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MIT Grad To Make Digital "SixthSense" Open Source

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the enhanced-reality-is-the-only-way-to-roll dept.

yuveraj writes to mention that Pranav Mistry, the brain behind the innovative "SixthSense" application demoed earlier this year, plans to open source the technology in order to get this to the streets faster. "Mistry’s decision has meaning beyond Sixth Sense. The desire of inventors is always to get their work into the market as quickly as possible. Usually this means waiting for it to be turned into a useful, profitable invention. Mistry is bypassing this by going straight to open source. There is no report on which license he will use, but whichever one he does choose he has put paid to the canard that open source and innovation are incompatible, for all time."

20 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. paid to the canard? by poetmatt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is it me, or does this expression make almost no sense? Regardless of the intent I don't get why it follows with "that open source and innovation are incompatible, for all time."

    Can someone translate this expression about canard?

    1. Re:paid to the canard? by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

      The writer assumes this single example totally undermines the argument that "Open Source and Innovation are incompatible".

      First, its a strawman argument. Nobody has said that innovation is incompatible with open source, at least no one has made a compelling case.

      Second its a presumption of importance way beyond the merits of the case. It is neither the first nor the most important open-sourcing of a potentially lucrative idea.

      This is Slashdot. You have to expect a certain amount of grandiosity in the story excerpts.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    2. Re:paid to the canard? by mcrbids · · Score: 2, Informative

      True innovation takes effort. Effort costs money. Giving away your stuff isn't usually a good way to make money.

      "Open source" efforts are generally quite effective at delivering answers to problems that are already well-understood and answered. Witness the whole Open-source UNIX phenomenon - UNIX was an long-standing operating system in the 1980s when it really started to gain steam, and it's downright ancient today. The problems of running a POSIX-style system are well understood.

      The BASH shell and environment of today would be quite recognizable by any UNIX developer circa 1978.

      Truly new ideas, however, are usually "held back" and kept proprietary for a while during which time the inventor/developer of the idea profits. After a while, the patent expires, and since the patent itself is public information, when it expires, that information is then added to the pool of general knowledge kept by society.

      In its basic inception, patents are a good thing!

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    3. Re:paid to the canard? by soundhack · · Score: 2, Informative

      "put paid" -- to finish something off
      "canard" -- a false or unfounded report or story

    4. Re:paid to the canard? by poetmatt · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You missed a step.

      True innovation takes effort. Effort costs money

      It's more like this:

      True innovation takes inspiration. Inspiration/innovation takes effort. Effort costs time. Time can cost money, or it can cost effort.

    5. Re:paid to the canard? by StillNeedMoreCoffee · · Score: 2, Insightful

      True, but the counter argument played out by the owners of patents and copyrights is that innovation would be dead if there was not stringent FBI level enforcement of I.P. including stringent fines and jail time. Well I guess that followed after those were commodized such that the owners of those properties were not the innovators for the most part, and the innovators are not the major benefactors of their innovation. Altruism is not dead, idea's don't have to always be owned and sold. I think we should go back to copyright only 35 years, then public domain. Afterall Steamboat Willy is now in public domain isn't he.

    6. Re:paid to the canard? by icebike · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm personally more concerned that someone who went to MIT thinks that a technology that interacts with a person is a sense. For something to be a sense, in the accepted meaning of the word, it's going to have to convey information to a person's brain. And for it to be new, it's going to have to not use sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell.

      If you follow it back to the original presentation (the "Demoed" link, you can see there is nothing even vaguely akin to a sense, although the head of the lab does use that term.

      It is more like Microsoft Surface in a wearable form, sans the surface.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  2. Re:Imagine the uses for aviation?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You may be disappointed to discover that the technology is more like multitouch gestures in the middle of the air with a projector. This has precious little to do with brain-computer interfaces of any kind.

  3. *sigh* by inviolet · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The sixth sense is accelleration. Sensory data is provided by the semicircular canals and is interpreted as sensations, therefore it deserves the title of 'sense'. Proprioception may also qualify, even though it is a derived/calculated sense.

    I give this example to my children to teach the important fact that most every person and most every textbook on Earth can be clearly and demonstrably wrong about something obvious.

    --
    FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
    1. Re:*sigh* by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Aren't those just different applications of "touch" ? Essentially I know I'm moving or upside down because I feel the effects of Gravity, and the feeling of those things is purely because of the physical pressure applied to nerves. Or at least my limitted understanding of Biology would lead me to believe that, I never took full Bio in high school.

      Wheras Sight is based on light entering your eyes, sound is your interpretation of mini air compressions around you, taste and smell have to do with different recepticals catching different molecules or something like that.

      The other senses you guys are pointing out don't really seem to be anything other then pressure sensation on the inside of your body in the exact same manner we do on the outside of our body.

  4. lol by charliemopps11 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've never gotten paid for anything I've written. I give it all away. The reward is called "Pride" As a society we simply need to find a way to make sure people like Pranav Mistry have gainful employment while they devlop things like this. As long as I have a decent job that pays my bills and afords me the time to work on software, I will continue to do so. But when employment barely pays my rent and my managers expect me to come in early and work late to the point that I have no time to do anything rewarding at all, everyone suffers because I can not continue to work on things that may or may not be profitable in the end. In my opinion the biggest obstacle in the way of innovation is profit.

  5. Re:Pilots are being taken out by greensoap · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cannot handle the G forces, I agree. But too slow? Then why do UAV's still have human pilots via remote control. Humans are being taken out because the aircraft are much more maneuverable without a human body blacking out during sustained g-forces. Also, that pesky bit about losing trained airmen when an aircraft is lost.

  6. Re:Pilots are being taken out by castironpigeon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    UAVs still have human pilots because politicians would freak out and media hysteria machines would have a field day if you had fully automated drones flying around, with or without bombs attached.

    --
    mmmm...forbidden donut
  7. I don't get it... by gabereiser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I mean, the tech is cool, don't get me wrong. Having dealt with multitouch for some years now I get it. But seriously, would anyone want to strap on a backpack, attach a bunch of gizmos to his chest, tape colors to his fingers, only to display PRE-PROGRAMMED information? I mean, the video of him is all marketing gimmick. A preloaded video of Barack Obama on the newspaper, clever bit of camera trickery. I don't see this gaining traction anymore than those wearable computers with the little lcd screen in your eye glasses. I would rather have a system that uses Augmented Reality. This "contraption" was deemed open source by it's creator because it's creator knows no one is willing to fork over the cash to bring this to market because it's a terrible concept.

    1. Re:I don't get it... by DeadDecoy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's not a terrible concept, it's simply a solution looking for a problem.

      But seriously, would anyone want to strap on a backpack, attach a bunch of gizmos to his chest, tape colors to his fingers, only to display PRE-PROGRAMMED information?

      The object he's showing is a prototype and will naturally have a larger form-factor relative to any final product. The reason for the backpack is to have something to hold his dev machine which runs the software. This can easily be put into a smaller computer or micro-controller at some later point in time. And all those gizmos amount to the coordination of multiple devices: web cam and projector, simply because no one has thought to combine the items yet. Again, once there is a market for the combined features, products will probably follow. As for the pre-programmed information, it's certainly true that this performs a limited number of operations, but common, this is only one guy demoing his prototype. There could be plenty of additional operations once this product is open sourced. You just have no imagination

      Imagine if such a device was attached to 'the cloud' at some wi-fi cafe. I could be browsing some journal articles projected onto the table, and upon finding an interesting item, send it to a friend somewhere else in the world. Feeling the need to discuss, we could then have a video conference on that table. Once done, I might load up pong and wait until my food is served. A lot of this is a "marketing gimmick" because the uses of such a device have not yet been fully explored. There's a huge pipeline of products and software interfaces that need to be hacked out before its ready for the public, but it certainly holds potential. You just have to make it cheap enough for the average consumer and find that killer app. Personally I wouldn't mind such a device in place of a Kindle/Nook with a decent reference manager, and would probably hack away at the open source to make that happen.

      You're probably against this because you have no idea of how it could be useful or popular. But don't worry, a lot of other, smarter people will probably get it done for you.

  8. Re:Imagine the uses for aviation?!?! by thhamm · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine having the instruments being "beamed" into your head

    Exactly! Just like this fluid gets into this egg, but with gamma radiation! (This post has been beamed into your brain by Lightspeed Brand Briefs).

  9. Simple English Slashdot, Please by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    he has put paid to the canard

    Now there's a new one. *fumbles through idiom dictionary*

    1. Re:Simple English Slashdot, Please by gr3kgr33n · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Put paid to"
      Meaning :To deal with effectively; to finish something off.
      http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/293200.html

      "Canard"
      Meaning: a false or unfounded report or story

      --
      My backup chemistry thesis stored on Data Storing Bacteria mutated; granting me a degree in forensic anthropology. v4sw7
  10. Re:Pilots are being taken out by vlm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Um... We do have fully automated drones flying around, both with and without bombs attached.

    We do have fully automated drones flying around, both with and without pilots attached...

    You'd be surprised what a good autopilot can do. Did you know the space shuttle, using 70s tech, lands itself, with the only human interaction being pushing the landing gear doors? No kidding hands completely off from orbit to runway using 40 year old tech?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  11. Media Lab? Unless it comes from the 1st floor... by snsh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The stuff that comes out of upper floors of the Media Lab generally don't commercialize well. Anyone remember Charmed Technologies? A couple of grads from the same group tried to commercialize wearable computers - the company didn't survive the bubble collapsing. The first floor of the Media Lab is different; they're more like traditional researchers and work on things like e-ink. But the upper floors generate demo after demo, that look cute and generate press, but not much commercial value.