July 20, 2008 by sean.

I have finally gotten around to reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. It’s truly brilliant and here is a taste from the supporting blog [which unfortunately seemed to run out of steam in May]:

Most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum. Because of this personal address , it makes no more sense to label this content than it would to call a phone call with your mother “family-generated content.” A good deal of user-generated content isn’t actually “content” at all, at least not in the sense of material designed for an audience. Instead, a lot of it is just part of a conversation. Mainstream media has often missed this, because they are used to thinking of any group of people as an audience.

Posted in collective intelligence, mobile computing, social networks | No Comments »

July 20, 2008 by sean.

“iTunes allows researchers (radiologists) to save, sort and search personal learning files -augmented intelligence” [via SmartEconomy].

Posted in science, augmented cognition | No Comments »

June 29, 2008 by sean.

Yet another sign that the bionic brain will be in the cloud [via 43 Folders]:

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

Posted in software, augmented cognition, mobile computing | No Comments »

June 24, 2008 by sean.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web [via Technology Review]:
Director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Web; Cambridge, MA

“I would like to see the Internet reach people in rural areas and help alleviate poverty. I would like to see more people reaching the Web from devices big and small, fixed and mobile. I look forward to more voice technology–in hands-busy scenarios such as driving, and also to increase accessibility (e.g., for people with low vision). The long tail of video on the Web is creating a new market of direct access to independent films and also has the potential to help with literacy issues. I hope for the proliferation of Linked Open Data: the Semantic Web ‘done right.’ I hope that governments will open their data stores to all citizens. A mashup sphere will feast on a wealth of Semantic Web data and herald the next wave of progress and creativity on the Web.”

Posted in pervasive computing, mobile computing | No Comments »

June 22, 2008 by sean.

1) What technology advances should small businesses and individual households be taking advantage of and what is the payback to them?

Twenty years ago, there was a lot of hype about Virtual Reality where you could put on a helmet and gloves to “jack in” to cyberspace and navigate virtual worlds. All of that seems quaint if not silly now in a world where always-on access to the internet is taken for granted, especially by people under 40.

High-speed internet and free wifi will increasingly become entry-level requirements to just play in the retail game [unless your core value proposition is to provide a technology-free retreat from the digital world]. Employees will seek options to work from anywhere [not just from home] and commitments to careers within a small business will likely be tenuous given the increasing range of options available. Employers will need to explore options such as eLance [think eBay for contractors] where other companies [including many outside the US] bid for work while displaying satisfaction ratings by employers and even the earnings from previous contracts.

2) How will technology shape small businesses and households five to ten years into the future?

The next five to ten years are arguably headed in the direction of “EOD” [Everything On Demand]. Want to watch your favorite television show? Hit a button and start now. Want a tailored suit with your own custom pattern? Sure, as long as I can take it home today. Want a great meal? Let me order it and have it ready when I hit the door [and don’t expect me to wait to be seated]. Oh, and let me do all of this connected to your free wifi hotspot from my mobile device!

As consumer demands expand and patience approaches zero, many people are willing to pay a premium to minimize any fuss with payments, forms and security [witness the success of the Clear program where people pay $128 a year to avoid those airport checkpoints]. Alternative methods of payment such as PayPal, eBilMe, Bill Me Later and Revolution Money Exchange are paving the way for customers paying in a ways that best suite their needs.

3) What technology trends keep you up at night that should also concern small businesses and households?

One of the most powerful emerging technology trends with the potential for changing the game of business is what many [including Entrepreneur Magazine] are calling “Marketing in the Recommendation Age.” As consumers turn away from traditional advertising and more to the web for help in deciding what products to buy and what companies to trust, businesses both small and large have less control over their brands. Sites such as Amazon, YouTube and eBay have built there success upon peer ratings of quality. And remember that criticism and scandals tend to rise more quickly to the top of Web 2.0 rankings [even if they are not true!] because they make better stories.

Not all of this will be confined to the web as we know it today. Imagine driving in your car and asking your GPS to find the highest-rated Italian restaurants within a five mile radius? Oh, and which ones have the shortest wait? The day is coming and soon!

Instead of trying to control the messages about your business, now is the time to start thinking about encouraging your best customers to be extensions of your brand, to help spread the word and advocate for you because it is in their best interest to do so. People who make excellent recommendation to their friends, family and peers earn their own version of points in the social network. Few people worry about recommending Apple products; Hotmail spread like wildfire by adding a “Want a free email account?” link at the bottom of everyone’s messages. Other successful small businesses leverage their stories to niche groups.

For example, Koyono, a small business based in Ohio, sells premium technology-friendly products to a niche audience of professionals who are fed up with clutter and want to adopt a minimalist, yet fashionable lifestyle.

One question for small business people is, “How do I make it easier for my customers to spread a good story about us?”

Posted in work, pervasive computing, augmented cognition, social networks | No Comments »

June 1, 2008 by sean.

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Posted in neuroscience, work, learning theory | No Comments »

May 26, 2008 by sean.

While Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites continue to receive a lot of attention, the real influence may lie within traditional social networks [washington post]:

When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. A person whose spouse quit was 67 percent more likely to kick the habit. If a friend gave it up, a person was 36 percent more likely to do so. If a sibling quit, the chances increased by 25 percent.

A co-worker had an influence — 34 percent — only if the smoker worked at a small firm. The effects were stronger among the more educated and among those who were casual or moderate smokers. Neighbors did not appear to influence each other, but friends did even if they lived far away.

“You appear to have to have a close relationship with the person for it to be influential,” Fowler said.

Posted in collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

May 26, 2008 by sean.

Dr. Mado Proverbio and researchers at the Milano-Bicocca University in Milan have found differences in EEG amplitude levels when processing language learned to proficiency before the age of five when compared to “second language” processing [msnbc]:

For more than a year, a team of scientists experimented on 15 interpreters, revealing what they say were surprising differences in brain activity when the subjects were shown words in their native language and in other languages they spoke…. Proverbio attributed the differences to the fact the brain absorbs the mother tongue at a time when it is also storing early visual, acoustic, emotional and other nonlinguistic knowledge. This means that the native language triggers a series of associations within the brain that show up as increased electrical activity.

“Our mother tongue is the language we use to think, dream and feel emotion,” Proverbio said.

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

April 22, 2008 by sean.

Wired explores a different Wozniak:

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains. But for Wozniak, 46, helping people learn a foreign language fast is just the tiniest part of his goal. As we plan the days, weeks, even years of our lives, he would have us rely not merely on our traditional sources of self-knowledge — introspection, intuition, and conscious thought — but also on something new: predictions about ourselves encoded in machines.

Given the chance to observe our behaviors, computers can run simulations, modeling different versions of our path through the world. By tuning these models for top performance, computers will give us rules to live by. They will be able to tell us when to wake, sleep, learn, and exercise; they will cue us to remember what we’ve read, help us track whom we’ve met, and remind us of our goals. Computers, in Wozniak’s scheme, will increase our intellectual capacity and enhance our rational self-control.

Posted in neuroscience, learning theory, augmented cognition | No Comments »

April 22, 2008 by sean.

Finally, the bionic eye is a reality [timesonline]:

Surgeons have carried out the first operations in Britain using a pioneering “bionic eye” that could in future help to restore blind people’s sight…

The device — the first of its kind — incorporates a video camera and transmitter mounted on a pair of glasses. This is linked to an artificial retina, which transmits moving images along the optic nerve to the brain and enables the patient to discriminate rudimentary images of motion, light and dark.

Posted in bionics | No Comments »

March 30, 2008 by sean.

Posted in science, bionics | No Comments »

March 14, 2008 by sean.

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

This article from MyTechNews suggest the Bionic Brain may be a nanobot brain:

A tiny chemical “brain” has been invented by Scientists at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. With a size of two nanometers, the molecular device is capable of controlling eight of the microscopic nanobot machines simultaneously.

Posted in neuroscience, bionics, augmented cognition | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

Reuters on the Brain Fitness Industry:

The size of the U.S. market for brain stimulation products — which can range from games such as Nintendo Co Ltd’s Brain Age to programs backed by research showing they can improve memory or other cognitive functions — more than doubled between 2005 and 2007 to $225 million, according to a new report by the consulting group SharpBrains.

Posted in science, neuroscience, augmented cognition | No Comments »

March 13, 2008 by sean.

Swarm Intelligence may not be complexity emerging from simple interactions after all [from MSNBC LiveScience]:

Although ants are noted for their communal cooperation, the ranks of ant royalty are actually riddled with cheating and corruption, a new study finds.

Posted in science, collective intelligence | No Comments »

February 27, 2008 by sean.

Jay Cross on management, instructional design and “learnscape architects”:

People inevitably shortchange the future by investing all of their energy in the present. Take the practice of management; it’s whirling around in a squirrel cage, running hard and going nowhere. Management values (e.g., control, precision, stability, discipline, and reliability) have not changed in a century. Business has streamlined strategy, production, services, and operations. We’ve cut the inefficiencies from every business process but the most important: management itself…

Changes in management mandate changes for learning professionals. At the dawn of the network age, managers enjoyed the luxury of annual planning. With objectives fully in mind, managers communicated the firm’s goals to the training department, which in turn translated those goals into workshops, learning management systems, and so forth… Instructional design works best when performance gaps are apparent; ISD lacks the framework to invent non-learning solutions. Meta-learning and flexible infrastructure are becoming more important than individual topics.

Some instructional designers will become learnscape architects; others will champion networks and foster professional communities. Learning-to-be will supplant learning-to-know.

Posted in learning theory | No Comments »

February 27, 2008 by sean.

I saw this a while ago and, until talking with a friend of mine over lunch, forgot how truly amazing it is…

Posted in pervasive computing, user-created content, work, learning theory, augmented cognition, mobile computing, collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

February 27, 2008 by sean.

Will Thalheimer has an excellent post on Will at Work Learning about the challenges with traditional instructional design as equating learning with courses:

LMS’s can’t be fixed with Elliott’s suggestions. The biggest problem is that the whole LMS face sends a powerful hidden message that “learning” is about taking courses or accessing other learning events. This “Learning Means Sitting” LMS mentality infiltrates whole organizations.

I’ve seen this recently with one of my clients, a huge retailer, where their LMS has encouraged store managers and other store leaders to focus learning time on taking courses, in lieu of coaching, learning from each other, trying things out and getting feedback, encouraging store employees to take responsibility for particular areas, etc. It’s not that they completely ignore these other learning opportunities; it’s that the LMS focuses everyones’ time and attention on courses, creating a lot of wasted effort.

To get the most from an LMS, you ought to throw away your LMS and start over. People can learn something—develop competencies/skills—from courses or from other means. A competency-management system that offers multiple means to develop oneself is ideal, where courses/events are just one option.

Posted in learning theory | No Comments »

February 21, 2008 by sean.

Daniel Terdiman of CNET writes about the new Emotiv “headset that seems a little like the one from the James Cameron-written 1995 film, Strange Days, complete with a set of sensors that are built to read your brain waves.

The software then is designed to interpret those brain waves in such a way as to allow users to manipulate objects onscreen with nothing but their mind.

Posted in fun, neuroscience, augmented cognition | No Comments »

December 15, 2007 by sean.

Posted in science | No Comments »

December 8, 2007 by sean.

Which employees have access to the Tribal Knowledge Sharing tool and which group of employees use it the most?

Everyone has access yet not everyone knows about the tools, especially people who don’t spend much time in front of a computer such as installers and technicians. Most of the content available today is focused on order entry so the most frequent users are call center and front office personnel. We are working to dramatically change that in the coming months with much more content and webinar sessions focused on topics of interest to other groups.

The long-term plan is not just about helping people get immediate access to content that helps them in their current jobs. It’s really about making it really easy for anyone to learn about anything, including the tasks that other people do. This helps each of us gain a broader understanding of how complete processes [not just the part directly in our hands] get down and ultimately impact the business. When you know more about the job of someone who is “upstream” or “downstream” from your responsibilities, it’s much easier to have dialogue about improving the bigger picture.

Having easy access to everything also improves career growth through cross-training, including self-initiated learning to help you prepare for your next job opportunity. Showing up at an interview saying, “I have dug into the knowledge resources about this job over the past few weeks” goes a lot further than showing up and saying, “So what do you guys do over here anyway?”

What are the most frequently used resources?

The most recent modules tend to be the most frequently used regardless of content. Most of the content is “disposable” in the sense that it has a limited shelf-life. Given the constantly changing nature of our business, most of the content we learned a year ago is no longer relevant. It’s as if we should constantly ask our brains, “What have you learned for me lately?”

Since the web-based training module contributors are anonymous, how do you recognize the employees who make excellent contributions?

We chose to make the posts anonymous to encourage peers to evaluate content on its own merit rather than voting for friends or dismissing the contributions of “the others” [to borrow a term from Lost].

In the upper right corner of the page, the users who have the highest rankings are featured in what, over, time becomes a king of the hill bragging right, as fleeting as that may be. While getting recognized for highly-valued contributions is great, most people who add to the mix do it out of a desire to help their peers and the company. We often tend to forget that most of us are motivated to learn and grow not just for our own personal gain, but to be part of something larger that benefits the greater good.

How do you address vandalism [profanity, inappropriate humor, flaming, etc.] in the knowledge sharing system?

It’s never happened so far. All new posts are reviewed by an approver before they show on the main page. Of the few that don’t make it, most are duplicate posts [a bug we had to fix in the system]. Once a post is public, any user can flag it for review which immediately pulls that post out of circulation for an approver to scrutinize more thoroughly. While flagging is also rare, the commitment of users to keep the information accurate and valuable is what makes the tool work.

Aren’t you afraid that people will post misinformation that will encourage others to do the wrong things?

When we described the concept of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing to an executive at another large company, he was outraged by the potential of a tool like this for spreading rumors, lies, “shortcuts” and misinformation, especially at the level of front-line employees. We asked, “Isn’t is scary that the same people you trust to talk with your customers you don’t trust to talk with one another?”

Human beings are social creatures and arguably, we learn most of what we know from casual conversations. Training classes, books, videos, and similar methods are also useful, of course. At the same time, having the chance to think, verbalize our thoughts and get social feedback is an important part of internalizing knowledge rather than passively consuming information. All of this happens in what we call “six feet of separation” meaning that most of our questions go to people in the immediate physical vicinity. If I have to get up and find someone to ask a question, it’s because I think that the people immediately around me can’t give me a “good enough” answer. The truth is, most of the time, a “good enough” answer is right there in my peers.

Doesn’t this mean that subject matter experts and trainers get pushed to the side when any one can create and publish their own content?

The truth is, there is no such thing as a “subject matter expert” or “trainer.” Both of these labels represent a relationship based on trust, and trust changes over time.

As soon as the training session, meeting or rally are over, people talk to one another in the hallways, breakrooms, smoking areas, etc. and ask questions like, “What did you think about that? Do you agree? Do these people know what they are talking about?” In other words, people are always creating and sharing content with one another and evaluating the trustworthiness of everything they hear. The difference is, with tools that encourage sharing ideas and lessons with a larger audience, more people can benefit, evaluate and weigh in. Plus, our job should be to help everyone contribute to the business goals, not to protect the special status of a few people who supposedly are never wrong.

Andy Warhol said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” We wonder if in the future, everyone will be an expert for 15 minutes.

Are there any key strategies when launching this training approach to ensure its success?

We are always “launching” these types of tools and don’t see that process as ever being finished. Like a lot of Web2.0 start-ups, we are perpetually in “beta” mode and figuring thing out as we go along.

One of our most important early lessons learned is that this type of approach is not something you can pull of with “top-down” mandates. People have to want to use tools like these for them to take off. The best way to get momentum is to provide a very intuitive interface and identify highly-motivated early adopters who contribute strong content in the beginning to get the ball rolling.

We used a low-tech version of social network analysis to identify trusted resources in the division, the people who tend to get the most questions from others. We found that these “hubs” in the social network didn’t necessarily have any special titles or formal status; they just had reputations for being approachable, knowledgeable and helpful. It turns out that most of these “go to” people are stressed by their popularity and often frustrated by answering the same questions over and over. When we find people in that situation, we say, “What if you could answer these questions once in about 5 minutes, direct other people to your answer, help them find other answers that they might have, and still get all the credit for your genius?” Most people say, “Where do I sign up?”

Posted in work, user-created content, learning theory, collective intelligence | No Comments »

November 21, 2007 by sean.

New research conducted by Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research shows that social interaction impacts IQ as much as “more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance”:

“We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes boosted participants’ intellectual performance as much as engaging in so-called ‘intellectual’ activities for the same amount of time,” Ybarra said [via US News an World Report].

Posted in learning theory, social networks | No Comments »

November 20, 2007 by sean.

Massey scientists at the Auckland-based Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, have created the world’s first affect-responsive virtual tutor:

Although Eve was developed for one-to-one maths teaching with eight-year-olds, she is a significant new character in the future of human computer interaction and could be a personalised virtual tutor by any name.

Linked to a child via computer, the animated character or virtual tutor can tell if the child is frustrated, angry or confused by the on-screen teaching session and can adapt the tutoring session appropriately. [via PhysOrg.com]

Posted in learning theory, software | No Comments »

November 19, 2007 by sean.

Migatti, PARC’s artificial intelligence software for mobile devices, could soon be data-mining your life:

(R)esearchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)… have developed software that turns a phone into a thoughtful personal assistant, one that helps people find fun things to do. The software, called Magitti, uses a combination of cues–including the time of day, a person’s location, her past behaviors, and even her text messages–to infer her interests. It then shows a helpful list of suggestions, including concerts, movies, bookstores, and restaurants [via Technology Review]

Posted in pervasive computing, software, augmented cognition, mobile computing | No Comments »

November 19, 2007 by sean.

From MIT’s Ed Boyden’s recently published article on How To Think:

I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes…). [via Technology Review]

Posted in work, learning theory | No Comments »

October 31, 2007 by sean.

“Brain activity associated with psychiatric illness has been observed in healthy people who missed a single night’s sleep. As well as shedding light on why sleep deprivation makes us feel so bad, the study could change our thinking about mental illness.” [via New Scientist]

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

October 21, 2007 by sean.

Rob Brown on developing a bottom-up collective intelligence model for improving Netflix recommendations:

What was striking to me was that this system, iterating over a massive amount of sloppy, low precision data, could organize the model with such stunning precision. I could type in the names of two movies, and ask “how similar” they are, and the results were almost always exactly what I would expect. I could type the name of a movie, and get a list, in order, of the top 20 movies that are seen as most similar. And it did quite a good job at the assigned task, predicting how users would rate movies. Those who claimed the process couldn’t work, after seeing the results, were shocked.

The point, of course, is that this system is very evolution-like, in that lots of messy data, with very little apparent “intelligence,” processed by a simple iterative algorithm, can find sophisticated equilibria with a great deal of precision. Looking directly at the raw data, such as at an individual user’s set of ratings, would indicate a lot more slop than is apparent in the final model. The system doesn’t “know” that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection “knows” why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood. Nonetheless, it works, against all intuition. [via karmatics.com]

Posted in collective intelligence | No Comments »

October 18, 2007 by sean.

Research on artificial nerve grafting for treatment of patients with traumatic injuries of nerves in the arms and legs, organ transplants and the removal of tumors:

University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells — and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life.

In a study published in October’s Experimental Neurology, Dr Paul Kingham and his team at the UK Centre for Tissue Regeneration (UKCTR) isolated the stem cells from the fat tissue of adult animals and differentiated them into nerve cells to be used for repair and regeneration of injured nerves. They are now about to start a trial extracting stem cells from fat tissue of volunteer adult patients, in order to compare in the laboratory human and animal stem cells. [via University of Manchester]

Posted in neuroscience, bionics | No Comments »

October 18, 2007 by sean.

Scientists studing “cognitive reserve” [resources for withstanding brain aging], are seeking methods for improving brain health:

Physical exercise is the best-proven prescription so far, the scientists agreed. Memory improved when 72-year-olds started a walking program three days a week, and sophisticated scans showed their brains’ activity patterns started resembling those of younger people…

Then there’s the “use-it-or-lose-it” theory, that people with higher education, more challenging occupations and enriched social lives build more cognitive reserve than couch potatoes.

Everything from doing crossword puzzles to various computer-based brain-training programs has been touted, but nothing is yet proven to work [while] animal studies suggesting low-dose estrogen and drugs that might mimic or ramp up brain signaling are promising possibilities. [via Wired News]

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

October 18, 2007 by sean.

MIT researchers believe that blood may actually play a role in neural activitiy:

“We hypothesize that blood actively modulates how neurons process information,” Christopher Moore, a principal investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, explained in an invited review in the October issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. “Many lines of evidence suggest that blood does something more interesting than just delivering supplies. If it does modulate how neurons relay signals, that changes how we think the brain works.” [via MIT News]

Posted in neuroscience | No Comments »

October 16, 2007 by sean.

Clive Thompson investigates the science behind Cory Doctorow’s fiction:

This summer, neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative’s birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up. [via Wired]

Posted in fun, augmented cognition | No Comments »

October 15, 2007 by sean.

New Scientist explores Microsoft’s latest software patents for “mind reading” software that evalautes the user experience:

Microsoft wants to read the data straight from the user’s brain as he or she works away. They plan to do this using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain. The trouble is that EEG data is filled with artefacts caused, for example, by blinking or involuntary actions, and this is hard to tease apart from the cognitive data that Microsoft would like to study.

So the company has come up with a method for filtering EEG data in such a way that it separates useful cognitive information from the not-so-useful non-cognitive stuff. The company hopes that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use. Whether users will want Microsoft reading their brain waves is another matter altogether.

Posted in neuroscience, work | No Comments »

October 14, 2007 by sean.

I recently created a YouTube playlist re: Augmented Reality content including some amazing material from Total Immersion:

Posted in fun, software, augmented cognition | No Comments »

October 14, 2007 by sean.

Lifehack.org claims that Your [Un-augmented] Brain is Not Your Friend:

A mind is a terrible thing. Whether because of the brain’s internal structure or the way social and cultural pressures cause our minds to develop and function, in the end the result is the same: minds that are not only easily deceived and frequently deceptive in their own right, but when caught out, refuse to accept and address their errors. If you have a mind — or even half a mind — you might be best off losing it entirely. Barring that, though, there are a few things you should know about the enemy in your head. Before it hurts someone.

Posted in neuroscience, learning theory, augmented cognition | No Comments »

October 14, 2007 by sean.

Some recent developments in the area of human-computer interface promise control of software [including game avatars, soundtracks, and more] via thoughts and emotional responses rather than keyboards or joysticks.

• In Second Life Gets Brain Controls a “brain computer interface” is described that has been developed to allow a person to control their own avatar in Second Life via thought. [via Smart Mobs and Pink Tentacle]
• Emotiv Systems, an electronic-game company from San Francisco, wants people to play with the power of the mind. Starting tomorrow, video-game makers will be able to buy Emotiv’s electro-encephalograph (EEG) caps and software developer’s tool kits so that they can build games that use the electrical signals from a player’s brain to control the on-screen action… S.M.A.R.T. BrainGames, a company based in San Marcos, CA, sells games and EEG caps designed to treat people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. [via Technology Review]

If you can’t wait for a technology-based solution for improving your brain, you can start with the low tech methods to Get Smart: How to Boost your IQ by 10 points, including:

10. Sit up straight, and close your mouth: Good posture affects our state of mind, and helps us to think more clearly. Wanna prove it to yourself? Try solving some math in your head while slouching, looking at the floor and letting your mouth hang open. Then do the mental math while sitting up straight, keeping your mouth closed and looking forward or slightly upwards. You’ll get the point.

14. Make connections: To grow longer dendrites, do something new. Try learning a new language or developing a skill such as drawing, and you’ll see instant changes in how you think.

20. Graze: To give your brain a steady supply of energy and minerals, eat little and often. Eating large meals shunts blood to your digestive tract, away from your brain.

25. Make friends: Preferably ones with large amounts of frizzy grey hair. Recent research showed that hanging out with boffins can boost your IQ by up to 10 percent.

Posted in bionics, augmented cognition | No Comments »

October 2, 2007 by sean.

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, discusses his controversial book A New Kind of Science which suggests that all complex systems emerge from recursive applications of simple rules, with Charlie Rose [starting around 14:20].

Posted in software, collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

September 22, 2007 by sean.

Video: Microsoft's Vision of 2010.

Posted in work, software, mobile computing | No Comments »

September 22, 2007 by sean.

Tom Fuller discusses Pervasive Computing, Ultra-Portable Devices and Location-Based Services:

NAVITIME runs on mobile phones, many of which include integrated GPS. A minority use case is in-car navigation. Many people outside Japan are familiar with in-car navigation systems, but in Japan, people are using NAVITIME mostly for personal navigation as they walk or take public transportation—particularly in Tokyo. This is yet another example of how Japan often leads the rest of the world when it comes to pervasive computing. NAVITIME provides comprehensive navigation information, including maps, timetables, prices, and even carbon footprints for various journey options. It’s an impressive large-scale system. [via blindside]

Posted in pervasive computing, mobile computing | No Comments »

September 20, 2007 by sean.

When I walked into the pre-school where my boys went, it was definitely a LOT different from the experience I remember as a kid. I’m not sure that I would have been ready for the radical changes that some lucky kids are getting at Blue Man Nursery School [yes, THAT Blue Man Group]:

(A)fter you’ve spent fifteen year spattering audiences with paint, pounding drums and pipes, spurtin goo out of your chest, and spitting chewed-up marshmallows onto canvases, what’s next? For Goldma and Wink, married fathers in their forties, the answer was clear: start a nursery school for your kids and tell all your friends. [via The New Yorker]

Posted in learning theory | No Comments »

September 16, 2007 by sean.

USC’s Ted Berger’s [”memory hacker“] research on brain-interface neurotechnology, neural modeling and biologically-inspired computing modules [funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] focuses on the potential for being able to one day:

open someone’s skull; implant a tiny, densely packed silicon computer chip; connect it to the brain; and let it take over cognitive function previously lost due to disease or injury.

“He wants to be the man who implants microchips between your ears. And the amazing thing is that he just might succeed,” a Wired magazine feature declared five years ago. Berger’s ambition to “create a bionic brain is bold, brash, and just a bit, well, mind-blowing,” the technology magazine opined. Berger’s project has come a long way since then.

This isn’t like a cochlear implant or an artificial retina or any other device stimulating inactive nerve fibers to resume functioning. No. This will be an artificial chunk of brain, something right out of a William Gibson cyberpunk thriller…

“We are on the brink of stretching the capabilities of the human race. I believe we will soon be able to connect the brain to computers or other devices,” Berger says. “We have to think about the implications.” [via USC and futurist.com]

Berger’s work gained wider recognition as a result of a 1997 Wired Magazine article and more recently in Popular Science and Scientific American. Berger also edits Neural-Prosthetis.com.

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September 15, 2007 by sean.

Bernie DeKoven of The Coworking Insitute describes “coliberation“:

How we have found a viable alternative for everything that people used to call “work.” How we join each other in some kind of virtual, actual coworking effort, coworking environment, doing something together for fun, on this particular page of the world wide web, thinking about making it more fun, and maybe even profitable for people to work together. [via smartmobs]

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September 14, 2007 by sean.

Wired Wiki: HOWTO Amp Up Your Brain

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September 12, 2007 by sean.

Another amazing TED talk: this one from Harvard scientist and author Steven Pinker:

We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we’ve come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

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September 6, 2007 by sean.

Inventor Dean Kamen previews the extraordinary prosthetic arm he’s developing at the request of the Department of Defense, to help the 1,600 “kids” who’ve come back from Iraq without an arm (and the two dozen who’ve lost both arms). Kamen’s commitment to using technology to solve problems, and his respect for the human spirit, have never been more clear than in this deeply moving clip.

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September 6, 2007 by sean.

“Corey Phelps, an assistant professor of management and organization at the UW Business School, and Melissa Schilling, an associate professor at NYU, “analyzed the innovative performance of 1,106 companies in 11 different industries over a six-year period. They examined the pattern or structure of strategic alliance relationships among companies in each industry. They found that how firms are connected to one another influences the number of patented inventions they obtained. Those that secured more patents were classified by Phelps and Schilling as being more creative.”

According to the researchers, “companies reap greater benefits when they are part of a network that exhibits a high degree of clustering and only a few degrees of separation, both of which are characteristic of a small world network.” [via zdnet.com]

Posted in work, collective intelligence, social networks | No Comments »

September 6, 2007 by sean.

continuous partial attention n. A state in which most of one’s attention is on a primary task, but where one is also monitoring several background tasks just in case something more important or interesting comes up.” [via wordspy]

Linda Stone who coined the term, distinguishes CP from multi-tasking: “When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing… (whereas CPA is motivated by the desire) to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.” [via WikiHome]

“CPA stems from our desire, Stone says, to be ‘a live node on the network’… The message is that the balance has tilted way too far toward distraction, creating a sense of constant crisis. ‘We’re not ever in a place where we can make a commitment to anything… Constantly being accessible makes you inaccessible.’” [via newsweek]

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September 6, 2007 by sean.

“The Department of Defense’s “Augmented Cognition” video is supposed to represent a plausible scenario for a human-computer interface that uses EEG and other technologies to figure out what to feed to operators, allowing teams to do fast analysis of giant amounts of data.” [via boingboing]

Here’s the video (caution: the movie is 93MB!): Augmented Cognition International Society

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September 5, 2007 by sean.

Teemu Arina has a link on his blog to an article he wrote for his company blog on “Horizontal technologies for learning.” The following definitional distinction between LMS and PLE [Personal Learning Environments: Check out Graham Attwell’s position paper] is huge. It is a key insight into why education has barely moved into the connected age and why social technologies are, as he says, “a way forward.” [via smartmobs]

The web is full of teachers, you just need the tools to reach them. I call that parasitic learning [ensouraging] trojan horses that will bypass institutional systems by helping students to help each other in their personal learning.

Robin Good recently posted a series of fascinating short film clips on YouTube of interviews with Finnish Teemu Arina about the Future of Learning.

Teemu’s blog on networked learning, knowledge and collaboration is also worth a look.

Posted in user-created content, learning theory | No Comments »

September 3, 2007 by sean.

From the Informal Learning reference on Wikipedia:

Learners get only about 25 percent or less of what is used at work through formal learning. The majority of companies that provide training are currently involved only with the formal side of the continuum. Most of today’s investments are on the formal side. The net result is that companies spend the most money on the smallest part - 25% - of the learning equation. The other 75 percent of learning happens as the learner creatively adopts and adapts to ever changing circumstances. The informal piece of the equation is not only larger, it’s crucial to learning how to do anything.

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September 3, 2007 by sean.

A few years, I worked with a group of professional artists who were working on a contract for a large consumer electronics “box” store who wanted to co-opt the “cool” of the local arts community.

What we originally planned to do was to create fun, low barrier, highly interactive art experiences for Gen Yers at some of the galleries and clubs that were looking to attract a younger crowd. Reasoning that most people who really get into music are often those who find a way to participate [even if they don’t become musicians], we set out to do something similar with visual and performance art.

Some of the events we planned included a contest where a local celebrity would (a) “seed” the beginning of an art piece or storyline that others would enhance or (b) record a digital musical track that others could transform. We also planned to create disposable sculptures on the outdoor mall downtown where passersby would be encouraged to take a minute and add or rearrange elements. We also looked at cross-pollinating works at diverse locations in an effort to expand the audience for the locations [classical music / jazz fusion at a theater, improv comedy at an ethnic art gallery, etc.]. We created a pre-Web 2.0 website that would list scheduled events, encourage visitors to rate submissions, allow community members to upload / download / discuss works in progress, etc.

The most ambitious idea included uploads of amateur screenplays under an unrestrictive Creative Commons license that would allow others to use any submission as the basis for storyboards, conceptual art, costumes, and short films where non-artists could audition for parts or act as extras. We wanted to see if we could have short films go from outline to edited film in 30 days or less. Web community members would then vote on the best submissions and the whole thing would culminate in a 2-hour film festival with awards for the highest-rated film. Amateurs were psyched at the thought of strangers building upon their work. The pros were much more cautious or even occasionally antagonistic to the concept.

What actually happened is that the artists leading the project began fighting within themselves over “creative control” [the exact thing we were trying to overcome so that newbies could find a way in] and ended up nearly getting kicked out of town. The gallery owners who were in the most financial trouble HATED the idea of non-artists participating in their world. Our project leaders later argued that the REAL problem was the lack of sophistication in the general population! What was supposed to be a series of fun, disposable events organized throughout the city became a LECTURE to berate the clueless, unwashed masses into better supporting the unappreciated geniuses struggling to survive.

What I learned from the overall experience first is that local arts communities are often NOT cool. Second,  amateurs tend to be more willing to collaborate and try new things just for fun [meaning they have little ego / reputation at stake] and that the guidance of pros / experts / would-be gurus can often be disruptive to a collaborative creative process.

Web 2.0 is all about participation in collaborative projects, whether that be ranking user-contributed content [ala YouTube, digg or truemors], turning ON comments re: fan fiction or building loosely-connected networks of friends [Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.]. No doubt that much of the content out there is only one step above spam [”You’re an idiot LOL,” “Guess what my cat ate for dinner?”] and that much of the hype about is overblown, but the potential for using these methods to make it easier to participate in creative endeavors [rather than learning to simply appreciate the results of others] might still be vastly understated.

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