Borg Group

I was at MIT’s Media Lab last week. The guy I was with pointed to the third floor and talked about the people who came out of it. It was as if the third floor were an incubator for ideas. The third floor had cyborgs. Or ‘borgs’ as they were called when they were first there. These borgs were the first to make wearable computing reality. From lugging tens of pounds of heavy equipment on their backs and bearing with the consequences, they made computers conform to the shape of their bodies, not their bodies to the shape of the computers we use today.

Interesting Beginnings

Lifecasting

It is important to note that Steve Mann was one of the borgs behind the beginning of wearable computing. He was also an early lifecaster — of the kind we recognize as iJustine today (in its most consumeristic form). He had this idea that if he were to be watched all of the time by survelliance cameras, he could watch the world back. This idea he called “sousvellience”, or survelliance by the individual.

Many media sources have cited Mann as “the world’s first cyborg”, from his early work with wireless wearable webcams.[14] Mann’s publications include the book Cyborg: Digital Destiny… and the textbook Intelligent Image Processing, describing his early adoption of an alternative life style with significant and interesting ideas. In 2001, filmmaker Peter Lynch directed Cyberman, a film about Mann’s life and inventions”. [1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann]

Now a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Steve Mann continues to push the boundaries of how humans and computers can cocreate each other, as well as amplify human action.

The Evolution of Wearables

Computing Lightness

Everything is becoming lighter and lighter. The industrial revolution saw the rise of heavy, unwieldy machines, but as time progressed, interfaces became liquid (iPhone), and computing became detached from cables and cords — and weight. Steve Mann took advantage of this as soon as he realized it. Because of this, he’s light years ahead of the rest of us lumbering beasts.

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Some of Steve Mann’s recent publications that are available on the WWW:

Comparametric Equations (the mathematical theory of computer mediated reality)

Wearable Intelligent Signal Processing: Lead article from Proceedings of the IEEE, Nov. 1998, Vol. 86, No. 11, cover+p2123-2151

http://computer.org/computer/backissu.htm (scroll down to the feature article of Feb.’97)
The complete article is also available from: http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/ieeecomputer

See also: http://www.wearcam.org/chi97 and http://www.wearcam.org/personaltechnologies and http://www.wearcam.org/historical/

For a light overview of the invention, see: http://www.wearcam.org/judith_gaines_und.gif or if you want more resolution: http://www.wearcam.org/judith_gaines.jpg

Mathematical theory (video orbits) behind his “image compositing” work, see Sep.’97 issue of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/tip.ps.gz

A small gallery of images is located at http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/orbits/gallery.html and a brief description at http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/orbits/

The chirplet transform

Take a look at some other embodiments of his “WearComp” (wearable computer) invention (e.g. WearComp1, WearComp3, etc.): http://www.wearcam.org/steve5.jpg

Other pictures of Mann’s “WearComp” invention as it has evolved over more than 20 years.

Zigelbaum showed me what he was working on during the first night of MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3. When he told me about it, I knew it was the thing I had thought about before when the opportunity to visit MIT had presented itself.

All of this was apparently built off of the original prototype system used in Minority Report. What made me happy was that the UI was exceedingly smooth and enjoyable to use. It was a relief. A complete and total relief.

A tremendous thanks to Jamie for letting me take pictures and showing me the lab. He is a very interesting and awesome person and I highly recommend his existence to you.

These are new gloves (he said that eventually they wanted the gloves to not have to be worn, and for the device itself to be able to recognize gestural movement.

G-stalt – the rules for interacting with the system. A set of a new sign language for controlling movement from a distance. It was great to have these up on the wall when I tried on the gloves to interact with the system. Very intuitive and simple to learn. Especially with the rewards of being able to move things across the room without touching them.

Sensor/Cam: part of the set of twelve needed for the full control of the system. Less can be used, but the resolution of movement suffers with each lost sensor.

Here are Some Moving Pictures For You

And here’s the tiny amount of video footage I was able to get (in chunks, in between furiously deleting old videos from my camera to make room for the new. Hopefully it conveys the excellence of the system).

Zigelbaum also showed me something secret that I can’t say anything about (yet). Let us just say that it was very cool, and that it will be public soon enough.You can read more about Gesture Recognition on Wikipedia if you want. Or you could run into me somewhere and hear a lot of hot air on what I’ve been calling “8 bit haptics”.

Anywho, this stuff rocked. The Media Lab was ultimate. I can’t wait to go back.

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Jamie Zigelbaum is Ph.D. student in the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. His research interests include the social implications of physical interface media, frameworks for next generation interfaces, and tangible interfaces for abstract digital information. He received a B.A. from Tufts university working with Professor Rob Jacob. At Tufts he created a multidisciplinary major in HCI, drawing from neuroscience, psychology, computer science, and human factors engineering.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who also posts over at the Makerlab Blog, which is something you might enjoy reading if you enjoyed reading the post above. It’s about more experimental tech and activities related to pushing the limits of art and technology. If not, you can always follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.