Demo of a New "Sixth Sense" Technology

TEDChris writes "Here's an intriguing attempt at a versatile new tech device that tries to augment the wearer's five senses. It comes out of Patty Maes's group at the MIT Media Lab. By combining a computerized personal projector with a camera and linking both to the Net, a host of surprising new applications becomes possible. This 8-minute demo created a lot of buzz at TED last month and was posted online today. Would love to know what the Slashdot community makes of it."

Comments

Sixth Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out that the character played by Bruce Willis was shot dead at the beginning of the movie.

Warning: the preceding was a spoiler.

Re:Sixth Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Snape kills Dumbledore

Re:Sixth Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

He was dying anyway. Snape is a goodie goodie pussy!

Re:Sixth Sense

[oodaloop]

Who would have thought that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father?

Re:Sixth Sense

[PCM2]

Dr. Manhattan killed Rosebud? That was Charles Foster Kane's favorite sled!!

Re:Sixth Sense

[PPH]

I thought Willis' career was mortally wounded by Hudson Hawk.

Re:Sixth Sense

[morgan_greywolf]

Oh, damn it! I've never seen Star Wars! Now you've gone and ruined it for me! Now I'll never understand references like "That's no moon!"

Re:Sixth Sense

[bhsx]

Yo Dawg, I heard you like spoilers...

Re:Sixth Sense

[Gilmoure]

Insensitive clod, some of us like that movie!

Re:Sixth Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig is ironic in that it has only 119 characters of text.

Re:Sixth Sense

[fractoid]

Wait, that guy in that movie I had to watch for English class... he made beer?

Re:Sixth Sense

[SenseiLeNoir]

The only issue i have is that there is actually already more than five senses in the human body.

In addition to:
- Sight
- Hearing
- Taste
- Smell
- Touch

There is:

- Balance and acceleration
- Temperature
- Kinesthetic sense (the part of the brain that tells the position of various parts of our limbs. Previously this was thought to be related to touch, but its been found in weightlessness, our brains can still "sense" the position of our limbs.)
- Pain (different to touch, as pain can exist without touch.

There are also other senses used for respiratory, etc.

Re:Sixth Sense

[BoothbyTCD]

Only the best bad movie ever made. There are some movies that are so bad they go all the way around and become awesome.

Re:Sixth Sense

[serge587]

And I thought they burnt it???

Re:Sixth Sense

[Poltras]

Who're "us"? You got a turd in your pocket?

Re:Sixth Sense

[Sqigg]

yeah i know. I loved Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

Re:Sixth Sense

[Slumdog]

Who would have thought that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father?

Or that R is killed by Dr. Manhattan and there is no squid?

Well, Rorschach is really killed by Dr. Manhattan, I'm not trolling! Look it up, in the comic book published 20 years ago.

Re:Sixth Sense

[Jake Griffin]

I had always learned that the sensations of temperature, pressure, and pain were all grouped into the sense known as "touch."

Re:Sixth Sense

[SenseiLeNoir]

Temperature is different to touch (sensed by a different sensor, and processed by the brain in a different section)

Pressure: Sensory pressure is touch, but Atmospheric pressure is detected via parts in the ear, separate from hearing, and not part of touch.

Pain via touch is the same as touch, but reacted differently by the brain. However, there is different types of pain, which are not associated with touch (headaches, muscle sprain, etc)

One possible application

[Locke2005]

Now you really CAN see dead people!

Re:One possible application

[von_rick]

And you won't have to imagine someone without their clothes. You can just turn on the mode which shows everyone like they would sans theirs clothes. And if you get caught doing that, you also risk getting killed, in which case you will not only be able to see dead people, you'll become one with them. Yippie.

Re:One possible application

[tlhIngan]

And you won't have to imagine someone without their clothes. You can just turn on the mode which shows everyone like they would sans theirs clothes. And if you get caught doing that, you also risk getting killed, in which case you will not only be able to see dead people, you'll become one with them. Yippie.

Wasn't there a Sony camcorder over a decade ago that could do this?

ISTR that it was recalled due to its "night vision" mode turning into more like "x-ray vision", except stopping at just under the clothes... I wonder how many cameras were actually returned, and how many were re-sold to others who wanted that particular feature.

Re:One possible application

[Abreu]

[citation needed]

...or as kids nowadays say: "Pics or it didn't happen!"

Re:One possible application

[Cyberax]

All you need for this feature is a simple IR camera.

It's easy to do - just remove IR filter (looks like transparent plastic film) from any cheap digital camera and add visible light filter (red plastic film).

Re:One possible application

[CatsupBoy]

Reuters

Linked to from the references section of this wikipedia article:

Infrared photography

Re:One possible application

[Zerth]

Yup, suprisingly many fabrics are IR transparent/translucent.

A fun thing to do is get a black shirt that is grey under IR and write messages on it in black or blue marker. Freaks out security, but looks almost normal to the mook asking you to take off your shoes.

Not so much fun at casinos, though.

Re:One possible application

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was amusing that the wearer of this device could project rude words and disparagements across people without them being aware of it. Or display stuff on them and then molest, I mean activate web links on them. And even not actually have to have conversations with them but instead read their blogs..

Actually, its a pile of crap, I hate it. I'm holding out for the version that interfaces with my genitals and gives me a nice feeling whatever I'm looking at.

Re:One possible application

[az1324]

"Hi, everybody. Patty Maes here for the amazing Sixth Sensizer. Even if they die fast, you'll make 'em last."

Re:One possible application

[ColdWetDog]

It's real, all right. I've got one. It basically is a DVR with a very weak IR blocking filter. It's more suggestive than useful. And in general, it's better if those sorts of things are left to your imagination.

Re:One possible application

[Locke2005]

I, for one, probably wouldn't be to happy with getting that "tingly-genitals" feeling while I'm kissing my grandmother... I think you need a much more sophisticated analysis of the object of attention here! One that can distinguish "Sheryl Crow = Good" and "Keith Richards = Not so good!"

spidy sense!

[jollyreaper]

Now all we need are web casters, ultra-sticky material for the hands and feet, and someone to beat Tobby MacGuire with a bar of soap in a sock if he comes anywhere near it.

Re:spidy sense!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can already shoot an ultra-sticky material from elsewhere.

Re:spidy sense!

[BlackSnake112]

At will? And without touching by your (or anyone's) hands?

I would hate to see what your laundry looks like...

I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

I, as a typical human, have plenty more than five senses. I would have hoped that people's understanding of their own body would have continued past grade-school.

But in any event, I welcome yet another sense beyond my current twenty-something.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

This isn't a "sense" at all. A "sense" implies something that provides continual information about your immediate environment. This is just another human interface to a computer. Nothing to see here.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[JustinOpinion]

I, as a typical human, have plenty more than five senses. I would have hoped that people's understanding of their own body would have continued past grade-school.

Yup. This is a pet-peeve of mine, too. Humans have between 9-16 senses (or more), depending on how you want to count/divide them. The "5 senses" idea dates back to Aristotle... and we've learned quite a bit about the world and the human body since then. Frankly it's ridiculous that even in grade school children are told that humans have 5 senses: it's patently false. And it's quite easy to demonstrate otherwise (e.g. ask a person if they can sense which way is down).

It bugs me to no end that these kinds of basic science mistakes are repeated ad nauseum.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[von_rick]

The purpose of putting the term "sixth sense" in quotes tells you that it clearly isn't a sixth sense in literal terms. They are just calling it so because they couldn't find any other term which would make people sit through the whole demo, which btw was ultra-sleek.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

This is just another human interface to a computer. Nothing to see here.

Did you watch the video? There is definitely something to see here.

I expected to have a foodarackacycle and a rosie robot by now, at least a flying car. But this will do for now.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[petes_PoV]

The thing about school is that it biggest tacit lesson is to give the expected answer - not the correct one. As the OP, I use this exact question (along with how many colours in a rainbow) as an example.

It goes down great with the kids, though the teachers I know, hate it.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

I did. Looks like a specialized PDA with internet access. We were supposed to have hand held devices that would do similar things with RFID tags by now. If that can't make it to the market, this stands no chance. I predict that the technology is far too expensive for a consumer device.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

You've probably got an anal stimulation sense wired to the pleasure center of your brain.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[mcgrew]

1. Sight
2. smell
3. touch
4. taste
5. hearing

Care to name your other twenty something senses?

PS: there should be no hyphen between "grade" and "school". Dodn't you learn that in grade school?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Exactly. Now the cyborg implant of a magnet in the middle finger of the left hand- that at least does SOMETHING NEW.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Goldsmith]

Depends on who you ask...

I would say we have only 4 senses: chemical, light, pressure and temperature... but part of my job is to work on electrical analogues of sense and often this boils down to the most basic properties. For example, telling which way is down is just an application of a pressure sensor, even though it's nothing like a sense of "touch".

Of course, I understand completely that a neurologist is going to have a different opinion, which is correct in its own way, and probably more similar to how a computer scientist would think of things.

But, yeah, the 5 senses thing is pretty dumb.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[tsm_sf]

Should I get off your lawn?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[edelholz]

She said that the components cost about $350 as is.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[MozeeToby]

1 & 2. Brightness and Color
3. Hearing
4. Pressure
5. Pain
6. Temperature
7. Smell
8-13. The different Taste Receptors
14. Balance/acceleration
15. Proprioception - Knowing where your body parts are. If you don't believe this is a sense check out the Pinocchio Illusion
16. Vasodilation in the skin (blushing)
17. Sensing a full bladder/bowels
18. Intestinal discomfort (not actually pressure nerves, that's just how your body perceives them)

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

6. pain
7. balance
8. acceleration
9. proprioception
10. temperature

Just to get you started...

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

I did. Looks like a specialized PDA with internet access.

Yeah, just like that except you aren't holding a PDA in your hands, it's projecting on to surfaces that you are looking at.

I predict that the technology is far too expensive for a consumer device.

Again, I predict that you didn't watch the video. They built it with "off the shelf" parts for $350.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[morgan_greywolf]

Hmmm...well, I think we tend to simplify things in early education because children have brains that are still developing and simply cannot understand some very subtle distinctions or abstract concepts. Ask the average 1st grader if his sense of pain comes from his sense of touch and he'll answer in the affirmative.

I think we all understand that we have more than 5 senses already, it's just that we've all had the 'five senses' thing beat into us since we were old enough to speak.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Sight
2. smell
3. touch
4. taste
5. hearing

Care to name your other twenty something senses?

PS: there should be no hyphen between "grade" and "school". Dodn't you learn that in grade school?

Nope I dodn't learn that in grade school

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

They built it with "off the shelf" parts for $350.

Now add in manufacturing labor and maintenance, R&D costs, quality control, profit and marketing. A lot more than component cost goes into making a device. I would estimate with bulk orders, you could get the component cost down to $275-$300. That's not bad. Now you'll need to double it or probably more. Pretty soon it costs as much as a laptop and the iPhone becomes cheaper.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

"I met a five-year-old child once who had managed to learn to speak German. And that's a hard language to learn."

And hey, I met a dog who took commands in Chinese. It was impressive because I'm in Canada. It's not surprising because the dog grew up in China.

Children, and dogs, will learn whatever you teach to them. Stop teaching them crap. I know many adults who can't conceive of any more than five senses. They don't even realize that field sobriety tests -- in any movie pre-dating breathalizers -- doesn't test ayn of those five.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Pain, proprioception, thermoception, orientation, direction, acceleration, balance, . . .
Ever seen a cop perform a field-sobriety test? You know, before breathalizers? It specifically tests balance and proprioception -- stand on one leg, eyes closed, and touch your nose. The only way it tests any of your five is because you need to hear the cop speak the directions.

Build a robot, or design any physical machine, and see how many "sensors" you need before it can do anything. Your laser printer has a dozen sensors just to align the paper!

In my world, possibly the same as yours, "grade-school" is indeed hyphenated; in part because it is a unified term. In "grade school", "grade" is an adjective where "school" is a noun. In such syntax, "grade" modifies "school". I was not referring to a school on a hill, or to school which teaches about grading. Now, I was talking about a school which is gradual, and hence "grade school" would have worked, I was not referring to the entire academic system in which education is taught gradually. I was referring to the subset of years consisting of grades 1 through 6(ish), commonly coined "grade-school".

Similarly, I could have used "elementary-school", however "elementary school" would have been a school that teaches the periodic table, or the basic elements of some other industry.

See, "adjective noun" is a general form of English, where each word is considered according to its individual definition. "adjective-noun" is a specific form of English, where the compound-word (or "compounded word", because "compound" is a noun, and "compounded" is the adjective here) is considered according to a non-Englist lexicon, often industry-specific jargon.

They taught me your way in grade-school, when they told me that I was in grade school. That's my point. My education continued beyond grade-school where I learned that I had not only attended grade school but I had also attended grade-school; and I learned the important distinction.

But I'll ask you the same question I ask of people who argue "whom" versus "who". "How many times have you said the word 'whom' in the last year?" Many of them realize that they've never used it, and that's when they realize that they must be making some mistake. So in your case, when was the last time you used a hyphen? If you answer is unreasonable, then clearly you aren't utilizing the entire English language properly.

A lot of people have been dropping hyphens over the last sixty years -- twice my life-time. But hey, people say "there's five of them over there" because they don't seem to realize how ignorant and hick-town it sounds when expanded to "there is five . . .".

Re:I already have more than five senses

[lawaetf1]

Sure.. just like the "components" of my server costs only $5,000. Then there's the $30k database license sitting on it. And the 2A of power it draws, and the $1k/month internet connection.. and my salary.. etc. Her hardware cost reference is to promote the "why don't we have this now?" reaction.

Anyone else notice the instances of him using the device (bookstore, grovery store) were conspicuously dimly lit? Not knocking what is certainly a clever packaging of components in an experimental doodad.. but would you buy a device you couldn't use outside?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[16Chapel]

So what, meatbag?

Come back when you've got smision.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[node 3]

I would say we have only 4 senses

And I would say you're too smart for your own good. A sense is an aspect of the physical world you can detect, it's *not* the type of physical phenomena being utilized in the sense. Otherwise, all senses are just chemical (or electro-chemical, if you want).

The sense of up and down is distinct from the sense of rough or smooth, even though both use pressure, just like a radio antenna and a roll of photographic film are distinct even though they both measure electromagnetism.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

So it's upsetting that public knowledge stops at a mere five.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[the_wesman]

oh - so, by your logic, if I have a demo that I don't think people will watch, I can advertise it as "naked pictures of your mom" - of course, it's not _literally_ naked pictures of your mom - I'm just using it because I can't find any other term which would make people sit through the whole demo - naked pictures of your mom, btw, are ultra-sleek

related: quotations marks are also often used when quoting people not just for poor slashdot headlines

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear god i really hope you are trolling.
If not, then here is yet another typical example of education doing wrong.

I know the education system holds back a specific chunk of people for the sake of society, but for crying out loud, at least stop some of this blatant lies.
At least teach them about the senses influenced by external sources.
Balance and Acceleration are 2 important ones.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Tryle]

I've seen his mom, I would not be watching the demo. Your logic is flawed.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[BAKup]

(e.g. ask a person if they can sense which way is down)

I know that one! The enemy's gate is down!

Re:I already have more than five senses

[morgan_greywolf]

I know many adults who can't conceive of any more than five senses.

And I know many adults who can't conceive of any more than 10 digits. The fact that there are a lot of ignorant people out there doesn't change the fact that if we tell a 5 year old about his sense of equilibrium, he probably won't know what you're talking about.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

Yeah, because this thing and the iPhone do exactly the same thing right?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[inviolet]

Yup. This is a pet-peeve of mine, too. Humans have between 9-16 senses (or more), depending on how you want to count/divide them. The "5 senses" idea dates back to Aristotle... and we've learned quite a bit about the world and the human body since then. Frankly it's ridiculous that even in grade school children are told that humans have 5 senses: it's patently false. And it's quite easy to demonstrate otherwise (e.g. ask a person if they can sense which way is down).

I find this absurd situation to be quite useful. The "five senses" claptrap is a quick and easy way to demonstrate to a ballast^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlay person that a 'fact', known by everyone, written in every textbook, and taught in every school, is obviously wrong.

From there they are on the way to "floating above" their society -- finally being able to see it objectively and pass judgement on its mores. Then they can compare it against other societies, uninstall whatever religion rootkit they didn't know they were hosting, and become a full-power subversive.

Hopefully.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

If you tell a five-year-old about his sense of vision, she won't understand either -- unless you said the word "vision" before.

"Equilibrium" is not a difficult word. You simply have to teach it -- five-year-olds lack two very important skills, they aren't psychic, and they don't tend to initiate cognitive learning.

But hey, as an adult, the number of times I talk to clients or people and have to say "emplain it to me as though I'm six" is very large. A lot of people like to say things, having no idea what they mean. And when you ask them to explain to you what they mean, it becomes very apparent that they have no idea.

I have one client (to make this relevant here) who likes to refer to her new web-site as being in "beta". She also likes to discuss features in terms of the "database". But what she says makes no sense. So I'd ask her "what do you mean by 'beta'?". And she'd say "you know, 'beta'. I don't know, 'beta'. it's your industry, you know what I must mean." And I'd ask "what do you mean by 'database'?", and she'd say "you, database, like, the whole thing."

It turns out that she used 'database' to mean any part of her web application that allowed her to see information. And she meant 'beta' as the first launch. Clearly, those are awy off. 'database' means the storage and manipulation of the data, not the reports and the presentation. 'beta' means it's still broken and has bugs, and we're letting external users find them. The confusion, of course, came when she said things like "we need to change the formatting of the database" and "it has to be bug-free for the beta launch".

So now we have an agreement. If she can't define a word, she can't use it.

Children aren't stupid, and they aren't ignorant. They're simply inexperienced.

You say many adults can't conceive of any more than ten digits. Well, they also can't conceive of any fewer than ten digits. And it's purely because no one ever told them, and they never tried. Children haven't had a chance to try, and most adults don't know enough to tell them.

Teach children about "equilibrium" and they'll understand. Don't and they won't. It's that simple. But I promise you one thing: if you don't know what the word means, you won't be able to teach it; not to children and not to adults. All you'll be able to do is to spread the confusion.

So, who taught you?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

What's the difference? All this thing does is look up information on something presented to it. The iPhone can be used to look up the same information, with the only disadvantage being that you have to manually search for it. For the examples presented in the video, manual searching is trivial. The display technique is gimmicky with no advantage beyond the fact that it's hands free.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Goldsmith]

So... the sense of light intensity different from frequency? Do we have a sense of wind? Insects detect chemicals with antenna which work much differently than animal noses, does that mean they don't really "smell"? You can go crazy with the number of ways we interact with the world, or you can try to generalize them. I find it more convenient to generalize, but I understand the biological reasons for enumerating slight differences in senses.

Also, I'm not just being clever. I didn't come up with those four areas, that's a common classification system. There are more than those four, but those are the four found in humans (so far).

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, like the sense of balance, which is what I consider to be our sixth sense.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

All this thing does is look up information on something presented to it. The iPhone can be used to look up the same information, with the only disadvantage being that you have to manually search for it.

Yeah the iPhone recognizes whatever object/person you put in front of it and displays information about it directly on it. I must have missed that one in the app store.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[PhreakOfTime]

Very well put. I do have one question though...

How old is your daughter?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I'd like to see a source on those hyphenation rules, if possible. I've taught English before, and although hyphenation rules are often rather vague, I've never heard of this particular distinction, and Wikipedia and the dictionary seem to disagree with you.

The distinction you're making doesn't really seem consistent, either. Aren't I learning "elementary knowledge" in elementary school? And can't "grade school" be distinguished as the type of school in which students are identified by numbered "grades"? (In many schools, students past eighth grade are referred to as freshmen, sophomores, etc.)

This also seems to clash with my general instinct, backed up by Wikipedia, which is to use hyphens for compounds like these only when they are used as adjectives. (So, "I learned grade-school math in grade school.")

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

But hey, people say "there's five of them over there" because they don't seem to realize how ignorant and hick-town it sounds when expanded to "there is five . . .".

Don't you say there are / there're?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

I haven't a daughter of my own. If I did, I'd win the award for fighting the most battles for home schooling. I continue to watch people give-up on teaching things before they've even started. And I've watched people try to teach things they themselves don't understand.

I'm now approached to teach parents about how to teach their children about computers. They used to ask about how to secure adult content from their children. It took a lot of effort to explain to them that doing so is counter-productive. But that evolved into "when should I teach my children to use a computer". And that eventually evolved into "what should I teach them first". It didn't take long to realize that they couldn't teach the first thing because they themselves didn't know the first thing.

It's very funny to watch parents learn more about computers than their children while they are teaching their children.

Sometimes C.E.O.'s need to be taught like pre-schoolers. And the really good C.E.O.'s? They love it. "When you're being taught by someone who doesn't expect you to get it right the first time, and doesn't expect you to bring anything to the experience, and you don't try to fight back, learning is a pleasure." -- I'm paraphrasing.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[MaceyHW]

And some people learn a single rule and never learn that it is not universal. Grammar school, elementary school, middle school, and high school are all compound nouns. Some compound nouns are widely hyphenated, some are not, and some are widely accepted written either way. Here's a more-complicated-but-more-useful set of rules for when to use a hyphen. :), But as its author notes, the rules are in flux.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion as to how fast we should collectively permit our language to (d)evolve. But when your going too be an grammar-Nazi, its important that you did it write.

The "lot of people" you deride for dropping the hyphen include the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. It's time to ease up on the attitude or go join a community that speaks exclusively Middle English--excuse me, "Middle-English".

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

That would be my mind. But read your local newspaper, listen to your prime-time sitcoms, even watch the news. You'll be HORRIFIED at how many people in your given day say "there's [many things]. . ."

But hey, just start with "anyway" and "manyways", and cut out "anyways" which makes no sense.

Oh, and "icecream" doesn't exist. Neither does "ice cream". "ice-cream" does. and it used to be "iced cream". Are you surprised that when you take milk, turn it into cream, and make it really cold, that it's iced cream? No of course not. But as an immigrant, learning english for the first time, "iced cream" doesn't need to be taught. "ice-cream" does. While we're here, Dairy Queen doesn't sell iced cream, they sell iced milk -- because "seft-serve" uses milk, not cream, as any lactose-intolerant person knows. So when you want ice-cream, you can't go to Dairy Queen. When you want ice-milk, you can't go to Baskin Robbins. When you wan tto be lazy, and label everything with the same name, confusing everyone, making it nearly impossible to learn english as a second language, and corrupting english to the point where every element of a vocabulary needs to be memorized, then you can do what you want.

Inspire, respire, expire, inspiration, respiration, expiration, empire. If you were taught seven words, you're wasting brain-cells.

As my vocabulary is enriched, I actually lose more and more words -- because they get combined into "Son a bitch! That's the same word!".

Import, important. Big surprise.

Depend, pendant, pending. Hmmm.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all like in the video when he displayed a keypad on his hand, and dialed a number to call someone?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Is sensing blushing actually a separate sense, or is it just detection of the temperature change due to the increased blood flow?

19. Hunger
20. Sensing if you need to take a breath (based on detecting carbon dioxide levels)
21. Physical Fatigue. You can tell when your body is physically tired.
22?. Tiredness, you can tell when you are tired from the simple need to sleep. Not sure if it's fundamentally different than physical fatigue.
23. Not sure of the veracity of this one, but a lot of people are pretty sure that the skin can detect light levels (from experiments on seasonal affective disorder). Might count as a separate sense since it operates independently of the eyes.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

First, wikipedia is like asking 2'000 people on the street. It's no where near correct. It's just good enough most of the time.
Second, "dictionary" means how to pronounce words (i.e. "diction"). If you mean a "lexicon" then say so.

And things like hyphenation have been destroyed over the decades. Your "dictionary" probably has the word "mentee". It may be defined as the subject of a "mentor". As in "employee" and "employer". Of course, first "mentor" is "or", not "er". Second, not every word that ends in "er" does so as a suffix. Third, "mentors" have "protoge", not "mentees". Fourth, "back-formations" are rediculous. Fifth, a word accidently 'invented' due to an error is not a word. If anyone got up and said "I want to say 'mentee' to mean this because I think it's missing from the language" then I'd support them. If they're simply an idiot one day and said "mentee" because they forgot the word "protoge" as we all often do, then it's not a word.

The hyphenation rule you mention about using the compound as an adjective is required because there is yet another noun following. For example, "Giant book sale" is a giant sale and a book sale. "Giant-book sale" is a normal sale of giant books. "Drunk driving lawyer" is a drunk lawyer and a driving lawyer. "drunk-driving lawyer" is a lawyer for "drunk driving". You don't need to hyphenate "drunk driving" because in that case "drunk" means drunk and "driving" means driving. But when it doesn't, you have to hyphenate it. In programming, we'd say "(drunk driving) lawyer" to indicate that the sentence/phrase parsing is inside-out and not left-to-right.

Yes, in elementary-school you are learning "elementary knowledge" and "grade school" can be the type of school in which students are identified by numbered grades. But the point is it doesn't have to be. Those are simply one of the very many matching cases. Because you need to defined "grade" in "grade school" in order to narrow down which one you mean, writing "grade school" would necessitate an emdash or parenthetical definition or footnote.

The guiding problem with all of this, and the reason hyphenation gets worse with each generation, is that industry-specific terminology used to be jargon. You'd write it in quotes, define it as a term that no one had heard before, and move on. The only people that would read your term were others in your industry, so they'd know what you meant and they'd like your term, and it wouldn't conflict with anything else.

But today, we converse across multiple industries in a single sentence. So industry jargon gets lost very quickly when tow industries use the same word to mean different things. When I was a pip-squeak web developer, and we had a meeting with the web advertisers, it took thirty minutes to figure out that I.P. meant something very different to the ten people in the room. To half it meant interten protocol, and to the other half it meant impressions per page. It was a very big waste of time.

Certainly, when you're talking to a teacher, "grade school" will not be misunderstood. And to anyone in the academic world, "grade school" would be correct industry jargon. But if you were to ask an arcitect to build your "grade school" you'd have a problem. Because in his mind, it would mean a school on a grade. And the word "grade" means the same thing in his industry as it does in yours, but the manner in which it modifies "school" is very different.

Of course, the moment you cross language boundaries, you get into more hell. And you don't have to leave English to do it. Think of all of the synonyms of the word "school". (English doesn't actually have two words that mean the same thing, as you'll soon discover.) Now say "grade " and watch how the meaning changes drastically.

"grade teaching", "grade training", "grade collecting", "grade gathering" -- remember, fish school too. "school" doesn't have anything to do with education, just like "class" doesn't.

But hey, people like to say: "I can't tell y

Re:I already have more than five senses

[BeanThere]

"Sixth sense" is a metaphorical, idiomatic phrase. I would've thought that people's understanding of basic English would have continued past grade-school.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

"Dictionaries" these days showcase common usage, not actual meaning. They politically add things like "mentee" and "ain't".

"grammar school" ain't a compound word, you haven't compounded it. And Google is hardly a worthy source for language definition -- as opposed to language usage.

"high school" is a great example. Try to craft a sentence where that can be understood without ambiguity.
"I went to a high school". Was it an up-hill battle every morning?

You can ditch the rules all you want, and we can all agree that we'll just "figure it out". But if the owness (I don't know how it's spelled) of communication is on the listener instead of the speaker, then ambiguity cannot be resolved. The result is multiple horrendous effects. First, it takes a lot more time and a lot more brain-power to understand what's being said. Garden-path sentences and other linguistic headaches are proven to be dreadful not only with computer speech recognition, but also with human beings. Driving while on the phone, for example. It takes approximately three times as much cognitive effort to understand common English than proper English.

That's which technical writers, radio announcers, marketing, contract writers, speech programmers, and traffic control personnel all use proper english -- because accurate communication is paramount.

"I saw that gas can explode."
"I saw that can of gas explode." "I saw that gas is able to explode."
"I saw that canister of gasoline explode." "I saw that gasolene is able to explode."

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Ah, the markers and the cisco thing. High-school took three years of chemistry, always asking "what's the definition of an acid and a base". It changed every three months. In the second year, I caught-on, and I read to the end of the next text book, and gave the actual correct answer one year early -- and failed the test.

You can lead me through the history of understanding all you like, and you can teach me simplistic views, but you've got to tell me that they are simplistic, and don't think for one moment that it's faster to teach me six incorrect things than to teach me the one correct thing.

"Hey art teacher, how come all of my tertiary paint colours that I mixed look the same?"
"Because our paints aren't perfect."

Bull-shit. I mixed green and blue when I should have been mixing green with cyan. But no one taught you cyan, they only taught you blue. And there's no way that children find cyan any more difficult than blue -- it's a bloody colour.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[thelandp]

By going on about the lesser known senses beyond the commonly understand five, you have completely missed the point of this demo, which shows a very interesting new technology. You have focused on an entirely unrelated point about number of senses, purely because of the title of the demo. Whether we have 5 or 16 does not change in any way the coolness of this technology. Don't be so pedantic.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[dbIII]

Some time ago I heard a radio interview with an apparently famous (forgot the name) US dancer from New York who was quite articulate and intelligent but completely illiterate. He said he had listed over twenty "senses" in his head, he was unaware of the usual meaning of the word and that you can have different forms of perception based upon combinations of senses. He was also following the fashion of changing the meaning of words at whim to make up for a limited vocabulary.

We talk of "depth perception" instead of depth sense. Our sense of touch in our ears lets us know which way is up just as the sense of touch in our feet lets us know if we are standing on a firm surface. It's not a failure of science, science still looks at the different forms of perception (eg. combinations of senses). It's just a disagreement between you and the dictionary.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Welcome to social discourse. It's called cross-association -- and that's a well-accepted measure of intelligence.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please explain how my sense of self awareness fits into your definition.

YOU FUCKING IDIOT

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Define ignorant

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

the characteristic or attribute of one who ignores otherwise readily accessible knowledge. From the root verb to ignore. Differs from unknowledgable by taking on an active quality.

Thus, children are typically not ignorant, having lacked the opportunity to learn a particular issue. Similarly, an adult never having had the opportunity to go to pilot an aircraft is not ignorant of those skills. Contrast that with an experienced co-pilot never having learned any piloting skills.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

The purpose of putting the term "sixth sense" in quotes tells you that it clearly isn't a sixth sense in literal terms. They are just calling it so because they couldn't find any other term which would make people sit through the whole demo, which btw was ultra-sleek.

Perhaps Augmented Reality would be a good phrase?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[arkhan_jg]

8-13. The different Taste Receptors

Now you're just being picky. Why not separate the cone cells into S,M and L, or split the sense of smell down into the thousands of distinct odours we can detect?

Besides, you're missing the point. The 5 senses description is part of the lies-to-children approach to teaching. You teach the basics by giving them a simplification or outright falsehood that conveys the meaning well enough - and that lie is good enough for that purpose, even for an adult layman.

Take physics, with newton's laws of motion compared to special relativity. Newton is good enough for general purposes, even if it is wrong with a more detailed understanding. Or the Bohr model of the atom; I remember when I did my A-level in chemistry, and the first thing my teacher told me was everything I'd been told about the atom up to that point was wrong. The same thing happened at university.

It's all part of specialization; the mechanical engineer looks at the human senses, and compares them to their human-built equivalent sensors, which is an entirely different approach to that of a biochemist.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[tomtomtom777]

Fortunately, he is not the only "person" to misunderstand quotes

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when a cocky idiot gets his ass handed to him on a platter. Thank you, idiot, for making my day.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[FTWinston]

So what about tickling?
Not only, "whats that about?" but ... is it a sense all of its own, or does it count as a specific type of pain? Cos I wouldn't call it pain, although we respond in a similar manner to tickling as we do to pain, but with added laughing.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting that despite your urgent concern for hyphenation, you don't seem to be nearly as meticulous about spelling.

I don't mean to be sarcastic or snide, I genuinely think it's interesting.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Ragein]

Put on some scuba gear and go diving at night turn all the lights off spin around a few times and then tell me which way is up.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Stratocastr]

You are defining the sense of direction as a "sense"

This is a misnomer. We do indeed have only 5 senses. This means that we have 5 organs of perception. These are :

1.touch (skin)

2.smell (nose)

3.sight (eyes)

4.hearing (ears)

5.taste (tongue)

It qualifies as a "sense" if there is a unique perceptory organ associated with it. For example, taste is a sense because there are unique taste buds on the tongue that distinguish sweet from sour and so on.

The "sense" of direction or the "sense" of up and down is not a sense, it is just an intelligent inference based on information gathered by the 5 senses.

A lie would be being taught that evolution is not a fact and only a theory.(i lol every time at this).

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's called "being an ass", and yes, it's well-accepted measure of intelligence - or more properly, lack of it.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Yeah, I've noticed that too, but I figure that here, I'm typing a mile-a-minute, and really not slowing down for accuracy.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[DrLang21]

Read the comment again "...with the only disadvantage being that you have to manually search for it." Like it's really that difficult to look up a product on Amazon. Recognition of a person in front of you is pointless here because the implementation does not allow for any practical means of displaying the information (hoping that someone has a white shirt and is in a dimly lit room and won't be pissed off about all you staring at all kinds of information being projected on them is not practical), not to mention that facial recognition is not near where it would need to be for this to even make sense. As far as I know, you still need prior training data for facial recognition to work. That one is just vapor ware thrown out there to try and excite you. I am generally unimpressed due to the fact that there's nothing really new here except for the use of a projector to display the information. Bar codes and RFID tags have existed for a while now, and attempts have been made to make similar information available in this fashion. I'm not saying that this is an uninteresting idea, but I am generally unimpressed with the implementation. If they come up with a practical use that just isn't reasonably available today, then I'll get excited. However, I spent enough of my career in academia to know how this will probably go down. At least in this case they actually have a working demo, rather than a bunch of government grant paid artist renditions.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Curtman]

Fine, get an iPhone I don't care. I think the iPhone is garbage. You can stick with your 8-track tapes and rotary dial phones it won't bother me a bit.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

You quickly lose your ability to sense which way down is as soon as you get disoriented (say, buried) in a dark place. People who get buried alive in avalanches report that they can't tell which way to dig to get up. Your sense of "down" depends on your ability to orient yourself by sight.

Try it. Make your bedroom pitch black at night and try to take off (or put on) your pants without holding onto something. It's a lot harder to balance when you can't see, even though your sense of balance depends more on your ears than your eyes.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Mr. Firewall]

Anyone else notice the instances of him using the device (bookstore, grovery store) were conspicuously dimly lit?

No, I was too distracted by the fact that the paper towels were in a refrigerated case.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

How about pedant?

Re:I already have more than five senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you almost wrote an entire article on the correct way to write "grade school"?

This is why I think English teachers are worthless, because no matter how "correct" you may or may not be, it won't matter because common usage will just change the rule anyways (that and the fact, no matter how I wrote my papers for English class, I always got a B. Copy-paste? B. Written in 5 minutes? B. Spend a week writing? B. This was the case with over 5 different teachers, and I always tried for an A.) Hell, English is mostly interpretation to begin with.

English (*cough* communication) is about getting the information across, and understanding that information. When you say "grade school", regardless of that hyphen, people will understand what you mean. It's interpretation. Whether I say "gotta" go, or "got to" go. You understand.

Then for the few who are brave enough to bring in the: we standardize it for foreigners learning our language! Ever hear a foreigner mess up a sentence, but still understand what they said? What about the fact you use a word they don't understand (or even a phrase which they obviously never heard before). They will ask what it means regardless.

The fact that people have nothing better to do than argue about how to say something "correctly" is pathetic. Yes, this looks hypocritical, but someone has to say shut the fuck up.

Re:I already have more than five senses

[holophrastic]

Ever taken a psychology class and learned how much more cognitive effort is required to understand improper grammar? Ever heard anyone say that talking on a mobile phone while driving is a distraction?

Ever heard of "miscommunication" in business, at a job, in the military, with friends?

There are times when your "interpretation" will suffice. Then there are times where it won't -- where the error-rate is just plain unacceptable.

And like I said, "grade school" will be understood by the vast majority. It won't be understood by the construction engineer wondering why you want to build you school on a grade -- because in his industry, the word "grade" has a very different meaning.

You can talk to dim-witted friends any way you like. And your english teachers may have been crap. Some of us went to better schools, and some of us converse in circles of greater importance. In business, the difference between asking your powder-coater to use "glossy" versus "shiny" versus "semi-gloss" versus "demi-gloss" is very different.

Sometimes it matters.

What do I make of it?

[overlordofmu]

I want one! Hell, I want three!

Already exists

[LordEd]

Its called a gun.

*Bang*... I see dead people

I guess

[oodaloop]

this sixth sense doesn't help to identify dupes, since this, or something very much like this, was just on /. a few weeks ago.

Re:I guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/222206&from=rss

I think I can't afford one

[Anonymous Coward]

At least I got chicken.

I have a sixth sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can "smell" a dupe a mile away. Smells worse than Cowboy Neal's taint (or so one would imagine).

Re:I have a sixth sense.

[retech]

Pity KDawson doesn't have that ability.

Overlay on my glass instead...

[sam0737]

I hope I can get the information overlay'ed on my glass instead of projecting out. First it should get better contrast, second I don't need to display what I am looking to the public.

Put the calibration aside, I would need to start wearing glass...Or should we get the video overlay signal injected into the brain?

Re:Overlay on my glass instead...

[LingNoi]

I am assuming you mean glasses. I don't think you need to wear them or have a port hard wired into your brain.

I think the trick is directing photons to the wearer's pupil, however I can imagine that some strong eye tracking would need to be in place first.

Re:Overlay on my glass instead...

[nine-times]

Yeah, that was my reaction. It's one thing if all the information being displayed would be a standard default, but as soon as you customize what data to show you, you're already displaying private information about yourself whenever using this. It'd be much better if it was displayed in a format that was private, that only you could see.

Beyond that, if it's something mounted in your glasses, it seems like it opens the potential (perhaps) to track eye movement and therefore guess at what you're looking at. That might open the door to have it make more intelligent guesses as to what kind of information you're looking for, instead of just displaying information about whatever happens to be in front of you.

But I gather from the video that this was all just supposed to be a starting point or proof of concept rather than an actual product. Maybe given an investment, building it into glasses would be more feasible.

Re:Overlay on my glass instead...

[nbates]

Yes, also imagine the akward moment when you meet your boss and a tag cloud with "S&M" on it comes up.

But definitely great as a proof of concept.

Wearable Display?

[GerardAtJob]

The use of a retinal display could complement this thing nicely... but since microvision have all and every patent on this... and only create stuff for military purpose, we won't see anything like this soon...

Re:Wearable Display?

[Zerth]

On the plus side, the basic patents have less than 10 years to go.

Re:Wearable Display?

[Anonymous Coward]

no but.. what? you mean.. patents STIFLE creativity? *shock* Never saw that one coming.

Re:Wearable Display?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like they haven't tried to make a consumer version. If you're willing to shell out $10k you can get a 800x600 monochrome red display from Microvision.

Now they're making handheld projectors, but I'd imagine their ultimate goal is ramping up production so they can make their wearable displays at a lower cost.

How the Hell is this a sense, or even useful?

[Aphoxema]

It's just the same old image recognition we've seen used in much more clever ways, now it's just with colored finger condoms.

Re:How the Hell is this a sense, or even useful?

[carlmenezes]

A lot of technology is the combination of existing pieces. What makes it useful is how the pieces are combined. Are search engines useful for that matter - they're essentially queries running on databases right?
Besides, it's a demo of a work in progress. You could have come up with this - but did you? Did you even think about it and envision it as completely as it was presented in the video, let alone implement it?
This is a work of genius. Please do not belittle it.

Re:How the Hell is this a sense, or even useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Hardly genius.

http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

I believe that they didn't really think of this idea, just expended upon Johnny's excellent work.

Spook Country

[Zebra_X]

This idea was featured in Spook Country by William Gibson.

You would think that

[One Brave Prune]

with all that technology the girl at the end would have a calculator watch.

Re:You would think that

[mustafap]

Being a nerd, I'd have to hack the code to project a binary led watch.

More Typical Media Lab goodness

[El Cabri]

Slapping together a few existing gadgets into an application that is in dire need of a real problem to solve.

Dupe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the video blog of the story over a month old.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/222206

Re:Dupe?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDawson = Dupe

Some of this is reminiscent

[Jane Q. Public]

of the VR artwork mentioned in William Gibson's "Spook Country". However, I don't think the projector idea is very practical. Probably it will be replaced by some sort of head-up display, like transparent VR glasses that overlay what you see with generated images.

Re:Some of this is reminiscent

[Sabathius]

Very insightful, but that's just version 1.5. Version 2.0 will be projected on your eyeball, or optic-nerve. The tendency of technology is to become invisible. I imagine that by 2050 everything we use on a day-to-day basis will be either embedded within us or the environment (or both).

Re:Some of this is reminiscent

[Locke2005]

You can already do this in a limited fashion with Google Maps on the Google phone. Using the built-in compass and tilt sensors, it can display a Street View image that changes as you pan the phone to correspond with the direction the display is pointed. Which opens up the possibility for someone to write an app for the Google phone that takes the camera image in real time and displays it on the LCD with superimposed 3D virtual modifications that everybody running the app could then see at the same location. Just imagine the multiplayer games you could play with that! (Ignoring, of course, the safety implications of a bunch of people navigating busy streets by looking through their cell phones.) As far as I know, this should be doable on the iPhone as well (and possibly other devices).

Re:Some of this is reminiscent

[teopatl]

So would that be eLARPing then?

Augmented senses: SID

[macraig]

I already know how to augment a person's senses: it's called SID (Sensory Integration Disorder). Anyone with SID is automatically the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Doesn't require any awkward paraphernalia, either, just a few rearranged genes! You probably already know one of these SID people, like the guy who screams at the neighborhood kids to stop that infernal racket!

Re:Augmented senses: SID

[macraig]

"So you mean that mutants with super hearing and x-ray vision are walking among us now? ZOMG! Call Nathan Petrelli and round 'em up!"

Old News

[rockNme2349]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/222206&from=rss

Meh

[Greyfox]

Implantation of tiny rare earth magnets in your finger tips makes for a far more interesting sixth sense. Then you can sense magnetic fields. No power supply needed or anything. Describing feeding you ads when you look at a product as a "sense" is a load of crap.

Re:Meh

[MaskedSlacker]

yeah, but try typing on your laptop with your fingers just inches away from a hard drive...

Re:Meh

[Greyfox]

Is this the voice of personal experience? What exactly happens? From what I've seen, the magnetic field on those rare earth magnets doesn't extend that far -- they're very powerful but you have to get them very close to any metal other than another rare earth magnet in order to make them stick. Once they do stick though, they stick VERY well indeed...

Mythbusters obtained a couple of those magnets that were about the size of a tea saucer. That's one of the few times I've actually seen Adam frightened of something he was holding. He very often just plows ahead, sometimes shows respect that something he's working for is dangerous, but it's not too often he's actually frightened of something. I would think that if you had magnets implanted in your fingertips and tried to handle the magnets he had, the big magnet would rip the little ones right out of your flesh.

Re:Meh

[MaskedSlacker]

If only there was some kind of precise mathematical law that explained how magnetic fields vary with distance, we wouldn't have to resort to hand-waving 'well, I don't think that'--otherwise known as blowing smoke out of a smelly orifice.

Not Six

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular believe, people don't have five senses. We have about nine, depending how you divide them up.

Re:Not Six

[MaskedSlacker]

Contrary to popular belief, 'sense' is not a biologically meaningful unit. Arguing about the number of senses is like arguing about the number of races. It's meaningless.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Solution looking for a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems sort of cool, I guess, but what's the point? It doesn't seem to do anything that you couldn't do more conveniently with a cell phone, and half of that stuff (Amazon ratings in books that are in your hands? Just read part of the damn thing.) seems pretty useless in general.

The only good thing I see about it

[sunking2]

At least now when you are caught staring at a womans chest you can blame it on your projector display.

sixth sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew it yesterday!

What could possibly go wrong?

[Locke2005]

Imagine all the great opportunities for gaslighting people you don't like you could create by hacking into this device while somebody else is wearing it!

Solution in search of a problem

[Locke2005]

When is the MIT Media Lab going to start working on something that is actually USEFUL to the common person? Say something in the field of teledildonics, for example.

Surprising?

[Alrescha]

"a host of surprising new applications becomes possible"

Surprising? New?

No. Please read some Vernor Vinge. To stay on topic, I recommend "Fast Times at Fairmont High", which covers the concept of augmented reality quite well. Someone wake me when technology catches up to that.

That said, I think it's wonderful that someone is working on it.

A.

media lab

[demon411]

I took a class with Pranav where he presented TapuMa http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects.php?action=details&id=53 as his final project. The idea seemed cool, put down a pair an object on the map and it showed you relevant locations. In fact, I think most of his projects had something or another to do with maps. This new project of his incorporates pieces of tangible interfaces as well as fluid interaction (ambient interfaces) and smart agents

Good editing

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the things in that "demo" looked like fancy editing tricks to me. Like when he drew the watch on his wrist... looked to me like they just added that after filming. Wonder what in this video was actually "real". I mean, if we're comparing special effects, movies have plenty of those.

It's faked

[Anonymous Coward]

If image recognition is really as far along as this demo suggests it is (recognizing books, recognizing toilet paper), why is a barcode scanner the most advanced thing we actually see in phones today?

And if she was wearing one of the devices, why didn't she actually demo it on stage?

This seems to be demoing the application of a bunch of technologies that are somewhere on the continuum between "doesn't generally work even in the lab" and "impractical for a handheld/neckworn computer."

If you're going to pretend that something is practical and then show how cool it is, why not produce a video of you living on the moon, instead of buying toilet paper?

Someone Please Tell Me

[DynaSoar]

Just what really revolutionary devices have been developed and put into common use by MIT Media Lab? I see a lot of hype from them, and it's getting less and less realistic and more obviously pie-in-the-sky. Science in the popular media only requires this condition and that's where Media Lab seems to live now. Real applications require more. What concretely have they done, previously and lately?

If they're stuck in theory mode, so be it. But then they should present their theories as such, not as super duper gaming gizmos on the verge of revolutionizing everyday life.

I'm still waiting for my jeans with the embedded keyboard they "demo'd" a decade or more ago.

Where are the intention gestures?

[izeskepticles]

The tough part in a "real world environment" is understanding the users intentions. They left out all of the hand gestures you would need to explain your intentions to the computer. Which makes this far more complex to interact with than shown here.

Where is the free software project?

[Statecraftsman]

I think this is a neat demo but where can I find me some source code and help extend it?

Vernor Vinge is the man

[wurp]

Vernor Vinge invented cyberspace (although I don't think he coined the term) in True Names.

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. Read True Names to get a notion of the profound visionary Vernor Vinge is. (Remember it was published in 1981).

Then read Rainbows End with your newfound respect for Vinge's powers of prognostication, and recognize that you're seeing into the near future.

(This post is a blatant copy of an old post of mine.)

Re:Vernor Vinge is the man

[religious freak]

Rainbow's End was the first thing I thought of too. I believe the novel was set in 2023 (maybe it was 2033?). That sounds like a world with the type of tech that I'd love to live in. Ubiquitous self driving cars, medical miracles, retinal overlays which alter your visual reality. Though I suppose I could probably do without the human race teetering on the edge of oblivion thing.

I've seen a couple comments when browsing reviews on Amazon stating that the year was way out of the realm of possibility. I guess we'll see. In case you didn't see the vid related to a /. article a few days ago, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBEXxW3qAMg

How hard would it be to put this computing power in a cell phone 15 years from now with retinal imaging? Who knows... as crazy as it sounds right now, he may be right!

Re:Vernor Vinge is the man

[wurp]

That's great - I wanted to do almost exactly the app he's doing with the "treasure hunt" for a mobile platform.

The only difference was that I wanted to make it more of a large scale thing, and use gps to get you close. I didn't think about using features to guide you once you get close... I was going to use large scale features for which the error in gps coordinates wouldn't be an issue. The thing that prevented me from doing the app is that I would need a digital compass in the phone to be able to tell direction. In fact, unless he has the whole environment they're likely to be in encoded and lots of computing power, he would need one too.

Oh, and I didn't think of the cool "bubbles" animation. I planned to do some futuristic, fantasy magic and steampunk skins for a locator.

I don't think phones have the computing power to do dynamic features now, and in fact I think it will be a terrible way to calculate location other than in very limited circumstances for a very long time. I do agree that augmented reality will be huge in 10 years, I just think other ways will be used of calculating location, except for landmarks (fixed location items of interest to lots of people).

Re:Vernor Vinge is the man

[wurp]

I said "use large scale features" which is very misleading in context. I meant the "gift" was going to be very big, so errors in gps coordinates wouldn't be too noticable.

We only have five senses?

[MartinSchou]

Hmm ...

Taste, smell, vision, hearing, touch, balance, temperature, spatial.

I suspect I'm leaving several more out, but which ones am I supposed to ditch?

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WANT

[Anonymous Coward]

WANT

yeah..

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/05/222206 http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-digital-six.html

That was somethin'

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to project BSODs on people

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Don't let my boss see it..

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Darn !

There goes my desk, phone, computer. 8)

Empty cubicles, guys ?

I, for one, welcome the next topic on "the best/cheapest 15%gray paint/cover you can slap on the cubicle" (tm)

First thing I thought of

[teopatl]

was Asimov's "The Last Question." This project, if successfully deployed on a wide scale, seems like it'd be a (very small) step towards a collective consciousness.

"Super hearing" happens

[dbIII]

With just a crack in the skull in the wrong place you too could have super hearing. It's apparently also very difficult to fix because there are a lot of important bits of brain right next to it.

Re:"Super hearing" happens

[macraig]

Since I have SID, I already have super hearing, thanks, but most of the time I wish I *didn't* have it. It's a life-altering distraction that can't be turned-off. That might be one good thing to say for a tech alternative: it will of course have the on-off switch that I wish I had.

Sure it's cool but....

[Anonymous Coward]

what are the applications for porn?

It should be possible with high-end pohnes

[S3D]

I don't think phones have the computing power to do dynamic features now

Actually they do. There are several working implementation of dense feature detectors on the smartphone, including SIFT, FAST and SURF, and some of them are capable of doing planar image registration(like Daniel Wagner "markerless" tracker. It's using image as fiduciary). The real difficulty is getting 3d structure form motion on the mobile, but that could be possible too soon. My opinion is tat 500+Mhz smartphone with floating point support should be capable of that, at least under good lighting conditions. The problem is to find correct algorithm with good enough optimization. Most of modern phones have DSP coprocessor, but API for it is closed by manufacturer. With open DSP API it would be practically sure thing.

Anime is (not) a lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we are one step closer to the "Dennou coil" anime. Horay!

Can we talk about the tech please?

[Chicken04GTO]

just like slashdot to argue over the goddamned name of the technology and avoid actually discussing the tech itself.

don't forget fashion sense

[Fractal Dice]

Once you go beyond the mechanics physical receptor to what interpretations we are gathering about the world, suddenly we have a great many senses.

We have a great many senses focused around identifying peer groups and mood states of other humans. The cuteness-sense of seeing a baby animal is as much a digestion of brightness and color to give an important data point as pressure senses lead to giving us a perception of balance/acceleration.

One of the things we humans are great at is extending our sense of self on the fly - we learn to see a tool as an extension of our arm, we internalize all the gauges and vibrations of a car into our sense of self, a game avatar becomes an extension of our presence, a facebook profile becomes a proximity sensor for social connectedness.

I see a sense as any metric about the state of the world that gets passed around the brain. I think restricting it to merely the typical input variables of a physics equation creates an unneeded division between amongst the analysis and data-packaging activities of the brain.

How about practicality?

[S45or1]

Wasn't this attempted before? I don't have the link off the top of my head, but hasn't the so-called "Minority Report computer" been made and then shunned because the average american user's arms would get tired after a marathon computing session? Of course, anything's possible. Look at the Nintendo Wii. That gets people to wave their hands for hours on end, and folks seem dandy with it.

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Old news

[Mr. Firewall]

Pretty much as predicted over two years ago in South Park episodes 1012-1013 ("Go God Go") in which people 500 years in the future are using this thing to make computer screens in mid-air....

So its a like a Hud

[Anonymous Coward]

So its a Hud
a simple one at that but its a start
her comment at the end of the video has me intrigued...brain implants
I could be like terminator...or like the matrix peoples
I see something I don't know about and point (or "think") at it and it tells me all about it

this combined with advances in bionics is awesome

Don't forget the noise generator

[inKubus]

Also there's the noise generator, also known as the creative mind. If you count senses as basically a signal generator (IE: eyes generate a signal based on the light levels, ears generate a signal, etc.) then the creative mind is definitely one as well. Too many people think of the senses as the sense itself plus the filtering system of the brain (and the recording and cataloging sections as well). Looking at them as a package prevents one from seeing that the filtering, recording and cataloging systems work independently of the actual senses. In reality, your entire nervous system is one sense, with various adapters (eyes, ears, etc) connected to it. But because of the massive capabilities of the adaptors, other, unseen capabilities are often ignored. Like all systems that carry signals, the nervous system is subject to noise, interference, and other unintended signals. The filtering and cataloging systems in the brain can be put to work on this noise, and literally create something (a new thought) out of nothing (noise). For lack of a better way to label it, this is the creative mind, where inspiration comes from. Likewise, the processes can also be used to sense characteristics of the adapters that may not be their primary purpose. The ear, for instance, is designed to sense air pressure, but it can also help with balance because the air pressure adapter is also affected by gravity. I think a lot of the brain/sense structure is misunderstood simply because we go our entire lives only believing there are 5 senses and not seeing the true nature of ourselves. I think that is where you were going with your comment, just wanted to finish the thought.

Cool, if you turn a blind eye

[Anonymous Coward]

Neat trick. Do you believe that the video showing information about a student would work in real life? Just where, exactly, is the searchable **publicly** available database of biometric-friendly photographs of everybody mapping them to names of those people? Or do you think that a real-world shelf product would be easily looked up by letting a camera eyeball it's packaging?

There's a reason this thing isn't real, and that reason is *not* that nobody thought of it before. There is such a long way the web needs to go before something like this becomes possible it's just silly.

functions

[bateteo]

I really hope some more advanced features to be included too. Like those which I need to replace my wife ;).

This will define the future -human computer inter.

[future.nerd]

I don't know about anybody else, but I agree with this following article saying and I quote "This device will define the next level of human computer interaction." Seriously, I am tired of using my stupid mouse and keyboard to navigate through maps: http://www.codingfuture.com/sixthsense-gestural-interface-for-future/