April 7, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM PSYCHOLOGY WORLD

Psychology World originally shared this post: Does the brain’s wiring make us who we are? Neuroscientists Sebastian Seung and Anothony Movshon debate minds, maps, and the future of their field.
April 7, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM NEUROVISUALIZATION

neurovisualization originally shared this post: this is a really interesting interview with prof. olaf sporn about computational neuroscience. also check out the other great podcasts at brainscience. NETWORKS OF THE BRAIN – OLAF SPORN Interview with Dr. Olaf Sporns, author of Networks of the Brain, which is a comprehensive introduction to the application of Network Theory to Neuroscience. Network Theory is an important tool for dealing with the massive amounts of data being generated by our current technology. We discuss basic concepts and also explore some of the interesting discoveries that are being generated by this approach.For detailed show notes, including links and episode transcripts go to http://brainsciencepodcast.com. h/t +Brain Science Podcast Home – Brain Science Podcast Brain Science Podcast show notes and blog
April 7, 2012

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT SOCIAL INNOVATION,…

This is an important social innovation, because, unlike classic non-profits or non-governmental institutions, they do not operate from the point of view of scarcity. Classic NGOs still operate much like other industrial institutions, such as the corporation and the market state, as they believe that resources need to marshalled and managed. By contrast, the new for-benefits have only an active role in enabling and empowering the community to co-operate – by provisioning its infrastructure, not by commanding its production processes. These associations exist for the sole purpose of benefitting the community of which they are the expression. This is good news, as they are generally managed in democratic ways. And they have to be, because an undemocratic institution would discourage contributions by the community of participants. Here is the kicker. What would you call an institution that is responsible for the common good of all the participants? I would argue that this type for for-benefit institution has a very similar function to what we commonly assign to the state. h/t +David Guthrie http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/20123111423139193.html The ‘welfare state’ is dead – long live the ‘partner state’? As the welfare state declines, what’s needed are democratically-run, civic institutions that protect the common good.
April 6, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM JOHN VERDON

John Verdon originally shared this post:
April 6, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM BRUNO GONÇALVES

Bruno Gonçalves originally shared this post: Complex systems: Spotlight on mobility Complex systems: Spotlight on mobility Nature 484, 7392 (2012). doi:10.1038/484040a Authors: Dirk Brockmann The complexity in patterns of human mobility, migration and communication has been difficult to unpack. Researchers have now come up with a simple theory that captures the intricacy of such phenomena. See Letter p.96
April 6, 2012

IN AMERICA WE HAVE A MOTIVATION PROBLEM :…

In America we have a motivation problem : money. I’m not a communist. I love capitalism (I even love money), but here’s a simple fact we’ve known since 1962: using money as a motivator makes us less capable at problem-solving. It actually makes us dumber. When your employees have to do something straightforward, like pressing a button or manning one stage in an assembly line, financial incentives work. It’s a small effect, but they do work. Simple jobs are like the simple candle problem. However, if your people must do something that requires any creative or critical thinking, financial incentives hurt. The In-Box Candle Problem is the stereotypical problem that requires you to think “Out of the Box,” (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?). Whenever people must think out of the box, offering them a monetary carrot will keep them in that box. A monetary reward will help your employees focus. That’s the point. ^When you’re focused you are less able to think laterally. You become dumber*. This is not the kind of thing we want if we expect to solve the problems that face us in the 21st century. Is your job like that of a button pusher? or do you have to think creatively? What about a CEO? The results above apply more to a CEO than almost anybody, yet CEOs receive greater financial incentives than anyone. This practice is self-destructive. Now I understand why the CEO of Company X killed his golden goose. I understand why he decimated R&D. I understand why he upped the number of spurious lawsuits against competitors instead of investing in long term growth. He was incentivized. He was focused. The stock price was the most important metric of judgment. The same is true for many other companies. http://blogs.nature.com/a_mad_hemorrhage/2012/04/02/ceos-and-the-candle-problem CEOs and the […]
April 6, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM GERD MOE-BEHRENS

Gerd Moe-Behrens originally shared this post: Leukippos Institute Evolutionary Synthetic Biology by Sergio G. Peisajovich “Signaling networks process vast amounts of environmental information to generate specific cellular responses. As cellular environments change, signaling networks adapt accordingly. Here, I will discuss how the integration of synthetic biology and directed evolution approaches is shedding light on the molecular mechanisms that guide the evolution of signaling networks. In particular, I will review studies that demonstrate how different types of mutations, from the replacement of individual amino acids to the shuffling of modular domains, lead to markedly different evolutionary trajectories, and consequently to diverse network rewiring. Moreover, I will argue that intrinsic evolutionary properties of signaling proteins, such as the robustness of wild type functions, the promiscuous nature of evolutionary intermediates, and the modular decoupling between binding and catalysis, play important roles in the evolution of signaling networks. Finally, I will argue that rapid advances in our ability to synthesize DNA will radically alter how we study signaling network evolution at the genome-wide level.” http://bit.ly/Hd65fd #syntheticbiology #synbio #syntheticbio Evolutionary Synthetic Biology – ACS Synthetic Biology (ACS Publications) Signaling networks process vast amounts of environmental information to generate specific cellular responses. As cellular environments change, signaling networks adapt accordingly. Here, I will discus…
April 5, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM MATT UEBEL

Matt Uebel originally shared this post: #RaceAgainstTheMachine . Robots will steal your job, but that’s OK | how to survive the economic collapse and be happy You are about to become obsolete. You think you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is impossible to replace. You are wrong. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by …
April 5, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM XAVIER MARQUEZ

This is a very reasonable and careful essay that reflects a lot of the organizational issues I’ve also been thinking about as a result of my work with Occupy. I can say with a bit of confidence that many of these thoughts are shared (if not always explicitly) by many of the protesters I’ve worked with as well. It is an excellent case study for looking at how the organizers are approaching the #attentioneconomy . “The second important instrumental limitation of protest is also pretty obvious, and has to do with the scarcity of the most important resource that voice requires to be effective: time (or, more specifically, coordinated time). Protest works to focus attention; it concentrates the diffuse and uncoordinated dissatisfaction of many into a unified chorus, and amplifies this dissatisfaction in ways that attract the attention of publics that might share some of these dissatisfactions, and of political coalitions that can act to change the circumstances giving rise to them. But in the short run, the attention budget for all issues of interest is limited; attention can be shifted, but not created, since we are a finite number of human beings who live only a finite amount of time. So protesting X means not protesting Y; and protesting X means not doing A, B, and C, at least for the duration of the protest. There is always some other pressing issue that loses out in the competition for attention, some other problem that could be plausibly argued to be more important: to protest is to make a claim about the proper priorities of an institution. (But how could we know?).” Xavier Marquez originally shared this post: I was invited by a student club here at VUW to talk about protest. Not entirely satisfied with these thoughts I jotted […]
April 5, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM OLAV SMØRHOLM

Read closely, because this is a brilliant application of the #attentioneconomy . This is an example of how we will start preferring attention-based models to other sorts of models and explanations for deciding difficult problems. Wondeful! The de?nitions [of life, IF] are more than often in con?ict with one another. Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together. One thing, however, can be done – sort of voting in absentia – asking which terms in the de?nitions are the most frequent and, thus, perhaps, re?ecting the most important points shared by many. Such analysis is offered below, revealing those most frequent terms that may be used for tentative formulation of the consensus. Olav Smørholm originally shared this post: Brilliant! Life is short | Byte Size Biology Note that I am diving straight into the subject, and not prefacing this post with a review of the various definitions of life. I assume that this blog’s readers have been exposed to some aspects o…
April 4, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM REBECCA SEARLES

Rebecca Searles originally shared this post: I think this is adorable Ants Vaccinate One Another To Prevent Epidemics, Colony Study Suggests By: Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer Published: 04/03/2012 05:05 PM EDT on LiveScience Like crowded megacities, busy ant colonies face a high risk of disease outbreaks. New research indicates …
April 4, 2012

RESHARED POST FROM PROJECT GLASS

#augmentedreality #attentioneconomy #googlex #fanboy Project Glass originally shared this post: We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t. A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do. Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass? +Babak Parviz +Steve Lee +Sebastian Thrun
September 18, 2007

POWERSET

Jon called me out to celebrate Google’s birthday a few days ago. It wasn’t really Google’s birthday, it was more like its christening; it has been 10 years since www.google.com was registered. I posted the following response, which might not be what he expected, but I thougt was worth posting here. I should start by saying that I like the Google example, not because I think it is the pinnacle of what search should be, but simply because it is an intelligent machine that we interact with every day and don’t give it a second thought. Philosophers like these kinds of ‘its right in front of your nose!’ examples. But the problem of search is much bigger than just Google. One of my profs really wants me to use Searchlight as my core example, but I will always be a PC guy (even if Vista sucks). In any case, it might be instructive in this context to compare Google to other search engines. Take Powerset, for example. The NYT recently had a post\ on how Powerset is attempting to use some fancy natural language processing techniques that came out of Xerox PARC to beat Google at its own game. I’ve often argued that Google is a language user, but Powerlabs is exactly right to assert that Google doesn’t use natural language; it isn’t a user like us. But how much does that matter? My initial reaction is that Powerlabs shouldn’t pretend it is in competition with Google (even if it wants a share of Google’s market); it is really serving a different kind of function. There are certain kinds of questions that Google is bad at answering because of its inability to understand natural language, but there are other kinds of questions that I really just want a machine to […]
September 19, 2007

SHOTGUN SHINE

From What the Sopranos taught me about technology: During one of his therapy sessions with Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony shares with her that he is flummoxed at A.J.’s behavior of late. She says it sounds like his son has discovered existentialism, to which Tony replies: “[!@%$#%@] Internet.” But Melfi defends the ‘Net, assuring him that existentialism is a European philosophy that was around long before the Web. I really want to do something similar with Dr Katz, but I just haven’t had time to do the video editing.
September 20, 2007

ESP

or: the extended mind for the blind Head-mounted device is the cat’s whiskers
September 20, 2007

NET NEUTRALITY IS ABOUT FREEDOM OF SPEECH

I posted a doomsday picture of what the end of net neutrality would look like several months ago. Here’s that image: This image caused some panic in a recent D&D thread. I have felt somewhat guilty about posting such a sensationalist photoshop since it has no real basis in reality, and so I felt obliged to clarify why the image is so troubling. That particular model is unmarketable, not because the basic concept is unmarketable, but because we are already so used to having those basic services (YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, etc) that the consuming public wouldn’t stand for their sudden removal from the web. Those services would necessarily be turned into the internet equivalent of ‘basic cable’, like the weather channel or CSPAN. While that particular depiction is unlikely, the basic concept is extremely marketable. It is already how TV (and telephone services) operate, and consumers are used to paying for tiered services. That’s why the image is so uncanny and disturbing, because it is already so familiar. But there is a HUGE difference between a tiered internet offering a YouTubeHD premium package, and a cable service offering tiered TV packages. With TV, content is produced by a network or a consolidated media company, so you get high quality productions that cost a lot of money. To offset those costs, the companies strike deals with cable TV providers to offer their content at certain prices. In other words, the TV providers work in conjunction with the content providers, and this necessarily homogenizes and narrows the scope of media offered. On the internet, on the other hand, there are no centralized sources of content production. There are no networks or media companies that have control of the market. Existing media companies have to compete with small start-up companies, and the existing […]
September 21, 2007

FUTILE TITLE

You should be listening to Ian’s podcast, loser! The only way it could be better is if it contained more dirty image-based puns.
September 21, 2007

SCROOGLED

Freedom is slavery by Cory Doctorow “Tell me about your hobbies. Are you into model rocketry?” “What?” “Model rocketry.” “No,” Greg said, “No, I’m not.” He sensed where this was going. The man made a note, did some clicking. “You see, I ask because I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail.” Greg felt a spasm in his guts. “You’re looking at my searches and e-mail?” He hadn’t touched a keyboard in a month, but he knew what he put into that search bar was likely more revealing than what he told his shrink. “Sir, calm down, please. No, I’m not looking at your searches,” the man said in a mocking whine. “That would be unconstitutional. We see only the ads that show up when you read your mail and do your searching. I have a brochure explaining it. I’ll give it to you when we’re through here.” “But the ads don’t mean anything,” Greg sputtered. “I get ads for Ann Coulter ring tones whenever I get e-mail from my friend in Coulter, Iowa!” The man nodded. “I understand, sir. And that’s just why I’m here talking to you. Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently?” Greg racked his brain. “Okay, just do this. Search for ‘coffee fanatics.’” He’d been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was called Jet Fuel. “Jet Fuel” and “Launch”—that would probably make Google barf up some model rocket ads. They were in the home stretch when the carved man found the Halloween photos. They were buried three screens deep in the search results for “Greg Lupinski.” “It was a Gulf War–themed party,” […]
September 21, 2007

THIS POST CONTAINS TWO HEADLESS WALKING ROBOTS

Remember BigDog? Well, Boston Dynamics just released its little brother. While LittleDog isn’t nearly as eerie as BigDog, STriDER wins the nightmare dystopic future award.
September 26, 2007

HUMAN COMPUTATION

Google TechTalks July 26, 2006 Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it. I describe other examples of “games with a purpose”: Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. I also explain a general approach for constructing games with a purpose. Here’s some links to the games mentioned, and others that work on the same principles: ESP Peekaboom Google Image Labeler Phetch (multiplayer game) Verbosity (Apparently the server doesn’t work) A few more links: O’Reilly’s short write up on this lecture All in all, a fascinating talk on a trend that I believe is going to be one of the most important any of us will face. As the symbiosis between humans and computers becomes deeper, and at a larger scale, we’re going to see problems that were formerly construed as “hard AI” suddenly broken, not because computers themselves have become intelligent, but because humans and computers have gotten better at working together. We’re only at the early stages of harnessing collective intelligence, and we’re going to see more and more breakthroughs as creative computer […]
September 26, 2007

WHAT AM I DOING

I should have posted this a long time ago, but it is so damn annoying that I am going to put it below the break. Thanks a lot, Peter.
October 1, 2007

NOTED W/GLEE

Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things (2005) p 38 All around us we see obsolescence– but our ideas of obsolescence are not supposed to obsolesce.
.twitter-timeline.twitter-timeline-rendered { position: relative !important; left: 50%; transform: translate(-50%, 0); }