On this episode of Spark: Farm Bots, Shifting Reality, and Life Logging. Click below to listen to the whole show, or download the MP3 (runs 54:00).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:00 — 24.8MB)
You can also listen to individual stories below.
Media Monitoring & Life Logging
A lot of us spend a huge portion of our day on-line. But what if you could track your behaviour on-line, to see what media you’re actually consuming, and what you’re really spending your time doing! Inspired by a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman, Nora decided to do just this. Ethan is a researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Ethan is committed to finding ways to expand our exposure to news and opinion from different parts of the world. He takes this idea so seriously, that he recently started an experiment: he’s using a whole set of handy tech tools to monitor how he consumes media online. Nora spoke to Ethan, and to Ian Kerr, the Canada Research Chair in Law, Ethics and Technology at the University of Ottawa, about this movement in recording personal data. (Runs 14:45)
- Ethan Zuckerman
- Global Voices
- Rescue Time
- Ian Kerr
- As We May Think
- Full uncut version of interview with Ethan Zuckerman
Reality Shifting Devices
How would you like to simply think, “Where’s my dentist from here?” and have the directions show up on your handheld? Maybe you’d like to slip to your appointment unnoticed thanks to your invisibility cloak. And just to make sure you don’t forget your appointment in the first place, you’ve already been injected with nano-computers that will do your remembering for you. This future might not be as distant as we think. Isabel Pedersen is a Communications professor at Ryerson University who studies what she calls reality-shifting devices. She spoke with Nora about her concern that we’re not taking the time to consider the human implications of such technologies before we accept them as fact. (Runs 8:40)
Farm Bots
There’s a digital revolution taking shape on the Prairies. Right now, researchers in the Robotics Lab at the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan are developing robots able to search out weeds with their “eyes” and pull them out with their robotic arms. It’s great for the future of farming, and the future of gardening! Can’t you just imagine sitting back on a patio chair while a little robo-weeder does the job on your backyard? Nora spoke to the CBC’s Sean Prpick about how close to reality robo farming is. (Runs 8:50)
Social Media Screening
Most of us with even some on-line presence have some personal data we wish wasn’t out there in the wilds of the internet. Embarrassing photos, comments, tweets, the kind of things we’d really hope no one could use against us, especially in say, something like a hiring process. Well, it actually happens all the time. It’s called “Social Media Screening” – employers hire specialized companies to screen potential job applicants by looking at what they do on sites like Facebook or Linkedin. Nora spoke to Max Drucker of Social Intelligence, one of those specialized companies. (Runs 6:03)
Workplace Relationship Intelligence
We’ve talked a lot this episode about what happens to this record of our lives that is continually building on-line. The content of what we say on-line reveals a lot about us. But have you ever thought about what the pattern of what you say reveals? Think about your work, and what could be found out by analyzing the patterns of communication amongst your team. A person who thinks a lot about this is Valdis Krebs. Valdis is an expert on network analysis and network weaving. He’s the Founder, and Chief Scientist, at orgnet.com and he developed software to map and measure networks and relationships in organizations. Here is Nora’s conversation with him.(Runs 10:46)
- Valdis Krebs
- Valdis’ blog with cool visualizations
- The original Economist article re: cell phone companies and social network analysis
Additional Information
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This episode should serve as a wake up call for all of us when it comes to what we do on the Internet, especially with social networking sites.
Hence, this should be considered required listening for anyone who uses the Internet.
Once the farm bots are working. The next step would be to leverage all the time spent on virtual farms (farm ville and the like) with read farms by linking activities on the virtual farm with work done by those farm bots!
I was thinking about the concept of "Our own Living Black Box" that Nora had described for our constant storage of our life connected. It made me think about the scale of time. If I lived for 80 years and recorded my life's moments, then in theory it would take another 80 years to replay it. The scale of time is 1:1, and I am not sure if that is a good thing. Think about maps, they have a scale of 1000's:1 because it is impracticle to have such small scales of representation. I think the same holds true for history and life. Give me John A. MacDonald at a scale of 10000:1, vs. John Q. Public at a scale of 1:1 anyday.
Sorry I missed you in Windsor! I was surprised that Isabel Pedersen did not mention another application for controlling a cursor or other object by one's mind-that of enabling quadriplegic, stroke victims or neurologically impaired individuals to communicate. Most devices now are activated by eye movements or other small muscle movements-this would open yet another door to the accessible world!