Slashdot Mirror
AP Article On Cyborg Steve Mann
Vellmont writes "Slashdots favorite Cyborg, University of Toronto Engineering Professor Steve Mann has an AP article about him out. You can read the article on Salon or Yahoo (as well as many other places). The article is well done, and I particularly love Prof. Mann's way of dealing with stores who prohibit videotaping. Slashdot ran a previous story about Prof. Mann's troubles with Airport Security in March 2002."
. . . Welcome our new Steve Mann Cyborg overlords.
I thought it was Gates of the Borg?
From the yahoo story: One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory ...
Someone might mug him to get that 512 gig of memory. Or even just to get the battery needed to power it.We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
I'd like to see a bewolf cluster of...hims.
clifgriffin > blog
...so much so that going without the apparatus often leaves him feeling nauseous, unsteady, naked
This is the way I feel too sometimes... if I forget to leave my pager, cell phone, lap-top, sidekick, and laptop behind...
Honestly though, this guy is addicted to information. If you tried to take google away from me, I would feel the same way. Information is addicted... there's no way around it.
AC
I always thought Kevin Warwick, AKA Captain Cyborg, was everyone's favourite cyborg. http://www.kevinwarwick.org.uk/ TheRegister also insult... er i mean do stories on him.
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
One thing that I think most people would benefit from is a link to the net, or prehaps better a secure enclopedia. How many times have you thought "I must look up xys" and then forgot. To just have that information at your fingertips would be excellent. However of course it depends on how deep it all llinks in. The last thing you want is a hacker breaking into your brain and controlling you. An army of zombies? No thankyou Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
He's not a cyborg, unless some of this hardware actually involved surgery or the replacement of biological parts. He's a gargoyle.
- linked to the net through his gear? I couldn't tell from the story.
I'm laughing at clouds.
Video quote:
"Then he tells the employees that "HIS manager" makes him film public places for HIS security -- how does he know, he tells them, that the fire exits aren't chained shut? -- and that they'll have to talk to HIS manager."
Of course if he does that in a cinema he will be arrested and sent to a state pen where he will become even more attached (ouch) to his wearable computer thanks to the resident cybernetic surgeon, Joe 'Two Teeth' Bob.
Beep beep.
ya see, this is why us hackers (in the original "total freedom of information" sense) taking the long view are so totally opposed to intellectual "property".
When the computer is so tightly integrated with your mind that it's effectively become a part of you, intellectual "property" law enforcement amounts to thought crime enforcement. And DRM is mind control. Just plain evil.
The right to know should be a basic human right. The right to say should be a basic human right. And if human is expanded to man-machine, that should apply to our computers too.
So, WAKE UP. Fight for your right to know. Do NOT hand people power to "own" YOUR copy of some information just because it's like THEIR copy. THEIR copy is NOT DIMINISHED by your having a copy.
It's NOT WRONG to copy information, any information. Let no person, natural or legal, tell you it is.
I think we all know the REAL reason this guy is becoming a cyborg. I think this is all I need to say: GO GO GADGET PENIS!
"One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory and a specialized operating system based on Linux"
Wow. Where can I get a box like that that fits under my sweater?
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
"One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory and..."
512 gig of memory eh? It's not likley to even have that much disk space.
Mind you, fitting enough power to run that puppy into a wearable PC isn't exactly a minor engineering challenge, it must still be pretty heavy.
Beep beep.
Mann, a 41-year-old engineering professor at the University of Toronto, spends hours every day viewing the world through that little monitor in front of his eye -- so much so that going without the apparatus often leaves him feeling nauseous, unsteady, naked.
I think it's called anxiety. I get it alot when i'm away from my computer, I don't have that clickly click click of the keyboard (it's bordering on OCD now)
I would also think the nauseous side effects he's experiencing when he takes his headgear off might be what I suffer from too. I think my eyes are used to focusing on my CRT a foot away from my eyes since i'm in front of the PC so much. Also my cochlea in my ear is used to my head not moving so much. When I go outside I get the double whammy of viewing objects that are not in my average focus, and i'm moving around.
Cyborg? He's not a cybernetic organism, he's guy who lugs around gear.
He's no more a cyborg than a guy covered in mud is a golem.
You can't take the sky from me...
With the way things are going in hollywood, you'd think that (a) someone from paramount would fly up from LA to TO, and slap him with an copyright infringment lawsuit... He's trying to be Borg!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Uh... since when is someone who wears computer a cyobrg? I was expecting to read about a guy's numerous electronic implants, but...what the hell? Use of computers, whether worn or not, does not qualify one as a "cybernetic organism." Having them as an integrated component of one's being does.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
yea, b/c you know yahoo is going to get slashdotted.
fucking karma whores.
and stupid fucking mods.
for Borg assimilation.
My rights don't need management.
Seriously, every little law placed on some gadget is now screamed here as being some "online" oppression.
After his last experience with airport security guards, he's likely to be sent to Guantanamo Bay if he claims to be a cyborg instead of a computer geek.
:)
Although if, as he claims, he can't be separated from the electronics, he can go through the X-ray machine with them
From the Yahoo Story:
It can plug into a variety of computers and devices. One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory and a specialized operating system based on Linux
When did P4s go 64bit?
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
He wore one to a high school dance.
Must've been quite the ladies' man...
Steve Mann: You'll have to talk to my manager.
Since the device only covers one eye, it would surely lead to asymmetrical vision problems. Rather quickly, I'd imagine, given how close the image is.
I saw parts of one of Mann's documentaries at USENIX in New Orleans a few years ago (1999?), and it was extremely entertaining. Since then, I've been trying to find a place where I can get my hands on a copy. Does anybody know a place that sells these, or a place where I can download them?
My Web Page
I'll give the AP the benefit of the doubt and guess 512 MiB of RAM plus close to 512 GiB of hard drives. AP, Reuters, and other wire services often confuse memory with storage.
Are there any cheap A/V "pen" cameras with a wide lens, that output to USB? I'd like to just record for now; having an over-the-eye small lcd display can come later..
time to kick in (-1, Redundant)?
And I guess we'll eventually need laws against driving and Instant Messaging at the same time.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
- Tyler Durden
.
"The U.S. Constitution - not perfect, but its better than what we have now"
When asked how many brothers and sisters he has, his response was "I am third of five."
"Derp de derp."
going round and round in smaller and smaller circles till you dissapear up your own butt could be here at last!
But seriously, it's one of those things that somebody is bound to do because it can be done, and who knows what we'll learn from it.
We didn't HAVE to have linux, but look were one man's experiment has taken us.
... If I run a wireless sniffer... can I snoop on his thoughts? ;O
MoFscker
The eventual coolness of wearable computers shouldn't be underestimated. Sure, it will start out with bleeding edgers being able to fire off posts to Slashdot using nothing but an elaborate series of eye movements. Early adopters tend to look silly to the rest of us. No shame in that.
But start combining technologies like mesh networks, cryptographic authentication schemes, GPS, and the like, and imagine where they're going. How cool would it be to walk down any street in the country, and be able to call up the name, location, and menu of every Chinese restaurant within seven blocks? Or pinpoint all the "single and looking" girls at a rock concert who don't identify themselves as cat lovers.
Imagine walking through a dark parking lot. If someone tries to attack you, one press of a button could notify the police and everyone within a two mile radius of your location.
In a lot of ways, this means giving up a certain amount of privacy. For example, the distress signal from the last paragraph isn't going to work if anyone, anywhere can hit the panic button anonymously. That's where the cryptographic authentication comes in. There needs to be a way to verify the originator and trustworthiness of a given piece of information, whether it be, "Yes, officer, I'm authorized to drive a motor vehicle," or "Chin Wan's has great stir fry." The infrastructure doesn't exist yet, and it doubtless will never be perfect, but someday it will be at least as trustworthy as asking to see someone's ID.
Some information will be automatically broadcasted, whether the user likes it or not (wanted for armed robbery). Some of it will be available to cashiers and law enforcement (too young to buy beer). Some of it will be voluntarily made available to the world (likes long walks, sunsets, and jiu-jitsu).
It's going to be fun to watch these technologies come together. Possibly in a train-wreck fashion.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This is just so appealing... I am dreding the prom... this would raise a few eyebrows (how does it work with a tux)
I think Steve Austin is more popular than this newcomer. Probably more expensive to taxpayers as well.
Of course they'll only be used for good things right?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Seems to me that that'd be a better place to start. Rewire the LCD output to go to his glasses-screen, find CF modules for things like the video cam, GPS, WiFi, and what-have-you, and you're good. The only big issue I see is the storage space, which, with an IBM microdrive, is probably limited to 5GB or so.
When he gets sick from not viewing the world through his video camera, he is suffering a form the same thing people who spend a lot of time in Virtual Reality do...their brains adapt to the slight lag caused by the electronics, and I theorize that they do so quickly because video is a much "hotter" medium...that is, it is like a firehose for the real visual field that the eye is used to. When that lag is eliminated, by taking the display off, it takes a while to adapt back to the visually cooler natural environment...and until it adapts, your inner ear and your visual perceptions are out of sync, and that can cause nausia. ...based upon observations from being the techie at a Virtual Reality Gameing place for 6 months.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Scroll down and to see it on the main page for the article...or search for "farrellj"
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
How many times are you going to post the same thing over and over?
Then he tells the employees that "HIS manager" makes him film public places for HIS security -- how does he know, he tells them, that the fire exits aren't chained shut? -- and that they'll have to talk to HIS manager.
His behavior in such showdowns generally provokes hostility, confusion or resigned shrugs
Well, of course it does, because that's ridiculous...
But don't try telling Mann that the complaining employees are just doing their jobs, and that his real beef is with executives who make store policy. Mann believes everyone should fight The System, those powerful institutions lurking behind the one-way mirrors.
Oh please, the execs of huge corporations are only human, too. Are you saying that corporations are some kind of sentient beings, having no trace of the true human limbs that support them? Lurking behind one-way mirrors... puu-leese. Sure, corporations are greedy, most don't give a crap about their customers, and they have their own little worlds, but there's humans behind those corporations, not idiot machine-humans like you. In the end, you're probably just as greedy and stupid as the execs are. I can see it now: "All humans who do not conform the cyborg initiative will be assimilated by force. Buy Powerade"
Not everyone can afford your life style, Mr. Mann, some people have to make an honest living, and can't go around being ridiculous the whole day. Some people aren't going to "fight The System" because they have a family to support and lives to lead. This Professor just needs to get a freakin' life, seriously. I think this is just a case of a guy with absurd ideas having the means to realize his equally bizzare notions that everyone should be walking around like a f**king cyborg in order to be more human.
A cyborg could, say, take pictures of hostile police officers during a political demonstration and instantly post them on the Web -- to spur others to join in the protest, perhaps, or to simply provide alternative documentation of the scene. Mann calls such postings "glogs" -- short for "cyborg blogs"
Shut the hell up. Wow. "Glogs"? Who the hell do you think you are? The logical progression of human evolution may indeed be through machine integration, but not right now. Just stop it, you pri*k. You know why they have cameras in stores? So if some punk comes in and robs it, they'll have evidence against them. And why don't they allow cameras in stores? Well, I'm not too sure about that one, but why the hell would you want to video tape in a store anyway? I'm sure the exits are chained up, you paranoid piece of crap. And we have police to keep order, not to beat down innocent citizens. Although that may happen in other countries, you live in CANADA!! Canada you idiot! Probably one of the most passive counties in the world! And if there was a demonstration where people got hurt, there's a good chance they deserved it for being stupid radicals with too much time on their hands, like you (but I'm not against demonstrations. There are entirly legitimate demonstrations to be had, such as one against the Iraq war).
"Clerks should be confronted with their clerk-iness," Mann says one afternoon in the Deconism Gallery, an electronic-art studio he runs near Toronto's Chinatown"
WHAT!?! What the hell are you talking about!? What is wrong with you!? Clerk-iness?! You mean their honest day's work to support themselves? Oh, oh, sorry, sorry. Wouldn't want to spoil your perfect world with laggarts who have to support themselves. Far be it from them to ask you for a bit of respect for a freakin' job, at least they're trying. You, on the other hand, were
if it ain't broke, break it.
If you looking for a way to hold onto that virginity for as long as possible, wearing some of Steve's old outfits might be a good start.
:/
On the other hand... you could look at porn -everywhere- you walked.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
This is all very well, except how many people are going to use MannCorp OpenWare Glasses, and how many are going to have AOL InfoWare Glasses. Mann might think these will block adverts, but you can bet your bottom dollar that most corporations picking up on this kind of technology are going to have a field day with the advertising. Can you imagine a GatorWare pair of glasses? Every advert you see is overlain with a new one.
I think I'll stick with my current glasses. The only way these obscure the truth is if I haven't cleaned them properly.
-- IANAL, BIPOOTV
They can kick him out of the store for videotaping within the building. He can object all he wants, but unless he's willing to fork over enough money to buy the store, there's nothing he can legally do to stop them from removing him from the premises, calling security if they need to.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I came up with an idea for something like this years ago. Besides having a constant connection to the Internet, oodles of memory and a backup system at home, I envisioned that my wearable computer would include an AI that would be able to understand speech so that a keyboard would not be necessary. I now believe that any kind of AI is still years away, but it sure would be handy in this case, if only for speech recognition purposes.
Anyway, I figured that this system would come with a complicated pair of glasses that would be able to overlay the real world with computer data. Besides that, the glasses would come with built-in cameras (potentially giving you 360 degree vision, as well as passive IR and UV), earphones and various microphones.
My dream would be to walk around all the time with this device. I would ask the AI questions, and after searching the net it would respond by showing me city maps, my location on them (GPS), pictures of people and the things they said, telling me about how much money I had spent, showing me lists of restaurants, my next appointments, incoming phone calls, etc, etc.
I also think that such a device would be a great for people who forget things a lot (like me). Since it would record everything you would hear and see all the time, you'd be able to recall any of this information at any time and virtually relive any event. It would then be easy to pass your experiences on to your friends -- or even the police if you happened to have been witness to a crime, for instance.
Of course, there would be lots of people who would object to the use of this technology in there presence on the grounds that anything they said or did around you could be used against them. On the other hand, they'd probably stop complaining as soon as they got one of the devices themselves.
Businesses would be more difficult, however. Imagine getting fired for whatever reason, and then the company insisting that you also erase all the data from your wearable computer that you accumulated over the period of your employment.
Anyway, as I was saying, I don't expect this kind of AI technology to become reality any time soon, but I think you would still be able to do a lot of interesting things with it -- even without the AI. I could go on, but IMHO this technology has the potential to radically change our society.
The article claims Mann became a cyborg so he could be more human. While I find this guy curious, I fail to see how his wearable stuff makes him more human. He's certainly having more fun than I am, but what is he proving?
I've had the opportunity to actually work with Steve Mann on a couple of projects he did here at the University of Toronto, where I got my master's in sociology and did the collaborative program with the new Knowledge Media Design Institute [http://www.kmdi.utoronto.ca].
A couple of people mentioned that they didn't understand how wearing a computer made one a cyborg. The understanding that I've gotten out of my graduate studies in these areas indicates that the academic definition of 'cyborg' is a bit different than the common Hollywood conception. Steve has said before that basically any piece of technology, however primitive or advanced, that you use or reach for without thinking about it, makes you a cyborg. If you automatically check a watch when looking for time, or reach for a pen [or PDA] to record someone's address, or run to Google if you don't know something, you've effectively 'internalized' those technologies as a part of the...organism that is you, for lack of a better way of putting it.
The Eyetap link a few people have mentioned [http://www.eyetap.org] is a good place to look at what Steve is doing. He's experimenting with what he calls post-post-modernism, and incorporating the cute little "de-as-in-deconstructionism" prefix into anything he possibly can.
About the videotaping thing - it's probably mentioned in the article [which I haven't read yet - I know, I'm lazy], but this is the whole "sousveillance" idea of "watching the watchers". You can find a paper that Steve Mann helped to author on the Netlab site [http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman] called "Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices to Challenge Surveillance" which talks a bit about this.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory and a specialized operating system based on Linux.
I'm assuming he doesn't need a 512GB hard drive but rather, 512 megabytes of ram. And if this isn't a typo, where can I buy a 512GB stick of ram?
do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Not everyone can afford your life style, Mr. Mann, some people have to make an honest living, and can't go around being ridiculous the whole day. Some people aren't going to "fight The System" because they have a family to support and lives to lead. This Professor just needs to get a freakin' life, seriously.
Thank you!
Steve Mann is just a self-impressed geek who lugs around a portable computer. He's not some kind of visionary. His work isn't improving people's lives. It's not making him more intelligent, healthier, more physically capable, or longer-lived. In fact, about the time that he started drifting away to read e-mail while I was talking to him, I'd be tempted to drive that EyeTap 3" back into his cranium -- which couldn't possibly be good for him.
Why doesn't Steve Mann take some of that energy and apply it towards systems that do real-time text-to-speech for blind people trying to get around in the sighted world? Why doesn't he put some effort towards a system that stimulates muscles so that paralyzed people could perform tasks we take for granted, like picking things up or turning door knobs? No, he's too full of himself to try to actually help someone.
If CCTV systems are bad because they invade the privacy of individuals, how can walking around with a camera be better? If he were using it purely to prove a point, that would be fine, but he seems to be advacating that everyone should be wearing cameras. This would be an abandonment of privacy, where no-one would ever be free of CCTV imagining.
Sticking a camera in everyone's face is just plain rude.
Having them as an integrated component of one's being does.
Ok... you better define some of those big terms you are throwing around. I know that I have a daughter is an integrated component of my being, but she does not live inside me. Mann has pretty much integrated his gear into his being. He wears the stuff everywhere all the time. It alters the way he thinks and behaves. It even screws him up when he takes it off. It is a part of what he is.
Remember Nanking.
300,000+ dead, some even said it reached into the millions - Japs didn't keep score like Hitler did.
LOL YOU = TEH FAIL, obviusly you cant make it a clicky!
Several people I have met, including myself, have very different visual abilities between their eyes. I have 20/20 in one eye, and 20/80 in the other. I figure that if I have to have vision correction in one eye, and I am desensitized to a mild difference in my sight, then the different quality of image provided by the camera would not cause any more problems than common glasses. In fact, where can I get a pair? I might as well have the ability to check my e-mail while between computers.
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
Eventually, he says, everyone will want to be more tightly linked with computers, to enhance our memory and connections to other people.
Haven't there been studies that show people who use PDAs have worse memory than non-PDA-users? What happens is you just put names, phone numbers, e-mail address, etc. on your PDA, you forget about it and rely on that for all your information.
I belong to the ______ generation.
And of course French women will still have hairy pits.
let's see how well he does on battlebots!
i'm guessing he would be in the heavyweight class.
...seem so passe and when there are only a few idiots still flashing their RIM gagets around, I was wondering what the next fashion would be... now I know.
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
"Fear me! I am the mighty Cyborg Warrior sent here from the distant future to videotape inside of Walmart and harass the clerks and their clerky clerkiness..."
This guy is a chump. I think the shielding on the eyepiece he wears needs some checking as it has obviously cooked half his brain.
Does he really think he is making a great significant social statement by wandering around wearing this crap?
And does he take this stuff off when he goes to the toilets at Walmart or is it a great social statement for him to video you having a leak at the urinal?
One of his common setups involves a computer with a Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 gigabytes of memory and a specialized operating system based on Linux.
Wow, that new 2.6 kernel can really support a bunch of RAM. Neato!
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
What are the best wearable computers you can cobble together for $2000, $1500, and $750? (USD)
Minimal Requirements:
-single eye head mounted display (like this)
-single hand input (like the twiddler)
-8 hours battery life
-linux
-802.11
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
"Clerks should be confronted with their clerk-iness", he says, and I have a corollary to this:
Mentally ill pseudo-cyborgs should be confronted with their pseudo-cyborg mental illness.
Sorry, I don't think this is a good use of technology. People who talk on cellphones constantly already annoy me enough. From the interview, this guy seems to be using this as a replacement for real human interaction, as well as a good way to feel superior to other people.
The fact that he wore a wearable computer to a high school dance isn't quite as amazing as the fact that he went to a high school dance at all!
Somebody set off an EMP near him?
Sure you could be charged with destroying private property but could you be charged with assualt as Mann would doubtlessy claim?
So how long until I can find one on the Apple store? :)
Cyborgs like the ones in Ghost in the Shell exist... Things like video communication, surfing the web, virtual reality, all in your head. How cool would that be, apart from the fact that if hackers gained access to your brain... censorship via 'interceptors' (think them as a way to allow other people to access your sight, and modifiy it, if possible) and tons of other things.
:o
But having a cyborg body would be pretty good... just get a new body whenever you get run over by a truck, provided your head is still intact. Although I'm personally not sure how they eat/drink/go to the toilet/have sex/and stuff, I'm sure they'll find a way.
On a more offtopic note, the first few episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 2 has been aired and the raws are on the net, waiting to be subbed...
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Nor is it wrong for the creator of said information to recieve just compensation for its creation and use. And the law of supply and demand begs to differ with you-- Their information does diminish in value when it can be widely/easily/freely distributed. And I'm sorry, but you don't have a right to know. You don't have a right to know what Cowboy Neil is doing with that sock puppet in the bathroom late at night, let alone distribute information that isn't yours simply because information is free, baby. It's not. The world does not work that way, nor has it worked that way for millenia, and it's not for lack of trying. In fact, go tell Coca Cola that since information is free, you should be allowed to copy their reciept and distribute across the net. Just let me know when you do so I can be their ro laugh my ass off at you.
Not that I don't -ahem- copy information, just that I'm realistic in knowing I don't have an automatic right to it. you want free information? Try telepathy. I seem to remember somebody (three guesses) refering to it as one of the worst curses you could bestow upon a civilzation.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
But that's what the /. mods seem to think, so oh well.
It bugs me the way he talks about "fighting the system" and taking on the "clerks" for their "clerkiness"
He's not fighting any system by being a total ass and filming in a private place. He's just a nerd looking for a fight, and while that can be amsuing in itself, it's really just fucking childish to pretend he's doing it for some "higher cause"
With his Palm ....... Pilot ?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
... he's tenured?
Sorry, I forget.
...think he got laid?
I saw the phrase "@ddicted to slashdot?" in your .sig, and my "delete-spam-now" reflex almost kicked in!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Eminem said it first
"Just tryin' to buy me some time, then I remembered this magic trick
Duh duh duh duh duh duh! Go go Gadget Dick!
Whipped that shit out, there ain't no doubt about it
It hit the ground, caused an earthquake and power outage!
I shouted "Now, Bitch, let's see who gets the best,
Shoved that shit in crooked and fucked that fat slut to death!"
- "As the World Turns"
He's now machine more than man, twisted and evil.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
All this is just warmup to when we isolate consciousness, and transfer it to a different physical object (perhaps silicon based).
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
freely available source code,
comparametric.sourceforge.net
and
Realit
as well as other related work that
is freely available.
RWM illustration.
Fundamentals
link to mediated reality.
If I were in his shoes, with all these ideas (30 years ahead of his time) I would be saying fsck GNU! I'd be partnering with Adobe, Microsoft, and make some money selling implementations.
Given what little appreciation has been shown for
what is given away freely (even Stallman is seldom
appreciated), I'd be taking a serious look at using a subscription-based model for all the websites. For the amount of hits that wearcam.org, eyetap.org, etc., get, even just a penny a year subscription would produce a fortune. And I'd be stopping all manner of free talks, or free advice. If you hate the guy that much, at least don't take him for a free ride!
If I were him, I'd be renting a store front, installing some surveillance cameras, and selling shrink-wrap software implementations of VideoOrbits.
Anyone who's actually making real change in the
world attracts a lot of wrath from un-appreciative
people.
Mann, Stallman, Gates, or anyone else who's
changed the parameters of our world is hated by
many. But at least Gates has some money to sweeten the hatred.
I've always liked the idea of replacing eyes with cameras that would support IR and zoom capabilities, most importantly, implants to let the blind see.
Karma: Good, or bust!
"For example, Mann and his graduate students have developed software that can transform billboards or other rectangular shapes in the physical world -- when viewed through the lens of a wearable computer -- into virtual boxes for reading e-mail and other messages."
So in the future we will be able to take the real world and turn it into what we want? So I can make every billboard have Cindy Crawford on it or make it a linux add? What about if we just don't want to see the messages that are around us in the "real" world. I swear officer I didn't see 65 on that speed limit sign. My eye piece made it look like it said 85mph.
I know that I have had times in my life where I have spent 18 - 20 hours in front of my computer. At that time I thought I had a great life but in truth it sucked. All I did was read and write code and emails. There is so much more to life than that. Sometimes it is good to take a step away from the monitor and see the world as it is.
-- David inquired...
For a current example, many current production cell phones include a camera and audio recorder. With the prevalence of cell phones, rules that treat cameras and audio recorders as unusual devices will need to be changed. I ran into this problem when I was selected for jury duty. A sign at the entrance to the courthouse said that these devices were prohibited. In the jury lounge, it quickly became obvious that most of the jurors were carrying cell phones. I suspect that most of the lawyers were also carrying these devices. If the security personnel had wanted to be hard-asses about it, they could have effectively shut down the courthouse for the day by refusing entry to anyone carrying a cell phone.
In the future, electronic vision correction/enhancement may become common for people with vision problems that are not correctable with conventional lenses. Now the video camera is no longer a toy, it is part of a medical device. A storeowner who tells his customers that medical devices are prohibited is going to be in big trouble, very quickly.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
and it's not that bad. He's a little less self righteous when in class. It's obvious that certain things he does is for attention. I had a unique experience in that on the first day of class i had with me, not even 2 hours later, my ex got me tickets to a Toronto Film Festival movie and it just so happened to be Cyberman and lo and behold, Mann walks down the aisle decked out in some old hardware he was laughing at in class. It was pretty blatant that he wore the larger headwear to garner more attention or someone affiliated with the film asked him to. It was actually amusing when some "movie appreciaters" who wanted to hear themselves talk more than actually ask questions questioned him after the movie. He shut a couple of them up quickly and left a few dumbfounded cause it sounded like they expected very few multisyllabic words from a "Tech Geek". There was at the very least one who had no question at all but wanted to state something obvious about the movie.
Mann's a little hypocritical. He despised Red Hat yet Eyetap used to be a Red Hat mirror (and a big pipe hog for this reason according to some U of T network admins). He used to state that some of the propietary closed code in Red Hat was poisonous with his analogy: "Which of the following would you eat? Pure food, pure poison, or some food mixed with poison." Needless to say, he exhtoled Debian for our labs (that was our first cheesy assignment, installing Debian on a 386/486).
Mann is kinda scary to walk into in the halls though. It always feels like he's not quite there when he takes off the glasses. He seems disoriented and I've seen him sometimes grab the walls to walk properly. I'm sure he's dependent on that system more than a lot of us could imagine. I think in the movie or in class he stated that they all have Runner's bodies or the health associated with that due to the increase in temperature caused by the machine on his hip.
He has a book on how he makes his mini-computers on eyetap somewhere - it is of use if you want to build your own (hard part is the power source). His philosophies and actions are easier to swallow with a grain of salt.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
With great irony I've heard about this guy in a tabloid article back at the beginning of 2002.
The article was eye-catching b/c it included a picture of this guy. He looked like a victim of malnutrition with a beard and this god awful eye piece that looked hardly ergonomical. The tabloid article went on to mention how if this poor lad went w/o wearing it he wouldn't be as mentioned "feeling nauseous, unsteady, [or] naked", but would rather suffer possible brain damage. I suppose the picture alone wasn't dramactic enough for the editor.
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
My goodness that sounds cool. Several thoughts:
:)
Given all his work is evidently produced under educational grants, why isn't plans, instructions, and/or specifications made available to the public? If his dream is truely for a connected humanity and not for personal commercial profit, wouldn't that be what we'd see?
Also, I'd think that his mode of output would cause some fairly severe visual problems. Knowing a little bit about how the bifocality and other various functions or the human eye work, and having had visual disorders since a young child, it seems odd to me that such a contraption would not cause phenominal headaches and degrade the ability of that eye to focus properly, let alone in unison with the other eye.
I wonder if he uses solidstate storage (and thus "512Gb of memory"), if the AP writer didn't know what they were talking about (doing what many people do: calling the storage memory), carries around 2 large IDE drives, a dozen laptop drives, or if he does something else entirely?
Does anyone know if there are any other similar projects, or if there is documentation somewhere mentioning what components he is using? I would love to get my hands on osmething similar to this (but maybe with somewhat less expensive processing power driving it). Would it be conceiveable to (at least) have something that's maybe 500MHz, runs cool, uses a little amount of power, and 'only' has a gig or two of RAM? I imagine that the battery would be manageable then.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
have you travelled at all lately? things at airports have just gotten a little zany since the world trade center attacks...and people being pushed around or worse by airport security in the name of homeland security is not unheard of any more. while your step dad may have been able to get around security without much pressure to find the sheer insanity encompassing the airlines recently as something other than it is...i think it would be folly...and to see this as an unlikely event is included in this. (although it may have taperred off somewhat, i havn't flown recently and mabye people have calmed down a little...but i doubt it.)
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I looked around for the various eye glass video screen options. I dropped it after I realized it would kill my eyes. Being constantly connected isn't THAT important.
The idiot will be half blind by the time he is 50.
"MiB?"
"GiB?"
Men in Black? Girls in Black? Obviously not a typo...
+++ATH0
There's been some interest in this in the CAD world. Maintenance techs could see drawings superimposed on their view of the real world. Stuff like that will probably happen. ("Where does this pipe go? OK, there.") You don't want that job either, but if you have to do it, the gear might help.
Printemps, the Paris department store, had "webcamers" for a few years. Webcamers were cool, young Parisians on Rollerblades wearing designer outfits equipped with audio and video links. Shoppers could make an appointment for remote shopping via the Web. Printemps also sent them to events like the Cannes Film Festival. It was cool, but unprofitable, and has been discontinued.
I've heard Wynn speak, but he didn't have much to say. We got to see what he sees on a big screen. It wasn't impressive.
We do need better design of wearable electronics. By now there should be phone sets built into earrings, a necklace, and a bracelet.
He suffers from typical media lab I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. Never mind that he got his PhD when he was 40 years old! He sucks every sap of energy from anyone who gets near him, and milks any credit possible for what its worth.
Steve Mann is a snake oil salesman, you get what you guy. Whatever catches on that is remotely related to wearable computing, Steve will claim he invented it and he did it first.
Seriously, all that GEAR you see him wearing?! His co-students at MIT made it or his grad students made it. Steve is an egotistical burn-out, and all he does now is rope is suckers for free labour and suck in a professor's salary (at u of t which is below his standards) and do work maybe one day a week. but atleast he's clearing $1 mill with the lab/art gallery he had all his students work on!!
I've actually been accused of being a cyborg before. Due to psychiatic and emotional problems experienced earlier in my life, I've developed a sort of machine perspective on things. Embracing the machine side of things helped me to escape the emotional pain I was feeling. Since then, the machine side has very much been a part of me. It's really interesting. I feel more comfortable expressing myself as a machine. Call it weird or crazy. But it makes sense to me. I have a writing on my website called The Human Computer. It relates to this topic. It expresses the brain in terms of machine and computer parts. Fusing man and machine would be a fantastic marvel. Intelligence, processing power, efficiency, strength and other abilities of the human brain and body would be greatly enhanced.
>I thought it was Gates of the Borg?
I think you've confused "favoret" and "most hated".
I don't actually exist.
We've already desided Bill Gates represents the ST:TNG borg so from what sifi do we attribute to Steve Mann?
In Dr Who we have the Cybermen who are much like the Borg however the borg just plug you into a single hive mind you don't think for yourself. The Cybermen reprogram you so while you do think indupendently you think the same was as all the other cybermen and you don't question orders.
Then there is the Darlek who just kill anything not like them.
I'd say Steve Mann is more like a Cyberpunk cyborg. Just some upgrades.
I don't actually exist.
I disagree. I wish more people would put up a fight, and then maybe businesses would stop getting worse with each passing year. I have seen clerks get ruder and ruder, to the point that sticking it to them is a perfectly acceptable way to stick it to the man. I'm sure a number of people will know what I am talking about.
If I ever got to the point where not having my "toys" with me 24/7 made me feel "nauseous, unsteady, naked" I'd have to seriously consider going into therapy.
OK, I have come home from work at times only to turn around and go back because I forgot my cellphone. Given traffic around here, that can take up to an hour to make the round-trip. Since I don't have a landline, I consider it a necessity to have it with me at home.
My personal PDA? Most of the time it sits in its cradle doing nothing. The only time I really use it is when I travel, and even then half the time I forget it at home.
There's something to be said about being able to leave everything behind and be inaccessible to the outside world, even if it is for a few hours. Some may call it isolated, or out of touch; I call it relaxing.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
He should just be considered a goofball.
"Hey everyone, look I have an iPod - I am a cyborg!!"
And can you blame him from being a victim of Media Lab exploitation? They were pretty quick to call his work their own, and describe him as "Here's Steve Mann, modeling our latest cyberware" (while showing a picture of his old inventions that pre-date his time at MIT).
WTF? Just because this guy is geeky enough to fixate on his wearable computer, how does that make him a cyborg?
How does any of this help him 'explore his humanity?'
Waste of time.
Some good points, but you missed one of the main ones:
> I think that Mann's experience is very similar with regard to his take on the world. He's moved
> ahead in a way. Concepts that are basic to him, are esoteric to the world at large.
Perhaps, but since when is that license to be obnoxious or act smugly superior?
A great many people have specialized knowledge. Some concepts that are basic to me are no doubt esoteric to you, and vice versa. Does that mean we should feel all smugly superior and look down on each other?
Lording your specialized knowledge over others doesn't make you l33t - it just makes you a prick.
But just because something is your property doesn't make you immune to the law.
Your store exists inside a city, which exists inside a state or province, which exists inside a country, etc..
Not to mention that it was built on stolen land, if you really want to get technical about ownership.
But on another level, there's no such thing as ownership (just stop paying your property taxes for a while and see what happens).
So I see no problem with sousveillance or other forms of inverse surveillance, if for nothing more than personal safety.
So how about equal rights, e.g. put the surveillers in jail as well.
The crazy thing is that Mr. Bergstein will probably be wearing an eyetap some day, and reading email while he's interviewing somebody in the future. Maybe some day someone (who does not yet have an eyetap) will write the same about Mr. Bergstein.
Fortunately, the web server with the article isn't running on Mr. Mann himself.
You apparently don't get what it is that Mann is researching. He is attempting to identify the issues that society will need to adapt to fit the technology of the future, and to propose solutions. Wearable computing is in its infancy, but will be commonplace within 5 years. Same with actual individual augmentation like cochlear and corneal implants, nerve actuated robotic prosthetics, etc. Right now its used with the handicapped to enable them. Tomorrow it will be used by 'normals' to expand their capabilities. Examining how society discriminates against augmented individuals will help develop the proposals needed to implement change, both in society and in making augmentations less obvious. When a person like Mann gets treated like a terrorist at the airport and like a shoplifter or peeping tom at the mall, then it is society that is the problem, not the individual.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
On a P4? A p4 is a 32bit cpu and would not be able to adress all the memory. Yes I know about NUMA or whatever it is called. But that is 4gb per process right?.
:P
A typo?
Please remove my bad karma
---
Yes, a typo. The standard EyeTap wearcomp comes with 512 megabytes in the 3GHz P4 configuration.
He wears the stuff everywhere all the time. It alters the way he thinks and behaves. It even screws him up when he takes it off. It is a part of what he is.
Yes, bit you could say the same about my underwear.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009