Category Archives: The Brain

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Enslavement of the Human Race?
I really like the direction that Hawking is taking with his views about the evolution of the computer world and technology. At the end of this brief article, there is a sentence which includes a comment about the “enslavement of the” human race. This is a common perspective of how the future might evolve, however it is not one that I agree with and see as unlikely.

What Hawking talks about is the use of genetic engineering, and other new technologies, to provide more and more man-machine integration … to reduce the boundary between humans and the networks that we use to communicate and generate business. This is exactly where I believe the world is heading … towards a synthesis of humans and the non-human … the extending of human abilities with human created extensions.

One of core creations of evolution that is missed in most discussions is community and organizations … and particularly the modern versions of these. As humans we strive to create effective communities and organizations, and communications is the bond with which these are created and held together. All of the work in communications and computer technologies are oriented towards the improved effectiveness of communications, and the automation of human infrastructure tasks.

The “closer” that we can get to the network – that we created – the more effective we can be in the communities and organizations that we are a part of. The integration of technology with humans is the “natural” path that we are moving down. We are closing the “gap” between our intelligence, and the collective intelligence that we are creating.

Stephen Hawking On Genetic Engineering vs. AI [Slashdot]

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Electronic communications will see a big boost …
With the recent Anthrax events going on with the United States Postal Service, I will predict that we are going to see a serious shift to electronic communications … more than we have ever seen before.

If you were to look at the average mail box in America, it seems that the only real mail – other than “junk mail” – are the monthly bills that we receive. The costs to the American public of shipping junk mail at a loss of revenue is about to get even more costly as new equipment is added to “clean” mail, along with the lawsuits and other potential hurdles.

There is going to be a big shift coming … more people using e-mail … more bills being “delivered” via e-mail and business-to-consumer portals. Many people are already paying bills on-line … now they will be receiving bills on-line. Free programs, like this one in Houston, are only going to further accelerate the feasibility of moving to an entirely electronic communications medium.

City Of Houston To Offer Free Email To Residents [Slashdot]

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People moving towards mobility … wearables are coming …
This is a very good article outlining the increasing interest in mobility and portable computing. It cites the growing purchases of notebook and laptop computers, and the increase of the size of that segment of computer sales. It also indicates that price is one of the key points attributed to these increased sales.

Wearable Computers are the next segment that will alter the direction of computing. These computers, when coupled with goggles that allow for augmented reality – overlaying our vision with tips and hints about the world around us – will extend the capabilities of humans forever.

Portable PCs carry new weight. A report shows notebooks are creeping up on desktops as the computer of choice. [CNET Tech News]

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Computers in the car … more coming soon …
I have been slowly outfitting my car with a variety of computers and applications. I see this as a big growth area as we create more powerful applications for navigation and communications … many of which will be used in our cars.

So far I am using my computer for both MP3 audio and navigation. I am using WinAmp (my favorite MP3 player) and Microsoft Streets & Trips. There are some other cool things that I’ve been working on … I have wireless in the car using a DLink 802.11b USB device so that when my car is parked in my garage or driveway I can remotely connect and transfer MP3s back and forth. I also have the GPS connected with the Microsoft software for all navigation.

My next step is to get Jabber working over a cheap CDPD modem for full time presence and instant messaging from my car!

Motorola takes the driver’s seat. video The electronics maker announces deals with BMW and Audi to equip cars with telecommunications and computing capabilities. [CNET Tech News]

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The continuing evolution of Instant Messaging … as people learn …
This is a good article that outlines the continuation of the learning process about Instant Messaging. One of the things that I learned while working in this area of research is that there is considerable confusion about exactly what we are talking about when we say “Instant Messaging”.

While working on the digitalme project at Novell, I had created a foundation framework for identity, community, and communications. Within this framework I quickly realized that it is not about “instant messaging”, but instead we are seeing a number of human behaviors and interactions collapsed. There is being, community, identity, and communications … and all of these are collapsed in our current conversations about “instant messaging.”

Being … that is who we are … who we are being. We then create relationships … which generates and creates community. Community then can give us identity … indicating who we are being repeatedly in that community. We then can indicate who we are being at any point in time (presence), and allow for various forms of communications at any particular time.

So what we really have is a way to organize the communities that we are a part of, and the members of the communities that we communicate with. We can then “see” their status and who they are “being” at that moment (presence)… and then we can choose the way that we (and they) wish to communicate. The aspects of building our “buddy list” and the indication of “presence” are some of the most critical components, but tend to be lost in these articles.

The next wave of instant messaging. Who needs e-mail, or even the phone? New tech plans to take IM far beyond the simple text message. [CNET Tech News]

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Tracking the popular memes …
One of the areas that I have been facinated about for quite some time is the tracking of popular ideas and current trends. There are numerous ways to do this, and I proposed one at Novell while working for Drew Major – Flow Mining. Flow Mining is the mining of data which flows through the net … with Novell I was interested in mining the flow of URL requests received by a proxy/cache.

This is another innovative approach to the same thing … looking at what URLs are placed in weblogs … what is of interest to people generating weblogs. There is a lot that can be learned by this, including observing which domains generate the most interesting URLs, and which URLs are growing from no interest to more interest.

This is a very cool project that has a huge amount of potential in many directions … IMHO.

Tracking Bloggers With Blogdex. MIT’s Media Lab just rolled out Blogdex, which tracks the most popular links across thousands of weblogs. The plan is to help the media get a handle on the explosion of personal news. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

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Distributed, replicated file and data storage …
This is a project that resembles the work of the Freenet organization … only this has the backing of Microsoft! They are creating a distributed set of shared storage as a solution for fault tolerant data protection. A group of people form a “replica ring” of sorts … and begin to store files on each others file systems. There is encryption and meta-directory capabilities which make this a very likely future.

MIT Technology Review: Fault-Tolerant File Storage. That earth-shaking experience got Theimer, then an operating systems researcher at Xerox PARC, thinking about how to make computer file storage systems radically more fault tolerant. His work has helped to lead to Farsite, a fail-safe storage technology being created at Microsoft. [Tomalak’s Realm]

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Weblogging … a truly “humaneural” application …
This is a very good article, and outlines some of the benefits of “weblogging” … which I see as another step in the direction of “humaneural” applications.

A “humaneural” application is one which improves the effectiveness of communications with a community of people. It is an application which begins to mirror the neural structures of the brain. A neuron has the ability to monitor hundreds or thousands of other neurons, and then generate it’s own output signals. In the case of weblogging, when coupled with an application like Radio from Userland, this same architecture can be mirrored …

What become amazing is the concept of Internet attached devices which will generate weblogs that can be subscribed to. If you are not watching weblogging, Radio, and Userland … you might want to!

WTF is Weblogging

Chris Ashley has written one of the best articles I’ve seen about Weblogging, Really Simple Syndication and the communities that these systems create and cultivate. It’s no surprise that his site links to Peter Ford, who I’ve been working with on integrating weblogging into education. If you want to know what Weblogging is all about then put this on your reading list.

[Adam Curry: CurryDotCom]

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A whole new world of location based services …
The advances that we are creating in computing devices, and in wireless connectivity, are setting the course on where the human race will be in the not-to-distant future. We are slowly evolving into a multitude of ever-connected people, continuously interacting throughout the day with the communities that we are members of.

I believe that some of the biggest enhancements to the human experience are going to appear as a result of the combination of location based services, and augmented reality. It is when we merge these two that we will start to see some incredible enhancements to how we relate to each other, and the world around us.

Image the day that you leave your house, wearing your computer and it’s augmented-reality goggles, and begin to experience the sensory enhancements that it can create. The computer will constantly be determining your location, and augmenting your senses with new forms of “awareness.” You will hear audible notifications of issues related to you – both near and far. A friend has come on-line … another friend is less than a mile away from you. You will also be able to see “virtual” signs and art in your goggles which “overlay” the world around you. These will be signs left by friends, and other people in the communities that you interact with. We have not even begun to see what is coming …

Location Services Coming Slowly. But study says they’ll generate big profits [allNetDevices Wireless News]

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This is a very cool idea for creating AI …
I am an advocate that AI will emerge, not within a single computer, but within a community of computers. Obviously the Internet is such a community, and we humans are a good way to “program” that AI. Mindpixel is such a project, which can use the network effect to create a huge wealth of knowledge in a system that can then be tapped for various purposes. This is a very cool implementation of a truly distributed AI …

Mindpixel project will apply psych test to AI model [Nanodot: News and Discussion of Coming Technologies]