I was asked for to comment on the Humane Ai Pin (omitting punctuation), so a quick minipost. I have no experience with this device, but have a bit of experience in the area so a bit of background is in order.
For the decade from 1992 to 2002 I spent a good deal of time working on a variety of Internet access schemes as well as spending a lot of time with a human computer interaction group. People in carpetland were interested so we did a number of dog and pony shows as well as wizard-of-oz demos.1 I'm not good at predicting the future - no one is - but I believe you can construct plausible scenarios and get a sense of some of the possibility space. You end up remembering the few home runs. In 93 or 94 I said you'd be able to have a conversation in full color with a relative on the other side of the globe and wouldn't have to pay long distance fee. Both of you would use a piece of glass with embedded electronics and radio that you'd hold in your hand. Technically it was certainly possible - the main technical rub was the battery. I hadn't appreciated advances in lithium-ion chemistry at the time. The other two roadblocks were monopoly carriers and about a half trillion in infrastructure. I didn't see either of those as being insurmountable - a feeling that was shared by several colleges. Ten or years may seem like a long time for device predictions, but the foundational technologies are usually on even longer horizons.. it's mostly seeing how they might converge. The who and how are more difficult.
As the decade went on we began to focus on music over the Internet. We even showed a prototypes to player Steve Jobs at Apple in an attempt to gain support for our music codec (AAC) a few years before the iPod. Our design wasn't that clever, but the recognition that portable music was important resonated for a few years. We were also working on other communication concepts - some were just concepts ten or twenty years out. There was the iCane - sort of a smartphone in the form of a cane, something like Google's eyeglasses, an infrastructure called AirGraffiti that, while basically a good idea, required a billion dollars or so a year to make fly (Google and Apple Maps are sophisticated examples), and so on.. We even looked at brooches and Star Trek communicators.
Smartwatches seemed so obvious we didn't spend much time other than being able to generate prompts by snapping or rubbing your fingers together (coming later this year on Apple's watch). The watch is a wonderful piece of jewelry that can be as inconspicuous as you need it while still signaling personal style - one of the few pieces of jewelry men wear.
Like a few other research groups, we wondered about other forms. Perhaps something on the belt would come earlier as putting the electronics in a phone seemed ten years off at least and five more for a watch. Taking with sociologists and anthropologists it was clear that people love images and video. The phone seemed like a wonderful platform IF you could pull it off. My piece of glass on steriods, but now only ten years off. We were beginning to see it as a computational platform rather than simply a videophone.
There were video projectors that could work on slanted and even arbitrary surfaces.. they were really crappy for a number of reasons. They don't and won't compete with a smartphone screen for a long time. Also remember your smartphone weighs about 200 to 300 grams plus or minus. Try hanging that on your clothes somewhere with properly positioned so you can put a surface in front of it. Also add some weight to run the projector for any length of time.
There's the notion of 'voice first". Folks who study human communication note that what we think of as voice is only a small part of spoken conversation. In addition to expressions and postures there are several types of context: the context of who, of place, of history, etc.. Voice alone is a relatively small, albeit important, part of spoken communication. To get it close right you probably have to give up a lot of privacy,
I claim video is so addictive to so many that the smartphone in their pocket will rule for some time. Earbuds, if you need audio, will talk to the phone in your pocket or your watch, which is in a position to take more meaningful biodata than something on your shirt. I asked an animator friend (she was a student at our place twenty years ago and she regularly looks at designs from her sister who is a high end jewelry designer) to make some sketches of a wearable for clothing that would be about half the volume of an iPhone. She made a few sketches and said it would be very dorky.. probably like something from the Victorian era.2
These are things you wear.. they say something about you and your person style. They offer only serious constraints.
There are more technical reasons I can give, but I'm guessing the Ai Pin will fade rather quickly in most social groups. But then again this is not my area and I'm frequently wrong. Also in 1993, when Kip told me they were going to get a gravity wave detector working in twenty years, I believed him. The technology is probably the most advanced on the planet plus they didn't have to deal with really hard problems like style and fashion. Maybe in ten years, but I'm not one to bet against quality video.
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1 The label we gave to the C-level floor as the carpet was nearly thick enough to impede walking.
2 Applying similar reasoning one of the anthropologists in the department pronounced the hugely promoted Segway a social faux pas as it implied 'totalitarian dorkishness'.
auteur and other fine words and phrases
About a week ago my friend Paul reported on his walking vacation in Iceland. Paul happens to be in his late 80s and hasn't lost his knack for physics or interesting words and phrases. He sent photos and noting some beautiful displays of the lux septentrionalis. In the 45 or so years I've known him I've picked up a fair amount of Latin, Greek and German. He bears direct responsibility for some of the phrases I use.. cheating in a way as I'm not fluent in these languages.1 Auteur is a particularly interesting word, so let's dwell on it.
Recognizing creation of a book is easy. Usually there are one or two authors get the credit even though editors, proof readers, printers and more were involved. It's similar in scientific papers - at least until you get to collaborations of a half dozen or more. Music is created by a composer, but orchestral performances are jointly credited to the composer and a conductor. It's the complexity of something - when more than a few creative people are involved, that the term auteur seems appropriate. I'd nominate James Murray of the Oxford English Dictionary as one of the first auteurs of a series of books - he went far beyond what normal editors do.
The term auteur is usually associated with film. Even in the thirties one hundred people might be involved in making a film and more than a handful - actors for example - may have had centrally important roles. Here the equivalent of the creation of the film is usually given to the director. A director may not know how operate a camera, the intricate lighting or be able to perform on stage. What they bring is vision and the ability to communicate it.
Alfred Hitchcock wanted control over every scene of the movie. He had to work it out ahead of time and communicate it so he repurposed Walt Disney's invention of story boarding to acted film. Hayao Miyazaki draws or corrects a lead frame of each animation segment of his films and spends a large amount of time with composer Joe Hisaishi to get the music right. His style is dictatorial, but animators regard him as the best - an auteur among animation auteurs. Pixar has a handful of internally grown auteurs who have seen remarkable success. Wes Anderson is so good that name actors fall over themselves to get parts before seeing scripts. It's an impressive group.
In spending time with an animation house as well as having worked on some large scale physics experiments, I see a common thread. There needs to be a vision. There may be, and probably is, someone in the organization for each of the speciality skills who is better at their skill than the auteur. The problem is having everyone do their best with limited knowledge of the rest causes project to drift from the goal. It's the sort of thing David Epstein talks about in Range. Someone has to have vision and taste and that's a special skill that requires development.
It can apply to business. Steve Jobs comes to mind and there are certainly others at various levels. An interesting question is at what point does a project get big enough that an auteur is necessary and how does that vary by project type? Many of you can come up with interesting examples.
Since sport is something of a mirror, one can think of great coaches as auteurs. It's certainly true in team sports like football, soccer, indoor volleyball, etc. Great coaches have developed a sense of the game and the taste in how it should be played. Certainly they need a group of good players, but not necessarily all need to be, or even should be, great. Finding a combination to execute the vision is the important piece.
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1 Here's a non-alphabetical list of some that come to mind:
Danish (I know three Danes well)
klap lige hesten "pat the horse" means shut up
det blæser en halv pelican "it's blowing half a pelikan" means it's very windy
ingen ko på isen "no cow on the ice" means whatever the problem is, it's no big deal
så er den ged barberet "the goat is shaved" means the problem has been fixed, or the work is done
gå som katten om den varme grød "walk as the cat around the hot porridge" means some is avoiding the problem
det regner skomagerdrenge "it's raining shoemaker's apprentices" means the rain is very heavy
hygge a special coziness - what you might find on a snowy evening with good friends, food and a fire.
Italian
commuovere to be moved by a story to the point of tears
Greek
meraki throwing yourself into something complete with passion, creativity and love. This is how Paul approaches physics.
Tagalog
kilig the feeling of butterflies in your stomach as it romance or discovery
Malay
pisan zapra the time it takes to eat a banana - about two minutes
Swedish
fika gathering to talk and take a break from ordinary routines. Coffee must be involved.
resfeber the beating of a traveler's heart at the beginning of a journey. A anxiety with anticipation.
Welsh
hiraeth a homesickness for the time and place to which you can't return
Japanese
komorebi the sunlight filtering through leaves on the trees
boketto gazing into the distance without thinking about anything
wabi-sabi finding beauty in imperfections, an acceptance of the cycle of life
German
kummerspeck 'grief bacon' the weight you gain from emotional overeating
freudenfreude finding joy in the success of others
Yiddish and Yinglish
shlimazel someone who seems to only have bad luck
(this part of the list is long .. mostly from friends on Long Island and NYC. Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish is a wonderful resource)
Bantu
ubuntu 'I find my worth in you and you find your worth in me' human kindness
French
flâneur a person who lounges or strolls around in a seemingly aimless way. Often seen as an aloof observer of urban society
sirop de poteau 'pole syrup' imitation or very low quality maple syrup that must have been harvested from telephone poles.
auteur a person of influence or artistic control - often associated with filmmaking.
I'll stop here..
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