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On-Body Circuits Create New Sense Organ
destinyland writes "In 'My New Sense Organ,' a science writer tests 'a new sense' — the ability to always know true north — by strapping a circuit board to her ankle. It's connected to an electronic compass and an ankle band with eight skin buzzers. The result? 'I had wrong assumptions I didn't know about ... I returned home to Washington DC to find that, far worse than my old haunt San Francisco, my mental map of DC swapped north for west. I started getting more lost than ever as the two spatial concepts of DC did battle in my head.' The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields.'
A bracelet! Much more practical than the haptic compass belt, then.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Is this really a new sensory organ if it just relies on buzzers rather than direct neural connections? Maybe I've just been spoiled by all the awesome research done in computer-brain interfaces.
...from my ankle to a more "centrally located area" and I stopped caring about getting lost.
In fact, turning in circles became quite pleasurable.
Does anyone have any kleenex handy?
I've heard of people implanting tiny rare earth magnets in their fingers so they can sense current flowing through wires and magnetic fields. I would like to try it when I can be certain they won't break when they're under my skin... :P
I've been to Northern Canada. A compass points to MAGNETIC North. True North is at the North pole, the point on which the earth spins. At true north, the sun never sets, and sometimes never rises for days on end. In summer, it has the longest days in the world. In winter, the longest nights. Magnetic north is not the same place at all ...
Magnetic North has some interesting properties too. Amongst others, the Magnetic south and north poles move around, periodically flip, and do not pass through the center of the earth.
Or Forehead.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
"Men, on the other hand, rarely use anything but a map. If I changed a street sign outside my apartment, my male friends probably wouldn't be able to find the place anymore."
Maybe I'm an exception, but I don't think that's true at all. I navigate entirely by landmarks. I don't even know the names of half the streets I travel on regularly. Furthermore, my mental map of the city is framed by our light rail system, major bus lines, and bike throughfares, not by the major roads carrying automobile traffic.
When I was a teen, I always consciously kept track where the North was. Every time I made a turn, I would adjust my imaginary compass - yeah I was some kind of freak. I would also make note of the orientation of some landmarks in every city. After a while, it became an automatism, now (over 20 yrs later) I often amaze people by pointing where the North is with very good accuracy without using a compass. It always works, but if I have been a passenger in a car (or other transport) it takes about half an hour after arriving before I know where the North is. Extra bonus: if the sun is visible, I can read the time of day from its position. I guess everybody can train it with a little bit of effort.
How to write an "Insightful" comment
1) Find a quote from the article, and claim you've always known it, and what is more everybody already knows it.
2) Make AWESOME generalisations about "how, like, men and women are different, yeah?"
Really insightful. Can we remove the current judges and get new ones?
No, but the user might know how to correct for it.
Step 1: look up magnetic declination for your location (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/IGRF_2000_magnetic_declination.gif
Step 2: rotate the ankle bracelet to compensate.
Or stand where you know you are facing true north, then rotate anklet until it indicates true north.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Some friends and I are the creator of the North Paw compass anklet. You can check out our website at sensebridge, or read all of our hack notes on the noisebridge wiki: compass vibro anket. You can purchase North Paw kits from us for $95, and then you don't have to take Quinn's word for what it's like to wear one :-)
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
I've lived in Southern Ontario most of my life and have a fairly good sense of direction. I usually know where north is.I wonder if this is more a function of memory than an innate ability: if I am a passenger in a car and fall asleep, I'll be lost when I wake up until I see enough visual cues to reestablish my knowledge of where north is. The same happens if I'm driving through a subdivision with lots of curved streets. A couple of decades ago I moved to Saskatoon in western Canada. I was lost. It wasn't the kind of random sense of being lost you get when you move to the new place. My sense of direction was completely reversed. I'd go south instead of north, east instead of west, not east instead of north or south instead of west. One day, I realized that this probably had to do with the rivers. I have usually lived near rivers, in places where I can actually see the river most days. In Southern Ontario, most of the rivers flow north-to-south. In Saskatoon, the river flows south-to-north. I think I had come to use rivers as mnemonic cues for direction. As soon as I realized this, my mental map of Saskatoon reoriented itself and I was never lost again.
I think it's cultural.
I lived in Scotland for a while and whenever I asked for directions the men would always say something like: drive down this road a piece until you get to the Crooked Horseshoe Pub, take a right and drive to the second roundabout after the Dog and Monkey Pub. Take the third right and drive to the Old Tennents Pub. Go right at the next roundabout and drive about 3 miles. If you reach the Goose Bridge Pub you've gone too far... Stop and have a cold one, then go back about a mile or so.
Show them a map and they look at you like you just asked them to diagram a sentence in Latin... and you're likely to hear some quaint Scottish expressions...
Compass On
Apply directly to the forehead.
Not that I'm surprised -- women will navigate first by landmarks and familiarity, and if that fails they fall back on maps. Men, on the other hand, rarely use anything but a map.
[Citation needed]
Like most men, I suck at giving directions because I can't remember the actual names of most of the streets used. Just like women, men navigate by running a sequence of events in a specific order, navigating by waypoints (landmarks) rather than absolute position. I suck at estimating the distance between landmarks, too, to the point where sometimes I get discouraged and turn around before I reach one, thinking I've already gone past it. And... (checking below belt buckle...) I'm definitely male.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I think we have cultural bias here. Just think about all the people that live in a great city in Japan, with almost all the streets that have absolutely no names, and people who live there manage to do everything without problem. In fact they don't even realize this could be different.
The device also detects 'the specific places where infrastructure interferes with the earth's magnetic fields'
Like the Swan hatch?
I object to this inaccurate stereotype. Where's the stop at the chip shop for a deep-fried Mars bar?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You are likely an exception. My wife uses landmarks to navigate, I prefer addresses. She'll tell me to pick up my daughter at Suzy's house, assuming that I know exactly where that is because I was there once a year ago. If I ask where is that, she'll say "it's on the street by the golf course in the green house on the same side as where Bob and Judy used to live", which still hasn't conveyed any useful information to me. What I want to hear is "1234 Trent Avenue" which uniquely identifies the house. That way I'm not standing there like a dumbass in front of the wrong green house.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Not that I'm surprised -- women will navigate first by landmarks and familiarity, and if that fails they fall back on maps. Men, on the other hand, rarely use anything but a map.
That's not quite true. Your explanation is generally accurate for how men and women give directions, and for if they're going somewhere they've never been (or have been a few times but don't know the way by memory yet). Women will give spatial directions (turn left at the QuikTrip, turn right at the second street past the big church on the right...) whereas men will generally use street names.
However, if you've already been somewhere a few times, it doesn't matter whether you're male or female: If you've been there enough times to remember the route, you're probably going off landmarks. I know I would be, and I'm definitely male...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
How could anyone lose track of cardinal directions in DC, even for a moment? It's built on a NS/EW grid, with the streets named on a number/letter system. It's got a giant phallic symbol sticking up in the exact middle (which is at 16th street NW, okay, but that still shouldn't affect one's sense of north vs. west).
The only place I can imagine where it would be harder to mistake west for north would be Manhattan, with its street (EW) vs. avenue (NS) distinction being impossible to miss.
If the wearer was passively registering the information from the anklet, then it would truly be only 45 degree resolution. However, when wearing it, it quickly becomes habit to twist the ankle back and forth slightly, to feel the exact point at which active motors change. This way the resolution approaches something close to the actual sensing capabilities of the compass IC (minus noise from the lag of the motors spinning up and down). It's the same unconscious action by which you might tilt something at an angle to see it's surface better. To answer the magnetic vs. true north question, the fact of the matter is that it really doesn't matter WHAT it points at. We picked (magnetic) North because that's seems a good default standard in Western culture. The usefulness of the device is in having an ever-persistent point of reference. As long as that directional reference is *consistent*, it should be able to point any cardinal direction and still be integrated into ones cognitive sphere. (Disclaimer, I'm the co-developer and have a lot of experience wearing one.)
True.
I suspect it is also related to the generality that men are better communicators, while women are better listeners.
Men want to understand (and to be understood). Women want to feel (and want you to feel the same way). We've probably all heard the saying, "If a woman tells you about her problem, she doesn't want you to solve it, she wants you to listen". Of course it's not always 100% true, but it's still an accurate generalization.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
My understanding is that women navigate by discrete landmarks building up a continuous linking of landmarks.
Men navigate by way points and distances. They flag in their brain decision points and then track distance to next point.
My wife and I've compared notes while driving and that certainly seems to be the case.
The argument I've heard from an evolutionary view is women needed a very accurate mental image of nearby areas for gathernig. Men needed to be able to navigate to remote areas and return without really knowing a great deal about the intervening details.
There are several cultures, most famously Australian Aborigines, where you can't even speak the language correctly if you don't have this skill. A quick example is from this article by Lera Borodistky:
Are you adequate?
I am a truck driver, so I do this navigating thing a lot. Strangely, 95% of truck drivers are men, probably because we actually have to get there on time.
Just for a laugh, can you imagine America being discovered by women ? Yes, head out on that blue stuff, keep an eye out for a really big wave then turn right until you see a whale. After that just go straight on until you get really hungry.