Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

BBC News has posted an article regarding the use of and subsequent outrage regarding high-pitched auditory devices that allow individuals to effectively disperse crowds of young people by playing tones which only young ears are consciously sensitive to.

From the article:

The devices, which exploit the fact that a person’s ability to hear high frequencies generally declines once they reach their 20s, have proved popular with councils and police who aim to tackle anti-social behaviour by using them to disperse groups of youths.

But a new campaign called “Buzz off”, led by the children’s commissioner for England and backed by groups including civil liberties group Liberty, is calling for them to be scrapped.

As with a few of the organizations outlined in the article, I believe that using these kinds of devices in public or private settings is patently wrong. It appears that our perspective on dealing with modern youth can be rather easily summed up as one of complete disinterest until the personal discomfort of the “mature” leads to annoyance. The fact that many of these devices are being used in commercial centers in the UK is laughable. Indeed, it is becoming more and more evident that our own “need” to consume in the peaceful confines of shopping malls, replete with painstakingly designed and tested advertisements saddled with complimentary muzak to create feelings of indifference towards our spending, has replaced our understanding of one of our foundational rights; that of our own cognitive liberty.

It strikes me that the concept of cognitive liberty, which I believe is the paramount philosophical creation of the human mind, is the liberty in which all other liberties swim with impunity. Without it as a foundation and breeding ground for thought, other liberties, such as free speech and the freedom of religion, become nothing more than good intentions bolstered by empty rhetoric. To subject another human without permission or warning to a sound with the intent of actively disrupting their thought process and, in some cases, causing them some deal of physical discomfort seems to be another sign of a potentially scary future. This seems especially true when the individuals utilizing these dispersion techniques are doing so out of concern for the material goods they’re peddling. The scary future exemplified by not only intentions of these kinds of devices, but by the lack of foresight of the men and women who bring them to the table as good solutions is something to take into great consideration as we continue to turn our understanding of the human body and technology against the people who will one day be asked to better it.

Dave at Cognitive Daily posted an interesting article about a listener’s ability to discern the differences between high-quality (256kbps), low-quality (128kbps), and really low-quality (64kbps) MP3 samples. I was able to choose them all correctly using my ears, my MacBook Pro’s sound card, and studio quality in-ear monitors.

Let’s see how humemes readers do. Here are the MP3’s he used in a different order:

Copland 1:

Copland 2:

Copland 3:

Santana 1:

Santana 2:

Santana 3:

After you’ve listened, post your guesses in the comments.

Here is a video of an introduction speech for the class Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs given by Hal Abelson of MIT in 1986:

Here is a video of John Maeda, the Associate Director of Research for MIT’s Media Lab, at the last TED conference in March 2007 discussing simplicity:

Last year I read and thoroughly enjoyed Maeda’s extremely short (~120 pages) book The Laws of Simplicity. I’d recommend it to anyone who does any kind of design. While designing with simplicity in mind may seem like common sense, I think sometimes we need a reminder and Maeda’s self-referential approach to discussing simplicity is a good one.

Cognitive Daily posted an interesting article today about the potential for human-robot marriage and how our relationships with robots seem to be growing.

From the article:

My first instinct upon reading this is to believe that people won’t get as much satisfaction from such relationships as from “normal” human relationships, but I’m not sure this will be the real problem with human-robot marriage. People need much less feedback in a relationship than you might think. They assign emotions to their pets (and robots) that these creatures simply don’t possess.

Emotional attachment to non-sentient items is a pretty scary thought, but entirely real. When we are in heightened emotional states, many of us seem to attach ourselves to whatever nearby is responsive, especially if that item performs a specific function or interacts with us and our environment. How these interactions will play out as technology advances is anyone’s guess, but they will without a doubt play out.