...is how children in these countries will gain access to all of the other things you need to make a laptop into a real tool for learning (and while whether stuff like a printer and shiny pre-packaged educational software may or may not be necessary, I think we can all agree that they would at least need an internet connection, and some software that may not be available as freeware). While this is a great idea, I wonder whether he also has plans to set up a free or low-cost ISP in these areas. Or, barring that, I wonder whether these laptops will have CD-RW or floppy drives, and if so, whether the school will be provided with blank disks/CDs.
You also have to wonder whether there's some way to provide teachers/parents in these areas with some sort of computer education, both so that they can utilise the computers intelligently in the classroom, and so that they can teach the children basic skills as well.
I guess my point is: while this is a beautiful idea in theory, I wonder if it will have much effect without lots of additional support behind it.
As this topic is closely related to my own area of CS research, I was very interested to see the various comments on this matter. The first commenter (who pointed out that guide dogs provide more than simple directional guidance) has an excellent point; however, as others have pointed out, robots can process many types of information that dogs never could, can be programmed to do things that a dog simply cannot do, and can receive information from sources other than visual and auditory stimuli (as with the RFID tags).
As for the RFID tag conspiracy theorists: seriously, I completely understand your reservations about this technology, with all the talk of RFID-containing passports, and such. And I agree completely that this is a technology with a huge possibility of potential abuse, by agents as various as governmental agencies and "identity thieves". However, I think it's important to keep from losing sight of the fact that this is not an irreconcilably evil techology, by any means; it's not a bomb or a gun. There are so many ways this technology can be used to help people, as several users above have pointed out.
As for this robot itself (and its software): as we all know, speech recognition has a long way to go before it's really an optimised technology (especially when being used, say, in a crowded public place); nevertheless, I think the concept behind these robots is a great one, and I hope that he finds a way to make it marketable.
Excellent point; glad to see you've already been modded up for this.
All of the people who have posted in defense of this sticker have expounded upon the idea that "evolution is just a theory, so we need to alert kids about this so that they can be open to other viewpoints!" While I think that creationism is a bunch of nonsense, I do agree that alternative *academic* points of view should be presented.
But how can we decide which issues to flag? Well, how about this: have a significant number of scientists or scholars questioned the status quo on a certain issue? Has legitimate, peer-reviewed academic research been found and presented in support of their ideas? If so, go right ahead; add a page to the history textbooks about how the Salem Witchcraft Trials were caused by rotten grain rather than a vindicitive, closed-minded society; add a sentence to physics textbooks debunking quantum theory, or whatever.
However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence (and by scientific evidence i mean just what I said before, peer-reviewed academic research) to disprove evolution. Furthermore, putting a sticker on the front of a book, rather than simply adding a page to the chapter about whatever topic you're deriding seems, to me, equivalent to stamping a big "VOID" on the front of the textbook in red ink.
I think the real question here is: what are robots *for*? I'm sure we've all heard the fantastic scenarios of Luddites and doomsayers wherein robots displace 99% of real humans from their jobs, or where they take over the world and kill us all. This is not to say that neither of these scenarios is possible; what it means is that before we consider the more technical aspects of robots (e.g., their power source) or the philosophical minutiae, we need to look at the bigger picture. The main question that I feel needs to be addressed, at this point, is: What are robots *for*?
Should our first priority be designing robots to perform dangerous or undesirable occupational tasks that, up to this point, were only able to be done by humans? If so, what sort of laws will govern their implementation-- i.e., if a company elects to lay off, say, all of its human slaughterhouse workers and purchase these robots instead, how will the human workers be compensated?
Or should we be concentrating on creating robots that can aid the disabled-- say, a guide 'dog' for the blind with a much higher-level skill set, and more longevity? If so, what rules will govern the use of these robots? And so forth.
I think that the problem with this article isn't that the questions are difficult to answer; it's that the wrong questions are being asked. We need to think about why we want robots, and what laws will govern them, before we can worry about anything else.
Yeah, case modders who do things like this are about as close to real "hackers" as were the kids in the hilarious and eponymous 1995 movie i'm sure we've all seen...remember that, where sysadmins sit in front of giant room-size screens that flash the password "GOD" over and over, and where hackers spray paint their laptops?
Maybe the people who got the idea to mod RAM in this manner watched that movie and that's where they got all their hardware hacking ideas from.
Personally, I feel that (with the exception of truly artistic case mods, like those posted above) "real" hackers/nerds/whatever shouldn't waste time to do any superficial aesthetic hardware mods beyond stuff like ripping the Dell sticker out of your monitor/case and replacing it with a linux one, or something along those lines.
I'm not diabetic, but I am a CS grad student who will soon be working on a thesis regarding medical technology (though in an area totally unrelated to yours). Obviously I have no personal experience with either type of device you mentioned, but one thing I've seen from my own research is that people who may have comorbid diagnoses are often going to require medical devices whose user interface is more flexible than that of an entertainment device or a device meant to be operated by medical professionals. For example: users of hearing aides are normally alerted to the fact that the device is turned to an inappropriate volume for their settings/not inserted correctly/left turned on when taken out of the ear by a feedback noise. However, for users whose hearing loss is more severe in the high frequencies, they may not be able to hear this sound at all (even with an aide of the proper power & settings to aid their hearing in low-frequency ranges), and may (for example) leave the hearing aide on for extended periods of time while it's stored in a drawer, potentially causing damage to these extremely expensive devices. However, having a visual alert (say, a small LED) alone would not be sufficient, as many hearing aide users are elderly and thus may also have vision problems. Although this is a relatively simple example, I guess you can see my point of why people designing a medical device meant for people who are elderly and/or frequently present with comorbid diagnoses must keep these facts in mind.
My thought: make it as simple as possible on the user end; perhaps have a few different modes. For example, a mode for the sight-impaired with large text, backlighting, and/or a voicebox; and another mode for hearing-impaired users (or just for people needing to use the device in a place where loud sounds are inappropriate). Keep the options in the user interface to a minimum; maybe just a startup screen with a "check sugar" option, a "view history" option, and a "test device" option if applicable.
I agree with what other people have said about having some sort of method to upload the data from this device to a PC; it would be great if there was a "doctor mode" as well, wherein the physician could link the device up to his PC, upload the data, and view graphs and other reports in a quick and concise manner. Of course, this option could also be accessible to users who had the desire to view it.
Ok, i think I've rambled on for long enough now....sorry, this is what happens when it's Friday and I'm at work yet have no actual work to do:).
I agree, this makes a lot of sense. A nice coffee shop in Tokyo's crowded area of Shibuya has very high prices, maybe US$6-7 for a small cup of coffee or cappucino. This seems so silly, when you could buy it in the vending machine for less than 1/5 the price. But as my brother pointed out, the reason you pay so much here in that busy area isn't that this coffee is particularly good, but the fact that you get to sit down to drink it and have a table to work at, and this is such a crowded expensive place that businesses must pay a lot to rent their store. Coffee=rent is a pretty common view in this area, and people take it to the full extent; you can find people sitting in these coffee shops for 8 hours, one sip of cold coffee left in the cup in front of them.
Good call...even my cute and absurdly small Sony Vaio (with its purposely low-voltage 1.1 gHz processor and battery, screen, and other features made to be really long-lasting) can't last more than 6 hours in general.
I don't see any real reason why people should be questioned at all when travelling within the country; our possessions and persons are already searched, we already walk through metal detectors
Excellent point. It may be annoying or inconvenient to be detained for hours because of your ethnicity or because of some random item you happen to be carrying/wearing that somehow arouses suspicion. However, of course, the implications of a system in which our passport contains all the information the government knows about us (did post something angry in your blog when Bush was "re-elected"? Are you a college student of middle-eastern descent studying engineering? Well, you must be a terrorist!) are far greater.
That, to me, is the problem; I see this "innovation" not as a convenience or an added security method, but essentially as a possible way for governments to act like the Thought Police.
Actually, I've already read that book (all of Murakami's books are great... he manages to write artsy books in a way that isn't pretentious, and write about tragedy so it doesn't seem melodramatic), and I think it does have a good point, indeed. Unless you can forsee every possible method of "terrorism", and unless you can find a way to inspect 100% of the people using your transit system with 100% thoroughness, all that these security measures become is an inconvenience at best and unconstitutional discrimination at worst.
Naturally, I agree with the majority of people here that RFID passports are insecure, a threat to our privacy, and just generally a bad idea. However, I see a bigger problem here-- and a trend that's been growing over the past few years, at airports in America as well as in other countries.
Airport security has already essentially dropped the facade of "random" checks; my male relatives (of Israeli descent, but most holding American passports) have all been interrogated/strip-searched/had the bomb squad called on them in the past few years at various airports throughout the world, for no justifiable reason. I find it pretty ridiculous that governments are spending so much money paying people to do things such as spend 2 hours detaining/interrogating a random girl (me) and doing things such as turning my violin upside down and shaking it violently, repeatedly turning my laptop on and off, etc., asking me idiotic questions ("why do you have this computer? what are you using it for?").
At any rate (sorry, got a bit off-track there), the real problem I see is this: airport security/governments in general already have such ridiculous criteria for profiling thought criminals (oh excuse me, "suspected terrorists".) It's bad enough to be detained/searched in this manner on a regular basis simply because of your ethnicity or appearance, but with RFID passports, passports containing a smartcard, etc., they can just take it one step further and start flagging "suspicious" people even more easily.
Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but I really fell that the biggest threat here is not random criminals trying to steal your data or abduct you (as others have suggested); I think it's government entities with which we should be more concerned.
...I remember having surgery when I was a kid and having the doctor tell my mother to take my GB out of the hospital room, because Playing Video Games Is Bad For You(TM). Glad to see that the medical profession has changed its mind.
And indeed, I find the argument that "video games destroy childrens' minds and will turn them into psychopathic lunatics" to have already been disproven, given that my siblings and I all grew up playing Nintendo/GB/etc. like there was no tomorrow, and now we're all scientists. The non-mad kind of scientists, even. So I think we turned out OK in spite of having Mario as a childhood companion.
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...is how children in these countries will gain access to all of the other things you need to make a laptop into a real tool for learning (and while whether stuff like a printer and shiny pre-packaged educational software may or may not be necessary, I think we can all agree that they would at least need an internet connection, and some software that may not be available as freeware). While this is a great idea, I wonder whether he also has plans to set up a free or low-cost ISP in these areas. Or, barring that, I wonder whether these laptops will have CD-RW or floppy drives, and if so, whether the school will be provided with blank disks/CDs. You also have to wonder whether there's some way to provide teachers/parents in these areas with some sort of computer education, both so that they can utilise the computers intelligently in the classroom, and so that they can teach the children basic skills as well. I guess my point is: while this is a beautiful idea in theory, I wonder if it will have much effect without lots of additional support behind it.
As this topic is closely related to my own area of CS research, I was very interested to see the various comments on this matter. The first commenter (who pointed out that guide dogs provide more than simple directional guidance) has an excellent point; however, as others have pointed out, robots can process many types of information that dogs never could, can be programmed to do things that a dog simply cannot do, and can receive information from sources other than visual and auditory stimuli (as with the RFID tags).
As for the RFID tag conspiracy theorists: seriously, I completely understand your reservations about this technology, with all the talk of RFID-containing passports, and such. And I agree completely that this is a technology with a huge possibility of potential abuse, by agents as various as governmental agencies and "identity thieves". However, I think it's important to keep from losing sight of the fact that this is not an irreconcilably evil techology, by any means; it's not a bomb or a gun. There are so many ways this technology can be used to help people, as several users above have pointed out.
As for this robot itself (and its software): as we all know, speech recognition has a long way to go before it's really an optimised technology (especially when being used, say, in a crowded public place); nevertheless, I think the concept behind these robots is a great one, and I hope that he finds a way to make it marketable.
Excellent point; glad to see you've already been modded up for this. All of the people who have posted in defense of this sticker have expounded upon the idea that "evolution is just a theory, so we need to alert kids about this so that they can be open to other viewpoints!" While I think that creationism is a bunch of nonsense, I do agree that alternative *academic* points of view should be presented. But how can we decide which issues to flag? Well, how about this: have a significant number of scientists or scholars questioned the status quo on a certain issue? Has legitimate, peer-reviewed academic research been found and presented in support of their ideas? If so, go right ahead; add a page to the history textbooks about how the Salem Witchcraft Trials were caused by rotten grain rather than a vindicitive, closed-minded society; add a sentence to physics textbooks debunking quantum theory, or whatever. However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence (and by scientific evidence i mean just what I said before, peer-reviewed academic research) to disprove evolution. Furthermore, putting a sticker on the front of a book, rather than simply adding a page to the chapter about whatever topic you're deriding seems, to me, equivalent to stamping a big "VOID" on the front of the textbook in red ink.
I think the real question here is: what are robots *for*? I'm sure we've all heard the fantastic scenarios of Luddites and doomsayers wherein robots displace 99% of real humans from their jobs, or where they take over the world and kill us all. This is not to say that neither of these scenarios is possible; what it means is that before we consider the more technical aspects of robots (e.g., their power source) or the philosophical minutiae, we need to look at the bigger picture. The main question that I feel needs to be addressed, at this point, is: What are robots *for*?
Should our first priority be designing robots to perform dangerous or undesirable occupational tasks that, up to this point, were only able to be done by humans? If so, what sort of laws will govern their implementation-- i.e., if a company elects to lay off, say, all of its human slaughterhouse workers and purchase these robots instead, how will the human workers be compensated?
Or should we be concentrating on creating robots that can aid the disabled-- say, a guide 'dog' for the blind with a much higher-level skill set, and more longevity? If so, what rules will govern the use of these robots? And so forth.
I think that the problem with this article isn't that the questions are difficult to answer; it's that the wrong questions are being asked. We need to think about why we want robots, and what laws will govern them, before we can worry about anything else.
Yeah, case modders who do things like this are about as close to real "hackers" as were the kids in the hilarious and eponymous 1995 movie i'm sure we've all seen...remember that, where sysadmins sit in front of giant room-size screens that flash the password "GOD" over and over, and where hackers spray paint their laptops? Maybe the people who got the idea to mod RAM in this manner watched that movie and that's where they got all their hardware hacking ideas from. Personally, I feel that (with the exception of truly artistic case mods, like those posted above) "real" hackers/nerds/whatever shouldn't waste time to do any superficial aesthetic hardware mods beyond stuff like ripping the Dell sticker out of your monitor/case and replacing it with a linux one, or something along those lines.
I'm not diabetic, but I am a CS grad student who will soon be working on a thesis regarding medical technology (though in an area totally unrelated to yours). Obviously I have no personal experience with either type of device you mentioned, but one thing I've seen from my own research is that people who may have comorbid diagnoses are often going to require medical devices whose user interface is more flexible than that of an entertainment device or a device meant to be operated by medical professionals. For example: users of hearing aides are normally alerted to the fact that the device is turned to an inappropriate volume for their settings/not inserted correctly/left turned on when taken out of the ear by a feedback noise. However, for users whose hearing loss is more severe in the high frequencies, they may not be able to hear this sound at all (even with an aide of the proper power & settings to aid their hearing in low-frequency ranges), and may (for example) leave the hearing aide on for extended periods of time while it's stored in a drawer, potentially causing damage to these extremely expensive devices. However, having a visual alert (say, a small LED) alone would not be sufficient, as many hearing aide users are elderly and thus may also have vision problems. Although this is a relatively simple example, I guess you can see my point of why people designing a medical device meant for people who are elderly and/or frequently present with comorbid diagnoses must keep these facts in mind.
My thought: make it as simple as possible on the user end; perhaps have a few different modes. For example, a mode for the sight-impaired with large text, backlighting, and/or a voicebox; and another mode for hearing-impaired users (or just for people needing to use the device in a place where loud sounds are inappropriate). Keep the options in the user interface to a minimum; maybe just a startup screen with a "check sugar" option, a "view history" option, and a "test device" option if applicable.
I agree with what other people have said about having some sort of method to upload the data from this device to a PC; it would be great if there was a "doctor mode" as well, wherein the physician could link the device up to his PC, upload the data, and view graphs and other reports in a quick and concise manner. Of course, this option could also be accessible to users who had the desire to view it.
Ok, i think I've rambled on for long enough now....sorry, this is what happens when it's Friday and I'm at work yet have no actual work to do:).
I agree, this makes a lot of sense. A nice coffee shop in Tokyo's crowded area of Shibuya has very high prices, maybe US$6-7 for a small cup of coffee or cappucino. This seems so silly, when you could buy it in the vending machine for less than 1/5 the price. But as my brother pointed out, the reason you pay so much here in that busy area isn't that this coffee is particularly good, but the fact that you get to sit down to drink it and have a table to work at, and this is such a crowded expensive place that businesses must pay a lot to rent their store. Coffee=rent is a pretty common view in this area, and people take it to the full extent; you can find people sitting in these coffee shops for 8 hours, one sip of cold coffee left in the cup in front of them.
Good call...even my cute and absurdly small Sony Vaio (with its purposely low-voltage 1.1 gHz processor and battery, screen, and other features made to be really long-lasting) can't last more than 6 hours in general.
Excellent point. It may be annoying or inconvenient to be detained for hours because of your ethnicity or because of some random item you happen to be carrying/wearing that somehow arouses suspicion. However, of course, the implications of a system in which our passport contains all the information the government knows about us (did post something angry in your blog when Bush was "re-elected"? Are you a college student of middle-eastern descent studying engineering? Well, you must be a terrorist!) are far greater.
That, to me, is the problem; I see this "innovation" not as a convenience or an added security method, but essentially as a possible way for governments to act like the Thought Police.
Actually, I've already read that book (all of Murakami's books are great... he manages to write artsy books in a way that isn't pretentious, and write about tragedy so it doesn't seem melodramatic), and I think it does have a good point, indeed. Unless you can forsee every possible method of "terrorism", and unless you can find a way to inspect 100% of the people using your transit system with 100% thoroughness, all that these security measures become is an inconvenience at best and unconstitutional discrimination at worst.
Naturally, I agree with the majority of people here that RFID passports are insecure, a threat to our privacy, and just generally a bad idea. However, I see a bigger problem here-- and a trend that's been growing over the past few years, at airports in America as well as in other countries. Airport security has already essentially dropped the facade of "random" checks; my male relatives (of Israeli descent, but most holding American passports) have all been interrogated/strip-searched/had the bomb squad called on them in the past few years at various airports throughout the world, for no justifiable reason. I find it pretty ridiculous that governments are spending so much money paying people to do things such as spend 2 hours detaining/interrogating a random girl (me) and doing things such as turning my violin upside down and shaking it violently, repeatedly turning my laptop on and off, etc., asking me idiotic questions ("why do you have this computer? what are you using it for?"). At any rate (sorry, got a bit off-track there), the real problem I see is this: airport security/governments in general already have such ridiculous criteria for profiling thought criminals (oh excuse me, "suspected terrorists".) It's bad enough to be detained/searched in this manner on a regular basis simply because of your ethnicity or appearance, but with RFID passports, passports containing a smartcard, etc., they can just take it one step further and start flagging "suspicious" people even more easily. Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but I really fell that the biggest threat here is not random criminals trying to steal your data or abduct you (as others have suggested); I think it's government entities with which we should be more concerned.
...I remember having surgery when I was a kid and having the doctor tell my mother to take my GB out of the hospital room, because Playing Video Games Is Bad For You(TM). Glad to see that the medical profession has changed its mind. And indeed, I find the argument that "video games destroy childrens' minds and will turn them into psychopathic lunatics" to have already been disproven, given that my siblings and I all grew up playing Nintendo/GB/etc. like there was no tomorrow, and now we're all scientists. The non-mad kind of scientists, even. So I think we turned out OK in spite of having Mario as a childhood companion.