Friday, March 19, 2010

Silicon World


Click for full size.

Attractive isn’t she, It’s a shame she’s not real. What you see above is the result of about 10 hours of work in Photoshop. The whole piece is a composite or collage if you will. The face alone is made of 7 different pieces.

We are living in a world where it’s becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between what’s real and imaginary. As Eiffel 65 put it, we're living in a Silicon World. While their song might not have been about digital falsehoods, I like the mental image and I think the analogy applies. The chorus says “I want a girl with silicon lips and silicon hair” and now, every day when you look at print ads, whether that be magazines, billboards, or banners, it’s all silicon. Nothing makes it to print without first being digitally touched up, or re-mastered.

We are being presented with a false ideal of what beauty is. Don’t believe me? Go watch the Dove, Evolution add. Don’t worry we’ll wait while you do. That and more, goes into what you see every day.

But it’s not just our advertising, it’s our entertainment too. I will assume most people have seen Avatar. I spend a good majority of my time dealing with this kind of thing and even I had to stop at times, during the movie and remind myself that what I was looking at was 100% fake, created from someone’s imagination. We herald it as innovative and groundbreaking when it’s in our entertainment but for the most part, we don’t notice when it’s in our every day life.

Personally I like the fact that technology is catching up to our imaginations. It is now possible, with enough money, to make just about anything come to life on the silver screen and the kid/ artist inside me, loves it.

Up until recently we were limited in our representations of human beings. We just couldn’t make them look real enough. I know that sounds kind of silly but here’s the thing. The closer something resembles a human the more we identify with it. This is called personification. The problem is, at a certain point it looks enough like a human that the brain starts to try and identify it, as an actual person and that’s where we hit the sticking point. If it’s real enough but not perfect, the attraction becomes revulsion, as it ends up looking like a zombie, or a distorted monster. It looks human but something isn’t quite right. You get this nagging feeling in the back of your mind that something is off. Sometimes you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know something is wrong. That’s your brain telling you it’s not real. Your subconscious looks at reality everyday, and then when it encounters something that’s off, it bugs you. This is called the Uncanny Veil. It’s the reason that for a long time computer animation steered clear of attempting realistic representations of humans. Because we couldn’t cross the veil and so as a result companies like Pixar created stylized version of humans. But now with avatar and other recent films like Benjamin button we have been able to push through and create false realities that are good enough to trick the mind, at least for a little while.

Now there is talk of resurrecting dead actors to make new movies. Bringing back Bruce Lee to make more martial arts films, but now the actor is digital and can do all their own stunts, work any hours you want, and do just about anything you want them to. All you have to do is hire a voice impersonator to do their lines and you’re good to go. Personally I think we’re still a ways off from this technology, but think about what that will do to Hollywood. As much as I love technology, I personally think we will never fully replace real actors. Actors who spend their whole lives learning to most minute control of their emotions and muscles to be able to evoke anything they need on film. I just don’t think we’re going to reach that level of control, at least not in our lifetime.

But where does it stop? With the advancement of technology progressing at the rate it is. Will we soon be seeing videogames that look like movies? We are already close. But will we see the return of Virtual Reality and actually live the games? What will that do to us? If people spend more time playing games then going outside where will the line between self and avatar begin and end? If we can create a digital person who looks real, what’s to stop advertising companies from using computer models instead of real ones? No longer would they have to worry about aging or weight gain.

Are we as a world culture going to continue to accept the advancement of technology or will there be a point where we say no, and draw a line at the level of involvement we allow technology to have in our lives.

Already we have begun to see a back lash against the digital altering of images for advertisements. Will we have a “Bra Burning” of the 21st century, where we reject the standards that media is trying to sell us, the ultra thin, ultra low-rise jeans? Or will we go blindly on into one of Hollywood’s cyberpunk futures, like Surrogates, where we live our lives vicariously through technology, never leaving our homes?

Already we live lives connected to the global community, via the internet, through the umbilical’s of our computers and cell phones. We pour our lives into ones and zeroes, into face book and myspace. People have been known to lose friends, jobs, even marriages to games like World of Warcraft.

Truly we live in a silicon world, but where does it end?

Monday, March 15, 2010

Convergence of Sight and Sound

I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon; I can watch a movie, a TV show, a youtube clip, or a trailer and really like the music that accompanies it, but when I go look the song up online and listen to it, I find that I don’t like the song as much. Because of this, I became more aware of the effect that the convergence of Sight and Sound can have. There’s a synergy between the two.

For example try watching a movie trailer with the sound turned off. It’s boring isn’t it? Now watch it again with the sound on, much better right? This isn’t exactly earth shattering news to anyone, but it is an interesting occurrence and I thought I would spend a little time mulling it over.

Anyone who has ever listened to music can tell you, it has a way of touching the emotions within you. It’s possible for a song to move you to tears, or make you laugh. Music is a highly emotive medium. On the flip side, our vision is slightly less tied to our emotions, or at least seems to be. Now perhaps that’s because we’ve become visually desensitized, through repeated bombardment of our ocular senses. Or maybe it’s because visual input gets filtered more than auditory, I’m not sure. Whatever the reason, images have less impact. That’s not to say they don’t effect us. If you look at pictures of the devastation in Haiti and you will likely feel pity or sympathy for the people in there.

So why do I like a song when it’s with a video, but not when it’s alone? To answer this let’s look at the example of classical music. Classical music can be highly emotive, and is excellent music, but for the most part I can’t just sit down and listen to it. Why? Maybe it’s because I have a short attention span, or it’s just not interesting enough to me. But set that same piece of music to say, the skating performance of a pairs team in the Olympics and suddenly, the song is very emotive and I am caught up in the whole event. Turn off the sound and the performance in interesting but not captivating. The video gives the music context. It gives a frame of reference in which to interpret the music. It narrows the scope of what the song could mean. Take the same song and set it to something different and it might be just as interesting but it may evoke different emotions. Why? Because the video is giving you a different context under which to interpret the music.

Music provides emotionality to the video and makes it far more impactful then it would be on its own, but the video gives the music context and flavor.
On the flip side, music can provide context to the video. Take a video of a car crash, back it with a sad song and the video is about a tragic accident. Switch the sad song for upbeat carnival music and suddenly you have a slapstick routine.

Alone music and video are limited in their interpretation and effect. But together they synergize to create manifold opportunities and amplified impact. It should be noted though, that a poor choice of video or music can utterly ruin any possible benefit the accompanying piece might have.

This convergence is something that advertising companies have known for a long time and can be seen every day on TV and in movies. Used to manipulate us into feeling what they want us to, so we will buy their products.

Be aware of the affect media can have on you and perhaps you can avoid its manipulation.

And now you know.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Truth, Lies and Orders of Intent

So in Philosophy there is a concept called Orders of Intent or Intentionality. This concept states that there are ascending orders of intent. Great, so what, you ask? Let me give you an example.

Order 0: I will eat the apple or I exist.

Order 1: I know that I will eat the apple or I know that I exist.

Order 2: I know, that you know, that I will eat the apple or I know, that you know, that I exist.

Order 3: I know, that you know, that I know, that I will eat the apple. I know, that you know, that he knows, I exist.

Etc... According to the theory, chimpanzees can handle perhaps two orders of intentionality, and humans can handle at max about five orders of intentionality (example: "I can't believe that you would think me capable of hating Fred just because he failed to defend Mary when John called her a dummy." It’s confusing but you can just begin to follow it. Another example or good way to think of it is like chess. How many moves ahead do you think? Or even rock, paper, scissors. When I play rock, paper, scissors, I frequently think, ok last time I did rock, so they will likely do paper, thus I will do scissors, but they will know that, so they will do rock, so I will do paper. In chess it looks like this, if I take his queen with my bishop, the only smart move is for him to then take it with his rook, which opens his king up for check from my queen, and so on.

So what does this have to do with anything? It has to do with how we communicate. Say I want the chair you’re sitting in. If I were to come up to you and say “May I have your chair?” That would be 3rd order intent, because you now know, that I know, that I want the chair. Conversely I could come up to you and say there are brownies in the kitchen. I know, that you now believe, that I know, there are brownies in the kitchen (3rd Order) But really, I just want your chair (1st Order)

So you could say that 1st order is awareness of self. 2nd order is awareness of others, and 3rd order is where true communication begins. But 3rd order is also where we begin to be able to deceive. Deception and lies are about making people believe what we want them to believe. Telling you there’s food in the kitchen isn’t a lie (if there really is food) but it is deception, if what I really want is your chair. This makes deception harder to spot than a lie. Why? Because, lies are not based on anything and thus can eventually be seen through, which is why the “best” lies are ones based on the truth, because they hold up longer under scrutiny.

As humans we like to get our way and so through the course of our lives we all learn to a greater or lesser degree how to manipulate, because the purpose of manipulation is to get your way. If you are passive aggressive you do this without direct confrontation. If your aggressive you might do it by force, and then there are those who master manipulation and do it without others even realizing they are being manipulated. Even believing they want to do what you, want them to do. I would say that these people probably work on 4th order most of the time. Intents are not about what you know as much as they are about what you believe. So let’s look at and example. Say there’s a girl (Suzie) in high school who likes a guy (Ben), but he’s already seeing someone (Lisa). Suzie, might start a rumor that Lisa has been unfaithful to Ben, making the person she tells, believe she’s telling the truth, which then makes the general population believe the lie, which in turn makes the Ben believe it and break up with Lisa. Or yet more deceptive Suzie might convince, the person she confides in, to believe she’s broken up over the fact that Lisa is cheating on Ben. From what I have read it gets hard to define the higher level intents. But I would consider this a 4th order, because after Ben breaks up with Lisa, Suzie can go to Ben and console him over the recent break up without Ben having any idea it was really all Suzie’s fault.

Back again to the chess example, the person who typically wins in a game of chess is the person who can think one step, or turn farther ahead than their opponent and the same is true in life. When it comes to manipulation the person who can think one step further, is the one who gets their way, at least when it comes to direct competition. But life is rarely a direct competition.

Now manipulation doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. Here’s another example. John and Beth are supposed to hang out, but John suspects that Beth might like him and wants to both find out if this is true, and not end up alone with her while hanging out. So John asks Beth if he can bring a friend, telling her that Jake likes bowling as well and they haven’t hung out in a while (which in this case is true). Now Beth has limited choices. She can say no, and have to explain why, thus letting John know that she likes him, or say sure, and now John isn’t alone at bowling with Beth. John has just effectively executed a 3rd order intent to get his way, manipulating Beth, while making her think that all he wanted was to hang out with more friends.

We do this sort of thing every day, often without thinking about it. We attempt to control our environment and thus the people around us. Some people are open about it and others aren’t. Perhaps one of the most effective methods of deception is, believe it or not, telling the truth. By telling the truth most appropriate to your situation and making others believe what you are telling them (which if you’re telling the truth they typically will), then you can get what you want without people realizing they have been manipulated. Back to the example of the chair, telling you there are brownies in the kitchen so I can have your chair, isn’t a lie and odds are you will enjoy the brownies. I haven’t lied and you probably won’t even think twice about it. The more you tell the truth the more people are inclined to believe what you say and the more they take it at face value. The more people take what you say at face value, the less they look for deception and thus the easier it is to manipulate them. This is perhaps the most deceptive and hardest to spot kind of manipulation. If the person doing the manipulation knows you well and knows your week points, interests, etc. They can convince you that you’re doing something of your own volition, because you want to. Giving you what you want to get what they want.

But how do we learn these kinds of behaviors? I think it, like almost everything begins in childhood, with how we are raised. If you as a child are in a store and really want a toy, what do you do? You throw a tantrum. Now how do your parents react, if they give in, you’ve learned that throwing a tantrum gets you what you want, and you will try it again the next time you want something. Congratulations you’ve just learned emotional manipulation. If your parents ignore you and let you tire yourself out, or spank you right there in the store isle, you learn that tantrums don’t work and will instead try something different next time. If your parents are good at not giving in to your manipulation and at teaching you, they may eventually convince you that the best way to get what you want is to simply ask for it, maybe even give a logical argument for why you should have whatever it is you want. But it’s also possible that you will simply learn to be craftier in your manipulation.

I think that those people who learn to be truly masterful manipulators do so throughout the course of their lives. It’s no one event or chain of events that teaches them. But I think that children who grow up in unstable or abusive homes likely learn manipulation as a defensive mechanism. If you know what makes your parents tick, if you know what they like or hate. Then you know what buttons to push, how to distract them when they’re angry or how to get them to drop an uncomfortable topic.

It’s amazing the things we learn in self defense, the things we learn in the course of life. So next time you’re interacting with someone, stop and think about your interaction. Stop and think about the way you communicate and maybe even how you came to have the communication style you use.

This has been a 3rd Order Intent

And now you know.

Monday, March 8, 2010

METS

So a couple of weeks ago I was using wiifit plus, and the game popped up a little box that said "Hi were now using these things called METs to calculate the estimated number of calories you're burning during each activity.

Being the curious person I am, I immediately went, what the heck is a MET. So I poked around in the game and found an area that talked about them... but it basically retold me the same information. So I decided to do some research and this is what I found.

MET stands for Metabolic Equivalents, with 1 MET equal to 3.5 milliliter oxygen per kg of body weight per minute. It's a gauge of how hard your body is working, and thus by extension how much oxygen your body burns to release the energy you need to do said activity. The maximum amount of Oxygen your body can use is called your VO2 max.

At rest every human being is uses roughly 1 MET and your average middle aged man or woman has a peak MET output of 8 to 10. Right now that doesn't mean much so let me give you some examples.

Walking = about 3 METS
Hiking = 7 METS
Swimming at a moderate speed = 8 mets

The sustainable MET output for your average human is 60-80% of their maximum METs. At 80-100% output the activity is not able to be sustained for any significant length of time.
So that's the bad news. The good news is the more fit you are the higher your maximum METs and the longer you can sustain a given output. This is because the more fit you are the higher your VO2 max.

Lets take a quick look at VO2 max. This represents the capacity of your body to deliver oxygen to your cells and the ability of your cells to use that oxygen. In an unfit body, the cells make poor use of oxygen and the cardiovascular system doesn't supply enough oxygen to the muscles. Where as in an someone who's fit, a greater volume of oxygen is delivered to the cells and the cells are more efficient in their use of that oxygen. A normal VO2 max for a 20-29 year old male is 43-52 ml/kg/min where as a male soccer player age 22-28 by contrast, is able to use 54-64.

So how do you use all this to calculate calories burned? For that we use the equation 1MET = 1cal/kg/hr. But since we use lb in the US, we have to divide that by 2.2, since 1kg = 2.2lb. So for us its going to be 1MET = .45cal/lb/hr. There for a 200 lb person hiking at 7 METs for an Hour would burn an estimated 630 cal or about 10.5 cal/min.

Lets extrapolate this. If you burn 1MET at rest. That means a 200 lb person is burning 90 cal/hr sitting on their but, or a total of 2160 cal in a day by doing nothing. This explains why when you look at the back of any food product the daily allowed numbers are based on a 2000 cal diet. Because the average human will burn more then 2000 cal by simply living. So to not waste away to nothing, we must consume at least 2000 cal a day. Which in the US, isn't much of a problem.

If you want to know what the MET value's are for just about any activity you can imagine just follow this link. Take a look you might be surprised at how high some of the activities you enjoy are. Also if you want to read more about VO2 Max follow this link. and a link to some one of the pages on METs I looked at.

And now you know. :)

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Social Leprosy Flip Side

Okay now for the flip side to my previous post.

Email is a great invention. While it doesn't have the same sentimental value as receiving a hand written letter in the mail, it has the bonus of being almost instantaneous, as long as people actually check their mail regularly. And in many ways its easier to hold onto your old emails than perhaps it is to hold onto old letters.

Cellphones, while they can be annoying at times, are very convenient. There is little better than a cellphone when you are in an emergency and need to reach someone. Or even just the simple convenience of trying to find someone you're trying to meet up with. No longer do you have to designate a time and a place to meet. You can now just call and ask, where are you?

Texting is perfect when you only need to send a simple message, like "I'll be there in 5 min" or "Don't forget to get milk."

The internet has brought us the useful tools of video chat and skype. Now you can call someone anywhere in the world for free as long as you both have internet. You can chat face to face across long distances if you both have cameras. This technology really does bring people closer together.

Dating sites are becoming more popular and more useful as our society gets busier and more isolated. It gets harder to meet people as life moves on. Without social gatherings the only way to meet someone is through your friends, family, or job. And that's a limited grouping of people. So the internet provides a way to look for others with similar interests. And not just on dating sites. Now you can use it to find other people who like to hike or quilt, or whatever hobby you are interested in. New ways to make connections and potential friends. People that you can then choose to meet in real life if you want.

The technology is expanding our ability to connect. But I think we must remember that technology is only a tool and not a replacement for having an actual relationship with living people. Use these tools to connect, but don't limit your interactions to those done solely through these tools.

Social Leprosy

So I thought I would rabbit trail off my previous topic for this one and talk about social leprosy, about our fear of connection. I'm not really sure where this particular issue started. I think it may have originated in a fear of rejection. I think it would be safe to say everyone has been rejected in one way or another during their life. Whether it was being picked last for Dodge-ball in school, or being told that a relationship just wasn't going to work, we've all felt the bitter sting of rejection to greater and lesser degrees. As I discussed in my last topic we are a generation averse to pain and as a result we try to mitigate and limit the ways we can be hurt, and fear of rejection springs from that.

One of the biggest ways you can be hurt is in relationships. Because, by the nature of relationship you must put ourselves out there, and must open up and share part of yourself. If you can't do this, then a relationship will never progress and you end up with empty shallow interactions.

So hypothetically we have a guy, we will call him Bob. Now for the sake of this exercise Bob is an average looking guy, he's not one of the guys that girls really notice and so he's going to have to work a little. Speaking from a guys perspective here, it takes a lot of guts to approach a girl and talk to her, especially if A. Your not very good at it, B. You don't know the girl well, and C. You like the girl even the littlest bit. So bob likes a girl. We'll call her Nancy.

Bob spends part of his time thinking about Nancy and how much he likes her and finally works up enough nerve to go talk to her. This is the crucial moment where Nancy has all the power and can crush him with little or no effort. In this case she does, well say because she happens to like another guy, and so she turns down Bobs invitation to coffee.

That rejection hurts and the next time Bob likes a girl he's likely to be a little more cautious before he approaches her and in how he does when he finally works up enough nerve to do so. In high school we see this play out endless times, and we see it on both sides. People become cautious and they start to try and feel each other out, they start to play games, like dropping hints and looking for reactions, they send friends to ask if the person likes you. This way the rejection is once removed and insulated. And these behaviors continue into adult hood. But as we age we get more crafty and perhaps fear rejection more. Cause now the clock is ticking, the older you get, the more society looks at you and wonders why you're still single and if perhaps there's something wrong with you. Because lets face it we live in a relationship based society. We've even built an entire industry around it, and gave it a holiday.

So we were happily playing our games, when along came the internet and we thought it was our salvation. A new and glorious way to communicate. Now you don't even have to talk to the person face to face. You can send them an email, and it's so much better then writing a letter because its fast. Then email was fallowed by cellphones and now we could be reached any where, any time of the day, but it didn't really bring us closer. Now instead of sitting down and having a conversation we could just call someone at the drop of a hat and ask them what we needed to know.

But then came texting and internet chat. Heralded as revolutions. With chat you can have the impersonality of text with the instantaneous quality of a conversation. You can talk to people from all over the world, but with the catch that now you don't know what they look like.

However text has its problems. For all its words, its imprecise. Text fails when it comes to conveying emotions. It lacks the nuance of voice. Without knowing how someone talks, you can't know for sure if something is a joke or not. So we resort to the ever present LoL or :D But really these emoticons fail. Rarely do I truly lol, but its what I type when I chuckle or smirk because its the accepted sign for, that was funny.

We hide behind text because it insulates us, but really it breaks down communication and as a result relationship. And texting is worse, now you can instantly annoy someone with a question or comment any time of the day without have to actually talk to them or wait for a reply. Sure its convenient but again it cuts down on real interaction.

And last but not least we developed Social Networking sites, where we can now feel like we're connected to other people because we can follow their thoughts and actions through the internet. Without ever talking to them. But hey, at least now we know what people look like. We can have hundreds even thousands of friends and not "know" any of them. It's so bad we've even coined phrases Like facebook friend. It's not official, your not really friends, until your friends on facebook.

I think we need to step back and reassess what it means to be a friend. All this technology and what have we gained. Distance, we no longer have to interact face to face, we can now sit at our computers in our homes and have "relationships". But now because we don't leave our houses we don't meet new people and without meeting new people how do we find a significant other?

Introduce the dating site, where you can be "scientifically" matched based on your selections from a drop down menu, with people in your area. You can click a button that says yes I think I might like to meet this person and if they click the same box on the other end you both receive a message saying you might be a match, now talk it out. Great we've just digitally recreated the high school equivalent of sending your friend to feel out the person. We've cushioned and insulated ourselves from rejection.

I'm not saying that these sites can't be good and helpful but I just think we should stop for a second and really ask ourselves if they're improving the quality of our relationships.
What happened to going for a walk, or sitting and chatting over coffee or tea. I personally miss late night conversations. Sure you can have a late night chat on your computer but it's just not the same as sitting curled up on opposite ends of a couch, philosophizing into the wee hours of the morning. There's no digital equivalent to a physical hug when you aren't feeling well, or just lost a loved one. You can't cry on someones shoulder through the internet. You can't hear the glorious tones of someones laugh through text and chat. And you can't hear the tones of soft loving care when someone says I love you. Text just isn't adequate to convey the depth and breadth of human emotion.

The phone is better but it's still impersonal and you still can't touch our interact with the person. You can't see their reactions or body language. I would personally say that at least 50 percent of communication is non verbal and you loose all of that. And for what? So we can be less vulnerable? I'm calling BS.

As Westly in The Princess Bride so perfectly says "Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise, is trying to sell something." I think its time we embrace what it means to be human. Stop hiding behind technology and get out there. Take a risk and feel some pain, and for God's sake, please can we stop playing childish games?

I think we end up causing just as much if not more pain by playing games and sending mixed signals, in relationships. Why can't we just be upfront, blunt and honest. Say what me mean, and mean what we say. Yes it hurts but in the long run it saves more pain and more trouble then all the lies and maneuvering. It saves a lot of time too.

So my challenge to you should you accept it, is to go out and live life a little. Talk to someone face to face for at least half an hour. Ask them how they are doing and mean it. And look them in the eye. I mean really look them in the eye.

I'll leave you with this, most people can't sustain direct eye contact for more then a few seconds at a time? Try it. Why is that? Are we afraid of what we will see, or what others might see in us?