CyberMouse

Saturday, November 15, 2003:

http://cyberatlas.internet.com/markets/wireless/article/0,,10094_3101231,00.html
Cell Phone Courtesy Lacking
Anyone who has had to overhear private conversations in public places won't find this research surprising. November 11, 2003
Unknown // 7:03 PM

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Friday, November 14, 2003:

Toward a Brain-Internet Link
Surfing the Web via chips implanted in your brain isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.

By Rodney Brooks
The future of computing
November 2003


A few weeks ago I was brushing my teeth and trying to remember who made “La Bamba” a big hit back in the late 1950s. I knew the singer had died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly; if I’d been downstairs I would have gone straight to Google. But even if I’d had a spoken-language Internet interface in the bathroom, my mouth was full of toothpaste. I realized that what I really want is an implant in my head, directly coupled into my brain, providing a wireless Internet connection.


In my line of work, an effective brain-computer interface is a perennial vision. But I’m starting to think that by 2020 we might actually have wireless Internet interfaces that ordinary people will feel comfortable having implanted in their heads—just as ordinary people are today comfortable with going to the mall to have laser eye surgery. All the signs—early experimental successes, societal demand for improved health care, and military research thrusts—point in that direction.

Remote-controlled rats are perhaps the most stunning evidence of this trend. Last year, John Chapin and his colleagues at the State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn reported installing brain implants that stimulate areas of the rat cortex where signals are normally received from the whiskers. Left/right cues from a laptop computer made the rats feel as if their whiskers had brushed into obstacles, prompting them to turn in the appropriate directions. To impel the rats up difficult inclines, a second implant stimulated pleasure centers in their brains.

This experiment built on the 1999 efforts of Chapin and Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University that enabled rats to mentally induce a robot arm to release water. First, a computer recorded the patterns of neural firing in key areas of the rats’ brains when the rodents pressed a lever that controlled the robot arm. Once the computer learned the neural pattern associated with lever-pushing, it moved the robot arm when it detected the rats merely “thinking” about doing so. In later versions of this technology, monkeys were able to control a more sophisticated robot arm as though it were their own.

Machine-neuron connections are working in people, too. Thousands of once deaf people can understand conversations thanks to cochlear implants. A tiny microphone in the ear picks up sound, and a small package of electronics translates this into direct stimulation of neurons in the cochlea. More recently, there have been reports of human trials in which comparable (though much more crude and early-stage) visual implants enabled blind patients to perceive something of their surroundings. And a handful of quadriplegic patients have neural implants that let them control computers by “thinking” about moving particular muscles.

Why am I confident that brain-Internet interfaces will become a reality? Because it’s not really such a vast leap from here to a thought-activated Google search: these human-tested technologies already give us the components that we would need to directly connect the Internet to a person’s brain. And because there are both medical and military pulls on related technologies. On the medical side, besides the urgency of providing physical and mental prostheses to patients with severe injuries, baby boomers are getting older, and their nervous systems are starting to fall apart. There will be increased demand for patching up deteriorating nervous subsystems—and baby boomers have always gotten what they demand. At minimum, this will drive the development of direct visual interfaces that by 2010 will help blind people as much as today’s cochlear implants help deaf people.

And on the military side, direct neural control of complex machines is a long-term goal. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has a brain-machine interface program aimed at creating next-generation wireless interfaces between neural systems and, initially, prosthetics and other biomedical devices.

Just as the modern laptop was inconceivable when the standard computer interface was the punch card, it’s hard to imagine how a brain-Internet interface will feel. As brain-imaging technologies continue their rapid advance, we will get a better understanding of where in the brain to insert signals so that they will be meaningful—just as the control signals for the rats were inserted into neurons normally triggered by whiskers.

We still need broad advances, of course. We need algorithms that can track the behavior of brain cells as they adapt to the interface, and we’ll need better understanding of brain regions that serve as centers of meaning. But we’ll get there. And when we do, we won’t “see” an image similar to today’s Web pages. Rather, the information contained in a Web server will make us feel as though “Ritchie Valens” just popped into our heads.

>Join the discussion

Rodney Brooks is director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. More by this author >>
Unknown // 3:09 AM

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Wednesday, November 12, 2003:

BARRIERS TO WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY
Ilene H. Lang says that "the barriers and demands of the high-tech industry
are very similar to those of traditional industries. What is surprising is
that in an industry that thinks of itself as a meritocracy, women and men
both perceive a lack of acceptance of women. " Lang is president of
Catalyst, a non-profit organization aimed at the advancement of women in
business. A new report by that organizations urges companies to address the
barriers to advancement by including women in career development programs,
providing opportunities for interacting with other successful women, and
fostering more flexibility. (San Jose Mercury News 12 Nov 2003)
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7241970.htm
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http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20031113b3.htm
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OPINION
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Nuclear Power & War
A nonproliferation victory in Iran
The bad news is that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has concluded that Iran operated a secret nuclear program and formally breached its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The good news is that the agency caught the clandestine program and forced Tehran to admit its behavior and accept an additional protocol allowing enhanced nuclear inspections. This happy outcome is proof of the importance of the NPT regime and the IAEA, and the need for continuing vigilance to enforce its provisions. Nuclear proliferation can be stopped, but the nonproliferation regime requires constant care and attention.
[MORE] ->
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ed20031113a1.htm
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This one is on Globalization:
OUR PLANET EARTH
Poor farmers pay price for subsidies
By STEPHEN HESSE
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fe20031113sh.htm

Unknown // 5:44 PM

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Spy Chips' Tested on the Sly
The Chicago Sun Times reports that P&G and Wal-Mart did a secret test of RFID chips in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers were equipped with RFID chips. "The shelves and Webcam images were viewed 750 miles away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and could even watch consumers in action," the article says.

This latest report "proves what we've been saying all along," says Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). "Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and others have experimented on shoppers with controversial spy chip technology and tried to cover it up," Albrecht says. "Consumers and members of the press should be upset to learn that they've been lied to."
Unknown // 3:42 AM

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Aging Society:
Woo foreign investors, make babies: report
The Cabinet Office says the
solution to Japan's aging population is to encourage people
to have more babies, and welcome foreign investment.
[MORE] ->
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20031025a1.htm
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Tech. Good and Bad,Bad,Bad
Remembering Neil Postman
By Jim Benning, AlterNet, October 10, 2003
"... the most significant American cultural fact of the second half
of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of Typography and
the ascendancy of the Age of Television." The change didn't bode
well for serious political discourse, Postman thought. As he
pointed out, the world of the printed word, by its very nature,
demanded rigorous logic. Television, with its emphasis on
flashy images, did not. The consequences were far-reaching ..."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16940
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Atomic Power Problems:
Is the Yucca Nuke Dump All Wet?
Last year, Congress and the President approved a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the disposal of highly toxic waste produced at the nation’s nuclear power plants. The depository assumes geological stability over 10,000 years. Too bad the government didn't pay more attention to what geologists had to say--particularly regarding the potential for water to infiltrate the site and carry the waste out of the repository.[Topics: Environment; Gov't Law and Policy; Opinion]
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_macfarlane102203.asp
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CELL PHONE REHAB?
Substance abuse experts say some of today's cell phone users exhibit
symptoms very similar to addiction when it comes to their communications
habits. "People literally detox from their phones. Text messaging, games --
these are all sources of isolation, a way to zone out," says a spokeswoman
for a leading substance abuse clinic in Southern California, which requires
cell phones to be checked upon admission. Critics say the word "addiction"
is over-used, and that the test should be whether there are harmful
consequences involved. But while frequent cell phone use hasn't yet been
determined to cause physical damage, it may have a negative impact on
relationships when talking on the phone becomes more important than talking
to the person you've invited on a date. Then of course, there's the
yet-unresolved issue of talking on the phone while driving, and the
condition described as "pseudo-attention deficit disorder," where meeting
participants while away their time on their "crackberry" RIM devices
instead of paying attention to the topic at hand. Virgin Mobile has taken
the controversy to heart, and has published on its Web site the
"Textercises" recommended by the British Chiropractic Association to avoid
straining hands and fingers while text-messaging. They call it "Practicing
Safe Text." (Wired.com 25 Oct 2003)
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60936,00.html

*****


Unknown // 3:04 AM

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Tuesday, November 11, 2003:

Mobile phone shipments up 20%
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20031112a9.htm

NTT posts nation's largest operating profit
Telecommunications giant NTT Corp. posts the nation's largest operating profit for the fiscal first half of 2003.
[MORE] ->
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20031112a1.htm


Unknown // 4:19 PM

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Monday, November 10, 2003:

Why The Matrix Matters
The third and final film in The Matrix franchise, The Matrix:Revolutions , opened this week. I haven’t seen it yet because I have been hiding out in the North Georgia mountains but I have been doing a lot of research and thinking about the Matrix phenomenon this year for my new book project.

To understand why The Matrix is important, you have to go back to the concept of Transmedia Storytelling , which I spelled out in a column earlier this year: "In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best--so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced through game play.... Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption.... Offering new levels of insight and experience refreshes the franchise and sustains consumer loyalty."

The Matrix pushes this idea of transmedia storytelling as far or further than anyone has gone before, building out the world of The Matrix across not only three feature films, but also a series of comics (first released on the web and now in print), a series of anime movies ( The Animatrix ), and an ambitious video game ( Enter The Matrix ) which contains more than an hour of original footage featuring the cast of the movie. Each of these works adds something important to our appreciation of the whole--none of redundant, each has its clear aesthetic contributions.

Game designer Neil Young uses the term "additive comprehension" to describe the ways that we accrue information in transmedia storytelling, so that The Second Renaissance (one of the anime) fills it the events between our present society and the world depicted in the films, The Kid's Story (also anime) introduces a minor character who appears without explanation in Reloaded , and Enter The Matrix (the game) provides backstory on Ghost and Niobe (two marginal characters in Reloaded who get more screen time in Revolution ). In one of the flashier examples of transmedia storytelling, an urgent message gets introduced in The Flight of the Osiris (anime) and left at a post office, where the player retrieves it in Enter the Matrix (game), and the impact of its contents are made clear in the opening scenes of Reloaded (feature film).

The Wachowski Brothers sketched out the game levels with Shiny Entertainment's David Perry, developed scenarios for many of the anime, and writed scripts for some of the comics. Fans argue that this gives these other works creative integrity.

Yet, at the same time, they work with distinctive and recognized artists in these other fields, artists like Paul Chadwick ( Concrete ), Neil Gaiman ( The Sandman), and Peter Bagge ( Hate ) in the comics or Mahiro Maeda ( Neon Genesis Evangelion ), Peter Chung ( Aeon Flux ), and Andy Jones ( Final Fantasy ) in the anime, who bring their own thematic preoccupations, visual style and fan followings to the project. Each of these, and many The resulting works cohere, more or less, together, but also are distinctly different and accomplished on their own terms.

Even within the feature film, the Wachowskis have consistently showcased the contributions of other creative artists, including conceptual artist Geoff Darrow (who brings a Euro-comics influence to the project), martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (who links it to the Hong Kong tradition), and costume designer Kym Barrett (who brings to it the high style we associate with her work on the films of Boz Luhrman).

Most film critics frankly haven't been willing to make the effort to "get" this franchise because they are stuck within a mono-media rather than a trans-media paradigm--and thus, the second two films walk away with a row of Gentleman's Bs. They can see something new is going on here but they really don't know what to make of it.

Traditional film aesthetics assumes not only that everything you need to know will be in the movie but that it will be repeated at least three times in case you blinked. The Matrix isn't playing by those rules: it is experimenting with a new kind of popular culture, one which is by design more open-ended, more multilayered, more provocative and evocative, more exploratory than any one spectator is going to be able to process.

You are always going to feel inadequate before The Matrix because it expects more than any individual spectator can provide. That is its strength and its limitations. The film depends on the power of internet communities to look at the work from many different perspectives, pool their knowledge, and compile the information for us. The Matrix isn't designed to be the end of the communicative and creative process but rather the beginning.

In the end, there is not one Matrix experience, but many. We hear this from no less an authority than Keanu Reaves: "What audiences make of Revolutions will depend on the amount of energy they put into it. The script is full of cul-de-sacs and secret passageways."

So far, the audience has been prepared to give them more leeway than the critics have. The dramatic sales figures for Enter the Matrix and the Animatrix suggest audiences were ready to buy into the concept of transmedia storytelling.

Some critics are arguing that the third film suffers because it is trying to do too much, close off too many openings, and has this feel of ticking off plot elements. This is not surprising given the fact that the aesthetics of transmedia storytelling are still relatively undefined.

Transmedia storytelling is trying to take an economic imperative (the need to build up franchises in an era of media conglomeration) and trying to turn it into a creative opportunity. There remains an uneasiness about what is ruling this process—art or commerce.

The Wachowskis are violating a core principle which I described in my column: "Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa."

Whether The Matrix experiment fails or not, it marks an important chapter in the emergence of this new transmedia aesthetic.

posted by Henry Jenkins @ 11/6/2003 09:40:5
Unknown // 3:55 AM

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