2014-10-15 12:53:50

I'm wondering how long it will take before wearable tech like google glass become something that we see as a must have instead of questioning or seeing odd? Then again, having a computer implant would be nice if I wasn't worried about becoming something like the borg off of star trek. LOL. The thing that bring this up is that I have recieved my aftershokz in the last few days and finding them to be different then any headphone I ever owned... Anyway, if you see an implant as something possible now days, what kind an implant would it be. Would it connecto to an IPhone or or an endroid for the computing power.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2014-10-15 18:31:50

This is a big question and I'm not sure I dare speculate what direction things will move in.

At the moment google glass is mostly a curiosity and smartwatches are up in the air, with the watches mostly being fitness oriented. Personally I'd have preferred a watch that connects via something like Bluetooth to whatever computer I'm using to act as login credentials and to transfer personal settings and preferences. You could even throw in some flash memory, the transfer rate wouldn't be great but it'd be fine for carrying a few documents to and from work or school.

Implants are a whole different ball game, unless you have a specific medical reason for them it would take a hell of a lot of persuading for people to accept them. I'm talking technological implants of course, not, ahem, cosmetic implants. If I had the ability to regain my sight great, if I had the ability to add thermographic and low light modes then I'd be in nerd heaven. I think it's going to be a long time before we start seeing elective implantation however, with the simplest being possible even now being an RFID or NFC chip to replace bank and ID cards as well as various other passes and licenses. A NFC chip for your bank account in your palm could be as close to the death of physical currency as we're going to get, though I doubt even that will put paid to coinage and notes which can be handed between individuals.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-15 21:19:41

I doubt myself that implants like bionic eyes or matrix style head plugs to interface with computers will be either developed any time soon (and soon in this case means the next 100 or so years), sinse we just don't know enough about the brain and how it assimilates data.

Palm chips or the like might be a possibility, heck we've been using them for animals for years, though there are some ethical concerns with that one.

I do think jewelery like the google glasses or smart watch might become more common, though probably not manditory or used by everyone both because of the conflict of different companies and types, and because of the difficulty of being able to physically operate such devices.

I also suspect we'll see a slow down in the social media grip on society and rather than become such a major fact of life as it is now it'll be a background element, rather the way that in the 1920's people were obsessed with cinema and the 1950's with television (tv street parties etc), but both settled to the point that other interests, fashions and habbits were going on in life rather than those being the major focus of a lot of people involved with them. This isn't to say diminish in importance, but diminish in prominance in public consciousness.

Of course there is the further economic problem given that in terms of economic growth and monopoly things aren't exactly doing well, and I also don't like the current grip of large corporations over society, and I suspect those factors will very heavily influence technological changes of any kind.

After all it was only the Americans trying to one up the Russians that had such an affect on the space program, and only the wide spread use of the radio in the second world war for service announcements that convinced people on the necessity for television,so what social or economic forces will come into play on the next major change in technology I don't know.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 02:42:13

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, dark in regards to the implants being so far out in the future.
Firstly, because of this article here...

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20141310-26321.html

Of course that won't work for everyone, but a fairly substancial number.
Furthermore, I can say that, based on what I'm learning in my biological psychology class, we are getting a better idea of how the brain works at a very fast rate. There's a machine that can be used to stimulate specific parts of the brain for experimental purposes, and my professor was telling us about this guy she knows with one who can use his knowledge plus a mapping system on the computer to basically find all kinds of areas on his own brain, like the centers for speech or motor control.

This next article is about a technology just barely being tested, but realy cool none the less. Essentially, one researcher's brain waves were interpreted by a computer, which then sent the signal over the internet to another, which then stimulated the second researchers brain to cause them to see a serious of flashes in their vision, which could be interpreted into words. So, the first step to brain to brain communication!
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.co … -mind.html

Sometime before that, they even had one rat control another rat with a similar kind of set up.

The future of technology is pretty exciting, in my opinion, and I think actually wearable devices are going to become more and more popular as we increase our ability to squeeze power into smaller and smaller spaces.
Implants may indeed meet social resistance at first, but I don't anticipate that lasting very long. Really, I think once they become sufficiently inexpensive, it will be no time before we start seeing at least subdermal implants for things like passkeys and wireless payment, as mentioned previously. And once those become common place, the next generation will think nothing of getting more advanced ones.

Of course, this is just my perspective as someone studying computers and psychology, that doesn't make me right, but from what I've learned, in and out of school, its where I would put my money.

Shadow

2014-10-16 05:27:09

I don't know shadow, all I've learnt of neuropsychology myself indicates just how great a gap there is between interpreting brain activity and the actual qualea of consciousness, which i find a more serious category problem and one I don't see a solution to any time soon just because I basically disagree with biological determinism. that's not to say you couldn't influence the brain chemically or even have a control of a computer with directed thought which was interpreted electrically, I'm just not sure you could do things the other way around.

Leaving aside the philosophical problem however I do see a more serious and worrying onewith direct brain access, that of privacy and individuality. We already have various companies who are exploiting mechanisms of controled addiction to make money, and I don't just mean cigarettes and food and boose but games like farmville which function as slot machines and are designed purely for generation of prophet through repeated clicking.

if some form of neural access were possible I would be extremely worried what sort of exploitations would be used by major corporations in the quest for prophet. Subliminal advertising? neurological control to buy certain things on an unconscious level? and that's before we get into the mine field of privacy.

I already have severe doubts about the way large scale capitalism is using technology with respect to freedom and the creation of desire, I'd be even more concerned if this sort of power got into those sorts of people's hands, after all The Internet, which began as an academic playground, then turned into a place for artistic freedom of expression is getting more and more regulated by corporate interest (ask yourself how many add panels you've seen lately).

Interestingly enough, the creator of the original 1986 Robocop film was asked to make the remake, however he said he didn't feel it had the same impact anymore because a world where large corporations were using underhanded methods to gain control of public serices and ultimately control of law really wasn't that much of a stretch into science fiction now as it was in the mid 80's.

That is why I personally would rather see the social changes come first before the technological ones, sinse as it stands now I would be very mistrustful of where those sorts of technological changes would go and what they would be used for.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 08:01:35

Looking at the reverse happening I did hear of a guy who trained brain cells taken from a rat to maintain level flight of a fighter in a flight simulator, even managing to keep this up better than a human when the weather conditions were cranked all the way up.

Some of the animal rights and vegan types will no doubt be up in arms about things like that but it could quite possibly lead to organic components in technological systems like the bio neural gel packs in star trek voyager. Obviously this won't replace electronic components entirely but we could potentially start to see it used to regulate systems at some point in the next 50 years or so. It could theoretically be used in anything down to something as simple and everyday as a thermostat or as complicated as a nuclear reactor, though obviously it would take a lot of work and testing to make sure any of these would be safe and reliable.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-16 09:07:57

Interesting thought Cx2, though given the implicitly falible nature of biological components and our inability to produce even basic biological matter on demand, I am not sure if we would have the necessary technological infrastructure to support that sort of development, sinse the gell packs on Voyager were also able to maintain their energy by converting  directly from the energy produced by the ship's warp core, and it'd be a bit of a pest to have to keep refilling your computer with compost, not to speak of all the fun people could then have with computer viruses big_smile.

then again, with some of the current research into growing cloned organs and developing cheaper ways of producing food that don't rely on natural sources I could see that sort of technology as a possible future development.

A rather fun idea I remember from a novel by Frederik Phol was what he called "chicken Little" which pretty much substituted for all chicken that people ate. This was essentially chicken muscle cells genetically tampered with to have some of the fast growing properties of yeast, so you basically had one mass of continually growing solid meat, an interesting problem for vegitarians.

I have seen it predicted that the next major technological revolution will not be in communications, artificial intelligence or transport, but biology, given the increasing world population and need for resources,which would be interesting, though open to similar abuses to neuro interface if in the wrong hands.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 12:57:24

hi,
I doubt developing implantable chips is far off
animals apparently can already be implanted to prevent them from getting lost
however I see many serious privacy and ethical concerns with this technology
with the microchip your government could basicly track everything.  including everything you eat by measuring blood content,  read your thoughts, track all your health issues  and they could easily eliminate anyone by determining the person's location with the implanted chip
I seriously hope that being implanted doesn't become mandatory

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2014-10-16 15:36:59

That's a point Enes, though I don't know about "read your thoughts" with a chip.

I don't worry about the government however in that situation so much as I'd worry about companies getting hold of the data from your chip and using it for extended market research, or still worse controled addictions as they already do by monitoring people's connection to social media or games.

I doubt chips would ever be literally mandatory, but we might get to a point where like an e-mail address, credit card or mobile phone having one is made to be a social necessity, indeed at the moment I see Huxley's Brave new world or Bradberry's farrenheit 451 as far more likely a future scenario than Orwell's 1984.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 18:00:28

It all comes down to what kind of implant. Technically a pacemaker is an implant, it just has minimal connectivity to the body. Even the ID chips used in animals are a kind of implant, of course these have no connectivity to the body at all.

Rudimentary mental control of computers has already been done, I heard of a man with severe disabilities which prevented his movement having small metal implants placed in his brain which then picked up nerve signals and the electromagnetic field from the metal passing the current was detected by electrodes worn on the head. He was able to control a pointer on a screen to indicate his requirements as a form of rudimentary communication. Heck there was even a project that wired a cockroach into a model car and allowed the cockroach's brain to steer the car.

Mental control of technology will probably come with time but that's no different than introducing an additional limb to the body, feedback will still likely be through traditional methods and more complete communication would be an incredibly long way off if possible at all.

Personally I don't follow the school of thought Dark does though I respect everyone's right to their own opinions, consciousness being more than the mechanics of the brain just feels too spiritual for me to accept on scientific principles which I tend to rely on for my understanding of anything. That said I do believe consciousness would be far too complex for us to transmit or emulate it without a significant loss in the process, for example to make a full android body with a human mind in control would certainly change the individual because of the change in the body's signals for things like hunger, sleep, sensory feedback and so on. Replicating every little detail would be virtually impossible and not doing so would change how we act in the world as surely as wearing shoes that are the wrong size.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-16 18:31:40

Well I can see such mental control of devices occurring as I said it's the other way that I'm less certain of, however you missunderstand me if you believe my objection is based on some sort of belief in souls or spiritualism or the like.

My position is simply that mental properties do not translate to physical ones, and that we would not be able to for example replace descriptions of consciousness with just a description of the chemistry of the brain because the two sorts of descriptions are categorically different and express different sets of properties. To give a famous example,Thomas Nagel wrote a paper called "what is it like to be a bat" (I'd suggest you look it up it's actually quite funny), where he stated that while we understand from a completely physiological level exactly what is happening with a bat's sonar, the nature of the experience the bat has when using it's sonar contains a sensary qualea, that is an actual experience which cannot be communicated only by the physiological explanation, ie we cannot know! literally what it is like to be a bat.

This isn't to say changes in the brain cannot be experienced at a conscious level, only that the correspondant translation between the two is neither as obvious nor as streight forward as biological determinism would have itk, and indeed there are papers on the quantum atomic structure of the brain that do support this idea.

For example, if you take a drug that affects your neuro chemistry we might be able to predict! it's affects on that chemistry, but what you actually experience of that drug and how you are then conscious of that experience would be an unpredictable matter that could only be talked of in the language of experience, and certainly it would not be possible to say play with your brain accurately or coherently enough to give you tailer made experiences or invention, even if it is a fun sf idea, much less construct an artificial mind that was conscious and functioned in the same way as a human's.

After all, we don't think that our computers suffer when we turn them off or when they crash.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 21:46:49

Oh I wasn't thinking that, I was just expressing my instinctive caution regarding ideas which involve never being able to understand something. One of our biggest hurdles in that regard would probably be our inability to communicate concepts of experience due to limitations in our language and so on.

I have to feel successful study of such things is theoretically possible, even if in reality it is a practical impossibility. As I said to me anything which claims to be impossible to theoretically understand feels too much like spiritual beliefs which by their nature are usually impossible to prove or disprove.

Every discovery we have made in the past has opened up yet more questions, anything where we hit a brick wall and say "We can't answer this, ever" just doesn't fit the established pattern of science through our entire history. That's not to say it can't happen but it makes me naturally sceptical. Saying something may never be practical to understand is another matter though, that there is a mechanism at work but collecting data or communicating concepts regarding that data simply isn't viable.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-16 22:36:56

The bat problem isn't really a problem of language, sinse there are plenty of things you can think of that do not require language to conceptualize. For example, you can think of the sound of the wind without actually needing to think of the words "wind" or "sound"  by just considdering the experience itself.

That is the issue with the bat's sonar. Even if we invented a new bat language of sense.

Even if I wrote a story about a bat flying around with their sonar, and said "And then the bat pappinged a tree" or "pappinged" a house, though I have invented a new linguistic term to cover the bat's experienced, the verb "papping" it doesn't mean anything to you as a human sinse you don't have a concept of the Quale of what "to papping" means, not the way that you can as I said hear the sound of wind without thinking of the words "wind" or "sound"

I disagree very much with your assessment of science, sinse the intrinsic idea that a current way of understandng the universe and the ansiliary background assumptions we have will always be correct and are based on past correct assumptions is just not how the history of science has been, nor does  it face any of the intrinsc problems with the scientific apporach, however that is a hole other debate and takes some fairly specialist discussion if you haven't studdied philosophy.

The problem of consciousness I mention isn't saying "you can't understand this so there!" it's simply saying that the ways that science currently describes physical, biological systems do not adequately describe the properties and sensations of consciousness.

one good explanation I once heard (which I've mentioned on this forum before), is that you could describe the physical properties of a bronze statue, it's hight, it's weight and mass, but there are other properties, it's artistic value and it's ability to represent an object which could not be described this way however much you listed the statue's basic physical dimentions.

It is possible that a future diciplin might develop forms of language that solve this problem, but again that would require a major conceptual shift and likely a lot of new language as well, but we're not really close to that as yet, and that is just a possibility, possible that this is simply one of those insoluable problems like reductive nihilistic schepticism.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-16 23:29:26

The next big thing will be the ability to controll your phone using your mind. Then it will go to computers.
No more keyboards, it will be just:
email (email cliant opens)
open documents/school/2014/fall/cs200/notes monday october 13 2014.txt (the document opens)
write "I like pie... lots of pie... orange pie... red pie..."


Just like touch screens are now, thoughts will be the new touch screen.
My mom has some students who play the thought-controlled games and to her those are normal already...

After that, what will happen is the computer will either go on the head, like glasses, or we will make some massive jump in science that will give us the ability to receive input.
for the problem is not with exporting thoughts, just importing them. We still require our senses to tell our brain stuff.
Does anyone know what these mind-controlled units are called?

2014-10-17 04:49:52

Well leaving aside the question of whether it would actually be possible to recieve real consciousness from a machine, (which I personally still doubt), at least one advantage of thought as a control method is no access issues big_smile.

Last I checked the interpretation of thoughts was by reading electrical impulses from the skin, and didn't involve the literal transfer of information so much as it involved the subject having to learn the correct interface of thoughts to access the system. In one thought controled racing game I saw for example, You couldn't for example just think "go right" and be understood, but had to think very specifically of moving your hand to the right and that being interpreted by the system, indeed most of the thought control system I've heard of work by tracking existing motor neurones the way that certain types of artificial limb do.

So you wouldn't literally be able to thinkg "open e-mail" and have it open, rather you'd think about a series of movements that the computer would interpret as you wanting to open the mail.

Whether the interpretation technology will improve to the point that human thoughts could be understood directly without the need to approximate  bodily movements is an interesting question.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-17 06:09:07

Oh I never said science was always right, we've got things wrong enough times in the past for that to be clear. I simply meant when we do get closer to the correct answer good science has always led to more questions to study. For example the discovery that Earth wasn't the centre of the universe led to us asking what is at the centre of the universe, how the universe is arranged, even how our solar system is arranged and why the planets go around the sun.

It sounds like we're saying the same thing just in different terms regarding consciousness. There is a mechanism at work but for whatever reason it isn't currently possible for us to... my head's too foggy just now. There is something to be understood but one way or another we're not in a position to understand it.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-17 07:00:34

@Cx2, the problem of science is far more complex than just "Science occasionally gets things wrong" and has to do with various inherent problems on the way science frames questions and goes about answering them within a self referencial system which is only explicable within reference and to itself and the sort of tquestions and phenomena that it has already established.

fundamentally, it is the admition that despite idiots like Richard Dorkins science is just as inherently flawed a method of ordering our experience as any other and just as much based upon assumptions we've already made about the rules of the game we've set up.

For example, a person without the necessary reference looking at a virus under a microscope will just see a lot of blobs and colours, and the identity and behaviour of those things are inherently set by what previously has been established.

This isn't to say "go off and be a nihilist" only that we should be very careful before assuming that our method of explaning reality is ultimately the only one possible, or assuming that we know everything or that we even have the necessary questions and abilities to know everything.

Consciousness here is a particularly good example, and one reason why I am so much against biological determinism and reductive physical explanations, sinse it does seem there is a heck of a lot missing in the electro chemical account of the brain and consciousness as opposed to what we actually experience and the way we consider our own minds, thoughts and impressions, and it would take a rather different approach than the basically physiological reductionist one currently in favour to account for that.

What such an approach would be I don't know, it'd probably be somewhere betwene neuropsychology, poetry, religious experience and metaphysics, but I doubt that with the currently utilitarian and actually rather narrow minded view of human experience, especially considering how much knolidge and research is a slave to production at the moment, I rather doubt we'll have the ability to expand our horizons that far, at least without a major change.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-17 07:56:30 (edited by cx2 2014-10-17 07:57:45)

There's science and then there's science, not even professional scientists do good science all the time. Good science means question everything and always be aware of how many assumptions you're making, sometimes assumptions are indeed a necessary tool but we need to be very careful about how heavily we lean on them. As I pointed out to someone a number of years ago the existence of gravity is technically still a theory, it's just a fairly firm one. I don't believe we're able to understand everything even given enough time, I simply believe there are mechanisms at work with rules and that it's the attempt to understand that is important.

I also agree that biology alone isn't adequate to explain consciousness, even if we were equipped to understand consciousness which we really aren't. Even if consciousness is a result of electrochemical interactions the result is so complex that looking at it in such a way results in losing the big picture, it's also perfectly possible there are methods of interaction within the brain using mechanisms not yet discovered. Trying to explain the workings of a computer solely using microelectronics as your basis would be difficult enough, you'd get so bogged down in capacitors and logic gates that you'd be entirely unable to comprehend the total function of the system at work. How much harder the mind would be for us to truly comprehend I hate to think.

Oh and Richard Dawkins is an arrogant knob of the first order. Mentioning him in the same sentence as science is kind of degrading.

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-17 09:25:19

Check out
The thought-reading headset website
They say:
"Detection algorithms
Our detection algorithms enable Emotiv Brainwear ™ to interpret signals measured as either mental commands, facial expressions or brain performance metrics. The standard SDK included with every headset gives you access to these metrics.
Performance
Measure and track your Focus, Engagement, Interest, Excitement, Affinity, Relaxation, and Stress levels.
Mental commands
Interpret basic mental commands such as push, pull, levitate, rotate and even hard to visualize commands such as disappear.
Facial expressions
Detect facial expressions such as blink, wink, surprise and smile.
You think, therefore you can"

I think, just as we have a standard keyboard, we will have a standard set of commands for using the computer (at first).
I for one, would like to get my hands on one of these and mess around with creating audio games or applications with it.

2014-10-17 09:27:43

wouldn't it be cool if you could have an avatar do what you are thinking and control it that way?
No more of this silly clicking...

2014-10-17 10:00:02

That's more or less how Battletech sees the control of its mecha, using bulky "neurohelmets" to allow mental control of the mech with secondary physical controls for certain functions that don't translate well.

Direct neural connection to a virtual environment as described in works like Neuromancer by William Gibson, the Shadowrun RPG, and most recently the Matrix films is something we may never see. We're certainly not even close.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-17 13:47:12

@Frastlin this sort of technology does seem possible sinse it is based on us using specific interactions that the system can itself understand, and needing to learn to use those interactions, rather than the computer "reading your mind", though it would still be a good idega and as you said work in a lot of ways, though again a far distance from Neuromancer, Tad Williams' otherland etc.

@Cx2, I don't think saying "hgood science" or "bad science" is exactly the correct way of illustrating the problem, sinse the problem is far more serious than that as pretty much all! assumptions in science are questionable, including the assumption of the rules used to set those questions.
For example there is the problem of experimenters regress, see Good old wikipedia or basically how exactly when a scientist is expecting results from a given experiment, thos namely that in order to judge whether a theory is correct a scientist looks at experiments, however in order to judge whether an experiment has been performed correctly and that the results show what the scientist believes they show, the scientist will refer to the theory.

This isn't to say science is wrong, only that Dorkins is a really! arrogant knob big_smile.

I myself like the idea of Paul Feyerabend, that science itself is a constructed activity in which a bunch of competing theories are set against networks of ever more fundamental assumptions, and that the validity of those theories is about compatibility with the fundamental assumptions, which may themselves be wrong, but do at least give a coherent framework to measure the wrongness against, so rather than thinking of science as a continual progress up a hill towards some universal truth, it's much more like trying to weave a net with smaller and smaller fibres, occasionally having to discard the larger peaces, but hopefully coming up with something that will do the job in the end.

Getting back to less esoteric matters however, one development in control methods that I do believe will be coming quite soon would be a fully spoken interface. I don't mean vo, I mean an advanced form of Siri which could not just recognize the odd key phrase or word, but also act within individual applications to perform the same sort of actions as clicking icons. I actually think we'll start seeing this fairly soon, within the next few years, and what is nice is it will be a development which sighted users will have as standard, ---- sinse people are used to talking, and one which will also be great for access. How awsome would it be to be playing an rpg and say "Equip the ebony short bow and the dragon scale armor, then close the inventory and go to the level one dungeon"

or having an action game like Gma tank commander where you could drive and use the gun but could change weapons by saying "load the smoke canister" or the like.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2014-10-17 14:09:50 (edited by cx2 2014-10-17 14:10:19)

I believe Skyrim and Mass Effect already can make use of the Microsoft Kinect to do something very similar to that, so it isn't unreasonable to imagine it becoming far more widespread. With the inclusion of Kinect as standard with the Xbox 1 for example the hardware exists in the mainstream, the issue is convincing developers that people want it rather than it just being an interesting gimmick.

Oh and Dark, that was why I said assumptions are necessary. Theories are commonly built on top of other theories and the well created ones tend to fit neatly with various other theories like a piece of a jigsaw. To me science is about refining all the pieces as much as we can so they fit as best they can with each other, but equally important is to encourage the human desire for understanding and our innate curiosity. So long as we keep it constrained by ethics, which is an entire other debate in itself, curiosity is one of humanity's best traits in my opinion. I think I've done hijacking this topic on the subject though smile

cx2
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To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-10-20 22:04:46

dark do you think voice commands will catch on? Have you asked your whole family what they use SIRI or google's speech recognition for?
when was the last time you got a voice message on facebook?
why did texting become so popular? Why don't most people have dragon, even if they can?

What seems to be advancing faster, the size of technology or speech recognition software? wouldn't it be faster to be typing commands through your mind before taking the phone out of your pocket? Wouldn't the ability to think texts to your friends in class without your teacher ever guessing exemplify the whole culture of texters? (The question is then, how to make a UI that the teacher never guesses is really a UI... Why has google not gone for google contacts yet?)

2014-10-21 12:21:31

@Frastlin, I think there is a tradition and culture around texting that has grown up with the generation who started sending text on mobile phones, look at text speak for example. It's sort of become a tradition and practice in and of itself, especially because texts are tied to sending pictures and images which have become a major part of social media culture, heck when I got my Iphone, the promotional material from the network said "sending funny videos" as a common use practice of the device. 

I suspect however with the improvements to Siri that we will see changes in the future. Dragon was always marketed as an aide to people with dislexia and similar rather than an ease of typing, particularly sinse very early versions of dragon required you to speak so slowly that there was nothing natural about it, however I suspect as the technology improves people will adapt to it, particularly if, as is suspected, the internet and social media focus changes in the next few years and people actually start seeing the value of more contact, sinse there is something inherently impersonal about communicating via text, though that is of course a hope as social media has a basically impersonal bias, and it is good for corporatiosn to maintain this level of depersonalization, (sinse woe betide that people really! start communicating).

I suspect we're also technologically a long way from sending text mentally as well, and that voice command will occur before that, heck look at the adverts that show people talking to google in natural sentences. Unrealistic advertising but probably  part of what will come before the thought based technology you predict.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)