IdeaFestival

I guess I'm a robot sympathizer

I'm not sure how I ran across this robot video, but it's wildly popular. My feed reader pulled down Jamais Cascio's reaction to it today, and because his reaction and mine were similar I thought I'd sign on to the sentiment he expresses.

Initially, I was weirded out. Looking like a cross between a giant fly and a horse, there's no question that this robot is exceptionally life like. I know that biped robots with human-like gaits are also being built. Perhaps that's one reason why I've changed my mind about the possibility of artificial intelligence. Intelligent robots increasingly pass the look test.

But seeing the person accompanying the robot kick it hard in the side - curiously, the scene is replayed in slow motion - I was suddenly aware of another emotion.

I felt genuinely sorry for it as it briefly flailed about trying to regain its footing.

Watching the video a couple of times again, I was reminded of how we're attracted to things with minds, how the sound of a parent's voice can light up an infant's eyes - how the cooing of a lover can bring union - how the sight of someone in distress can catalyze an emotion buried in our limbs. This is good.

Thus cued, we reach out.

I realize that it's a robot, but I'm with Jamais. Why the hard knock?

Wayne

Growing compassion

Having first read a story about how experiments with the cooperation of Bhuddist monks had shown a marked change in brain structure as a result of meditative practices - particularly those areas thought responsible for compassion and consciousness -I was gratified to see that Newsweek's Sharon Begley recently brought the story forward.

New research demonstrates that the voluntary generation of compassion thought and feeling can result in long lasting changes for the better in our brains. We can indeed grow the areas of our brain responsible for compassion.

Cool, isn't it?

Similarly, UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz touched on the idea last September in Louisville while arguing that practiced "reframing" can curb obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Wayne

"Obliquity:" To get somewhere, go somewhere else first

Is the best strategy for success and indirect approach to goals? Offering some examples from history, economist John Kay explains "obliquity."

George W. Bush speaks mangled English rather than mangled French because James Wolfe captured Quebec in 1759 and made the British crown the dominant influence in Northern America. Eschewing obvious lines of attack, Wolfe's men scaled the precipitous Heights of Abraham and took the city from the unprepared defenders. There are many such episodes in military history. The Germans defeated the Maginot Line by going round it, while Japanese invaders bicycled through the Malayan jungle to capture Singapore, whose guns faced out to sea. Oblique approaches are most effective in difficult terrain, or where outcomes depend on interactions with other people. Obliquity is the idea that goals are often best achieved when pursued indirectly....

Obliquity is characteristic of systems that are complex, imperfectly understood, and change their nature as we engage with them.

Wayne

Hat tip: Cognitive Edge

Wikipedia: complexity Merriam-Webster: tact

"Humanitarian Technology Review"

Bruno Giussani has posted an article about a new journal with an intriguing title: The Humanitarian Technology Review. A project of InSTEDD, the journalist effort is based on the idea that many of the worst results from disease and disaster can be traced to an inadequate understanding of events between specialties.

Bruno cites the early reporting of West Nile Virus among large mammals in veterinary journals; that information might have helpful to medical doctors had the information been made available to them. He also lists this impressive list of fields the journal will cover:

early disease detection, predictive modeling and simulation, mobile communications, transportation, water and sanitation, green tech, climate change impacts, machine translation, vaccines, crisis management, food security, resilience and recovery, energy, chronic disease, microbiology, just to mention a few.

The goal of InSTEDD, according to Bruno, is to provide "the earliest possible warning of all bad things."

Wayne

What's it like to be me?

Wired has just concluded a contest that invited readers to submit self-portraits. Reader favorites are here and editor favorites, here. There are some awfully interesting and skillfully done compositions, so give them a look.

Wayne

Enceladus' internal heat mapped

[Cross posted from KySat, the blog for the Kentucky space program] More science from Cassini's recent close encounter with Saturn's geyser-moon, Enceladus, is being made available to the public. NASA has just posted this heat map of the  southern pole of the satellite.

According to the agency, there is a 200 degree swing (Fahrenheit) between the temperature at the vents and the rest of the surface of the moon.

To see what the water-ice geysers look like from space, check out this picture.

Wayne

Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/SwRI/SSI

Stars dim for Arthur C. Clarke

In an essay published today in the New York Times, science writer Dennis Overbye reflects on a life - his life - guided in part by the visionary science fiction of the late Arthur C. Clarke.

I’ve lived in Clarke’s universe ever since I was in eighth grade and a classmate slipped me a paperback edition of Clarke’s 'Reach for Tomorrow,' a collection of short stories. Until that point my biggest ambition was to play second base for the New York Yankees.

But here is the heart of the essay:

In his short story 'The Nine Billion Names of God,' published in 1953, Clarke wrote of a pair of computer programmers sent to a remote monastery in Tibet to help the monks there use a computer to compile a list of all the names of God. Once the list was complete, the monks believed, human and cosmic destiny would be fulfilled and the world would end.

The programmers are fleeing the mountain, hoping to escape the monks’ wrath when the program finishes and the world is still there, when one of them looks up.

'Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.'

That was a typical Clarke ending, and it seemed only natural upon his death that nature might want to reciprocate.

And as Overbye points out, it did. Having traveled a colossal distance, on the morning of his death the remnants a gamma-ray burst lit up an area of the night sky in the region of the constellation Boötes before dimming again. Fitting.

Wayne

Arthur C. Clarke

"Meaningful experience" part of new business curriculum

Senior practitioner Kate Rutter of the experience design firm Adaptive Path recently interviewed Nathan Shedroff, an experience designer and founder of the brand new MBA in Design Strategy at the California College of the Arts, on the evolving relationship between design and business.

"Design and business aren't new," Shedroff says, "though the way they relate to each other at this point in time are."

Though they discuss a variety of topics related to that developing relationship, this exchange emphasized design thinking as business process rather than a business end.

[KR]: It seems that a common attribute of [programs that teach "design thinking"] is to blur the boundaries between fields, and to foster the ability to synthesize…to cross-pollinate concepts and ideas across different functional areas. With this trend towards generalization, how do you avoid teaching people to be, for lack of a better phrase, Jack-or-Jane-of-all-trades but master of none?  

[NS]: This is a great question. There’s no way we can teach students everything they need to know.... Their learning is life-long so the best we can do is frame some of these perspectives and skills for them, give them some experience, and inspire them to continue the process. We’ve prioritized, in the curriculum, the skills, knowledge, and experiences we think they will need the most, but it’s just a start. Besides, there’s only so much you can learn in school. At some point, you need to learn 'on-the-job' — whatever that job may be. So, we’re exposing our students to a variety of skills but with unified perspectives (design-led innovation, meaningful experience, sustainability, and visionary leadership) so that their deep skills will follow these lines. They will be expert innovation leaders and will be able to apply these skills to any domain or challenge.

Rutter's byline says she embraces the term "specialized generalist." I dig that; it reminds me of Steve Hardy's term "creative generalist."

Wayne

Hat tip: Putting People First

Nice people get more

Do nice people get more? Freakonomics:

'People who punish others the least earn the biggest rewards in repeated interactions, according to a new study published in the journal Nature and authored by Martin Nowak, director of the evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard University'.

Yeah, they do.

Wayne

Titan chemistry, titanic idea

CICLOPS, the team that brings the fantastic Cassini images to the public, has just published this natural color panorama. The yellowish Titan is headed behind the planet, while Tethys has come into view.

Cassini is scheduled to fly by Titan at a mere 620 miles in altitude today to further examine the atmosphere of the moon.

In 2005, the doughty spacecraft also sent a probe to land on the surface of methane-shrouded Titan, which, recent evidence suggests, may also contain subsurface oceans.

And in an unexpected surprise, the craft has observed continuously erupting water-ice geysers at the southern pole of Enceladus.

So why is that important?

If these active organic and geological processes are occurring here, in a one solar system in single galaxy - and the one we just happen to occupy to boot - perhaps they are more common than previously believed. Thanks to Hubble, we now know, for example, that organic molecules are present in the atmosphere of another planet orbiting a distant sun. Perhaps, just perhaps, a history-changing discovery awaits.

NASA has made the science from Cassini freely available here if you're interested.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Wayne