Contents:

An Algorithmic Outlook Extension of the Mind Let There Be Fire! Rhetoric, Retrieval, and Computing

Return of Signal to Noise Visual Technology ExplainedFeng Shui and Computing

The Art of Earth: Enviromentalism OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): When Smart People Do Dumb Things Recorded Sound and Computing

Computing and Number Contemporary Computing | Speech Must Read

Contemporary Computing | Unified Platform

There are many devices and platforms for computing. The choices which are available to the individual consumer include 3 or 4 handset platforms on a range of devices and 3 or 4 desktop and laptop platforms on a range of devices. The options for computing within and across large organizations are more variegated.

Apple Inc. currently sells 4 different computing devices running 2 platforms, 3 platforms when you include their iCloud service.

Google Inc. currently sells 2 different (soon to be 3) computing devices running 2 platforms, 3 when you include their Google Docs and Google Apps services, 4 platforms when you include their Google Search service.

What is a computing platform? Is it an Operating System, a device, a set of frameworks for how you develop applications and drivers?

Computing is yet to be defined or fully understood. We do know that computing is an augmentation or extension of the mind.

A platform is something that you stand upon, or something another object rests upon.

A computing platform is something we rest our thoughts upon.

Increasingly, a computing platform is something we rest our thoughts, hopes, dreams, and cares for others on.

Facebook is a computing platform.

Its an Operating System of sorts, set across a series of servers enumerated on different devices with specific applications and frameworks for developing on the platform.

In this sense Facebook more closely resembles what we are converging on, the Unified Platform.

The Unified Platform.

The Unified Platform consists of an Operating System which runs on a set of servers and natively on devices, an application layer which runs across all devices, and a series of conduits which connect to other platforms.

Here's how it works, and why we need it.

The Unified Platform runs in part from a data center where each end user receives an allocated set of resources which grow as needed. The information for the user, their contacts, calendar, documents, photos, music, and UpLinks reside on the server.

What are UpLinks?

The Unified Platform is agnostic to other platforms.

UpLinks are conduits which connect other platforms to the Unified Platform. UpLinks are curated, they are authorized for use and may be submitted by individuals and organizations.

The user interface for the Unified Platform is unified across devices and tailored to meet specific hardware requirements. You can access the Unified Platform from a standard cellular phone using the dial pad. It will speak your messages or a document in storage to you. On more modern hardware, such as a tablet or smartphone, the Unified platform conflates incoming messages into a simple parsible interface. Text messages, emails, tweets, Facebook comments, forum replies, listservs, rss feeds, all converge in a highly legible and extremely simple interface.

It gets better.

When you respond to a particular message or to a particular contact, the Unified Platform will request that person to indicate their preferred means of contact. Moving forward, when you communicate with someone, you do not need to specify the means. You convey your message to the Unified Platform via your preferred means through thought, gesture, image, moving picture, audio, sensor, speech or text input. [This is the future we are talking about, after all.] The Unified Platform then sends your communication to the individual via their preferred means with no effort on your part.

Why?

We have more ways to communicate than ever, yet our ability to make and maintain genuine connections with people and groups has diminished in a user-centric world of ever expanding applications, services, and platforms. User-centric is good, choice is good. It is bad when the separate choices of people prevent them from having communication without friction. This friction is the residue of the translation which occurs when someone who prefers one platform reaches out or responds to someone on another system or platform.

As we see the emergence of personal social networks, such as Path, we can predict this world of separate intertwining platforms will continue to tie itself in a knot. And Path is a good sign, it exhibits some of the features of the Unified Platform and it has a very lean interface with some circular elements.

The Unified Platform.

When you first install the application layer or purchase a device with the Unified Platform, you are asked:

Please connect your existing devices to the Internet.

Take a moment to get yourself something to drink, we're going to review your contacts first.

[The Unified Platform retrieves all of your contact information and steps you through a simple on-screen process with automated attendant that helps you merge and eliminate duplicates.]

Do you know who Mary Smith is? Is this the same Mary Smith?

Which is her preferred contact information and means of contact? Would like us to contact her to determine this now?

There is a basic set of tasks we need to accomplish. Sharing our thoughts and our lives with each other requires more than integration, it requires unity.

The Unified Platform.

Contemporary Computing | Speech II

There's a nuanced understanding of computing underlying MG Siegler's article covering his take on the reaction to Apple's Siri software.

In the article, Siegler makes many valid points succintly. He refers to Siri, and the speech recognition software it represents, as an extension of computing. I'd like to carve out the path that he treads a little wider so others can follow. In doing so, we'll explore the way we interact with computing from the understanding that computing as a medium is an extension of the mind.

There's a frequently heard anecdote regarding the early versions of speech recognition software. The computer scientists creating the software were amazed at the results they were getting from their early iterations. Some were skeptical, knowing the limited processing power of the computers they were using at the time. By observing the test sessions more closely, they found the reason for the exceptional performance---the people using the software.

As it turned out, the people in the test sessions were altering their speech to accomodate the software. In other words, they were using their innate mental faculties to augment the software. This is the opposite of what computing seeks to do.

Computing as an extension of the mind seeks to augment our inborn mental muscle, not rely upon it.

The timing of when Siegler's 'extensions of computing' are ready for people is when the software or computing system crosses the zero mark from relying on our mental faculties to augmenting them.

I felt the timing was right for Speech to make its foray when I wrote Contemporary Computing | Speech.

I'd like to offer an explanation for why the timing is right and why Speech has yet to make its full debut. I won't speculate on the impact this will have on childhood development. I agree with Siegler when he says that our children will grow up speaking with computing as time and speech recognition progress.

The timing is right for speech recognition software, sadly, for the same reason the scientists were so excited about the early iterations.

The people who are using the software are accustomed enough to using their mental faculties to accomodate computing that they accept the shortcomings of the system. They may be aware they are modifying their voice or repeating, and this behavior does not prevent the experience from being an overall augmentation of their inherent mental capabilities.

This is in part due to their experience using computing, and may also be due in part to a shift in mental faculties that Jonah Lehrer has been tracking admirably. I leave it to the reader to decide how this relates to Siegler's observation regarding our children's experience with computing.

The timing is wrong because speech recognition software is relying too heavily on our innate mental faculties and not providing enough augmentation in return.

What may move us past the zero point and into augmentation are massive data sets of speech patterns and queries. Apple is building a new data center and Apple as well as Google are working to build these data sets.

This akward timing may explain the mixed experiences people are having. These mixed experiences may vary based on a person's innate mental faculty for accomodating computing.

Recorded Sound and Computing

My efforts to understand computing where in large part instigated and continue to be fueled by my research into the history of recorded sound. My conversation and correspondence with Tony Schwartz had a profound influence on how I view the media which surround and inform our lives, including how we view ourselves. It may be helpful to understand how my work at Evolution of Sound (please pardon our appearance we are undergoing renovations) relates to my work here at Understanding Computing. I'm happy to report the following was written using speech recognition software:

The environment created by recorded sound is the most proximal environment to the environment created by computing. The environment created by recorded sound has an immediate effect on the listener. There is also a depth of information about the state of molecules in the environment of the initial recording.

Through Thomas Edison's invention of recorded sound, people across the world are* able to exchange detailed information about their immediate environment. When Tony Schwartz first began trading his wire recordings by placing ads in newspapers around the world he was initiating an exchange of information; sharing the movement of molecules surrounding the personal lives of the people with whom he traded recordings.

With the sharing of information made possible by computing we find a similar immediacy and depth of information. When we begin to understand computing we realize that unlike the acoustic analog space created by recorded sound computing possesses an algorithmic sensibility intrinsic to the digital processes which provide the underlying foundation for the overlaying exchange of information. Where recorded sound presents the listener with the movement of molecules in the air at the time of the recording, computing aims to present to the audience the processes that put those molecules in motion.

*As more and more exchanges of recorded sound occur through the medium of computing, this verb will more appropriately be 'were'.

Note to You, Yes You, Reading this Now . . .

We [. . .] find expressing our thoughts and feelings to each other or forming a connection with another person or another culture more difficult than any time in human history.

I will be posting thoughts from time to time on my Twitter feed.

There is plenty more that is not written here, I'm sorry, I don't have the time at present to share more of my understanding of computing with you in detail.

If you are taking the time to read these articles and think about them, one small article should last you a day, or perhaps a week. Please consider all the implications of what is said here. Please take the time to read everything carefully as I have taken great care in preparing it for you. These are not typical blog entries, many of these articles have been edited as my understanding improves, consider this a work in progress, continually progressing.

If you'd like to reach me to discuss a particular topic in greater detail, please send electronic mail to:

seth |A| upwardarrow.com

Until then, I'll keep the fire going for you . . .

Must Read

Ted Nelson (Theodor Holm Nelson PhD) who is often limited by the statement 'the man who coined the term hypertext' has written his autobiography Possiplex. You can purchase the book directly through his site, and I highly recommend that you do. Nelson is unrelenting in his insistence that computing can serve humanity better than its present forms and permutations, I couldn't agree more.

Amazingly 50 years after Nelson's initial observations the common sense approach he recommends for computing and his essential understanding of data structure for idea and information exchange between people is yet to be understood by most 'computer scientists' and 'tech-gurus'. Nelson says it best in his book, if I could sum up the most important point, we are people first, and 'computer scientists' second.

Contemporary Computing | Speech

This is the first in a series of practical follow-up articles to the Feng Shui and Computing article. In that article I describe the imbalance which exists in our current sensory interaction with computing through a flawed set of consumer interfaces we use in our day to day lives to communicate with each other and reflect on ourselves.

In the Feng Shui article I mentioned the computing devices to correct this imbalance exist. Many of the adventurers and artists conceiving and developing these interfaces are not alone in their pursuits. Similar projects may exist down the hall or across the globe. I've chosen these adventurers with the help of computing.

Let's consider the observation in the Feng Shui and Computing article regarding computing and speech:

We listen to music and words but the computer (in most cases) does not understand what we are saying.

• Most of our personal computers are this way. Computing however, is listening. For instance, computing provides customer service in automated telephone systems. We have become so accustom to this that we only notice it when we perceive an error. Some of us have become accustom to speaking to automated telephone systems using the tones generated by the telephone dialing system.

  At present the personal devices we use for computing: our phones, our PCs, our laptops, and tablets, are lacking something in their ability to listen---active listening. Computing wants to acquire this very human characteristic. Maria Aretoulaki, PhD has made this her life's work. If you look at Aretoulaki's consulting group DialogCONNECTION you'll see how widespread our use of speech recognition and speech synthesis is now.

  I'm thankful Aretoulaki is as passionate about teaching and helping others as she is about her own work. She's ensuring the next generation of computing speech therapists are sure to engender a behavior of active listening in the patient, first and foremost by demonstrating it themselves. As her approach to VUI design is better understood in the industry, the only tones dialing the telephone system will be those of the human voice.

Rhetoric, Retrieval, and Computing

Its important when understanding computing to understand what Eric McLuhan means when he says all media go through 'retrieval' or retrieve some aspect of the past. Chris Anderson of TED talks makes the case that expressing ourselves and sharing information is best achieved through moving picture and sound on the Internet in this article from Wired Magazine's February 2011 issue. What is remarkable about the article is not so much Chris Anderson's observation. Its the way he goes about making his case.

There is a clear difference between persuasive writing and spoken rhetoric. Anderson's article is remarkable in his mastery of rhetoric, something which has for sometime been lost is now being retrieved. Its not surprising that Anderson who curates the TED talks has mastered the art of the spoken word. Surrounded by moving pictures and videos of people providing persuasive arguments for their ideas and their causes each day, Anderson is ahead of the curve in using rhetoric so effectively. Call the article 'Encomium of YouTube' and you wouldn't be wrong.

Anderson's article presents a ton of anecdotal evidence, leading with the heart-warming story of a child, connecting the subject matter to the audience's daily lives, and paying lip service to potential arguments against his case while continuing to belabor his point. Anderson frames the argument within the two 'opposing' views he 'argues' against. What Anderson is doing is framing the argument in a context where his point cannot be wrong.

Whether the type of broadband needed for this communication is available to the same extent that simple text communication is available on cell phone networks worldwide is not likely to cross most readers' minds. As it shouldn't, it is outside of the context of the dialogue Anderson has created.

Rhetoric was a great art for the Greeks in the time of transition from the spoken word to the alphabet. Currently we are undergoing 3 transitions in media:

• From print to electronic media
• From print to computing
• From electronic media to computing

As computing takes center stage it will begin to exhibit behaviors of past media. Chris Anderson of TED talks is awash in computing. He is not a native speaker but has a mastery of the language. That this would alter his expression in print is not surprising and his use of rhetoric is appropriate given the Wired magazine audience is awash in computing also. His article is a sign that spoken word is to be retrieved next.

If you have not read Gorgias' 'Encomium of Helen' I suggest you do so. Before retrieving spoken word completely through voice recognition and speech synthesis, computing will retrieve rhetoric. As computing retrieves rhetoric and this skill begins to proliferate it will be necessary to pay close attention to the way in which ideas are presented to you. Consider that print in its consistent, linear nature, disdains 'miracles' and the 'supernatural' as these things cannot be proven in logical order. A return to rhetoric prior to complete immersion in the acoustic space will coincide with a return to passionate arguments you find tough to deny, and you just can't put your finger on why.

Feng Shui and Computing

According to Feng Shui, computing devices are considered yang devices. If you are a strict Feng Shui practitioner you will not have computers or other electronics in the bedroom. There is a good overview of the discussion on this Google Answers thread. The question that has furrowed my brow recently is: When will I feel comfortable with a computer in the bedroom?

I will preface all of this by saying I am speaking broadly of Feng Shui principles and do not profess any expertise in this area. I know enough of the principles to find them well suited to describing the terrain of computing. Taoist mysticism derived at the same time as idiogramatic Chinese writing is well tuned to describe the acoustic space created by computing.

At the heart of Taoist mysticism is the Yin and Yang. Opposing forces each containing the seed of the opposite. The binary manifestation of these energies is the basis of the immense complexity we see around us in the world.

Computing has a binary basis as well so some direct correlates could be made to show Taoism predicting computing, or simply that computing is capable of the same complexity we see every day in our natural environment.

Here we are talking about Feng Shui in particular and not the Tao at large. Feng Shui is the system of aesthetics based on Taoist principles; a system for improving energy flow in life through proper balance of Yin and Yang principles in one's environment.

Understanding Computing is an exploration of the environment created by computing. Let us examine our interactions in brief and determine if a balance of Yin and Yang currently exists with computing.

We interact with computing through a series of devices: displays, speakers, microphones, keyboards, mouse devices, touchscreens, touchpads, joysticks, and more. When I look at the current state of computing in our lives I find there is a great deal of imbalance in our interactions with these devices.

We listen to music and words but the computer (in most cases) does not understand what we are saying.

We look at a screen, but it does not look back or care what we are looking at.

We move a mouse, it does not move back.

We touch a screen, it does not touch back.

When computing tracks my movements, understands my gestures and my speech, follows my glance to points of interest on the screen, and when I can feel the icons on my desktop, then I will have no problem putting more computing in my bedroom, for now, my phone by my bed is enough.

Currently, all of these computing devices exist. When a unifying platform is built for these devices, computing will be as effortless as seeing someone walk into your office because your desk is facing the door.

The state of computing currently is too confused to label any computing device as Yin or Yang. We can label most devices as imbalanced and therefore a great deal of caution should be advised for everyone as to how we incorporate those devices into our interactions with each other and our natural environment.

Computing and Number

While tweeting this morning with @sandeepamin about bartering I began to think about the basis of money and commerce. Money is a paper medium carrying all the weight of that medium with it. However, the most prominent feature on a bill is typically not the words, its the number. Number is the basis for money.

As we look back at the origin of writing, even before clay tablets, we see trade occuring through the use of clay vessels containing a number of clay pieces equivalent to the head of cattle or sheep (more appropriately) you were exchanging for yourself or your employer. The clay pieces were replaced with marks on a smaller piece of clay (easier to transport) and eventually those marks developed into the writing system we know in the West today as the alphabet.

Flash forward from Babylonian times and Westward to England and the United States during World War II and we find efforts to better calculate missile trajectories. The overwhelming numbers being dealt with resulted in what most people would point to as the birth of modern computing, ENIAC. Number is the basis for computing. Now.

What came to light in this morning's conversation was that computing would obsolesce its maker, number. With the ability to exchange modes of expression and not merely information, computing will retrieve from the past the act of barter. Money (money as print currency) itself will be the first to go (ie-PayPal). Followed by the loss of number attached to a transaction, currency. Computing in its interconnectedness will allow value to be traded instead of money.

Quantifying will have less meaning and qualifying, your trading partner, yourself, their goods--or services or information or emotion--and yours will be more important.

Material printing will only hasten this new reality.

Let There Be Fire! Understanding Computing is Part of Upward Arrow!

It has been quite some time since my last posting to this site. Understanding Computing is now part of UpwardArrow. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and I'm ready to bring the fire. The way we interact with computing has to change if we are to ensure computing is a benefit to humanity. Here our goal is to understand computing. In particular, we need to understand and evaluate the computing interfaces we use better.

A swift movement is being made from the Engelbartian Keyboard Mouse Video setup to the touchscreen, with haptics and voice recognition right on the heels of the touchscreen. After spending some time bringing together collaborators in this particular effort, I found there was a great deal of interest in a statistically valid study of human computer interfaces and how we experience the same content through different media.

Interest alone does not generate possibility, that is left to the will. While the discussion sussed out the details of the type of study needed, it did not make the possibility of that study any more real.

I tried to find support from the computing industry, perhaps this was the height of my naivety at the time. Humbled by a number of dead-ends, including amongst others NASA and DARPA, I realized that to live the dream, I would have to build it. Or I might say to build the dream, I would have to live it.

I've been busy getting the foundation built for UpwardArrow. I developed a business that meets the core principles of Upward Arrow, most importantly, a business that ensures technology serves humanity. In this case, the goal is to ensure laptop computers are not wasted and personal information is kept secure in the process. EraseMyLaptop is the will that will make the way. We offer a free nationwide service to our clients and we are a member of the Better Business Bureau. By choosing EraseMyLaptop to recycle your laptpo in a free, honest, environmentally friendly, and secure way, you are ensuring technology serves humanity.

Introduction: Exploring a New Medium

Mediating and meditating on our existence has defined the arc of human progress ever since we learned to speak. The alphabet lit a fire that burned as long as the Roman Empire. Gutenberg's mechanical improvement of Chinese block-printing caused an explosion of culture. When we harnessed electricity for communication an implosion occurred of atomic proportions. Understanding the environment created by computing is vital to our physical, psychological and spiritual survival. The electrical environment of Thomas Edison consumed and contained the mechanical environment of Henry Ford. Understanding how the computing environment will consume and contain the electrical environment is our main concern.

In a lecture titled 'Cybernetics and Human Culture', Marshall McLuhan helps us to begin our journey:

Pictorial three-dimensional art has little in common with the acoustic space because it selects a single moment in the life of a form, whereas the flat iconic image gives an integral bounding line or contour that represents not one moment or one aspect of a form, but offers instead an inclusive integral pattern. This is a mysterious matter to highly visual and literate people who associate visual organization of experience with the real world and who say 'Seeing is Believing'. Yet this strange gap between the specialist, visual world and the integral, auditory world needs to be understood today above all, for it contains the key to an understanding of what automation and cybernetics imply. To anticipate a bit, and to capsulate a good deal, let me suggest that cybernation has much in common with the acoustic world and very little in common with the visual world.

Internally, our nervous system communicates through electrical signals. Since the birth of the telegraph, the external signals we send to each other are increasingly communicated through electricity. There is a unique symmetry of communication and parallel of media here. It could be that this is a natural consequence of evolution as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has stated. As McLuhan points out, amongst other results of this unique parallel of media is the depth of communication which is possible: the inputs and outputs of electronic media vibrate to our very core.

If we fail to understand computing and the change it will have on our perception of the world, we will miss an opportunity to improve the lives of people throughout the world. We might even find expressing our thoughts and feelings to each other or forming a connection with another person or another culture more difficult than any time in human history.

For McLuhan, computing was another part of the electronic environment, or the latest evolutionary species to emerge from that environment. Time has shown that computing is an environment of its own as its consumed and contained all the media of the previous electronic environment: photography, telegraphy, telephony, phonography, moving pictures, radio, and television. The situation is more dire, for McLuhan and others who tried to deepen our understanding of the electrical environment had scant time for their ideas to percolate through society before the computing environment closed in.

The main concern of this site is an adventure. The plan is to stride out into the landscape and shed light on some landmarks so that others may follow and record in detail. We'll find that the mapping of the electronic environment has left us with a rough sketch of the coastline so that we can make a landing point. We'll also run into a few of the other adventurers who so far have been bold enough to tread inland and explore. While 'adventuring' may carry a light-hearted connotation, make no mistake, the stakes are high . . .

Humankind and humanity rest on our ability as a people to understand computing.

An Algorithmic Outlook

At the end of this post is a great history of early computational devices and the dawn of digital computing by Paul Dunne. Dunne has done a remarkable job of succinctly covering the movement from mechanical to electrical computing machines.

Dunne's recounting of Ada the Countess of Lovelace and Charles Babbage's pursuit is not to be missed. Living in the mechanical environment they possessed a mindset more appropriate to the 21st century. For visionaries like Lovelace, Babbage, and George Boole, an algorithmic sensibility set them ahead of their time. Its interesting to note the emergence of algorithmic (as opposed to geometric) thought within Babbage's own life.

The first thing to understanding computing is to understand that it is algorithmic, it is process driven. As some linguists have concluded, the function of a word or morpheme defines its meaning. In this view, the word 'is' finds its definition only in context, in intimate relationship words or phrases that surround it. 'is' by itself means nothing. In a phrase such as 'the bus is green' we find 'is' playing a role. In another phrase such as 'the bus is late' we find 'is' playing a different role in the process, a different definition. This can be made clear by examining these phrases in another language such as Spanish: 'el autobus es verde' and 'el autobus esta tarde', respectively.

The computing environment is much the same, the basic elements are defined by their processes and are highly sensitive to context. The basic elements and their processes together form the system. For anyone born into the computing environment, this way of viewing the world is second nature, its subconscious.

The syntax of Boolean algebra is an incredible statement of this worldview, perhaps only more elegantly captured in the syntax of Instant Messaging and SMS Text Messaging. The speed of the 'IMs' and 'texts' (and now 'tweets') of the computing environment are not significantly greater than the telegrams of the electrical environment. It was only in the process-driven computing environment that the letters and symbols themselves took on greater meaning as defined by their role in the communication process. It is algorithmic thought that makes a semi-colon paired with an end-parentheses far more meaningful than perhaps 100 letters of the alphabet strung together in a linear fashion. ;)

An algorithmic sensibility does not always imply a simpler, clearer view of the world. The science of complexity, what Stephen Wolfram calls a 'New Kind of Science', gives us hope that the new worldview inherent in the computing environment can provide a simpler model for understanding our world. The science of quantum physics shows us that this lens can also provide some weird effects when modelling our world.

The science of quantum physics is driven by the computational tools used to calculate new theories and obtain results from experiments. It is no wonder that when we look at an electron we can only know its position, but not its velocity, or visa versa. As one would expect when peering into the workings of nature through an algorithmic lens in real-time, we can only see where the process is headed or what the intermediate result is. Despite this 'spooky behavior' as Einstein called it, quantum physics has a better model for most phenomenon than the Newtonian physics wrought from the print environment.

This probability and process nature of quantum physics is another way to look at the algorithmic sensibility that is characteristic of the computing environment. The study of quantum physics grows within the computing environment that makes the calculations possible. One result of this intimate relationship is the semi-conductor that has driven the expansion (or better, encapsulation) of the computing environment.

Solar panels became more practical after improvements gotten through human and computing collaboration. Here we see an instance where the computing environment is containing the electrical environment.

Mechanical Aids to Computation and the Development of Algorithms by Paul Dunne

Extension of the Mind

Another characteristic of computing is the bodily function it extends or enhances. In understanding all media we must at some point examine it from the extension of the body perspective that McLuhan provides. For McLuhan, a car was an extension of the foot just as much (if not more so) than it was a collection of valves, gears, and electronics. The fork, knife, and spoon are extensions of our mouths and our hands. The electrical environment as McLuhan saw it, was an extension of the nervous system.

We find computing to be unique, the first medium to be an extension of the brain. We'll leave speculation on the relationship between the brain and mind aside to focus on how computing reflects and refracts the basic biological role played by the collection of grey matter housed between our ears. With the short-comings of fMRI and other brain imaging tools, we'll limit our discussion even further and won't examine the functions of the brain in great detail.

One thing we can say for certain is that without this valuable organ, we cannot operate our bodies. Its difficult to understate the indepence and fragility of the brain. Even the most basic bodily functions are coordinated from here. The slightest trauma can have incredible consequences. People can be left immobile or in a vegetative state from a blow that may not even bruise another part of the body.

Our communications and increasingly our manufacturing, agriculture, and healthcare rely on computing. The fragile and complex interdependent nature of computing leaves us vulnerable in many ways to a 'blow to the head'. The hacking of computers that control power grids is a good example that highlights the difference between the electrical environment (the nervous system) and the computing environment (the brain). Manned electrical switching stations are not as vulnerable to attack as are computer controlled automated ones, even a mechanically or electrically switched station would be more secure. Those stations would be hardware based, when software (computing) is added, the chance for a small glitch to cause a big problem increases significantly.

Recent revelations on the plasticity of the brain show that unlike other parts of the body, the brain continues to develop throughout our life. Our bicep muscle can't decide that it wants to move to control our leg, but the neurons in the brain can be remapped and reallocated in amazing ways. The emergence of self-forming, self-healing wireless mesh networks is a good reflection of the brain's plasticity. Once again it is the software running on these platforms that makes these mesh networks so robust. Their ability to grow, heal, and repair is not due to the ability of the device to allocate another antenna to itself (picture a mesh router grabbing the HDTV antenna you have); instead, it is the ability of the software to reallocate and redirect packets of information through an unchanging hardware interface.

The Return of Signal to Noise

When Tony Schwartz examined the electrical environment around him,.he found media of instantaneous awareness. There was: the telephone, radio, and television. (We'll discuss recorded sound below.) All of these media provide an experience that is a stream of information only fully formed in the audience's brain. The radio and telephone issue a continuous stream of electro-chemical impulses to the brain, a constantly changing series of crests and falls within the sound waves being sampled by the ear drum. The television (CRT) displays one pixel at a time in reality. It is only within the audience's mind that the picture takes shape.

For this reason, Schwartz discarded time as an element in his communications theory. Responsive Chord was based on an instantaneous trigger and response mechanism when a signal aligned to a pre-existing context in the audience's mind (brain). Schwartz discarded Signal and Noise in favor of Responsive Chord and he was right, the electrical environment largely operates in this manner.

For the present, in the computing environment, discarding signal and noise is throwing the baby out with the bath water. We need to recapture time as an element if we are to understand the computing environment.

We are, as Eric McLuhan might say, in a state of reversion or retrieval with the current content and mechanism of the computing environment. The LCD technology that now predominates in computing displays is a sample and hold technology with a flashing light behind it, this is more akin to film than television, and perhaps more akin to the zoatrope then to tv. The LCD inverter pulses 60 times a second, but the pixel on the crystal display only changes if its given a command to change.

The Art of Earth: Enviromentalism

For Marshall McLuhan, the electrical environment was completed when Sputnik circled the globe. The Earth had become a work of art, and the environmental movement soon begun in earnest. While Sputnik circled the globe, there were still many electrical connections to be made within the sphere. As the spread of computing worldwide has increased, environmentalism has grown to become a medium of exchange itself. Carbon offsets can now be traded, purchased, and granted to individuals and corporations. The green medium is a cool medium if we follow McLuhan's definition, its become more of a lifestyle trend than an activist cause in many ways. This is not to undermine the necessity of caring for our Earth. Thinking that egregious uses of our natural resources can go unheeded is simply a lack of common sense. The cool nature of being green has more to do with how the computing medium operates than with any historical weather data generated by computer operators.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): When Smart People Do Dumb Things

The One Laptop per Child project does a good job proving that the ignorance of the West in bringing technology to the East hasn't changed much since the Boxer Rebellion.

Within the project there is an epistemological bias buried deep in the software of the system, and the hardware is complicit in this forced view of learning on the laptop recipient.

There wasn't any attempt to hide this fact, Negroponte et al. made it known that the OLPC was to be part hardware/part software/part curriculum. Here's a great set of quotes from the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (OLPC has gotten a mixed reception in India) to get us started before we examine the brutality of this project in depth:

India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) announced: "India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area." [ . . .]

The ministry also stated that 6-12 is a highly "vulnerable age group to cover in an area of human technology interface which is so new and heavily debated." They are concerned about "both physical and psychological effects of children’s intensive exposure to the computer implicit in OLPC are worrisome, to say the least." [ . . .]

Arguing that the "implications of computer-based pedagogy for childhood have remained a grey zone of research," the ministry gives the example of the US where "the debate between those who believe computers to be good for children and those who have the opposite view has been quite polarised and shrill."

We'll leave the strict epistemological concerns aside to focus on the hardware for a moment.

The mere fact that a laptop was the hardware center of the project and not a cell phone bespeaks the latent ignorance of the West when we attempt to cojole the East into interpreting media and its uses the way that we do.

For Negroponte, Alan Kay, and others involved in the project, it would seem computers are the focus and not computing. The immersion and use of cell phones in the East leaves the West at a significant disadvantage in terms of mobile computing use. We are struggling to play catch-up. 'Why use that advantage to help the students and teachers OLPC is intended for when we can try our best to halt their progress and regess them to laptop use?', seems to be the question the MIT alums asked themselves before embarking on the project.

The keyboard/video/mouse combination is the most apparent and dominant form of computing interface in the West. This has been the case since Engelbart's evangelists started their mission at Xerox. This form of computing is clearly a transitory form, looking at the keys now I can't help but recall Chinese block printing. The screen reinforces this focus on the visual world that is a media sensory bias in the West, but certainly not in the East. The mouse moves in 2 dimensions, not three.

'We have to use what technological tools are available to us, the k/v/m setup is the best thing going right now', may be a response we get from OLPC on this point. The cellphone is a much closer manifestation of the future of computing than the laptop is. It is primarily auditory, used for listening and speaking, and primarily tactile, cellphone manufacturers and auto manufacturers to a lesser degree focus a lot of their efforts on making their interfaces useable through tactile and auditory sense alone, *without* the user having to look at them.

'Why dumb down a laptop when you can beef up a cellphone?', it would seem Steve Jobs and Apple understand this question more than the folks at OLPC. Instead of a $100 laptop, why not a cellphone?

This is were it gets brutal. In the West, our use of print allowed our culture to dominate the world, often with bloody effects, the Native Americans of North America and the Native tribes of Australia are some of the more obvious examples. The electrical environment was controllable enough by the powers-that-be that Western culture could still dominate world affairs, World Wars for that matter. Still the literate man is alien to the electrical world and it was only through the exercise of power that dominance could be maintained. The emergence of computing has shattered this illusion of control. The Western visual, literate, still-print-biased culture is wholly separate from the forms and functions that characterize the computing environment. For Eastern culture, auditory, iconic, and still-print-resistant, the electrical environment is a natural extension of an inherent sensory bias. Its a short hop from the Eastern media bias to acclimate to the computing environment compared to a long haul from the Western media bias.

And so we find a laptop, a transitory print-leaning form of computing being used instead of a more audio-tactile-leaning cell phone. To truly improve education at the speed of light in developed countries, surely money could go much further in developing low-cost cell networks for conference call classes between remote students and teachers.

Visual Technology Explained

What follows is part of a project working with Gregory O'Toole testing how people react to the use of different media. More on this as it becomes presentable. In the meantime this is some helpful reference on visual technologies for you:

Here is a brief summary of each type of visual technology that will be used during testing. Focus is given to human perception in the description. We limit our explanation at the initial sensory input as not enough is known about brain function at present to provide any concrete explanation of what occurs when the signals hit the grey matter.

Print

Print is typically compromised of a flexible piece of material taken from plant or artificial fibers overlayed with a contrasting element comprised of ink or carbon which may be dervied naturally of artificially. Light reflects off the surface of the printed material and the contrasting elements reflect different wavelengths or have different absorption properties than the underlying element presenting an image to the viewer defined by the 'highlighted' or 'lowlighted' areas on the printed material.

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display):

An LCD display is typically a combination of a liquid crystal substrate, a flourescent light bulb and a reflective surface. The light from one or more bulbs is reflected across a white or reflective surface the size of the liquid crystal substrate. The light projects through the liquid crystal substrate after reflecting off the white or reflective panel behind (from the perspective of the viewer) the display . When voltage is applied to the liquid crystals (a material exhibiting properties of a liquid but containing crystalline structure) the crystals change their alignment exhibiting the monochrome or multi-chromatic image to the viewer. The flourescent light bulb pulses at typically 60hz per second, this combined with the alteration of the crystals in a grid (pixels) creates the illusion of motion.

Recently more manufacturer's have been using solid state light emitting diodes (LEDs) to provide the light source for the LCD screen. The LEDs can be aligned to the LCD grid (pixels) to allow individual shut-off of LEDs behind specific pixels on the LCD (which are receiving the command for the color black) creating what many consider a better contrast in the image, a 'deeper black' as some have described.

E-ink

E-ink technology is a branded name for electronic ink or electronic paper of a certain sort. An E-ink display is compromised of a transaprent plastic substrate containing a series of elements which comprise a grid (pixels). These elements are themselves transparent and in turn contain a series of contrasting capsules. When the primary element is acted upon by an electrical charge triggering all the capsules from one contrasting group to move to the fore (from the viewer's perspective). The combination of elements (in a current monochromatic display) displaying all white capsules at their fore or all black capsules at their fore creates a contrasted area that light reflects off of to reach the viewer. Like reflects off the surface to the viewer which makes E-ink more like printed material when compared to LCD or CRT technology which projects light through the material towards the viewer.

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