Tag Archives: Eric Schmidt

Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence launched at Harvard University and University of Manchester pushes the boundaries of smart robotics and AI

Before getting to the two news items, it might be a good idea to note that ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’ and ‘robot’ are not synonyms although they are often used that way, even by people who should know better. (sigh … I do it too)

A robot may or may not be animated with artificial intelligence while artificial intelligence algorithms may be installed on a variety of devices such as a phone or a computer or a thermostat or a … .

It’s something to bear in mind when reading about the two new institutions being launched. Now, on to Harvard University.

Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence

A September 23, 2022 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) news release (also on EurekAlert) announces a symposium to launch a new institute close to Mark Zuckerberg’s heart,

On Thursday [September 22, 2022], leadership from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Harvard University celebrated the launch of the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University with a symposium on Harvard’s campus. Speakers included CZI Head of Science Stephen Quake, President of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow, Provost of Harvard University Alan Garber, and Kempner Institute co-directors Bernardo Sabatini and Sham Kakade. The event also included remarks and panels from industry leaders in science, technology, and artificial intelligence, including Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Andy Jassy, Daniel Huttenlocher, Sam Altman, Joelle Pineau, Sangeeta Bhatia, and Yann LeCun, among many others.

The Kempner Institute will seek to better understand the basis of intelligence in natural and artificial systems. Its bold premise is that the two fields are intimately interconnected; the next generation of AI will require the same principles that our brains use for fast, flexible natural reasoning, and understanding how our brains compute and reason requires theories developed for AI. The Kempner Institute will study AI systems, including artificial neural networks, to develop both principled theories [emphasis mine] and a practical understanding of how these systems operate and learn. It will also focus on research topics such as learning and memory, perception and sensation, brain function, and metaplasticity. The Institute will recruit and train future generations of researchers from undergraduates and graduate students to post-docs and faculty — actively recruiting from underrepresented groups at every stage of the pipeline — to study intelligence from biological, cognitive, engineering, and computational perspectives.

CZI Co-Founder and Co-CEO Mark Zuckerberg [chairman and chief executive officer of Meta/Facebook] said: “The Kempner Institute will be a one-of-a-kind institute for studying intelligence and hopefully one that helps us discover what intelligent systems really are, how they work, how they break and how to repair them. There’s a lot of exciting implications because once you understand how something is supposed to work and how to repair it once it breaks, you can apply that to the broader mission the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has to empower scientists to help cure, prevent or manage all diseases.”

CZI Co-Founder and Co-CEO Priscilla Chan said: “Just attending this school meant the world to me. But to stand on this stage and to be able to give something back is truly a dream come true … All of this progress starts with building one fundamental thing: a Kempner community that’s diverse, multi-disciplinary and multi-generational, because incredible ideas can come from anyone. If you bring together people from all different disciplines to look at a problem and give them permission to articulate their perspective, you might start seeing insights or solutions in a whole different light. And those new perspectives lead to new insights and discoveries and generate new questions that can lead an entire field to blossom. So often, that momentum is what breaks the dam and tears down old orthodoxies, unleashing new floods of new ideas that allow us to progress together as a society.”

CZI Head of Science Stephen Quake said: “It’s an honor to partner with Harvard in building this extraordinary new resource for students and science. This is a once-in-a-generation moment for life sciences and medicine. We are living in such an extraordinary and exciting time for science. Many breakthrough discoveries are going to happen not only broadly but right here on this campus and at this institute.”

CZI’s 10-year vision is to advance research and develop technologies to observe, measure, and analyze any biological process within the human body — across spatial scales and in real time. CZI’s goal is to accelerate scientific progress by funding scientific research to advance entire fields; working closely with scientists and engineers at partner institutions like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biological Imaging to do the research that can’t be done in conventional environments; and building and democratizing next-generation software and hardware tools to drive biological insights and generate more accurate and biologically important sources of data.

President of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow said: “Here we are with this incredible opportunity that Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg have given us to imagine taking what we know about the brain, neuroscience and how to model intelligence and putting them together in ways that can inform both, and can truly advance our understanding of intelligence from multiple perspectives.”

Kempner Institute Co-Director and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and of Statistics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Sham Kakade said: “Now we begin assembling a world-leading research and educational program at Harvard that collectively tries to understand the fundamental mechanisms of intelligence and seeks to apply these new technologies for the benefit of humanity … We hope to create a vibrant environment for all of us to engage in broader research questions … We want to train the next generation of leaders because those leaders will go on to do the next set of great things.”

Kempner Institute Co-Director and the Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School Bernardo Sabatini said: “We’re blending research, education and computation to nurture, raise up and enable any scientist who is interested in unraveling the mysteries of the brain. This field is a nascent and interdisciplinary one, so we’re going to have to teach neuroscience to computational biologists, who are going to have to teach machine learning to cognitive scientists and math to biologists. We’re going to do whatever is necessary to help each individual thrive and push the field forward … Success means we develop mathematical theories that explain how our brains compute and learn, and these theories should be specific enough to be testable and useful enough to start to explain diseases like schizophrenia, dyslexia or autism.”

About the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education, to addressing the needs of our communities. Through collaboration, providing resources and building technology, our mission is to help build a more inclusive, just and healthy future for everyone. For more information, please visit chanzuckerberg.com.

Principled theories, eh. I don’t see a single mention of ethicists or anyone in the social sciences or the humanities or the arts. How are scientists and engineers who have no training in or education in or, even, an introduction to ethics or social impacts or psychology going to manage this?

Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to these issues was something along the lines of “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.” I understand there have been changes but it took far too long to recognize the damage let alone attempt to address it.

If you want to gain a little more insight into the Kempner Institute, there’s a December 7, 2021 article by Alvin Powell announcing the institute for the Harvard Gazette,

The institute will be funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, which was announced Tuesday [December 7, 2021] by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, significant new computing infrastructure, and resources to allow students to flow between labs in pursuit of ideas and knowledge. The institute’s name honors Zuckerberg’s mother, Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, and her parents — Zuckerberg’s grandparents — Sidney and Gertrude Kempner. Chan and Zuckerberg have given generously to Harvard in the past, supporting students, faculty, and researchers in a range of areas, including around public service, literacy, and cures.

“The Kempner Institute at Harvard represents a remarkable opportunity to bring together approaches and expertise in biological and cognitive science with machine learning, statistics, and computer science to make real progress in understanding how the human brain works to improve how we address disease, create new therapies, and advance our understanding of the human body and the world more broadly,” said President Larry Bacow.

Q&A

Bernardo Sabatini and Sham Kakade [Institute co-directors]

GAZETTE: Tell me about the new institute. What is its main reason for being?

SABATINI: The institute is designed to take from two fields and bring them together, hopefully to create something that’s essentially new, though it’s been tried in a couple of places. Imagine that you have over here cognitive scientists and neurobiologists who study the human brain, including the basic biological mechanisms of intelligence and decision-making. And then over there, you have people from computer science, from mathematics and statistics, who study artificial intelligence systems. Those groups don’t talk to each other very much.

We want to recruit from both populations to fill in the middle and to create a new population, through education, through graduate programs, through funding programs — to grow from academic infancy — those equally versed in neuroscience and in AI systems, who can be leaders for the next generation.

Over the millions of years that vertebrates have been evolving, the human brain has developed specializations that are fundamental for learning and intelligence. We need to know what those are to understand their benefits and to ask whether they can make AI systems better. At the same time, as people who study AI and machine learning (ML) develop mathematical theories as to how those systems work and can say that a network of the following structure with the following properties learns by calculating the following function, then we can take those theories and ask, “Is that actually how the human brain works?”

KAKADE: There’s a question of why now? In the technological space, the advancements are remarkable even to me, as a researcher who knows how these things are being made. I think there’s a long way to go, but many of us feel that this is the right time to study intelligence more broadly. You might also ask: Why is this mission unique and why is this institute different from what’s being done in academia and in industry? Academia is good at putting out ideas. Industry is good at turning ideas into reality. We’re in a bit of a sweet spot. We have the scale to study approaches at a very different level: It’s not going to be just individual labs pursuing their own ideas. We may not be as big as the biggest companies, but we can work on the types of problems that they work on, such as having the compute resources to work on large language models. Industry has exciting research, but the spectrum of ideas produced is very different, because they have different objectives.

For the die-hards, there’s a September 23, 2022 article by Clea Simon in Harvard Gazette, which updates the 2021 story,

Next, Manchester, England.

Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI

Robotots take a break at a lab at The University of Manchester – picture courtesy of Marketing Manchester [downloaded from https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/manchester-ai-summit-aims-to-attract-experts-in-advanced-engineering-and-robotics/]

A November 22, 2022 University of Manchester press release (also on EurekAlert) announces both a meeting and a new centre, Note: Links to the Centre have been retained; all others have been removed,

How humans and super smart robots will live and work together in the future will be among the key issues being scrutinised by experts at a new centre of excellence for AI and autonomous machines based at The University of Manchester.

The Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI will be a new specialist multi-disciplinary centre to explore developments in smart robotics through the lens of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous machinery.

The University of Manchester has built a modern reputation of excellence in AI and robotics, partly based on the legacy of pioneering thought leadership begun in this field in Manchester by legendary codebreaker Alan Turing.

Manchester’s new multi-disciplinary centre is home to world-leading research from across the academic disciplines – and this group will hold its first conference on Wednesday, Nov 23, at the University’s new engineering and materials facilities.

A  highlight will be a joint talk by robotics expert Dr Andy Weightman and theologian Dr Scott Midson which is expected to put a spotlight on ‘posthumanism’, a future world where humans won’t be the only highly intelligent decision-makers.

Dr Weightman, who researches home-based rehabilitation robotics for people with neurological impairment, and Dr Midson, who researches theological and philosophical critiques of posthumanism, will discuss how interdisciplinary research can help with the special challenges of rehabilitation robotics – and, ultimately, what it means to be human “in the face of the promises and challenges of human enhancement through robotic and autonomous machines”.

Other topics that the centre will have a focus on will include applications of robotics in extreme environments.

For the past decade, a specialist Manchester team led by Professor Barry Lennox has designed robots to work safely in nuclear decommissioning sites in the UK. A ground-breaking robot called Lyra that has been developed by Professor Lennox’s team – and recently deployed at the Dounreay site in Scotland, the “world’s deepest nuclear clean up site” – has been listed in Time Magazine’s Top 200 innovations of 2022.

Angelo Cangelosi, Professor of Machine Learning and Robotics at Manchester, said the University offers a world-leading position in the field of autonomous systems – a technology that will be an integral part of our future world. 

Professor Cangelosi, co-Director of Manchester’s Centre for Robotics and AI, said: “We are delighted to host our inaugural conference which will provide a special showcase for our diverse academic expertise to design robotics for a variety of real world applications.

“Our research and innovation team are at the interface between robotics, autonomy and AI – and their knowledge is drawn from across the University’s disciplines, including biological and medical sciences – as well the humanities and even theology. [emphases mine]

“This rich diversity offers Manchester a distinctive approach to designing robots and autonomous systems for real world applications, especially when combined with our novel use of AI-based knowledge.”

Delegates will have a chance to observe a series of robots and autonomous machines being demoed at the new conference.

The University of Manchester’s Centre for Robotics and AI will aim to: 

  • design control systems with a focus on bio-inspired solutions to mechatronics, eg the use of biomimetic sensors, actuators and robot platforms; 
  • develop new software engineering and AI methodologies for verification in autonomous systems, with the aim to design trustworthy autonomous systems; 
  • research human-robot interaction, with a pioneering focus on the use of brain-inspired approaches [emphasis mine] to robot control, learning and interaction; and 
  • research the ethics and human-centred robotics issues, for the understanding of the impact of the use of robots and autonomous systems with individuals and society. 

In some ways, the Kempner Institute and the Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI have very similar interests, especially where the brain is concerned. What fascinates me is the Manchester Centre’s inclusion of theologian Dr Scott Midson and the discussion (at the meeting) of ‘posthumanism’. The difference is between actual engagement at the symposium (the centre) and mere mention in a news release (the institute).

I wish the best for both institutions.

Is technology taking our jobs? (a Women in Communications and Technology, BC Chapter event) and Brave New Work in Vancouver (Canada)

Awkwardly named as it is, the Women in Communications and Technology BC Chapter (WCTBC) has been reinvigorated after a moribund period (from a Feb. 21, 2018 posting by Rebecca Bollwitt for the Miss 604 blog),

There’s an exciting new organization and event series coming to Vancouver, which will aim to connect, inspire, and advance women in the communications and technology industries. I’m honoured to be on the Board of Directors for the newly rebooted Women in Communications and Technology, BC Chapter (“WCTBC”) and we’re ready to announce our first event!

Women in Debate: Is Technology Taking Our Jobs?

When: Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 5:30pm
Where: BLG – 200 Burrard, 1200 Waterfront Centre, Vancouver
Tickets: Register online today. The cost is $25 for WCT members and $35 for non-members.

Automation, driven by technological progress, has been expanding for the past several decades. As the pace of development increases, so has the urgency in the debate about the potential effects of automation on jobs, employment, and human activity. Will new technology spawn mass unemployment, as the robots take jobs away from humans? Or is this part of a cycle that predates even the Industrial Revolution in which some jobs will become obsolete, while new jobs will be created?

Debaters:
Christin Wiedemann – Co-CEO, PQA Testing
Kathy Gibson – President, Catchy Consulting
Laura Sukorokoff – Senior Trainer & Communications, Hyperwallet
Sally Whitehead – Global Director, Sophos

Based on the Oxford style debates popularized by the podcast ‘Intelligence Squared’, the BC chapter of Women in Communications and Technology brings you Women in Debate: Is Technology Taking Our Jobs?

For anyone not familiar with “Intelligence Squared,”  there’s this from their About webpage,

ntelligence Squared is the world’s premier forum for debate and intelligent discussion. Live and online we take you to the heart of the issues that matter, in the company of some of the world’s sharpest minds and most exciting orators.

Intelligence Squared Live

Our events have captured the imagination of public audiences for more than a decade, welcoming the biggest names in politics, journalism and the arts. Our celebrated list of speakers includes President Jimmy Carter, Stephen Fry, Patti Smith, Richard Dawkins, Sean Penn, Marina Abramovic, Werner Herzog, Terry Gilliam, Anne Marie Slaughter, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Mary Beard, Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie, Eric Schmidt, Richard Branson, Professor Brian Cox, Nate Silver, Umberto Eco, Martin Amis and Grayson Perry.

Further digging into WCTBC unearthed this story about the reasons for its ‘reboot’, from the Who we are / Regional Chapters / British Columbia webpage,

“Earlier this month [October 2017?], Christin Wiedemann and Briana Sim, co-Chairs of the BC Chapter of WCT, attended a Women in IoT [Internet of Things] event in Vancouver. The event was organized by the GE Women’s Network and TELUS Connections, with WCT as an event partner. The event sold out after only two days, and close to 200 women attended.

Five female panelists representing different backgrounds and industries talked about the impact IoT is having on our lives today, and how they think IoT fits into the future of the technology landscape. Christin facilitated the Q&A portion of the event, and had an opportunity to share that the BC chapter is rebooting and hopes to launch a kickoff event later in November”

You can find a summary of the event here (http://gereports.ca/theres-lots-room-us-top-insights-five-canadas-top-women-business-leaders-iot/#), and you can also check out the Storify (https://storify.com/cwiedemann/women-in-iot​).”

– October 6th, 2017

Simon Fraser University’s Brave New Work

Coincidentally or not, there’s a major series of events being offered by Simon Fraser University’s (SFU; located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada) Public Square Programme in their 2018 Community Summit Series titled: Brave New Work; How can we thrive in the changing world of work? which takes place February 26, 2018 to March 7, 2018.

There’s not a single mention (!!!!!) of Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley) in what is clearly word play based on this man’s book.

From the 2018 Community Summit: Brave New Work webpage on the SFU website (Note: Links have been removed),

How can we thrive in the changing world of work?

The 2018 Community Summit, Brave New Work, invites us to consider how we can all thrive in the changing world of work.

Technological growth is happening at an unprecedented rate and scale, and it is fundamentally altering the way we organize and value work. The work we do (and how we do it) is changing. One of the biggest challenges in effectively responding to this new world of work is creating a shared understanding of the issues at play and how they intersect. Individuals, businesses, governments, educational institutions, and civil society must collaborate to construct the future we want.

The future of work is here, but it’s still ours to define. From February 26th to March 7th, we will convene diverse communities through a range of events and activities to provoke thinking and encourage solution-finding. We hope you’ll join us.

The New World of Work: Thriving or Surviving?

As part of its 2018 Community Summit, Brave New Work, SFU Public Square is proud to present, in partnership with Vancity, an evening with Van Jones and Anne-Marie Slaughter, moderated by CBC’s Laura Lynch at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Van Jones and Anne-Marie Slaughter, two leading commentators on the American economy, will discuss the role that citizens, governments and civil society can play in shaping the future of work. They will explore the challenges ahead, as well as how these challenges might be addressed through green jobs, emergent industries, education and public policy.

Join us for an important conversation about how the future of work can be made to work for all of us.

Are you a member of Vancity? As one of the many perks of being a Vancity member, you have access to a free ticket to attend the event. For your free ticket, please visit Vancity for more information. There are a limited number of seats reserved for Vancity members, so we encourage you to register early.

Tickets are now on sale, get yours today!

Future of Work in Canada: Emerging Trends and Opportunities

What are some of the trends currently defining the new world of work in Canada, and what does our future look like? What opportunities can be seized to build more competitive, prosperous, and inclusive organizations? This mini-conference, presented in partnership with Deloitte Canada, will feature panel discussions and presentations by representatives from Deloitte, Brookfield Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Vancity, Futurpreneur, and many more.

Work in the 21st Century: Innovations in Research

Research doesn’t just live in libraries and academic papers; it has a profound impact on our day to day lives. Work in the 21st Century is a dynamic evening that showcases the SFU researchers and entrepreneurs who are leading the way in making innovative impacts in the new world of work.

Basic Income

This lecture will examine the question of basic income (BI). A neoliberal version of BI is being considered and even developed by a number of governments and institutions of global capitalism. This form of BI could enhance the supply of low wage precarious workers, by offering a public subsidy to employers, paid for by cuts to others areas of social provision.

ReframeWork

ReframeWork is a national gathering of leading thinkers and innovators on the topic of Future of Work. We will explore how Canada can lead in forming new systems for good work and identify the richest areas of opportunity for solution-building that affects broader change.

The Urban Worker Project Skillshare

The Urban Worker Project Skillshare is a day-long gathering, bringing together over 150 independent workers to lean on each other, learn from each other, get valuable expert advice, and build community. Join us!

SFU City Conversations: Making Visible the Invisible

Are outdated and stereotypical gender roles contributing to the invisible workload? What is the invisible workload anyway? Don’t miss this special edition of SFU City Conversations on intersectionality and invisible labour, presented in partnership with the Simon Fraser Student Society Women’s Centre.

Climate of Work: How Does Climate Change Affect the Future of Work

What does our changing climate have to do with the future of work? Join Embark as they explore the ways our climate impacts different industries such as planning, communications or entrepreneurship.

Symposium: Art, Labour, and the Future of Work

One of the key distinguishing features of Western modernity is that the activity of labour has always been at the heart of our self-understanding. Work defines who we are. But what might we do in a world without work? Join SFU’s Institute for the Humanities for a symposium on art, aesthetics, and self-understanding.

Worker Writers and the Poetics of Labour

If you gave a worker a pen, what would they write? What stories would they tell, and what experiences might they share? Hear poetry about what it is to work in the 21st century directly from participants of the Worker Writers School at this free public poetry reading.

Creating a Diverse and Resilient Economy in Metro Vancouver

This panel conversation event will focus on the future of employment in Metro Vancouver, and planning for the employment lands that support the regional economy. What are the trends and issues related to employment in various sectors in Metro Vancouver, and how does land use planning, regulation, and market demand affect the future of work regionally?

Preparing Students for the Future World of Work

This event, hosted by CACEE Canada West and SFU Career and Volunteer Services, will feature presentations and discussions on how post-secondary institutions can prepare students for the future of work.

Work and Purpose Later in Life

How is the changing world of work affecting older adults? And what role should work play in our lives, anyway? This special Philosophers’ Cafe will address questions of retirement, purpose, and work for older adults.

Beyond Bitcoin: Blockchain and the Future of Work

Blockchain technology is making headlines. Enthusiastic or skeptic, the focus of this dialogue will be to better understand key concepts and to explore the wide-ranging applications of distributed ledgers and the implications for business here in BC and in the global economy.

Building Your Resilience

Being a university student can be stressful. This interactive event will share key strategies for enhancing your resilience and well-being, that will support your success now and in your future career.

We may not be working because of robots (no mention of automation in the SFU descriptions?) but we sure will talk about work-related topics. Sarcasm aside, it’s good to see this interest in work and in public discussion although I’m deeply puzzled by SFU’s decision to seemingly ignore technology, except for blockchain. Thank goodness for WCTBC. At any rate, I’m often somewhat envious of what goes on elsewhere so it’s nice to see this level of excitement and effort here in Vancouver.

Surveillance by design and by accident

In general, one thinks of surveillance as an activity undertaken by the military or the police or some other arm of the state (a spy agency of some kind). The  Nano Hummingbird, a drone from AeroVironment designed for the US Pentagon, would fit into any or all of those categories.

AeroVironment's hummingbird drone // Source: suasnews.com (downloaded from Homeland Security Newswire)

You can see the device in action here,

The inset screen shows you what is being seen via the hummingbird’s camera, while the larger screen image allows you to observe the Nano Hummingbird in action. I don’t know why they’ve used the word nano as part of the product unless it is for marketing purposes. The company’s description of the product is at a fairly high level and makes no mention of the technology, nano or otherwise, that makes the hummingbird drone’s capabilities possible (from the company’s Nano Hummingbird webpage),

AV [AeroVironment] is developing the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) under a DARPA sponsored research contract to develop a new class of air vehicle systems capable of indoor and outdoor operation. Employing biological mimicry at an extremely small scale, this unconventional aircraft could someday provide new reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities in urban environments.

The Nano Hummingbird could be described as a traditional form surveillance as could the EyeSwipe iris scanners (mentioned in my Dec. 10, 2010 posting). The EyeSwipe allows the police, military, or other state agencies to track you with cameras that scan your retinas (they’ve had trials of this technology in Mexico).

A provocative piece by Nic Fleming for the journal, New Scientist, takes this a step further. Smartphone surveillance: The cop in your pocket can be found in the July 30, 2011 issue of New Scientist (preview here; the whole article is behind a paywall),

While many of us use smartphones to keep our social lives in order, they are also turning out to be valuable tools for gathering otherwise hard-to-get data. The latest smartphones bristle with sensors …

Apparently the police are wanting to crowdsource surveillance by having members of the public use their smartphones to track licence plate numbers, etc. and notify the authorities. Concerns about these activities are noted both in Fleming article and in the August 10, 2011 posting on the Foresight Institute blog,

“Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute based in Palo Alto, California, warns that without safeguards, the data we gather about each other might one day be used to undermine rather than to protect our freedom. ‘We are moving to a new level of data collection that our society is not accustomed to,’ she says.”

Peterson’s comments about data collection struck me most particularly as I’ve noticed over the last several months a number of applications designed to make life ‘easier’ that also feature data collection (i. e., collection of one’s personal data). For example, there’s Percolate. From the July 7, 2011 article by Austin Carr for Fast Company,

Percolate, currently in its “double secret alpha” version, is a blogging platform that provides curated content for you to write about. The service taps into your RSS and Twitter feeds, culls content based on your interests–the stuff that “percolates up”–and then offers you the ability to share your thoughts on the subject with friends. “We’re trying to make it easy for anyone to create content,” Brier says, “to take away from the frustration of staring at that blank box and trying to figure out what to say.”

It not only removes the frustration, it removes at least some of the impetus for creativity. The service is being framed as a convenience. Coincidentally, it makes much easier for marketers or any one or any agency to track your activities.

This data collection can get a little more intimate than just your Twitter and RSS feeds. Your underwear can monitor your bodily functions (from the June 11, 2010 news item on Nanowerk),

A team of U.S. scientists has designed some new men’s briefs that may be comfortable, durable and even stylish but, unlike most underpants, may be able to save lives.

Printed on the waistband and in constant contact with the skin is an electronic biosensor, designed to measure blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs.

The technology, developed by nano-engineering professor Joseph Wang of University of California San Diego and his team, breaks new ground in the field of intelligent textiles and is part of shift in focus in healthcare from hospital-based treatment to home-based management.

The method is similar to conventional screen-printing although the ink contains carbon electrodes.

The project is being funded by the U.S. military with American troops likely to be the first recipients.

“This specific project involves monitoring the injury of soldiers during battlefield surgery and the goal is to develop minimally invasive sensors that can locate, in the field, and identify the type of injury,” Wang told Reuters Television.

I realize that efforts such as the ‘smart underpants’ are developed with good intentions but if the data can be used to monitor your health status, it can be used to monitor you for other reasons.

While the military can insist its soldiers be monitored, civilian efforts are based on incentives. For example, Foodzy is an application that makes dieting fun. From the July 7, 2011 article by Morgan Clendaniel on Fast Company,

As more and more people join (Foodzy is aiming for 30,000 users by the end of the year and 250,000 by the end of 2012), you’ll also start being able to see what your friends are eating. This could be a good way to keep your intake of bits down, not wanting to embarrass yourself in front of your friends as you binge on some cookies, but Kamphuis [Marjolijn Kamphuis is one of the founders] sees a more social aspect to it: “On my dashboard I am able to see what the ‘food match’ between me and my friends is, the same way Last.FM has been comparing me and my friend’s music taste for ages! I am now able to share recipes with my friends or hook up with them in real life for dinner because I notice we have similar taste.”

That sure takes the discovery/excitement aspect out of getting to know someone. As I noted with my comments about Percolate, with more of our lives being mediated by applications of this nature, the easier we are to track.

Along a parallel track, there’s a campaign to remove anonymity and/or pseudonymity from the Internet. As David Sirota notes in his August 12, 2011 Salon essay about this trend, the expressed intention is to ensure civility and minimize bullying but there is at least one other consequence,

The big potential benefit of users having to attach real identities to their Internet personas is more constructive dialogue.

As Zuckerberg [Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook executive] and Schmidt [Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO]  correctly suggest, online anonymity is primarily used by hate-mongers to turn constructive public discourse into epithet-filled diatribes. Knowing they are shielded from consequences, trolls feel empowered to spew racist, sexist and other socially unacceptable rhetoric that they’d never use offline. …

The downside, though, is that true whistle-blowers will lose one of their most essential tools.

Though today’s journalists often grant establishment sources anonymity to attack weaker critics, anonymity’s real social value is rooted in helping the powerless challenge the powerful. Think WikiLeaks, which exemplifies how online anonymity provides insiders the cover they need to publish critical information without fear of retribution. Eliminating such cover will almost certainly reduce the kind of leaks that let the public occasionally see inconvenient truths.

It’s not always about whistleblowing, some people prefer pseudonyms.  Science writer and blogger, GrrlScientist, recently suffered a blow to her pseudonymity which was administered by Google (from her July 16, 2011 posting on the Guardian science blogs),

One week ago, my entire Google account was deactivated suddenly and without warning. I was not allowed to access gmail nor any other Google service until I surrendered my personal telephone number in exchange for reinstating access to my gmail account. I still cannot access many of my other accounts, such as Google+, Reader and Buzz. My YouTube account remains locked, too.

I was never notified as to what specifically had warranted this unexpected deactivation of my account. I only learned a few hours later that my account was shut down due to the name I use on my profile page, which you claim is a violation of your “community standards”. However, as stated on your own “display name” pages, I have not violated your community standards. I complied with your stated request: my profile name is “the name that [I] commonly go by in daily life.”

My name is a pseudonym, as I openly state on my profile. I have used GrrlScientist as my pseudonym since 2000 and it has a long track record. I have given public lectures in several countries, received mail in two countries, signed contracts, received monetary payments, published in a number of venues and been interviewed for news stories – all using my pseudonym. A recent Google search shows that GrrlScientist, as spelled, is unique in the world. This meets at least two of your stated requirements; (1) I am not impersonating anyone and (2) my name represents just one person.

GrrlScientist is not the only writer who prefers a pseudonym. Mark Twain did too. His real name was Samuel J. Clemens but widely known as Mark Twain, he was the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and many more books, short stories, and essays.

Minimzing bullying, ensuring civility, monitoring vital signs in battle situations, encouraging people to write, helping a friend stay on diet are laudable intentions but all of this leads to more data being collected about us and the potential for abusive use of this data.