kathleen forden

For the past two months I’ve been running a large project for the world’s largest provider of higher education and have not really had a lot of time to post.

During that time I kept seeing signs of what I call the start of the human-machine convergence.  Yes, I know there are precedents for this and these are not the “true first signs”.

I’m interested for another reason, the way it is being marketed.  For some reason it’s being commercialize this holiday season.  Several “toys” are being promoted to consumers that allow brain reading to control objects in front of you.

Mattel and StarWars Science are both offering these toys at your local Walmart or Target.  But good luck finding them, even with a $100+ price tag they appear to have sold out.

I don’t have the time to post all of my thoughts, and came across this article below that sums up what I was missing above.  Have fun and enjoy the read, let me know your thoughts too!

Mind Reading (Neural Decoding) Goes Mainstream | h+ Magazine.

Other Resources:

Posted via web from kforden.com

So it’s not exact science, it’s still worth viewing.

This concept allows to you to experience immersion and effortless navigation in an Augmented Reality environment. New types of interactions involving near-to-eye displays, gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch.

Through these new types of social linkages people will be connected in innovative ways between the physical and digital worlds.It’s hands-free and weightless compared to a tablet, no small screen problem as you have on a mobile phone – but is it truly useful?

Unlike most other AR apps we’ve seen lately, where the physical world is referenced by the AR – the two seem unrelated here. It takes all kinds, though, and who’s to say how AR will be used?(Also, isn’t this music a little creepy? It sounds bittersweet about the inevitable and yet slightly frightening future.)None the less, we’d love to get our hands on a prototype of this technology to test it – just as soon as it becomes real.

According to the New York Times Bits blog, a recent study funded by the US Department of Education (PDF) found that on the whole, online learning environments actually led to higher tested performance than face-to-face learning environments. “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction,” concluded the report’s authors in their key findings.

The report looked at just under one hundred studies that compared the performance of students in online learning environments (or courses with an online study component) to those who were given strictly face-to-face instruction for the same courses. What they found was that students who completed all or some of their coursework online tested on average in the 59th percentile, compared to the 50th percentile for those who received only classroom instruction, and that the results are statistically significant.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/?hp

OK, some of the science is questionable, however, it’s worth the watch to understand and see possible dimensions.

A short animation that takes the viewer through a progressive description of all (and all possible) dimensions, up to and including the 10th

The brain’s “seeking system” is hard-wired to obsessively love Google, Twitter, e-mail, and other electronic communication devices, fueled by the opioid neurotransmitter dopamine, according to neuroscientists.

Seeking. You can’t stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges’ instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don’t even care about. Nina Shen Rastogi confessed in Double X, “My boyfriend has threatened to break up with me if I keep whipping out my iPhone to look up random facts about celebrities when we’re out to dinner.” We reach the point that we wonder about our sanity. Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times said she became so obsessed with Twitter posts about the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest that she spent days “refreshing my search like a drugged monkey.”

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2224932

by Thomas Bartlett
The Chronicle of Higher Education

John G. Sperling, as he often reminds those around him, is running out of time. At 88, he is in relatively good health, despite a weak kidney and back problems. He still walks the dog, drives himself to meetings, and seems to have no shortage of nervous energy: Forced to sit still for any length of time, he twirls his cellphone between two fingers or distractedly peels the label from a bottle of water, leaving it in shreds on the table.

Even so, he feels the tug of mortality, and he has a lot left to accomplish. Like, for instance, saving the world.

He’s had big ideas before. In 1974, at the not-so-tender age of 53, he left a tenured position at San Jose State University with $26,000 in savings to start an academic program for working adults. In the beginning, he ran the operation out of his house. It soon outgrew those humble digs and later relocated to Arizona, adopting the name of that state’s capital. Now the University of Phoenix has close to 400,000 students, more than 200 campuses and 26,000 faculty members, and is valued at roughly $10-billion.

http://www.phoenix.edu/news_room/releases/2009/07/phoenix-risen.html#