#AugmentedReality #Transhumanism #Google’s ‘Project Glass’ is the future of wearable computing
Google Glass isn’t a real thing, and it probably won’t be for a while. But the technology is there, the resources are there, it’s just a matter of putting them all together into a product that people would feel comfortable buying and wearing. I use my phone all the fucking time to the annoyance of many around me, but I don’t know if I would want to be this immersed. Maybe. At least I could keep eye contact at dinner while I’m reading email and RSS feeds.
Submitted by InformationDesk
NASA and GM team up for Robonaut-inspired cyborg glove
NASA and GM are working together on a robotic glove that can help make working with your hands a little easier. Officially called the Human Grasp Assist device — but also known as either K-glove or Robo-glove — the glove reduces the amount of force needed while using a tool, which decreases the chance of repetitive stress injuries. This is important for both NASA and GM, as the glove could potentially be used by both astronauts and auto assembly workers who handle tools for long periods of time.
The two organizations previously worked together on the Robonaut — which recently managed its first handshake in space — and the glove actually borrows some of that technology. It includes actuators in the fingers for a better grip, and pressure sensors to determine when you have a tool in your hand. Right now the Robo-glove weighs about two pounds and can reduce the amount of force needed for a given job by around half. So if a job takes 15-20 pounds of pressure, it could be reduced to as little as 5-10 pounds. The team is currently working on its third prototype, which will focus on making the glove smaller and lighter — so it looks like we’ll still have to wait a while to get stronger through Deus Ex-style human augmentation.
The World Through Google's Smartglasses
Augmented-reality eyewear is the next step toward a future in which we never again have an unmediated view of the world
Terminator Vision Orion Pictures
Google announced yesterday that before the end of 2012, you will be able to buy augmented-reality smart eyeglasses from the search giant. The Android-powered glasses will have an onboard camera that monitors in real time what you see as you walk (or, heavens preserve us, drive) down the street. The lenses will then overlay information about people, locations, and whatnot directly into your field of view.
We knew this day was coming, but I certainly didn’t suspect it’d be so soon. Never again will you have to wonder Where is the closest Pizza Hut? or What make of car is that? or Don’t I know her from somewhere? Ubiquitous smartphones have already given us the ability to swiftly look up information with only a moderate disruption. Smartglasses completely remove the mediating step of pausing to wonder and ponder and research: data is simply there, an inseparable part of your visible world.
Overlay Google Maps onto the real world, and navigation becomes effortless. Overlay reviews and menus onto restaurant storefronts as you pass them; overlay nutritional data onto your plate as you eat; overlay purchasing info if you particularly admire your co-worker’s new shoes; overlay translations of foreign signage, breaking news, hilarious kittens romping at your feet.
As smartglasses become popular, the world will start to seem naked and inaccessible without a glossy data layer on everything.As smartglasses become popular, the world will start to seem naked and inaccessible without a glossy data layer on everything. Everyday activities, maneuvering through the physical world, socializing, working, learning, will all be increasingly eased by the use of glasses; increasingly, until these activities start to feel almost impossible without the glasses. Who’s going to have patience to laboriously explain facts to a non-data-overlaid person? Give you my business card? Point you in the direction of Fifth Avenue? I don’t even remember how to spell my name! Where are your Googles?
Will businesses see the need for physical signs and billboards? Will municipalities bother to maintain physical street signs and traffic signals? Will smartglasses make the university lecturer’s blackboard and salesman’s PowerPoint obsolete as well?
What comes after that? With everyone wearing glasses (or, at this point in the future, contact lenses or implants), individual appearance becomes as malleable on the street as it is now on the Internet. You can overlay your real body with a digitally altered one, saving money on subtle nose surgery or just completely living life as a furry avatar.
What, though, will it take to get us to that tipping point, when head-up augmented reality suddenly shifts from a novelty to a ubiquity? Wearing cumbersome goggles on your face as you proceed through your day is a bit more of an intrusion than I for one am ready for. Sony’s 3DTV goggles are impressive and designed only to be worn in the comfort of your couch, and still I have yet to meet someone who owns a pair. The gear will have to be small and easy to integrate with your basic life processes. Perhaps AR windshields in our cars will become common first, before we put them on our faces.
But, however it comes — the fully mediated future has begun.
A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision.
http://bit.ly/xITx1H - Watch and share “A Day Made of Glass 2,” Corning’s expanded vision for the future of glass technologies. This video continues the story of how highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world.
[EDIT: My dreams of the artificially intelligent global information grid controlled augmented reality of a future, LOOK JUST LIKE THIS… *facepalm*]
Source: youtube.com
Activist Post: Israeli Researchers Build a Rat Cyborg With a Digital Cerebellum - #NWO
The day when doctors can patch up the human brain with electronics, cyborg-style, hasn’t dawned just yet. But if the rats at Tel Aviv University are any indication, that day may not be so very far away. Researchers there have developed a synthetic cerebellum that has restored lost brain function in rats, demonstrating that artificial brain analogs can potentially replace parts of the brain that aren’t functioning properly. Paging officer Alex Murphy.
The team’s synthetic cerebellum is more or less a simple microchip, but can receive sensory input from the brainstem, interpret that nerve input, and send the appropriate signal to a different region of the brainstem to initiate the appropriate movement. Right now it is only capable of dealing with the most basic stimuli/response sequence, but the very fact that researchers can do such a thing marks a pretty remarkable leap forward.
To achieve such a breakthrough, the cerebellum was a pretty ideal place to start. Its architecture is simple enough and one of its functions is to orchestrate motor movements in response to stimuli, making it easy enough to test. Using what they already knew about the way a rat’s cerebellum interacts with its brainstem to generate motion, they built a chip that mimicked that kind of neural processing and activity.
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Perception Warfare or War, Perceptual Conflict, Perception Space, Perception Operations, Perception Battlespace, P-Space
- General Sources
- Perception Space or P-Space
- Perception Warfare
- Perception Management
- Perception Failure
- Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
- Augmented Cognition
- Knowledge Representation (KR)
- Semiotics
- Cultural Conflict
- Reification or Objectification
- Memes, Metaphors, and Semantics
- Archetypes and Myths
- Reflexive Control
- Neocortical Warfare
- Subliminal
- Examples and Readings
see also:
- Influence & Influence Theory
see also cyberspace page
You’re not who you think you are;
you’re not who others think you are;
you’re who you think others think you are!
—- Source Unknown
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—- T. S. Eliot
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
—- Albert Einstein
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
—- Arthur Schopenhauer
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
—- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962 movie)
- See also Peck’s Postulates, a short primer on international relations and the importance of perceptions
- First, there are NO absolutes; perception is everything. It is not what we say or even what we do that matters. The only thing that matters is how the other party(ies) PERCEIVE what we’re doing - because that is what controls how they react. Differing perceptions do not make one side wrong and the other right, but they do dictate what does or does not happen.
- Reframing Perception-Space (P-Space): A Quick Overview of a Unifying Concept
- Perception Warfare: a perspective for the future, by Friman, Swedish National Defence College, Dept of Operational Studies
- Influence Net Modeling, including software from SAIC
- The Mind Has No Firewall, by Thomas, in Parameters, Spring 1998
- Defending friendly and targeting adversary data-processing capabilities of the body appears to be an area of weakness in the US approach to information warfare theory, a theory oriented heavily toward systems data-processing and designed to attain information dominance on the battlefield. Or so it would appear from information in the open, unclassified press. This US shortcoming may be a serious one, since the capabilities to alter the data- processing systems of the body already exist.
- Perception Warfare: a perspective for the future, by Friman, Swedish National Defence College, Dept of Operational Studies
- Glenn, Jerome and John Peterson. Information Warfare, Cyber Warfare, Perception Warfare and their Prevention. 60 min. Atlanta: World Future Society, 1995. Audiocassette.
- perception management - (DOD Dictionary) Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations. See also psychological operations.
- How to Win Friends and Influence People: Planning Perception Management at the Division and Corps Level (local copy), by Briand, US Army Command and General Staff College, 2004
- “Perception Management” as it relates to Iraq war - search results
- “Perception Management” as it relates to Afghanistan - search results
- see also logic fallacies and cognitive biases on Communication Skills page
- Disappearing Percepts: Evidence for Retention Failure in Metacontrast Masking, by Lachter, Durgin, and Washington - posted at the Cognition Lab, NASA Ames Research Center - includes discussion of
- change blindness
- inattentional blindness
- integration over saccades
- backward masking
- Attention to Safety and the Psychology of Surprise, by Wickens - Keynote address: 2001 Symposium on Aviation Psychology: Ohio State University
- Detail to Attention: Exploiting Visual Tasks for Selective Rendering (local copy), abstract of presentation at 2003 Radiance Workshop, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
- The human eye is physically incapable of capturing a moving scene in full detail. We sense image detail only in a 2° foveal region, relying on rapid eye movements, or saccades, to jump between points of interest.
- We show in a controlled experimental setting how human subjects will consistently fail to notice degradations in the quality of image details unrelated to their assigned task, even when these details fall under the viewers’ gaze.
- Diagnostic Failure: a Cognitive and Affective Approach (local copy), by Croskerry, in Advances in Patient Safety, Vol. 2, from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) - discusses a variety of factors affecting medical decision making, for instance …
- The Casablanca Strategy is a form of temporizing. The usual suspects are rounded up in the form of bloodwork or other tests, and additional time is gained for events to mature, decline, or otherwise declare themselves.
- The Allegory of the Cave, decription of Plato’s allegory from The Republic, of people basing their perception of reality on mere shadows of the true reality
- Plato’s Republic: The Allegory of the Cave additional references
- You may also want to view the movies “Matrix” and “The Thirteenth Floor” and “Wag the Dog”
- Augmented Cognition home page, DARPA’s Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO)
- Augmented Cognition (local copy), by Schmorrow, DARPA (slides)
- Augmented Cognition, DARPA Project Summary, Oregon Graduate Institute
- “The objective of this seedling project is to investigate the feasibility of enhancing the quality of human decision-making in complex and uncertain situations and under time pressure. The specific focus is to characterize the principles underlying the augmented cognition systems and to develop techniques that alleviate natural human attentional limitations in the management of uncertainty using dynamic visualization techniques.”
- Attention and Representation of Uncertainty (local copy), quad chart
- Augmented Reality, DARPA project
- Augmented Reality(local copy), quad chart
- Improving Our View of the World: Police and Augmented Reality Technology (local copy), Futures Working Group, FBI
- Improving the View of the World: Law Enforcement and Augmented Reality Technology (local copy), by Cowper, in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Jan 2004
- Augmented Cognition additional references
- What is a Knowledge Representation? by Davis, Shrobe, and Szolovits, MIT Labs
- “What is a knowledge representation? We argue that the notion can best be understood in terms of five distinct roles it plays, each crucial to the task at hand:
- “A knowledge representation (KR) is most fundamentally a surrogate, a substitute for the thing itself, used to enable an entity to determine consequences by thinking rather than acting, i.e., by reasoning about the world rather than taking action in it.
- “It is a set of ontological commitments, i.e., an answer to the question: In what terms should I think about the world?
- “It is a fragmentary theory of intelligent reasoning, expressed in terms of three components: (i) the representation’s fundamental conception of intelligent reasoning; (ii) the set of inferences the representation sanctions; and (iii) the set of inferences it recommends.
- “It is a medium for pragmatically efficient computation, i.e., the computational environment in which thinking is accomplished. One contribution to this pragmatic efficiency is supplied by the guidance a representation provides for organizing information so as to facilitate making the recommended inferences.
- “It is a medium of human expression, i.e., a language in which we say things about the world.”
- “What is a knowledge representation? We argue that the notion can best be understood in terms of five distinct roles it plays, each crucial to the task at hand:
- Knowledge Representation additional references
- See also symbols and symbology on the Theory page
- Semiotics for Beginners, by Chandler
- Semiotics - organized links to resources
- Open Semiotics Resource Center
- Semiotics, handout by Walker, Oregon State University
- Based on “semiosis,” the relationship between a sign, an object, and a meaning.
- Langer’s Theory of Symbols
- Langer, Susanne. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, Harvard Press, 1942
- “In philosophy this disposition of problems is the most important thing that a school, a movement, or an age contributes. This is the “genius” of a great philosophy; in its light, systems arise and rule and die. Therefore a philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them. Its answers establish an edifice of facts; but its questions make the frame in which its picture of facts is plotted. They make more than the frame; they give the angle of perspective, the palette, the style in which the picture is drawn — everything except the subject. In our questions lie our principles of analysis, and our answers may express whatever those principles are able to yield.
- “Every society meets a new idea with its own concepts, its own tacit, fundamental way of seeing things: that is to say, with its own questions, its peculiar curiosity.”
- “The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences. Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminated presences which simply had no form for us before the light fell on them.”
- “symbolization is the essential act of mind”
- “In the fundamental notion of symbolization — mystical, practical, or mathematical, it makes no difference — we have the keynote of all humanistic problems. In it lies a new conception of ‘mentality,’ that may illumine questions of life and consciousness, instead of obscuring them as traditional ‘scientific methods’ have done.”
- “The philosophical study of symbols is not a technique borrowed from other disciplines, not even from mathematics; it has arisen in the fields that the great advance of learning has left fallow. Perhaps it holds the seed of a new intellectual harvest, to be reaped in the next season of the human understanding.”
- “Language, in its literal capacity, is a stiff and conventional medium, unadapted to the expression of genuinely new ideas, which usually have to break in upon the mind through some great and bewildering metaphor.”
- “Art, on the other hand, has no consequence; it gives form to something that simply is there, as the intuitive organizing functions of sense give form to objects and spaces, color and sound.”
- Strategic Implications of Cultures in Conflict, by Belbutowski, in Parameters
- Winning CNN Wars, by Stech, in Parameters
Reification or Objectification
- Reification - regarding something abstract as a material thing (aka Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”)
- references on reification
Memes, Metaphors, and Semantics
- See also symbols and symbology on the Theory page
- a memetics reader - “meme: a cultural unit of information that propagates across our ecologies of mind”
- Union of International Associations (UIA)
- Missiles, Missives, Missions and Memetic Warfare: Navigation of strategic interfaces in multidimensional knowledge space, by Judge, — discusses “conceptual defence” and related topics
- Selected Reports on Governance through Metaphor
- Research on Metaphor, Comprehension and Future Governance
- Susan Blackmore - The Meme Machine a review of her book
- Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Metaphors for a Period of Transition, by Jablonsky, in Parameters, Winter 1997-98
Jung and Campbell, Archetypes and Myths
- Links to Mythology and Archetypes
- The Seven-Stage Hate Model - The Psychopathology of Hate Groups (local copy), by Schafer and Navarro, in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, March 2003 - including use of symbols and mythologies (HTML version)
- Group gathers
- Group defines itself
- Disparages target
- Taunts target
- Attacks target without weapons
- Attacks target with weapons
- Destroys target
- more on archetypes and myths
- The Implications of Virtual Deception, by Pasanen, in Aerospace Power Chronicles — Lefebvre believed, “We [the Soviet Union] can influence the channels of information and send messages which shift the flow of information in a way favorable to us” — includes listing of ways reflexive control can be used
- Russian Information-Psychological Actions: Implications for U.S. PSYOP (local copy), FMSO study — section on reflexive control and how Russians have used it
- Dialectical Versus Empirical Thinking: Ten Key Elements of the Russian Understanding of Information Operations (local copy), FMSO study (see first endnote re: reflexive control)
- Human Network Attacks (local copy), FMSO study (see especially section titled “Reflexive Control: an Information Weapon Subset”)
-
-
“In military actions, attacking minds_that is the primary mission; attacking fortifications, that is a secondary mission. Psychological war is the main thing. Combat is secondary.” — Third Century Chinese Military Theoretician
- Russian military theorist S.A. Komov has written that RC [reflexive control] is a form of “intellectual” IW. He offered the following eleven types of intellectual IW for use against systems, people, alliances or forces in the field:
- Distraction—during preparatory stages of combat operations, creating a real or imaginary threat against one of the most vital enemy places such as flanks and rear, forcing him to reevaluate his decisions to operate on this or that axis.
- Overload—often manifested by sending the enemy a large amount of conflicting information.
- Paralysis—creating the belief of a specific threat to a vital interest or weak spot.
- Exhaustion—cause the enemy to carry out useless operations, thereby entering combat with expended resources.
- Deception—during preparatory stages of combat operations, force the enemy to reallocate forces to a threatened spot.
- Divisive techniques—cause the enemy to believe he must operate in opposition to coalition interests.
- Pacification—through a peaceful attitude and approach cause the enemy to lose vigilance.
- Deterrence—create the impression of superiority.
- Provocation—force enemy action advantageous to your side.
- Suggestion—offer information that affects the enemy legally, morally, ideologically or in other areas.
- Pressure—offer information that encourages society to discredit its own government.
-
- Chotikul, Diane. Soviet Theory of Reflexive Control in Historical and Psychocultural Perspective: A Preliminary Study. Monterey, CA, Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.), Jul 1986. 118 p. Doc. call no.: M-U 42525-163
- Reid, Clifford. “Reflexive Control in Soviet Military Planning,” in Soviet Strategic Deception, edited by Brian Daily and Patrick Parker (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books)
- Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. — Sun Tzu
- In Athena’s Camp: Preparing for Conflict in the Information Age, Arquilla and Ronfeldt ed.s, RAND, 1997
- Chapter 17 - Neocortical Warfare? The Acme of Skill (local copy), by Szafranski, originally in Military Review
- “That nonfighting is the attribute and aim of neocortical warfare does not mean that this warfare is passive or inactive. It requires considerable effort, resources and skill—the acme of skill—to subdue an enemy without fighting. The aim is not merely to avoid battles. The aim is to cause the enemy to choose not to fight by exercising reflexive influence, almost parasympathetic control, over products of the adversary’s neocortex. In actively enjoining the minds of adversaries to not fight, we must understand the adversary’s culture, world view and the representational systems the adversary recognizes, values and uses to communicate intent. We must understand the adversary’s verbal and nonverbal language. We might use tools similar to Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s “neuro linguistic programming” to understand how the adversary receives, processes and organizes auditory, visual and kinesthetic perceptions.”
[see also neuro linguistic programming on the AWC Gateway]
- “That nonfighting is the attribute and aim of neocortical warfare does not mean that this warfare is passive or inactive. It requires considerable effort, resources and skill—the acme of skill—to subdue an enemy without fighting. The aim is not merely to avoid battles. The aim is to cause the enemy to choose not to fight by exercising reflexive influence, almost parasympathetic control, over products of the adversary’s neocortex. In actively enjoining the minds of adversaries to not fight, we must understand the adversary’s culture, world view and the representational systems the adversary recognizes, values and uses to communicate intent. We must understand the adversary’s verbal and nonverbal language. We might use tools similar to Richard Bandler and John Grinder’s “neuro linguistic programming” to understand how the adversary receives, processes and organizes auditory, visual and kinesthetic perceptions.”
- Chapter 17 - Neocortical Warfare? The Acme of Skill (local copy), by Szafranski, originally in Military Review
- Thumping the Hive: Russian Neocortical Warfare in Chechnya (local copy), by McIntosh, Naval Postgraduate School, Sep 2004
- Anchoring and objectifying ‘neocortical warfare’: re-presentation of a biological metaphor in Serbian conspiracy literature, by Byford, Loughborough University
- Cybercortical Warfare: The Case of Hizbollah.org, by Conway, Trinity College, 2003
(alternate source)
Subliminal Persuasion, Perception, and Priming
- see also media agenda setting at Air War College Gateway to the Internet
- Subliminal Smiles Can Sway You: Study found they made people more likely to try new things, by Dotinga, Healthday News, 27 May 2005
- Different time courses for visual perception and action priming, by Vorbert et al, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 2003 - full text
- Subliminal priming refers to the finding that the priming function increases with SOA [stimulus-onset asynchronies], despite perfect masking. This is compelling evidence for behavioral effects of stimulus properties that do not access awareness and suggests that metacontrast masking abolishes conscious perception of some of the prime’s features, but not those features’ motor effects.
- Subliminal Message - Wikipedia article
- The Mind Has No Firewall, by Thomas, in Parameters, Spring 1998
- An entirely new arsenal of weapons, based on devices designed to introduce subliminal messages or to alter the body’s psychological and data-processing capabilities, might be used to incapacitate individuals. These weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.
- Properties and mechanisms of perceptual priming, by Wiggs and Martin, in Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 1998, 8:227-233
- I Don’t Know It but I Like You: The Influence of Nonconscious Affect on Person Perception, by Monahan, in Human Communication Research, Jun 1998 - “Uses a subliminal priming task to induce a positive nonconscious affective response toward the target persons.” [from eric.ed.gov abstract]
- Subliminal Priming and Persuasion, by Strahan et al, U. of Waterloo — even if subliminal persuasion doesn’t persuade by itself, “subliminal priming can enhance persuasion”
- What’s Wrong With This Picture ? The Fallacies Underlying “Subliminal Persuasion” — includes brief discussion of the popcorn-Coke hoax which supposedly proved subliminal persuasion worked
- Skeptical Inquirer
- The Influence of Foreign Culture on Air Force Contingency Contracting Operations, by Ruefer, AFIT paper
- Desert Storm’s Siren Song, by Lohide, in Airpower Journal, includes discussion of various types of warfare, including cultural warfare, and concludes (pre 9-11) with
They will argue that change occurs so rapidly in today’s information-based society that the United States must be proactive in incorporating the lessons of Desert Storm into its future defense plans. Actually, this view is dangerously myopic. Abundant evidence exists to suggest that the twenty-first century could be dominated by culturally based conflict. The strategy of paralysis is ineffective against such an amorphous threat. Therefore, creating a US military force that is overly dependent on a high-technology air arm would be, to use Howard’s words, too wrong.
- “The Coming Anarchy,” by Kaplan, in The Atlantic Monthly, Feb 1994, discusses cultural-based warfare and its potential impact on the US
- Saddam claims victory in Gulf War, CNN report
- Who Really Won the War? series of quotes from observers and participants in the Gulf War
- Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life, book by Jeremy Campbell
-
The human observer cannot be excluded completely, because the idea of order is inextricably linked to the mind’s awareness. Muddle, to some extent, is in the brain of the beholder. One person’s disorder may be another person’s order, depending on how much knowledge that person possesses about the details of the apparent confusion.
Smarter Than You Think - When Computers Keep Watch #nwo #augmented #systemsofcontrol
Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises.
Smarter Than You Think
Keeping Watch
Articles in this series are examining the recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics and their potential impact on society.
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Some officers played the role of prisoners, acting like gang members and stirring up trouble, including a mock riot. The latest in prison gear got a workout — body armor, shields, riot helmets, smoke bombs, gas masks. And, at this year’s drill, computers that could see the action.
Perched above the prison yard, five cameras tracked the play-acting prisoners, and artificial-intelligence software analyzed the images to recognize faces, gestures and patterns of group behavior. When two groups of inmates moved toward each other, the experimental computer system sent an alert — a text message — to a corrections officer that warned of a potential incident and gave the location.
The computers cannot do anything more than officers who constantly watch surveillance monitors under ideal conditions. But in practice, officers are often distracted. When shifts change, an observation that is worth passing along may be forgotten. But machines do not blink or forget. They are tireless assistants.
The enthusiasm for such systems extends well beyond the nation’s prisons. High-resolution, low-cost cameras are proliferating, found in products like smartphones and laptop computers. The cost of storing images is dropping, and new software algorithms for mining, matching and scrutinizing the flood of visual data are progressing swiftly.
A computer-vision system can watch a hospital room and remind doctors and nurses to wash their hands, or warn of restless patients who are in danger of falling out of bed. It can, through a computer-equipped mirror, read a man’s face to detect his heart rate and other vital signs. It can analyze a woman’s expressions as she watches a movie trailer or shops online, and help marketers tailor their offerings accordingly. Computer vision can also be used at shopping malls, schoolyards, subway platforms, office complexes and stadiums.
All of which could be helpful — or alarming.
“Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better,” said Hartmut Neven, a computer scientist and vision expert at Google. “Where that leads is uncertain.”
Google has been both at the forefront of the technology’s development and a source of the anxiety surrounding it. Its Street View service, which lets Internet users zoom in from above on a particular location, faced privacy complaints. Google will blur out people’s homes at their request.
Google has also introduced an application called Goggles, which allows people to take a picture with a smartphone and search the Internet for matching images. The company’s executives decided to exclude a facial-recognition feature, which they feared might be used to find personal information on people who did not know that they were being photographed.
Despite such qualms, computer vision is moving into the mainstream. With this technological evolution, scientists predict, people will increasingly be surrounded by machines that can not only see but also reason about what they are seeing, in their own limited way.
The uses, noted Frances Scott, an expert in surveillance technologies at the National Institute of Justice, the Justice Department’s research agency, could allow the authorities to spot a terrorist, identify a lost child or locate an Alzheimer’s patient who has wandered off.
The future of law enforcement, national security and military operations will most likely rely on observant machines. A few months ago, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm, awarded the first round of grants in a five-year research program called the Mind’s Eye. Its goal is to develop machines that can recognize, analyze and communicate what they see. Mounted on small robots or drones, these smart machines could replace human scouts. “These things, in a sense, could be team members,” said James Donlon, the program’s manager.
Millions of people now use products that show the progress that has been made in computer vision. In the last two years, the major online photo-sharing services — Picasa by Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery by Microsoft, Flickr by Yahoo and iPhoto by Apple — have all started using face recognition. A user puts a name to a face, and the service finds matches in other photographs. It is a popular tool for finding and organizing pictures.
Kinect, an add-on to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 gaming console, is a striking advance for computer vision in the marketplace. It uses a digital camera and sensors to recognize people and gestures; it also understands voice commands. Players control the computer with waves of the hand, and then move to make their on-screen animated stand-ins — known as avatars — run, jump, swing and dance. Since Kinect was introduced in November, game reviewers have applauded, and sales are surging.
To Microsoft, Kinect is not just a game, but a step toward the future of computing. “It’s a world where technology more fundamentally understands you, so you don’t have to understand it,” said Alex Kipman, an engineer on the team that designed Kinect.
‘Please Wash Your Hands’
A nurse walks into a hospital room while scanning a clipboard. She greets the patient and washes her hands. She checks and records his heart rate and blood pressure, adjusts the intravenous drip, turns him over to look for bed sores, then heads for the door but does not wash her hands again, as protocol requires. “Pardon the interruption,” declares a recorded women’s voice, with a slight British accent. “Please wash your hands.”
Three months ago, Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N.Y., began an experiment with computer vision in a single hospital room. Three small cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling, monitor movements in Room 542, in a special care unit (a notch below intensive care) where patients are treated for conditions like severe pneumonia, heart attacks and strokes. The cameras track people going in and out of the room as well as the patient’s movements in bed.
The first applications of the system, designed by scientists at General Electric, are immediate reminders and alerts. Doctors and nurses are supposed to wash their hands before and after touching a patient; lapses contribute significantly to hospital-acquired infections, research shows.
Next Page »Want to destroy your neighbors life forever? There’s an app for that! #nwo #systemsofcontrol #augmentedreality
A new iPhone App with the misleading name ‘PatriotApp’ attempts to draw on the power of the patriot movement, turning smartphone users into a gigantic snitch network.
You might think an app with such a patriotic name might have useful functions like a pocket constitution or quotes from our forefathers. But contrary to the services one might expect, this app allows users to report any ‘suspicious’ behavior directly linking them with top government agencies.
Much like the new DHS program ‘If you see something, say something’ this app is meant to turn average citizens into a network of spies feeding information back to the federal government.
Citizen Concepts, a company formed by insiders from DHS, defines the use of such an app on their homepage:
Citizen Concepts announces the launch of PatriotAppTM, the world’s first iPhone application that empowers citizens to assist government agencies in creating safer, cleaner, and more efficient communities via social networking and mobile technology. This app was founded on the belief that citizens can provide the most sophisticated and broad network of eyes and ears necessary to prevent terrorism, crime, environmental negligence, or other malicious behavior.
Simply download, report (including pictures) and submit information to relevant government agencies, employers, or publish incident data to social network tools.
Key Features:
Integrated into Federal Agencies points of contacts
FBI
EPA
GAO
CDC
Custom integration with user employers
Fully integrated with Social Media (Facebook, Twitter)
Multiple menus and data fields
View FBI Most Wanted
Simple graphical user interface
Uses:
Enable citizens to record and communicate:
National Security, Suspicious activities, Crime
Government Waste
Environmental Crime or possible violations
White collar crime
Workplace harassment, discrimination, or other violations
Public Health concerns
PatriotApp encourages active citizen participation in the War on Terror and in protecting their families and surrounding communities.
An app like this is meant to solidify the climate of fear in which our leaders want us to exist. The threat of terrorism must be palpable in order for the ‘War on Terror’ to be justified and to validate all the extreme measures instituted in its name.
