The Extensions of Man

The first video in this post was originally found in Roger Ebert's recent, online journal entry, "The human race on a key ring." Read it here.

Patti Maes - "Sixth Sense" demonstration

The "controversial" feature presented in this demonstration of the "Sixth Sense" (at approximately 06:45) is hilarious, but I'm slightly creeped out by its implications.


Alarums have long been raised about the "obsolescence" of human memory in the age of digital information. Just last week, MSN.com featured an article on its homepage with the tagline: "Is Memorization Dead?" Most people I know can't remember all the phone numbers of their family and friends by heart. That information is stored onto their various communication devices which they can retrieve at the push of a button so that they don't have to remember them. The same with data of other sorts. We Google it.

What if the same practice were extended to our memory recall of the people in our lives? Can you imagine human relationships and conversations deteriorating to the point where the only way we can remember who the other person is is through "cloud tags" (bite-sized labels like the ones appended to this blog post). Or how artificial the context of human conversations would become if to break the ice, we resorted to consulting the "interests" section on their MySpace page as we're speaking to the other person? I won't mention the awkwardness that would ensue if for some reason, the projected text is undecipherable on certain types of clothing. "Um, can you take off your shirt so I can read your stats better?" Kids perceiving the world like an unholy amalgamation of Geordi La Forge and the Chris Anderson character in "Minority Report"? The streets overrun with broods of genetically engineered android children...I'll stop there.



Two things that would benefit from multi-touch, user-interface technology: music production and film editing. Make it so. (These Star Trek references are completely unintentional. Honestly.)

TED Talks: Illuminating information presented by brilliant people whom you've never heard of and some whom you have.

Thanks to Darren Aronofsky, my intelligence just expanded incrementally.

I didn't even know this site existed until he mentioned it at the Brainwave talk on March 19.

This morning, I learned something about Photosynth (software that enhances visual images of real objects, by drawing from the vast network of visual information posted by users onto the internet (via Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.) of the same object), superstring theory, brain theory, the "digital puppetry" and "emotion capture" effects used in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and our educational system.

For informative, exciting, funny, thought-provoking presentations by people at the forefront of "technology, entertainment and design" watch the TED talks.

Dave Eggers: 2008 TED Prize wish: Once Upon a School



Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?



Jeff Hawkins: Brain science and computing



Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Photosynth



Brian Greene: Superstring theory



Ed Ulbrich: How Benjamin Button got his face