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Reading media

Friday, March 29th, 2013

It’s been a while since I’ve attempted an analysis of media coverage but the appearance of these two articles at roughly the same time inspired me.  Nature has a Mar. 22, 2013 article by Brian Owens titled, Canada puts commercialization ahead of blue-sky research; Federal budget boosts clean-energy research and university infrastructure. It’s not an unusual response to the 2013 budget and there has been a great deal of discussion about the trend towards commercialization (e.g. Ivan Semeniuk’s Mar. 25, 2013 Globe and Mail article, Federal budget ignites debate over what science is for).

Particularly striking with regard to the Nature article about the Canadian federal budget is the picture which accompanies it, the least flattering image I have ever seen of Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty. Shot from the side and below, it emphasizes his girth and receding hairline. Interestingly, this shot is used in a British publication which is taking the Canadian government to task. I have not seen any comparable images in Canadian media pieces where Flaherty is usually shown full face and from mid-chest up.

The second piece I’m highlighting is about a technology application (thanks to @BoraZ for the tweet link) which features fascinating insight into the politics of selling technology, from an Open note to tech press/bloggers (Note: Links have been removed),

We just did a great rollout, the product is fantastic. This is going to move tech in a new direction. It’ll create new standards. I’m absolutely sure of it.

Yet, even with my track record as one who leads change in technology, the release of this software has gotten almost no note from leading tech bloggers and reporters.

That’s okay, because it’ll happen without them. Last time I pushed something through, it didn’t get support from the press either. And the time before that. We can make it happen without their help.

I think they’re comfortable with big software ideas coming from big companies. But I can’t make change happen within the context of a big corporation. Too much second-guessing, too many strategy taxes, too many phony business models. So I choose to do it as an independent.

…

These are early days, the product is very simple, and well-documented. We went to great lengths to make it easy to understand.

Helping users understand new relevant technology is what you do, after all.

PS: I did not include comments on this post because this is the kind of thing that attracts a lot of trolls.

PPS: To users, this is why you haven’t heard much about Little Outliner in the tech press. There’s nothing wrong with the product.

Curious yet? The product is called Little Outliner, from the home page (Note: A link has been removed),

Little Outliner is a powerful and easy editor that automatically saves text locally, a new feature in HTML5.

Here’s more information from the Little Outliner press guide,

You do not have to register or create an account. Just visit the site, and start typing.

It stores text in local storage on your own computer.

The user’s outline is not transmitted to our servers.

There is no charge to use Little Outliner. Use it to become familiar with outliners. For some people the features of Little Outliner will be exactly what they need.

…

Little Outliner is our entry-level product.

It’s where we start. We will release deeper, more specialized, technical and sophisticated products built on outlining. Little Outliner will remain simple, general, easy and approachable. It’s where we expect new users to start.

All of our products will be focused on outliners and communication.

As for who is behind Little Outliner, the company is called Small Picture (from the press guide),

Small Picture, Inc is a Delaware corporation, founded on December 19, 2012 by Dave Winer and Kyle Shank.

Dave Winer, 57, has a long history in the tech industry. He is the founder of Living Videotext, founded in 1981, created the first personal computer outliners, ThinkTank, Ready and MORE. UserLand Software, founded in 1988, created Frontier, integrated development tools and web content management software for desktop computers. UserLand developed the first blogging software, Manila and Radio, and pioneered the development of RSS aggregator and interapplication protocols. Winer was the first blogger, and pioneered the development of podcasting, in 1994 and 2001 respectively. He has been a researcher at Harvard and NYU and has a MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, and a BA in Mathematics from Tulane University.

Kyle Shank, 28, has worked as a consultant to Silicon Valley tech companies. He has worked within the software group at IBM in Massachusetts, North Carolina and Zurich, Switzerland. In 2005 he co-founded the first open source Ruby on Rails specific IDE RadRails based on Eclipse. Kyle graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2007 with a BS in Software Engineering.

Dave works in New York City, Kyle in the Boston area and collaborate via Instant Outline and Skype.

I think these two stories demonstrate the political nature of choosing images (in this case, presenting an image that suggests Flaherty is big [an upward angle tends to make someone seem big and threatening] while emphasizing his weight and aging) and choosing stories (in this case, determining what technology consumers will hear about). We tend to think of our information flow as being free and unencumbered when it is not. There are any number of gatekeepers and choosers who decide what we will and won’t see.

There is a kind of paradox at work. In order to blog or write or communicate one needs to make choices but that means one is inevitably put in the position of becoming a gatekeeper/editor/censor.

I don’t believe there is a magic way to escape the paradox and the best we can hope for is that we be  vigilant about our own biases and that our readers or audiences remind us when we fail in our attempts.

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Digital world and the Cleveland Museum of Art

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

If this project is as advertised, then the Cleveland Museum of Art has developed a truly exciting interactive experience. Cliff Kuang in his Mar. 6, 2013 article for Fast Company is definitely enthusiastic,

If you’re a youngster, why stare at a Greek urn when you could blow one up in a video game? One institution thinking deeply about the challenge is the Cleveland Museum of Art, which this month unveiled a series of revamped galleries, designed by Local Projects, which feature cutting-edge interactivity. But the technology isn’t the point. “We didn’t want to create a tech ghetto,” says David Franklin, the museum’s director. Adds Local Projects founder Jake Barton, “We wanted to make the tech predicated on the art itself.”

Put another way, the new galleries at CMA tackle the problem plaguing most ambitious UI projects today: How do you let the content shine, and get the tech out of the way? How do you craft an interaction between bytes and spaces that feels fun?

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Jan. 14, 2013 news release describes the new project,

… Gallery One, a unique, interactive gallery that blends art, technology and interpretation to inspire visitors to explore the museum’s renowned collections. This revolutionary space features the largest multi-touch screen in the United States, which displays images of over 3,500 objects from the museum’s world-renowned permanent collection. This 40-foot Collection Wall allows visitors to shape their own tours of the museum and to discover the full breadth of the collections on view throughout the museum’s galleries.

Throughout the space, original works of art and digital interactives engage visitors in new ways, putting curiosity, imagination and creativity at the heart of their museum experience. Innovative user-interface design and cutting-edge hardware developed exclusively for Gallery One break new ground in art museum interpretation, design and technology.

…

“Technology is a vital tool for supporting visitor engagement with the collection,” adds C. Griffith Mann, Deputy Director and Chief Curator. “Putting the art experience first required an unprecedented partnership between the museum’s curatorial, design, education and technology staff.”

Comprised of three major areas, Gallery One offers something for visitors of all ages and levels of comfort with art. Studio Play is a bright and colorful space that offers the museum’s youngest visitors and their families a chance to play and learn about art. Highlights of this portion of Gallery One include: Line and Shape, a multi-touch, microtile wall on which visitors can draw lines that are matched to works of art in the collection; a shadow-puppet theater where silhouettes of objects can be used as “actors” in plays; mobile- and sculpture-building stations where visitors can create their own interpretations of modern sculptures by Calder [Alexander Calder] and Lipchitz [Jacques Lipchitz]; and a sorting and matching game featuring works from the permanent collection. This space is designed to encourage visitors of all ages to become active participants in their museum experience.

In the main gallery space, visitors have an opportunity to learn about the collection and to develop ways of looking at art that are both fun and educational. The gallery is comprised of fourteen themed groups of works from the museum’s collection, six of which have “lens” stations. The “lens” stations comprise 46” multi-touch screens that offer additional contextual information and dynamic, interactive activities that allow visitors to create experiences and share them with others through links to social media. Another unique feature of the space is the Beacon, an introductory, dynamic screen that displays real-time results of visitors’ activities in the space, such as favorite objects, tours and activities.

…

The largest multi-touch screen in the United States, the Collection Wall utilizes innovative technology to allow visitors to browse these works of art on the Wall, facilitating discovery and dialogue with other visitors. The Collection Wall can also serve as an orientation experience, allowing visitors to download existing tours or curate their own tours to take out into the galleries on iPads. The Collection Wall, as well as the other interactive in the gallery, illustrates the museum’s long-term investment in technology to enhance visitor access to factual and interpretative information about the permanent collection.

“The Collection Wall powerfully demonstrates how cutting-edge technology can inspire our visitors to engage with our collection in playful and original ways never before seen on this scale,” said Jane Alexander, Director of Information Management and Technology Services. “This space, unique among art museums internationally, will help make the Cleveland Museum of Art a destination museum.”

In concert with the opening of Gallery One, the museum has also created ArtLens, a multi-dimensional app for iPads. Utilizing image recognition software, visitors can scan two-dimensional objects in Gallery One and throughout the museum’s galleries to access up to 9 hours of additional multimedia content, including audio tour segments, videos and additional contextual information. Indoor triangulation-location technology also allows visitors to orient themselves in the galleries and find works of art with additional interpretive content throughout their visit.

…

“ArtLens allows the visitor to take the experience of Gallery One out in to the other areas of the museum,” said Caroline Goeser. “It brings in many voices and traditions from different cultures, as well as giving visitors a chance to see demonstrations of art making techniques by local artists. The content is layered so visitors can choose what interests them and discover new ways of looking at and interpreting the object. Their experience is guided by their own sense of curiosity and discovery.”

It’s interesting to note the companies that partnered with the museum and to note the source for the money supporting this effort (from the news release),

The museum partnered with several other companies to complete the project, including Local Projects (media design and development), Gallagher and Associates (design and development), Zenith (AV Integration), Piction (CMS/DAM development), Earprint Productions (app content development), and Navizon (way-finding).

Gallery One is generously supported by the Maltz Family Foundation, which donated $10 million to support the project. Additional support for the project comes from grants and other donations.

Kuang’s article makes the exhibits come alive,

The first gallery that many new visitors will see, Gallery One, is a signature space, meant to draw in a younger crowd. To that end, the exhibits are about fostering an intuitive understanding of the art. Which sounds like baloney, but the end results are quietly terrific. At the root, the exhibits encourage people to move, fostering a connection to the art that’s literally written on the body:

  • In one display, a computer analyzes the expression on a visitor’s face. Then, they can see work spanning thousands of years that matches their own visage.
  • Gallery One also offers a chance to directly experience the physical decisions behind how masterpieces are made. For example, in front of a Jackson Pollack painting is a virtual easel, loaded with tools that approximate Pollock’s own, so that visitors can pour their own drip painting and compare it to the real thing.

Sounds like very exciting stuff. For anyone who can’t visit the exhibit, there are videos including this one where visitors strike a pose and an image (from the collection) mimicking the pose appears {ETA Mar.6.13 4:35 pm PST: I got this the wrong way round, the museum presents you with a piece of art and you strike the same p0se),

Sculpture Lens – Strike A Pose – Cleveland Museum of Art from Local Projects on Vimeo.

Kuang covers that exhibit and much more in his article, which I strongly recommend reading, and he makes this point,

Even as the designers go wild with the technology, they never stop to consider what anyone who doesn’t care about that technology would stand to gain. It was Barton’s [Local Projects founder Jake Barton] own skepticism about technology that made the technology great. His team didn’t necessarily believe that high-tech flare would add value to the museum experience. So they strove to look past the technology.

As a technical writer, I had many, many arguments with developers about precisely that point; most of us don’t care about the technology.  So, kudos to Jake Barton and all of the teams responsible for finding a way to integrate that understanding into a series of exhibits that allow the museum to showcase its collection, engage the public, and develop new audiences.

Meanwhile, the Council of Canadian Academies is poised to embark on an assessment which examines museums and other memory institutions along with digital technology from an entirely different perspective, Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution,

Library and Archives Canada has asked the Council of Canadian Academies to assess how memory institutions, which includes archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, can embrace the opportunities and challenges of the changing ways in which Canadians are communicating and working in the digital age.

…

These trends present both significant challenges and opportunities for traditional memory institutions as they work towards ensuring that valuable information is safeguarded and maintained for the long term and for the benefit of future generations. It requires that they keep track of new types of records that may be of future cultural significance, and of any changes in how decisions are being documented. As part of this assessment, the Council’s expert panel will examine the evidence as it relates to emerging trends, international best practices in archiving, and strengths and weaknesses in how Canada’s memory institutions are responding to these opportunities and challenges. Once complete, this assessment will provide an in-depth and balanced report that will support Library and Archives Canada and other memory institutions as it considers how best to manage and preserve the mass quantity of communications records generated as a result of new and emerging technologies.

I last mentioned the ‘memory institutions’ assessment in my Feb. 22, 2013 posting in the context of their ‘science culture in Canada’ assessment panel. I find it odd that the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation was one of the requestors for the ‘science culture’ assessment but it  is not involved (nor is any other museum) in the ‘memory institutions and digital revolution’ assessment.

After reading about the Cleveland Museum of Art project, something else strikes me as odd, there is no mention of analysing the role that museums, libraries, and others will play in a world which is increasingly ephemeral. After all, it’s not enough to keep and store records. There is no point  if we can’t access them or even have knowledge of their existence. As for storing and displaying objects, this traditional museum function is increasingly being made impossible as objects seemingly disappear. The vinyl record, cassette tape, and CD (compact disc) have almost disappeared to be replaced by digital files. Meanwhile, my local library has fewer and fewer books, DVDs, and other lending items. What roles will libraries, museums, and other memory institutions going to have in our lives?

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Innovation in Europe—don’t copy a policy unless it works (amongst other salient comments)

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

There are very trenchant comments coming from the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) brief of  the Science of Innovation conference held Feb. 28, 2012.

From the July 18, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

Innovation has improved human living standards to an unprecedented level, and is the key to further progress; however it is a complex phenomenon that is not easy to understand and whose effects are unclear. This is the conclusion of the policy brief published by the European Science Foundation and STOA on innovation policy. …

It summarises ten thought provoking issues that the science of innovation poses to policy makers:

1. Innovation policy: ‘uncommon sense’ needed – innovation is not always benign and its effects are not clean cut. It is important to understand how best to optimise, not maximise, innovation

2. The ‘science of innovation’ – diversification of innovation policy is vital. In particular a better understanding of innovation policy for the service sector is important, as this is the largest and fastest growing sector, making up more than two-thirds of European economies

3. Policy myths and rituals – there are many ‘myths’ in the world of innovation policy, such as the role of venture capitals, SMEs and the state. Innovation policy sometimes has a ritual dimension, in which policy-makers apply certain principles from elsewhere – often the US – because it seems like the thing to do, rather than because of clear evidence that it will work in their particular situation. Innovation policy has to be context-specific, and this is a big challenge for those who want to develop European-level innovation policy [emphasis mine]

4. Blind spots in innovation policy – knowledge transfer from other sectors than universities have been largely omitted in the discourse on innovation; the focus on tertiary education has for instance in some cases reduced the quality of the output of secondary education [emphasis mine]

5. Creative destruction, or destructive creation? – rather than ‘creative destruction’ we are increasingly seeing a process of ‘destructive creation’, in which new products and services diminish or destroy the usage value of existing ones, to the benefit of a few rather than many [emphasis mine]

6. Cognitive lock-in – the increased proximity between innovation policy and innovation research may have the effect of inhibiting the creation of new knowledge that could change policy directions

7. The ERA and academic disparities – the effect of European Research Area (ERA) policy may be uneven, as the opportunities it presents are unevenly distributed

8. Evidence-based innovation policy: limits and challenges – innovation policy is often not really evidence-based, or even based on distorted evidence. Available evidence from innovation research is fragmented, of variable quality, hard to interpret and often used inappropriately [emphasis mine]

9. Sharing risks and returns: toward a new model of knowledge governance – a new model of knowledge governance is considered, with innovative financial tools to give returns proportional to the very active high risk-taking role of state in investing in innovation

10. Innovation aimed at public value – stimulating the right type of innovation requires a clear idea of ‘public value’ and how to measure it

The brief (all 12 pp.) can be found here. Having read the brief, I highly recommend it. They actually have some imagery accompanying the text that I would describe as satirical. You just don’t expect that kind of thing in an official joint non-governmental agency/government  document.

There were a few things that I didn’t quite understand including the image of the turtle jumping out of a glass of water and seeming to fly (front cover) but perhaps someone could leave a comment explaining it to me.

To whet your appetite, here’s an excerpt from an item in the brief,  from 3. Policy myths and rituals on p. 5 PDF,

Features that work in the US may not work as well in Europe [or Canada for that matter], and in fact many of the ideas that Europe [or Canada] has about what works in the US are incomplete or distorted. For example, in the US, it is in fact in existing, large firms (rather than small new start-up SMEs) and in non-R&D intensive sectors (rather than R&D-intensive sectors) where the main productivity gains are being realised. The real importance of universities in the innovation system is not the direct commercialisation of research-derived knowledge. It is rather a range of other highly influential effects, notably the ‘production’ of an educated workforce able to generate and/ or absorb innovations, and of educated consumers able to use innovative products, both necessary for realising the value of innovation. Also, contrary to the ruling perception of many European policy-makers, active intervention by the state is key to innovation in the US. Innovation policy has to beware of myths and rituals, and needs to be highly context-specific (national, regional).

ETA July 27, 2012: David Bruggeman in a July 26, 2012 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog comments,

In general, the report strikes me as a more pragmatic, operational focus on science, technology and innovation than what I see being supported through the NSF program.  (Of course, YMMV.)

He too was quite interested in their point on myths and policy.

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Ukrainians ease communication with $50 gloves that convert sign language to speech

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Strictly speaking or otherwise, this is not a ‘nano’ story but it does speak (wordplay intended) to some longstanding interests of mine. Christina Chaey in her July 10, 2012 article for Fast Company notes,

More than 275 million hearing-impaired people are unable to use speech to communicate. Sign language is one solution, but it’s only as helpful as the number of people who know the language. That problem is what drove three Ukrainian students to develop EnableTalk, a pair of sensory gloves that help bridge that communication gap by turning sign language into speech.

The three-programmer team behind EnableTalk, who were inspired by interactions with hearing-impaired athletes at their school, took the $25,000 top prize in software design at Microsoft’s 10th annual Imagine Cup. The decade-old tech competition challenges students to design innovative technology across various categories including game design, Kinect, the Windows Phone, and Windows 8.

Bob Yirka in his July 11, 2012 article about Enable Talk for physorg.com provides some insight on why the team chose their project,

The team said the idea for their system came from the frustration they experienced when trying to communicate with hearing impaired athletes at their school. … The problem with sign language they point out, is that most people who can hear never learn it, thus those with hearing impairments are only able to communicate with a small part of the general population which generally includes those who cannot hear and those in their immediate circle.

The quadsquad receiving their $25,000US price,

downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/events/imaginecup/

Yirka offers the best description of the technology that I was able to find (Note: I have removed links),

The gloves work through the use of five hardware components: flex sensors in the gloves record finger movements and a main controller coordinates information from an accelerometer/compass, an accelerometer/gyroscope, a microcontroller and a Bluetooth module. Windows mobile software was used to convert the gesture commands to sound signals for broadcast by the Bluetooth module. The sound waves are converted to voice using Microsoft Speech and Bing APIs running on a Smartphone, which ultimately serves as the voice for the person using the system.

For even more technical details, you can go to the Documentation page on the Enable Talk website.

The quad squad’s Imagine Cup presentation video is pretty glitzy, from the Enable Talk Gallery page,


I was surprised that everyone in those ‘street scenes’ seems to be about the same age and social class, that the streets are so clean, and, coming from the West Coast of Canada, that everyone is the same colour.

ETA July 12, 2012: The article by Christina Chaey indicated the gloves would cost $50 but I notice the video indicates a $200 price tag.  Perhaps the $50 price is what they’re hoping to charge after widespread commercialization?

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Material changes

Friday, June 8th, 2012

A few items have caught my attention lately and the easiest way to categorize them is with the term, ‘materials’.  First, a June 7, 2012 article by Jane Wakefield about fashion and technology on the BBC News website that features a designer, Suzanne Lee, who grows clothing. I’m glad to see Lee is still active (I first mentioned her work with bacteria and green tea in a July 13, 2010 posting). From Wakefield’s 2012 article,

“I had a conversation with a biologist who raised the idea of growing a garment in a laboratory,” she [Biocouture designer, Suzanne Lee] told the BBC.

In her workshop in London, she is doing just that.

Using a recipe of green tea, sugar, bacteria and yeast she is able to ‘grow’ a material which she describes as a kind of “vegetable leather”.

The material takes about two weeks to grow and can then be folded around a mould – she has made a dress from a traditional tailor’s model but handbags and furniture are also possibilities.

Bio-biker image courtesy of Bio Couture (http://www.biocouture.co.uk/)

Designer Suzanne Lee’s website is http://www.biocouture.co.uk

Wakefield’s article goes on to discuss technologies being integrated into design,

While computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) is not a new technology, it has rarely been used in the fashion world before but French fashion designer Julien Fournié wants to change that.

Mr Fournié began working in fashion industry under Jean-Paul Gaultier but these days he is more likely to be found hanging out with engineers than with fashionistas.

He has teamed up with engineers at Dassault Systèmes, a French software company which more usually creates 3D designs for the car and aerospace industries.

…

Recently Mr Fournié has been experimenting with making clothes from neoprene, a type of rubber.

It is a difficult material to work with and Mr Fournié’s seamstresses suggested that the only way to stitch it would be to use glue.

“To my mind a glued dress wasn’t very sexy,” he said.

So he handed the problem over to the engineers.

“They found the right pressure for the needle so it didn’t break the material,” he said.

Wakefield discusses more of Fournié’s work as well as a ‘magic mirror’ being developed by the FashionLab at Dassault Systèmes,

“A store may have a magic mirror with a personal avatar that can use your exact body measurements to show you how new clothes would look on you,” explained Jerome Bergeret, director of FashionLab.

There is more in the Wakefield including the ‘future of fashion shopping’.

Still on the material theme but in a completely different category, flat screens that are tactile. From the June 6, 2012 news item by Nancy Owano on the physorg.com website,

Why settle for flat? That is the question highlighted on the home page of Tactus Technology, which does not want device users to settle for any of today’s tactile limitations on flatscreen devices. The Fremont, California-based company has figured out how to put physical buttons on a display when we want them and no buttons when we don’t. Tactus has announced its tactile user interface for touchscreen devices that are real, physical buttons that can rise up from the touchscreen surface on demand.

…

The customizable buttons can appear in a range of shapes and configurations. Buttons may run across the display, or in another collection of round buttons to represent a gamepad for playing games. “We are a user interface technology where people can take our technology and create whatever kind of interface they want,” said Nate Saaal, VP business development. He said it could be any shape or construct on the surface.

Lakshmi Sandhana also wrote about Tactus and its new keyboard in a June 6, 2012 article for Fast Company,

The idea of a deformable touchscreen surface came to Craig Ciesla, CEO of Tactus, way back in 2007, when he found himself using his BlackBerry instead of the newly released iPhone because of its keyboard. …

“I realized that this question could be answered by using microfluidics,” Ciesla says. Their design calls for a thin transparent cover layer with some very special properties to be laid on top of a touchscreen display. Made of glass or plastic, the 1mm-thick slightly elastic layer has numerous micro-channels filled with a non-toxic fluid. Increasing fluid pressure with the aid of a small internal controller causes transparent physical buttons to grow out of the surface of the layer in less than a second. Once formed, you can feel the buttons, rest your fingers or type on them, just like a mechanical keyboard. “When you don’t want the buttons, you reduce the fluid pressure, draw the fluid out and the buttons recede back to their original flat state.” (No messy cleanup–the minimal amount of fluid is all contained within the device.) “You’re left with a surface where you don’t see anything,” Ciesla explains.

The company, Tactus Technology Inc.,  does have a product video,

It’s a little bit on the dramatic side, I think their professional voiceover actor could have a future career  as a Rod Serling (Twilight Zone) sound alike. Regardless, I do like the idea of a product than can function as a flat screen and as a screen with buttons.

My last item is about an emotion-recognition phone. Kit Eaton who writes for Fast Company on a pretty regular basis posted a June 7, 2012 article about systems that recognize your emotions (Note: I have removed links from the excerpt),

Nunance [sic], which makes PC voice recognition systems and the tech that powers Apple’s famous Siri digital PA, have revealed their next tech is voice recognition in cars and for TVs. But the firm also wants to add more than voice recognition in an attempt to build a real-life KITT–it wants to add emotion detection so its system can tell how you’re feeling while you gab away. …

Nuance’s chief of marketing Peter Mahoney spoke to the Boston Globe last week about the future of the company’s tech, and noted that in a driving environment emotion detection could be a vital tool. For example, if your car thinks you sound stressed, it may SMS your office to say you’re late or even automatically suggest another route that avoids traffic. (Or how about a voice-controlled Ford system that starts playing you, say, Enya to calm the nerves.) Soon enough, you may deviate from your existing “shortest route” algorithms, while being whisked to parts of the city you never otherwise visit. Along the way, you might discover a more pleasant route to the office, or a new place to buy coffee.

But Nuance says it has far bigger plans to make your emotional input valuable: It’s looking into ways to monetize its voice systems, including your emotional input, to directly recommend services and venues to you.

There are more details and a video demonstrating Nuance’s Dragon Drive product in Eaton’s article. As for me, I’m not excited about decreasing my personal agency in an attempt to sell me yet more products and services. But perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic.

Since my weekend is about to start and these items got me to thinking about materials, it seems only right that I end this posting with,


It takes about one minute before the singing starts but it’s worth the wait. Happy weekend!

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Mathematics as a literary endeavour

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Like novelists, mathematicians are creative authors. With diagrams, symbolism, metaphor, double entendre and elements of surprise, a good proof reads like a good story.

So starts Corrie Goldman’s May 8, 2012 article about Stanford University (California, US) professor Reviel Netz and his new book, Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic. (Goldman’s article was republished from the May 7, 2012 article in the Stanford Report.) The article was written in a Question and Answer format and here is an excerpt from the Stanford website,

You have said that a math proof is more focused on the properties of text than any other human endeavor, short of poetry.

Mathematics is structured around texts – proofs – that have very rich protocols in terms of their textual arrangement, whether in the use of extra-verbal elements – diagrams – in the very layout, in the use of a particular formulaic language, in the structuring of the text. And its success or failure depends entirely on features residing in the text itself. It is really an activity very powerfully concentrated around the manipulation of written documents, more perhaps than anywhere else in science, and comparable, then, to modern poetry.

…

How do you define or identify literary-like elements like metaphors in a mathematical proof?

Metaphor is fairly standard in mathematics. Mathematics can only become truly interesting and original when it involves the operation of seeing something as something else – a pair of similarly looking triangles, say, as a site for an abstract proportion; a diagonal crossing through the set of all real numbers.

You have said that a proof can be seen as having a complex narrative and even elements of surprise much like how a story unfolds. Can you give me an example?

You tell me, “I’m going to find the volume of a sphere.” And then you do nothing of the kind, going instead through an array of unrelated results – a cone here, a funny polygon there, various proportion results and general problems; then you make a thought experiment that shows how a sphere is like a series of cones produced from a certain funny polygon and, lo and behold, all the results do allow one a very quick determination of the volume of the sphere. Here is surprise and narrative. That’s Archimedes’ “Sphere and Cylinder” proof; it’s a typical mechanism in his works. Other authors are often much more sedate and progress in a more stately manner; this is Euclid’s approach.

These questions are answers derived from an April 13, 2012 workshop (Mathematics as Literature / Mathematics as Text Workshop) held at Stanford University.

The description for Netz’s book, Ludic Proof, provides more insight into his work (excerpted from the description),

This book represents a new departure in science studies: an analysis of a scientific style of writing, situating it within the context of the contemporary style of literature. Its philosophical significance is that it provides a novel way of making sense of the notion of a scientific style. For the first time, the Hellenistic mathematical corpus – one of the most substantial extant for the period – is placed centre-stage in the discussion of Hellenistic culture as a whole. Professor Netz argues that Hellenistic mathematical writings adopt a narrative strategy based on surprise, a compositional form based on a mosaic of apparently unrelated elements, and a carnivalesque profusion of detail. He further investigates how such stylistic preferences derive from, and throw light on, the style of Hellenistic poetry.

The word ‘carnivalesque’ made me think of literary theorist Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, from the Wikipedia essay (footnotes and links removed),

Bakhtin had a difficult life and career, and few of his works were published in an authoritative form during his lifetime.As a result, there is substantial disagreement over matters that are normally taken for granted: in which discipline he worked (was he a philosopher or literary critic?), how to periodize his work, and even which texts he wrote (see below). He is known for a series of concepts that have been used and adapted in a number of disciplines: dialogism, the carnivalesque, the chronotope, heteroglossia and “outsidedness” (the English translation of a Russian term vnenakhodimost, sometimes rendered into English—from French rather than from Russian—as “exotopy”). [emphasis mine] Together these concepts outline a distinctive philosophy of language and culture that has at its center the claims that all discourse is in essence a dialogical exchange and that this endows all language with a particular ethical or ethico-political force.

I didn’t find that description as helpful as I hoped and so clicked to Carnivalesque and here I found a liaison between this term and Netz’s response about mathematical proofs unfolding as complex narratives with surprises,

Carnivalesque is a term coined by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, which refers to a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos.

It’s not the first time I’ve across a reference to Bakhtin’s theories, specifically ‘carnivalesque’, in the context of scientific and/or technical writing. Somehow one doesn’t usually associate chaos, humour, and surprise with those writing forms and yet, ‘carnivalesque’ keeps popping up.

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Sometimes when we touch: Touché, a sensing project from Disnery Research and Carnegie Mellon

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research, Pittsburgh (Philadelphia, US) have taken capacitive sensing, used for touchscreens such as smartphones, and added new capabilities. From the May 4, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

A doorknob that knows whether to lock or unlock based on how it is grasped, a smartphone that silences itself if the user holds a finger to her lips and a chair that adjusts room lighting based on recognizing if a user is reclining or leaning forward are among the many possible applications of Touché, a new sensing technique developed by a team at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Touché is a form of capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the types of touchscreens used in most smartphones. But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, like the typical touchscreen, Touché monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies.

This Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) makes it possible to not only detect a “touch event,” but to recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that is doing the touching. An object thus could sense how it is being touched, or might sense the body configuration of the person doing the touching.

Disney Research, Pittsburgh made this video describing the technology and speculating on some of the possible applications (this is a research-oriented video, not your standard Disney fare),

Here’s a bit  more about the technology (from the May 4, 2012 news item),

Both Touché and smartphone touchscreens are based on the phenomenon known as capacitive coupling. In a capacitive touchscreen, the surface is coated with a transparent conductor that carries an electrical signal. That signal is altered when a person’s finger touches it, providing an alternative path for the electrical charge.

By monitoring the change in the signal, the device can determine if a touch occurs. By monitoring a range of signal frequencies, however, Touché can derive much more information. Different body tissues have different capacitive properties, so monitoring a range of frequencies can detect a number of different paths that the electrical charge takes through the body.

Making sense of all of that SFCS information, however, requires analyzing hundreds of data points. As microprocessors have become steadily faster and less expensive, it now is feasible to use SFCS in touch interfaces, the researchers said.

“Devices keep getting smaller and increasingly are embedded throughout the environment, which has made it necessary for us to find ways to control or interact with them, and that is where Touché could really shine,” Harrison [Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute] said. Sato [Munehiko Sato, a Disney intern and a Ph.D. student in engineering at the University of Tokyo] said Touché could make computer interfaces as invisible to users as the embedded computers themselves. “This might enable us to one day do away with keyboards, mice and perhaps even conventional touchscreens for many applications,” he said.

We’re seeing more of these automatic responses to a gesture or movement. For example, common spelling errors are corrected as you key in (type) text in wordprocessing packages and in search engines. In fact, there are times when an applications insists on its own correction and I have to insist (and I don’t always manage to override the system) if I have something which is nonstandard. As I watch these videos and read about these new technical possibilities, I keep asking myself, Where is the override?

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Pebble’s e-paper watch wins over $3M in funding through crowdfunding

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

I gather it’s the most successful crowdfunding project Kickstarter has hosted yet. The Pebble team asked for $100,000 to realize their e-paper/ smartwatch project and have raised over $3M while they still have 30 days left in their campaign. In the kind of twist that makes one smirk, they posted the project on Kickstarter as they were unable to raise sufficient funds in Silicon Valley. From the April 16, 2012 Q&A with Alexandra Chung at Wired,

Wired: Are you surprised by the reception to Pebble? What were you hoping for when you launched on Kickstarter?

Migicovsky [Eric Migicovsky, Pebble founder and lead designer]: We were expecting $100,000 over a month, so when it came in two hours, it was a surprise. On Thursday, we were earning $80,000 an hour. By Sunday morning, we passed the Wasteland 2, which was the second most popular Kickstarter after Double Fine Adventures.

…

Wired: Has the influx of funding affected your production plans? Are you changing your strategy at all?

Migicovsky: We’re basically leveling up. We had a variety of paths we could have followed. We were originally aiming for $100,000, so we had a production path that we could have followed to meet that $100,000. Now we’re following a path that is several levels higher than that.

Right now, we don’t have any specifics for where the product is being made. There are various levels of contract manufacturers, and we’re going to use a contract manufacturer. We’re moving to a one-stop shop, so we come with X amount of orders.

On the one hand, six months is not very long to bring a product to market. But we have this huge backer community that will help us get there. They are providing the funding that’s helping us make quality decisions, like spending money now on making a more aesthetically pleasing product. We’re making those decisions now.

We had a design plan with several different levels. It’s not like we are drastically altering the design. We just had “gotta haves,” like 7-day battery life, and then the “nice to haves” like more water-resistance, which are the features we’re moving into now.

Here’s a description of the pr0ject and the product from the April 17, 2012 news item on the BBC News website,

The Pebble watch reached the $1m mark in 28 hours. The firm behind the device, which has been designing smartwatches for three years, said that it was “blown away” by the support.

The watch has an electronic paper screen and connects via Bluetooth with iPhones or Android powered devices to allow users to customise the watch face and download apps.

The display stays on at all times and is backlit for night viewing. The firm says that the rechargeable battery will last a week.

It can display distance and speed for runners and cyclists, control a smartphone’s music, and show emails, messages and reminders.

The watch will go head to head with an Android-compatible device released in April by electronic giant Sony Corp. The Sony Smartwatch costs $149.99.

This video should answer a few more questions about the watch,

Migicovsky is Canadian. Originally from Vancouver, he graduated from the University of Waterloo and made his way to California. From the April 17, 2012 article by Chuck Howitt for the Record.com,

The Pebble smartwatch is a “natural evolution” of the inPulse smartwatch that Migicovsky started working on while a student at UW [University of Waterloo] in 2008.

Released in 2009, the inPulse connected wirelessly with BlackBerry smartphones to indicate when the user had an email, message or call.

Sold through a company he called Allerta Inc., sales of the inPulse have been rather modest, about 1,500 to date, admits Migicovsky.

So the 26-year-old Vancouver native set his sights on the booming iPhone and Android markets.

To crack the California market and raise funds at the same time, he applied for admission to Y Combinator, a technology incubator based in Silicon Valley, in early 2011.

Successful applicants are guaranteed about $20,000 on admission plus more funding at the end of an intense three-month internship. Migicovsky was able to raise about $375,000 by the time he left Y Combinator, which he used to start working on the Pebble.

…

When he hit the venture capital market, he got a lukewarm response for the Pebble.

Most venture capitalists “have an aversion to hardware,” he said. “The general feeling is it costs more money. There is a little bit more risk.”

You can find out more about Pebble at the company website and, if you were wondering what SDK (as mentioned in the video) means, it’s Software Development Kit.

I recently wrote about e-paper in my April 3, 2012 posting titled,
Folding screens at University of Toronto and EPD (electronic paper display) with LG.

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Nintendo experiment at the Louvre

Friday, December 16th, 2011

I’m not the only one who was excited about the Louvre/Nintendo announcement (from the Dec. 15, 2011 AFP [Agence France-Presse] sourced news item on physorg.com),

The Louvre said Thursday it has teamed up with Nintendo to hand out 3D game consoles to guide visitors through its vast art collections, as part of a stepped up digital drive at the Paris museum.

Starting in March, the world’s most visited museum will gradually replace its traditional audio-guides — used by just four percent of its 8.5 million annual visitors — with 3DS pocket consoles.

“We are the first museum in the world to do this,” Agnes Alfandari, museum’s head of multimedia told AFP.

The Japanese giant Nintendo is supplying 5,000 of the latest-generation consoles, which offer 3D vision without the need for special glasses, as part of a partnership with the museum.

After searching online I’ve found only one source article (the one produced by AFP) which every other media source quotes from and neither the Louvre (list of press releases) nor Nintendo (list of press releases) appear to have distributed a press release about this experiment.

Leslie Horn in her Dec. 16, 2011 article for PC Magazine did note this,

The AFP said Nintendo has developed the content, but the Louvre retained “editorial control.”

This move is not just good for the Louvre; it’s a welcome boost for the 3DS as well. Nintendo’s launch of the device was disappointing, and the company lost close to $1 billion in the last six months. Between March and September, it sold just 3 million units, far below its original expectations.

The Louvre, which is the most-visited museum in the world, is making a big push toward digital, and it believes the new guides will be attractive to gamers and those who use touch-screen phones and tablets. It’s also cooking up revamped smartphone and iPad apps and it recently redesigned its Web site, the AFP said.

While the Louvre has retained editorial control, Nintendo has created some content as Chris Velazco notes in his Dec. 15, 2011 item for TechCrunch,

On top of that, Nintendo has also produced original content for the Louvre, though it’s still unclear what they have in mind. While we’ll certainly see some educational software trickle on to the devices, I’m still holding out hope for an elaborate RPG [role playing game] that takes players gallivanting up and down the Richilieu Wing. Sadly, the Louvre retains editorial control over what goes on their 3DSs, so we can probably kiss that epic boss battle atop the Pyramid goodbye.

For anyone who’s curious about this new console to be used by the Louvre’s visitors (from the Nintendo 3DS Features page),

The Nintendo 3DS system opens up a whole new world of eye-popping gameplay possibilities. The stereoscopic 3D display of the upper screen gives objects within the game world a feeling of space and depth that extends far into the back of the screen. It becomes easier to see the position of characters and obstacles in the world, making many game experiences even more intuitive for all types of players.

…

Portable play control reaches a new level with these amazing features, allowing for new & unique gameplay mechanics. A built-in motion sensor and gyro sensor can react to the motion and tilt of the system, so whether players are twisting their systems side to side or moving them up and down, their motion-compatible Nintendo 3DS games respond instantly.

Here’s a video (largely in French) of an event introducing Nintendo’s 3DS consoles in February 2011 that was held at the Louvre,

Mostly enthused, even this group of young gamers comments that the new console requires a period of adjustment for their eyes.

Finally, here’s a short video (1 min., 19 secs.) in English from Mashable about this experiment at the Louvre,

I would love to hear more details but I imagine we’ll have to wait until March 2012 when the new 3DS consoles come into play (pun intentional) at the Louvre. Meanwhile, this experiment provides a view into how high culture and popular (sometimes called low) culture support each other’s interests/businesses.

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Burnaby-based company (Canada) challenges fossil fuel consumption with nuclear fusion

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

General Fusion, a Burnaby-based company getting ready to commercialize nuclear fusion by the end of this decade, is making a bit of a media splash. From a Nov. 30, 2011 news item on physorg.com (written by Tim Lawrence for AFP),

In the race against world governments and the wealthiest companies to commercialize a nuclear fusion reactor, a small, innovative Canadian firm is hoping to bottle and sell the sun’s energy.

They hope to test a prototype in 2014 and eventually become the first to commercialize the technology, offering a safe, cheap, pollution-free and virtually inexhaustible source of energy.

“What we’re trying to do is build the technology that can make the power that drives the sun, make it here on earth,” said Michael Delage, General Fusion’s vice president.

Most times when we hear ‘nuclear’, especially in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, we think of nuclear fission not nuclear fusion, which is a different technology. From the General Fusion website page on Safety,

Nuclear fusion power plants produce electricity without incurring the dangers associated with nuclear fission.

…

Fusion systems cannot melt down or explode since the fusion reaction only acts on a small amount of nuclear fuel at a time and can only occur if suitable conditions can be created and maintained for a sufficient time. If any part of the process does not work perfectly, fusion will not occur. In contrast, in a fission reactor, fuel is added in bulk and the reactor controls the rate at which a chain reaction occurs; if the control mechanism fails, the reaction can run away and a meltdown can occur.

…

Fusion systems do not use or produce highly active, long-lived radioactive waste. In contrast, fission reactors create reaction products that are unstable and more highly radioactive than the parent fuel material. Some of these fission products have half-lives of tens of thousands of years, creating long-term radioactive waste storage problems.

…

Fusion power plants are unattractive terrorist targets since their destruction cannot cause widespread environmental damage or human injury, and they do not produce or contain any materials that could be used for making bombs.

The description of the benefits from the technology are certainly persuasive (from the General Fusion website section on Benefits),

Environmental

Nuclear fusion power plants produce electricity without emitting greenhouse gases or pollutants.

Sustainability

General Fusion’s technology preserves non-renewable resources and promotes energy access, independence and security.

…

General Fusion power plants use deuterium and lithium as input fuel. The generator converts the lithium into tritium during the reaction process.

Lithium is abundant and widely available. The current annual lithium production is 16,000 t with 28.5 Mt of known land reserves and 250 Gt of seawater reserves. If fusion power plants were used to generate all of today’s electricity, land and sea reserves of lithium would be sufficient for 207 million years of production.

If you prefer to get your information via video,

Good luck to the  folks at General Fusion!

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