Category Archives: Technology

News about technology.

Smartphones, Tablets and How Social Media Hijacks Our Minds

Leave a comment

It’s no news that the use of smartphones and tablets has been found to be detrimental for the usual brain development of children. I’ve placed emphasis on the word “usual” because even though children that are allowed to use smartphones and tablets end up having a different brain structure (both physical and operational), this may not be detrimental for them in a possible future where a whirlwind of interaction with robots and multiple various forms of AI at the same time might become a part of the daily routine. But that’s a risky bet to make. It is now quite well recognized (also by neuroscientists) that these devices are harmful for children^.

Recent studies, however, have shown that the exaggerated use of smartphones is causing damage in adults too. One of the most serious effects of smartphone abuse is social retardation, which has grave repercussions across a wide spectrum of behaviors:

http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/04/06/technology-addiction-mental-health/^

But wait, there’s more. The “hardware” side of the problem is further compounded by the software that we use. According to Tristan Harris, a former Google product manager, our minds are being hijacked by social media (and other similar online products). Here’s an excellent interview with Tristan where he explains how and why this happens:

https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them^

There is also a TED talk by Tristan where he describes the tactics and purposes of the corporations that profit from hijacking our time and attention:

https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention^

The smartphone is not only made to capture our attention, but also to encourage changes in how our brain works (neuroplasticity^ plays a huge role in this). As a result of these changes, our attention is easier to capture and once baited, it can be manipulated so that it doesn’t escape the trap. It wouldn’t be so bad if our attention and time would be invested in something useful, but many times this is not the case.

Social media excels at propagating cheap thrills and “harmless” pleasures. Tempting us to divide our attention and scatter it across the endless assault of notifications, these websites and applications offer little more than a specter of happiness –it’s all that’s necessary in order to keep users satisfied and hooked on a certain platform. Unfortunately, social media has started to play an increasingly important role in who people vote for. Spreading knowledge this way has started to seriously harm our culture and society not only by allowing the rampant spread of false information but even more importantly by isolating social groups and preventing the spread of correct information.

This is where things start to become very dangerous, because dis-informed voters are what dangerous individuals use to grab the leadership.  Power-hungry manipulators might be able to advance their interests and the interests of those they collude with, but this usually comes at a steep cost for humanity as a whole.

It’s impressive how far these manipulation techniques have gotten. What’s a bit scary for me is that even with the army of psychologists and researchers at their disposal, the corporations are still barely scratching the surface when it comes to the intricacies of how the brain works. As the knowledge about our psyche advances, so increase the ways it can be exploited. Perhaps as an informed adult you can now take measures against this sort of manipulation. That’s the optimistic outcome when it comes to adults. However, take a deep breath now and think of the children^.

Update: And then, of course, there’s the Trojan horse aspect these devices pose. Privacy? What privacy?

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/02179-SmartphonesTabletsSocial-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Smartphones, Tablets and How Social Media Hijacks Our Minds’ desc=’Recent studies have shown that the exaggerated use of smartphones is causing damage in adults. One of the most serious effects of smartphone abuse is social retardation, which has grave repercussions across a wide spectrum of behaviors.’]

Blasts from the (Tech) Past

Leave a comment

Here are two awesome links with echoes from our technological past.

Let Windows 95’s startup sound slowed down with 4000% guide your meditation:

http://boingboing.net/2017/03/21/windows-95-startup-sound-slowe.html^

And then bow in front of the all-mighty Floppotron and the Computer Hardware Orchestra playing AWOLNATION’s “Sail”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KclRiK-L-_4^

I can’t help it to also link another awesome fan-made video for “Sail”:

www.mentatul.com^

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/02047-BlastsFromTheTechPast-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Blasts from the (Tech) Past’ desc=’Here are two awesome links with echoes from our technological past.’]

A Dark Side of Software

Leave a comment

Lying and cheating to get a competitive edge is nothing new and certainly not limited to human beings. But Earth has plenty of resources and there’s no serious threat to our existence in sight (other than ourselves, of course). Because companies affect so many beings, cheating has serious effects.

Thanks to software, never before has cheating had so many ways of staying hidden through complexity and obscurity. Thankfully, some people still have a conscience and this is how we found out about the way Uber, Volkswagen and probably many other companies have stayed above the law and ruined the lives of countless people:

https://medium.freecodecamp.com/dark-genius-how-programmers-at-uber-volkswagen-and-zenefits-helped-their-employers-break-the-law-b7a7939c6591#.k774sps2y^

As software engineer, to say that I’m disgusted by what these guys did would be an understatement. It is not unethical. It is outright criminal. What’s even worse is that such people^ usually manage to escape justice. Laws are changing too slowly to be able to keep up with these crooks and their perpetually changing methods. It’s like an old turtle chasing a cheetah. It’s not even funny anymore, it’s painfully sad.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/02009-ADarkSideOfSoftware-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’A Dark Side of Software’ desc=’Thanks to software, never before has cheating had so many ways of staying hidden through complexity and obscurity.’]

Junking Earth’s Orbit

Leave a comment

How many times did I tell you to stop leaving your toys all over the floor!? Sorry, I meant orbit:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/ISRO_Creates_World_Record_PSLV_Takes_Off_With_104_Satellites_999.html^

First of all, congratulations to India for launching 104 satellites in one shot. Congratulations also to the various organizations that will advance science through the various experiments on board them satellites. However…

I have said it in the past^ as well. We’re being careless with our orbital activities. It’s not only our forests and seas that we’re spoiling, but also our lovely planet’s orbital space. And like the environment down here, there’s only one up there and once we’ve ruined it, it’ll take a long time to fix.

Sure, there’s a lot more space up there, even if we only consider close Earth orbit. But if we keep launching our tech-junk with little foresight one day we might get hit by the nasty Kessler syndrome^, and then we’ll see decades of technological progress thrown out the window, not to mention it’ll be very difficult for anything to leave Earth until we clean the mess up. At least it’ll be some measure of defense against alien immigrants?

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/01931-JunkingEarthsOrbit-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Junking Earth's Orbit’ desc=’We're being careless with our orbital activities. It's not only our forests and seas that we're spoiling, but also our lovely planet's orbital space.’]

Amazon Is Well on Track to Become a Fully Robotized Retailer

Leave a comment

Amazon’s latest forays into robotics have left me thoroughly impressed. Take a look at this awesome presentation of one of the company’s most modern order fulfillment centers:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/06/technology/amazon-warehouse-robots/^

Now combine this with the company’s obvious direction of turning into a delivery behemoth. Amazon is rather coy about this aspect, but why else would it be buying up planes^ and making airport^ investments^? This is only the beginning I believe. I see the company making use of robotic planes and a massive fleet of self-driving trucks in the near future.

I don’t really think that delivery via aerial drones will make it past the marketing gimmick stage. At most, it will perhaps become some sort of exclusive service – expensive and inefficient, at least for the customer. In any case, Amazon is well positioned to become a “full stack retailer” – a seller that controls the entire distribution chain. And there are signs that “retailer” is not enough.

Given the company’s (mostly) successful ventures with producing television and electronics, I wouldn’t be surprised if it begins buying up farms in becoming a full stack grocer as well. Then, I would expect Amazon to bring its robotics expertise into automated farming. There already have been plenty of experiments in that field.

Last but not least, check out this fully automated experimental grocery shop where there are no human employees (to see at least):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc^

To be honest though, I’m not so sure if I like this last one. This fully robotic retail world might rob some people of even the little human interaction they get when they go into a shop. We might be taking some things a bit too far. But then again, shops might soon entirely cease to exist. I’m quite sure Amazon’s vision of the future is to remove all “wasted” shelf space and move everything online. And for those who wish to actually see the groceries they’ll buy, there’ll probably be a virtual reality shop in some years.

I am also slightly worried about the privacy aspects of some of the company’s ventures. Not only about these shops where electronic eyes watch everybody, but also cloud services such as Alexa^ that create and memorize accurate snapshots of the customer’s preferences and even personality. It’s a well-known strategy to bait people into accepting various losses of rights under the guise of introducing “much-needed features”. But let’s wish for the best and have faith in society’s ability to self-regulate and evolve.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/01926-AmazonFullyRobotizedRetailer-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Amazon Is Well on Track to Become a Fully Robotized Retailer’ desc=’Amazon's latest forays into robotics have left me thoroughly impressed. Take a look at this awesome presentation of one of the company's most modern order fulfillment centers.’]

Quantum Supersampling

Leave a comment

It’s been quite some time since the last major breakthrough in computer graphics. For the past few decades, graphics quality has been steadily improving, but this has been mainly due advances in semiconductor technology and secondly due to software evolution. Little has changed when it comes to the way images can be efficiently rendered. Ray-tracing^ has been around for a while but it is too computationally-intensive to match rasterisation^.

At long last, an evolutionary leap might soon be upon us thanks to quantum computing. There are myriad applications for this emerging branch of technology, but one of the most interesting I’ve learned about lately is this fascinating proposal called quantum super-sampling. It’s a process combining ray-tracing with quantum computation. Here’s a (long) video presentation describing the process, by the author himself:

https://vimeo.com/180284417^

Eric Johnston is quite well known in the computer graphics world. Seeing such a proposal from him fills me with enthusiasm. It might take a decade or more for this technology to become mainstream, but when it happens – when, not if – we will witness a major improvement in graphics rendering, possibly leading to real-life quality video games and experiences.

Combined with the instant transfer of information that is made possible by quantum entanglement, this might mean that a powerful central server could render realistic graphics for a very large number of people. Perhaps us becoming capable of projecting universes might be proof that this Universe is a projection?

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/01913-QuantumSupersampling-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Quantum Supersampling’ desc=’It's been quite some time since the last major breakthrough in computer graphics. At long last, an evolutionary leap might soon be upon us thanks to quantum computing.’]

Kitchen 3.0

Leave a comment

The age of interconnected devices and gadgets is slowly dawning. This category of communications-capable electronics has been labeled “the Internet of Things” – somewhat of a misnomer now-a-days when it is obvious that the security threat of any machine reachable from the Internet is enormous. Perhaps quantum cryptography will one day address this issue. Until then, home owners will probably be safer by using offline “smart home controllers” with manually-upgradeable firmware in what will be an Intranet of Things.

Irrespective of the name, this new wave of electronics is still barely in its infancy. Any company worth its salt has to prepare for how business will change in the coming decades. And there’s nothing more disruptive than what is basically the rise of the first mainstream generation of highly task-optimized robots. Indeed, a smart refrigerator is basically a robot focused on a certain task.

While the first robots accessible to everybody will still function very much like our current appliances, their smarts will open up a myriad opportunities for ground-breaking innovation. Because the kitchen contains a large amount of appliances, let’s explore how all these can be interconnected in order to provide an evolutionary leap when compared to today’s emerging Kitchen 2.0 where we do have smart devices but they are working by themselves rather than in cooperation.

The purpose behind any post in this Futurology^ category is to launch a wild, boundless speculation regarding what the future holds regarding a certain concept. To get things going, here are some of the things I imagine we’ll find in the kitchens of the near future (coming decades). Feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments below. With your approval I may integrate these in the article, giving proper credit.

  • Among its kitchen brethren, the refrigerator is going to see some of the largest changes to the way it operates. First of all, it will be able to manage its own contents and automatically order things its owners usually consume. Secondly, it will become smaller due to the increased efficiency in food delivery.
  • The way goods arrive in our household will fundamentally change, paving the way for new companies to establish themselves or creating new opportunities for profit for existing companies, such as Walmart which, 7 months after this article was published, has started experimenting with deliveries directly to the refrigerator^. Almost all perishable goods will be delivered by robots, most likely by self-driving trucks. We can’t exclude aerial drones that land packages on the rooftop of buildings. However, this is far less energy efficient and current experiments with this technology are either marketing gimmicks or attempts to create a segment for very fast but also very expensive shipping.
  • After delivery, a property’s own small transport robots will take the goods and store them in a Central Refrigerator. From there, the products will be distributed upon request to individual household refrigerators.
  • There will be no need for a refrigerator to have more than a day’s quantity of milk because more milk will be just 1 to 5 minutes away. Apartment buildings will have a Central Refrigerator somewhere in the basement, so quite close to family refrigerators. Product delivery will be slightly longer for areas with villas (due to the Central Refrigerator being located in a separate building somewhere close by).
  • All food orders will go to the Central Refrigerator. This will, in turn, bulk orders together and get the best offers from various warehouses in the area. Such a system will also save power due to having more efficient storage and much less heat leakage – the main door of this large refrigerator will almost never open because small delivery robots will go in and out through isolating access hatches.
  • Cooking a meal will often be as easy as pressing a button. People will be able to download recipe-programs for their kitchen. A recipe will therefore consist of a list of items that the refrigerator has to order and a set of instructions for various kitchen appliances. Some ingredients such as flour, sugar, oil, will be available to purchase in packages with the exact dosage required for the recipe, reducing waste and making it easier for Kitchen 3.0 to prepare the recipe.
  • Kitchen appliances will be integrated in one single block inside which ingredients can be transported from one section to another using various robotic arms. I’ll call this the Kitchen Block. Products that don’t require refrigeration will be brought from a larger storage compartment, either inside the home or a common storage location used by more families.
  • Baking a cake for example will consist of the mixer requesting items from various storage locations. The mixer will also be able to assign tasks to other sections of the Kitchen Block, such as asking the oven to toast some nuts before sending the cake batter to it.
  • All appliances will therefore be a part of a single unit, able to give instructions to each other. This will be done using preferably open source protocols and open standards, which is probably the only way for the manufacturers of various robots to be able to allow these machines to work with each other.
  • There will still be plenty of room for people to cook by themselves if they so wish, but more and more citizens will become recipe downloaders and/or developers. Creating a recipe program will probably not be so difficult, since in the coming decades computers will be operable using natural language. This transition is already taking place.
  • Despite the recipes being programs, they will be human-readable, making it very hard for an attacker to hack Kitchen 3.0. Combined with a strict security policy based on user approval and only minimal communication with the Central Refrigerator and similar “Master” robots, Kitchen 3.0 has good security prospects.
  • On the topic of Master robots, does every home really need something as complex as a Kitchen Block? Perhaps it should belong together with the Central Refrigerator, serving more than one household. This way, costs will be kept down and cooking will be more efficient. Then, Kitchen 3.0 could be split into a central section and a trimmed down “thin client” located inside each family’s home.

The Futurology Disclaimer: I do not claim that my ideas are original. I’m sure these suggestions are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, but hopefully they’ve scratched enough to get anybody inspired to come up with more. I’m also sure many of these ideas are already being worked on by several organizations. If any of the ideas listed by anybody on this page are original and will benefit any organization, I expect credit to be given where it’s due.

Version history:

2017-02-16 – 1.0 – Written.
2017-09-23 – 1.0.1 – Added a link about Walmart experimenting with deliveries directly to the refrigerator.
[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/01904-Kitchen30-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Kitchen 3.0′ desc=’While the first robots accessible to everybody will still function very much like our current appliances, their smarts will open up a myriad opportunities for ground-breaking innovation.’]

Productivity in the Age of Mixed Reality

Leave a comment

In the past few years we’ve witnessed the launch of more than a dozen HMDs (Head Mounted Displays). Several of them are already available in large numbers. HMDs focused on entertainment (Oculus, Vive) rely on taking over visual perception completely via Virtual Reality. HMDs focused on productivity (HoloLens) mix real life with computer generated imagery drawn upon a transparent display. There are other combinations and means of mixing visual information, so all of this technology has recently been put under the umbrella term Mixed Reality.

This post concerns the productivity aspects of Mixed Reality. It’s a topic I’ve been meaning to play with for more than a year. I find it quite fitting to debut the Futurology^ section on Mentatul with this text, especially since just as I was preparing to write, I stumbled upon the following news (this has to be the work of a muse):

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-trials-hololens-technologies-construction,33490.html^

The purpose behind any post in the Futurology^ category is to launch a wild, boundless speculation regarding what the future holds regarding a certain concept. To get things going, here are some of the things I imagine can be accomplished in the future (productivity-wise) using Mixed Reality.

I’ll list my ideas chronologically, starting with the first things that came to my mind back when I read about what Google Glass can do. Feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments below. With your approval I may integrate these in the article, giving proper credit.

  • Workers are busy adding the finishing touches to a building. Using an HMD similar to a pair of glasses (like HoloLens for instance), they see the position of all other workers, as if they would see through walls. All wiring and pipes are also drawn in their exact positions inside the walls as the user looks around.
    All workers see directions pointing them towards the location of the next task. Let’s take for example the installation of a network socket. The worker is helped to locate all tools required for the task. After the task is completed, a test immediately shows if the connection is successful. If it is not, the worker can simply look around through the walls and see where to go and fix the connection.
  • Operators of large machinery are assisted in anything they do by architectural plans projected over real life terrain. Machines are integrated with this projection and “snap” automatically to the highlighted locations, needing only rough supervision. Of course, operators will soon become completely unnecessary because…
  • Architects are allowed to control and direct robots directly from their office. Work done in CAD applications, after passing several simulations and authorizations, is downloadable by robots that simply print out the structures. Architects are able to use Mixed Reality to fly around the construction site from the comfort of their homes. This technology can be used to construct human-ready colonies as well as mining stations anywhere in the solar system.
  • Before AI becomes sufficiently advanced to perform all these tasks, humans are recruited to supervise the operation of these robots (as is already done in the mining industry^). Gamers might find employment opportunities in a future that relies on a person’s multi-tasking skill, quick reflexes and ability to channel one’s mind into an alternate reality. Think of it as a huge real time strategy game where a gamer controls an army of construction robots.
  • Taking this to the next step, humans supervise self-driving vehicles that are stuck for some reason or require human intervention. Planes, boats and anything that moves is accessible in a “first person” view.
  • The security implications of all that I’ve written are enormously hugely massively gargantuan, and that’s an understatement. However, quantum cryptography might address this issue.
  • Repair manuals are displayed onto a device as the user is fixing it (this tech already on its way!^). With a good system in place for spare parts management, this enables any reasonably handy person to fix almost anything. Of course, this means that the religion of Consumerism^ should give up on one of its founding principles: planned obsolescence.
  • Taking this one step further, in times of crisis when a hospital is not accessible, simple surgical programs can help lightly trained individuals to perform tasks that would normally be beyond their capability.

The Futurology Disclaimer: I do not claim that my ideas are original. I’m sure these suggestions are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, but hopefully they’ve scratched enough to get anybody inspired to come up with more. I’m also sure many of these ideas are already being worked on by several organizations. If any of the ideas listed by anybody on this page are original and will benefit any organization, I expect credit to be given where it’s due.

Version history:

2017-02-08 – 1.0 – Written.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/01866-ProductivityMixedReality-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Productivity in the Age of Mixed Reality’ desc=’Here are some of the things that may be accomplished in the future (productivity-wise) using Mixed Reality.’]

Why Google Did Away with Project Ara

Leave a comment

Some months ago, Google killed Project Ara, an ambitious venture to create a modular smartphone featuring upgradeable components. And when I say ambitious, boy was it a moon shot.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/project-ara-googles-modular-smartphone-is-dead/^

It’s one thing to upgrade components in a desktop computer or a car, but the smaller the device, the trickier it is to engineer efficient connections between components whose bandwidth requirements and standards of communication vary wildly. Even notebook manufacturers struggle with this limitation as they attempt to engineer ever-thinner devices.

As a result, Project Ara phones turned out a bit on the bulky side and looked like the phone would disassemble if dropped. Regarding this second caveat, don’t get me wrong: dissipating impact energy by falling apart isn’t necessarily bad. Nokia was an expert in this “method”. Its bulky phones could withstand countless drops. But at least for now it’s difficult to get the best of both worlds.

The idea behind Project Ara was good, the timing was not. Our technologies are a bit too scattered right now for this to properly work. There are different manufacturers for each phone component and countless standards in place. Building a prototype was easy (with Google’s money), but getting all those manufacturers in the same boat and getting a good selection of upgradeable components in shops around the world is a daunting logistical challenge. However, the largest obstacle was undoubtedly the fact that…

There is little customer interest in such a project. Who wants to carry around a phone that has 20% extra weight and size only so that they can upgrade a component or two once a year? Some people maybe will, but we live in a world where those that could afford or have interest in upgrading phone components will most probably choose to buy a new phone altogether.

Kudos goes to Google for making the attempt and opening the way. We still have a lot to learn regarding miniaturization, standards and logistics. I think we’ll see something like Project Ara come back sometime in the coming decades. For now, looks like we’re stuck with Samsung and Apple and their consumerist phones for which one can’t even replace the battery (not really, there are plenty of brands that allow this; it’s a pity people don’t press this requirement and instead let themselves fall prey to planned obsolescence).

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/01129-ProjectAra-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Why Google Did Away with Project Ara’ desc=’Project Ara was an ambitious venture to create a modular smartphone, featuring upgradeable components.’]

Carpooling Becoming More Effective with Every Passing Day

Leave a comment

An interesting phenomenon is happening in Los Angeles. People are starting to realize that owning a car is not only stressful, but economically damaging. Thanks to companies like Uber, Lyft and others, the costs of movement have decreased drastically. An increasing amount of people is waking up to the fact that ridesharing has more advantages than disadvantages.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/priya/people-in-los-angeles-are-getting-rid-of-their-cars^

This is only the beginning. The self-driving vehicle revolution will increase the efficiency of transportation even further. We often hear that one cannot stand in the way of progress. With the help of software and the Internet, seems like progress is hitting the pavement of most major cities on the globe and will slowly but surely spread everywhere.

Even if the costs of movement are already quite low in some countries, even there, the benefits of ridesharing and carpooling will undoubtedly make themselves felt sooner or later. There are interesting times ahead. Although professional drivers might not be so keen regarding the upcoming changes, the planet will become cleaner and we’ll have less pollution from our streets. And think of all the freed car parking space!

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/01159-CarPoolingLosAngeles-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Carpooling Becoming More Effective with Every Passing Day’ desc=’People are starting to realize that owning a car is not only stressful, but economically damaging. Thanks to companies like Uber, Lyft and others, the costs of movement have decreased drastically.’]