Loosely Assembled

‘Tis hard to say which is a more compelling, or more primary, interpretation of the notion of “Robots Mimicking Humans Mimicking Robots”, the reversible Palingram or the infinitely extended Möbius loop.

They both tell a different story about our fascination with, and relationship to, simulated humanity, machine intelligence, creator and creation. As a proposed next step, I’d personally like to see another robot manning the remote controls of this robot, perhaps creating some kind of command based feedback loop, susceptible to minute changes, enabling a kind of machine evolution of culture.

Enjoy

How have people organized information over the centuries, and millennia? Are we predisposed toward more ‘linear’ or more ‘digital’ forms? How long have we been trying to cope with the problem of information overload? Are hierarchical trees a fundamental paradigm rooted in our own reproduction? How many times has the internet already been invented? How can we reinvent it again? How can we get enough distance from it to see it clearly?

In the 1890s and 1900s Paul Otlet designed and built a network where organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web”.

via information architect and writer Alex Wright during a particularly good SALT lecture.

New Scientist has an interesting article about computer aided speech.

Ramsey, who suffered a brain-stem stroke at the age of 16, has an electrode implanted into a brain area that plans the movements of the vocal cords and tongue that underlie speech.

These sensors end up driving a vocal simulator, allowing Ramsey to make sounds with his mind.

I like this approach of tapping into the vocal control regions instead of the fantastical notion that you could simply tap into the “thoughts”. You could still have private thoughts, and express externally by intentionally “speaking”. It seems important to remember that computer brain interfaces will almost always have to read the signals naturally intended for output, and that a mind reading machine is still quite unlikely.

You could also hypothetically send those signals elsewhere, having them drive another device besides your own vocal simulator, you could have them broadcast around the world, sent to a voice to text translator, or simply stored as raw data on a backup drive of everything you have ever said.

Read the Neural Voice API article.

I love subtle, nearly invisible art like this.

The site I found this on, unurth, has tons of other great street art (although most of it not subtle at all).

From a CCRMA final project called Sonifying & Visualizing Neural Data by Mindy Chang.

Great video from Derek Sivers about assumptions, opposites, logic, history, and thinking.

The example about Japanese addresses finally gives some context to the alternative global coordinate system Geotude, basically recognizing and giving names to the spaces between the lines.

This talk by Will Self starts out slow, but really gets cooking a few minutes in.
He’s talking about walking from London to New York and how to explode your many micro worlds.

Danah Boyd’s Streams of Content talk, about the flow of information through social media, is something everyone online should read.

There are several points that resonate with me, but I’ll limit this post to the quoting of a couple choice passages.

People consume content that stimulates their mind and senses. That which angers, excites, energizes, entertains, or otherwise creates an emotional response. This is not always the “best” or most informative content, but that which triggers a reaction. This isn’t inherently a good thing. Consider the food equivalent. Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they’re rare in nature. Thus, when they come around, we should grab them. In the same way, we’re biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We’ll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.

When we think about centralized sources of information distribution, it’s easy to understand that power is at stake. But networked structures of consumption are also configured by power and we cannot forget that or assume that access alone is power. Power is about being able to command attention, influence others’ attention, and otherwise traffic in information. We give power to people when we give them our attention and people gain power when they bridge between different worlds and determine what information can and will flow across the network.

via @chrismessina

Sachiko Kodama works with magnetic fluids to create these surreal active sculptures.

via @caseorganic

Who needs gold plated cables?

(Via @kottke.)