Off Course-On Target

Prosthetics are a great source of learning for us all

You may have read some of my previous postings on prosthetics and how they are being dramatically affected by advancements in 3D scanning and printing.  But there is so much more benefits that prosthetics are providing for many other advancements and in particular the ability to control them directly with the brain, as outlined in the article below.

Oh, and when it comes to prosthetics I’ve noticed that many assume that this only applies to military personnel and casualties of the atrocities of war, but these are actually a small minority of the need and use of prosthetics and other areas such as accidents and birth defects account for many more.  Whatever the cause the future of prosthetics is looking brighter than ever and how great is it that these advancements can not only bring such transformative change to those in need but can also provide additional benefits for the rest of us as well. 

This whole area of enabling direct connections between the brain and external devices from prosthetics to eyes to computer interfaces is going through some remarkable advancements and I’m convinced they will be the source of many spin off advantages for an even wider array of applications.  As the article outlines, there is still some major challenges to overcome but this initiative and funding by DARPA focused on finding solutions is promising.  Prosthetics and brain control are definitely worth watching for more glimpses of the premature arrival of the future and answers to my ongoing quest to have us all change our assumptions and to be planning and wondering around the question of “What if the impossible isn’t?”

DARPA aims to control prosthetic limbs with brain implants

By Andrew Nusca | Mar 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

• As the use of prosthetic limbs increases in military veterans, the Pentagon is investigating prostheses that are more durable, reliable and directly controlled using brain implants.

DARPA, the military’s research arm, said it will launch the next phase of its decade-old Revolutionizing Prostheticsprogram, which had an original goal to create a fully-functioning, neurally-controlled human limb within five years.

Though the agency has made considerable progress — human trials of the DEKA Arm are underway, and a neurally-controlled arm is under development at Johns Hopkins University — it hasn’t yet achieved its goal.

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Pandora still out of the box?

My first and still favorite music recommender system, Pandora has been struggling to survive and has had several near death experiences over the past 10 years.  So I’ve been delighted to see a flurry of reports in the past few weeks about how things have recently changed for the better for Pandora. See the list at the end of this post for several of these recent reports.  Perhaps what I found even more valuable was the larger lessons which emerge from the Pandora story such as how to survive by being agile and adaptive and how perseverance, both on the part of both the founder and CEO Tim Wetergren and all the many employees who stayed with him through the troubled times and in many cases going years without paychecks, really does win out.

Pandora was one of the first tangible examples Erik Duval and I seized upon and used when showing others what The Snowflake Effect looked like and proof that it was possible.  Pandora truly lived up to its mythical name and let the Snowflake Effect genie out of the box for good for Erik and I. 

While I continue to watch and experiment with many other music recommender systems such as Last.fm, Slacker, and Spotify, I’ve always found that Pandora does the best job of helping me find just the right songs at just the right time, which is at the heart of the premise and the promise of the mass customization and personalization of The Snowflake Effect.  Others prefer to find music based on the tastes of others by adding and mining data from social networks to their tools, but for me I’m looking for music that matches my tastes, moods and context and Pandora, with its Music Genome Project database containing intricate details of each song, seems to do do this best.
*  See “The Song Decoders” NYT article for an interesting insight into the people doing this work.

Music is but one of the almost infinite areas where we are seeing the transformation from a culture of mass production to one of mass customization and personalization.  Experiencing the difference between finding songs and artists via a service such as Pandora compared to something like Top 40 radio is one of the most compelling ways of seeing this transformation which will help you see just how powerful and how real this transformation is and will be.  We are already seeing similar examples of how we can have similar “decision support” in finding the best books to read, sites to visit, people to talk to.

If music recommender systems are new to you or it has been a while since you have tried them, I’d encourage you to check them out and see if they don’t help you find just the right songs, just for you, and in doing so give you a glimpse of the Snowflake Effect future before us.

 

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• How Pandora Avoided the Junkyard, and Found Success (nytimes.com)
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• Pandora Could Hit $100 Million in Revenue for 2010 (mashable.com)
• Of Course On-Demand Music Replaces Sales - It's Supposed To (wired.com)
• As Online Music Falters, Pandora Doubled To 40 Million Users This Year. (techcrunch.com)
• Pandora open-source handheld is go (crunchgear.com)
• Pandora Sees a Big Future: Heir to FM (nytimes.com)
• Why I love Pandora Radio (timesunion.com)