• Intel aims at VW-like “ICE web”

    Hours Categories Game talk
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    At Semicon 2009, the keynote speaker from Intel apparently said that Intel is working towards the Internet becoming an “immersive connective experience,” or ICE web.

    Intel’s laboratories have also investing in researching visual computing, using computers in conjunction with cameras and GPS in a smartphone. For example, users could take a picture of a sign on their smartphones and the handset would check GPS to see what country the users was in, get a translation of its meaning and give directions from a mapping application overlaid.

    He said that applications like Second Life were merely the first generation of virtual worlds and the situation was going to get more immersive. Intel has been using software modelling techniques to render 3D more effectively, including making computer generated environments obey physical laws of movement and building in behavioural intelligence.

    — Intel outlines the next generation ‘reality web’ – Technology – News – CRN Australia

    None of this sounds particularly off the Metaverse Roadmap, honestly. The interesting thing is the dates.

    He estimated that the techniques of using the camera to produce visual searches for data of photographed object would come online in 2010, with information overlay on camera views by 2012 and a 2D and 3D visual overlay available by 2014.

    Naturally, why this matters to Intel is that all this will need more powerful chips… especially on more mobile devices.

    Of all the parts of the Metaverse Roadmap, it’s the augmeted reality quadrant that is moving the fastest (once you train yourself not to look for goggles and instead look for phones).

  • Even our brain is a small world network

    Hours Categories Misc
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    I still follow stuff about small world networks and power laws… and look, here they pop up again. Your neurons have 13 degrees of separation!

    That isn’t really what the article is about, of course; it’s more about the way in which this sort of organizational structure allows the brain to live at the very edge of chaos, tipping between stability and chaos as we think — and that in fact, the chaos maybe what drives the classic definition of intelligence.

    The balance between phase-locking and instability within the brain has also been linked to intelligence – at least, to IQ. Last year, Robert Thatcher from the University of South Florida in Tampa made EEG measurements of 17 children, aged between 5 and 17 years, who also performed an IQ test.

    He found that the length of time the children’s brains spent in both the stable phase-locked states and the unstable phase-shifting states correlated with their IQ scores. For example, phase shifts typically last 55 milliseconds, but an additional 1 millisecond seemed to add as many as 20 points to the child’s IQ. A shorter time in the stable phase-locked state also corresponded with greater intelligence – with a difference of 1 millisecond adding 4.6 IQ points to a child’s score.

    — Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain – life – 29 June 2009 – New Scientist.

    Now, of course we know this isn’t the only sort of intelligence. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating result, and the article also ties it to research on autism and schizophrenia.