The Birth of the Cool
Signal processing is part and parcel of what we see. The retina is in fact actually composed of brain cells and interpretation plays a part from the first instant of perception. Because the image it receives is optically inverted and the data arrives faster than it can be processed, the brain adjusts the information before we “see” it in our minds. “The retina, unlike a camera, does not simply send a picture to the brain. The retina spatially encodes (compresses) the image to fit the limited capacity of the optic nerve.” It does this in part, by sending the changes in a visual image rather than the entire dataset containing the static parts of the image.
But if Mother Nature tricks us, then why not Google? Dean George Orsak of Southern Methodist’s Lyle School of Engineering says that “augmented reality” has had a long played a large and perhaps dangerous role in our vision.
Something fascinating happened during a football game between the Bengals and Ravens in 1998. It seemed a little gimmicky at the time, but now it is indispensable: The yellow first-down line that automatically “paints” on your TV screen premiered during this game, providing most of us with our first glimpse of live augmented reality.
Football changed forever.
Today we take it for granted that our reality can be enhanced by technology. From new emerging 5D rides at amusement parks to “heads up” displays in modern airplane cockpits and video games, augmented reality is here to stay.
“Augmented reality is here to stay” especially if Google has a say in the proceedings. Consider Google Goggles which may soon be at a computer store near you.
Now that we have the leaked information from Google that the company is preparing to release new camera-loaded, data-processing eyeglasses, we are all preparing for what could be a major advance in the role technology plays in our personal lives. What the smartphone did for human communications and rapid information access, the so-called “Google Goggles” just might do for much of the remainder of the human experience.
Augmented reality is not a Web page or a search engine. It is human experience enhanced by all types of technologies that supplement sounds, sights, smells, motion, and interaction to improve our experience. This is not new, but that doesn’t mean that Google’s sideways announcement won’t be a game changer. The wireless phone didn’t just remove the wire — it unleashed an entirely new path for innovation that is still playing out today.
Augmented reality is “a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” But if that sounds great, consider that its near-cousin, computer mediated-reality, “refers to the ability to add to, subtract information from, or otherwise manipulate one’s perception of reality through the use of a wearable computer.”
The difference between the two is entirely dependent on the kind of processing implemented. Do it one way and it’s “augmented”. Do it another way and it’s “mediated”. But in either case what you see isn’t necessarily what you get; or rather what exists isn’t necessarily what you see. Perhaps David Axelrod understood the word “media” long before most of us did. The media is what “mediates” and his idea is that once you start augmenting reality via the media, then why stop?
The centerpiece of Axelrod’s latest effort to persuade voters to re-elect the President in 2012, despite his poor record in virtually everything is the “cool strategy”. It aims to persuade voters to see the President as a celebrity, the greatest thing since unsliced bread, a person whose presence you would be grateful for. Therefore you should elect him just because he makes you feel good. That would be in contrast to the constipated, clinched, and stuck-up Mormon Republican Mitt Romney, whose mere proximity should fill you with disgust. The Christian Science Monitor describes the battleground.
Republicans know that in a battle of “cool,” Mitt Romney doesn’t stand a chance against President Obama.
While Mr. Obama slow-jammed the news on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” – giving the show its highest viewership in two years – Mr. Romney’s biggest cultural moment of the week was … what? Sitting at a picnic table with Republican voters in Bethel Park, Pa., in his crisp white shirt and necktie, turning up his nose at the cookies? Turns out they were from a beloved local bakery. Oops.
One is tempted to remark that this battleground is entirely fictional, as in Captain America versus the Red Skull or Thor versus Loki. But so what? That’s where the action is. Therefore the Republican game-plan for fighting the Obama “cool strategy” is perceptual as well. Instead of complaining that President Obama’s cool constitutes just another set of mediated reality goggles, they are simply going to sell the public a rival set of goggles, one in which cool is uncool. The Christian Science Monitor continues its description of the battle of the goggles.
But instead of just ignoring Obama cool, the Republicans are hanging a lantern on it, saying, in effect, We get it, and here’s why you should vote him out anyway.
That’s the essence of a new video out Thursday by American Crossroads, the big conservative “super political-action committee” that’s supporting the Romney campaign. The 45-second message is mostly a montage of cool Obama moments – appearing on Jimmy Fallon, singing Al Green, calling Kanye West an expletive. Then the music stops, and the harsh statistics appear: Half of recent college grads are either jobless or underemployed. Eighty-five percent of college grads are moving in with their parents, according to a study out last May. Student-loan debt just crossed the $1 trillion mark.
Modern American politics with its emphasis not on changing reality but altering the voter’s perception of it recalls the fictional Talosians of Star Trek. In that science fiction universe, the Talosians are masters of a world in which people live in illusion so that they may be independent of reality.
The Talosians capture Star Fleet officer Captain Christopher Pike. They make everything seem wonderful for him. But they are up to no good. In reality (if one may use the term) “while imprisoned, Pike uncovers the Talosians’ plans to repopulate their ravaged planet using himself and Vina as breeding stock for a race of slaves.”
Viewers of the Original Star Trek series will remember that even the Talosians could not quite master reality completely. “Pike discovers that his primitive human emotions can neutralize the Talosians’ ability to read his mind, and he manages to escape to the surface of the planet along with his landing party”. Pike learned that if you got angry, hungry or emotional enough, the raw truth would burn through, despite the Talosian goggles.
Ironically he returns to the Talosian planet of his own free will. After being irremediably damaged in a radiation accident, Pike decides that reality is no longer for him. He makes his way back to Talos and disappears into the care of the aliens who tell the crew of Starship Enterprise as they depart that Pike has “illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.”
And there the viewer is left, on a Starship warping out into the void of space when it could have had all the Talosians had to offer, the crewmen wondering if it is still slavery when the slave doesn’t know he is enslaved. Say goodbye to reality and live in the Dream, for why should anyone care what exists if we can all pretend to live in the greatest of all possible worlds.
Cool, anyone?
The World As It May Be
The World As It Seems
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
Not ironic at all; “The Menagerie” tells us that when one is a hopeless cripple, there’s no longer any harm in living the illusion perpetrated by the
ObamistsTalosians; but until then, even they’ll tell you not to drink the Kool-Aid that they serve.“Augmented reality is here to stay”
I have no trouble with augmented reality as long as the augmentation is based on truth. Augmented reality based on untruth is an oxymoron, and should be termed augmented unreality.
“The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind; surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false… There was truth and there was untruth; and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” George Orwell – 1984
The augmented reality Google goggles are supposed to be able to do facial recognition of people you meet on the street, query the Internet, and tell you “John Smith, Wife Harriet, Children Kyle, 7, Heather, 11, knows you from the golf club, avid Pacman enthusiast.”
OKay, and if your augmented reality Google goggles say “John Connor – Kill” when you see someone on the street…? What do you do, switch to a non-Skynet ISP?
On a positive note, they’ll probably make all the woman look like Summer Glau.
And then there’s the X-ray vision possibilities.
But it’s still pretty scary to me.
Augmented reality, Illusions… We’ve been living in an Augmented reality for at least 50 years now, it has been one sensory perception at a time…
Perception is not reality. Regardless of the claims of Madison Ave. In the end reality always wins. This November, that will be proven yet again. You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time. That needs to be Mitt’s campaign slogan. Make sure the voters understand there was no shame in being fooled by Obama the first time. No excuse for being fooled the second time.
The latest “augmented reality” trick being foisted on us by the Obama machine is his “I Killed Osama bin Laden” studliness meme.
This is the height of mendacity and reality distortion, but many people may buy it. That al Qaeda was weakened by years of heavy attrition thanks primarily to Bush, and that bin Laden had become an innefectual recluse are of no consequence in this narrative. Nor does it matter that Obama is known for bowing and scraping to potentates, delayed and downsizing the Afghanistan surge, withdrew from Iraq without a Status of Forces Agreement in place, and is butchering the American military machine. Oh yeah, and then there’s that Gitmo thing, and the on-and-off efforts by Holder to try Bush and Cheney for “war crimes.”
To further the absurdness and gall of this suddenly “tough” president, Democrats are suggesting that Romney would not have given the go-ahead to the bin Laden raid. Seriously? Well, no, not seriously at all, but that doesn’t matter.
The man called Nada in John Carpenter’s “They Live” had the opposite appliance of the Goggles. He had access to what some call Truth Glasses which allowed him to notice that the world was being invaded by aliens masquerading as Us. Now you may or may not subscribe to the political message of “They Live”, but the concept of Truth Glasses is an interesting one.
Truth Glasses are essentially de-augmenting devices. They let you burn through the memetic spoofing and get a return on things as they are. They strip out the padding and give “you” the rawer data. I have put “you” in scare quotes because to some extent we want to keep the filters of our choice, those which define us. We want to be able to apply our own perspective at the very least.
What we don’t seem to want is a gratuitously imposed layer of signal processing between reality and our perception of it. The probable way this is going to be resolved is through choice. Audiences have learned to recognize the laugh-track for what it is. So perhaps in the future, we can be made explicitly aware — through a product — what layers have been added to the scene. We may have to pay extra to see things for what they are.
But I’m guessing some won’t bother. They’ll be happy in their Fool’s Paradise. How interesting it is that a civilization which sees ubiquitous danger in religion or philosophy is for the most part ready to uncritically embrace what is added on by Madison Avenue and the spin doctors.
Well no, it isn’t.
If I were a science fiction writer, I’d tell the story of a man that “wakes up” because his reality augmentation devices have broken down and finds himself wandering out into a world where everyone is living in his own private dream. He thinks at first that he is the Only Man Awake. And then the realization hits him: that he can’t be. Someone else is running the augmentation. So he starts the search for the Men in Charge. And the first thing he does is walk into the open door of an unattended gun store to prepare himself for all eventualities. What is it like to be the Only Other Man Awake?
If Augmented Reality is here to stay, where the hell was it when President Pseudo-Kool was doing his pathetic parody of “Slow-jamming the News?”
That was the lamest attempt at “coolness” I’ve ever witnessed. If anything, it confirms for all time the ABSURD CLAIM of Wm. Jefferson Clinton as the First Black President. The Dems may actually have an actionable case against Mr. Kimmel’s producers for highlighting OBumble’s gracelessness compared with the comparative smoothness and grace of his host and backup band.
The enormous failing of “Augmented Reality” is simply that it is NOT REALITY.
Our Vision is in the first place, a CONSTRUCTION: an APPROXIMATION and on-the-fly interpretation of streaming information impinging on our retinas.
To enhance that with additional layers of imagery based on probabilities or reductions based on the most current science and technology may have some value.
But the original eye-brain system is the distillation of tens of millions of years of selection by the most brutal testing. Survival of the most agile adaptations according to supremely objective criteria (even if the final arbiter is not entirely dis-interested in the outcome…)
It seems increasingly clear that the task of “making the president seem smart, witty, and wise” enough to recognize – much less actually handle – the current mess, is beyond the ken of his quarterwit wizards.
“Augmented reality” is for the present only useful in helping an educated brain find a pathway through fields that are generally understood. If you don’t even grasp that YOU yourself are the cause of the mess confronting you, you’re up the fecal watercourse without any oars.
You can’t pick up real dog turds with a virtual spoon.
The mind has no access to reality except through pain. Touch, smell, hearing and vision merely enable the brain to create an image of reality.
Most people, cocooned from pain by their affluent culture, prefer to experience fictional pleasure. Movies, novels, computer games, et al.
PostModernism helps obliterate intellectual unpleasantness. Google Goggles promise more of the same.
The concept of the Google Goggles is fascinating in another respect: It’s another appliance in helping to live a more compact and less cluttered existence. No more big screen TV or “entertainment center” for instance.
In a world where various countertop cooking appliances have made the stove obsolete for most people’s needs, and a foldup futon captain’s bed couch (complete with dresser drawers), wireless laptops and tablets, etc., we can becaome downright Thoreau-like with our virtual reality Walden Pond “cabin” existence.
winslow 9,
Our cerebral images of reality are still truth, absent psychosis, because those mental images are based on direct observation (sensory detection) of the natural world. There is always more truth to be had on every object of observation through scientific testing – which is a controlled form of observation. Pain is an unpleasant form of observation – an unpleasant sensory detection of the natural world – a thorn in the flesh.
HUFFINGTON POST FINDS OBAMA’s OSAMA AD “DESPICCABLE”
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/04/30/huffington-slams-obama-osama-ad/#more-792366
Axelrod needs to super-glue Obama’s mask, it is slipping so much. They should also super-glue Biden’s mouth shut.
7. wretchard, sounds like the “Matrix” to me!
Oh boy. Here was I thinking that augmented reality meant breast implants. Now you tell me it’s a pair of fancy goggles? So what kind of reality does Obama’s lying eyes see?
I’m sticking to “what you see is what you get”. A cool communist con man is a cool communist con man is a cool communist con man. Everything else is an illusion.
Cool. When will Mr. President start handing out the free acid?
Gotta love Ariana. She is the supreme opportunist. That is part of her charm. Maybe her recently discovered disgust of Obama’s posturing reveals her estimate of his electoral chances.
When I think of Ariana it is as one of those action movie female characters who plays the dictator’s mistress but is secretly having an affair with the grizzled Gringo pilot who has been hired to fly the failing dictator out of an imploding country.
The dictator believes her to be loyal and so has given her a gun to put to the Gringo pilot’s head. She orders him to take off with herself, the dictator and a suitcase of gold bars. The irate mob breaks into the airport perimeter. It is now or never.
The pilot calmly informs the Ariana character that the plane can’t take off with all three of them and the suitcase of gold. So the choices are.
What would Ariana do?
W: “Say goodbye to reality and live in the [Talosian] Dream…”
Every form of human despotism (Monarchy, Fascism, Islamo-Fascism, Marxism) offers its particular dream and hope to mankind – usually packaged in the rhetoric of social justice – as part of a method to enslave the masses in a nightmare of social injustice.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [the dreamy lie and reality], and accepting both of them [Insanity]… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
Boy. What a great post!
It raises lots of questions. I’ll stick to two.
1. What kind of liability insurance must a Goggle-wearer buy in order to operate his ‘augmentation’ device in unaugmented reality-space? Seems like the campus enjoyed by the goggle user approximates the one enjoyed by licensed motorists – the surrounding ‘operating space’ created by the goggle is artificial, it is delineated and distinct from the ‘reality’ lived by non-users, and its modes of use require a mechanism powered by a refined energy source to power them, just like a car. And so, should Goggle users expect to be registered, tested for proficiency and licensed, just like the average driver on the Jersey turnpike is?
2. How might employing the Google Goggle regularly be like using recreational drugs? Does not the wearer experience a “heightened” awareness? Does the Goggle ‘high’ distract the user from reacting to real hazards in life, as alcohol might dull the reflexes of a driver on a clogged freeway? And will the Goggle lure young people to a life-long abuse of the augmentation, one in which they acquire the characteristics of bed-ridden coma patients, their muscles atrophied and skin ashen with uncirculated blood? Or where they replace every day relations and mundane reality with the ‘high’ of the Google Goggle, drifting untethered from the human scale?
I’m thinking the answers are Yes to all of the above. Do any others think differently?
Ariana would probably shoot the dictator and hope that by dumping the -pardon the pun- dead weight, that it would be enough to get the aircraft off the ground.
Wretchard,
I think Arianna’d do number 1. Shoot the pilot (once they take off) and settle for the dictator and the gold.
She’s an old shark who knows that landing a Cessna’s easy (so long as there’s flat ground and she can throttle back the engine)…and there’s always another coup, with a gringo pilot and a gold-laden escape plane waiting in the wings.
Steve (20),
They aren’t taking off as is.
Steveaz #18:
Yes, if Texting While Driving is such a problem, how much of a problem can Driving While Google Goggling be?
Theoretically, you could be driving down a street in dense fog in the middle of the night and your Googoggles could enable you to drive as if it was a clear day. I recall the time I took my GPS, walked out to the runway, and confirmed that I could find it by only following the display. Now, landing an airplane would not be as easy, but would be possible, and that was a couple of orders of magnitude less sophisticated.
But the Googoggles also could blank out things that the sponsors of the service did not want you to see, like competitors’ automobiles or stores, or not show things they were not aware of, like pedestrians.
I recall one SF story I read in which a group of people who were telepathically linked settled on a planet. Then they had a few children who were not telepathic, and who began to point out that their “wi-fi network” self images were at variance with reality. Some of the settlers were fat blobs but saw themselves as they were at 20 years old, slim and handsome. Some had contracted diseases that made them hideous but they still “broadcast” an image of being young and beautiful. The non-telepathic children became the most valued members of their society, since they were the only ones with an uncorrupted vision of reality.
I suspect that the Gods of the Copybook Headings will always eventually have their way with the Google-y eyed, no matter how perfectly the reality augmentation is executed…Holodecks always have their glitches.
Storm Rider
Ed Land of Polaroid fame used to write articles on is vision experiments in the Scientific American. It is from thee that I draw my model of how we experience reality. Two particularly vivid results.
If you look through a Stereo-opticon? at a scene in which each view is produced only in shades of one color, orange, the viewer sees a complete color scene.
If you look at a series of dots that are close to being in a straight line, you will tend to see a crystal clear straight line. A similar effect is observed when squinting at an impressionistic painting and the scene jumps out at you.
Our image of the external world is indirect and mostly inferred. We cannot ever know how much truth is in it.
As in science, the mind creates a more or less complete scene based on insufficient information.
This is why simultaneous witnesses to the same events often report them differently. For example, line calls in club tennis. Another example is optical illusions.
One can be more sure of one’s model when there is corroborating evidence.
that ain’t no Talosian, it’s a Gorn, if memory serves, and I’ll bet it finds dogs tasty.
But instead of just ignoring Obama cool, the Republicans are hanging a lantern on it, saying, in effect, We get it, and here’s why you should vote him out anyway.
Whatever you claim, can be overloaded. Obama cool? Who else is cool? Kim Kardashian? Cee Lo Green? Fity cent? The Hulk? “Obama Smash!” At some point, no, just spelling the guy’s name right is not good publicity, it’s a tired, running joke that submerges any attempt at message. Cuz what is always cool is cutting down whatever’s cool.
That would be in contrast to the constipated, clinched, and stuck-up Mormon Republican Mitt Romney, whose mere proximity should fill you with disgust.
Or something worse, disinterest. This *is* just that old overloading tactic.
What Romney has to do is *sparkle* some, so he has something to offer in contrast to what is otherwise an unfortunately accurate portrayal of his public image. His campaign, in their finite wisdom, has tried to hide him behind a veil, hoping that America will take what’s behind the curtain, rather than whatever clown acts appear on the other stages. And, well, in the primaries it worked. This is after all pretty nearly the opposite of the Google Glasses model, this is the Zaphod Beeblebrox Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses strategy, that turn black just when anything alarming might appear in view.
http://hhgproject.org/entries/perilsensitivesunglasses.html
For #22 RWE:
I remember that SF story you mentioned, and it actually came to my mind when I originally read Wretchard’s Post. Only I remember it as a short story in either Analog or Asimov magazine from a few years back – and it was only the one normal kid in a colony world of telepath’s.
Perhaps the author expanded his or her’s short story. I can’t for the life of me remember the author or the name of the story, can you elaborate?
For Wretchard – My first Star Trek thought about the google goggles was to compare it to the Borg eyepiece that Picard was given, an augmentation so that he might better serve in the collective.
I like your Talosian comparison better.
It’s the same idea motivating both Talosians and Borg.
The illusions the Talosians give and the Borg eyepieces are both provided so that the slaves/drones will perform their work better.
No doubt the Google goggles will be marketed for work as well as play.
@3. RWE “OKay, and if your augmented reality Google goggles say “John Connor – Kill” when you see someone on the street…?”
Or somebody hacks them so that they verify a hacker as your banker? Or that you see a green traffic light when it’s really red?
Having a web-augmented view requires that you be able to trust the web.
Fezas #26:
Yes it was a short story in Analog sometime in the last 10-15 years or so. Do not recall the writer or how many kids there were.
MichaelC #27:
Now think about this. For military use GPS employs certain anti-spoof and anti-jam features, part of which is having better receivers than commercial equipment and part of which is signal processing. Now if a commercial system depends on GPS and it is jammed or spoofed over a given area what does that do?
An example is the Lightsquared debacle. That Wi Fi system was going to interfere with military GPS – but was going to wipe out civilian GPS. What if it was approved and used to spoof GPS by some miscreant?
And what if you start getting Viagra and Nigerian Oil Deal SPAM over your GooGoggles?
Coming soon to a nation near you!
Like Lord Pao An says: “Hope & Change? Naw! They said Rope & Chains!”
winslow 24: “Our image of the external world is indirect and mostly inferred. We cannot ever know how much truth is in it.”
Our mental images of the external world follows a direct path from the retina to the occipital cortex with secondary connections to the frontal lobes and other brain centers involved in perception. Truth from the external world is therefore directly painted into our minds and is therefore self-evident. The idea that we cannot know truth by observation of the material world is a rejection of science it’s self, since science is simply the discovery of material truth via human observation and testing (controlled observation). We can discover how much truth is in anything through repeated observation and testing – aided by the faculty of reason – which is the ability to comprehend and accept self-evident truth.
Totalitarian government is the inevitable result of the idea that “we cannot ever know how much truth is in it” because a Big Brother will always step in – with Big Brother’s mystical truth.
“You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party [of Big Brother] holds to be truth is truth.” George Orwell – 1984
“The blueprint [in Plato’s Republic] includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite: the philosophers [Big Brothers]. Their title to absolute power, Plato explains, is their special wisdom, a wisdom which derives from their insight into true reality… the so-called “Form of the Good”… The Form of the Good cannot be known by the use of reason [observation]… It can only be grasped, after years of ascetic preparation, only by an ineffable mystic experience… which is reserved to the philosophical elite [of Big Brothers]… The mass of men, by contrast, are entangled in the personal concerns of this life. They are enslaved to the lower world revealed to them by their senses [observation]. They are incapable of achieving mystic contact with a supernatural principle. They are fit only to obey [Big Brother's] orders.” Leonard Peikoff
“What men perceive is not reality “as it is,” but merely reality as it appears… Thus for Kant, as for Plato, the universe consists of two opposed dimensions… true reality, a supersensible [non-observable] realm… and a world of appearances which is not ultimately real, the material world men perceive [observe] by means of their physical senses… Reason is impotent to discover anything about reality… It is Kant who made possible the sudden mushrooming of the Platonic collectivism in the modern world…” Leonard Peikoff
“Aristotle is the champion of this world, the champion of nature, as against the supernaturalism of Plato… Reality is comprised, not of Platonic abstractions, but of concrete [observable], individual entities, each with a definite nature, each obeying the laws inherent in its nature. Aristotle’s universe is the universe of science.” Leonard Peikoff
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/review_rand.htm
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/chapter1.htm
Most people will admit there is media bias, but none will make the leap to sheer fabrication. Moreover they are only willing to conceive a maximum 2 layers of conspiracy: there is no reverse-reverse-psychology (and certainly not a fourth layer), that’s too unbelievable.
As for Star Trek, I only wish I had the knack for ancient Greek and Hebrew (plus a 140 year lifespan) to connect a fraction of the stories told. When you combine absurd plot-lines with cryptic scriptures, they suddenly make perfect sense out of each other, no twisted parables necessary to interpret stuff.
This reminds me of Fritz Leiber’s “Bazaar of the Bizarre.” From the Wiki:
Storm Rider
In my opinion, based on the examples in my previous post, the retina does not create an image. It creates information, according to which the brain creates an image. The brain does the best it can to create an accurate image, but because it never has enough information to create a complete picture of the external reality, it is always trying to fill in the blanks.
I do believe in an external reality, much of which can be discovered through our sensors and mental interpretations, including science.
Direct experience of external reality is available through ESP, however, which can be used to verify sensory experience. (smiley)
My distress is that those of us who can afford to ignore reality, often choose to do so. Therefore, I castigate the Post Modernists and others.
Wretchard: “The centerpiece of Axelrod’s latest effort to persuade voters to re-elect the President in 2012, despite his poor record in virtually everything is the “cool strategy”. It aims to persuade voters to see the President as a celebrity, the greatest thing since unsliced bread, a person whose presence you would be grateful for. “
So Axelrod’s strategy is to contrast the Cool Obama vs. the Dweebish Romney? I guess if Whiskey were here, he would have a heyday amplifying on the theme of how the alpha-cool is very appealing to SWPL women voters, as opposed to how put off they would be by the oafish beta-male. Of course, I can’t elaborate on this theme with all the marvelous panache that Whiskey would bring to it.
Obama was on the Jimmy Fallon show. Almost nobody watches that show because it is on so late and Jimmy isn’t really very funny. But when Jimmy slow jammed the news with President Obama – that segment was an internet hit. 5 million views on YouTube alone. Cool still has power.
Romney has been successful at stripping Obama of substance with the prebuttal attack. But substance has always been Obama’s weak point and Obama has overcome that weakness with cool.
We are a country in crisis and I believe we need more than cool to overcome our problems.
A space alien’s view of the slow jam – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VutVpPzbP8Q
Thing is, announcers still, 14 years later, mention when there’s a close play and the refs are bringing out the chains to measure for the 1st down that the augmented reality yellow line is just an approximation. The real result is still down on the field.
The people who think Broke Obama is cool don’t realize the real result is down on the field, where their Mr. Cool is wearing mom jeans and acting like a whiney dork. Oh, and hiring RIAA lobbyists.
winslow 33,
A visual image is created on the retina which is then accurately projected, via the optic nerves, onto the occipital cortex, where we see the image. Barring psychosis, physical disease of the brain, or drug effect; our brains accurately process the visual information received from the retina, thus the image is transferred from retina to brain in high fidelity.
A complete picture of external reality simply requires repeated observation and testing (controlled observation). For example, if one wants a more complete picture of the external reality of the influenza virus, one can extend the power of human observation via the electron microscope, but even that degree observing power depends on the same retino-occipital tract required for ordinary observation.
Many of the verses of “In the Year 2525″ (Zager and Evans) seem appropriate to this topic.
“Joe Bob says ‘check it out’.”
I cannot understand why Obama in that picture is doing an especially bad dilbert impersonation. Outside the art of Scot Adams, have you ever seen a tie do that?
When dilbert chic is as cool as you can get…
It appears that according to Axelrod, any victory achieved by means of augmented reality is its own reward. Lemons into lemonade, so that the resulting ramifications are accumulated into the new standard. So that it even becomes cool to be a F*up. At least you are gaming the system, and that’s (always) cool. I thought that the death of Whitney Houston put paid to the notion of the black community as the fount of the uber celebrity, as far as the media was concerned, and it certainly delt them both a heavy blow, but thaT was a long time ago. Some sort of redemptive event, or even sacrifice was desperately needed, and hence the media sensitivity to the script that Trayvon the victimized martyr was indeed an already pre-existing augmented reality that needed their immediate assistance, and increased augmentation.
In either case, the individual nor the reality concerning him matters not, but the roles it provides for such celebrity actors such 0bama means that the series could be renewed by years end. Mission accomplished. It’s a wrap.
Thoughts and comments.
Augmented Reality — How Different From the Current?
I can see augmented reality being both addictive and dangerous. The tool it seems is one that can be used to benefit but of course it can be just as easily abused and used to mislead, just like the current media. Photoshop anyone? Mary Decker on Time, when was that again?
Cool Obama vs. Nerdy Romney
I was listening to some replay from Colbert and sure enough he was ridiculing Romney and Rob Portman (a name tossed about as a running mate possibility) as essentially not being “cool” or charismatic. Geeze, why do I get the feeling someone is taking marching orders?
The Republicans are hitting back appropriately, flashing images of Cool Obama in trivial (but cool) pursuits and then asking if skyrocketing debt, high unemployment, etc are all cool.
Star Trek and the Talosians
My recollection is the Talosians confessed their addiction to augmented reality was their downfall, they preferred it to real reality. Kinda like kids preferring video games to going outside and playing a real ball game.
I was thinking about TOS vs. Next Gen. There is definitely a different life views radiating from the creator in each of those. The former seems more manly more confident (even in the face of greater unknowns) while the later seems a lot more mushy and squishy. I wonder if this is due to a change in Roddenbury or perhaps something he thought as mirroring our nation’s evolution?
Transferred Experiences.
I’m reminded of Natalie Woods’ last movie Brainstorm, her character’s husband was part of a research group that developed the ability to record individual’s actual experience and then be able to allow others to have the experience. The couple used the device to patch up a nasty fight they had, and then one guy abused it by recording a guy with a hooker, and then hooking himself up to a loop of the penultimate moment. The researchers ended up destroying the device and trashed the records so the Govt. could not get their hands on it.
The Dame, the Pilot, and The Dictator: 24K
The dictator would be informed he could exit the plane alive or dead, the bluff called, the dictator shot and ditched. The pilot had better hope things don’t go sour on the flight lest he be capped on the runway.