Marry Christmas From Geek!

A bit late, but I wish you all the love, joy and personal development that will potentially lead you to higher levels of understanding, awareness and self-transcendence.

As the ancient Chinese curse says:

"May you live in interesting times".

[image credit: Futurama]

Remove Universities, Tax People Outside Cities (and Other Extreme Ideas For 2010)

The new issue of Wired features a great collection of short radical manifestos from different authors for new policies in 2010 Britain. However, they are so extremely great, that they could be easily applied anywhere else. I strongly recommend you to read all of them, but below I made a review of my favorite ones.

1. Tax People Who Live Outside Cities, because it's not sustainable - rural households have much higher CO2 emission per person (larger houses, more cars per houshold, etc.). If we tax cigarettes to reflect the harm, we should also tax lifestyles that are damaging health of our planet (by PD Smith).
2. Turn Cities Into Self-Sufficient and Carbon Neutral Jungles, with eliminating using cars (walking, cycling and public transport is sufficient to move in the cities) and applying genetically modified (GM) crops everywhere, with making vertical farms on buildings (thick plantings of trees would absorb CO2 and extra luminescence genes would remove the requirement for city lights). Office building should be turned to high-tech beehives, shopping malls into bazaars and majority of buildings refurbished using bioarchitectural solutions, without building a new ones to save space and decrease the carbon footprint (by Paul McAuley).
3. Promote Another Credit Crunch, our economy is based too much on financial services, which consume themselves. Let is collapse. (by John Lanchester).
4. Slash Universities and Go Virtual, because it's too expensive and irrational to maintain the current system of higher education. Only 99 universities in England and Wales cost £8 billion of UK public money. Students graduate with an average debt of £20,000. To cut the costs we should revise and eliminate the pointless, non-vocational courses, make as much as we can online based, create more options for skill trainings. National service should be restored to promote social cohesion and civicmindedness in youngsters to get them out of negative circulation - we don't need university for this (by Glen Newey).
5. Recycle dead and introduce them back into the food production :-) (by Dinos Chapman).

[photo credits: Wired]

Geolocated Augmented Reality

Is it possible to have Terminator-like augmented vision on our mobiles?

I mean, yeah, we have some basic augmented reality apps and I already spoke about them in one of my previous posts. However they all suffer from obvious problem - the mobile GPS location is accurate ONLY down to about 8-12 meters or even more. The consequence of this is that the augmented reality data floats all over your screen and it's not accurate enough.

I want to look at my phone and have a nice icons, descriptions, clips and images overlying on the surrounding reality in the right places without the irritating floating effect. I want to be able to pick an object in city space and label it in a way that will effectively display for other users. I want it to be like in a science-fiction movies.

But how to achieve that?

One company thought about interesting way to solve the floating and accuracy problem. Earthmine has adapted a 3-D space mapping technology used in Mars rovers to capture the city street and create a detailed, 3D representation of space. At first it sounds just like a sophisticated Google Street View. However, Earthmine vision is to merge 3D maps they capture with location capacities of mobile phones and create a fully interactive, and stable geolocation engine. So inaccurate GPS signal from the phone will be combined with the recognition of the surroundings you are standing in, which will allow you to get a precise augmented reality display.

I just hope that Google have a plan like this, and can use that in their Street View to apply such technology, because it would really be... the quickest solution, considering how much of the world they have already mapped....

[photo credit: Earthmine]

Reactive Music and Reconnected Reality

I have different soundtracks to everyday world, my iTunes library is filled with playlists for different moods, actions and places.

Those playslists also allow me to escape from the surrounding noise, and therefore from the actual experience of auditory reality that I exist in.

However, I've recently discovered reactive music, the type of music that is shaped by your everyday world sounds.


I have two apps on iPhone: Kids on DSP and RjDj, both based on the same engine - that is to play some pre-recorded samples, but morph and mix them with sounds recorded in real time from microphone placed in the headphones. So the software records sounds that surround you and sample them into a continuously evolving soundtrack. As a result you actually listen to your environment which makes you more connected to reality. Your medium returned you to the world that surrounds you.

It is very crude and simple, it needs to be improved, but I see a type of augmented reality here that works like boomerang, that comes back to you with some upgrade of your actual experience of the moment and the sounds of your surroundings. You don't actually cut yourself from the noise, but you use those sounds to make your music.

So I recorded my trip back from work today using different 'scenes'* from RjDj and Kids on DSP and I managed to make a small album out of it, ;-)

*'scenes' are small programs inside RjDj that control how sound is recorded and sampled with the default sets. Those 'scenes' can be programmed and published for users by anyone who make one.

Geek On Acid: Back From Work
[recorded with RjDj and Kids On DSP]

Record Your Unconscious Mind with 'The Psychosqope'

A device that every respected psychodynamic therapist dreamt about has now became a reality.

A device that is an answer to Freud's and Jung's search for unconscious diagnosis emerged from the calculation power of the vacuum lamp.

The Psychosqope - a machine for recording the unconscious mind.

The Psychosqope consists of two parts - the Vacuum-Sonic Unconsciousness Sampler (VSUS) and the Subprojective Nonperception Test (SNT).

The VSUS is highly advanced device designed to detect Rorschach Waves' emitted by any unconscious mind/monad. Rorschach Waves were normally difficult to read, due to interference with electrical brain waves and some external frequencies. However, by using combination of subsonic reading of sound waves generated by unconscious monad and combing it with the calculation power of vaccum lamp processor, the VSUS is able to extract Rorschach Waves from the spectral chaos of energy and combine this information into a meaningful diagnosis.


The VSUS is used only with specially designed Subprojective Nonperception Test (SNT). SNT is heavily based on the Rorschach Test and Alcohol Stimulation Theory. SNT can't be described here due to make sure it doesn't leak into the collective unconsciousness, biasing the results of the diagnosis.


The Psychosqope has been fully attested to apply in psychological diagnosis and research.


The first global presentation of 'The Psychosqope' will take place in this year Steampunk Conference 'Nordcon' by its creator - Psychomechanikus Piveq.

[photo credit: geek on acid]

Retro [geek] Corner - Fuji Instax 200 Instant Camera

It is already this time of the year, and I am preparing for Nordcon - science-fiction assembly. This year dress up code is Steampunk - dark, Victorian atmosphere mixed with advanced industrial revolution bizarre gear. Where Turing machine is actually self-conscious and everyone wears goggles because of the smog and dust. Good times...

Anyway, I thought that I will use this opportunity to recover some of the artifacts of old technologies, that were once (quite recently) defining the reality, but are now more or less dead. I was browsing in my retro geek corner, and in the first review it is Fuji Instax 200 Instant Camera, sold by Fuji since... mid 90's.

I love this peace of gear. Extremely simple to use, and with the press of a button you produce a 10 cm x 6.3 cm photo that comes out from the top slot with lots of satisfying noises and twirls. When you turn it on people stare. People stare even when you take it out of the bag. And they are very surprised, shocked and amused at the same time.

Camera produces photos which are wider and more rich in terms of color depth comparing to well-known Polaroid One with 600 film. Fuji Instax external look misses some of the elegant aesthetics of Polaroid instant cameras, but it is still a party animal, with flash, two options of focus and three sensitivity modes. Crude. But I feel I need to exploit it in incoming Nordcon (although it is really not a Steampunk piece, nobody will care;-)


Why do I still love instant camera, in the reality where I can make thousands of photos with my iPhone or any other digital camera? It is the crudeness, grittiness and material evidence of your photographic crimes, which comes instantly, and which you can share in a very different way than digital photo on a small shitty display. You can write on it. And it is generally a social thing.

Digital photos are done without any philosophy behind them, because person is not limited by film capacity. Digital photos are freeware, they don't cost you anything so you just shot them without thinking much about it. On the other hand instant photos have a value, they not cheap, and they certainly require some thought, otherwise they will come up crap. In Fuji you need to think about distance between your focus lens and viewfinder, and adjust your position, otherwise you will shot a photo somewhere next to your target.

Fuji Instax is a kind of technology, that has certainly died from the hands of digital photography, but it is still intelligent and social type of camera. And although you can consider it as a dinosaur technology, Fuji is still making films for it, in contrast with Polaroid.

It is simply the great retro geek machine, 8 out of 10 stars.

[Fuji Instax 200 Camera]
Price: ~£25-£60 - Ebay UK for good condition camera;
~£15 in your local charity shop if you are lucky;-)

[Fujifilm Instax Wide Picture Format Film]
Price: ~£10 for twin-pack (20 shots) - 7 Day Shop UK

[photo credit: geek on acid]

Virtual Dresses and Skin Displays

Today something for geek chicks out there. Some hot tech-news from the world of fashion.

First - you have a trouble with deciding whether to buy this online dress? Not sure about the size, or how it will go with your jewelery? Well, folks at Tobi Shopping created Virtual Dressing Room, Fashionista. It works as augmented reality, so you print a special marker, stand in front of your computer camera, and just change the dresses or other clothing that overlay on the top of your body image, with everything showed in your browser display in a real time. With printed marker you adjust the position of the dress in the virtual camera space. It is a bit crude, but very interesting idea in terms of applying augmented reality in the user interface. I tested it with Ola, and she got hooked on it quite quickly. Below are her photos with the virtual dresses :) But watch the tutorial before you try the dresses.

Second - remember those gang members from Gibson's Virtual Light? Or drummers from Stephenson's Diamond Age? Yes, the ones with interactive tattoos which were displaying different images under their skin depending on emotions and their behavior. Now research team from University of Pennsylvania finally made it, with the LED tattoos technology that can turn your skin into the full color screen. Those LED's will be the combination of silicon microchip with silk substrate, allowing the chip to smoothly dissolve into your body. Unnoticeable microelectronics implanted in the surface of your skin will allow to hook it to any electronic device, displaying anything you want. They will be also useful in diagnostic aspects, like monitoring vital metabolic signals, blood pressure, etc. Initial displays will be black and quite basic, but the potential application for the future is limitless, from full body displays to microchips being implanted to your retina to regulate the amount of light coming to your eye or displaying augmented reality. Philips is already exploring some commercial use of electronic tattoos. It is a bit creepy, but... I love it ;-)

Woman Addicted to Brain Implant

I have been organizing my papers over the weekend and I found this 1986 paper from Pain journal which describes the first ever case recorded of a woman addicted to deep brain stimulation implant.

The described patient (48 years old) has been suffering from chronic pain for over 15 years, with a recorded history of heavy addiction to opium-based painkillers and alcohol. It was established by psychiatrists that the best course of treatment for the pain would be to use an implant located in thalamus. Indeed, during the self-stimulation the pain has been removed, but as a unexpected side effect, she has been also experiencing an erotic sensation (although without orgasm).

As a result, she started stimulating herself throughout the day, neglecting family commitments and personal hygiene. She also developed ulceration on the top of her finger used to adjust the amplitude dial for brain implant. Over the two years after the implant was installed, her compulsive use of the stimulation dial has been associated with 'frequent attacks of anxiety, depersonalization, periods of psychogenic polydipsia and virtually complete inactivity' [1]. She also developed a heart disturbance (paroxysmal atrial tachycardia).

I read this paper thinking about those experiments with rats who pressed button every second to produce the pleasant stimulation via brain implant, until they died from exhaustion. How closely related we are all in the animal kingdom...

[1] Potenoy, R. K., Jarden, J. O., Sidtis, J. J., Lipton, R. B., Foley K. M., Rottenberg, D. A. (1986) Compulsive Thalamic Self-Stimulation: a Case with Metabolic, Electrophysical and Behavioral Correlates. Pain 27: 277-290. [you can access this paper for free here]

The Road Train

Your remember cars in Minority Report or Total Recall?

Cars that didn't need a driver action to operate them?

Cars which drive itself while you have a lunch, read a book or watch a movie?

Well, soon it will be here, in our lovely Europe! How soon? Within next 10 years, with the trials starting in 2011!

As a part of European Union Safe Road Trains for the Environment initiative (or SARTRE) cars with similar destinations over long highways will be grouped together into road trains. The lead vehicle will be driven by an experienced motorist, like bus or truck driver, that regularly travels that road. One train will include between 6-8 cars. At any time you will be able to join the train. Then the onboard computer takes over the vehicle and you can relax and enjoy your bacon roll.

Simple.

The most exciting is that there is no need for infrastructure investment. All modification would have to be done on the vehicle level.

I can already see myself reading e-book comfortably while behind the wheel.

And last point – despite the project name, cars can exit from car train anytime ;-)

[picture credit: Ricardo UK]

Neurointerface

William Gibson in his 1984 novel Neuromancer predicted that we might connect the computer to our brain. His dark story was a fiction 25 years ago, but now it becomes a reality.

We are closer than ever to interface our brain with the computer.

One of the most promising developments is BrainGate (currently during clinical trials conducted by Cyberkinetics). BrainGate consist of a sensor in the form of sophisticated micro-electrodes implanted directly into motor cortex and a decoder - dedicated software translating brain activity into useful commands for external devices. At this stage the majority of tests are conducted in patients with severe forms of paralysis, like Quadriplegia or Locked-in syndrome.

Application? Prosthetic limbs control, complex computer operation with augmented reality, therapy for neuronal-based disorder (in expansion of deep-brain stimulation).


Certainly, we don't know enough about the brain at this stage to be able to create complex interfaces, but even hooking motor cortex with functional microchip will be a milestone in neurocybernetics.

Problems?

What problems? ;-)

But seriously, one outlined in this month issue of Wired is neurosecurity. Folks at the Medical Device Security Center (MDSC) showed that they could reprogram implantable hearth regulator with simple radio equipment. Now, think about your neuroimplant being hacked, and your prosthetic limb, anti-depressive brain stimulator or remote control function (;-) taken over? So MDSC is now developing encrypting security methods for neuroimplants.

A Firewall for your brain.

[photo credits: Cyberkinetics]

The Future of Drugs - Part 1

Society seems to have a problem with deciding what to do with drugs. Certainly it seems that liberalization and legalization is increasingly possible scenario for the future. Status of cannabis in Netherlands, therapy models for heroin addicts in Switzerland, return of research on healthy participants with THC, LSD for anxiety related treatment and MDMA for post-traumatic stress disorder or all drugs decriminalization experiments in some Portugal cities... Those are just a few examples showing that open minded and objective approach to drugs can work better than law enforcement and criminalization.

There has been a heated discussion in the recent days in UK regarding sacking of Prof David Nutt, who was a Head of Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). It was related with Prof Nutt’s lecture at King’s Collage, where he suggested that decision to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B drug was politically motivated against the suggestions of scientific advisers (and that overall cannabis is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco). After Home Secretary decision to sack Prof Nutt, two other advisers resigned in protest, and the whole scientific panel is raging.

Professor Nutts actually gave a very good review during this lecture which you can read in this briefing from Center of Crime and Justice Studies. I strongly recommend you to read it. Prof Nutt argue that such factors as harm assessment bias, media bias and political stigmatization are just some of the problems that so far prevented most countries from application of multicriteria decision-making in classification and general approach to drugs.

Governments applied this multicriteria decission-making model in case of nuclear waste disposal or terrorist threat assessment so why is scientists’ voice so badly ignored regarding drugs?

Eigenharp Is a Future of Music Composing

Electronic instruments, particularly synthesizers and controllers, are one of my big fascinations, and I am very excited by the presentation I went for on Thursday. About 3 weeks ago I heard about company Eigenlabs which released the new electronic instrument - Eigenharp Alpha. I have found out that they are touring in UK and will be showing in Glasgow on 29th of October. So I booked a ticket and went to The Classic Grand on Jamaica Street and...

Amazing quality instrument with 120 highly sensitive keys, 12 percussion keys, 2 touch strip controllers, a breath pipe and numerous pedal inputs. The real deal are the keys which have touch sensitivity down to a micron... You hook it to your Mac (PC software coming soon) via special base station, which is a sonic brain for Eigenharp. And you can map basically every physical-modeling or virtual instrument, setup or plug-in that you have there, with a lot of stuff supplied by Eigenlabs and with extremely accessible interface.

When I was holding it I felt like being in a band that was playing in Cantina in 4th episode of Star Wars:


There is no point to write about all the features. The point is that 8 years of Eigenlabs hard work resulted in this 'musical spaceship' which will probably define the direction in synthesizers design in the next years. The interface is merging two worlds that are so difficult to connect - a futuristic, tactile, sensory, physical device with unlimited and complex galaxy of software synthesizers. And they do it in a way that you won't spend half day to map 5 sounds into your controller...

It is £3950 worth monster, that I would probably buy if I would have that money just for the sake of learning how to play the instrument of the future...

For now, as a mortal, I can still go for Eigenharp Pico. Its just... not the same ;-)

Printing Image on Your Eye

I will be talking a lot about Augmented Reality. This is an exciting feature that recently invaded most of mobile phones running Android or iPhone, with the number of geolocative applications like Layar, Nearest Tube or Accrossair Browser. It is very simple at this stage, you use camera implemented in your phone together with 3G and GPS location information to display various data on the objects surrounding you. Sounds neat, but in practice I found it bizzare. You stand in the middle of the street waving your phone, but then you get access to information quite quickly and visually attached to reality surrounding you. I used Layar and Nearest Places on iPhone, but I found it a short term fascination. Too small, to distractive as an interface, too complex, not exciting enough.

But the potential is there, a massive one.

Augumented reality projected directly to your retina is a very close possibility.

First you got Brother Industries who designed 'retinal image display' (upper image), where a device attached to glasses frame is drawing the image on your retina using a laser.

Second you got those contact lenses from Prof. Parviz at the University of Washington (lower image), who want to print circuits and LED based displays on the contact lens.

Now both devices are certainly in the trial stages, but its a question of 2-3 years before it will be fully developed and tested by the US army, before making it to the market.

Of course that would lead augumented reality into the new stage where you fully incorporate visual display into your daily real world.

[photo credits: Parviz Research Group, University of Washington; Brother]

Become Lifehacker

My recent discovery is Lifehacking. When you work with the computer for 10 hours a day on average (not mentioning iPhone time) you get easily distracted. Although internet can stimulate your brain function, your attention is under constant electronic attack and you might find yourself in a situation when you won't get things done. Study from University of California at Irvine shows that "you are interrupted once every 11 minutes; after any interruption, you take 25 minutes to return to your task".

So the question is how to improve my daily interaction with computer, mobile phone and media? How to 'firewall my attention'? How to increase a control over time I spend at work?

The answer is: Lifehacking. A series of tricks, hints and hacks that you apply in your daily existence to make things better between you, your devices and your time.

Gina Trapani wrote an ultimate geek guide with 116 small hacks described, on different levels of difficulty. You don't need to use them all, the point is to read this book as a hypertext page, where you jump only to the hacks that are useful for you.

This is definitely my book of the month.

PS: I would say this post is for Dr Dude-Chick who is my pal in the journey for searching new ways to optimize life ;-)

Manifesto

This is my third blog, with two previous ones failed. The idea behind the past ones was to write about myself and it was usually working for couple of months, before there was no motivation and also nothing really exciting to write about. I didn't have an urge to dissect my daily life and brag about it online and so my past blogs died after months of inactivity.

But recently I thought that there is something I could share with people, and these are different ideas about technology and science that I have everyday when I search the vast landfields of internet, read the newest scientific papers and generally think about possible directions in my own and others research.

So this third blog isn't supposed to have different format, with small updates on things I found out there that are not about myself, but about the technological reality that surrounds me.

Stay tuned, I hope this time it will work ;-)