Recording Memories - Will we see it in our lifetimes?

These scientists have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the brain’s temporal lobe – the seat of the auditory system – as a person listens to normal conversation. Based on this correlation between sound and brain activity, they then were able to predict the words the person had heard solely from the temporal lobe activity.
Scientists decode brain waves to eavesdrop on what we hear

Hat Tip: Slashdot

This development is intriguing in several ways. In addition to helping people with a wide range of problems (stroke, Parkinson’s, ALS) communicate I see this as one of the first steps necessary to saving memories. If these thoughts can be expressed in 0s and 1s; if you can “read” words via recording synaptic transmissions can we “see,” and “hear” thoughts and memories? Will we be able to store “consciousness,” the “brain-in-a-jar” meme from B sci-fi movies? Will learning, whether facts, applications or physical activities be accelerated as depicted in The Matrix?

The answer, of course, is yes. We need to come to grips with what is coming down the pike. Even before “immortality” becomes an issue (the merging of the brain-in-a-jar meme with robotics) we will have to grasp more mundane issues such as police interrogations, legal proceedings, contracts, advertising, privacy from “hackers” and other issues we can’t conceive of at the moment.

As scary as this may be if we live in a police state – how exciting it is in other endeavors, such as medicine (from diagnosis to helping people who are disabled) and in the spread of knowledge. “Video” memories will be added to biographies, to scientific papers, and in personal records analogous to adding YouTube videos to a blog post or as the Pensieve from the Harry Potter stories.

[Edited 2/25/2012]

Technological Change will Alter Old Ways of Doing Things

I usually don't comment on articles such as SocialNomics: 40+ Items Tech Will Kill this Digital Decade but I so disagree with so many of the points made that I feel compelled to comment.



Got called away. Will be back to complete this shortly.

Moore's Law Gets Another Reprieve

Woo Hoo. Doomsayers beware! Moore's Law has yet another reprieve. This is terrific news. Ever cheaper computing power is necessary in every human endeavor. There may / will come a time when Moore's Law is no longer applicable but at this point in time every double is critical.

Ohm’s Law Survives at the Atomic Scale

Moore’s Law, the cornerstone rule of the semiconductor industry, may get a reprieve from its predicted demise, according to a group of scientists in Australia and the United States. Their unexpected findings show that a well-understood law of classical physics—and a pillar of electrical engineering—holds for some objects that are just four atoms wide, a size where quantum effects should rule instead. ...

Previous experiments had shown that at widths less than 10 nm, the resistivity of silicon nanowires increased exponentially (Ohm’s Law, by contrast, is linear). The researchers were able to get around this exponential increase and follow Ohm’s Law, in effect, by heavily doping the silicon nanowires with phosphorus.

Read more on the topic at Slashdot.

QR Codes - Time For Apps to be Built

I think there is a huge demand for QR Codes. 14 million people in the US selected a QR Code in June, over 6% of the total mobile audience. That is a HUGE amount considering that as of yet there is little to no utility for the end user. As soon as utility improves QR Code usage will skyrocket. As of now it's simply a toy whose main appeal are to gadget lovers.

The study also found that these scanners were more likely to be men (60.5% of scanners) and aged 18 to 34 (53.4%) and have a household income of $100,000 or above (36.1%).
14m Americans scanned QR and bar codes with their mobiles in June 2011

It's been two plus years since they've hit the market - the only question that exists is: how long before QR Codes EXPLODE on the market?

The Future of Technology

Here's some old cellphone commercials from the 1980s and 90s. Back in the day floppies were 1.4 mgs; external harddrives costing hundreds of dollars held 20 mgs; modem bandwidth was at 9600 until 1991.

Why this history of technology? As HCI professionals we must, at times, think of where we may be going. There is no better way to get a glimpse of the technology in 20 years than to look back at technology from twenty years ago. Let's keep in mind Moore's Law (that computing power doubles in power every 18mths while the price drops in half) while thinking of the possible and where will we be.

If you want to see a very accurate view of the internet from 1969 see:



Will we have apps that will know what food we have in the refrigerator and our cupboards and be able to come up with recipies with our existing food. For example type: I want something spicy, preferably Mexican or Indian; keep it low calorie; use items that will go bad; etc...

EDIT 12/31/2011:

This site 11 Predictions That Back To The Future Part II Got Right might inspire your thinking of what's yet to come.

The Singularity is Near

How many more doubles until the singularity?

If you don't know what the singularity is - and you have some time - read the following article by Ray Kurzweil,
The Law of Accelerating Returns. It's one of my favorite articles and informs much of my thinking of the future of technology.

Processing speed is growing exponentially. While the first few doubles may not be noticed, or seem exciting to outside observers, it can soon grow to game-changing proportions.

Year	Name	Transistors
1971	4004	2,300
1972	8008	2,500
1974	8080	4,500
1978	8086	29,000
1982	286	134,000
1985	386	275,000
1989	486	1,200,000
1993	Pentium	3,100,000
1997	Pentium II	7,500,000
1999	Pentium III	9,500,000
2000	Pentium 4	42,000,000
2002	Itanium 2	220,000,000
2004	Itanium 2	592,000,000

I got the above table from Intel, published in 2005. Six years later the Core i7 (Sandy Bridge E) has 2270 million transistors (2,270,000,000).

Where will we be in 20 years? Assuming computing power (equivalent but not equal to transistors) continues to double every 18 months we will go through 13 more doubles, 2.27 billion will become 4.5 billion in 18 months and become 9000 billion in 20 years. Imagine that if you can.

Twenty years ago we had clunky "portable phones" with huge batteries, today we carry around TVs in our pocket. Tomorrow will it carry all our books, medical records, photos? Of course. We need to imagine what new things could be there. Could it be a portable "pensieve?" A place to store and review memories?

QR Codes - Why Aren't We Hearing More About Them?

QR Code usage is ramping up very slowly. Why is that? It's a wonderful idea. Use your phone as a scanner and get more information about a product, or include it into an existing app. For instance you can scan your food and an app could help you come up with something to cook for that night; another app could help can keep track of your clothes. Let an app know what your favorite beer is (it could tell that from your purchases and web queries) and as you pass a bar you could get a notice that this very bar has Six-Point Righteous Rye on tap and a great selection of Avery beers.

Why has it not taken off? Because right now selecting a QR Code provides limited utility to the end user. This will change shortly - in 5 years or so - when there are apps galore for the end user. Of course then QR Codes will be invisible, with dozens, if not hundreds hidden in EVERY graphic.

We can see the inevitable problems: as QR Codes become "pushed" on consumers there will be new calls for privacy; new data piracy problems. We will solve these problems as well.

---

EDIT 12/2/2011:

Starbucks Cup Magic launches for iPhone and Android devices in the US next week and allows users to point their iPhone at specially designed Christmas cups and see all sorts of fancy dancing things and enter competition.

The app works by pointing your phone’s camera at the company’s red holiday season coffee cups and 47 additional objects, such as bags of coffee, on display at Starbucks retail locations. Doing so will produce animations involving five characters — an ice skater, a squirrel, a boy and a dog sledding and a fox — on your screen. You can also interact with the characters. For instance, if you tap the boy on the sled he does a somersault. Those who activate all five characters can qualify to win an as-yet-unnamed prize.

Starbucks brings seasonal cups to life with AR

The Return of Moores Law

Not too long Michio Kaku was predicting the End of Moore's Law and now we see Intel announcing that "it had again found a way to make computer chips that could process information more quickly and with less power in less space." Intel expects "to be able to make chips that run as much as 37 percent faster in low-voltage applications and it would be able to cut power consumption as much as 50."

Does this mean that Michio Kaku was wrong? No. But as mentioned in the earlier post there are numerous workarounds. At worst, assuming that Kaku is right that, for the moment, we've come to the end of increasing computer power by brute force, we will then need to become more efficient with the power we have.

I would bet that Michio Kaku is wrong and expect that computing power will continue to increase. Intel is increasing the efficiency of their design, not simply by making things smaller - as has been done for the last 30 years - but by being more efficient with what they have.

Early transistors were built on a flat surface. But like a real estate developer building skyscrapers to get more rentable space from a plot of land, Intel is now building up. When the space between the billions of tiny electronic switches on the flat surface of a computer chip is measured in the width of just dozens of atoms, designers needed the third dimension to find more room.
Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward

For a more complete explanations see: Intel Announces first 22nm 3D Tri-Gate Transistors, Shipping in 2H 2011 and
Intel Announces New 22nm 3D Tri-gate Transistors

The End of Moore's Law

Michio Kaku believes Moores Law has run its course; that the age of "cheap computing" is over and as a result the economy and life will take a hit as a result.

So the collapse of Moore's law is a matter of international importance, with trillions of dollars at stake. But precisely how it will end, and what will replace it, depends on the laws of physics. The answers to these physics questions will eventually rock the economic structure of capitalism. ...

Around 2020 or soon afterward, Moore's law will gradually cease to hold true and Silicon Valley may slowly turn into a rust belt unless a replacement technology is found.
What happens when computers stop shrinking?

He makes several interesting points - but, as good a physicist as he is, Michio Kaku misses the mark when it comes to business and innovation. For instance, now with computing power growing so fast, efficient use of that computing power is not formost on peoples minds. Look what was able to be done in 1969 with a computer less powerful than in today's phones. Efficient use of the available computing power was paramount then. It will be again. What other ways will we have to increase our processing ability -- assuming we don't find a "replacement technology?" Will we be able to combine existing processors to make something more powerful? Will we be able to develop processes that don't require brute force to solve the problem?

Here's some bits of insight into what's within the realm of possibility:

Fruit Flies Hold the Key To Faster Computing

Dr. Ziv Bar-Joseph, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon, may have found the key to faster computing in the form of fruit flies. While computer scientists have long struggled with determining optimal communications paths in digital environments, Bar-Joseph believes the answer can be found by studying the biological make-up of fruit flies: 'Determining how to select a [Maximal Independent Set] is difficult and has been under scrutiny for many years. It turns out that fruit flies solve a similar problem.

Air Force Supercomputer Made From PS3's

The Air Force's Research Lab in Rome, NY. has one of the cheapest supercomputers ever made, and best of all over 3,000 of your friends can play Tekken on it. The computer is made from 1,716 PlayStation 3s linked together, and is used to process images from spy planes.

The Supercomputer is cheaper and uses a "fraction of the energy that comparably sized supercomputers use. Portions of it — say 300 machines — can be turned on while the rest are off, depending on a job’s needs."
PS3 Supercomputer

Maybe Moore's Law is coming to an end by 2020 (and then again maybe not) but I would bet (and am betting) that greater efficiency will bridge us until new technologies will allow us to once again double computing power at a fairly rapid rate.

The End of Google Wave

Google has decided to pull the plug on Google Wave. After great promise it dies an ignoble death.

Google in their August 4th update states that:

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.
Update on Google Wave

The failure was primarily due to the business decision to launch the product too soon. This was a robust application whose target audience included non-techies who will have nothing to do with a product that doesn't help them accomplish the tasks at hand. In many ways Google Wave was a time-sink, entertaining and a useful exercise for IAs, developers and other techies, but of little to no use for many business users. The end result we see now - after a rousing introduction - Google Wave is dead barely a year after being introduced to the public.

iPad: The Future or Not?

Like millions of others I’ve been wondering about the impact of iPad on the future of the internet and computers. It appears as if Apple has hit a home run, although there are a few caveats regarding its impact. First the positives. The interface is remarkable and it is the first great eReader on the market. Tablets, and especially the iPad, is ending print media (books, magazines and newspapers). We’re seeing technology come to what many of us have been imagining for the past many years. First Wolfram|Alpha came out last year and now the iPad. Combine the two, wait a few years for incremental improvements, and you will have a computer straight out of Star Trek, Minority Report or Avatar.

Now for the caveats.
Tablets, including the iPad, are not designed for heavy-duty data entry. For it to replace laptops keyboard tasks will have to be improved. I don’t think this is much of a problem as it is a simple incremental step to improve the screen keyboard.

The iPad is a mobile device and will take a beating. How durable is it? Will the screen take the punishment without breaking too often.

It’s still too bulky. It needs to fit easily into a pocket and then expand to the necessary size. This will come in time. And sooner than you think. Laugh if you will. When modem speeds increased from 9600 to 14.4 to 28.8 people laughed when I answered the question “How fast is fast enough to load a webpage?” with the answer “As fast as it takes when you’re changing channels on your TV” or “As fast as it takes from flicking on the light switch until you have light.”

I’ve heard many complaints that the iPad doesn’t use any Microsoft products; that you can’t make phone calls, or use it as a camera. If the iPad catches on, which I think it will, those features will be included soon enough and shortly these complaints will be a thing of the past.

I think this is the first tablet that will capture the imagination. I do think that the lack of an external drive is a problem – for the moment.

Google Wave - Is it still there?

Last year Google introduced a new work collaborative application called Google Wave. It seemed an answer to many business people's dreams but it no longer looks as inviting.

Is it because Google launched the product too soon? Is it because non-techies have a hard time with it? - and as all IAs know the ideal software is one in which the users are unaware of, and certainly not frustrated by.

I've experimented with it but NONE of the business users were happy with it and didn't participate. I've heard several others voice the same the thing. No matter how good a product is, if it is not used it isn't useful.

Here's hoping to a comeback. Wave has great potential.

Digital Photocopies and Identity Theft

Just in case you haven't seen this article:

Digital Photocopiers Loaded With Secrets
Your Office Copy Machine Might Digitally Store Thousands of Documents That Get Passed on at Resale

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive - like the one on your personal computer - storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.

The Future of Marketing - Quick Response Codes

The more I read about Quick Response Codes (QR Codes) the more I see the future of marketing: a true interaction between consumer and marketer. Users able to to scan and get more information simply by scanning a code in a magazine or a billboard. Applications available to help users integrate a new product or service into their daily lives.

QR also brings in scary thoughts of dystopian futures where advertisers and governments know your every move. The technology that can bring a cornucopia of products can also bring in 1984 type surveillance.

Still - the future benefits are evident. QR Codes are easy to create and simple to display. Their uses run from the mundane such as quickly sending users to a website (or a subsection thereof) or providing them with up to the minute promotions. But there are more interesting uses such as stores luring consumers in based upon their buying habits; or by integrating a product with an existing app to give an unintended outcome. For instance you're in the supermarket and pass a product. Your recipe creation app has interfaced with your going out app and "concludes" that you are in the mood for Indian food. A voice or text message appears: "Buy this product and that one over there. Add it a your existing foods and you will have an excellent XYZ meal for your hot date tonight."

Oh, the future is bright. Where are my shades?

Google Wave - The Future of Office Meetings?

Last month Google unveiled a new application, Google Wave, brainstormed by the creators of Google Maps. It's meant to be a new communication platform for the web. Wave will combine the features of email and IM - a Facebook, so to speak, for business projects. Users can upload comments, which in turn can be commented on and graphics, video and other items can be included into the mix.

Unlike Facebook the history remains so that new users can easily come up to speed on a project by reading the posts and comments.

It seems to have great potential and there is great need for this technology. Conference calls and email work, but as everyone knows, it's certainly not perfect.

I would add voice to screen transcription so that phone conversations can be added to the comment section as IM communication is included.

See the product from Google's IO Conference:

Information Spreads Because it Must

From the author of The Meme Machine - Susan Blackmore speaks at TED. Anyone interested in marketing or technology ought to watch this. How and why do memes spread?

"Information/Technology spreads because it must." If you like Ray Kurzweil you'll love this talk - especially her description that we're at the "third replicative point". [16:50]

We become teme machines: AI merges with people. Scary and wonderful. If so we become immortal.



See the video The Birth of Computers at 15:55 (a George Dyson discussion) for another take on this topic.

The Birth of Computers

If you're interested in the history of technology then this video is for you. If you're a programmer and you're interested in the history of technology you will LOVE this.

Another Way to Save Articles

I just found out about a new web application - Instapaper that seems wonderful. Marco Arment, the lead developer, describes the project in the following way:

You come across substantial news or blog articles that you want to read, but don’t have time at the moment.

You need something to read while sitting on a bus, waiting in a line, or bored in front of a computer.
Tech Crunch

This is perfect for someone like me. My bookmarks are completely out of hand; I often scrape articles I want to read and when I most want to read them I am away from my computer.

My only fear is quickly bumping up against storage limits (both in space and time span). Here's hoping this site takes off.