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Archive for July, 2009

The Digital Brain

July 28th, 2009
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NewScientist has an article, Evesdropping on the Music of the Brain, in which they described how philosopher Dan Lloyd created software that gave a musical interpretation to signals generated by a functional MRI. While brain music is interesting by itself, NewScientist asked if there could be other uses for the information presented in this way.

Could identifying such aural differences ever be useful? Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, thinks they might. He says brain music’s killer application might be in allowing researchers to home in on patterns that suggest a particular region is interesting and that wouldn’t be detectable using the eye alone. They could analyse these regions more closely using conventional imaging.

His colleague Didier Grandjean at the University of Geneva in Switzerland says that brain music might help identify temporal patterns in particular. “Melodies are a much better way to build complex mental representations over time than anything the eye can do,” he says.

I can imagine that the visualization (MRI pictures) and the “music” could be useful for bio-feedback as well as for diagnosis. For example, the TED Conference has a four minute video by Christopher deCharms on using MRI to control your brain in order to manage your pain.

Coaching moment: As medical diagnostic and interpretive procedures become more creative and useful, we are at greater risk for being denied medical insurance or benefits, or otherwise marginalized by our records. This is a most important time to make your voice heard in the health care matter that is being discussed in Congress right now. Do you want health care that is based on risk (calculated by your insurers) or based on your health? Here’s a link to find out about the proposed health care legislation or to identify and contact your senators and representatives. I strongly urge you to speak for yourself on this issue.

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Finding Yourself

July 15th, 2009
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This is Michael Wesch’s keynote talk from the second day of Personal Democracy Forum 2009. Wesch is a professor of anthropology at Kansas State University, and was the author of “The Machine is Us(ing) Us,” a video about how the internet is changing society.

Wesch talks about “a core ethic of our society: a search for identity and recognition; in a society that does not automatically give identity and recognition. You have to create your own.” Wesch points out that we face two threats: 1) self-centered modes of self-fulfillment, which leads to civic and social disengagement, and 2) negation of all horizons of significance, which leads to divergent views, fragmentation, and “special interest sound bite politics.” He continues with why this matters, and why it matters deeply.

It’s an interesting talk. Wesch raises important questions.

Coaching moment: There are really two parts to your identity: 1) who you think you are and who you want to be, and 2) all of the external parts of your identity. The two parts reflect how you want to appear and interact with the world (inside looking out), and how you’re seen by the world (outside looking at you). You have more control over who you want to be.

Sometimes we feel a disconnect when we learn that our external artifacts paint a picture of who we are that’s very different from how we see ourselves. The evidence is there. Is it being misinterpreted, or does it reveal something about us that makes us uncomfortable? Often we find that it’s a little of both. What if you could change that, even just a little?

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On Being Recognized

July 10th, 2009
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This is a working demo for an “augmented identity” system. ReadWriteWeb has a great article about this called Augmented ID: Augmented Reality Facial Recognition for Mobile that talks about the program in this video as well as others working in this area. One note: at this point in time and development, you need to capture the person’s face from the front.

That’s people. There is also augmentation for the place where you’re standing, the sounds of your life and more. (The last link is from 2007!)

Coaching moment: Have you ever gone somewhere and wondered about a place you were passing? Or joined a party and wished you remembered someone’s name? Your new glasses might be fitted with a small digital screen to display certain things (like names) discreetly. Your new audio stream might include stories and facts about places you’re walking through. Learning about things will become a whole new experience.

Of course there’s another side: surveillance and public cameras can be matched with face and license plate recognition for pervasive and effective surveillance. In the (near) future, it’s possible that your parent or spouse may not need to ask where you were last night.

Right now, the greatest promises are those we hold in our own hands. Where we control the information that we need, when we need it, we are empowered to benefit from the augmentations (hardware and software). When control of information is in control by unknown interests, be they law enforcement, private organizations, or malevolent forces, we do not enjoy the benefits of safety, security, or helpful information despite the public relations stories.

Here’s a suggestion to help you think about this. Go for a walk and take a note pad with you. Make several brief stops and look around. What would you like to know about where you are? What would you be worried about happening? How will augmented reality tools help or hurt your wishes? Write those things down. Keep writing in your notebook for a week and see what happens.

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You (the default mode)

July 8th, 2009
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Science News is running an article called You Are Who You Are By Default in which author Tina Hesman Saey explores the brain’s default network. This network, one researcher believes, is “more active when the brain is at rest.” There are two areas in the brain that seem to work as your default network.

From the article:

Functions ascribed to those two areas may give clues to what the default network is good for. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in imagining, thinking about yourself and “theory of mind,” which encompasses the ability to figure out what others think, feel or believe and to recognize that other people have different thoughts, feelings and beliefs from you. The precuneus and PCC are involved in pulling personal memories from the brain’s archives, visualizing yourself doing various activities and describing yourself.

Together, these hubs give you a sense of who you are. Their prominence in the network has led some researchers to propose that the function of the default mode is to allow you to internally explore the world and your place in it, so you can plot future actions, including contingency plans for various scenarios you might encounter.

Of interest, your default network can also be a source of distraction:

The default mode network sometimes stirs during monotonous tasks, drawing away a person’s attention. Such reactivation of the network predicted errors up to 30 seconds before a person made a mistake…. And a study … shows that not only is the default network involved in mind-wandering, it also distracts executive areas of the brain, so that people aren’t even aware that their minds have wandered off task.

The article continues to explore the network as a center of certain brain-based illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) or Alzheimer’s. These are all parts of our inner selves that make us unique and who we are.

Coaching moment: Our minds are busy balancing our priorities and needs during every moment of our lives. What does this have to do with digital identity? Everything: it’s our priorities and needs that are being represented by ones and zeros–that are in the control of various parties.

When something is really important to me, I like to make sure that it’s taken care of according to my standards.  But when my details are in someone else’s hands, and they have a very different set of priorities, I don’t have any assurances that my interests will be represented, much less taken care of. I believe others feel the same way about certain details in their lives.

So the question arises: what’s most important to you? What details of your life would you feel most strongly about having exclusive control over? What things do you care less about? Are there any systems or tools that might help you with the important bits? Are you fighting the interests of a powerful company or industry? What’s it going to take?

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The State of Digital Identity

July 6th, 2009
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This video is the first of eight parts of a panel discussion from RSA 2009: Panel of Identity Organizations. This panel discussion is a bit technical, with speakers talking about standards and how things work (or not). RSA, the company hosting this conference, is involved in security, cryptography, and related technologies.

The entire series in this panel discussion is about an hour long. Sometimes I don’t mind listening to discussions that are over my head in terminology or technical detail if I can take away a general idea of where things are. From this hour, I came to understand the following things:

  • open source, and more importantly open standards, are key to developing interoperable tools
  • making all of these ideas work together is “in progress” as there are lots of pieces in each idea
  • it’s tough to find a balance between putting us in control and giving us too much to control
  • there are many bright and determined minds working on this

Coaching moment: I’m optimistic that a day will come in which you can choose to represent yourself with greater detail. For example, you may not wish to “friend” everyone who asks you on Facebook or MySpace, and you might not follow everyone back on Twitter. If you did, you might want to choose to see (or not see) certain people in your friend or twitter streams every day. It will be easy to, say, turn off “loudmouthguy” for a few days, or “use this account to log into those other accounts.”

Mind boggling, eh? Here’s the secret: it all gets down to trust and attention. Both are your most valuable assets.

Who in your life do you trust most? Who would you like to pay greatest attention to? Now imagine some form of customimized slider bars that you could adjust for everyone you know: from 0 (not much trust or attention) to 10 (alert me if this person says anything). Once you set this up, what would your world be like?

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