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."
He's not a cyborg, unless some of this hardware actually involved surgery or the replacement of biological parts. He's a gargoyle.
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.
A DIMM isn't that small... where do you put >= 512 of them?
Has to be a typo... probably 512 MB.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Honestly though, this guy is addicted to information.
I think this guy is more addicted to publicity than information. I've seen many articles of him, but I still have no idea if he has actually accomplished anything else than just to wear a computer and a camera all the time. No offence to anyone, but what is the point?
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...
They are both frauds of the same magnitude...
odd that they have so much in common.
I'm starting to think that these journalists make these factual errors to get peoples attention.
Have you noticed they always put a much bigger number than it was supposed to be? The error is never a lesser number...
Will code a sig generator for food
"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"
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!
By that logic, people who spend a lot of time reading books would have the same issues.
Book reading isn't nearly as monotonous to your body as sitting in front of a CRT though. A book you can change its viewing distance by extending your hands, the light is reflected off the pages wheras a CRT the light is being emitted from the screen itself.
Books can be read in front of a nice warm fire on a cozy couch. They can be taken to your bathroom for a good read during a nice long sit down.
CRT's have refresh rates. Maybe high refresh rates have an undocumented side effect (we all know low refresh rates leads to headaches) Books refresh in realtime, at the maximum rate our eyes can see the text.
A book is waaaay more relaxing to your body than the computer is.
Try to think of Mr. Mann's contribution as stemming from merely being a social outlier. Even if his behavior doesn't seem to be doing anyone any good, he's helping by making a lot of very weird people seem normal in comparison. Thus, he paves the path by which oddness becomes mainstream and accepted, and makes our conception of "normal" broader and more flexible.
Just as a population thrives due to genetic diversity, a society will stagnate without an influx of diversity. And this guy, I have to admit, is pretty diverse.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
"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...
Like one of the other posters said, he does appear to have become a little more... pedantic(?) with age. But to be fair, I think this is one of the possible problems with people who are heavily involved with computing.
I've found myself having a greater amount of trouble interacting and dealing with other people as I've become more and more entrenched in computing. I spend about 12-20 hours a day using computers. Whether it's at work (about 7.5 hours spent there. I don't even go out for lunch anymore.) at home (multiple projects going on here with my systems) or at friends and relatives homes (fixing problems or connecting them to my network via VPN). My general day starts at 8:00AM and ends at about 3:00/4:00AM every day with about 95% of it spent in front of computers.
The funny thing is that I find myslef becoming so annoyed with people when they claim to know something about computers, but in the end they only know a little bit about one aspect (web design, hardware, specific lnaguages, etc...). What's really funny is that I am completely aware of the fact that I have (in psychology more than anything else) become the "Unix guy". When I first started working with PCs back in the late 90s, I ran into a few "Unix guys" (which Mann seems to be one of) and they annoyed the piss out of me. They seemed arrogant, impatient and generally unpleasant. I never really understood why. (This was also back when I thought Unix was dying) But after getting annoyed with Windows and moving to Linux, and then working with Sun Solaris, Tru64 and HP-UX... well, I started to see a lot of those traits just naturally manifesting themselves within me. I still work hard to maintain a pleasant personality and I don't wear suspenders or have any facial hair, so I'm not 100% the "Unix guy". But I can now understand their frustrations. Here is the key issue: (Note this in your memory banks for future use in arguments) Many of the concepts of Unix are basic computing concepts applicable to ALL platforms that people on ANY platform SHOULD be made aware of IF they really want to know how to use a computer. The frustration of the "Unix guy" is much like that of the parent that has to deal with the 16 year old who just got a driver's license and now thinks they actually know how to drive. (I'm not saying that all users of other platforms are like this, but many are. I've met plenty of really great Windows admins on the net who know as much about basic computing concepts as any other Unix guy.)
So... 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. However, his concepts are a set of meta-realities that many of us have not fully experienced. I will argue that some of us are halfway there though. Just yesterday when I was talking to my wife about my lifelong love of machines over humans, I mentioned to her that to me a computer is an extension of the physical world. Back when I was in high school (1980s) I became instantly aware of how I could move much of what I had in the real world into the computer. That continues to my homelife today. All of my computers here at home are networked and any one of them serves as a head for all the others. I've eliminated cassettes, video tapes, audio cds and dvds from my visible life by keeping them only for backup purposes. They take up less space when they needn't be displayed. Instead, all of my important data is on the home application/file server. I am also slowly moving to a point where the majority of the CPU power will be centralized in a cluster with only a few wireless terminals needed around the house. Ideally one or more of those terminals will be wearable. At that point, the need for much in the way of physical items becomes less useful. What need is there for a television, when I can look anywhere in front of me an watch a movie while surrounded with data that constantly keeps me informed of all things that are per
Un-news
It's not computers you are absorbed with.
:
It's yourself.
How long do you think you'd live if the civilization you so
obliviously depend on collapsed ?
I'd give you 2 weeks at the outside. In the mean time, try being grateful to those who came before you, like Sir Issac Newton ( before whose intellect yours would shrivel ) was
"If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants" - Newton.
As a last word : try volunteering at a homeless shelter. You might be surprised and changed by the experience.