Human Mosaic Systems Blog

Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1KJAXM3xYA

http://www.ted.com Technology is evolving us, says Amber Case, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on "external brains" (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? Case offers surprising insight into our cyborg selves.

A Brief Explanation Of Why Minecraft Matters by Devin Coldewey

A Brief Explanation Of Why Minecraft Matters by Devin Coldewey on January 15, 2011

On Wednesday, it was announced that a game called Minecraft had hit a million sales. This probably isn’t the first time that you, a denizen of the internet, have heard that word. But unless you’re in the habit of following up on every indie game mention you happen to see, there’s a good chance this particular title might have slipped under your radar. So what is Minecraft, and why is everyone talking about it? ....

(rest of story:  http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/01/15/a-brief-explanation-of-why-minecraft-matters/  )

conclusion: 

.... With gaming threatening to unseat cinema and TV in terms of time and cash invested, this change from a top-down to a bottom-up development process isn’t just a curiosity, it’s a momentous change. The time has come when not only are the tools for creation available to the dedicated independent developer, but also the means of distribution and popularization. The heavy hitters in the industry will find themselves much more under threat soon from the proverbial two guys in a garage. Minecraft’s success may seem a lark born of big-budget backlash and social media, but pretty soon, that kind of success won’t be a lark, it’ll be a back door to a billion-dollar market.

An Artistic Exploration of What is an Avatar by Glyph Graves

 "Antarctica- An Individual Existence" by Glyph Graves. A dynamic, live data feed piece.

Artwork Machinima link to "Antarctica - An Individual Existence"

Glyph Graves is considered one of the great artists in Second Life. In real life he is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist in Sidney Australia. ( You will find one of his interactive pieces, Organic Recurve, at my HMS site. Google him to read more about his incredible installations, including those with IBM and to see the wealth of stunning images of his many works.).

His work has won numerous awards and often finds creative ways to push narrative immersion into the conversation of the work. Glyph's and other SL artists' works drive me to find a way to take this brave new direction they are taking and incorporate it into the immersive environment of 3D simulations to help create paradigm shifts in our understanding of the world around us.

This recent unique artwork shown in the machinima linked above explores the concept of what is an avatar through the use of live feed data.

Description of the dynamic live data feed piece, "Antarctica - An Individual Existence":

Created in Second life using real time data from 19 automated weather stations in Antarctica

Antarctica .. a continent of of ice, rock and wind that for most of its frozen expanse rises above the sea as the Antarctic High Plateau around 3000 meters. This piece brings the continent into a virtual world and poses the question : What is an avatar?

The word avatar is not a new word
--noun
1. Hindu Mythology. the descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
2. an embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.
3. Computers. a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.

This piece is a personification of a continent, and a fragment of its current (real time ) existence is projected into virtual in the same way that we project a fragment of ourselves into SL and call it our avatar .

It speaks as a symphony of music that is generated by the wind direction from location across its body. Its form is described by the height and position of its parts. Its skin ( the thin layer of air just above the ice) coloured by its temperature.

As this is real time the composition will change from hour to hour, day to day as the conditions at each of the 19 locations on the continent change giving a song of Antarctica.

While the discs are visible as well as touching the disc there is also a colour scale that will tell you the temperature at each site at a glance.

This piece has two phases

Phase One

The first incarnation personifies the continent ice cover as a human figure.

It stands then breaks into its component parts. Each part is a real location on Antarctica, the site of an weather station that is streaming real time data on the conditions.

Phase Two

The second incarnation transforms into separate discs and takes the last 20 readings from each of the 19 weather stations (about the last 5 hours with the last being current).

Each disc represents an automated weather station and contains a set of individual notes. The direction of the wind at that location determines which note from each set is played at each location. NB there are no sound loops rather notes are generated one at a time depending on the wind direction.

The direction of the wind is also given by the direction of the texture animation and the particle stream.

The speed of the wind is given by the speed of the texture animation and the density of the particle stream.

The temperature is signified by colour - red is the hottest and bright blue the coldest. If it goes over 0 degrees it will begin to drip.

The relative height of the discs conform to the height of the weather station.


Technical aspects and Acknowledgements

I take the data from the web, pipe it though my hosted web site and transform it into music and colour.

It uses several transformations that are facilitated via scripts that modify the primitive parameters of each unlinked prim in the piece.

For the height of the station I have used the barometric pressure in the same way it is used by an aeroplanes altimeter. Any difference due to temperature or local air pressure changes is negligible compared to the variation caused by altitude.

The data is provided by the University of Wisconsin Madison through its AWS site and I gratefully acknowledge their permission to use it.

I pull the information from that site and then pre-processed on my hosted site ( I learnt php for this project)

Each element in the piece then request the last 20 readings ( about the last 5 hours ). I use the temperature, wind speed, wind direction and barometric pressure.

All scripts (off world and inworld), sculpts and textures are my own.

The music come from sets of notes in each element. I utilise 4 instruments to create the symphony.

Ghost Blow notes created by Jovica - www.freesound.org
flute - by Lorin Tone
Chord set by Lorin Tone.
Violin notes London Philharmonic

---

Quantum Mechanics and the Stock Market and more….

 ( http://tinyurl.com/2vowroy)

There has been a flurry of posts relating to quantum mechanics that in light of the stock market plunge in May of 2010 (How one automated trade led to stock market flash crash http://business.newsplurk.com/2010/10/how-one-automated-trade-led-to-stock.html ) give pause to examine closer.

Thomas McCabe in a recent post with the Kurzweil blog (When The Speed Of Light Is Too Slow: Trading at the Edge http://pulsene.ws/jnFI ) talks about the problem with latency issues in today’s high speed trades and the desire to maximize profits that is driving the search for ways to enable even faster trades. Over the last few years traders have been building automated high-frequency trading (HFT) systems that compete by making thousands of trades a minute to maximize profit. However, high density areas slow down the computer’s ability to send and receive information. One option talked about in this article is placing computers further away from populated areas, and more in the middle of the path between major trade markets. That would put a computer in the middle of the Atlantic to optimize the London to NY market path.

Another published report describes how quantum computers are closer to being a reality (Quantum computers a step closer to reality thanks to new finding http://pulsene.ws/iUxC ) with great implications for encryption as well as the ability to handle quickly the large and complex innundation of information today.

And finally, the article/interview with Seth Lloyd of MIT published in CBC News that addresses the newly discovered quantum mechanics principles at play with animals and plants. (Quantum 'weirdness' used by plants, animals http://ow.ly/39ccO ) Imagine tapping into the entanglement phenomenon to understand what is happening in a distant place to trigger a response on your part, or the ability to navigate a complex morass of information and clearly see the path that will get you to where you need to be…

Amazing! The implications of this go well beyond the stock market, and may foretell a host of future problems, too….

** NOTE: Explanation of Quantum Entanglement and how it would relate to our personal lives: Everyday Entanglement - Science News http://bit.ly/baEgdV

The Virtual World Revolution

 (map of technological change over time)

I ran across this blog post today that echos what I said at a meeting  at the National Defense University last year: we are indeed in the middle of a major revolution!  "Of Grids and Webs" http://bit.ly/b8hU46

I do feel the 3D immersive environment (virtual world) movement we are currently experiencing is a major revolution that will impact our society and culture globally as dramatically as did the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions. Complexity has grown as our world has become hyper connected and collaboration in decentralized environments has not only grown, but become necessary to cope with the speed and cost of this constantly dynamic and changing environment.

User interfaces that are intuitive are moving at an incredible speed as demonstrated by the successful hacking of Kinect within only 3 hours of its release! ("US$3,000 bounty claimed for open source Kinect drivers - http://gizm.ag/cM4QkO" )  This unleases the potential for incredible creativity regarding applications of the program.

Intuitive user interfaces going mainstream is the key to mass adoption of 3D immersive environments. UIs like Kinect and Emotiv are speeding us towards that intuitive interface.

This blog article that discusses decentralization and the internet (my presentations on this the past 2 years raised sooooo many eyebrows here in DC, especially among those in DoD….) explains this very nicely.

More articles the past two days continue to point out the direction we are going:

1. "Thanks to technology, it’s an increasingly digital world" http://bit.ly/bl6ddc talks about how “smart systems” or sensors are being used in ever increasing places gathering data and helping individuals and cities become more efficient in the use of resources;
2. Complex adaptive systems_Robot musician jams with humans http://pulsene.ws/hSep - robots are now being designed to recognize and interact with musicians as it joins in playing jazz… Jazz is a dynamic changing and unpredictable musical form. No two performances are ever identical;
3. Mergence of physical world and virtual world_“"MIT Media Lab builds game space of the future" http://bit.ly/bxToPk”. Playtime Computing combines computer graphics projected on a wall and floor, motion-capture sensors and a robot to let children (it's build for kids for now) interact with characters that move between the projection screens and the physical world.  This is taking Kinect a step further, blurring the lines between our physical world and the virtual one;
4. And combined with the incredible applications of presence and transference in virtual worlds as demonstrated by the host of psycho-therapeutic applications, especially where Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder  (PTSD) is concerned we begin to see its power to change not only the way we work, but the way we think and experience life. The latest neurological research into the way the brain imprints horrific events that cause PTSD and the effects of the computer game, Tetris, on nullifying it, begins to look at this component. (When it comes to traumatic flashbacks, Tetris blocks http://pulsene.ws/habA)

 We are in the middle of an incredible revolution! And we are changing not only culturally, but perhaps neurologically as well. All of this continues to point to the importance of paying attention to the avatars we create and the design of the 3D immersive environments we utilize and explore. We affect and change technology, and through using it, we affect and change ourselves and our culture.

"Crowds and Clouds: Data, Sheep, and Collaboration in the Works of Aaron Koblin" by MIT World

The visualization of dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar...

 

About the Lecture

Where others see just data points and fodder for bar graphs, Aaron Koblin visualizes dynamic systems where information assumes forms both abstract and familiar. In this talk, Koblin shares recent projects that meld statistical science and art to convey a really big picture, while often inviting the viewer to partake in a more personal experience.

Koblin explores those “interesting traces” left after humans interact with each other and with computers -- what he calls “data trails.” One work, Flight Patterns, depicts the flow of air traffic over North America in a 24-hour period. The east and west coasts light up in sequence, and lines shoot out of great cities in swarms at busy times of day, like brain scans showing bursts of activity among neural centers.

Koblin is not simply fascinated by a bird’s-eye view of human networks. In the Sheep Market, he seeks to “juxtapose the humanity of an individual process with a gigantic, alienated system.” With the help of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, software that allows online users to contribute a tiny part of a large project for very little compensation, Koblin collected thousands of drawings of “a sheep facing left.” The result is a black and white mosaic of 10,000 Lilliputian animals, each one of which when selected emerges as an individual drawing. (Participants were paid two cents a head). Similarly, in Ten Thousand Cents, online participants drew a tiny piece of a $100 bill (for a penny). The collage, “the largest distributed forgery project on the planet,” looks remarkably like the real thing when viewed from afar, but says Koblin, “if you drill in, you can see smiley faces, stippling, and sketching” -- a wild variety of artistic styles. He has tested the crowd-sourcing concept with audio as well, creating a version of “Daisy Bell” for 2,000 sampled voices, which “sounds like a pack of gremlins,” or HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey on steroids.

Koblin’s work maps comfortably onto the music video world. His tribute to Johnny Cash features a multitude of drawings by fans, and he collaborated on a “music video without video” for Radiohead that employed laser scanners and light patterns. Koblin wants to marshal data, as well as the collective intelligence of the Internet, to create a meaningful experience on a human scale. “I nerd out on a lot of this technology stuff,” Koblin admits, but he also suggests there is no point to art without “emotional resonance.”

Open Standards/ Cloud Computing and Societal Implications

 What is the effect of open standards and cloud computing on societal organization and diversity (and, thus, creativity in general ) globally?
Is this an overlooked area of sociology?

A colleague and I were discussing yesterday the technological advances being made at breathtaking speed and the natural delay in societal structures or policies keeping up.

The advent of cloud computing is leading to what is referred to as a collective mind, allowing information from a wide (almost infinite) variety of sources to be made available on the internet to facilitate collaboration, among other things. Concerns about the subsuming of individual creativity and individual effects on a complex system was noted. Individual outlier effects drive complex systems. Einstein was such an outlier... unexpected, and not like the majority of society. He stood out from the crowd. He was different. And his insights and ideas changed the path our world has taken. He helped to continue the drive of our complex system.

The need for interoperable platforms is obvious in a cloud environment, and thus, open standards need to be adopted to ensure the information in the cloud can be accessed by all.

But, some have postulated that in developing open standards may have  an impact on societal organization, as well as individual behavioral effects. "Technical Regulation of the Internet : From Standardization to Behavorial and Societal Norms"
Cloud computing is about the user and as such will affect the behavior of the user. It may also affect the organization of society as a whole through it's use.

Virtual environments have a powerful feedback loop of influence psychologically and in some cases physically with the user. If one scales up the effect on the individual, it becomes apparent that groups and society as a whole may be affected, as well.

Hopefully, this is an area that is being addressed already. If not, it is an area of concern that needs to be examined.

For additional related info: "The Social Web: Creating An Open Social Network with XDI "