Dubbed the most-complex structure in the universe, perhaps nothing is more mysterious, more enduringly elusive, than the human brain.  In the 19th century the ‘new science’ of phrenology promised to unlock the secrets of the human brain by studying the shape of a person’s head. A century later researchers started to look inside the skull for answers; the National Institutes of Health declared the 1990s the “Decade of the Brain” and federal money gushed into research grants, creating a renaissance in neuroscience. The results of that renaissance are just starting to emerge:  today’s brain imaging techniques allow scientists to map the neural circuitry of the human brain to within 50 nanometers; advances in brain-machine interfaces suggest a cyborg-like future may be closer to fact than fiction; and perhaps most importantly, modern paradigms of consciousness and behavior are emerging that suggest new insights into what makes us uniquely human. This week’s Friday Five looks at a small handful of projects and perspectives revealing the future of the brain.

Brainbow

The pictures look like stunning pieces of abstract art: vibrant multi-colored tendrils forming delicate branches of trees and tendrils.  Rather than an impressionist art exhibit, however, these pictures reveal brilliant bouquets of brain cells and are the highest resolution images of the brain available today.  Last year Dr. Jeff Lichtman and his team at the Harvard Brain Center developed transgenic mice with multicolored neurons using a new method that “paints” brain cells with a fluorescent protein, making visible individual neurons and their vast networks of connections.  Pictures of those mouse neurons, what Lichtman calls “Brainbows“, reveal an ethereal combination of technology and nature on the frontier of neuroscience. By color-coding neural circuits, researchers hope to create a complete a “wiring diagram” of the brain that will help identify the cause of neural disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s.  In this NPR interview, Lichtman describes the significance of brainbows for the future of neuroscience; for more eye candy, see this Wired gallery.

Augmented Cognition: DARPA goes Hollywood

DARPA’s Augmented Cognition program (”AugCog”) explores pathways to enhance human cognitive processes, particularly in the areas of attention and memory - a future-critical skill in a world increasingly characterized by information overload.   Most of the studies the agency funds have impenetrable-sounding titles, such as “Experience-Based Narrative Memory”.  But in this case, DARPA turned to Hollywood to bring the potential of augmented cognition technology to life.  The Future of Augmented Cognition is a short film directed by veteran filmmaker Alexander Singer that depicts DARPA’s vision of “AugCog” technologies in 2030.  Set in a command center tasked with monitoring cyberspace activities for anomalies that could threaten the global (and largely digital) economy, the film aims to provide both an entertaining and informative overview of the role AugCog technology could play in everyday life in the future.

Brain-machine interface

In 2001, electrician Jesse Sullivan accidentally touched a live cable, electrocuting him with 7,500 volts of electricity. As a result, both his arms were amputated at the shoulder. In the process of fitting him for artificial limbs surgeons took the severed ends of the nerves that once controlled Sullivan’s arm and rerouted them to the muscles in his chest. Unexpectedly, the nerves grew into the muscles and the procedure made Jesse Sullivan the first person to receive a nerve-muscle graft and use it to control an artificial limb. While there are numerous stories in the news today about the potential of brain-machine interfaces, this video from Pop!Tech 2005 tells one of the most remarkable and inspiring stories in neuroscience.

Promise and Peril: The Future of the Brain

The title says it all.  Most books about the future of the brain tend to be either science-heavy or buried in a deep layer of philosophical theory covering the dualism vs. holism debate.  Scientist and author Steven Rose balances the approach in Promise and Peril: The Future of the Brain, an ethically-aware, pop-sci look at how developments in neuroscience (including smart pills, brain repair and mind-reading devices) will change our understanding of what it means to be human in the future. 

Blue Brain 

The human brain is often described as a biological supercomputer, and the holy grail of computing has long been to make a machine that functions with the speed, accuracy and complexity of a human brain. But can a brain be built from a bunch of circuit boards and microchips?  IBM and Swiss research lab EPFL say yes: they’ve teamed up to create the Blue Brain project, described as the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain.  Blue Brain, as the supercomputer is called, consists of 2,000 microchips, each of which has been programmed to act like a neuron in a human brain and which together replicate “with shocking precision” the cellular events unfolding inside a mind. This SEED magazine article by science writer Jonah Lehrer offers an in-depth look at road to building Blue Brain, from the eccentric personalities (including project leader Henry Markam) to the technical hurdles (such as an estimated annual $3 billion electric bill).

Running notes from Pop!Tech ‘08.  For more posts, see the Pop!Tech blog.

photo: Kris Krug 

DR. GARY SLUTKIN, CeaseFire

Dr. Gary Slutkin asks: can put violence in the past, like we once did smallpox, by thinking about it differently? 

Specifically, by thinking of urban violence not as a moral or policy issue (that is, what’s “right and wrong”), but as a public health one.  Slutkin suggests that “violence is an infectious disease”; that it operates like a virus, following the same epidemiological patterns as health epidemics such as AIDS and tuberculosis.  He should know: Slutkin is an epidemiologist and physician who spent ten years in Africa on the frontlines of infectious diseases. Today, he’s the Executive Director of the Chicago Center for Violence Prevention. CeaseFire is the Center’s anti-violence campaign uses a public health approach to reducing shootings and killings.

If violence behaves like an epidemic, can it be cured?  Slutkin proposes that at the minimum the spread of violence can be contained (and perhaps halted) by applying the same tactics public health officers use in dealing with disease outbreaks: first: interrupt the transmission; then change social behaviors and norms. CeaseFire employs a team of “violence interrupters” - outreach workers (many of whom are ex-offenders themselves) to personally intervene and stop violent acts in the community on a case-by-case basis. Combined with a vigorous PR campaign, the aim is to ultimately change social norms - in essence, to make violence as socially unacceptable as, say, smoking.

Sound impossible?  Perhaps.  But as he points out, we once thought curing the plague was impossible too.  That was because the cause of the plague was invisible - a bacteria, inside a flea, on a rat.  By identifying the “etiologic agent” (the root cause) and making it visible, we have a better chance at finding a cure.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIK HERSMAN, Ushahidi

Erik Hersman understands the power of “making the invisible visible.”  Hersman is one of Pop!Tech’s first Social Innovation Fellows, and like most social entrepreneurs, his work is a reflection his favorite things: Africa, technology and maps.  Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Hersman is rabid techie, a web developer who writes two tech-related blogs (AfriGdaget and WhiteAfrican) and an avid map collector. He begins his talk by saying that he was born of two cultures, but lives in neither. In reality, his cultural vertigo likely fuels his ability to see opportunity where others see crisis.

Following the post-election violence that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, Hersman and fellow Kenyan bloggers created Ushahidi (the name  means “testimony” in Swahili), a website that allows users to report incidents of violence via a mobile phone text message or email.  Reports were posted to a map, creating a near-real time record of events throughout the country.   (MB note: I first wrote about Ushahidi here).

Part of the brilliance of Ushahidi is that gives voice to the myriad of stories that would otherwise be missed by the mainstream press, but its ultimate aim is more than simply a platform for citizen jpurnalism- the goal is to crowdsource crisis information. With funding from grants and a prize money from a handful of prestigious awards (including NetSquared and Knight-Batten), the plan is to build Ushahidi into a free, open source mapping tool that acts as not only as an archive, but also as an early warning system, detecting crises before they happen.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIC DAWSON, Peace Games

Slutkin and Hersman suggest that violence is not only a disease, but one that can be visualized and mapped in real time.  But the question remains: how can it be stopped from beginning in the first place?  Eric Dawson, another Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, has an idea: teach kids “peacemaking” as a skill.  Dawson starts his talk with some sobering statistics - American children today will have witnessed 100,000 acts of violence on television before they enter the sixth grade.  His organization, Peace Games, offers a K-8 curriculum that teaches kids how to become not just victims or witnesses of violence, but peacemakers who are able to diffuse it.  The underlying theory is that violence is a learned behavior that, gone unchecked, can lead to greater acts of violence. In contrast, Dawson thinks that the skills of peacemaking can also be learned.  His goal is to have Peace Games taught as an integral part of the curriculum, alongside math and science.And it seems to be working: he says that schools that use Peace Games see a 60% reduction in violence and a 75% increase in socially peaceful behavior.

My innermost Twitter thoughts, revealed (courtesy of TweetClouds)

Today the world welcomes its newest democracy.

Sixty years ago the remote Himalayan country of Bhutan was, by thoughtful intention, stuck in the Middle Ages.  The small Buddhist kingdom saw its first wheeled vehicles and the end of feudal serfdom in the 1950s. Today - a few relatively short decades later - thousands of electronic voting machines will record the results of Bhutan’s first ever general election, and with it, the birth certificate of a new democracy.

Trapped between India and China, Bhutan is a small country (about the size of Switzerland) with a population of around 700,000. The nation has a reputation for being protectively insular; it’s never been colonized and a century of royal rule has stressed the preservation of tradition and culture: a national policy of Etiquette and Manners includes a compulsory dress code (knee-length robes for men and ankle-length “kira” dresses for women) in public places; television and the Internet were only cautiously introduced in 1999. Bhutan is perhaps best known to the outside world for its policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which advocates that cultural traditions and the environment not be sacrificed in the pursuit of economic development.

Yet despite its self-imposed isolation, the country - at the specific and determined behest of its kings - has followed a careful, thought out plan to join the modern world.  In 1998 Bhutan’s fourth king, Druk Gyalpo  (”Dragon King”) Jigme Singye Wangchuck announced his plans to transition the country from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, voluntarily reducing the scope of his powers and ruling with the advice of his government.  In 2005 he declared that the country’s first national democratic election would be held in 2008, saying in part, “The sovereignty, stability and well-being of a country must be placed above everything else.  The country is more important than the king.” It was a move of remarkable foresight for a king who ascended the throne at the age of 17, and earned him a spot on Time Magazine’s list of “100 People Who Will Shape the World” in 2006.

In the West we talk a lot about the rapidity of change, often referring to the explosive adoption rates of mobile devices, or our ever-shrinking electronics, or the how fast Facebook is growing. Yet these data points pale in comparison to the type of change that Bhutan is embarking on.  In preparation for the social and political transformation ahead, Bhutan’s Election Commission spent two years canvassing the entire country with a massive civics lesson, educating villagers about their role and responsibility as citizens of a soon-to-be-democratic country.

In 2006 King Wanchuck abdicated the throne to his son, 28-year old King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wanchuck, who will oversee Bhutan’s first steps as a democracy.  Today, Bhutan’s citizens are voting for their first-ever National Assembly. The new leaders - nearly all of whom are in their 20s and 30s - will write the next chapter of Bhutan’s unique history.  How this remote country handles the growing pains of democratic ideals is yet to be seen; like any democracy, conflict is to be expected, perhaps even courted.  Will Gross National Happiness survive? How will Bhutan’s citizens - and their new leaders - negotiate the social and political changes of this next period of modernization?  How will Bhutan respond to being led by many voices, rather than one?

It’s not often that a democracy is born in relative peace; in Bhutan’s case the credit can be laid at the feet of far-sighted leaders and a community that values spiritual harmony above economic gain. Bhutan has undergone remarkable changes in the last 50 years; one can only wonder what the next fifty will bring.

Earlier today, legendary science fiction writer and future visionary Sir Arthur C. Clarke passed away at the age of ninety in his home in Sri Lanka.  This Washington Post obituary fittingly refers to him as the “unofficial poet laureate of the space age.”

A few months ago he recorded what ultimately turned out to be his final message in this YouTube video “90^th Birthday Reflections” (see this post).  In it, he reflected on his diverse career as a writer, undersea explorer, space promoter and science popularizer.  Of these, he said he hoped to be remembered most as “a writer, one who entertained readers and hopefully stretched their imaginations as well.”

In a testament to the power of social media, a virtual memorial is quickly amassing on YouTube.  The crowd-sourced eulogies range from the personal and profound to the poetic and offer a wide angle view to Clarke’s enduring ability to inspire.

If you could have one superhuman power, what would it be? 

Admit it: we’ve all harbored some fantasy about what it would be like if we could fly or walk through walls or move objects just by looking at them. The wildly popular tv show Heroes taps into our inner superhuman desires, telling the stories of ordinary people who discover that they have superhuman abilities (including a cop who can read minds and a cheerleader who can heal herself). How closely does fantasy mimic reality?  Turns out pretty closely, in some cases.  The heroes on the show gained their powers via a genetic mutation, but several superhuman abilities are within reach, mainly thanks to some well-funded military research. This week’s Friday Five explores future superpowers we can look forward to, and what they might mean for society.

Bionic Eyes

This Discover article reports that engineers at the University of Washington are developing contact lenses that contain electronic circuits that would allow wearers to see information superimposed over their view of the world in front of them (such as driving control panels and immersive virtual games) and “surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see.”  Someday, the lenses might also offer tele/microscopic vision, the ability to see infrared frequencies, or the ability to take pictures and videos.

Super Strength

From the Incredible Hulk to Superman, the ability to pick up large objects (such as cars and meteoroids) seems to be the most common attribute of superheroes.  So it’s no surprise the military is investing heavily in giving its soldiers super human strength.  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is first in line, developing an exoskeleton - a frame that fits over the body designed to help soldiers move faster and farther, carrying heavier loads and weaponry.  The key?  The robotic frame contains miniature internal combustion engines moving each powered joint.  This New Scientist article provides an update on the research, which is expected out sometime this year.

New Limbs

This much-watch video from IEEE Spectrum showcases Dean Kamen’s “Luke Arm”, a robotic arm named after Luke Skywalker’s mechanical hand in Star Wars.  It’s amazing footage of a emerging vison of next-generation limb prostheses that are fully functional, neurologically controlled, and have normal sensory capabilities.  More than that, it’s also incredibly inspiring: the soldiers featured testing the arm (some of whom are double amputees) talk about the feelings of liberation and independence the arm is giving them.

Mind Reading

Perhaps the most potent (and the most controversial) of future superpowers is the ability to read minds.  Psychics claim that this is an inherent ability, but science is taking another approach: last year researchers used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future.  While the ability to truly read minds is likely still decades away, the brain scan technology is also driving developments in human-computer interfaces such as mind-controlled computers that would allow people to operate email and the internet using thought alone.  Check out this Guardian article for more.

Super Humans

Joel Garreau’s best-selling book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human discusses the implications of human enhancement.  In the future, how will “Natural” and “Enhanced” children compete in school?  In life? I’ve argued that we’re on the verge of a socially fracturing debate about what it means to be human; Garreau explores how this debate will affect us at every level. It’s a great read, one that will change what you thought you knew about the future.

Note: Our usual end of the week gig, the FringeHog Friday Five is back after a brief interruption. My new year’s resolution to travel less worked fabulously until exactly the first week of February, at which point back-to-back road trips derailed the semi-normalcy I was just becoming accustomed to.  But we should be back on schedule.  Almost.

FringeHog Friday Five: Future Bestsellers

I like to think of FringeHog as a mental whiteboard; a space to play with ideas that may not be ready for prime time and a way to indulge my inner writer.  And apparently I’m not the only one: a growing share of bloggers are using their blogs as drafting boards for their upcoming books.  Why blog your book?  Lots of reasons: to mark your intellectual territory; to translate mindshare into market share when the book hits the stores; or in Jeff Howe’s case, to prove your point.

Watching these future atoms start out as neo-bytes is a voyeuristic dream. It’s another example of making the invisible visible: we’re offered a glimpse (although sometimes not a pretty one) into the writer’s thought process.  So if you’re the type of person who shows up to the movies early just to watch the trailers, then this post is for you, because this week’s Friday Five looks at future books-in-the-making.  Will any of these be The Next Big Idea?  You decide.  (Thanks to Bruno G. for the suggestions)

Chris Anderson: FREE (Due out: mid-2008)

In this follow up to The Long Tail, Chris Anderson (editor of Wired) takes a look the many ways to make money by giving things away for free.  The book is aptly titled FREE (subtitles under consideration include: FREE: How companies get rich by charging nothing). Blog posts tagged with the title include a rich assortment of “free” experiments including: music , books and even cars.  Anderson even gets in on the gig himself, with some not-too-shabby free publicity, compliments of this month’s cover story in Wired. 

Charles Leadbeater: We-Think (Due out: March 2008 in the UK)

Charles Leadbeater’s thesis is that “new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work.” Leadbeater puts the theory to the test in his new book, We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity, which charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning. With the support of his publisher, Leadbeater is releasing the book in its entirety online (prior to formal publication) so that “people can comment upon the text, add to it, disagree with it.” Each chapter is profiled, and next to it a running list of comments by readers. 

Kevin Kelly:  The Technium  (Due Out: ??)

Kevin Kelly describes the Technium as “a word I’ve reluctantly coined to designate the greater sphere of technology - one that goes beyond hardware to include culture, law, social institutions, and intellectual creations of all types.” Since November 2004 he’s been blogging about the Technium; his posts are thought-provoking and far-reaching, from Humans are the sex organs of technology to the inevitability of lifelogging, to the four stages in the Internet of things. All explore Kelly’s view of the Technium as an extended face of technology, as a whole system with its own dynamics. It will be interesting to see how he ties these together into a book but in the meantime, watching it unfold from Kelly’s mind reminds me of the television series Lost; the plot is complex and overlapping, often paradoxical and filled with unforgettable narrative.

Jeff Howe: Crowdsourcing (Due out: July 2008)

If veteran writer Charles Leadbeater is the Pro, then first-time author Jeff Howe is the Amateur.  Which makes it all the more interesting to see how the two authors approach the same topic.  What Leadbeater refers to as “We Think”, Howe more descriptively calls “Crowdsourcing.” His book, Crowdsourcing:  Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, is an extension of his June 2006 article in Wired in which he described the rise of mass collaboration as an economic tipping point.  In a nod to the editorial wisdom of crowds, selections of Howe’s book are (also) being released online for review and he promises to publish the “most salient, witty or astute remarks” as an appendix in the final chapter. The first chapter to be released can be found here.

Mobile Novelists: It ws bst f tms, it ws wrst f tms…

In Japan, writing a novel on a blog has become positively passé.   Just in case you missed the story, Japan’s biggest book distributor Tohan recently reported that of the 10 best-selling novels in 2007, five were originally “mobile novels” (”keitai shosetsu” in Japanese) - stories written for downloading on cell phones before being (re)published in book form.  Mobile novels (typically short stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging) have seen explosive growth: in 2003 sales of mobile novels were worth 1.8 billion yen; in 2006 the figure was 9.4 billion. Experts say the growth is due to a change in business models; when Japan’s mobile phone providers starting offering unlimited data for flat monthly rates, sales skyrocketed.  Download sites like Maho no-i-rando have hundreds of thousands of novels listed; increasingly many of those are finding their way into book form, putting the next bestseller, um, under your thumb.

Shai Agassi wants to make the world a better place, one electric car at a time.

As a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’ he was asked: “what could you do to make the world a better place by 2020?” His answer: take a country off of oil. To do so, he’s engineered a unique collaboration between the country of Israel, a major automaker and his company, Project Better Place. The government of Israel will supply tax incentives to consumers, Renault-Nissan will supply the electric cars and Agassi’s company will provide the batteries and the country-wide infrastructure to recharge the cars.   

It’s an interesting partnership, but the real innovation is the business model behind it.  Project Better Place is looking to change the way cars are paid for, taking a page from the playbook of mobile phone   companies, which operate cell phone towers and provide coverage to subscribers.  In a similar way Project Better Place plans to offer consumers a subscription-based ownership model for their cars, linking vehicle owners into the Electric Recharge Grid, a nationwide network of charging spots and battery-exchange systems that Agassi calls a “virtual oil field.”  Owners will pay a monthly fee for expected mileage, eliminating the uncertainty of fluctuating gas prices.  Combined with the government’s tax incentives, the goal is to make electric cars less expensive than gasoline-based cars, rolling out 100,000 of them by 2010. 

It’s a vision not only for the future of the car, but for a country.  According to Project Better Place’s website, if the rollout is successful it would position Israel as the first industrialized country to ‘end the stranglehold of oil on its economy’; Agassi describes it as “Israel’s Apollo Mission.”  He’s an evangelist to be sure, but he’s gaining converts. To spread the word about the possibilities of an oil-free transportation future, Project Better Future solicits ideas and support via registered users on its website.  Members offer suggestions about everything from design (”make the batteries open source”,” use solar film on the roof of the car”) to marketing.

At this recent talk at DLD, Agassi explained his motivation for starting Project Better Place was a finding a way to merge his two passions, climate change and peace in the Middle East.  As he sees it, if you could take Israel - a chaotic country - and create a replicable, oil-free model there, you’d have a shot at changing the world.  

Note: These are running notes for LIFT ‘08; for more complete blog coverage check out the official LIFT Conference blog or LunchOverIP. 

Genevieve Bell says that people on average tell “between 6 -20 lies per day”. 

Which of course makes me think: what have lied about today?  Well, I told my 3-year old nephew that if he didn’t finish his yogurt that he’d never play professional football (although the truth is that his genetic disposition will likely be the primary cause of his future career disappointment, rather than the vanilla yogurt).  I also told him that the batteries of his Lion King reader book had died.  This was a total lie, because in fact I removed a battery when the bugger was in the bathroom, rendering the book mute (although in my own defense, I truly feel this was a lie necessary to protect the both of us, as I was afraid of what I’d do if I heard the “Circle of Life” song one more time today).  And I told my mother I was relaxing and taking the day off of work (yeah, right). Ok, so that’s three lies.  According to Bell’s stats, it looks like I’m below average. I suppose for once I should be glad I’m not an over-achiever.

Bell, an anthropologist at Intel, conducted research to explore the role that lies and secrets play in our digital lives.   She starts her talk by admitting that she lied to Yahoo about her birthday.  Not a cardinal sin of course, but it did have consequences: she had forgotten her Flickr login and since she couldn’t remember her fictitious birthday, she was unable to retrieve her password and was locked out of Yahoo and other online accounts.

It turns out lying is more common than we think.  Bell says a UK survey revealed that 45% of mobile phone owners admitted to having lied about their whereabouts via text messages.  Cornell research showed that 100% of online daters have lied (usually about height or weight).  The rest of us lie for a variety of reasons: 40% to conceal misbehavior, 14% to keep our own social world ticking over; 9% to increase popularity.

The point is that lies - and its cousin, secrets - are a natural and integral part of life, and that we have constructed various social and cultural responses to them.  Lying on the witness stand is perjury, but telling a secret to one’s lawyer is perfectly legal, and in fact protected.  While most religions proscribe that lying is bad, secrets are a different story.  Secrets, Bell assets, cement relationships; paradoxically, they create trust: forms of “secret” or sacred knowledge are deeply rooted in our cultural, religious and political systems.

So what does this have to do with our digital lives?  If lies and secrets abound in the “real” world, online they positively flourish. Bells says lies about location, context, intent and identity (physical appearance, aspirations, demography, status and standing) are all possible, sometimes even required, in the context of our digital lives.  For instance, MySpace restricts access to those 14 years old and up; there are a surprising percentage of MySpace users who claim to be over 100. The question is: are information/communication technologies (and related applications and services) succeeding in part because they facilitate our lying ways?  Or are our lies and secrets are necessary to keep us ‘safe’?

Lies and secrets online are not only commonplace, they’re sometimes celebrated: the website PostSecret is a gallery of “secrets” that people have sent in via postcard, letter, etc.  (side note: PS is one of the most addictively voyeuristic sites online; it’s the 14^th most popular website and has spawned a book and community meetups).

Bell quotes James Katz, saying we’re “entering an arms race of digital deception” - that for every device that provides “truth”, another channel or device emerges that facilitates deception: cell phone tracking technology can reveal your whereabouts, but services like MobileAlibi can create a fictitious back story about why you were there (and who you were with). A newer generation of technologies have even greater potential to tell the “truth” unbidden: lie-detection algorithms on text messages and emails, GPS trackers and more.  Bell’s talk is fascinating; like most provocative speakers she raises more questions than answers, but they’re intriguing ones: is technology creating or mitigating truthiness? How are our cultural ideals and practices - something as basic and “moral” as truth telling - changing as we interact with technology?

Note: these are running notes for LIFT ‘08.  For more complete blog coverage, check out the official LIFT Conference blog or LunchOverIP.

François Grey is the Head of IT Communications at CERN, the Switzerland-based research center most widely known as the birthplace of the web and home to the world’s largest scientific instrument, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In addition to smashing participles and looking for new ones, when the LHC begins operations later this year, it will produce roughly 15 Petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually.  To analyze the mountains of the data the project will rely on the LHC Grid, a globally distributed network of computers. The approach is similar to that used by SETI @ Home which taps into the spare computing power of millions of volunteer computers to download and analyze radio telescope data in search of extraterrestrial life. The idea is catching on: Grey says today there are dozens of distributed computing projects in fields such as molecular biology, climatology and particle physics; the Sony PS3 is pre-loaded with software to enable it to connect with Folding@Home, aStanford-based project that’s studying protein folding.

A unique culture has evolved around distributed computing projects, creating tight-knit communities of volunteers.  To incentivize participation projects like SETI give volunteers “credits” for donating computing time; individuals and teams self-organize and compete to donate the most hours.  Message boards act as a social networking site for volunteers and individual profiles make participation in the project personal: Matthew Tine (aka Stainmaster) is a 32-year old Australian who has been a SETI@home member since 2000 and has to date donated over 18,000 hours of CPU time.

Grey says is science taking the distributed network concept one step further, from volunteer computing to “volunteer thinking”.  As he describes it: a new generation of projects is emerging that taps into not only the computers, but the brains of the volunteers, inviting them to analyze scientific data online: cataloguing galaxies, scouring microscope images, or mapping out remote regions.  For instance, Galaxy Zoo taps armchair astronomers to help scientists classify galaxies by looking at images and identifying whether it’s a spiral or an elliptical galaxy.  Using legions of people is not only efficient, it’s also more effective: collectively human brains are better than computers at pattern recognition, and algorithms would invariably throw out the “unusual, weird or wonderful” patterns that would attract the attention of a curious human.

Herbaria at Home is using a similar crowd-sourcing approach digitize and document the world’s largest collections of herbarium specimens; another project, AfricaMap seeks to create more accurate cartographic maps of Africa by asking volunteers to look at satellite images over the African continent and search for roads, bridges, human settlements, rivers, agriculture fields, etc.

Distributed computing has spawned distributed thinking, a trend Grey calls “citizen cyberscience”, or philanthropic crowdsourcing. It’s a fascinating concept and one that could mobilize an army of amateur scientists into service.