Monday, May 14. 2012
Via MIT Technology Review
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A mathematical upgrade promises a speedier digital world.
By Mark Anderson
In January, four MIT researchers showed off a replacement for one of the most important algorithms in computer science. Dina Katabi, Haitham Hassanieh, Piotr Indyk, and Eric Price have created a faster way to perform the Fourier transform, a mathematical technique for processing streams of data that underlies the operation of things such as digital medical imaging, Wi-Fi routers, and 4G cellular networks.
The principle of the Fourier transform, which dates back to the 19th century, is that any signal, such as a sound recording, can be represented as the sum of a collection of sine and cosine waves with different frequencies and amplitudes. This collection of waves can then be manipulated with relative ease—for example, allowing a recording to be compressed or noise to be suppressed. In the mid-1960s, a computer-friendly algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) was developed. Anyone who's marveled at the tiny size of an MP3 file compared with the same recording in an uncompressed form has seen the power of the FFT at work.
With the new algorithm, called the sparse Fourier transform (SFT), streams of data can be processed 10 to 100 times faster than was possible with the FFT. The speedup can occur because the information we care about most has a great deal of structure: music is not random noise. These meaningful signals typically have only a fraction of the possible values that a signal could take; the technical term for this is that the information is "sparse." Because the SFT algorithm isn't intended to work with all possible streams of data, it can take certain shortcuts not otherwise available. In theory, an algorithm that can handle only sparse signals is much more limited than the FFT. But "sparsity is everywhere," points out coinventor Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "It's in nature; it's in video signals; it's in audio signals."
A faster transform means that less computer power is required to process a given amount of information—a boon to energy-conscious mobile multimedia devices such as smart phones. Or with the same amount of power, engineers can contemplate doing things that the computing demands of the original FFT made impractical. For example, Internet backbones and routers today can actually read or process only a tiny trickle of the river of bits they pass between them. The SFT could allow researchers to study the flow of this traffic in much greater detail as bits shoot by billions of times a second.
Copyright Technology Review 2012.
Personal comment:
A faster digital world certainly means a faster (intertwined) world in general. It is fascinating to consider how important algorythms have become in this contemporary world and therefore, how mathematics are! Can a "tiny" piece of math (FFT?) modify the world? (of course it can, as it in fact already did many times --from Pythagore or Thales to Turing or more recently Wiles, through Euler, Descartes or Newton and many many more...--). It therefore also happen at the "atomic level" of the code (a math formula), and that's even more fascinating.
Friday, May 11. 2012
Via Creative Applications
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Feel Me is a project by Marco Triverio that explores the gap between synchronous and asynchronous communication using our mobile device in attempt to “connect differently” and enrich digital communications. Whereas we draw lines between phone conversations and sms messages, Feel Me looks for space in between that would allow you to be intimate in realtime, non-verbally using touch.
Based on the finding for which communications with a special person are not about content going back and forth but rather about perceiving the presence of the other person on the other side, Feel Me opens a real-time interactive channel.
 
Feel Me first appears to be a text messaging application. When two people are both looking at the conversation they are having, touches on the screen of one side are shown on the other side as small dots. Touching the same spot triggers a small reaction, such as a vibration or a sound, acknowledging that both parts are there at the same time. Feel Me creates a playful link with the person on the other side, opening a channel for a non-verbal and interactive connection.
“Feel Me” was awarded honors at CIID. Marco is currently working as an interaction designer at IDEO.
See also concept development videos below.
Project Page
Wednesday, May 09. 2012
Via BLDGBLOG
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[Image: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; courtesy of the USGS].
In Charles Fishman's compelling exploration of water on Earth, The Big Thirst, there is a shocking statement that, despite the apparent inexhaustibility of the oceans, "the total water on the surface of Earth (the oceans, the ice caps, the atmospheric water) makes up 0.025 percent of the mass of the planet—25/10,000ths of the stuff of Earth. If the Earth were the size of a Honda Odyssey minivan," he clarifies, "the amount of water on the planet would be in a single, half-liter bottle of Poland Spring in one of the van's thirteen cup holders."
This is rather remarkably communicated by an illustration from the USGS, reproduced above, showing "the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth." That's not a lot of water.
Only vaguely related, meanwhile, there is an additional description in Fishman's book worth repeating here.
 [Image: The Orion nebula, photographed by Hubble].
In something called the Orion Molecular Cloud, truly vast amounts of water are being produced. How much? Incredibly, Fishman explains, "the cloud is making sixty Earth waters every twenty-four hours"—or, in simpler terms, "there is enough water being formed sufficient to fill all of Earth's oceans every twenty-four minutes." This is occurring, however, in an area "420 times the size of our solar system."
Anyway, Fishman's book is pretty fascinating, in particular his chapter, called "Dolphins in the Desert," on the water reuse and filtration infrastructure installed over the past 10-15 years in Las Vegas.
(Via @USGS).
Monday, May 07. 2012
Via Mammoth
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de rholmes
[The Placer County Courthouse, in Auburn, California -- imagine it swarmed by a glitch jam.]
NPR reported this morning (ed. note: last morning due to the repost) on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch “accidentally summon[ing] 1,200 people to jury duty on the same morning”. An excellent reminder of the tendency of algorithmic dysfunction to manifest as physical dysfunction, and (at a relatively small scale) of the potentially disproportionate impact of glitches when they are translated from dataspace into an infrastructural system. The glitch may be as simple as having accidentally swapped the 0 indicating “do not come in” for the 1 indicating “come in”, but the resulting jam is rendered in aluminum autobodies and on asphalt corridors where it is much more difficult to clear than it was to create.
Friday, May 04. 2012
Via Pasta & Vinegar
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The terms ‘Creole’ and ‘creolization’ are used in many different contexts and generally in an inconsistent way. It is instructive to start with the origins of the root word. It was probably derived from the Latin creara (‘created originally’)… The French transformed the word to ‘créole’… ‘Creole’ referred to something or someone that had foreign (normally metropolitan) origins and that had now become somewhat localised… To be a Creole is no longer a mimetic, derivative stance. Rather it describes a position interposed between two or more cultures, selectively appropriating some elements, rejecting others, and creating new possibilities that transgress and supersede parent cultures, which themselves are increasingly recognised as fluid.
— Robin Cohen, Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power, Globalizations Vol. 4 (2) 2007
Why do I blog this? Some people wonder about the fact that we live in a perpetual present without the jetpacks, moonbases and virtual realities we were promised. This was actually the topic of the Lift 09 conference I co-organized. I’m more and more interested to uncover the the “alternative futures” to this, places where créolisation will play an important role. This is a new pet project for 2012 and I will file all the weak signals I collect about this under the category “creolization”.
Personal comment:
As we are very interested in that topic of creolization (see on our home page), so as Nicolas Nova with with we had a discussion on that topic last week, I take the opportunity to mention that he (Nicolas) will file projects under this subject on his blog.
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