What Can Global Tech Women Do For You?

A conference like The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is a fantastic experience. Having attended many times I can vouch for the fact that there is nothing (nothing) like being surrounded by a couple thousand other professional technical women. You don't realize until you experience it just how different the technical world, our world, would be if there were more technical women around. I can't describe the experience other than to say it is mind blowing, empowering and life changing.

However, most technical women around the globe don't have access to the GHC or one of it's sister conferences. They don't have access to the resources and connections available to those relative few who can physically attend a conference for women in computing. What to do?

Global Tech Women, introduced in my last post, intends to bridge the gap between globally dispersed technical women and the equally dispersed resources and like minded others. That means bringing resources for personal and professional growth to technical women on a local level. In their communities and homes. That also means providing technical women access to content and a network on a global scale. Global Tech Women (GTW) is employing both a bottom up and top down approach to supporting and connecting often isolated technical women.

"Women Talk Tech" Webinars. Information and expertise coming to you.

On September 21st Global Tech Women founder Deanna Kosaraju spoke in some depth about the organization: its vision, mission, goals, and plans.  What is going on as well as opportunities for you to get involved. This 30 minute webinar contains far more information than can easily fit in a blog post. Or even several blog posts. Deanna also hints at some nifty technology in the wings. If you want the full scoop on Global Tech Women, you can access the webinar and slides here.

Then there was the second webinar on October 12th which featured Caroline Simard getting into specifics about how to identify a work culture that is (or is not) actively supportive of technical women. I thought I knew a lot already about this topic yet I walked away with things to ponder and act upon. A particularly nice feature of this webinar was the active discussion from women across the career spectrum. Curious? The webinar and slides are archived here (scroll down the page).

The next webinar is ... Friday. It looks like we are going to hear about disruptive innovation. You can still sign up here. If you miss it, don't worry - like all the other webinars it will be archived.

"Voices" - an International Women's Day Conference. We return to the challenge facing technical women who would like to attend a conference geared toward their personal and professional goals.

Voices will be held on International Women's Day of course.  March 8th, 2013. What is truly innovative about this conference is that you don't have to go anywhere to participate. The conference comes to you. As described in detail in the first webinar video, Voices will take place over a 24 hour period, following the sun as it circles the globe. Not only can you attend the conference but you can participate in the planning and execution. In other words, if you want to hear about something, share about something, if you know about something worth sharing at the conference, you are encouraged to contact the organization to discuss how to make it happen. The agenda is not going to be decided by "someone out there".

A Customizable Open Source Platform with resources and connections geared towards your profile.

If every social media savvy marketing organization can target you with ads based upon what they creep around snooping out about you (yuck), doesn't it make sense to turn things on their head and *ask* technical women what they want to help them achieve their personal and professional goals and then deliver it? Sometime soon, the GTW website will provide you the ability to create a goal driven profile which will be used to connect you with resources, ideas, activities and people that fit where you are in your life and career.

The platform will likely require an entire blog post of its own sometime down the road. Meanwhile, in order to eventually provide oodles of bloggable material about how this platform serves your needs, you can contribute to its architecture and development. This is yet another example of Global Tech Women walking the talk - they want to involve technical women in the creation and direction of this platform.

It dawns on me, on this, the waning week prior to our incredibly close national election here in the US, that just as I hope all of you in this country get out and voice your opinions by VOTING (this is no time to be apathetic or too busy to register your opinion), I hope that all technical women reading this, wherever you are in the globe, take the opportunity to take part in the participatory democracy presented to you by Global Tech Women. In whatever way works for you.

Quelque Chose est Différente Ici

It is healthy to periodically have your perspective altered as mine has been for the past few days here in France. When I go to sign on to this blog for example, I am asked for my "Adresse électronique" and my "Mot de passe" and depending upon whose computer I'm using I may find myself reminding my fingers that the "z" is not where I think it should be. Along with many other keys. It's not a QWERTY keyboard. Have you assumed that QWERTY is universal? Nope, it's not.

I checked out a definition on Wiktionnaire and then logged in to Facebook. "Bienvenue sur Facebook. Connectez-vous inscrive-vous ou décrouve!" Connect, write, or discover! 

Another meaning for découvrir is "to take the lid off". Now that makes me think of food. Pas problèm, as so much of it is so good here. Pqss the pqstries: qnd the cheese:  I wonder if the people at Facebook were trying some subtle way to appeal to the French palate. Not that Facebook is known for subtlety.

A French relative once told me that the best cheese is the most odiferous cheese; the way to identify the best cheeses, he said, were to sit them out and wait for a passing fly. If the fly passes above the cheese and drops dead the cheese is first rate. Yum. We immediately went cheese hunting.

A few days ago someone asked me to look over a document written in English and edit it for the grammar. They handed me a flash drive. Not any ordinary flash drive - not a bit of plastic in it. It is made of wood and remains closed by virtue of a magnet. Talk about ecologically ingenious. I've got to hand it to whoever created this device because I'd love to see us reduce the amount of environmentally toxic plastic used in our computing systems.

Electronic devices are some of the worst plastic offenders. This little flash drive is a reminder that there are alternatives to our near complete dependence on plastic if only we get creative in our thinking. Maybe a laptop made of wood isn't the solution (might it catch on fire when the drive heats up?) but surely there is something we can do about all that plastic.

You know what I haven't seen here in Paris? iPods. I can't recall having seen more than one or two people in Paris with those dangling ear cords. Smartphones are everywhere, everyone seems to have one, but there are signs in many places asking people not to use their phones and people respond by not using their phones! I think it's great. People aren't absorbed in their own isolated electronic worlds the way they often are in the US. They talk to in person to one another, to their children, to their friends. 

Bonne journée

Stories Worth Pondering on a Sunny Memorial Day

Today was a holiday here in the US. A friend in New York City and I commiserated over email about the fact that we were both inside plugging away - he in New York City and I here in San Diego. In both places the weather was about as perfect as one could ask. Well, my Boogie Board will come out another day and his...I'm not sure what the NYC equivalent of a Boogie Board is.

In today's virtual travels, which included a meeting with someone in Canada (he also was stuck indoors because it isn't a holiday in Canada), there was opportunity for roaming. In case you too were inside today (or even if not) I share some fun and thought provoking stories I stumbled upon.

First of all, in case you haven't heard enough about Facebook, the hot off the press rumor is that they are developing a smart phone. What a coincidence - just recently I pondered about the relationship between people's politics and their phones. What ilk of voter do you think would flock to a Facebook phone?

Next, in case you thought you had a breather from hearing about Apple Computer, somewhat less hot news, but noteworthy for its implications nonetheless, is that the company is going political. Steve Jobs might be rolling over in his grave, but Tim Cook headed for Congress recently. One can only wonder what Cook and John Boehner spoke about. Does Beohner use an iPhone? I haven't written much about politics in this blog, but that may change if things stay this interesting.

Apropos of today's indoor activities, I must ask: do you have "mouse finger"? That annoying pain in the middle joint of the right index finger experienced by heavy computer users (like moi). It comes from hitting the left mouse button all day long. Here is a nifty video about a new motion controlled technology that may eventually give us all happy fingers.

Now this financial technology idea has huge potential for someone with the right combination of skills. Harness supercomputers to monitor the stock market and trades in real time, in such as way as to provide opportunities to prevent financial crash and burn. With which we are all too familiar. What a great idea. I hope someone gets right on this.

Finally, a Memorial Day story. A cool technology (that is a pun, trust me) that will be very good for helping military personnel. I am at odds with myself to decide if civilian populations ought to be allowed to get their hands on this - or rather in this. These. In These. Special texting gloves. Unless you are a firefighter (do firefighters text?)

I hope you all had a great day, whether you were indoors or outdoors.

The Importance of Integrating the Interdisciplinary

Has it ever occurred to you that the newness of interdisciplinary work, the excitement and the challenges it poses, is unique primarily to the major English-speaking cultures? That what are "aha!" moments to some of us are "you don't say" moments to others of us?

I have been reading "The Seven Cultures of Capitalism" by Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars. Though out for almost 20 years the book is as fresh as if it came out last year, because the way culture shapes perspectives and decision-making remains fairly constant over long periods of time.

The authors posit 7 pairs of opposing terms (e.g. universalism vs. particularism) reflecting values that underly how seven successful capitalist societies function and make decisions. Each society is unique, yet: "Our thesis of economic development is, however, that each value in the pair is crucial to economic success. The capitalistic cultures that succeed in the next [21st] century will be those that overcome their cultural predispositions to favor, for example, individualism at the expense of community, and bring seemingly opposed values into balance" (page 10).

Extrapolating from their focus on economics and social relationships to the realm of computing is not hard. Consider that when we, in our search for knowledge, place emphasis on finding "the truth", "the facts", on breaking things down into their constituent parts to understand how they work, we inevitably specialize. We dive deep in order to make discoveries. We like algorithms, controlled studies, pre-conditions and post-conditions, invariants and formal methods. Science and engineering have made huge strides as a result of our ability to finely analyze details and to think things through sequentially.

Unfortunately, when we hold those preferences, "interdisciplinary" often means "messy": When computer science integrates with art the result resists particularist analysis. Holism rather than deconstruction is needed to understand the synthesis of computer science with biology. No wonder many people in this (United States) society find interdisciplinary work so challenging - we are bucking our culturally ingrained way of viewing the world.

If you interact with other cultures on a regular basis, you may find that sometimes other people are truly puzzled by your world view (One of my favorite constants is: "WHY did your country elect [fill in the name of a president]?"). We can nod our heads over a mutual lack of understanding of political decisions by other countries' citizens, but we have trouble seeing just how deeply our view of "what IS" constrains  what is new and exciting. To some other cultures excitement over interdisciplinary computing might be puzzling simply because synthesis and integration are as ingrained in them as separation and specialization are in us.

I heard someone dismiss interdisciplinary issues as the latest fad. This person opined that if we just ignore calls for (often difficult) interdisciplinary collaboration they will eventually go away. The important question (imo) is not the issue of fad or not fad; the important issue is why interdisciplinary endeavors are getting so much attention and what will happen if we don't succeed in shifting value systems enough to make them work. If we grow cynical, tire of the struggle and fall back against our comfortable disciplinary boundaries, we lose. Why? Things are getting more complex and sophisticated year by year - whether you take a macro or micro view of the world's interactions. People and societies that are truly comfortable with an interdisciplinary perspective will make the greatest discoveries and innovations and move society forward. Others will fall behind. 

Mobile, NUIs, Research: Yes!

I missed the introduction of the speaker and the first few minutes of the talk because I was waiting in line at the restroom. Walking into the tented area at the UX Speakeasy Conference where she was speaking I hadn't had time to find a seat when I heard something that made my ears perk right up. Something about mental models and how human action is constructed and reconstructed as people come into contact with the physical and digital world.  Taking this reality as the basis of a call for the creation of shape shifting digital content. For those who are interested in learning more about these ideas, a recommendation to read the work of sociologist Lucy Suchman. 

I scrambled for my program - who was this speaker? I was excited: I knew what this conversation meant. ("Yes!" "She gets it! Yes!") I was hearing a fellow researcher! From that moment forward I maintained a sensory laser focus on Rachel Hinman.

Rachel spoke about the necessity and inevitability of a transition from GUIs to NUIs (Natural User Interfaces).  About how mobile devices are driving a major paradigm shift in society's expectations of technology, necessitating that developers and designers alter their mental models. 

"Pages and screens are not our design material. Content is now our design material". 

On the nature of constant change, its fluidity and the implications for good UX (User Experience) design: 

"Digital content needs to be like water".

Evocative statements such as these lead to fascinating speculation. For example, a chicken and egg question regarding our needs from technology and the capability of technology. Which came first - new technology or new expectations? i.e. Did the introduction of mobile devices initiate massive changes in what we want, require, expect from technology,  or did growing expectations about the place of technology in society lead to the ubiquity of mobile devices? 

Either side of the question can be argued. The answer is not as important in this case (imo) as asking the question and doing the research to understand it. Digging into the question makes it abundantly clear just how inter-related technology and human experience are. Here is an example, inspired by Rachel's ideas: Rachel said that GUI programs are dying under their own weight. Do you agree? Why? What does it mean to be a heavy program anyway? What programs or apps or interfaces come to mind? Why do they support or not support the claim? If, as Rachel next pointed out, mobile brings the age of the NUI interface - why is this so? Why mobile? What is so different about mobile? What does NUI bring to a mobile device? Alternatively, what does mobile bring to a NUI? How do we know we are designing in the right direction? (What does it mean to be in the right direction?)

Questions, questions questions. Questions like these can lead to innovative and ultimately productive research and design. Inventions. They can lead to devices that will sense your intent and reconfigure themselves in response (we return to Rachel's call for shape shifting content). Big changes, and yes there are challenges. Paradigm shifts and mental model reconfiguration can be scary because we have to toss out much that is familiar. Arguably, we are there now. "We are stuck in a NUI-GUI canyon right now...NUI development can feel anchorless for the designer".

Where will insight and answers to these complex questions and challenges come from? From rigorous applied research. My favorite moment of the entire conference came when, spontaneously, Rachel said "For those who think research labs are a waste - suck it!".  I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank You. :)

Sharing Research Over YouTube: Good Idea?

Wired Science posted an article today* about ongoing dissertation (doctoral) research in developing gesture based systems for guiding aircraft. Wired created their article in great part from an MIT news release from 2 days ago. Content issues aside (subject for another day) there are fascinating cultural issues inherent to these releases.

The PhD candidate conducting much of the research (Yale Song) posted a YouTube video describing his work (all these secondary links can be reached from the primary Wired article). What I find interesting is the manner he chose to go public - that he chose to Really Go Public via YouTube. Traditionally, academic doctoral research focuses dissemination on conferences and journals for other academics.

There are good reasons for this tradition. First, the details of computing and engineering doctoral research are often highly technical and most easily understood by one's academic peers. As it should be: obtaining a PhD is supposed to involve breaking new ground and exploring innovation. Meeting this expectation means you have to delve deep deep deep. If you are a researcher, you no doubt have experienced the rapid glazing over of eyes when you start to explain nuances of your work to a lay audience. Even a well educated lay audience. It takes skill and practice (lots of practice) to share cutting edge technical research with those inside your field, let alone those outside your field. Not for the faint of heart.

Second, the academic reward system values publications at journals and conferences, in some cases books, but almost never public media. Again, this makes sense: it is from peers who are well versed in your subject matter that you can receive informed critique, feedback and support. A strong argument can be made that traditional media is often ill equipped to deal with cutting edge technical research. I'm sure you don't need me to show you recent examples of mangled and inaccurate reporting of scientific research in the popular media.

However, we know that people engage with audio - visual information more readily than they do with text alone. (Academics may be the exception - we DO love to read :)  It seems only natural that we find ways to take advantage of non-traditional dissemination venues for research - doesn't it? 

Thus, I was both delighted, surprised, yet not surprised to see a doctoral student online very clearly explaining his work. Part of me wonders: why is he doing it? I can't imagine he gains any official value added for his CV (aka "resume"). Another part of me concludes: it is only natural for the current generation of up and coming researchers to break out and add YouTube videos to their professional portfolio. Video can be an incredibly effective communication medium.

Yet another part of me suggests: Researchers shouldn't have to confine themselves to traditional dissemination outlets and/or wait until they are well established to share their work with the greater public. Should they? There are so many potential benefits of intelligently sharing cutting edge research with the greater public.  Why aren't more people doing it?


*Wired Science article

Concerned About a Regenerating Doctor? Take Heart: Think Innovation

A friend, colleague and fellow Doctor Who fan announced on Facebook recently that this Spring the current Doctor would be changing. A chorus of "oh no!!!!" popped into Reply boxes from around the world.

Reading nostalgic discussions about The Doctor, it dawned on me there was a connection between accepting technological innovation and global dismay at the prospect of a new Doctor. We earthly humans don't always like change, even when we know it is inevitable and good for us. Since 1963 there have been 11 Doctors. We (his fans) all know that every few seasons he regenerates. New face, new body, new personality, new cohorts. Change is how the show stays fresh and innovative. Yet, each time we mourn and wish to hold onto our favorite for a few more episodes.

We don't always welcome change in technology even when we know the potential for innovation and positive outcomes is grand. An article last year in the CACM about natural user interfaces quoted someone who said "it is not appropriate to start talking about NUIs until you have a complete solution"*. There was more to the statement, but still I wanted to ask: why not? When has technological innovation ever waited for complete solutions? Innovation comes when people keep working, thinking, trying, changing, implementing, deploying, testing, investigating. There are no guarantees, but we forge ahead anyway.

For a period of time I had a pre-adolescent crush of serious proportions on the 4th Doctor. Many years later I had a post-adolescent crush (less serious but still notable) on the 10th Doctor. In each case, when he changed I thought no, it isn't possible to move forward - no! We (I) aren't ready! However, in spite of my personal angst, the interface changed. Tom Baker gave way for Peter Davison (a pretty cool dude too). David Tennant gave way for Matt Smith. Matt Smith will give way for...

There is a reason they call it regeneration. Doctor Who has been around almost 50 years because he upgrades - not always perfect, sometimes not so effective. If we waited around for everything to be complete, standardized, worked out, there would be no adventure. No more planets and people to save - and no opportunity for all the fun along the way.

One of the biggest challenges to technological innovation is moving out of a comfort zone based on familiarity.  A reader of my last post on NUIs commented elsewhere that it is difficult to define "norms". I agreed, and suggested that it is also difficult to define "natural". These are challenges to developing NUIs. But neither one of us suggested that technology should not move forward and strive for positive change. 



Dr. Who Timeline
* Communications of the ACM, December 2011, Vol. 54, No. 12, p. 15

Computer Aided Composition & Hallucinations

The term "algorithmic composition" is loaded with baggage. Although the phrase pops up in our conversation fairly often, because of the loaded nature of the words, Alexis Kirke prefers "Computer Aided Composition" to describe the process he uses to compose music.

Although perfectly capable of coding, and having done so in the past, Alexis now prefers to work collaboratively with a professional programmer so that he can focus on the overall composition. "Programming is a creative act in itself" and it is all too easy to get sucked into it, he explains. Listening to Alexis describe how he is developing Insight, I couldn't help but think of a Vulcan Mind Meld. Alexis desires to "share the unsharable" - his consciousness, internal feelings, his Palinopsia hallucinations. (See the previous post for more on Alexis  and how Palinopsia inspired this particular body of work)

According to the current plan, if you are in the audience at the February 10th  performance you will see Alexis standing on stage behind a music stand holding an iPad. Perhaps he will be holding a pen.  A Macintosh laptop is within arm's reach. The programmer sits in the front row of seats, and there is a flute player somewhere on stage with his own computer monitor. Alexis sees you; he also sees lighting designed to trigger his hallucinations.

It is difficult to formulate words to describe what this application program will probably look like, but I'm going to give it a whirl. The iPad will show Alexis a camera image of what he is seeing at any moment, an "augmented reality". The software on the iPad will incorporate parameters that correspond to common elements of Alexis' hallucinations. As Alexis experiences hallucinations, he will activate afterimage functionality and trigger an afterimage on the iPad. (At this point, a poor video connection on our Skype call produced a well timed "trail" as Alexis moved his hand across my line of sight). When this happens he is presented with visual options, filters and parameters. These are produced in partial response to an iterative feedback loop between himself and the programmer: he selects, via multi-touch, tapping, double tapping, 3 fingered presses, which parameters are appropriate and what filters to apply. For example, he can adjust the iPad screen brightness to correspond to his perception of brightness. He can likewise adjust screen size, the specific pattern of an afterimage, the rate of visual decay, single or multiple images, random patterns, and many other aspects of the visual echo. Alexis is simultaneously saying "yes, that" "no, not that" to presented options, and creating from scratch on the fly what he sees. He has to make the iPad "see" what he sees.

All this is happening extremely rapidly as his hallucinations develop, exist, and are replaced (sometimes in milliseconds) with the next hallucination. And we must not forget that this is not a completely free form activity - there will be at least 3 sections to the composition. Each section of the piece has different parameters. Alexis will reach over to the laptop to change sections. All of the visuals are handled by the iPad. When a hallucination is accurate, it is packaged up and sent wirelessly to the laptop, where the music resides. One reason for this division of labor is that the visual software is processor intensive. Memory optimization has been critical, and Alexis brought in someone who focused exclusively on iPad memory optimization.

Somehow, it all gets put together and coordinated: visual hallucinations from the iPad, musical scores from the laptop, contribution from a live flute player watching the iPad output.

You, sitting in the audience would see Alexis' hallucinations projected on a large screen, and hear his musical score to go along with it. All in 12 minutes.

The performance of Insight, at the Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival, is going to be filmed. Let's hope it becomes available online!

2012 Is Looking Good For Interdisciplinary Computing

All signs are that 2012 is going to be a banner year for interdisciplinary computing. You don't  have to look far to see evidence that more and more people are actively engaging in and publicizing interdisciplinary computing work.

On the computing education front: At the upcoming SIGCSE 2012 conference there will be sessions on studio based learning (several), digital humanities, interdisciplinary database applications, knitting patterns and program tracing, science fiction in computer science education. There will be presentations on healthcare and computing (several), and interdisciplinary travel. There will also be a special session devoted to the role of interdisciplinary computing in academia, research and industry. This session will be run by Ursula Wolz and Boots Cassel, the same people who organized the interdisciplinary computing meetings I attended and wrote about this past year. Interdisciplinary is becoming a hot topic in computing education.

In the private sector: Volumes of online and print text are dissecting everything that might have led to Steve Jobs repeated successes. Analyses of Jobs and the innovations he drove have repeated his comments about how Apple existed at the intersection of liberal arts and technology.  A repercussion of these discussions is going to be (I predict) even greater corporate emphasis on how a meeting of minds between computing and traditionally non-technical fields can lead to innovation.

The term "social intelligence" is becoming more common as we look at what we can learn, intuit, predict, and know from analyzing social media. If we are to really understand what social media has to tell us about people, or, conversely, if we are to really use social media intelligently for business purposes (two sides of the same coin), we will have to do more to integrate our understandings from psychology, anthropology and sociology into our computing development work. There is huge potential here for intelligent forward thinking collaborations.

Most telling: If you pick up any computing / technology magazine off the supermarket rack and flip through it, you will find advertisements from organizations that tout their interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary achievements. Energy, water, biomedical, transportation, communication, disaster prediction and management, interactive literature.

One can focus on the exaggeration and hype inherent to much advertising, but that would be missing the bigger picture. The important thing to note is that the whole notion of promoting interdisciplinary computing has entered the mainstream. When large and small organizations jockey to convince potential customers and clients that *they* are on the forefront of interdisciplinary computing, then interdisciplinary computing is no longer on the fringe. Funding follows, and smart funding has the potential to nurture environments that drive technological innovation.

People will make the final decisions and determine the directions interdisciplinary computing takes. I am optimistic and excited about where we can go..

Happy Healthy Interdisciplinary New Year!

The Computer Sand Society

This week begins the holiday season for many people and often with it, unfortunately, way too much stress. Maybe that is why this week (Thanksgiving week in the US) brings out some strangeness. There was the blog post forwarded by a friend about stuffing a turkey with twinkies. It is hard not to feel fondness for something that springs back into shape when you step on it, but ... make a meat glaze out of the so-called "creme filling"? Yuck.

I also received an advertisement in the mail addressed to me at "The Computer Sand Society". Walking back from the mailbox, I thought: this could be a new interdisciplinary application! In response to this inspiration, a friend sent a lovely video link about sand animation; another friend suggested that, nice as it sounds, poolside would be much better than beachside because sand is hard on laptops. Could it be worse than three bouts of sick video cards?  Perhaps, yes it could. Although I once told a cell carrier that my phone had mysteriously died when it had in fact fallen in the toilet (would you want to explain that one?), I'm not sure the computer manufacturer would buy into the notion that a gritty substance floating around the motherboard stemmed from disintegrating integrated circuits.

However, as I do believe in the power of creative thinking to spur innovation, I suspect there is opportunity for The Computer Sand Society to come into its own.

Modeling and simulation of sand castles. Has anyone developed a system, similar to those used by architectural design firms, to analyze the possibilities for ever more complex creations, factoring in the properties of sand - fineness of particles, distribution of various well crumbled crustacean shells, positioning relative to the high tide mark, mineral components?

Sand castle building is serious business for some people. The U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition bit the dust this year and its demise has many people very upset. I wonder if profits from my envisioned application might have helped hold it together? We could have perhaps drawn on the nearby expertise of the famous Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) and the local surfers who are out every morning, afternoon and evening rain or shine, 365 days a year. Who understands the interactions between sand and surf better than these subject matter experts?

I have always wanted to combine my love of the outdoors with the potential of computing. A typo by some overworked marketing employee has given me the inspiration for a new hi-tech startup. All that is needed now is a really dedicated team to get it off its feet - and an angel investor.

Any takers?

Happy Thanksgiving - have some fun and forget the stressful stuff for a few days.

Interdisciplinary Computing in a Big Way: The Center for Science of Information

If you followed the 3 earlier posts on An Interdisciplinary Puzzle, the Wireless Car, and finally Banana Trucks and Stock Traders, then you know that information theory was at the heart of the discussion. And if you were really curious, and followed the link hint I provided in the last of the posts, then you figured out that there is an exciting body of work in this area going on at: The Center for Science of Information. Their mission is "to advance science and technology through a new quantitative understanding of the representation, communication, and processing of information in biological, social and engineered systems". A mouthful, but a mouthful that hopefully makes sense after reading the other posts.

The Center's web pages contain an incredible amount of information about their interdisciplinary research, teaching and outreach activities. No one institution or discipline could do their work alone; through bringing experts together from across disciplines, they hope to develop new cross-cutting principles governing the storage, compression and transmission of information (examples in the earlier posts!). Nine universities participate in the Center as well as collaborators from a wide range of corporations and industries. In addition, students, undergraduate and graduate, and post-doctoral researchers have the opportunity to become immersed in this cutting edge research. 

I had a fascinating conversation about the Center with Deepak Kumar of Bryn Mawr College. Deepak is the Associate Director of Diversity and Education for the Center, as well as a professor of Computer Science. Even prior to the creation of the Center, he has been teaching interesting interdisciplinary computing courses. One example is an undergraduate course on emergence. Emergent behavior appears everywhere in the natural world and is a perfect topic for demonstrating the utility of computational modeling.

For example, here in Southern California it is amazing to watch a group of Brown Pelicans cruise along in formation just over your head and then almost as one swoop down, realign into a row and ride the wind currents of ocean waves in the surf. They never touch each other or the ocean, although they can be inches from both.

Have you ever watched a flock of birds and wondered why they never crash into one another? I wonder: How do the Pelicans all know when to turn sharply, descend in unison, line up exactly the same distance from each other, and at some point, without apparent reason, rise up together again into the sky? If I watch any one bird, I can identify how it behaves. But somehow, and this is the puzzle, a group behavior emerges. Flocking birds are a classic example of emergent behavior which can be studied through computational modeling and Deepak uses this example in his course.

If birds don't suit your fancy, there are emergent behaviors to be studied computationally in linguistics, social networks, epidemiology (just for starters). Bryn Mawr is a perfect institution to be part of the Center for Information Science team not only because of courses like this, but because they have a  minor in Computational Methods that actively collaborates with departments across the college.

I asked Deepak to tell me more about the role computer scientists play in advancing information theory. He obliged; here are a few things he shared. [I'm going somewhat technical for the rest of this paragraph] For starters, computer scientists understand algorithms and complexity. They know that how a problem is modeled will lead to various algorithms with different complexities. Which one(s) best fit the constraints and goals of the subject matter? A computer scientist can help determine what kind of processor to use, what algorithms to use, all the ins and outs of dynamic problems and dynamic programming. Computer scientists have an expertise in the classification of problems; they can identify a set of problems as of a certain type (e.g. NP-hard) and the relationship between how a problem is modeled and the resultant effect on the model. There is more, but you get the idea.

Next year Deepak will be teaching a course in the Science of Information. This class will bring the work and ideas behind the Center for Science of Information directly to his undergraduate population. The course, and related activities such as internships and mentoring, will provide opportunities for his students to interact with other institutions and personnel on the Center team. Deepak is very excited about running this course; in fact he told me that the most inspiring aspect of his role in Center activities is the opportunity to bring new superstar research to his computing students and to make it outward looking.

It is going to be very interesting to watch how all of this work develops over the next few years. 

Interdisciplinary Computing Meeting 3: Day 1

This is quite the post for several reasons. I am in Washington DC attending the third Interdisciplinary Computing meeting. I posted about the previous two earlier this year [the January meeting, the April meeting] . When we were at dinner, I was sitting next to someone who is in the arts and telling him how I was very interested in finding an interesting project that crossed over computer science and the arts for a chapter in a future edition of my book. Well, I got back to my hotel room and discovered that the video card on my motherboard has gone out. So I am writing this post on a psychedelic smeary LSD reminiscent screen - and I can't really read what I'm writing. This is not exactly what I had in mind when I asked for a convergence of art and computing. Beware what you ask for! For the next two days I'll be writing this way, as a replacement part will be meeting me back in San Diego later this week. Meanwhile...have patience with the typos and lack of editing because I can't see beyond the pulsating purple and lime green.

So on to the meeting report.  As always, all of the comments in this post are my interpretations and reflect my perspective on what occurred. They are not any "official" pronouncement and there may be others at the meeting who have a different set of thoughts. If that is you, please chime in!

Today was the most incredible example of synergistic conversations that can come out of putting passionate widely divergent thinkers together. 

Two of our meeting goals (as laid out by our trusty leaders Boots Cassel and Ursula Wolz) are to identify the breadth that is Interdisciplinary Computing (IC) and how to Facilitate Interdisciplinary Computing. Lynn Andrea Stein from Olin College talked about the interdisciplinary nature of Olin, an engineering school that was able to design interdisciplinarity into itself in a holistic way in part because they were able to start from the ground up approximately 10 years ago. Valerie Barr from Union College, founded in 1795 and the first college in the United States to offer engineering programs, provided an interesting contrast as she spoke about her work with a large range of successful IC programs.

A common theme was the infusion of computing into courses outside the traditional curriculum as well as a major rethinking of CS coursework - both institutions are having great success, attracting more students into the CS courses and increasing diversity.

With the audience of CS faculty, arts faculty, education, math (and more) faculty chiming in and asking many questions the phrase came up: Hearts, Minds and Culture. All three must be addressed. Further discussions delved into what that means. At the faculty level, student level, institutional level.

We had two breakout sessions and in both I was extremely priviledged to sit with some of the most interesting and engaged people. We wrestled with tough questions such as:

Outcomes are important (we all agreed) as are Goals - should Goals come first, followed by Outcomes followed by metrics for assessing them, or perhaps should desired Outcomes be the starting point with the other items emerging from there? It turns out to be a fascinating way to turn your thinking on its head.

Verbs vs. Nouns. Several breakout groups  (including ours) independently came up with this terminology to describe how we must stop thinking in terms of Nouns (e.g. "content") and think in terms of Verbs (what do we want to DO, to have students DO). And if we make the mistake of framing Goals in terms of Nouns instead of Verbs, we will undercut the whole purpose of trying to be innovative and creative and flexible in our approaches among different departments. Noun (content) orientation can lead to "content wars" in many cases and a lose-lose situation, as opposed to a win-win situation in which everyone can find common ground.

Very interesting idea. Think in terms of Verbs - it makes sense that this orientation would lead to a greater chance of finding mutually beneficial modern ground among widely diverse faculty. Gets us away from the dreaded "coverage debates" many of you no doubt know too well.

I'm going to short change some of the day's activities a bit in order to keep this to a reasonable length for a post, but there is one last item that energized me so much I must mention it. One participant, during a full group discussion, asked the question: should we think of Interdisciplinary Computing as "corrosive"? Corrosive in that it breaks down institutional boundaries and structures? And if so, is it corrosive by its very nature or is it something that those involved would want to specifically focus on? Corrosive. Fascinating. That is such a vivid word. Think about that will you? 

The same person followed up with this thought: if Interdisciplinary Computing is indeed corrosive, then the theoretical ground of doing IC work changes. 

IC is rhizomatic he posited. I know what a rhizome is (in a general sense), but I had to ask for an explanation in the context of this conversation. He explained, (and I try to closely paraphrase) – you can’t teach what you want to teach from any one source. You break something and it will find its way around via  a different route.Wow... think on that one too won't you? This is what you get when you work with interdisicplinary minded people from different disciplines. 

Finally, my vocabulary was expanded even further in the context of IC when in a breakout session we were discussing the topic of forming and sustaining IC community. One member of our group brought up this idea, which we all latched onto: the notion of the Interpersonal as equally important to the notion of the Interdisciplinary. The importance of realizing that it is relationships between people that will make or break IC and that a strong focus on developing, supporting and maintaining interpersonal relationships among *people*, not just "disciplines" is vital. 
 

Interdisciplinary vs. Interpersonal. Put another way: There is interdisciplinary work but there are interpersonal relationships b/w faculty and we need to find ways to facilitate and support those relationships. Equally or possibly even more important. 

And finally, the most mind blowing IC vocabulary expansion  for my afternoon came with someone in our group suggesting we think about IC this way: as Inter-Epistemological.

What?

Inter-epistemological – theories and ways of knowing. The interconnectedness of different models of ways of working. 

In digging around for some definitions of "inter-epistemological" someone found a previously published paper with an eerily provocative title: 

“Moving beyond interdisciplinarity: Academic Reflexivity in an inter-epistemological research program, celebrating indigeneous knowledges: Peoples, Lands and Cultures” 

 Think about Interdisciplinary Computing (corrosive and rhizomatic) in terms of that phrase. 

From purple smeary-land, over and out for the evening. 

This post was updated on 11/10/11 to fix typos and add links.

Banana Trucks, Stock Traders, iPods and More...

Information interchange is an activity shared by biological, chemical, physical, economic and social systems. As science and technology have accelerated in recent decades, we now routinely deal with enormous amounts of data that we try to model accurately in order to understand. When you think about it, these systems have a lot in common. 

For example, my rudimentary understanding of how stock market trading works, leads me to understand that market traders need to get certain complex data right at the beginning of the market day. Within the first few minutes in fact. Any later, and that data is useless to them.  Incomplete or inaccurate and that data is useless to them. This is essentially the same challenge faced by our wireless car which must receive all its varied sensor data properly.

Information theory provides the starting point for addressing these challenges and those of even more complex natural and artificial information interchange systems alluded to above. Claude Shannon's theorems (greatly simplified and hopefully not misrepresented as a result) assumed that data can be encoded as a string of 1s and 0s and transmitted from one point to another. Shannon's ideas enabled us to understand and address data degradation over distance traveled, effects of interference ("noise") and the recognition that when we encode, store and transmit data we can compress it to save space and reduce latency (i.e. speed things up).

An entire communications industry was spawned as a result of information theory. Among other things, we have been able to leverage our detailed understanding of the costs associated with data compression. For example, have you ever compared the sound of a song played on an iPod with a song played from a professionally mastered CD? Which has better quality? The CD of course. On the other hand, you can store far more songs on an iPod than on a CD. This difference has little to do with "old" or "new" storage media technology. If a 1 hour CD can hold approximately 12 songs, whereas your iPod can hold far more than that, it is because, in order to squeeze additional music on the iPod, you lose some digital bits that supply the greater dynamic range heard on the CD.

You probably don't care though, right? You don't expect professional quality music reproduction coming through those little ear buds. Cycling down the road, jogging along the trail, or wherever you are tearing around dangling your iPod, your primary concern is access to reasonably decent portable music. Conversely, you expect a CD playing on a multi-speaker Surround Sound home theatre system to produce pretty darned nice music, right? I certainly do. Personally, I don't know if I could handle hearing Bohemian Rhapsody in its super compressed format on an iPod. But I could definitely rock to the original Hawaii 5-O Theme Song.

How do we know how to produce just the right fidelity for MP3s, CDs, DVDs, etc? Because information theory has led to a highly accurate understanding of the tradeoffs inherent in different types and amounts of data compression as well as a host of other factors that come into play when deciding the optimal way to transmit data point to point. So we know how to model different audio/video systems and choose the compression, transmission and storage methods most appropriate for a given context. The digital data comprising a Dixie Chicks song will be treated much differently if it is to find its way onto a CD vs. an iPod or the movie theatre. Yet each scenario will be optimal and we understand how to make it so.

If only that was all there is to it. The problem is, not all data manipulation is as straightforward. This is where I want to start calling it "information" rather than "data", because much of the "data" we now study has meaning that cannot be divorced from it - hence is "information".

Consider the modeling of a system for optimal routing of commercial trucks. To keep it as simple as possible, let's say all trucks are going from Point A in San Diego, California to Point B in Chicago, Illinois. A truck full of hazardous waste and a truck full of bananas are definitely not the same animal. The optimal routing of those trucks is not the same. The hazardous waste truck must avoid certain roads and population areas, perhaps certain times of day, even if it takes longer to get from San Diego to Chicago. The bananas on the other hand, must arrive as quickly as possible or else rotten mush will show up at the grocery store. A dynamic traffic routing system must understand the semantics of the data, i.e. what is in each truck en route. In this case, semantics also affects temporal issues - timeliness of arrival. The system must be able to adjust on the fly to all the unexpected things that could happen along the way: snow storm, sink hole, holiday parade, incorrect satellite map of the road! Plus, let's complicate matters even more: if our grocery store in downtown Chicago is deluged at the same time by 50 trucks of perishable produce coming from ports on both coasts, there will be Chaos in The Loop (downtown Chicago). And more likely than not, rotten mush on the shelves and in the dumpsters.

Do you see how our wireless car system design has a lot in common with our commercial truck routing system? This is the same class of challenges that exist within a myriad of natural and human-made systems.  Even if you aren't a professional in any of the fields listed in the opening paragraph, you may begin to see the commonalities within complex information interchange systems. To understand these systems we first have to try and model them, taking into consideration all the relevant variables and their interactions: syntactically, semantically, temporally.

Information theory has to be taken to the next level, to incorporate additional factors. Do you want to hear more about all this from an expert? As you wait for the next installment in these posts, consider tuning in October 31st to an interesting talk on the history and philosophy of information. 

Not to mention, by doing so, you will get a head's up on the people who are working on "Shannon 2.0".

The Wireless Car Considered

In order to answer the question(s) posed in my previous post, let's go back to the automobile. Your car. Unless you are into antiques, chances are that your current car is a computer on wheels (thinking from a layman's perspective). You probably know this if you ever have taken your car in for what seems like a small repair and get hit with a gigantic bill because "the chip needed to be replaced". Or, you take your car in and they tell you they will "plug it in and run diagnostics". They download some data, study it, and presto, tweak just the right part of your vehicle. You save money.

The heart of modern automobile engines is a CPU in the engine control unit which serves as a data collection hub. Approximately 150lbs of wiring runs through your car between various sensors and the engine control unit. So when something goes wrong, it might be one of the sensors, it might be a wire, or it might be the CPU. Of course, there are many many advantages to having a CPU in your car as compared to the older technology, but this isn't the right place to go into that. What is relevant however, is the fact that all those wires are MESSY. And HEAVY. And ... complex.

Imagine the advantages that could be gained if those wires could be removed and replaced with wireless broadcasting of sensor signals to the CPU.

150lbs less weight: that's about one adult, or a few kids, or many pets, or a lot of gear. Lighter car, better gas mileage.

No wires: less mess in the cars innards (think like a mechanic to fully appreciate that one).

No wires: less complexity and cost in the manufacturing process - consider the domino effect of not having to figure out placement, routing, materials use, secondary waste generation. The car should cost less to build, thus cost less to the consumer. Economies of scale can be gained if the elimination of wires in favor of wireless becomes standard.

Store the data, compress the data, transmit the data. This is where Shannon (my final hint in the last post) comes in. Claude Shannon, whose seminal work approximately 60 years ago founded what we now know of as Information Theory. Theorems about optimal point to point communication of bits. Your cell phone calls rely on application of information theory as do your Skype calls, iPod and CD storage and other applications too numerous to count. I'll come back to that later because with our automobile scenario

There Are Challenges.

For starters, we would need to make sure that my Subaru, sitting at the stoplight next to your Lexus, doesn't tell your Lexus what to do (in theory this might be fun, but I digress). Non negotiable requirement: my car's wireless transmitters need to be picked up only by my car's CPU.

In addition, my car's CPU would have to juggle incoming signals from many sensors. There are N (meaning I have no idea how many) sensors in my car, each of them likely has a different sampling rate, transmission distances vary point to point, noise is inevitable, delay is inevitable, and there are definitely other parameters that I am not thinking of. To function properly, my wireless car's CPU must receive all the encoded data in sufficiently robust form in a timely fashion.

If you are familiar with classic information theory, you know where I am going. If you aren't, then I'll point out: Shannon's seminal work on data storage, compression and transmission didn't anticipate the kind of requirements involved in developing a functional wireless network automobile.

But there is a group of people working on this exact problem and the larger class of problems of which it is a part. And the results they come up with will effect Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Social Sciences, Engineering, and more.

To Be Continued...

 (I won't make you wait a week)

An Interdisciplinary Puzzle For You To Figure Out

Today I am going to give you something to ponder for a few days - see if you can figure it out. Then, next week I'll tell you all about an exciting project I learned about this week.

What do biological, physical, social, engineering and financial systems have in common?

Toss in Computer Science. Computing is key to solving the puzzle of what this mystery project is.

A concrete example of where it all comes together involves one of the most prevalent objects in the developed and developing world: the automobile.

Think about how many feet of wiring runs through your car. How many feet do you think there are on average, front to back? Have you ever thought about that?

What does the wiring in your car accomplish and what are the critical factors in its proper functioning (don't forget about temporal issues)?

Wiring: kind of Old School technology don't you think?

Let's say you remove the wiring (or most of it) from your car. What advantages might you get from eliminating the wiring?

WHY DO WE CARE? (hint: economic productivity is one answer)

Hopefully some ideas are popping into your head - crazy ideas are fine. Crazy ideas are very good. Innovation comes from so-called crazy ideas and that is rarely a bad thing.

I leave you with a parting final hint: Claude Shannon.

If you come up with the solution before I post about it you gain enormous brownie points and public acknowledgement of having a highly productive brain. All ideas welcome.

Enjoy your mental percolations.

Puzzling Phone Algorithm; Virtual Reality Consumer Product Research

Recently I had a conversation with Franz Dill, who maintains one of the most prolific blogs I have run into. The name of his blog is The Eponymous Pickle, and you might want to think about that name. Once you figure out what that title is all about, you'll have a window into what a conversation with Franz is like. Without letting the cat completely out of the bag I'll just say...really interesting and loaded with ideas.

Before we even got into "the real conversation" something interesting happened. We were discussing the fact that I was on Skype from my computer and he was on Skype from a mobile phone. In comparing our reception quality (which was fine) I noted that if he had another call come through that the Skype call would be dropped. The first time it happened to me it was quite puzzling. One moment the person I was talking to was there, the next moment he was gone. poof. No warning for either of us, just - gone. Franz suggested this was probably the result of call prioritization.

Hmm? Now, looking back on it I'm wondering - that seems like an odd arrangement. Who wrote the software that made the decision that a current call should drop if a new one comes in? Did anyone test that out on users? It doesn't follow usual phone protocol. It also doesn't lead to a positive interaction moment, and in the case of a critical negotiation for example, could be quite disruptive. Why do you think they (whoever "they" is) wrote the algorithm that way?

Moving on...one of the interesting things Franz and I discussed was his role in creating the first Innovation Center at Proctor & Gamble. The Center was (and still is) used to creatively experiment with the impact on consumers of various home and store environments. They took over a warehouse in the middle of a cornfield and built a house inside it (yes, you read that right) and later built a store next to the house - inside the warehouse. Apparently one reason to build a house inside a warehouse was so they could make constructive adjustments to the facility (such as punching holes in the wall :)  for the purpose of improved experimentation and monitoring. Presumably, having your own house in a warehouse meant that the house could be recreated and repurposed over and over again as needed.

Franz and his colleagues performed all sorts of experiments with real consumer/users and these experiments eventually moved into the realm of virtual reality. For example, they created wall size displays that people could interact with (you can see a picture of one and read about it in detail in the Eponymous Pickle).

I wonder if the current development team is working on a 3-D virtual store yet. Imagine what it would be like not only to look at and touch the wall display but to reach out and pick up items items off a virtual shelf and put them in a virtual shopping cart. Or perhaps pick up virtual items and put them in a physical shopping cart. The technology to do this exists. I didn't ask Franz about 3-D virtual consumer experimentation and I wish I had.

What do you think the consumers/users reaction to virtual 3-D shopping would be? (That means...you!)

Design Studios, Studying Design

Back in August, while attending the ICER conference, I discussed some work being done to incorporate the studio model into the computing classroom. Several people replied, sharing their own work in this area or knowledge of others' work. At least one person I spoke with believed the studio model was impractical. Interestingly enough, there is a discussion about the use of Design Studios within the UX (User Experience) community. In late August, the first of two articles in UX Magazine discussed the basics of Design Studio. The rationale for using Design Studios included the following:

"The reality of designing modern digital solutions is that no individual can solely capture all the complexity of creating a truly vibrant product with various customer engagement points, different usage patterns, and behaviors based on complex needs, goals, and customer backgrounds, all interwoven into an emergent, ubiquitous engagement tapestry. This is why innovation really is, and should be, a team sport."

The above quote reflects a key feature of UX work: obtaining a holistic view of the interactions, perceptions and ramifications of users interacting with digital artifacts. Beyond traditional user interface and graphical design issues (although those are relevant), to include all the complexities that people, as people, bring to the table and what that complexity means for their "experience" (hence the name User Experience). Cognition, affect, behavior, environmental and social factors.

The second of the articles, which came out today, provides resources and guidelines for how you can put Design Studios into action. Very interdisciplinary:

"Teams should be designed to have some balance representing various disciplines. Mix up key stakeholders representing various functions within the company. I have found that it’s crucial to include participants from sales and customer support. They bring a unique vision of the customer and the market to a process. Ideally, Design Studio should cut across executives, sales, customer support, product management, development, marketing, and experience design."

These articles are a great resource if you are interested in the implementation of design studios - either in the classroom or in your workplace.

If you follow the guidelines shared in these articles, ... what has your experience been?

Commonalities Among Computing Professionals Who Work for Good

I am performing a final review of the the production text of my book on socially beneficial uses of computing (officially: Computers and Society: Computing For Good).  The computing topics range all across the discipline of computer science (high performance computing to social media) and the non-computing topics are as diverse as saving endangered sea turtles, medical informatics and educational software for children with disabilities.  Several years in the writing, I met on this journey either virtually or in person, dozens and dozens of people. Looking back on all these wonderful encounters I am struck once again by the commonalities among them. 

1. Passion. More than anything else, the people who shared their stories (and those of their organizations) with me felt that their work was more than a job. Again and again I heard about how the cause they worked towards (earthquake prediction, identifying best practices recommendations for infant care, poverty alleviation) gave a sense of purpose above and beyond a paycheck. When things got tough, their passion for helping people or the environment supported them.

2. Risk Takers. As many books on innovation in business have documented, a willingness to take risks, experience setbacks or even failures, is absolutely necessary. Some people I met had abandoned secure positions to follow their dreams, or within their current careers they strategically stuck their necks out to convince others that their ideas were sound and worthy of support. Again and again. Technically and non-technically. Risk taking, dealing with the inevitable setbacks by getting up and moving forward are an ingrained trait in many of the people who are doing the greatest good with computing.

3. Curious and Open Minded. A common reaction to being a risk taker (whether in the world of computing innovation or elsewhere) is to face and go beyond those who say "it can't be done" or "this is not the time". In fact, as the interdisciplinary computing pioneers I met demonstrated, you need to let these critiques roll off. Instead, keep asking questions, gathering information and recognize there is rarely only one way to solve a problem. In fact, the more that conventional wisdom says this is so, the less likely it is to be true.

4. Keep Technically Current and Constantly Learn. Just as I had the privilege and necessity of diving deep into the world of mobile devices, computer security and other areas of computing, the people who are highly effective and innovative with their socially beneficial projects are continuously studying. Not necessarily (or usually) through formal education, but through reading, experimenting, sharing, and just plain digging into material further than they "had to".

Perhaps more than anything else, the computing and non-computing professionals knew themselves well, and knew what their dreams were. They made a personal commitment to pursue those dreams.

If you are reading this, it is likely you have a desire to "do good" with computing. Do you know what your dreams are and are you pursuing them?

Fun and Weird For Friday

It's Friday, it is the start of a holiday weekend in the US, so I thought I'd share some fun things I found. Way back in the Dark Ages when robots first hit the commercial scene I was entranced by a review of one home robot that had a built-in set of sensors to detect life forms. The robot had a limited speech capability to make it friendly. The early models had some slight glitches; apparently one robot snuggled up to a toilet bowl (the size and shape somehow registered as sentient) and talked to it. Another robot used a heat sensor to get just a little too close to the fireplace, again thinking it was alive. But oh, I wanted one.

We have come a long way. I have eyed a Roomba, not necessarily because I need a robot vacuum cleaner but because I wanted to watch it interact with my cat. But now, things have gotten even better. Check these out:

RoboKing Triple Eye vacuum cleaner - it can spy on people, scope for dirt and you can control it via Smart Phone when you are stuck in a traffic jam and are bored to tears breathing exhaust fumes.

Bakebot: Plans for a robot to cook for you...this one needs some work before it goes commercial. I happen to prefer to be my own mad scientist in the kitchen. Especially while this device is still in the oven.

Play Rock Paper Scissors against a computer. You can play against a Novice or a Veteran. Then you can read what the computer is thinking. You will get sucked right into this one...really. When I played against a novice computer my results were: Win, Win, Tie, Lose, Tie, Tie. When I played against a veteran, my results were: Lose, Lose, Tie, Lose, Lose. The computer performed a complex seeming analysis of what I was thinking and then told me what 20,000 (or so) other people did that was similar to my strategy . When I played the Novice, I was actually trying to outwit it. When I played the Veteran I just decided to randomly wing it and it was quite engaging to see how the computer analyzed my winging strategy. You see...you can get sucked in. Look how much I wrote about Rock Paper Scissors! So if you have no plans for the evening...

I really dislike mushrooms but I had a lovely time growing little yellow mushrooms with Mushroom Life and listening to them go "eep" "eep" "eep"; the faster I clicked the faster went the "eeps" and the faster the little yellow things popped up on the grid. More smiles on your face.

You can play Mushroom Life seriously of course. But after the spy vacuum, the half-baked robot cook, and doing battle with the computer over RPS, it seems fitting to work on making music out of popping mushrooms.

Have a nice weekend ("eep").

Internet Voting Revisited: It Could Go Viral

Quite some time ago I wrote a post on internet voting and it generated quite a bit of impassioned response, in great part on some of the computing discussion groups I cross-posted to. Computer scientists have some very strong opinions on internet voting.

Whatever you think of it personally or technologically, it looks like internet voting is coming. There is a really interesting new grassroots movement afoot. It reminds me (and probably will you too) of how the internet was first used to make one primary political campaign go viral (Howard Dean anyone?) - and now virtually all serious politicians recognize that the internet cannot be ignored if they want to win an election. Some use it more effectively than others, but no one brushes it off anymore as only for the "fringe".

There is a group called Americans Elect 2012 that is setting up an online voting system for the 2012 presidential primary so that people across the United States can pick the issues that matter to them and the people they wish to nominate. I heard an interview last night on the PBS NewsHour with 2 of the principals and it is very interesting - non partisan, and sounds like they are going full steam ahead with harnessing computing and the internet to get around the gridlock of our current political election system.

The group already has a presence in all 50 states and is working through the complex process, that varies state by state, of when and how they are legally permitted to operate.

Their system is in Beta, and you can check it out. The site I'm about to link you to includes, among other things, interview snippets with people from 5 states - people on the streets.

Technologically, what is cool about this is that it could very well work. They have apparently thought out how to harness the internet and to address what people are really upset about (according to national polls that were discussed on the news spot last night). The organization is not letting itself get tangled up in theoretical or philosophical or technical discussions about whether or not internet based voting is feasible, or a good idea - they are doing it.

Here they are: Americans Elect 2012. 

If this effort takes off, it could radically change politics as we know it. What do you think????