What's new in neuroscience?

An early conception of the brain

The human brain is one of the most fascinating objects in the universe, and one of the most important to understand, but also one of the most difficult to study. However, a lot of new research is taking place which is opening up our understanding of the mind like never before. The latest Future Talk features a discussion of the latest developments in neuroscience with two guests. Michael Merzenich is a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco who has won many awards and honors for his work, and who is especially well known for his research in brain plasticity. Simon Tan is a clinical neuropsychologist at Stanford Medical Center who also maintains a private practice in neuropsychology.

The discussion includes the differences between "brain" and "mind", common mental impairments and untapped mental potentials. We also talked about the nature of thought, consciousness and intelligence. Although these latter topics are far from understood, just discussing them seems to be a worthwhile exercise in itself that can conceivably lead to new insights.

To watch the show in its entirety, click here, or to watch it as a series of three shorter segments, click here.

How to create a mind

Ray Kurzweil

I went to an interesting talk at the Commonwealth Club a few days ago by Ray Kurzweil, the well known author, inventor and futurist who has spent decades studying human intelligence and machine intelligence and trying to enhance them both, and who is especially known for his work on the "technological singularity". He was discussing his latest book, "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed", in which he attempts to reverse engineer the human brain to figure out how it works, and then find ways to apply that knowledge to make both men and machines more intelligent than ever before, perhaps merging the two to create a new kind of being altogether. Although he has his critics, Kurzweil's past predictions have proven to be surprisingly accurate, and he's certainly one of today's most interesting and stimulating futuristic thinkers. I'll have more to say when I finish reading his book.

A foldable display in your future?

One of the most perplexing issues for designers of mobile computing devices is how big to make the screen. On the one hand, we want it to be as big as possible so it can contain more information, and on the other hand we want it to be as small as possible so it's easy to carry. Some have suggested that the solution is to create a screen as thin as a piece of paper that you can fold up and put in your pocket, or roll into a tube. Now, researchers at the University of Cincinnati's Novel Devices Lab have demonstrated that it's possible to do just that! In a breakthrough "proof of concept" experiment, using a technology called "electrofluidic imaging film," they've demonstrated that such thin film displays can indeed work. In addition to the advantage of being easy to carry, they can display sharp colors even in bright sunlight, and require very low power and no heavy batteries, since they get their energy directly from ambient light. Of course, there are many issues still to resolve, and it will probably be years before these devices are commercially available. But it's a big step forward.

Mobile Apps and Mental Health

Smartphones have proven to be a terrific platform for enabling us to do all kinds of things we could never do before, and now they're being used in the field of mental health. Though not a substitute for one on one sessions with a doctor, smartphone apps can be a valuable and ever present resource that can help you through difficult times and give you access to additional resources as well. The current Future Talk explores the use of mobile technology in promoting mental health, and features two guests. Julia Hoffman is a clinical psychologist and mobile apps lead at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where she develops apps to help people with post traumatic stress disorder, and Nicholas Chapa is mobile team lead at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, where the goal is to help people overcome destructive behaviors and replace them with positive healthy ones instead. Even though this entire field of combining mobile technology with mental health is only in its infancy, it's already shown a great deal of promise. If you'd like to view the show in its entirety, please click here. To see it divided into three shorter segments, click here.

Gray Matters

Went to an interesting discussion on the workings of the brain today, titled "Gray Matters",  at Stanford's Maples Pavilion. It was moderated by Juju Chang of ABC News and featured some really interesting panelists, including Bob Woodruff of ABC who went through a long recovery after suffering severe brain injury from a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006. Brain science is still in its infancy, but more and more people are studying it, addressing questions such as: what are thoughts, how are memories stored, and how can we retain our mental agility. Much of the research is focused on gaining better understanding of ailments of the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease. All of the panelists seemed to feel that the research is moving in the right direction, although there's obviously so much more to be done.

Outsmarting Google

Evan Bailyn

I went to a fascinating talk yesterday by Evan Bailyn, author of the bestselling book "Outsmarting Google", which gives practical advice on how to increase your ranking in Google searches. If you own a business that relies on Internet sales, you know how important it is to appear at or near the top of the Google listings when people use search terms related to your products. Evan has founded and sold several companies that succeeded by using his methods of search engine optimization, and now heads a company called First Page Sage which works with companies both large and small to heighten their Internet presence. Among his recommendations are updating your site frequently with new material. He says if you add new content 5 days a week, Google will recognize it as a news site and give it higher ranking, but four days a week won't be enough. He also says that being linked to by a lot of other pages will increase your ranking, and he gives practical methods for getting those links. Interestingly, he advises an approach based on sincerity rather than attempts at manipulation, such as paying people to link to your site. He says that people who use manipulative or dishonest methods to increase their ranking are regarded as spammers by Google and actively fought against, and if Google thinks you're spamming, your ranking will be dramatically lowered with little chance of improvement. Evan has been featured in major media such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and ABC News, and apparently has a lot of very satisfied clients. If you have a company that badly needs an Internet boost, you might want to look him up.

The Higgs Boson

Scientists around the world were elated by the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. The elusive subatomic particle was first postulated by British physicist Peter Higgs in 1964, and was finally detected for the first time this year at CERN, with its Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest particle accelerator at over five miles in diameter. The Higgs boson is believed to be what enables matter to have mass, and is thus part of the essential "glue" that holds the entire universe together. 

Interestingly, the particle was not so much detected, as created. Most people are familiar with Albert Einstein's famous equation e=mc² which states that when converting mass to energy or vice versa, the amount of energy is equal to the amount of mass times the speed of light squared, meaning that a very small amount of mass can produce a very large amount of energy. This is the principle of the atomic bomb. But in the Higgs experiment, protons were accelerated to nearly the speed of light, giving them a huge amount of kinetic energy, and when they were brought into head on collisions with each other, the tremendous energy released by the collisions resulted in the formation of numerous new particles, including the Higgs boson. 

The goal of particle physics is to discover the most fundamental objects in the universe, and explain their interactions in the simplest way possible. To learn more about the Higgs boson and the world of particle physics in general, you can view the current episode of Future Talk in its entirety by clicking here, or divided into three shorter segments by clicking here.

Build your own submarine!

Underwater exploration is finally coming within reach of the common man, thanks to OpenROV, an open source, remotely operated mini-submarine that can be customized with a variety of cameras and sensors. The co-creators, David Lang and Eric Stackpole, have put all the blueprints on the Internet and invited comments and suggestions for improvements, and they're also selling kits so people can put together their own OpenROVs at home. The OpenROV was featured prominently at the 2012 Maker Faire, and is very much part of the Maker culture. In case you think there wouldn't be much interest in this type of thing, David and Eric used Kickstarter, the crowd funding website, to raise money for their work. They set a goal of raising $20,000 in a month and raised more than $100,000, mostly in small donations. Even NASA has gotten actively involved in the project, because of the similarities between exploring oceans and exploring space, and because the open source methodology is something that NASA is trying to develop for its own use. The current episode of Future Talk features an interview with David Lang, footage of the OpenROV in action, and an extensive report on the Maker Faire itself. You can view the show in its entirety by clicking here, or divided into 3 shorter segments by clicking here.

The future of television?

        Many people have tried to merge computer technology with television, but the problem remains elusive. Although most modern TV's can receive digital input, there's still no universal standard for seamlessly merging the two technologies into one. Still, piecemeal advances are continually being made in the form of new products that give computerized features to ordinary TV's.

        One entrant in the field is Reincloud, a Mountain View startup headed by Dan Reitan. Dan has a long history of applying computer technology to television. He was a pioneer in augmented reality TV and one of his inventions in the 1980s scored the highest TV ratings ever in the history of automated television. I visited his office this week and he gave me a demo of his current product, which I found quite interesting.

        It's not quite ready for delivery and he's looking for additional funding to take it to the next step, but it's basically a platform that grants new capabilities to content providers. For example, it gives the content provider tools to create a real life three dimensional world where the TV screen acts as a viewport. By manipulating a few buttons, the home viewer can rotate that 3-D world to bring any portion of it into the viewport. This functionality opens up new possibilities for both producing TV shows and viewing them, and making them much more interactive than before. 

        He also showed me a segment from an old Monty Python program, and while John Cleese was talking, a can of Mountain Dew tumbled into the picture and landed on the desk next to him. Basically, the technology allows the easy placement of virtual objects anywhere in an existing program, in an appropriate place, for example on a table and not hanging in space. Ultimately, these objects will be live links, and clicking on them will lead to further information about them. Of course you'll be able to return to your original program at any time. The implications not only for advertising but also for news and documentary programs are huge.

        Although I'm not expert enough to predict how these tools will do in the marketplace, they do seem to add some exciting new dimensions to our current TV viewing experience.

Self driving car in your future?

Self driving car with Googlers (l-r) Eric
Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin

What could be better than letting your car drive you effortlessly through rush hour traffic, while you doze, read the newspaper, or answer your email? Although a number of companies, including Google, are working on self driving cars, they're still far from being a commercial reality. Getting a computer to operate the car's controls is the easy part. What's hard is to get it to drive safely and with good judgment in heavy traffic and unpredictable road conditions.  The car has to "see" the road and interpret what it sees in real time. It has to read and understand traffic signs, know all the traffic laws, and judge the speed, direction and distance of other vehicles. It also has to know when to break traffic laws to avoid dangerous situations, such as driving at the speed limit when everyone else is far exceeding it. It has to recognize emergency vehicles such as police and fire, and know how to behave when a policeman signals it to pull over. Although computers can already perform some of the functions of driving, it looks like it will be a while before we can yield total control to the machine.

The right to privacy?

Most people recognize the value of privacy, and the right to keep their personal life out of the public view. But is such a right enforceable in the Internet age? With almost everybody carrying miniature recording devices that take both pictures and sound, and with the ability to upload these images for the whole world to see, and with miniature surveillance cameras in almost every public place and every place of business, privacy may be becoming a thing of the past. Certainly, politicians have learned that the slightest misstatement on or off the podium can have instant national repercussions. Wikileaks has shown that secret diplomatic talks are not necessarily so secret anymore. And the potential for malicious spying just for the sake of causing mischief is very great. Technology seems to be moving far faster than any possible laws capable of restraining it. Does this new situation require changes in behavior? Will we have to be a lot more careful about we say and do, in both public and private venues? Although we still haven't digested the full impact of these changes, it might be a good idea to try to live our lives so that everything we do can withstand the light of day, because that light might be shining on us sooner than we think.

Life on other planets?

The recent SETIcon II conference in Santa Clara, CA had optimistic news for those hoping that there's life on other planets. In recent years, thousands of planets have been discovered by NASA's Kepler Project, and many of them show signs of containing water, considered essential for the development of life.  But just because conditions are capable of supporting life doesn't mean they're capable of originating life. What does it take to get biology started? Is it enough just to have the right chemical elements on hand? Will such chemicals, floating in water, automatically combine to produce higher and higher levels of organized complexity and ultimately result in conscious living creatures? That seems a bit improbable, even leaving aside the question of how consciousness can arise from nonliving atoms, unless there's an invisible mind, or spirit, that guides this process of organizing atoms into highly complex, self replicating sentient beings and imparts a bit of its own spirit to them.  If such a spirit exists, then life could occur almost anywhere the basic elements are present, and we shouldn't be surprised to find it. But if not, it would take an extraordinary set of random accidents and coincidences for life to start anywhere, and we would expect it to be extremely rare in the universe.

Fracking discussed at Stanford conference

A recent conference at Stanford University sponsored by the Brookings Institution discussed America's energy future, including the controversial practice known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". Fracking is the process of causing fractures in rocks beneath the Earth so that natural gas trapped in those rocks has more channels to escape to the surface, where it can be captured by gas wells. Since gas is one of the cheapest and cleanest burning fuels, there's huge demand for it, and the increasingly widespread use of fracking has increased the supply, brought down the price, and made our "energy crisis" seem to recede into the distance. But fracking has risks. Sometimes the released gas doesn't go where you want it to, but seeps out into other areas, such as underground water supplies. Also, it seems intuitively obvious that when you fracture large rocks under the Earth, you're tampering with the planet's structural integrity and making the ground less stable, inviting catastrophic and irreversible damage. Also, every time a fracking procedure goes well, it just adds more incentive to keep doing it. The question is, are the environmental consequences of fracking being considered carefully enough, of is the prospect of huge energy supplies at great prices making us blind to the potential dangers? 

Starting an online business

Ever think about starting an online business? Setting up a website and using it to sell your merchandise all over the world? It can be done, and it's not that hard, according to Muffi Ghadiali, adjunct professor at Stanford University who teaches courses in Internet entrepreneurship, and who is this month's guest on Future Talk. There are many software packages that enable you to easily create good looking websites, complete with shopping carts and the ability to accept credit cards, even if you have no programming background. Or you can hire a professional to do the technical part. It's still much cheaper than operating an actual physical store, and your potential reach is far greater. This of course doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to make a profit. You'll have to work just as hard to understand your customers and their needs, and make your products appealing, as you would in any brick and mortar business. You'll also have a lot of online competitors and it can be hard to get noticed, but you'll be able to use tools like Google AdSense, which posts your ads next to relevant searches, and which you only pay for when someone clicks on them. To see the complete interview with Muffi Ghadiali, click here, or to see it broken down into 3 shorter segments, click here.

The Maker Faire

The Maker Faire is one of the largest "do-it-yourself" gatherings in the world. The annual event took place last weekend at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, with about 1000 exhibitors and over 100,000 attendees. The event has grown explosively in the seven years since its founding, and is now in several other cities as well. I went with my camera crew to record material for an upcoming episode of Future Talk and was not disappointed. From homebuilt helicopters and submarines to robotic kits used for making your own robots at home, to 3-D printers and soldering classes for kids, there were ingenious devices and eye popping art and sculpture as far as the eye could see. It's all part of the Maker movement (which some prefer to call the Maker subculture), which also includes a flagship publication, Make Magazine. The goal is to encourage people to master technology, learn from each other, and "do-it-themselves". It wouldn't surprise me if some really useful inventions were to come from the people who exhibited at the Faire.

Thinking About Thought

Doing research on artificial intelligence has got me thinking about thought. What are thoughts? Are they mere electrical impulses, or something deeper? Perhaps thought is one of the basic substances of the universe, more basic than matter or energy. Perhaps matter and energy come into being through the action of thought, rather than the other way around. 


If this is true, it might open some interesting avenues of inquiry. For instance, how do thoughts connect to one another? Can we program our minds to attract the thoughts we do want and reject the thoughts we don't want? Is "inspiration" the process of being receptive to ideas that are already floating around us?  And why do certain types of undesirable thoughts, the kind that lead to conflict and war, appear to be so contagious? Gaining insight into these questions may be more important than many of the other things we spend billions of dollars to study.

What is Neurobotics?

Yoky Matsuoka

Neurobotics is a relatively new branch of science that combines neuroscience with robotics. One of its goals is to build prosthetic limbs that have all the functionality of natural limbs and that are controlled by brain power alone. One of the pioneers in this field is Yoky Matsuoka, who appears as a guest on the current episode of Future Talk. Yoky is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" as well as many other prestigious awards. She was the founder of the Neurobotics Lab at the University of Washington, and she has her own nonprofit foundation, YokyWorks, which seeks to develop ingenious engineering solutions to help people overcome their physical limitations. She has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from M.I.T. 


Born in Japan, she originally aspired to be a champion tennis player. A series of injuries ended her tennis career, but observing the process by which her mind and body worked together to heal her injuries inspired her to enter her current field.  To view the episode in its entirety, click here. To view it divided into 3 shorter segments, click here.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is one of the most interesting areas of scientific research. One of the things that makes it interesting is that building machines that can mimic human intelligence requires gaining more insight into human intelligence itself. The truth is, intelligence is poorly understood and not well defined. Is it mostly memory, the ability to store information and retrieve it at will? Is it the ability to recognize patterns, to see how different things are similar and how similar things are different? Is it openness to new ideas? And where do ideas come from anyway? We don't say "I just created an idea." We say "An idea just came to me." Came to me? From where? Are we swimming in an ocean of ideas, most of which bounce off of us and some of which stick to us? If so, how can we attract the ones we want and filter out the ones we don't want? And are there different kinds of intelligence, such as mathematical intelligence and emotional intelligence? I hope to do a series of programs very soon on artificial intelligence, and what it teaches us about actual intelligence. Watch this blog for developments.

Searching for Einstein's gravity waves

Illustration of laser interferometer

According to Einstein's theory, gravity is not a force, but is the result of the curvature of space which occurs in the vicinity of large objects such as stars and planets. Einstein postulated that when large scale violent events occur, such as collisions between stars, space is deformed in such a way as to cause gravity waves.


Scientists are now seeking to prove the existence of these waves using laser interferometers, which can detect tiny changes in the length of an object which might be indicative of gravity waves. Project LIGO, funded by the National Science Foundation, has build two laser interferometers, each one consisting of two perpendicular laser tunnels two and a half miles long. This is obviously extremely expensive and one may wonder if it's worth the cost. But some of the technologies developed for the interferometers have other uses as well, so there's definitely a payback of sorts, even if gravity waves are never found.


Project LIGO is examined on the current episode of Future Talk, which features two Stanford physicists who work on the project. Brian Lantz has his Ph.D. from MIT, and Riccardo Bassiri has his Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. In addition to showing some fascinating video produced by the National Science Foundation, they also give in-studio demonstrations of some of the equipment used in Project LIGO. If you'd like to view the entire episode, click here. If you'd like to view it broken down into three shorter segments, click here.

Agora Startup Idol

For several days this week I worked as a volunteer on Agora Startup Idol at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View. It's a series of four hour live webcasts modeled on "American Idol", except that the contestants are all founders of startup companies and most of the judges are venture capitalists. I worked two days as director and one day as program host. We had lots of technical glitches, especially with the audio and with the video conferencing software, but it's been very interesting nonetheless.

I met some people in the studio from a company called Blueseed, which plans to refurbish a large ship and anchor it outside of San Francisco beyond the twelve mile limit, to serve as a base for foreign entrepreneurs who want to live in Silicon Valley but can't get visas to do so. It may sound like a wacky idea, but they've thought it through pretty thoroughly. When they heard I was a director, they said they were looking for a director to help them put together a fund raising video about their company. We chatted a bit about their company and their proposed video and exchanged business cards. Maybe it will become an opportunity.

My visit to Hacker Dojo

Hacker Dojo is a living example of the computer culture of Silicon Valley. For a modest monthly fee, entrepreneurial-minded software developers can get workspace, high speed Internet access, a place to mingle with like-minded folks and share ideas, and perhaps even start new companies. But even though I'm a veteran software developer myself, my reason for visiting had nothing to do with this. Rather, I was there because I've gotten involved with something called "Startup Idol", which will be a series of live webcasts similar to the "American Idol" TV show, except that all the contestants will be founders of startup companies and all the judges will be venture capitalists, and the Hacker Dojo will be the venue for the webcasts. It's a shoestring production that's underfunded and understaffed, and it's not quite certain that the webcasts will even happen on schedule. Still, it seems to have some interesting possibilities, so I've offered to lend them a hand.

A different view of the Internet

I went to an interesting talk the other day by Evgeny Morozov, author of the recent book, "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom." Morozov is a researcher from Belarus who studies the social and political impact of the Internet and is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. He challenges the optimistic view of those who say that the Internet will always have a liberalizing and democratizing effect on authoritarian regimes, and argues that it can just as easily be used as a tool for political repression, public surveillance and the spread of extremist propaganda. He calls the U.S. government's "Internet Freedom Agenda" naive and maybe even counterproductive in promoting democracy through the Web. He has a lot of ideas that are well worth considering, especially since they're seldom discussed.

Digital self monitoring may lower medical costs

We all know how medical costs are soaring out of control, placing a huge burden on the entire economy. But inexpensive digital devices are alleviating some of those costs, by enabling patients to monitor their physical signs at home with fewer visits to the doctor. For example, a tiny sensor created by Proteus Biomedical in Redwood City California is eaten by the patient, and once activated inside the body, transmits heart rate and other information to a smartphone.  

With such devices, it's easy to observe patterns of physical symptoms over time,  and when symptoms might be reduced by diet, exercise or meditation, it's easier to determine which of those are actually working.

Digital monitoring devices are already a billion dollar industry and growing fast. In a few years, use of such devices is likely to be the norm rather than the exception. There are a few potential drawbacks, such as such as the possibility that your data, transmitted over wireless networks, may be accessed by people who are not authorized to see it, or that your data could be tampered with. Nevertheless,  we definitely seem to be moving in the direction of having a much more detailed and comprehensive view of everything going on in our bodies, with far fewer of those costly doctor visits than before.

For a more comprehensive article on this topic from the San Jose Mercury News, click here.


For a video of the working of the Proteus pill, click here.

Can Facebook bring peace?

Zuckerberg and Peres

Israeli President and inveterate peace advocate Shimon Peres visited Facebook HQ in California this week, where Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg helped him set up his own Facebook page dedicated to world peace. Facebook also launched a new peace website located at peace.facebook.com, where the goal is to have people on opposite sides of conflicts communicate directly with each other and form relationships, in the hope that this will promote peace.

It's an interesting experiment, and it raises some important questions. Is peace the natural state of mankind with war being a temporary aberration usually caused by misunderstandings? Or is war the natural state, as people compete ferociously for the things they want, and peace is just a lull between outbreaks of fighting? There's probably truth in both perspectives.

What Facebook can do, by creating a vast public marketplace of ideas, is bring clarity to the issues, help define what matters most to people, and do this at an accelerated pace that brings contradictions to a head much quicker than before.

It may be that through the Facebook experiment, people on opposite sides of conflicts will find they have more in common than they expected. It may also be that some contradictions cannot be reconciled, because many people are unwilling to give up their desires and ambitions, and would rather fight than settle for an unsatisfactory status quo. The Internet may actually accelerate conflict as it brings to the surface long held grievances that in some cases have simmered for centuries. The one thing that does seem certain is that the experiment will go on, and things previously hidden will continue to be revealed, releasing enormous amounts of energy that will have highly unpredictable consequences.

Robotic bees on the horizon

Scientists are making huge strides in drone aircraft, those pilotless planes that are playing an increasingly important role on the battlefield. Now we may be on the verge of creating drones the size of insects using an inexpensive technology that starts with thin sheets of raw material and then uses an automated origami-like process to cut, bend and fold the sheets into their final shape. The process is fast, cheap and reliable, and adding radio controls and sensing mechanisms is also expected to be easy.

You can read an article about the technology here.

What will these "robotic bees" be used for? The military potential is obvious. Imagine millions of cheaply produced robo-bees dropped on a battlefield, or  a civilian city, each with the ability to detect human presence and deliver a fatal "sting" before it's even seen. Also consider that these low cost devices will be within the reach of almost any country to build or purchase, and we're looking at a new and very unpleasant dimension to warfare.

In recent years we've made great progress in understanding and manipulating the world of matter and energy, but very little progress in understanding the world of mind and soul, and the drives and urges that underlie human behavior. Unless we can better understand ourselves, and better control the destructive side of our nature, new technology, despite its benefits, will also have the capacity to do us enormous harm.

Interview with Bill Davidow

Bill Davidow

I recently interviewed Bill Davidow, author of the recent book "Overconnected: The promise and threat of the Internet", for Future Talk. He claims that the constantly accelerating speed with which data moves through the Internet has a destabilizing effect on society, especially in financial markets, and that catastrophic consequences are likely if the problem isn't addressed. Bill is a former senior VP at Intel and co-founder of the Mohr-Davidow venture capital firm, and sits on the Board of Trustees of Caltech and UCSF Medical Center. The program can be seen in its entirety at futuretalk.blip.tv or divided into three shorter segments at www.futuretalk.net/ft28.html.