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“These Were The Days Of Bobby Fischer And Garry Kasparov, Slightly Before The IBM Computer Deep Blue Took Reign”

December 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Why do I have to wait to see Andrew Bujalski’s film Computer Chess when I want to see it right now? From Indiewire:

“Set around 1980, Computer Chess is the fictional account of the computer programmers and chess players that tested artificial intelligence through computer-human chess tournaments. These were the days of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, slightly before the IBM computer Deep Blue took reign.

But Bujalski’s film is not about these real-life people; it’s an exploration of the environment he imagines for these programmers. Speaking with indieWIRE, Bujalski says, ‘We’ve certainly done research, and a few people in that community have talked to us and helped us out. We’re not setting up to do a documentary or a slavish interpretation of the truth. I certainly have tremendous respect for those guys and for what they accomplished. I hope some of that will come through whether or not we get it right for them.’

Though Bujalski says he was never a computer nerd, he admits this film is a way of him exploring the geek that never was. ‘Perhaps deep down it’s my attempt to vicariously peek into the fantasy braniac life I ought to have pursued as a kid.’

Speaking with Indiewire, he elaborated on arriving to the story: ‘I was only a little kid at this time. I saw the same headlines as everyone else did about Deep Blue. I was never terribly invested in the topic in those days. The idea for the film really came when I was at the New England Mobile Book Fair — Newton Highlands, MA. They have this great remainders section. I’ve been going to that bookstore since I was a kid. There are books waiting for someone to love them, and many of them have been there for 25-30 years, if not longer. I found a book on chess trivia — it was $1 or $2. I’m not nearly enough of a chess enthusiast to buy it at full price. The book was from 1986 or so and there was a section on computer chess trivia. It started to plant images in my head, of these guys and what they were up to.'”

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“The Book Is About Ways To Read Out The Contents Of A Person’s Brain”

December 25, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In 1992, AI legend Marvin Minsky believed that by the year 2023 people would be able to download the contents of their brains and achieve “immortality.” That was probably too optimistic. He also thought such technology would only be possible for people who had great wealth. That was probably too pessimistic. From an interview that Otto Laske conducted with Minsky about his sci-fi novel, The Turing Option:

“Otto Laske:

I hear you are writing a science fiction novel. Is that your first such work?

Marvin Minsky:

Well, yes, it is, and it is something I would not have tried to do alone. It is a spy-adventure techno-thriller that I am writing together with my co-author Harry Harrison. Harry did most of the plotting and invention of characters, while I invented new brain science and AI technology for the next century.

Otto Laske:

At what point in time is the novel situated?

Marvin Minsky:

It’s set in the year 2023.

Otto Laske: 

I may just be alive to experience it, then …

Marvin Minsky: 

Certainly. And furthermore, if the ideas of the story come true, then anyone who manages to live until then may have the opportunity to live forevermore…

Otto Laske: 

How wonderful …

Marvin Minsky:

 … because the book is about ways to read out the contents of a person’s brain, and then download those contents into more reliable hardware, free from decay and disease. If you have enough money…

Otto Laske: 

 That’s a very American footnote …

Marvin Minsky:

Well, it’s also a very Darwinian concept.

Otto Laske: 

Yes, of course.

Marvin Minsky:

There isn’t room for every possible being in this finite universe, so, we have to be selective …

Otto Laske: 

 And who selects, or what is the selective mechanism?

Marvin Minsky: 

Well, normally one selects by fighting. Perhaps somebody will invent a better way. Otherwise, you have to have a committee …

Otto Laske:  

That’s worse than fighting, I think.”

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“It’s Wholly Empirical, Rather Than Building Edifices Of Equations”

December 24, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Andrew Hacker’s New York Review of Books critique of a trio of new volumes about predictive powers, including The Signal and the Noise, written by political polling wunderkind Nate Silver:

“The Signal and the Noise is in large part a homage to Thomas Bayes (1701–1761), a long-neglected statistical scholar, especially by the university departments concerned with statistical methods. The Bayesian approach to probability is essentially simple: start by approximating the odds of something happening, then alter that figure as more findings come in. So it’s wholly empirical, rather than building edifices of equations. Silver has a diverting example on whether your spouse may be cheating. You might start with an out-of-the-air 4 percent likelihood. But a strange undergarment could raise it to 50 percent, after which the game’s afoot. This has importance, Silver suggests, because officials charged with anticipating terrorist acts had not conjured a Bayesian ‘prior’ about the possible use of airplanes.

Silver is prepared to say, ‘We had some reason to think that an attack on the scale of September 11 was possible.’ His Bayseian ‘prior’ is that airplanes were targeted in the cases of an Air India flight in 1985 and Pan Am’s over Lockerbie three years later, albeit using secreted bombs, plus in later attempts that didn’t succeed. At the least, a chart with, say, a 4 percent likelihood of an attack should have been on someone’s wall. Granted, what comes in as intelligence is largely ‘noise.’ (Most intercepted conversations are about plans for dinner.) Still, in the summer of 2001, staff members at a Minnesota flight school told FBI agents of a Moroccan-born student who wanted to learn to pilot a Boeing 747 in midair, skipping lessons on taking off and landing. Some FBI agents took the threat of Zacarias Moussaoui seriously, but several requests for search and wiretap warrants were denied. In fact, an instructor added that a fuel-laden plane could make a horrific weapon. At the least, these ‘signals’ should have raised the probability of an attack using an airplane, say, to 15 percent, prompting visits to other flight schools.”

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“It May Well Change The World”

December 24, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The opening of “A Robot in Every Home,” Bill Gates’ famous 2007 Scientific American piece which compared the nascent robotics industry to computers of the Homebrew era:

“Imagine being present at the birth of a new industry. It is an industry based on groundbreaking new technologies, wherein a handful of well-established corporations sell highly specialized devices for business use and a fast-growing number of start-up companies produce innovative toys, gadgets for hobbyists and other interesting niche products. But it is also a highly fragmented industry with few common standards or platforms. Projects are complex, progress is slow, and practical applications are relatively rare. In fact, for all the excitement and promise, no one can say with any certainty when–or even if–this industry will achieve critical mass. If it does, though, it may well change the world.

Of course, the paragraph above could be a description of the computer industry during the mid-1970s, around the time that Paul Allen and I launched Microsoft. Back then, big, expensive mainframe computers ran the back-office operations for major companies, governmental departments and other institutions. Researchers at leading universities and industrial laboratories were creating the basic building blocks that would make the information age possible. Intel had just introduced the 8080 microprocessor, and Atari was selling the popular electronic game Pong. At homegrown computer clubs, enthusiasts struggled to figure out exactly what this new technology was good for.”

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Homebrew Computer Club in 1978:

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“For The First Time Now, We Can Actually Design Life In A Computer”

December 24, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

David Frost just did an interview with Craig Venter, the biologist who was the subject of Wil S. Hylton’s excellent 2012 New York Times Magazine profile.

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“We Don’t Mind Our Phones Spying On Us”

December 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I don’t always agree with Evgeny Morozov, but I always find him to be thought-provoking. In his new Financial Times piece, “Google Should Not Choose Right and Wrong” (free registration required), the technologist suggests that the search giant should be forced to accept checks and balances. A passage about the intrusiveness of Google Now:

“At the end of each month, Google happily reports – without you ever asking for it! – how many miles you’ve walked or cycled. This intervention is no simple weather trivia. Here Google assumes that walking is more important – perhaps, even more moral – than, say, driving. It explicitly ‘bakes’ morality into its app, engaging in what one might term ‘algorithmic nudging.’

Had governments advocated such surveillance-powered interventions, many would find them intrusive, not least because their terms must be subject to public debate. Are we measuring the right things? Are we unfairly blaming individuals for failures of institutions? Walking is undoubtedly easier in Manhattan than in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

With Google at the helm, however, resistance is minimal. We don’t mind our phones spying on us – at least not when Google needs this data to tell us about flight delays. Likewise, we have been persuaded by Google’s efforts to recast the information it collects as objective and simply existing “out there” – in nature – unaffected by their recording devices or systems of measurement.

Google’s power and temptation to do good are only poised to increase. As its services are integrated under one umbrella – maps, emails, calendars, videos, books – it knows even more about our moral failings. And as Google begins to mediate our interactions with the built environment – through its self-driving cars, smart glasses, smartphones – the scope for ‘algorithmic nudging’ also expands.”

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“All that information is ready at the exact moment you actually need it”:

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“There’s No Going Back. So What Is ‘Control’ Now?”

December 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

More about the harsh realities of gun control in the nascent days of 3D printers, this time from Devin Coldewey at Techcrunch:

“If you were to attempt to write a law governing media copyright in 1998, would you attempt to do so without acknowledging the existence of the Internet and compression methods like MPEG-1? Any law crafted under such restrictions would be laughably incomplete.

Likewise, if you were to discuss a law that allows or restricts the creation and distribution of firearms, would you attempt to do so without acknowledging the existence of 3D-printed weapons and the ability to transfer blueprints for them online?

Here’s the problem, though. Like the digitization of music, the digitization of objects, guns or otherwise, is a one-way street. Every step forward is ineffaceable. Once you can make an MP3 and share it online, that’s it, there’s no going back — the industry is changed, just like that. Why should it be different when you reduce a spoon, a replacement part, a patented tool, or a gun to a compact file that can be reproduced using widely-available hardware? There’s no going back. So what is ‘control’ now?

Will ISPs use deep packet inspection to watch for gun files being traded? Will torrent sites hosting firearm files be taken down, their server rooms raided? Will all the ineffectual tactics of digital suppression be tried again, and fail again?

Will 3D printers refuse to print parts, the way 2D ones are supposed to refuse to print bills? Will printers have to register their devices, even when those devices can print themselves? How is it proposed that control is to be established over something that can be transferred in an instant to another country, and made with devices that will soon be as common as microwaves?

Part of the discussion has to be that, government or otherwise, there can be no more control over printed guns than there can be over printed spoons. Regulation or banning of firearms, whether you think the idea is good or bad, will soon be impossible.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“LS3–Follow Tight”

December 20, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

DARPA uses the Legged Squad Support System (LS3) to demonstrate how obedient its robots are–for now.

“A Major Impetus For The Book Was My Research On Bob Brown, Who Described A Pocket Reading Machine In 1930”

December 20, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From an interview at Guernica about technology and art with critic Paul Stephens, a passage about Bob Brown’s proposal eight decades ago for an e-reader:

“Guernica: 

Information overload is a hot topic; we all struggle with being bombarded. You look backwards to Gertrude Stein, Stéphane Mallarmé, Walter Benjamin, T. S. Eliot—at the way the modernists who were also on the cusp of a technology explosion dealt with information and how it was conveyed via new channels. Some, like Stein, embraced this bombardment; others, like Pound and Eliot, did not. How can we return to Stein and relate that to having an iPhone?

Paul Stephens: 

A major impetus for the book was my research on Bob Brown, who described a pocket reading machine in 1930. A friend and disciple of Stein, Brown was thinking about the new technologies of microfilm and sound film, and the possibility that it would soon be possible to transmit poem texts instantaneously by means of radio. He put together an anthology that asked poets to write what he called ‘readies,’ parallel to the ‘talkies,’ which had just revolutionized film. The anthology included writers like Stein, Pound, William Carlos Williams, and the Italian futurist F.T. Marinetti, and probed how poetry would change if it were sped up. He was never able to construct the device, but did publish the anthology.

Amazingly enough, it was prophetic of some of the developments we’ve seen with smartphones. For instance, they got rid of punctuation and compressed words—a lot of the poems looked like textese, a sub-language we’re now increasingly familiar with. Bob Brown claimed to get the idea from reading Stein’s Tender Buttons on Wall Street in 1914 and looking at a stock ticker at the same time, which is just mind-blowing to me. The stock ticker was an extraordinary invention—essentially a horizontal scroll that conveyed instantaneous price data over long distances in real time, not unlike Stein’s notion of a ‘continuous present.’ The fractured, cubist syntax of Stein seemed like language in motion to Brown. He thought her modernist experiments were a parallel development to reading facilitated by machines, and he predicted that our pace of reading would accelerate.”

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“This Cross Between An Aqualung And A Motorbike Is That Latest Idea For Lunar Travel”

December 20, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

An amazing British Pathé newsreel about a jetpack that was tested in 1966.

“Motopia Was A Bold—If Somewhat Impractical Plan—For A City Built From The Ground Up”

December 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s another excellent post at the Paleofuture blog, this one about Motopia, a never realized insta-city which completely separated pedestrian and automobile. It was designed in 1960 by British landscape architect Geoffrey Allan Jellicoe. The opening:

“‘No person will walk where automobiles move,’ is how British architect Geoffrey Alan Jellicoe described his town of the future, ‘and no car can encroach on the area sacred to the pedestrian.’

Jellicoe was talking to the Associated Press in 1960 about his vision for a radically new kind of British town—a town where the bubble-top cars of tomorrow moved freely on elevated streets, and the pedestrian zipped around safely on moving sidewalks. For a town whose main selling point was the freedom to not worry about getting hit by cars, it would have a rather strange name: Motopia.

Planned for construction about 17 miles west of London with an estimated cost of about $170 million, Motopia was a bold—if somewhat impractical plan—for a city built from the ground up. The town was envisioned as being able to have a population of 30,000, all living in a grid-pattern of buildings with an expanse of rooftop motorways in the sky. There would be schools, shops, restaurants, churches and theaters all resting on a total footprint of about 1,000 acres.“

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The Ultimate Machine, Or Leave-Me-Alone Box

December 19, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Information Theory genius Claude Shannon, who loved pogo sticks and juggling, also created this nifty gadget in 1952,

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“Wouldn’t It Be Much More Fun If You Created Your Own Spacecraft?”

December 19, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

A Vice video about an Open Source Outer Space program in Copenhagen, which encourages the building of homemade spacecraft that can accomplish suborbital space flight.

“This Little Show—For Better And For Worse—Has Had A Profound Impact On The Way That Americans Think And Talk About The Future”

December 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

I watched reruns of the original 1960s Jetsons episodes when I was a kid, but I was unaware until now that the program ran for just one season. That’s amazing considering how much it’s still a part of the culture. When, for example, people talk about Elon Musk’s dreams of the Hyperloop, the show is used as a reference point. From a post about the 24 classic episodes at the Paleofuture blog at the Smithsonian:

“It was 50 years ago this coming Sunday that the Jetson family first jetpacked their way into American homes. The show lasted just one season (24 episodes) after its debut on Sunday September 23, 1962, but today The Jetsons stands as the single most important piece of 20th century futurism. More episodes were later produced in the mid-1980s, but it’s that 24-episode first season that helped define the future for so many Americans today.

It’s easy for some people to dismiss The Jetsons as just a TV show, and a lowly cartoon at that. But this little show—for better and for worse—has had a profound impact on the way that Americans think and talk about the future.”

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The original 1963 ABC promo for the show:

“The Robots’ Duties Also Include Spot Welding Labels Onto The Gifts”

December 18, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Santa is already down on the elves and now technology is taking a potshot. GM has repurposed some auto-manufacturing robots for gift-wrapping duty. From Autoblog: “In addition to stuffing and wrapping boxes, the robots’ duties also include spot welding labels onto the gifts (who even knew that was possible?). The work looks boring and monotonous, but at least these GM robots were able to find a second job.”

“The Glamorous Future Included No Digital Photography Or Stereo Speakers Tiny Enough To Fit In Your Ears”

December 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “No Flying Cars, But the Future Is Bright,” Virginia Postrel’s contrarian Bloomberg piece, which provides an incrementalist’s argument to those who feel we’ve failed to realize the bold technological visions of the ’50s and ’60s:

“The glamorous future included no digital photography or stereo speakers tiny enough to fit in your ears. No forensic DNA testing or home pregnancy tests. No ubiquitous microwave ovens or video games or bar codes or laser levels or CGI-filled movies. No super absorbent polymers for disposable diapers — indeed, no disposable diapers of any kind.

Nor was much business innovation evident in those 20th century visions. The glamorous future included no FedEx or Wal- Mart, no Starbucks or Nike or Craigslist — culturally transformative enterprises that use technology but derive their real value from organization and insight. Nobody used shipping containers or optimized supply chains. The manufacturing revolution that began at Toyota never happened. And forget about such complex but quotidian inventions as wickable fabrics or salad in a bag.

The point isn’t that people in the past failed to predict all these innovations. It’s that people in the present take them for granted.

Technologists who lament the ‘end of the future’ are denigrating the decentralized, incremental advances that actually improve everyday life. And they’re promoting a truncated idea of past innovation: economic history with railroads but no department stores, radio but no ready-to-wear apparel, vaccines but no consumer packaged goods, jets but no plastics.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“We’re Really On A Remarkable Trajectory Of Quickening Innovation”

December 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

It was surprising to hear that Ray Kurzweil has accepted the position of Director of Engineering at Google. He seems at the point in his career where he’d want to be independent not an employee, but I suppose there are lots of things you can do with Google’s resources that you can’t accomplish on your own. From Neal Ungerleider at Fast Company:

“Ray Kurzweil is best known these days as the world’s foremost Singularity evangelist and as a prophet of a whizbang, techno-utopian future. However, Kurzweil first came to tech fame as a machine-learning guru whose groundbreaking work on voice recognition and optical character recognition changed computing and laid the groundwork for everything from Siri to desktop scanners.

Now, Kurzweil has a new home: Google. On Friday, Google announced that Kurzweil is their newest Director of Engineering. Kurzweil started at Google today with a focus on new machine-learning and language-processing projects.

‘In 1999, I said that in about a decade we would see technologies such as self-driving cars and mobile phones that could answer your questions, and people criticized these predictions as unrealistic,’ Kurzweil said in a statement. ‘Fast forward a decade–Google has demonstrated self-driving cars, and people are indeed asking questions of their Android phones. It’s easy to shrug our collective shoulders as if these technologies have always been around, but we’re really on a remarkable trajectory of quickening innovation, and Google is at the forefront of much of this development.'”

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The Kurzweil Reading Machine, 1977:

The future futurist plays his computer composition on TV, 1965:

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“Where Abandoned Liquor Stores Now Fester, Yoga Studios Shall One Day Bloom”

December 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I posted something a couple months back about Zappos founder Tony Hsieh spearheading a reimagining of raffish Downtown Las Vegas as a Jane Jacobs-ish walkable community for the Information Age. It’s a tall order. Here’s an excerpt from another piece about Hsieh and his master plan, this time from Greg Beato at Reason:

“In December 2010, Hsieh announced that Zappos.com was planning to move its thousand-plus employees from an office park in Henderson, Nevada, to the old Las Vegas City Hall, a transition that will happen sometime later this year. When it does, Hsieh won’t be commuting. In 2011, he leased 50 units in a luxury high-rise in the neighborhood, and he and some of his Zappos.com co-workers moved in. He’s hoping more will follow—Zappos.com employees and anyone else who wants to live in a lively, community-oriented urban neighborhood near his eight-acre worksite. It’s something he calls The Downtown Project. 

Primarily bankrolled by Hsieh, The Downtown Project plans to invest $350 million in up to 200 small businesses, dozens of tech start-ups, and a diverse mix of other public resources and amenities. The ultimate goal: To create the sort of dense, walkable, mixed-used Shangri-La championed by the urban theorist Jane Jacobs in her 1961 classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 

Put another way, Hsieh would like to make downtown Las Vegas a more compelling social network, a feature-rich platform that encourages frequent chance encounters, fruitful knowledge exchange, and over the long term, greater innovation and productivity. Where abandoned liquor stores now fester, yoga studios shall one day bloom. 

In a town where development typically takes the form of another massive casino resort, Hsieh’s dream is a fairly radical vision. But Las Vegas has already replicated Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and the New York skyline, so why not thriving urban neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Mission District or Brooklyn’s Williamsburg?

Call it a venture-capital take on urban locavorism.”

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“WITHIN 50 YEARS…We Will Have A Colony On Mars”

December 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

One segment from Popular Mechanics‘ new “110 Predictions for the Next 110 Years” feature:

“WITHIN 20 YEARS…
Self-driving cars will hit the mainstream market.
Battles will be waged without direct human participation (think robots or unmanned aerial vehicles).
The first fully functional brain-controlled bionic limb will arrive.

WITHIN 30 YEARS…
All-purpose robots will help us with household chores.
Space travel will become as affordable as a round-the-world plane ticket.
Soldiers will use exoskeletons to enhance battlefield performance.

WITHIN 40 YEARS…
Nanobots will perform medical procedures inside our bodies.

WITHIN 50 YEARS…
We will have a colony on Mars.
Doctors will successfully transplant a lab-grown human heart.
We will fly the friendly skies without pilots onboard.
And renewable energy sources will surpass fossil fuels in electricity generation.

WITHIN 60 YEARS…
Digital data (texts, songs, etc.) will be zapped directly into our brains.
We will activate the first fusion power plant.
And we will wage the first battle in space.

WITHIN 100 YEARS…
The last gasoline-powered car will come off the assembly line.”

“IBM Researchers Are Developing A Computing System That Actually Experiences Flavor”

December 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

IBM has published its new “5 in 5” list, which predicts the new technologies are right around the corner. Below is an excerpt of one of them followed by the official video.

“Taste: Digital taste buds will help you to eat smarter

What if we could make healthy foods taste delicious using a different kind of computing system that is built for creativity?

IBM researchers are developing a computing system that actually experiences flavor, to be used with chefs to create the most tasty and novel recipes. It will break down ingredients to their molecular level and blend the chemistry of food compounds with the psychology behind what flavors and smells humans prefer. By comparing this with millions of recipes, the system will be able to create new flavor combinations that pair, for example, roasted chestnuts with other foods such as cooked beetroot, fresh caviar, and dry-cured ham.

A system like this can also be used to help us eat healthier, creating novel flavor combinations that will make us crave a vegetable casserole instead of potato chips.

The computer will be able to use algorithms to determine the precise chemical structure of food and why people like certain tastes. These algorithms will examine how chemicals interact with each other, the molecular complexity of flavor compounds and their bonding structure, and use that information, together with models of perception to predict the taste appeal of flavors.

Not only will it make healthy foods more palatable — it will also surprise us with unusual pairings of foods actually designed to maximize our experience of taste and flavor. In the case of people with special dietary needs such as individuals with diabetes, it would develop flavors and recipes to keep their blood sugar regulated, but satisfy their sweet tooth. ”

“The Adolescent Identity Crises That Plague American Teenagers Aren’t An Issue For Hunter-Gatherer Children”

December 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Interesting piece by Jared Diamond at the Daily Beast on the “hunter-gatherer” method of child-rearing. An excerpt:

“I find myself thinking a lot about the New Guinea people with whom I have been working for the last 49 years, and about the comments of Westerners who have lived for years in hunter-gatherer societies and watched children grow up there. Other Westerners and I are struck by the emotional security, self-­confidence, curiosity, and autonomy of members of small-scale societies, not only as adults but already as children. We see that people in small-scale societies spend far more time talking to each other than we do, and they spend no time at all on passive entertainment supplied by outsiders, such as television, videogames, and books. We are struck by the precocious development of social skills in their children. These are qualities that most of us admire, and would like to see in our own children, but we discourage development of those qualities by ranking and grading our children and constantly ­telling them what to do. The adolescent identity crises that plague American teenagers aren’t an issue for hunter-gatherer children. The Westerners who have lived with hunter-gatherers and other small-scale societies speculate that these admirable qualities develop because of the way in which their children are brought up: namely, with constant security and stimulation, as a result of the long nursing period, sleeping near parents for ­several years, far more social models available to children through ­allo-parenting, far more social stimulation through constant physical contact and proximity of caretakers, instant caretaker responses to a child’s crying, and the minimal amount of physical punishment.”

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“NASA Took The Decision To Stage A ‘Controlled Descent And Impact'”

December 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

A pair of probes are going to be purposely crashed into the moon by NASA. From the Guardian:

“Two spacecraft orbiting the moon are ending their mission by crashing into a lunar mountain at almost 4,000mph.

The twin gravity recovery and interior laboratory (Grail) probes, known as Ebb and Flow, have spent almost a year mapping the moon’s gravity in unprecedented detail.

With their fuel running low, US space agency NASA took the decision to stage a ‘controlled descent and impact.’

The alternative would have been to let the probes crash randomly which may have damaged places of historic interest, such as the Apollo landing sites.”

“There Is Still No Machine Remotely Flexible Enough To Deal With The Real World”

December 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Another really smart post by NYU psychology professor Gary Marcus at the New Yorker News Desk blog, this one entitled, “Why Making Robots Is So Darned Hard.” An excerpt:

“Meanwhile, whether a robot looks like a human or hockey puck, it is only as clever as the software within. And artificial intelligence is still very much a work-in-progress, with no machine approaching the full flexibility of the human mind. There is no shortage of strategies—ranging from simulations of biological brains to deep learning and to older techniques drawn from classical artificial intelligence—but there is still no machine remotely flexible enough to deal with the real world. The best robot-vision systems, for example, work far better with isolated objects than with complex scenes involving many objects; a robot can easily learn to tell the difference between a person and a basketball, but it’s far harder to learn why the people are passing the ball a certain way. Visual recognition of complex flexible objects, like strands of cooked spaghetti and opening and closing humans hands, present tremendous challenges, too. Even further away is a robust way of embodying computers with common sense.

In virtually every robot that’s ever been built, the key challenge is generalization, and moving things from the laboratory to the real world. It’s one thing to get a robot to fold a colorful towel in an empty room; it’s another to get it to succeed in a busy apartment with visual distractions that the machine can’t quite parse.”

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“Testing Kenshiro’s Spine Part”

December 13, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Headless robot, courtesy of Japanese researchers, which replicates human muscle movement. The walking function is eh, but the bending knee motion is quite good. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

“Let’s See What He’s Got Up His Sleeve For Us This Time”

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

People in show business are labeled “genius” if they’re able to complete a sudoku slightly faster than Stephen Baldwin. But Ricky Jay is the real deal, a deeply brilliant person who can accomplish amazing things with his brain despite the deterioration of some basic neurological functions. A clip of the magus, actor and scholar appearing with Merv Griffin in 1983, and then an excerpt from Mark Singer’s great 1993 New Yorker profile, “Secrets of Magus.”

“Jay has an anomalous memory, extraordinarily retentive but riddled with hard-to-account-for gaps. ‘I’m becoming quite worried about my memory,’ he said not long ago. ‘New information doesn’t stay. I wonder if it’s the NutraSweet.’ As a child, he read avidly and could summon the title and the author of every book that had passed through his hands. Now he gets lost driving in his own neighborhood, where he has lived for several years—he has no idea how many. He once had a summer job tending bar and doing magic at a place called the Royal Palm, in Ithaca, New York. On a bet, he accepted a mnemonic challenge from a group of friendly patrons. A numbered list of a hundred arbitrary objects was drawn up: No. 3 was ‘paintbrush,’ No. 18 was ‘plush ottoman,’ No. 25 was ‘roaring lion,’ and so on. ‘Ricky! Sixty-five!’ someone would demand, and he had ten seconds to respond correctly or lose a buck. He always won, and, to this day, still would. He is capable of leaving the house wearing his suit jacket but forgetting his pants. He can recite verbatim the rapid-fire spiel he delivered a quarter of a century ago, when he was briefly employed as a carnival barker: ‘See the magician; the fire ‘manipulator’; the girl with the yellow e-e-elastic tissue. See Adam and Eve, boy and girl, brother and sister, all in one, one of the world’s three living ‘morphrodites.’ And the e-e-electrode lady . . .’ He can quote verse after verse of nineteenth-century Cockney rhyming slang. He says he cannot remember what age he was when his family moved from Brooklyn to the New Jersey suburbs. He cannot recall the year he entered college or the year he left. ‘If you ask me for specific dates, we’re in trouble,’ he says.”

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