Professor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implications of advances in neuroscience that have made it possible to communicate with those in a vegetative state:
Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.
I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly the other night, a film based on real events about a man that is totally paralysed and can only communicate by blinking his eye.
But this is something else, amazing:
For seven years the man lay in a hospital bed, showing no signs of consciousness since sustaining a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. His doctors were convinced he was in a vegetative state. Until now.
To the astonishment of his medical team, the patient has been able to communicate with the outside world after scientists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.
They devised a technique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to simple questions through the use of a hi-tech scanner, monitoring his brain activity.
To answer yes, he was told to think of playing tennis, a motor activity. To answer no, he was told to think of wandering from room to room in his home, visualising everything he would expect to see there, creating activity in the part of the brain governing spatial awareness.
His doctors were amazed when the patient gave the correct answers to a series of questions about his family.
Iraq’s Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says.
According to Iraqi experts, the U.S. and Britain, being the lovers of freedom and democracy that they are:
… bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq.
While I’m a big fan of the iPad’s ease of use, this aspect worries me.
In my circle of friends, family and workmates I’m the technological shaman who helps them acquire, use and heal their computers Macs.
I’ve always enjoyed this. Not so much the technical tinkering, but the practice of helping people to get on with what they’re using a computer for in the first place. In fact it’s always frustrated me that people like myself are needed in the first place. And even more so the dismissive attitude of so many of the technologists and computer geeks who frequent the technical forums that I myself gain much of my knowledge from. For them computers are not the problem, people are just bumbling idiots. Rather than design computers around people they think people should mold themselves to the way a computer works.
True to form many of them are apocalyptic about Apple’s new iPad. They see it as a toy, nothing more than an oversized iPod, even an affront to their computing prowess. How can one get serious computing done without a filing system, multiple windows or a mouse they cry! ((The truth is multi-touch input is infinitely more powerful than a mechanical pointing device.)) Fraser Speirs aptly refers to this as Future Shock.
Ultimately the iPad represents a couple of things to me: on the negative side it’s potentially the beginning of the end of the free and open internet as we know it. On the positive side it is almost certainly the beginning of the end of the desktop metaphor. And not a day too soon.
Someone has finally got serious about creating a powerful computer that’s easy to use.
No Right Turn on the risk to democracy that Paypal presents:
Paypal has blocked donations to the Arrest Blair campaign, supposedly on the basis that it “encourages illegal activity” (conducting a lawful citizens arrest of a rich and powerful figure apparently being illegal in the eyes of PayPal). It’s a blatantly political move — and its not the first time they’ve done it. Last week, they froze the assets of Wikileaks — a site which encourages and publishes anonymous leaks in the public interest, and is credited with “produc[ing] more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years”.
Ryan Paul writing for Ars Technica:
When making a purchase, online shoppers are confronted with a validation check that requires them to supply a password — in addition to the standard security code that is on the card itself — in order to prove that they are the real owner of a credit card. … Some of the credit card companies take advantage of [this system] by wrapping their implementations of the validation system in draconian terms of service that force users to agree to accept full liability for credit card fraud.
I’ve just been updating some photos on Flickr and it struck me how much we record and photograph children’s lives these days. Looking back on photos and video is a great way to reminisce. But what if one day you could video record your entire life and play it back? Freaky.
Edit: Watched a film called Code 46 the other day, in which you can upload your memories to a device and play them back in video.
The Guardian has just released an iPhone app. It’s only available U.S./UK/Ireland for now but they’re working on other countries.
As some of you may have noticed I’ve been having a bit of a tidy up around here recently. Last Straw now has a classy new grid-based design called Basic Maths by Khoi Vinh. I’ve also blown a few cobwebs out of the backend involving categories and whatnot. All of which should make browsing my rants endless pearls of wisdom infinitely more pleasurable. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a new photo/video gallery too.
As email subscribers will have already noticed I’ve also overhauled the mailing list system, switching to MailChimp. Note that this will now come as a weekly digest instead of individual emails.
While switching I was reminded of how many friends and family I’ve surreptitiously subscribed over the years. Not the most polite thing to do. Honestly, unless you really want to receive these emails, please unsubscribe. There are other more modern ways to follow a blog these days anyway.
In the mean time you might like to check out another website overhaul I’ve been working on recently.