#include<speculative comments about motivation>

Interesting piece about the futurist implications of the promising new technologies on the horizon becoming corporate controlled walled-gardens, much as everything is now. It’s clear that some level of profit driven development is good, as it spurs innovation, but it’s also clear that too much moves to stifle innovation. To me, it seems that the iPhone is an example that’s swinging to the stifling end of the spectrum.

I have an iPhone, and I like it, but in some ways I regret buying it – had I known about the imminent release of Android phones back in Sept last year, I would have waited. Aside from the overly optimistic prospect of me writing apps for Android, owning the iPhone makes me feel slightly dirty, like I’ve just been sent a particularly glossy membership card to the NZ National party or some other vaguely nefarious organization. Despite their clear skill at aesthetics and design, Apple just seem sinister to me. It must be all the fanboys. Organizations that have and encourage a cult-like following always disturb me.

From the article:

I say that the iPhone is not the future, but what I mean by that is that the iPhone is not representative of a future I want to see. The future is not just a retail opportunity and a finer world is not built entirely of consumer goods. I’m not keen on a future where the major technologies of environmental and social mediation are owned and controlled by corporate ideology. As AR creeps closer and closer, the question of who gets to plant a flag in the liminal space of a technologically re-mediated environment becomes a more pressing concern – with new horizons there are always new forms of colonialism.

Interesting comments and discussions. Here’s mine:

Let’s assume we’re talking about the actions that a certain group or subculture can take to adapt these future unfriendly devices for themselves – aboniks is totally right that we can’t somehow convince the mass body public that the abridgement of rights they are barely aware of in the first place is enough reason for them to give up their shiny toys and stop responding emotionally to well crafted marketing. That’s just human nature, and immutable, at least for now.

Granted, the principle of openness could be crafted into a compelling message that might slowly challenge these closed cultures, but that’s an eternal vigilance problem – we’d have to have to resources to push our message on a similar scale, push it hard, and keep pushing it. If we were really capable manipulators, we could try dressing it up in religious clothes, but again, that’s not something a small group of hackers can easily do (though I’m always for starting a cult of technology).

This is all just paraphrasing of the old maxim “show, don’t tell”. Open source and future friendly systems and devices need to beat closed systems at their own game. We have to design systems, devices, whatever it is we design to be more usable, more focused, more elegant, more aesthetically pleasing, and with not necessarily more features, but better and more applicable features.

So, what can we do? Design stuff. Make stuff. Publicize everything we do. Help each other make stuff. Get past ego – it’s not about designing things to make one person or one subgroup look awesome, it’s about designing things to help us all move forward. Hack things. Publish our hacks. Design our creations to work together. Establish open de facto standards before the big corporates come in and foist closed ones upon us. Put every good idea in the commons, and make that commons so visible that patent inspectors can’t help but notice it. Encourage our children.

Some of that’s really practical, some of that’s philosophical. I think both are necessary – ideology without designs is just pretentious pap, design without ideology is all to easily co-opted by the greedy.

Now, go watch the Wolfram Alpha demo video.

Next, imagine if you had analytical tools of this nature at your fingertips at all times, and were able to project and share them on surfaces using some form of augmented reality. Finally, imagine what this could do to intelligent argument, discussion, design, and political discourse.

Quite a step, huh?

The interface used is quite cool and inspirational, but there’s a lot of funky interface videos out there, and the basic idea of creating worlds from within isn’t new; Snow Crash has this sort of thing, and, to some extent, it’s a logical extension and extrapolation of Wayne Piekarski’s PhD work in using AR to build 3D models on the world around us. That said, it’s a very polished imagining of this idea, and well worth the watch.

What I really liked, though, is the emotional context in which this is placed – the film’s not just a cool interface concept, but rather an example of how virtual worlds and technology might be able to provide emotional support of a sort. Effectively, the protagonist is creating worlds to embody and relive his memories. Once, our memories were limited to shared stories, then writing, then photos, then video – it seems logical that, if 3D environments and simulated experiences could be captured, then these too would be something that we collect, file away for posterity, and maybe share with our friends.

Imagine if, instead of showing wedding photos to friends who couldn’t make it, you could compellingly simulate the experience of being there.

found via Long Now

Why do I blog this?
I’ve always loved world building, and the idea of being able to easily create and experience worlds excites me. To really be compelling, though one would need to be able to create believable simulated people and animals to populate the world; as it is, the world in this video seems somewhat lonely.

If you’re not a math geek of some kind, you’re probably not reading anymore, but just in case you are, the point is that each of these letters has a common meaning in a lot of mathematical notation – p is a probability, v some arbitrary vector, f(x) and f’(x) some arbitrary function and its derivative, and x, y and z, are coordinates in 3-space.

The problem is that a lot of the time, this isn’t true, and even when it is true, it’s hard to tell exactly _which_ probability or set of coordinates you might be talking about.

Good math books typically get this – they define their notation, and use it consistently. If p means probability in chapter 1, it probably doesn’t mean ‘an arbitrary solution to the dual problem’ in chapter 2, unless it’s been explicitly re-defined. Each symbol should correspond to one particular value or concept at any given time. This makes the text easier and faster to read, and avoids all sorts of nasty confusion.

So, why is it that people presenting mathematical results always assume that you know their notation? If they throw up a complicated expression using a bunch of different letters, why do they assume that you know that r doesn’t actually mean radius (even though it’s shown on a circular diagram), and that, today, we’re using g to refer to probability, not p (except for that slide near the end, because it’s from a different slide set).

You’d think this just happens in badly prepared and presented seminars. Unfortunately, either you’re wrong, or I have an uncanny ability to attend only seminars that meet that criteria.

So, if you’re ever in a position to be presenting mathematical notation to a bunch of people, please, please, do the following..

• Introduce your notation. Tell the audience what each letter means as soon as you start using it.
• Don’t change what x means halfway through your talk, unless you really have to. If you’re using x to just mean ’some arbitrary value’, that’s OK, but tell people that.
• Each value should refer to only one thing at a time. This is particularly problematic if you’re working through an algorithm that re-uses the same notation every step. Is B the initial basis matrix you chose, or the basis matrix at step 3?
• If you’re re-introducing some notation you briefly mentioned at the beginning, mention it again.
• If your expression expresses some important relationship, verbalize it – read it out. If your expression is really large but still important for your audience to understand, not just accept, break it down and read it out. If you can’t do that, your audience won’t get it.
• If you’re just showing algebraic steps, question why you included them in the first place. If you’re not expecting your audience to work through the algebra while you’re talking, leave it out.
• Just because you think p always means probability, don’t assume you can get away with not defining it. If a letter has different meanings in different fields, you’re bound to confuse at least one person. Sure, they might be able to work it out from context, but they shouldn’t have to. Besides, p means the probability of what, exactly?

I could go on, but instead, I refer people to Polya’s lovely short rant on the subject in ‘How to Solve It’. There’s a free version online. It’s on page 134.

People seem to forget that the entire point of notation is the economical expression of an idea for the purpose of memory or communication. Furthermore, memory is really just a special case of communication – you’re communicating with your future self. Imagine how confused they’ll be if, in your notes, q means different things without clear distinction. Imagine how confused your audience will be, not having been you in the first place.

This all boils down to this general point about communicating – if you don’t value your idea enough to make sure your audience understands, don’t bother opening your mouth. Play Minesweeper instead.

X-posted to various places

In particular, he discusses how automated lighting, sound and so forth can afford a stage manager the opportunity to calibrate the response of the audience by controlling the timing of cues much more closely, much in the same way a live television producer does the same. What this has meant is that show production, in addition to be a massive organizational exercise, is now a performance unto itself.

Later, he goes on to talk about ways in which producers of other media gauge audience reaction and adapt accordingly – focus groups for TV and movies, golden ears for music, and now, with technology, learning systems based on customer profiling and crowd-sourcing, that can supplement socially driven recommendations such as friends or local record store owners – last.fm being a prominent example.

So inspired, here’s an interesting extension that occurred to me:

What if specialized AI, running locally, could be injected into traditionally mass-produced media like music, TV, or movies to act as a kind of virtual stage manager? It could observe you, the audience, a focus group of one, then tweak the timing, the content, the tone, and even the script of media to better suit your current mood, your tastes, to stimulate you in ways to which you are more sensitive, or even to better fit your available time.

But then, I saw this photo..

It’s Phoenix decelerating with its parachute in the Martian atmosphere, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Not a high quality image, but there’s something totally awesome about this. It’s not just telemetry and indirect guesses – that’s a man-made probe, landing on an alien world, and we can actually see it.

If you’re not in awe of that, what exactly does it take?

via The Planetary Society

So, I made a steam engine.

3D Animation of the Phoenix Lander, due to land on Mars in about 17 hours.

This expedition promising interesting results. It’ll be our first chance to sample soil beneath the Martian surface as it carries on board a digging arm capable of digging a trench half a metre deep. In addition, it carries a wet chemistry lab, a mass spectrometer, and several other instruments, allowing it to analyze whatever it finds.

Not a lot is known about the soil on Mars. Take, for example, this photo, taken by the Spirit rover. It shows a surprisingly pale soil rich in silica found just beneath the red soil surface. It wasn’t found through any deliberate effort, rather, it was spotted when, at one point, the rover’s camera was brought to bear on the trail left by its wheel in the soil. Hopefully this mission will result in a lot more information about the role and amount of water in Mars’ climate and geology. If we’re lucky, it’ll give much more conclusive evidence of whether or not there’s ever been life on Mars..

For those who are really geeky, there’ll be live footage of the NASA mission during the landing available from NASA TV on Monday from about 10am onwards

Either way, here’s hoping the landing goes well..

Viruses and bacteria evolve, just like all other living creatures. The difference is that they do it really fast. This means we can use evolution as a way of manipulating them. In the first story, we alter the environmental pressures that they live under, forcing them to adapt accordingly. In the second, we apply the rapid evolution of one microbe (viruses) to counter the the rapid evolution of another (superbugs).

Anyway – here’s the two stories:

1. By controlling the environmental conditions in which pathogenic organisms grow, we can, in principle, exert limited control over their evolution.

In order to be transmitted, some pathogens require a live, or even an active host. For these pathogens, there is evolutionary pressure towards non-lethal or lower intensity infections – infections that keep the host mobile and able to spread the pathogen. Others do not rely on host transmission, and in their case, there is evolutionary pressure towards the full exploitation of the host; that is, high intensity infections that take full advantage of the host as an incubator and food source.

Two examples of these pressures exist and have been studied:

• Cholera can be transmitted through several mechanisms, including water. Of these, water is the only one that doesn’t rely on an active host. Therefore, it is expected that cholera samples taken from a population with high water quality (where disease transmission must occur through active hosts). This effect was demonstrated through the analysis of samples taken from a cholera epidemic in Latin America in the 1990s. Samples of the disease taken from Ecuador (where water quality is low) produced more toxins than those taken from Chile, where water quality is comparatively high.
• Malaria transmits into humans through mosquito bites. Furthermore, the immature parasite is picked up again by mosquitoes through biting infected humans, where it grows, and is eventually injected, mature, into another human host. By protecting those seriously ill with malaria from being bitten again, more intense variants of the disease can be intercepted, and only less intense variants of the disease are transmitted. This was studied in Tennesee in the 1930s & 1940s, when the construction of hydro lakes led to widespread malaria.

This approach does little to prevent disease, but does a lot to reduce its intensity.

Ref: TED talk 2007, Paul Ewald – ‘Can we domesticate germs?’

2. Use viral evolution to counter bacterial evolution of resistance to antibiotics

A major medical problem facing the world today is increased bacterial resistance to antibiotics. It’s generally accepted that the unnecessary use of antibiotics to counter mild infections, and, more importantly, to promote animal growth in farming has led to the rise of anti-biotic resistant ’super-bugs’, including MRSA, resistant TB, and more. All sorts of diseases once considered controllable are becoming uncontrollable again, and people are dying from them in their thousands.

The principle behind this is simple – bacteria evolve at a rate many orders of magnitude faster than vertebrates. If we exert pressure on bacterial populations (through, say, a particular form of antibiotic), they’ll tend to evolve resistance. We’re stuck in an evolutionary race – we ‘evolve’ attacks (particular drugs), they evolve resistance. Currently, we’re much worse and much slower than the bacteria are at this, and we’re losing.

However, we’re not the only organisms that want to be able to attack and kill bacteria – there’s a whole class of viruses that prey on bacteria, including the famous T4 virus you’ll all have seen pictures of. These are called bacteriophages, and, like us, they’re in an evolutionary race with bacteria. One difference – they’re a lot better at it than we are.

Bacteriophages have another interesting property – they tend to be very specific in what they attack, most only targeting a small number of bacteria. Human cells are quite different to bacteria in many ways, and are effectively ignored by them. Given this, what is to prevent us from using them to target particular types of bacteria? Infected by medicinally resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)? Try this viral cocktail..

OK – it sounds a bit far-fetched, or at least dangerous. There’s almost certainly drawbacks or risks that need to be addressed, but, as a research direction, it sounds really interesting. Several groups have been working with this therapy for quite some time, and some trials are underway. There’s even a book on the subject – Viruses vs. Superbugs.

Ref: Interview on Science Friday, April 4, 2008

I find the idea of this sort of manipulation extremely elegant – the phrase ‘playing god’ seems, to me to apply to this sort of thing even more so than it does to genetic engineering; I think of that as something more akin to hacking than the exertion of any divine powers..