Colin Ellard - You Are Here

Footloose

The wide availability of cheap and reliable sensors is going to have all kinds of effects on how we live our future lives.  I'm actually a big fan of using sensors either carried on one's person or embedded in the environment to change and hopefully to enhance our connectedness to the world.  I usually think of this in terms of providing a cybernetic assist to our fragile grasp on place -- using cheap computing power to remind us of where we are, where we're not, and how the two are connected.

This is something entirely different, but at least in the same realm.  These clever researchers have found a way to put cheap sensors and computing into shoes to help with balance problems, particularly with the elderly.  We're now seeing legions of baby boomers reach retirement age, but unlike some past generations, these people are not going to be content to toddle off to a condo in Boca.  They're healthy, educated, and vibrant with life, but still afflicted with some of the physical and cognitive declines that come with advancing years.  So the challenge is to find ways to help them adapt to the inevitable changes within, but to still live up to their full potential.

In my own small way, I'm beginning to engage with questions like this in my research life.  How does (and how should?) design, especially architectural design, adapt to a cohort of seniors who aren't ready for the rocker on the porch so much as the trek in Nepal?  I don't think we know nearly enough about how to do this well.

Bee-ographic profiling

There's an old saying about not messing in your own backyard, which apparently is a wise rule adopted by a wide range of critters from insects to serial killers.  In research about to hit e-print, Nigel Raine and Steve Le Comber, a pair of entomologists from Queen Mary, University of London have teamed up with a criminal profiler, Kim Rossmo, a former detective who was the first police officer in Canada to earn a PhD in criminology for a technique that he pioneered called "geographic profiling."  Rossmo, who is now at the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University developed sophisticated computer programs that were designed to zero in on the home locations of violent criminals based on the locations of their crimes.  Rossmo has been outspoken in his discussion of many crime investigations, including that of William Pickton in British Columbia.

What's most fascinating about this recent research is that it points out the interesting linkages between patterns of foraging and hunting behaviours in animals ranging from bees to sharks and the patterns of criminal acts in people.  One simple rule is that serial killers are less likely to commit crimes in areas close to their homes.  The profiler then can search for "holes" in the distribution of murders.  Oddly enough, foraging bees show similar patterns in that they are less likely to forage at flowers that are close to their hive because this might lead predators to find their homes.  This finding, along with other predictors, can make it possible for scientists to zero in on the location of a hive by analyzing the pattern of visited flowers.  The value of such studies is that understanding foraging patterns can help with conservation efforts.  At the same time, the studies with animals can help to hone computer models designed to catch killers because some of the principles generalize across species.

I'm game for anything

I'm sure these brain-wave reading headsets will turn out to be a crude early version of what will be available in two or three years, but I'm nothing if not an early adopter,so I've just ordered one of the first of such devices to come to market.  The OCZ "neural impulse activator" -- a bit of a cheezy title for the product to be sure -- promises to allow me to find ways to manipulate my computer using my thoughts.  All this for a couple of hundred bucks -- how could I refuse?  I suspect that what's really happening here is a little self-training to control combinations of brow-furrowing and eye-popping, but cheap methods of measuring bio-signals have come along by leaps and bounds in recent years, so one never knows what little surprises might be in store for me.

Other than the joy of gaming, I've been thinking a lot about the role of a computer interface in mediating our connections with cyberspace.  In our lab, we think this is pretty important.  That's why, when we place people into virtual environments simulating big houses, we lug a big van load full of delicate gear from our lab space to a large gym -- so that rather than using a mouse or a joystick to move around a space, people can just walk naturally.

I don't know how far this OCZ device will take me -- I'm keeping my expectations on the low side -- but imagine being able to generate an immersive virtual environment and then being able to wander through it just by wanting to, but separating the intention from the action itself, or at least much of it.  Even if it begins to feel as though you're controlling your place with your thoughts, how is that going to affect your understanding of where you are?

And now back to my day job.  Wait!  This is my day job!

The future of reading

The chatter is increasing about the influence of new technologies on the basics of how we read and otherwise parse information.  This article, justifiably, is receiving a lot of attention.  The premise is that our exposure to Internet technologies, and the alternative methods they give us for gathering information, may actually be changing the structure of human cognition, giving us what Cory Doctorow called an "outboard brain."  Now, the New York Times is chiming in with an in-depth series on the future of reading beginning with an article written by Motoko Rich (free registration with NY Times required to read this) and published this past weekend.

There are many important issues to be worked out here, and the articles linked above serve as a pretty good primer for some of them.  As an educator and a scholar, I find much to like in the recent exponential rise in the availability of good quality information in digital form.  In some ways, my job has become much easier.   In the past few years, the direction of my research has undergone a radical shift -- I've had to try to imbibe entirely new areas of knowledge in a dizzyingly short period of time.  I know there are gaping holes in my knowledge base, but I also know how to fill them quickly and efficiently from my desktop (which can be anywhere ranging from my office at the university to my backyard Muskoka chair to (much to the disgust of my little son and boon companion in "bear country") a twinkling smart phone beside a campfire.  As the Times article points out, with the loss of the careful editorial control of content that happens in the chaotic Internet, we've learned to rely on the rules of swarm intelligence to assess the patency of what we read.  Wikipedia, for all of its warts and wrinkles, seems to me to be right more often than it is wrong.  When 10 different websites say much the same thing, one can be ever so slightly more confident that one is at least circling the neighbourhood of a "fact".

One of the main criticisms of the Internet Information Age has to do with its potential to erode our span of attention and this, to me, seems like a more serious concern.  I had a short e-chat with a textbook editor friend of mine last week about this, and she felt that it had become more difficult for her to immerse herself deeply in text.  I feel the same tug of resistance to this kind of immersion myself.  When I read a novel, I often do so with a notebook computer close at hand so that I can both write notes to myself and check facts or follow up on random ideas, as I read.  I can't remember the last time I became so immersed in a book that I lost track of space and time, yet I know this used to happen to me on a regular basis.

On the weekend, Karen and I visited the Stratford Festival to take in a production of Taming of the Shrew.  When we heard that the running time was just shy of three hours, we both blanched a bit, yet this is not the least bit unusual for a Shakespeare production.  Looking around the half-filled auditorium, it was hard not to notice that the demographic spectrum of the audience tilted toward the aged, in spite of the aggressive marketing of the festival designed to bring under-18s into the auditorium.  Is full scale live theatre also a victim of the electronic age?  As I sat through what turned out to be a pretty solid production of an interesting play, I found myself struggling to maintain attention at times.  This never used to happen to me.

The night after our theatre expedition, I sat in our large family room and looked around at all of us--together in the same room yet each in their own space.  Only my four year old son lay on the floor immersed in a book (well, an Archie comic still counts....).  The rest of us stared at screens.  I tried an experiment.  I pulled a copy of Oliver Twist from the shelf (significantly, purchased at least five years ago and yet unopened until Saturday) and began to read aloud.  Soon, I had a litter of children at my feet (Karen too), lying on the carpet each with one ear facing me.  After a couple of chapters, I stopped, fearing that everyone was asleep.  One little head popped up, and then another.  My teenaged daughter, Jessica, asked "Can we read more tomorrow, Dad?"  It might not happen--we might not get through the whole book any time soon--but it was great to think that it might be possible.

China risen

   On my first trip to  China in 2001, there was one small area of Beijing that drew me back into its clutches time and time again.  No matter where I began my day, it was a near certainty that around sunset I would find myself just below the south gate into Tiananmen Square wandering the tiny back alleys of Qianmen. Back then, I didn't know much at all about psychogeography or space syntax theory or isovists or any of the amazing ideas of planners and architects regarding the manner in which the organization of a space can have  such a profound impact on how one feels in it. All I knew was that once I was past Qianmen Gate and immersed shoulder to shoulder in the teeming masses, listening to screeching street hawkers trying to outdo the verbal advertising blasting out of shop fronts on loudspeakers, wandering tiny alleyways of hutong neighbourhoods with their incredible contrasts of light, colour, sound and aroma, I felt somehow as if I was at home but also in the heart of Asia.  It was here that I found a tiny restaurant where the staff seemed so fascinated by the chutzpah of a sole white face willing to sit and point at a menu of unknowns, to eat falteringly with slippery plastic chopsticks, and to drink seemingly endless large bottles of icy Chinese beer on those hot August nights that they would hover over me in clouds of three or four, offering giggling tutorials in Chinese table manners and what I at least interpreted as some admiring and sympathetic glances.  It was in this same neighbourhood where, tottering out of the restaurant on unsteady legs, I found a man standing with a small telescope pointed toward the full moon and a little sign that offered glimpses for a small handful of change.  And it was here that I was propositioned for the first and only time by a Chinese prostitute--in my naivete I wondered how it was that this woman was willing to risk the automatic death sentence for prostitution.   I loved the vibrant heart of this neighbourhood and always felt as though, if I were to live in Beijing, I would want to live here.

Now, seven years later, I read that the Qianmen streets I knew are no more.  The blazing shopping avenue that used to ring my ears and fascinate my eyes is to be replaced by some kind of faux-Chinese SoHo, replete with Starbucks, Adidas, Apple, and many of the other brand names of the West.  The hutongs in this area, like many others in Beijing, have been flattened to make way for the Olympic games, many of the residents driven to the outer suburbs.  It's all very sad that in the name of showing a "world class" face, China is destroying some of its jewels--lovely neighbourhoods filled with overflowing courtyard houses, street life, mixed use like those of us in the sterile and sprawling west can only imagine.  These parts of Beijing were for me the ones that really worked in a way that most of us living in North American cities  should only envy.

And what when the Games are done?  Will Qianmen slowly creep back towards the old ways?  Will there be enough ghostly resonance of old Beijing in the new concrete escarpments to bring  back any semblance of authentic life?   Or will the streets remain empty, like a sad facsimile of a North American power centre in the off-season, only with a few carved dragons on the building facades to remind us that we're in China and not in Tucson or Edmonton?   

artful design

I've just stumbled across this company via a nice write-up on the influence of nature on the healing process in Orion.

Here's what they make:

That's not a skylight.  It's a gorgeous kind of lightbox designed to create the illusion of open space and nature in an ordinary interior.  From the point of view of the observer, this clever device is actually changing the shape of the space inside the room.  Sky Factory tells me that they have installed such products in thousands of health care settings, where there is every reason to believe that these devices are having beneficial effects on patients which might range from more rapid healing to the lowered stress levels that might help them better tolerate some of modern medicine's difficult or painful protocols.

At least that's what we think.

The problem of applying the tools of modern psychology to the question of whether or not designs like this really work, why they work, and how to optimize them, is one that I find increasingly fascinating.  Indeed, the very fact that the description of this product appeared in a short article in Orion, a magazine devoted to understanding and preserving nature, raised my eyebrows.

At some deep level, we're getting that it's important to use technology to understand our relationship with nature.  Fascinating technology, deep understanding of how the tools of behavioural science can illuminate the effect of such technology on our minds, and a desire to make life better for the weak, the sick, the shut-in, the institutionalized.  That's a pretty nice agenda for a Friday afternoon of blue sky thinking.

Invisible integration in Dubai

I'm having all kinds of different reactions to this video, discovered via one of my new favourite blogs.

It seems that Dubai, a city teeming with migrant workers from nearby developing countries who fill low-paying service and construction jobs, has a problem.  How to house those workers in affordable dwellings without using exurban migrant worker camps?  The solution proposed here is to build invisible skyscrapers inside luxury high rises in which such workers can be housed in internal tubes filled with modest Ikea furnished suites with shared kitchen and living areas.  The entryways are even cleverly arranged so that those living in the lap of luxury on the outside rind of these big tubes would never even have to see the workers who toil for them.  Even though I know this arrangement is much better than the current conditions of the migrant work camps, this just rubs me the wrong way.  It's the idea that these big shiny buildings might be designed in such a way as to pretend that the worker termites who actually keep the whole city running don't really exist.  It's exactly this type of subterfuge, the pretense that we  can spread ourselves out in gigantic residential palaces while hiding their real costs behind a clever smokescreen of occluding walls that has gotten us to our present precarious state.  Lots of times, we make these kinds of cleavages between the real and the fantasy purely by accident.  It's the cold deliberation that in this case makes it seem so odious.

Mirrors

Here's something strange.  When you look into the mirror, how big is the image of your face?  Now, as you back away from the mirror, how does the size of the image change?  If you're like most people you'll say that the image is roughly the same size as your real face but as you back away, the image will become smaller.  Makes sense, right?  Except that's not what happens.  The image of your face will be exactly half the size of your actual face, no matter how far you are from the mirror.  Which means that as you back away from the mirror, the size of your face's image won't change.  This seems so counterintuitive that you may have to try it for yourself to believe it.  I had to.  I used a couple of small pieces of tape, at the top and bottom of my face image in the mirror.  As I walked away, the image of my face remained exactly within the tape marks.  And then, I had to demonstrate to every single one of my children, all of whom were awestruck except for one 10 year old who had such strong convictions about what would happen that she actually denied the evidence of her senses.

The physics behind this is not very complicated and is explained well here.  What's much more interesting is to reflect (sorry...) on the reason why what we see confounds our intuitions.  It's because what we see, when we look into the mirror, is not a reflection.  For all intents and purposes, we are acting as though we are seeing another person who looks just like us.  As we back away from real people, their images do get smaller, so we expect it of our reflected images as well.  No matter how hard we try, it seems, we just can't see the image as an image, rather than as the real thing.

Mirrors: the original virtual reality machines.

Vacation

It's been a very exciting week for me.  Not only did I catch the first glimpse of what will probably be the cover of my forthcoming book, but I had a chance to try my hand at making a video trailer for the book.  This was something entirely new for me.  I've been a reluctant feature in home movies, but I've never had to try to to project any kind of message using video images.  Like any beginner doing this, I learned all kinds of hard lessons about myself.  I talked too fast.  I dropped my volume at the end of sentences sometimes.  I don't swing my arms very much when I walk, which looks weird (my wife, at breakfast this morning, almost spewed her coffee in amusement at the idea that I hadn't really known this before this week).  What was most interesting, though, was having a chance to see myself from the outside.

Just after I earned my PhD, a dear friend of mine gave me a book:  The Personality Surgeon, by Colin Wilson.  I have no idea how she chose this particular book for me and didn't have a chance to ask her, but I've probably wondered more about this gift over the years than almost any other that I've ever received.  From my current perspective, it seems like a remarkable act of prescience.  The premise of the book is that a psychiatrist stumbles upon the idea that if we could only see ourselves as others see us, many personality problems would be solved.  This basic idea is spun off in classic Wilson style by the introduction of the idea that if we see ourselves as we're not, perhaps our personalities can be changed.

I'm not sure whether seeing my hulking presence on a screen will turn me into a new man (I suspect not), but Wilson's idea, and my own thoughts about embodiment, have a kind of resonance.  How much of what we are depends on having that third person point of view concealed from us?  And when we look on, as we do when we see video images of ourselves or avatars representing ourselves in virtual reality, how does that change who we are? 

Much of our understanding of ourselves must come from feedback from the outside world.  I know I've hurt your feelings when I see you cry.  I know I've pressed the elevator button when I see it light up.  Turning a mirror on ourselves using any number of different space-shifting technologies changes those feedback loops in all kinds of interesting ways.

I'm going on vacation for a few days -- going to take in some nature scenery at a campground.  I have an idea which book I'll take with me.