bodhi tree swaying

I showed this video to rapturous applause in my final class at Upward Bound. The speaker is Pranav Mistry, a young Indian technologist at MIT. He outlines the development of his Sixth Sense system of augmented reality. The video starts off rather slowly, but as we works through the evolution of his thinking and demonstrates more and more audacious applications of the technology, it becomes rather a thrill-ride. This technology has so many potential uses that it’s hard to believe that it won’t be in widespread use within a few years. I’d imagine the next step is having the augmentative imagery displayed in a head-up fashion, using glasses or even (eventually) contacts.

I especially appreciate the way that Mistry talks about us ceasing to be machines sitting in front of machines, and instead humanizes technology by making it a natural part of the way we interact with the world. In Mistry’s …

This is pretty exciting, at least for a techno-fetishist like me:

Swype Beta on Nexus One from bcpk on Vimeo.

Wonder how long it’ll take to appear on the iPhone, if it ever does.

It’s ironic that just as science is beginning to discover how creativity works, it is (in the US at least) in the midst of a marked decline. A Newsweek article reports that while IQ has been steadily rising, generation by generation, creativity began to decline steeply after 1990.

It’s a fascinating article (that I’m only half-way through), but in case one day you ever need to remind yourself what creativity was, here’s how it used to work:

When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available

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Interesting and provocative stuff from writer (and meditator) Robert Wright:

This autumn will see the publication of a book that promises to help us out here: “What Technology Wants,” by Kevin Kelly, a long-time tech-watcher who helped launch Wired magazine and was its executive editor back in its young, edgy days.

Don’t let the title of Kelly’s book terrify you. He assures us that he doesn’t think technology is conscious — at least, not “at this point.” For now, he says, technology’s “mechanical wants are not carefully considered deliberations but rather leanings.”

So relax; apparently we have a few years before Keanu Reeves gets stuffed into a gooey pod by robotic overlords who use people as batteries. Still, it’s notable that, before Reeves played that role in “The Matrix,” the movie’s directors gave him a copy of Kelly’s earlier book, “Out

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An interesting thing is happening in the field of artificial intelligence: a computer that can beat humans in a natural-language general knowledge quiz:

‘Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.”

This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge” ), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?

Neither, as it turned out. Both were beaten

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Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you’re reading.

It’s a simple bookmark that you put on your browser toolbar and then click when you want to simplify a web page. On a blog it removes all the sidebars and ads, allowing you to focus on the main content. On a regular site it can be useful for reformatting the font and column width. Here’s an example:

“Before”

Note the excessively wide “column.” Actually, the text runs right across the page width, meaning that your eyes have to work very hard to scan across the width of the text.

“After”

See how much easier it would be to read the text in a proper column?

Here’s another “before.” …

I love this video showing the cycle of photosynthesis in the oceans and on land over a three year period. It’s like watching a child breathing. This is another video from NASA’s SeaWiFS satellite.

This NASA page has more information about what’s going on.

If I hadn’t seen this Microsoft ad on PC Magazine’s website I would have assumed it was a spoof. How could any respectable company produce such an obnoxious advertisement?

In the hunt for quicker and easier ways to maintain this blog, I’m going to be experimenting with posting by email. This is just a test to see if I have the settings right.

Interesting interview from Wired, with Maggie Jackson, the author of “Distracted.” Ironically I started reading “Distracted” but put it to one side while I immersed myself in some of other books.

Paying attention isn’t a simple act of self-discipline, but a cognitive ability with deep neurobiological roots — and this complex faculty, says Maggie Jackson, is being woefully undermined by how we’re living.

In Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, Jackson explores the effects of “our high-speed, overloaded, split-focus and even cybercentric society” on attention. It’s not a pretty picture: a never-ending stream of phone calls, e-mails, instant messages, text messages and tweets is part of an institutionalized culture of interruption, and makes it hard to concentrate and think creatively.

Of course, every modern age is troubled by its new technologies. “The telegraph might have done just as much to the

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Maia takes after her parents (except that dad has enormous resistance to speaking on the phone).

From the NYT:

PLEASE listen carefully as this menu has changed.

For English press or say “One.” Para español oprima o diga “Dos.” For all other languages press or say “Three.”

One.

Thank you for your interest in our service. If this is a true spiritual emergency, please hang up and dial the number on the upper left-hand corner of the mailing label of your last solicitation. Otherwise, please stay on the line and your prayers will be answered in the order in which they were received.

All right, let’s get started. For prayers of repentance press or say “Two.” For prayers of supplication press or say “Three.” For prayers of forgiveness press or say “Four.” For prayers of serenity press or say “Five.” For all other prayers press or say “Six.”

>I guess…Er…Supplic — three. Three. [3]

I think you said, “Two.” Is this correct?

No.

I

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I predict with, some confidence, that by the year 2000, or not long afterward, technology will have developed to the point where we can talk to — and even see — people in other parts of the world. The arts of cinematography and telegraphy will come together as never before and vast networks of cables will transport sounds and images around the globe.

From the comfort of one’s own drawing room one will be able to converse with friends and family in distant places, allowing us to keep in touch with each other as we travel the world. And if I may make an even more outrageous prediction, by that time there may even be heavier-than-air flying machines that allow us to cross the world’s oceans in a matter of hours rather than days!

Cory Doctorow‘s Bitchun Society comes one step closer — a society in which people are permanently wired into the net, can see head-up displays in their visual field, can vote on each other’s status (like voting on Digg stories), and can email each other directly from the mind. It’s a concept that’s both scary (what about mindful concentration?) and attractive (all that access to information, anytime).

The Army grant to researchers at University of California, Irvine, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland has two objectives. The first is to compose a message using, as D’Zmura puts it, “that little voice in your head.”

The second part is to send that message to a particular individual or object (like a radio), also just with the power of thought. Once the message reaches the recipient, it could be read as text or as a voice mail.

Army developing ‘synthetic telepathy’ …