TVoT (Television of Things)

Here is a feature of television-related items, and unlike the Internet of Things (IoT), these things has little hype behind them.

A few weeks ago (Novermber 22nd) was the 30th Anniversary of the Max Headroom intrusion on two Chicago television stations. The first intrusion was on WGN (Channel 9). A second intrusion occurred later that evening on WTTW (Channel 11). The original pirate broadcaster was never identified, and subsequent intrusions did not occur.

Shortwave radio carries a television signal! The high-pitched bleeps and buzzes in the background of a short-wave broadcast are actually data streams. Some of these sub-channels carry a series of images rendered at a low frame-rate, which produces a television broadcast of sequentially-scanned still images. This protocol is called slow-scan television (or SSTV) [1], and has its roots in the ham radio community. Modern uses include sending images to earth from the International Space Station [2]. 

If you don't know about mechanical television technology, it's your time to learn. Precursor to the much better-known electronic television, a number of early technologies enabled the reproduction of images by producing horizontal lines within a given image at a certain rate. The higher the scan rate, the faster individual images could be rendered, and the faster new images could replace the complete ones already rendered. Obtaining a higher scan rate meant that the images were more recognizable as a "moving" sequence. 

By and large, mechanical generation was not commercially successful. Scan rates that would enable high-resolution images were never achieved. The Nipkow disc (invented in 1884) enabled animations based on a sequence of images on a rotating disc visualized using a light source and a Selenium element. The Baird televisor (developed during the 1920s) improved upon the Nipkow disc by transmitting the sequential images using a carrier signal. Like SSTV, there are limited uses for these technologies in the 21rst century, which include Steampunk-themed maker projects, digital light processing, and laser lighting displays (the latter two applications have relied upon significant technical advancements).


Lastly, there was an excellent recent episode of the Function podcast (hosted by Anil Dash) on the history of animated gifs. While it is now a 30-year old technology, animated gif are still an efficient way to present sequential movement and simple animation on the web. While animated gifs have been discussed on this blog in the past, the podcast discussion did mention that the first gif was 1987. So here is an image of the first gif (a flying plane) created by Steve Wilhite [3].

NOTES:
[1] A collection of readings can be found at the National Association for Amateur Radio website.

[2] Trapp C. (2017). Space Technology and Audio Tape to Store Art. Hackaday, December 14. SSTV signals commonly relay images to earth from the space station.

[3] Buck, S. (2012). History of GIFs. Mashable blog, October 19.

Newtonmas meets Festivus

A series of Easter eggs for your holiday season! Since December 23rd is Festivus and December 25th is Isaac Newton's birthday (Newtonmas), it makes sense to combine the two into a discussion about the physics of pole balancing.

Inverted pendulum in dynamic equilibrium? Festivus pole. Next up, the airing of grievances!

Newtonmas poster (with fractals). The physics of planetary precession is why we celebrate today! COURTESY: Felix Andrews.

The pole balancing problem, also called the inverted pendulum, is a classic model system in the application of reinforcement learning (a form of supervised learning). The problem requires the supervisor to keep a pole banaced while the base moves back and forth along a one-dimensional plane. This should keep eveyone at the Festivus party busy until the airing of grievances! 

An example of balancing an inverted pendulum (e.g. pole) on a cart. COURTESY: MIT Signals and Systems course, Lecture 26.

Many applications of the inverted pendulum involve balancing the inverted pendulum on a cart [1]. The application of reinforcement learning is often (but not necessarily) used to drive the controller, or where to move the cart in response to inertial forces generated by the free-swinging pole. Using the cart as the base of support, motion of the pole is translated along a single degree of freedom. You may recall the last Synthetic Daisies post in which we discussed holonomic motion. The dynamic equilibrium exhibited by the inverted pendulum is a linear version of those physics.

A demonstration of the first-order Lagrangian used in pendulum mechanics can be found in this video, COURTESY: PhysicsHelps YouTube channel.

The description of this sometimes chaotic [2] motion can be described using Lagrangian mechanics, which is a more refined form of Newton's equation of motion [3]. Yet the policy required to maintain balance of the pole can be rather simple, largely involving first-order, closed-loop feedback and and an iterative function. Hence, Newtonmas is really a celebration of the physical processes that govern our holiday adventures. Happy Newtonmas to all, and to all a good (well-controlled) system!

Inverted pendular mechanics, simulated and visualized in Python. COURTESY: "An Introduction to Numerical Modeling II", Adam Dempsey.

NOTES:

[1] there are many demonstrations of this (class projects, hobbyists) on YouTube. This is also a classic benchmark for control systems design.

[2] the identification of chaos in an inverted pendulum (particularly when we move to the double pendulum case) stems from the Lagrangian representation. For more, please see the following references: 

a) Kim, S-Y. and Hu, B.   Bifurcations and transitions to chaos in an inverted pendulum. Physical Review E, 58(3), 3028-3035 (1998).

b) Duchesne, B., Fischer, C.W., Gray C.G., Jeffrey, K.R.   Chaos in the motion of an inverted pendulum: an undergraduate laboratory experiment. American Journal of Physics, 59(11), 987-992 (1991).

[3] some practical pointers to the difference between Newtonian and Lagrangian physics can be found on the Physics StackExchange here and here,

Thought (Memetic) Soup: November edition

This content is cross-posted to Tumbld Thoughts. Here are a few short observations on the state of the world and data, circa Summer 2014. Haven't gotten around to cross-posting these yet. The meta-theme is social disruption, evolutionary change, and economic dynamics, in spite of ideonational bias. These include Disruption du jour (I), Satire Makes it Doubly Skewed (II), and Ideonational Skew - Satire = Epistemic Closure? (III).

I. Disruption du jour

Is the idea of disruptive innovation a useful concept, or is it largely a misapplied buzzword. In the original definition of "creative destruction", Joseph Schumpeter described a process of innovation that resembled an avalanche or an earthquake. For example, most innovations do not reshape their respective industries, but a few key innovations (born out of creative ferment) do.

The modern notion of disruptive innovation does not make the distinction between the effects of innovation in different industries, nor are all so-called "disruptions" equally as valuable. Schumpeter's model of disruptive innovation resembles a power law, while the modern conception of disruptive innovation argues that transformative changes are ubiquitous. Here are some readings on the myth and controversies surrounding the concept:

Lepore, J.   The Disruption Machine. New Yorker, June 23 (2014).

* a critique of the "disruption" industry.

Bennett, D.   The Innovator's New Clothes: Is Disruption a Failed Model? Bloomberg Businessweek, June 18 (2014).

* perhaps Lepore is right -- disruption for disruption's sake is not a viable model of economic change.

Bennett, D.   Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'. Bloomberg Businessweek, June 20 (2014).


* a rebuttal to the Lepore article from the modern "disruption" guru.

II. Satire Makes it Doubly Skewed

Two (intentionally) skewed views on Evolution [1, 2]: God does not do art, and monkeys still exist. Or something like that. Anyways, here is a sampling of creationism satire from Summer 2014.

[1] Pliny the In-Between   Theistic evolution. Evolving Perspectives blog, July (2014).

[2] Why There are Still Monkey (fake book in the Dummies series). Timothy McVeins Twitter post, June 20 (2014).

III. Ideonational Skew - Satire = Epistemic Closure?

Statistical conspiracy theory? Here is a link to John Williams' Shadowstats site and (appropriately) three readings [1-3] that critique the overall approach. For example, in one reading, it is suggested that the "shadow" in the Shadowstats name consists of an inappropriate modeling methodology.

[1] Aziz   The Trouble with Shadowstats. Azizonomics, June 1 (2013).

[2] Krugman, P.   Always Inflation Somewhere. Conscience of a Liberal blog, July 19 (2014).

[3] Hiltzik, M.   A new right-wing claim: Obama must be lying about inflation. The Economy Hub, Los Angeles Times, July 23 (2014).

October, 21, 2015 is roughly 365 days away!

Or 365.37708 days away, to be a bit more precise.

Screenshot courtesy of Back to the Future Countdown and Hero Complex. Are we approaching yet another "temporal paradox"? Or is it just a multiverse? Ah, I see. Someone must have gone back and changed something....

The Map of the Cat, the Hair of the Dog, and Other Metaphors and Descriptors

What's in a set of descriptions, or a set of metaphors for that matter? Quite a bit or very little, depending on whether or not you are working in your area of specialty. Richard Feynman once (and to the great consternation of neurophysiologists within earshot) referred to a feline brain atlas as the “map of the cat” (not to be confused with Arnold’s Cat Map).

Recurrent cats! But what about its brain?

This parable, of course, speaks to the role of jargon in science. I am generally in support of jargon-filled science, providing it serves to conceptually unify and serve as shorthand for complex phenomena. The problem occurs when it serves as a membership proxy into the high priesthood of Discipline x or Disipline y (ironically for Feynman, one of these disciplines was and is theoretical physics).

Far from making one sound like a drunken PoMo generator, jargon and highly-specialized language is sometimes an efficient information encoding scheme. But sometimes shortcuts that transcend jargon (but only briefly) are quite useful as well. But words are not enough. Sometimes it takes not a paradigm shift but a conceptual shift. And sometimes that takes a semi-humorous (and non-specialized) turn of phrase. Perhaps even a pun or two (to wit):

Q: what do an airplane crash investigators and experimental scientists have in common?

A: both look for an answer inside of a black box!

Thought (Memetic) Soup, June edition

Happy middle of summer (in the Northern hemisphere, anyways)! Here are some humorous and puzzling items from my leisure time, cross-posted to Tumbld Thoughts. Also an update on Orthogonal Research, which is turning into quite a productive endeavor. This also marks the return of the Thought Soup series. Bemusement and incredulity abound. 

I. Technological Bemusement (for better and for worse)

Miguel Nicolelis (Neuroscientist of BMI fame) is demoing an EEG-controlled exoskeleton at the World Cup [1]. The exoskeleton is able to engage in soccer-related movements, but is controlled by a human brain. Read the Science News interview for more. And here is the outcome [2], courtesy of Neurogadget.

Contrary to the popular trough of disillusionment, Google Glass is a huge development in the world of Augmented Reality. Soon we will all be wearing glass-mounted displays, even if they are not made by Google. Google is apparently very bad at marketing, but that may not be the whole story [3]. Just know that violent responses to so-called "glassholes" is not entirely new.

25 years ago this month: Star Trek V opens. See William Shatner direct a film. Then see William Shatner rock-climb (poorly) and question God. If God is at the center of our galaxy, then are there gods at the center of all of the other galaxies? And if a god created the Big Bang (as some people claim), then is this God merely a middle manager? These are the types of questions audiences should have been asking, but it was 1989 and we were all fascinated with Spock's levitation boots.

II. Speaking Fee Incredulity

Speaking fee incredulity, courtesy of CREMA [4]. The graph is a sampling of economists on the lecture circuit: the x-axis is their relative internet ubiquity, and the y-axis is their minimum speaker's fee. Notice the red arrow and how it points to a cohort that includes Myron Scholes, Dan Kahneman, and Ben Stein. Funny how the world works sometimes.

III. Spam and Pointless Political Resistance Incredulity

I quit, I give up, Nothing's good enough for anybody else, It seems  -- Circle, Edie Brickell.

The chorus of this song [5] seems to summarize the Democratic Party's 2014 grass-roots fundraising strategy against the conservative Super-PAC fundraising [6]. Do you approve of this message? There are some people (progressive-minded bloggers, no less) who do not [7]. I don't think the Queen (a tory who does not have to worry about being elected) is amused, either. 

Of course, it's only a matter of time before democracy-as-market-economics [8] implodes. Perhaps we are witnessing that implosion right now. In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a jihadist stroking his cat. No, it's not a dirty limerick -- it's some form of PoMo resistance. Is this the height of absurdity, or Dr. Evil, martyrdom edition? Big money and bad religion, it's all highly-offensive performance art to me.

IV. Lack-of-funding Incredulity

My slouch towards intangible forms of enterprise continues. The Orthogonal Research activity report for the second quarter (Q2) of the calendar year (not financial) is now available. Busy quarter, but still without funding (although parties interested in changing that can contact me).

Is placing a value on research necessary but not sufficient? Here's one humorous take. COURTESY: PhD Comics.

NOTES:

[1] Servick, K.   Kickoff looms for demo of brain-controlled machine. Science News, 344(6188), 1069-1070 (2014).

[2] Paraplegic Man In Mind-Controlled Robotic Suit Kicks Off World Cup 2014. Neurogadget, June 13 (2014) AND Atkins, H.   Human In Robotic Exoskeleton To Kick Off The World Cup. Popular Science, June 6 (2014).

[3] Edwards, J.   Google glass is going to be huge, and its critics are wrong. Business Insider, June 9 (2014).

[4] Center for Research in Economics, Management, and the Arts. Reblogged from The Big Picture blog.

[5] Circle, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. YouTube video (1988).

[6] Dear Democrats, please stop spamming me for donations. Weasel Zippers blog, February 28 (2013).

[7] Atrios.   From Bean to Cup, You Fuck Up. Eschaton blog, May 27 (2014) AND Myers, P.Z. Democrats: you suck. Pharyngula blog, May 30 (2014).

[8] Avalon, J. and Keller, M.   The Super PAC Economy. Daily Beast, September 18 (2012) AND Aronsen, G.   Are Super PACs Overhyped? Mother Jones, September 28 (2012).

Official Host of Carnival of Evolution, #70

Synthetic Daisies is one again playing host to Carnival of Evolution's April edition, which goes live on April 1. This year's theme will be the games of evolution. To know exactly what this means, you will have to join us on April 1. This marks the third consecutive year of blogrolling [1]. I have been contributing posts for a bit longer). There are three ways to contribute: 1) log in to the Blog Carnival site and fill out the form, 2) post the link to the Carnival of Evolution Facebook page, or 3) e-mail me directly with “Carnival of Evolution” in the title.

Until then, here are some anatomical renderings and faux-developmental biology of alien hearts and brains [2]. A throwback to the theme of Carnival of Evolution #58: visions from the Evolutionary Future. According to the futurist George Dvorsky [3] and as implicitly suggested on Memory Alpha, we have indeed (but perhaps not ethically) won over these hearts and minds -- and brains. 

NOTES:

[1] Themes for past years: 2012 (tree structures of life) and 2013 (future of evolution).

[2] Carrick, L.M.   Cranial, Brain, and Heart Development: Human, Andorian, Klingon, Gorn, Tellarite, Vulcan. Vibrant Oxymoron blog, July 7 (2011).

[3] Dvorsky, G.   Star Trek's 'prime directive' is stupid. Sentient Developments blog, January 13 (2007).

Taking the Pulse of a Boiling Fishbowl

I have put an interesting and potentially useful new page on the blog -- something I am calling Blogospherics (roughly translated from marketing-tinged English: ways of the blogosphere). It's a collection of phenomena and curiosities of blogs, bloggers, and people who consume blog content. One section moves into the area of bibliometrics (academic article citations), but is still fairly relevant to blogging.

Blogospherics, GTN (go there now) or ASAP' (as soon as plausible). There is no prize for diligence, only inspiring content to be found.

Space Bits, "Red-sky" Thinking, and Vader the Clown

As usual, cross-posted from Tumbld Thoughts. This time, it's loosely-associated features on space science, space speculation, and science fiction. I, II, and III, respectively.

I. Space (Exploration) Simulation

Capture, stretch, and consume. The simulation discussed in this NY Times article [1] shows that the gas cloud G2 [2] is about to collide with the massive black hole that forms the center of the Milky Way galaxy (Sagittarius A*). 

II. Space (Futurism) Boosterism

Once the Singularity occurs (or perhaps slightly before), we will be able to terraform and colonize Mars. At least according to the optimists. See this Humanity+ article [3] by Nicole Willett from the Mars Society and this article in Current Biology [4] for more.

III. Space (Fictional) Humor

A day in the life of Darth Vader. From top: a morning stroll with the colleagues, pensively waiting in line at the local mall, and being put to sleep by Spock the home nurse after milk and cookies (not shown). And what roast of Darth Vader would be complete without a tip of the pen to Hanus [5] by the artist Jim Koch?

Yay, Hanus! That's all, Folks!

NOTES:

[1] Cowen, R.   It's snack time in the cosmos. NY Times, February 17 (2014).

[2] Montet, B.   Seeing black holes with a gas cloud. Astrobites blog, June 28 (2013).

[3] Willett, N.   How to Terraform Mars. Humanity+ Magazine, February 19 (2014).

[4] Gross, M.   The past and future habitability of planet Mars. Current Biology, 24(5), R175-R178 (2014).

[5] Hill, S.   Awesome Vader project puts the "art" in Darth. Wired Underwire blog, July 9 (2010).

A Mechanistic but Non-deterministic Holiday Season.....

This has been cross-posted to Tumbld Thoughts. 

The cold and emotionless holiday season......

Have a recursive holiday season!

Season's Fractals!

Here are some nice technological and mathematical non-sequiturs for the holiday season. Full of modern Western traditions. Thanks to Craig Ferguson, Benoit Mandelbrot, and natural forms for the conceptual help.

Advances in AI for and from the mind

Here are four short features from my micro-blog (Tumbld Thoughts) that creatively discuss the current and future state of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning research. Featured are: LIVE from Annoying Valley, Internet (I), Thinking more like a theorist...... (II), Trends in Future Research (III), and The path to machine consciousness will run through the executive network (IV). 

I. LIVE from Annoying Valley, Internet

Here are a few readings [1] on how recommender systems and other intelligent agents go AWOL on a platform of creative destruction. Ads such as "enlarge the size of your portfolio using this one simple trick" [2] are an example of the "annoying valley", which is a version of the uncanny valley ubiquitous in human-robot interaction.

Thanks go to Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson), and Thomas Hobbes and Joseph Schumpeter for the quotes (reworked from their original syntax).

II. Thinking more like a theorist......

Now, I think I'll get in touch with my inner theorist. Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory" summarizes the story of my academic career (at the 00:10 mark). What can we do Glenn Shafer's mathematical theory of evidence [3]? How about enabling complex data fusion and context-aware robotics (see figure below)? Next, Paul Krugman brings us his thoughts on the purported death of economic theory. Last but not least, a group of psychologists ask under which conditions theory can obstruct research progress [4]. This can be contrasted with the exclusive use of naive theories (e.g. common sense models) in AI research.

III. Trends in Future Research

Here is a Quora thread on the top problems in machine learning. Answers range from a bulleted list of hot topics to longer discussions. Major problems (as defined by the crowd) include: gesture recognition, learning from social networks and media, deep learning [5], newsfeed aggregation, and scalability. Interestingly, there is only moderate overlap between individual answers. 

Also interesting is the related Quora thread on important problems in the field of Artificial Intelligence over the short term (5-10 years). It will be interesting to see how these predictions correspond with future breakthroughs and developments in the field [6].

IV. The path to machine consciousness will run through the executive network

"Attention (awareness) is a data-handling method used by neurons. It isn’t a substance and it doesn’t flow"

Interesting quote from a even more interesting story [7] by Michael Graziano, a Neuroscientist at Princeton. He makes the case for how and how not to study consciousness. While theories of consciousness are plentiful, he argues (along with Christof Koch [8] of Caltech/Allen Brain Institute) that consciousness is primarily of phenomenon of attention and mental reflection. 

Returning to the quote. If consciousness is a form of awareness, and awareness is a model of attention, then they all seem to be a data handling procedure the brain uses to select and reflect on information from the environment. In that sense, it is a non-physical entity that does not operate like a physical intention [9]. The flow of physical intention can be distinguished from experiential flow involved with creativity [10] or the flow of information in attentional networks of the brain [11]. By contrast, the idea that consciousness flows into objects in the environment (e.g. a portrait or object) is pre-scientific superstition.

In addition, there is also evidence (highlighted in Graziano's article) that consciousness is largely an "after the facts" mental construction, which feeds back to subsequent attentional selection. What is the missing piece of science's understanding of consciousness? Graziano's answer might surprise you.

Images in IV: Debugger, xckd comics; human attentional network [11] with my own annotations; Superman fighting Zod from Superman II

NOTES:

[1] Read the following articles in succession:

Turley, J.   Damn You, Autocorrect! EE Journal, August 21 (2013).

Moyer, B.   The Annoying Valley. EE Journal, November 17 (2011).

[2] Rothschild, M.   One Weird Trick to rule them all. Skeptoid blog, January 28 (2013) AND Stepney, S.   What do these have in common? A Memory Less Ephemeral blog, August 30 (2013).

[3] Notes on belief functions from the book: Shafer, G.   A mathematical theory of evidence. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ (1976). A precursor to Dempster-Shafer theory.

[4] see the following reference, with an explanation grounded in the philosophy of science: Greenwald, A.G., Pratkanis, A.R., Leippe, M.R., and Baumgardner, M.H. Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress? Psychological Review, 93(2), 216-229 (1986).

[5] For more on the promise of deep learning, please see: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013. MIT Technology Review, April 23 (2013).

[6] For more on the predictability of research trends, see the chart at bottom and the following reference: LeHong, H. and Fenn, J.   Key Trends to Watch in Gartner 2012 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle. Forbes Tech news, September 18 (2012).

[7] Graziano, M.   How Consciousness Works. Aeon Magazine, August 23 (2013).

For a comparison between human and non-human brains, please see the following article: Boly, M., Seth, A.K., Wilke, M., Ingmundson, P., Baars, B., Laureys, S., Edelman, D., and Tsuchiya, N.   Consciousness in humans and non-human animals: Recent advances and future directions. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:625 (2013) doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00625.

[8] Koch, C.   Consciousness is Everywhere. HuffPo blog, August 15 (2012).

[9] Graziano contrasts consciousness (the awareness of stuff) with "extramission theory", a naive theory that posits human control over the natural world using visual cues.

[10] For more on this idea, please see: Csikszentmihalyi, M.   Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. Harper and Row, New York (1990).

[11] Posner, M.I. and Patoine, B.   How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition. DANA Foundation News, September 14 (2009).

For more in brain networks involved in creativity and perhaps consciousness as well, please see: Kaufman, S.B.   The Real Neuroscience of Creativity. SciAm Beautiful Minds blog, August 19 (2013).