A while back I heard a talk on how the brain calculates. The main idea from the talk was that the brain uses a different function to do accurate arythmatic as opposed to conceptual math and other types of computations.
For arythmatic the brain will access the information it needs from memory and apply it like an algorythm. This is a typical left brain complexity function. And this is the model used to build computers, and doing more of these faster and faster brings us to the computing power we have now.
But when the brain does other calculations, like when catching a ball, it uses estimations. This function is more like guessing and then narrowing in the get the approximate answer. With these functions the brain realises it does not need the exact answer, so its "computations" are only as accurate as it needs to be.
So, this got me thinking. Why are we modeling robots and certain applications to act with the memory and algorythm approach when we dont need a dead accurate answer (just yet). So I was wondering if a kind of fuzzy math is being applied to robotics and other applications, to sell accuracy for speed in the settings that allow for it.
Perhaps this is what they are aready doing. I often come up with ideas that have been used already - but they were authentic to me. Well, let me go try do some reading on this one.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
MS Courier
So excited about all the released details (albeit virtual) for the upcoming MS Courier booklet. The mentioned features are already showing that they will dominate the market. I have an iPhone and its use for my work is seriously lacking. I am in process engineering. I have other creative passtimes also. Writing or making notes with a finger is an obvious downgrade. And typing on something that small with thumbs is simply too slow. And the iPad... is simply half a device (no thanks).
The market need (on the business end) is obvious from the sales in the "productivity" and "lifestyle" and "business" sections of the iTunes AppStore.
MS Courier developers have the advantage of watching how the public responds to other devices and incorporating the learnings. It seems to tackle all the shortcomings of other devices already. I really hope this is the one mobile device to combine all.
Imagine if you can always have your office with you in a lightweight network-conntected computer. No, a netbook cannot handle my concept sketches and a tablet is massive.
I (like many) go to meetings all day and have to make endless notes or to-do lists. I have to multitask on the run and use "downtime" for creative input to my projects. Something I hope they have the virtual display keyboard, in landscape mode. Granted, I make a lot more stylised notes with a pen. But since I type a lot fasted than I write, a keyboard would really help me finish reports and emails while not at the desk. Speaking of "away from the desk", I also hope its unique OS can sync with the desktop and dump or share the connected content in a file explorer subfolder format. Obviously sync with outlook and office is vital for the big picture.
Just. The whole phone part. If they include that functionality, I would not need anything else. And I (along with many) would be willing to pay a great deal for this ultimate device!
They should probably sell a wirelessly connected earpiece for it.
I mean, imagine just keeping the booklet in your jacket pocket (or backpack) with your mini phone or earpiece device (attached to your lapel, or shirt, or in your pocket) ring for the call. Or if you really want to go out to a beach party without the bigger booklet, connecting to it over the mobile network would be needed. In that case it would have to be a mini phone, or the booklet would have to share contacts with a regular phone (the less exciting option). Another use is for a shoppinglist. So holding it open with one hand would need it to fold back to back.
And I really hope the webcam installation was true. Enabling conference video calls for this device will set it above any bar. Then casual corner of the market would want to watch entertainment video content and listen to songs and play some games. And its an obvious unintended take-over of all ebooks.
It will be the must-have device for the near future.
My guess is they are struggling with battery power, generated heat, operting memory and memory capacity. And maybe with durability on the hinges. And perhaps outdoor sunlight reflectivity. And the pen has challenges of its own - oh, imagine a step up with pressure sensitivity !
The only other comparable device for functionality is the "sixth sense" device I saw on the TED website. But it still has many more years to go to create the intented seemless augmented reality. The protyping looks promising.
The market need (on the business end) is obvious from the sales in the "productivity" and "lifestyle" and "business" sections of the iTunes AppStore.
MS Courier developers have the advantage of watching how the public responds to other devices and incorporating the learnings. It seems to tackle all the shortcomings of other devices already. I really hope this is the one mobile device to combine all.
Imagine if you can always have your office with you in a lightweight network-conntected computer. No, a netbook cannot handle my concept sketches and a tablet is massive.
I (like many) go to meetings all day and have to make endless notes or to-do lists. I have to multitask on the run and use "downtime" for creative input to my projects. Something I hope they have the virtual display keyboard, in landscape mode. Granted, I make a lot more stylised notes with a pen. But since I type a lot fasted than I write, a keyboard would really help me finish reports and emails while not at the desk. Speaking of "away from the desk", I also hope its unique OS can sync with the desktop and dump or share the connected content in a file explorer subfolder format. Obviously sync with outlook and office is vital for the big picture.
Just. The whole phone part. If they include that functionality, I would not need anything else. And I (along with many) would be willing to pay a great deal for this ultimate device!
They should probably sell a wirelessly connected earpiece for it.
I mean, imagine just keeping the booklet in your jacket pocket (or backpack) with your mini phone or earpiece device (attached to your lapel, or shirt, or in your pocket) ring for the call. Or if you really want to go out to a beach party without the bigger booklet, connecting to it over the mobile network would be needed. In that case it would have to be a mini phone, or the booklet would have to share contacts with a regular phone (the less exciting option). Another use is for a shoppinglist. So holding it open with one hand would need it to fold back to back.
And I really hope the webcam installation was true. Enabling conference video calls for this device will set it above any bar. Then casual corner of the market would want to watch entertainment video content and listen to songs and play some games. And its an obvious unintended take-over of all ebooks.
It will be the must-have device for the near future.
My guess is they are struggling with battery power, generated heat, operting memory and memory capacity. And maybe with durability on the hinges. And perhaps outdoor sunlight reflectivity. And the pen has challenges of its own - oh, imagine a step up with pressure sensitivity !
The only other comparable device for functionality is the "sixth sense" device I saw on the TED website. But it still has many more years to go to create the intented seemless augmented reality. The protyping looks promising.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Neuroscience and genetics and connectivity
So we are studying the brain, to understand how it works and how it sees reality. We are mapping neurons and synapses and their electrical activity on supercomputers. We are supposedly learning a lot from stimulating these models and looking at the reaction. And we marvel at reaching the terraflop level but will never really get computers to act like the brain, or maybe we will.
Yet we have billions of supercomputers walking around the planet. These biological supercomputers (the brains) are evolving slowly. We don't understand them fully, but we can see the outcomes and achieve so much as a species. Beyond that we sense that an alien race would possibly be more intelligent.
My question is, why are we not working on interconnecting brains. Not surgically of course, but rather getting them to "supercommunicate" to work towards a common goal. Communication we currently have are grossly inefficient from one brain to the next. This makes learning and knowledge processing and recording slow. Like writing to a hard drive is much slower than other computing functions.
I used to wish that I could link my brain directly to the internet, or have a direct-link computing interface because the slowest most labourious part is the information travelling in and out of my brain.
Is anyone working on that? I really hope so. I don't just mean more intuitive or natural interfaces. I mean true connectivity. Start as simple as MRI's on heads that are touching and thinking/doing the same thing. I just seems like a logic step up for humanity, the brain and breaking out of the mold we are making.
Yet we have billions of supercomputers walking around the planet. These biological supercomputers (the brains) are evolving slowly. We don't understand them fully, but we can see the outcomes and achieve so much as a species. Beyond that we sense that an alien race would possibly be more intelligent.
My question is, why are we not working on interconnecting brains. Not surgically of course, but rather getting them to "supercommunicate" to work towards a common goal. Communication we currently have are grossly inefficient from one brain to the next. This makes learning and knowledge processing and recording slow. Like writing to a hard drive is much slower than other computing functions.
I used to wish that I could link my brain directly to the internet, or have a direct-link computing interface because the slowest most labourious part is the information travelling in and out of my brain.
Is anyone working on that? I really hope so. I don't just mean more intuitive or natural interfaces. I mean true connectivity. Start as simple as MRI's on heads that are touching and thinking/doing the same thing. I just seems like a logic step up for humanity, the brain and breaking out of the mold we are making.
SETI at snailspace
So I watched the movie "Contact" and a couple of years later heard a talk on what SETI is doing and their ideas or approach to one day discover or make contact with alien lifeforms.
My only thought was that it was completely wrong. Yes, I do have my own idea of the right approach or direction. Skip the rant and read the end if you want to know.
Its like rolling a 100-billion-sided dice. And in the whole existance of the human race, we only get to roll it once.
Its like deciding to take a 100-light-year-stroll and really believing we just need to be patient.
And these are the kind of people who are supposed to understand the scale of the distances and the probabilities we are facing. Yes, the calculations should that the probability for other civilisations are in the millions or billions - big deal, it that is still a drop in the ocean of possible places to look. And worse still when reaching/detecting/contacting most of the possible places are so remote that it doesn't matter anymore.
The point? The point is, why are the people of SETI wasting their time combing the sands of the universe when clearly that whole approach and idea is flawed. Sure, we are finding ways to look at a little bit larger cross-sections of sky, only to see 1000+ years into the past. The time-lines don't add up. If a civilisation found us, through tedious observation, it is very likely that they only saw ancient life and moved on, or nothing at all. Even finding a planet suitable to have life, and then waiting for their modern light to reach us, will leave us in extinction before we find it. Besides, would we be able to find or even detect earth as a place of interest from 1000 light years away? Considering we are searching the whole sky, and we only get to see earth 1000 years back. Or do we have a massively powerful beacon, that we are sending a wide-spanding, incredibly strong beacon into space?
The solution. Well, at least the correct approach for the serious section in SETI is to exert ALL efforts to advance our technology in only 2 areas.
1. We will get nowhere (and that applies to aliens also) if we do not gain the ability to manipulate space-time in a stable way. SETI should be working on that, or supporting that in a BIG way.
2. If we really see option 1 as almost impossible and just as unlikely to reach aliens just by looking, then we should SERIOUSLY be looking at self-sustained life on a ship, to send off, for billions of years (yes, I know, evolution would love that little popsicle).
Those seem like the only 2 ways SETI is going to answer the question they are looking for.
There is obviously also the possibility that we ARE completely unique, dispite the math.
My only thought was that it was completely wrong. Yes, I do have my own idea of the right approach or direction. Skip the rant and read the end if you want to know.
Its like rolling a 100-billion-sided dice. And in the whole existance of the human race, we only get to roll it once.
Its like deciding to take a 100-light-year-stroll and really believing we just need to be patient.
And these are the kind of people who are supposed to understand the scale of the distances and the probabilities we are facing. Yes, the calculations should that the probability for other civilisations are in the millions or billions - big deal, it that is still a drop in the ocean of possible places to look. And worse still when reaching/detecting/contacting most of the possible places are so remote that it doesn't matter anymore.
The point? The point is, why are the people of SETI wasting their time combing the sands of the universe when clearly that whole approach and idea is flawed. Sure, we are finding ways to look at a little bit larger cross-sections of sky, only to see 1000+ years into the past. The time-lines don't add up. If a civilisation found us, through tedious observation, it is very likely that they only saw ancient life and moved on, or nothing at all. Even finding a planet suitable to have life, and then waiting for their modern light to reach us, will leave us in extinction before we find it. Besides, would we be able to find or even detect earth as a place of interest from 1000 light years away? Considering we are searching the whole sky, and we only get to see earth 1000 years back. Or do we have a massively powerful beacon, that we are sending a wide-spanding, incredibly strong beacon into space?
The solution. Well, at least the correct approach for the serious section in SETI is to exert ALL efforts to advance our technology in only 2 areas.
1. We will get nowhere (and that applies to aliens also) if we do not gain the ability to manipulate space-time in a stable way. SETI should be working on that, or supporting that in a BIG way.
2. If we really see option 1 as almost impossible and just as unlikely to reach aliens just by looking, then we should SERIOUSLY be looking at self-sustained life on a ship, to send off, for billions of years (yes, I know, evolution would love that little popsicle).
Those seem like the only 2 ways SETI is going to answer the question they are looking for.
There is obviously also the possibility that we ARE completely unique, dispite the math.
Flight planning
I had a dream many years ago. Yes, a real dream, not a metaphorical one.
I dreamed that we were getting ready to board a flight. Instead of cramming past eachother and trying to stuff lugguage overhead while loading hundreds of human cargo and handbagage, it was all done in an open space.
What I mean is, the seats and luggage were all in open frame on open carpet and can be accessed from all sides.
When everyone was loaded, the frame with chairs was slotted through a door into the plane. So the plane (engines and wings) do not have to be with the passenger capsule. So the number of planes and passenger capsules does not have to be equal, and passengers can be loaded before the plane arrives - and loaded all in one go.
Just a thought
I dreamed that we were getting ready to board a flight. Instead of cramming past eachother and trying to stuff lugguage overhead while loading hundreds of human cargo and handbagage, it was all done in an open space.
What I mean is, the seats and luggage were all in open frame on open carpet and can be accessed from all sides.
When everyone was loaded, the frame with chairs was slotted through a door into the plane. So the plane (engines and wings) do not have to be with the passenger capsule. So the number of planes and passenger capsules does not have to be equal, and passengers can be loaded before the plane arrives - and loaded all in one go.
Just a thought
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