:00

Guy Kawasaki, in a talk to O'Reilly's 2007 MySQL Confernece, entitled The Art of Innovation, lists 9 rules of Innovation.

Jump to the next curve.
Don't worry, be crappy.
Churn, baby, churn.
Don't be afraid to polarize people.
Break down the barriers.
“Let a hundred flowers blossom.”
Think digital, act analog.
Never ask people to do what you wouldn't do.
Don't let the bozos grind you down.

Mapping Life

2007-11-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

Juan Enriques in his 13 October SALT talk (summary, mp3) made an interesting comparison between agriculture and energy. It used to be that in agriculture we threw bigger machines (tractors, combines, etc.) and chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers) at the little plant. Then in the 1960's we changed the plant itself -- the green revolution. By changing the plant itself, we solved the food problem we could never solve by throwing more machines and chemical at the plant.

Now consider hydrocarbon fuels (coal, oil). We are currently throwing more machines at them (digging deeper, oil extraction from shale, etc.). But what if we could change the coal itself? Could we make a bacteria that eats coal or oil and excretes natural gas? Just let them loose in a coal mine or oil shale and harvest the natural gas. Or could we genetically engineer the bacteria in the ocean that absorb carbon out of the air to also absorb hydrogen out of the water and produce hydrocarbons for us? We could build power generation plants that run off of air and water and a domesticated bacteria.

Everything is Misc/Links are Enough Video

2007-10-18T07:44:00.001-05:00

Dave pointed me to a new video that makes the point of hyperlinking and tagging solves the misc problem.

Video Mashup at Different Scales

2007-10-18T07:15:00.000-05:00

Bruce pointed me to this:

Storage is our Past, Present, and Future

2007-10-18T06:46:00.001-05:00

Jonathan has an interesting piece on the value of past data in the present, and how we need to preserve the present so the future has a rich past upon which to draw. He makes two points.

Analog films from the past, when digitally remastered to DVD in the present, give the viewer a higher quality viewing experience than the original viewers experienced.
The production of a digital full-length movie in the present requires 1 Pedabyte of storage

Future rendering systems will increase the quality of the present data, so we will naturally want to store all of our data for future exploitation.

This will be true not just for the film industry, but for all sectors. For example, the current value to present genealogists of a 17th century parish register of births, marriages, and deaths, far exceeds the value of the register to the priest who recorded the data.

Seeing Magnetic Lines

2007-10-15T12:41:00.000-05:00

National Geographic reports that bird migrate by looking at the earth's magnetic field lines.

Scientists already suspected birds' eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth's magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.

Thinking Second Life into Action

2007-10-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

BoingBoing points to Keio University research that allows a person to operate second life, just by thinking about it.

IWB on Social Robots

2007-09-25T15:14:00.000-05:00

Irving has an interesting post on robots in virtual social networks. He sez:

The Huggable is a robotic communication avatar designed for social interactions, education, healthcare and other applications. It is essentially a very cute teddy bear, with a sensitive skin, embedded "intelligence" (i.e., hardware and software), wireless communications and the ability to see, hear, speak, touch and move. But what I find so compelling about The Huggable is that it can operate as an autonomous personal robot and as a semi-autonomous robotic avatar that is part of a human social network, providing a much richer set of interactions to the members of the network than is possible using PCs and similar devices.

There is a lot of activity in intelligent, autonomous, mobile robots for entertainment, education, protection and many other applications. Applications range from helping doctors and nurses perform their duties better (even remotely), to providing assistance to the elderly for improved mobility and strength (e.g., vacuuming, helping in getting out of bed, even companionship). Aging populations around the world are a big driver of personal robot products and applications.

The concept of semi-autonomous robots integrated into a social network is new, at least for me. But once you start thinking about potential applications, many come to mind, in areas as diverse as family communications, healthcare, education and entertainment.
For example, imagine faraway grandparents being able to interact with their young grandchildren who are holding and playing with The Huggable. You can talk, read stories and sing to them. You can (virtually) hug them. You can watch and listen to their reactions as well as sense the way they hold and touch the teddy-bear-like device. Imagine a similar scenario with soldiers stationed around the world, being able to interact with their young children in a far richer, more emotional and satisfying way than a phone conversation. Or imagine the help it could provide children not getting enough nurturing and stimulation from their parents, by enabling family members, professionals or volunteers to get involved in their care.

Virtual World News

2007-09-25T07:49:00.000-05:00

3PointD has two interesting postings. The first discusses the virtual Vietnam War Memorial in Second Life and the second speculates on the Google Earth virtual world.

Bin Laden Word Cloud

2007-09-24T06:36:00.000-05:00

Dave pointed me to a interesting ManyEyes visualization of Bin Laden's recent speech.

I registered and uploaded the Gutenberg.org Alice in Wonderland. Guess which words are most frequent before clicking. . . here or here.

Here is some population data to play with from the Census Bureau.

Fight for Kisses

2007-09-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

Doc pointed me to a very clever Wilkinson advertisement using avatars for actors. I understand that creating advertisements in virtual worlds is much less expensive than hiring a sound stage and actors. Virtuality is beginning to become mainstream. Video courtesy of DailyMotion.

Fight for Kisses
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