Bundling Books

One of the annoying things about television is summarized by the immortal phrase "hundreds of channels and nothing on." One reason for this (though not the only one) is that channels are provided in bundles. For example Discovery Channel typically comes with a cadre of other channels like Discovery Health, the Military Channel, TLC and BBC America. If a cable provider, like AT&T Uverse, wants to provide Discovery Channel to its users, it must buy the bundle from Discovery Communications, Inc. Similar bundles exist from many outlets (for example the 30 ESPN channels you get).
However it is annoying to users because by and large they only want one or a few of the channels in a bundle, but they pay for all of them.
Virginia Postrel suggests digital books should be bundled in a similar manner, where a consumer must buy a bundle of books to get the one they want. This, she argues, will help buoy sales of less popular books:

Every book is indeed different, but that’s no excuse for charging more than the market will bear. And, at least for digital copies, there’s a way around the “every book is different” problem: bundling a lot of books together, charging a flat fee, and letting customers use whichever ones they like best.

How will this solve any problems? Why should a consumer be forced to pay for books they don't want? I can only see consumer irritation from this plan, the same way consumers hate forced buying bundles of television channels to get the few channels they actually will watch.


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Conflicted, or NASA Is Hiring Astronauts And I Want To Be One

Long time readers of this blog know that on more than one occasion I have taken potshots at NASA. I've complained that manned spaceflight, while a noble pursuit, seems perilous and without point unless a clear direction is given. For example, if manned spaceflight involves building an orbital launch vehicle to send terraforming equipment to Mars...I'm all for it. Manned spaceflight as an economic stimulus mechanism for east Florida, on the other hand, I do not like.
I've laid out on this blog a time or two what I think should happen, going so far as to say we need to completely reboot NASA. I've suggested more robotic space missions and less manned missions would further what I see as the ultimate goal of space travel: preventing humanity's extinction by increasing the number of planets we inhabit from 1 to 2+.

All that being said, this morning I found out that NASA is taking applications for astronauts. And as I type this post, I have the application open on my second monitor. I cannot lie: this is the most appealing job application I've ever come across.

But here's the conflict: clearly I have issues with NASA. Clearly I have made those public. My name is on this blog, and honestly I stand by pretty much all the things I've said (things I do not stand by are summarily redacted). So I wonder if I would really stand a chance. I easily meet all the physical and academic qualifications for the position. Two degrees in engineering, 5 years experience designing/building both large electromechanical systems as well as small electronic devices. Significant experience with electrical design and circuit boards. Great health. From the applications: "Creativity. Ambition. Teamwork. A sense of daring. And a probing mind. That's what it takes to join NASA..." I got those covered!

But I have to wonder if they would only consider ardent NASA fanboys? If that is the case, let me please quote myself, from a post entitled "In Defense of NASA":

Listen, I am a big, big fan of NASA. Their mission statement, "To improve life here, to extend life to there, to find life beyond" is succinct and brilliant. When I was barely 6 years old I saw a shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral. We were several miles away, but even from there, you could see the glowing beast of a shuttle hurl into the sky, and watch the primary rockets fall away, until the shuttle was eventually lost from view. I grew up with a father who dreamed of going to space, and then vicariously dreamed that I might go to space. I watched Star Trek and Star Wars religiously. The crazy missions to the Hubble, Mars, and the construction of the ISS have all been highlights in my life. I was one of the people who let the SETI program borrow my computer at night to process radio wave information.
I don't need to go on really. I know how much NASA, and space exploration, means to me. And that is exactly why I am so critical of it! Watching your single favorite government organization fall into bureaucratic oblivion, pandering to the whims of whatever the current President says the agenda should be, overspending their budget year after year funding elephantine projects with no clear timeline or budget, not requiring their subs to perform at a certain level, and worst of all: creating unattainable, but PR-friendly goals and then spending enormous amounts of money on not achieving them...these are hard pills to swallow

All this being said, I think I will apply to be an astronaut. "Be the change you want to see in the world," goes the oft repeated quote. I guess if I want to fix NASA, the right way to do it would be from the inside, not from the comfort of my computer at my desk in Kansas. In that post, I also wrote:

My father likes to chide sports commentators with this line: "if these idiots knew so much, why aren't they coaches?" The same could possibly be aimed at me. If I have all the answers to NASA's problems, why don't I be put in charge of NASA? Wouldn't I like that?

I guess I should stop commentating and try coaching.


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Things I Will Believe When I See

Computer animations of robotic animals are pretty easy to produce. I know this because my roommate and I used to do it for fun in college.

So earlier this year when BostonDynamics robot cheetah animation came out...I held my breath.

Now we have a robot ostrich animation complete with weird render that looks like a Halflife 2 creature! It'd be neat if it was built, sure. But I'll hold my breath in the mean time.


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Scott Adams' Cyborg Evolution

Scott Adams thinks that health monitoring will be the first substantial step in our "cyborg evolution." Welcome to the club, Scott.

Here at TAE, the inevitable seamless integration of machine and man has been discussed too many times for me to link to. Heh.
But I want to make a point about Adams' piece, because I think he understates the ideal. His vision:

I predict that health monitoring will be the next substantial phase of cyborg evolution. I think we'll have embedded chips to continuously monitor our blood for sugar levels, cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, salt, specific diseases, and more. I think we'll also have monitors on our bodies to tell us when our brains are at their peak levels (for thinking tasks) and when our bodies are most energetic (for exercise). Perhaps our monitors will tell us when to eat and what to eat. Monitors might tell us when we are hydrated, when we have enough fiber in our diets, and when we need more sleep. You can imagine a long list of what the monitors might tell us. The embedded monitors might be powered by your body chemistry and communicate with your smartphone when it's near.

I question why we need the smartphone at all? Why not have the monitor calculate the nutrients our body needs and then simply regulate the liver to efficiently digest the right amounts of the right molecules? I don't have time to take pictures of food and record if I feel energized. I don't want to spend my time putting my diet into MyFitnessPal. I want to just have a device implanted in my liver that checks my nutrient levels and then adjusts my body chemistry accordingly.
Adams envisions a monitor that tells us when our brains are at peak performance. I envision a device that keeps my brain at peak performance all the time! Adams' envisions a device that tells me when I need more sleep. I envision a device that not only helps regulate my sleep patterns, but increases the efficiency of my sleep patterns so I get "40 winks" in 30 winks' time.

Adams imagines a world where we're enshrouded in devices which improve our quality of life. I agree this is the future...but an iterative one. I imagine a future where we aren't enshrouded by devices...we are one with them.

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Watching Your Friends Drink Kool-Aid

You know, I don't have a Twitter account. I never really see the utility in it; always seems like just a bunch of white noise. People who trumpet it as an innovation usually point to its power for news dissemination, for example when the East Coast experienced an earthquake earlier this year. Others contend that Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprisings, helping to organize protests. That's a fallacious argument to me, because people have rioted and protested for hundreds of years before there was Twitter. It's just that before Twitter, people actually had to talk to each other in order to spread the word.

But for me Twitter does have one utility, namely it allows me to watch the slow decay of my peers as they helplessly fall prey to the consumerist lifestyle they've come to believe matters. I should add that the example tweets I use aren't meant to be attacks on individuals (these people are acquaintances), simply I used them because they prove my point and you people just put it out there in public so everyone can see. Theoretically I'm helping you.

There's this epidemic, and Freddie nails it, of competitive consumerism in my generation. Everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid of a capitalistic culture that says "the herd is happy" and that somehow you must fit in while simultaneously rising above everyone else in your individuality and innovative consumerism. And so you end up with a massive, generational flocking effect...everyone tries to stay as close together as possible, and a tiny perturbation - new, hip, pointy-toed shoes - causes a ripple where the whole flock massively pivots to follow that first-turning bird. And while the seemingly mindless collective flock of individuals sticks tightly together, they tweet back and forth about it.

I hate to tell you this, but your ability to pass an online quiz that proves you can tell a good pino from a bad cab really doesn't matter to anyone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You found a 100-point cab for $16 at so-and-so's liquor store? No one cares. No one. In fact the statistically proven, temporal subjectivity of the 100-point score renders it worthless too. Your groupon deal for unlimited yoga for $30 might be impressive to you, but you're basically just wasting electricity retweeting it...everyone who would want that deal would have to already be signed up to Groupon (and already have seen the deal) or have to join Groupon to get the deal (in which case they'd immediately see the deal) so you've really done nothing but brainlessly advertise for Groupon for free. Good work.

Someday, not too far in the future, one of these people will realize things like "I actually didn't really like HealthRidge Fitness Club" but they won't tweet "ignore my tweet from three months ago. #hindsightis20/20" The 100-point cab they spilled all over the twittersphere will be long forgotten, and the cheaper, lower-ranked wine they enjoy even more won't cause them to retroactively go back and tweet "100-point wine was overrated by 7 points IMHO #iwasshortsighted". You're not going to see a tweet from the above person "@RoadID I never really use this thing, had it 5 years and never needed it, why did I waste my money?"
Because retroactive self-abasement goes against the competitive consumerist's nature. You can't look back in regret because to do so would admit weakness in prescience. And it is the illusion of indefatigable prescience that powers the competitive consumerists of my generation. It is only boldly forward, boldly onward for the competitive consumerist, in whichever direction the flock takes them.

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One more thing about prosthetics

Micro-sensor-embedded-fiber-optic-super-prosthetics may hold promise for future American soldiers that lose limbs...but what does that uninsured amputee in Botswana do? As medical breakthroughs become more and more expensive to develop...they become more and more disconnected from the places they are truly needed.

The counter-argument, that these technologies need to be developed in the First World and become profitable and then the patents run out and then it gets cheaper and then eventually it trickles down to the Third World...that argument falls short when you try to find a person living in the Third World that has a pacemaker.


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Prosthetics Is About Software

First off, I applaud this effort. Amazing science in progress.

However, look at that diagram...they want to create an awfully complicated design. Tiny optical mirrors are placed along equally microscopic optical fibers, which are then wound around individual nerves. A nerve signal headed for an amputated limb is detected by these microsensors and they transmit the signal via the optical fiber to a CPU of some sort which will then move the limb. Theoretically feedback could go the other way - touching an object could fire off haptic sensors which would then send an infrared laser signal through the fiber optic cable to the mirror and trigger a nerve pulse, which would then be carried to the brain.

Okay, here's the thing. The article, and the researches in it, make brain-machine interface seem like a really crappy technology with no promise. But practical, functioning prototypes of their technology is "a decade off" they admit. They claim: "Even a bleeding-edge, brain-based prosthetic would only offer a few degrees of movement, and because electrical signals are relatively slow, you couldn’t move as quickly as someone with a real arm."
The problem with this claim is that anyone with a basic understanding of bioelectric signals knows that the transmission speed of electrical signals in copper wires is thousands and thousands and thousands of times faster than the signal transmission speed in nerves. In fact, because the transmission speed of nerves is SO slow, early multi-cellular life forms evolved myelin sheaths, which speed up the transmission rate of nerve signals, at the cost of signal strength. Myelin sheaths are spaced along a nerve fiber, and the signal shoots through them, then reconcentrates in the inter-mylin nerve fiber space, then shoots through the next one. It's all explained here.
The point is that their core argument against brain-implant prosthetics is that the slowness of them is what causes the difficulty in doing simple tasks. That is simply not true. They further claim their fiber optic method will mitigate this problem...that's probably not true....but we won't know for another decade, right?

The reason, dear readers, that brain-controlled prostheses lack mobility is two-fold. First, the electromechanical design of prosthetics is still limited by our ability to make artificial muscle. We use servos to simulate elbows and knees. In a way we do it backwards of nature. Nature puts the muscles between the joints, then pulls on the joints to move them. We put the "muscle" in the joint, and actuate it right there on site.

The second reason for the difficulties in brain-controlled prostheses is that we simply have not developed software to decode the brain. Put one of these babies on, and you can get a pretty diverse and interesting real-time electrical output from the brain. But first, no one wants to wear that, and second, the amount of data is simply overwhelming. When I think about typing the letter "t", my brain produces a very specific electrical signal. However, it's lost in the noise of me thinking about moving my eyeballs, thinking about maintaining my posture in this chair (or should I say maintaining my slouch in this chair?), and thinking whatever else I am thinking. When you have billions of signal generators that maintain trillions of interconnections...you simply get a TON of noise. And so the difficulties in moving a prosthetic with your thoughts alone has nothing to do with signal velocity and instead has everything to do with signal integrity. If I had a prosthetic arm and wanted to type the letter 't' I would have to think really really hard about it so that the software in the brain-implant-computer-whatever could clearly through all the noise see I wanted to type that letter. Thinking hard is a lot slower than regular thinking.

So I humbly submit: the hardware you use to interface with the amputee is irrelevant, mostly. As long as you can interrupt and monitor the brain's commands...either at the brain or at the stump...you can move the hardware. What matters is signal processing, which lies in the software. This is a problem, I think, for mechanical engineers like me and electrical engineers and neurophotonics researchers to accept: we're not the important part of this puzzle.

But this goes back to TAE's Law of Bionics that I submitted on this blog many times, and it bears repeating now: All You Need Is Drivers. The only thing stopping me from having a functioning USB port on my arm is that we lack the drivers for the two hardware systems to communicate. All you need is drivers. All you need is drivers. All you need is drivers.


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