Category: Science

Like A Population of Over-Stimulated Newborns

Posted by – June 10, 2010

Recently, a friend of mine, Bill Pennington (@blazing_b on Twitter) shared an amazing reminder of an article called “The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People.” I really got to thinking a lot about this, and all the really creative people I know that have been successful in flourishing within the confines of their right-brain (the more complex, amorphous and sometimes torrential, side of our intellect – my opinion of course).

Our Culture

The average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours a day staring into screens. We have gotten down on our knees and ripped the faucet off the water main of information with mouths and hands wide open. By majority, we are a culture of people in a constant state of waiting for the next thing to do, the next thing to react to, to eat, to drink, to socialize, to attend, to take care of, to engage on whatever level enough to prompt us to feel like we know what we’re supposed to do next while we are awake. I truly believe it’s NOT human nature that we are control freaks with how much idle time we allow. I believe we are taught by our environment how to, and why we should limit our solitude, deviate from it, stay misinformed on how to leverage it for personal growth. We do this out of fear. To us I think deep down we know that solitude is the ultimate place of vulnerability, where we are forced to face the truth, ourselves, with no distraction, and it’s uncomfortable.

I think our full tilt culture lacks balance in a way that creates more unnecessary stress, turmoil, and bad decision-making than we give it credit for. We are feeding our brains a TON of info without allowing them enough time to process what we’re taking in, apply it to our psyche the way it’s meant to be physiologically and emotionally applied, and then purge the excess “noise” from our short-term memories so that we can move onto the next thing.

Our Brains

The Similarity Between Mental & Physical Process

The average American eats about 1,800 pounds of food per year, or about five pounds per day.

Our brains are the digestive systems of information. Our actual digestive systems are a process, a series of required steps to do their job correctly, only beneficial if all steps are allowed to happen. Just like when we consume food and beverages, we chew it, swallow it, digest it – methodically processing and getting all required nutrients where possible and then disposing of the unnecessary.

Now if, relatively speaking of course, we ate 100 times the amount of food we normally do, for one day (500 pounds vs. 5 pounds), but only allowing our bodies to only process and dispose of it at the same frequency we do on an average day when we ate only 5 pounds of food, what would happen? Would our body adjust and allow more throughput to accomodate the massive increase in regular input (food)? Would our stomach eventually learn to produce a 100 times more acid to break down food faster? Would our intestines eventually adjust, able to work 100 times harder to absorb nutrients? Would our bodies eventually be able exploit and take advantage of 100 times the intake of vitamins from those nutrients? Would we be able to eventually expel 100 times more waste after processing? I know that’s a little graphic but you get my point.

My Answer: Hell NO it wouldn’t.

Our bodies would shut down. Heart attacks, strokes, bursting organs, and aneurisms would dominate the mortality charts of the U.S. Department of Health within 48 hours. The reason for this is that our bodies are designed for a certain amount of input within a range, a range whose boundaries guarantee the survival of our species. It is to this point, I believe that our brains have their own set of limitations as well when it comes to input. The Information Age has really put humanity’s processing power to the test. [I went into more detail on my opinion about this test in this post.]

Our Capacity for Input, The Natural Limitations

SMS, Facebook, IM, Email, RSS, Breaking News from 100 sources at within seconds via web, smartphone, and now iPads and other tablet computers, is now becoming a normal way of life. To boot, that is all information that blasts us in the side of the skull OUTSIDE the face-to-face part of our daily lives (raising children, having significant others, working in an office with other professionals, talking to friends, doing dishes and laundry, et al.).

I do believe that we’ve been able to adjust quite well to the amount of information now instantly available via computer and phone. But I still think that we have limits that we are inadvertently overlooking. The implementation of boundaries supporting these limitations is our responsibility and is only possible with balance.

Solitude & Balance

The sister post to the one about Creativity on ZenHabits.net was called The Lost Art of Solitude. What an amazing post this was. And until I applied it to my life over the last year or so, I had no idea how important this was for our daily existence.

I’m a single dad with 3 sons that I have half the week. I have a challenging and busy (sometimes more than full time) corporate job that I spend at least 45-50 hours a week on, sometimes more depending on what’s going on, and I’m in a band (95% fun, 5% work). Whether it’s fun or work, it’s all activity, input requiring a response or some tending to from me.

When I started carving out one day a week for solitude, it was a dramatic visceral experience at first. I equate it with me freeing up a traffic jam of information, a gridlock made of of millions of cars filled with frustrated drivers and passengers waiting to get through to reach their final destination. When I allowed myself to be alone for a day, letting some of these proverbial cars through, I was not only able to start processing what I had experienced during the week, I was also freeing up issues and thoughts, good and bad, in my brain that had been buried for a LONG time, issues that were long overdue for some TLC.

I found that the most significant shifts in development as a person, both personally and professionally, happen when I’m alone, giving myself some time to process life’s input. I end up more inspired, more grounded, more clear-headed, more patient, and more thoughtful in everything I do, even if I just give myself one day, or even one evening a week.

I highly recommend to anyone that they schedule some time for themselves if they don’t already. I don’t believe people should always be alone and not socialize. Just make sure to balance them. The better you balance socializing and solitude, the more you’ll get out of both.

Onward.

[image borrowed humbly from distractible.org]

Open API’s: Good for Syndication. Bad for Safety?

Posted by – February 18, 2010

Unearthing Another Reality

I’m usually not focused on writing about breaking news but being a regular user of Foursquare and then watching all the press and online noise yesterday about PleaseRobMe.com, I really started to think about open API’s, their possibilities, the good, the bad, and the bigger picture. While I’m not necessarily offended by what the PleaseRobMe.com guys have done (after all, we all have access to that data), it does remind us how a little creativity + ingenuity + behavioral data = influence. Regardless of how truthful or how it’s spun, we can essentially do whatever we want. I think the PleaseRobMe.com dudes used humor to reveal how ridiculous our assumptions are that we can just use all these tools so lackadaisically and believe that nothing bad could come of it.

It’s Just Data, Right?

There is a data collection procedure that they have done with small children when it comes to their exploratory behavior. I saw it on Discovery Channel years ago but I haven’t found a photo, video or article on it online yet. I will link out to it when I find it, or better yet if you know, send it to me and I’ll append it to this blog post and credit you with the find.

Basically, they would put a toddler in a big playroom full of toys. There would be a camera overhead in the center of the room. The child would also have a small concentrated red light affixed comfortably and safely to the child’s back on his/her shirt or overalls. For about an hour or so, as the child ran back and forth doing things, playing with different toys, hitting several different areas of the room every minute, the camera would capture the patterns of the child’s movements over a specified amount of time, drawing it’s movement patterns for the camera. Child psychologists would then analyze this crazy light pattern of movement to better understand attention spans and other developmental characteristics during playtime.

I think apps/sites like Foursquare are collecting the same type of data about adults and probably tech savvy teens too. I have two teenagers that are under my guidance with their data-enabled phones but it’s a little unnerving to think about how much easier it is now for the underbelly of society to learn about them. I’m not much of a conspiracy guy but there are some evil (and intelligent) mofos out there that see this kind of data as the framework for their silver platter of chaos that they can feast on to their heart’s content. API = Open book.

We Are A Giant Research Project

Think about all the sites and online tools that we love. Think about all those sites and online tools that we love and interact with often through multiple means that have open API’s. Think about the amount of data we are giving them about ourselves, friends and family. Just like when an MRI creates a 3D image scan of your noggin by collecting data, these types of sites are doing the same with your behavioral patterns and those you associate with. The funny (or odd) part about all of it is that we are voluntarily (and excitedly in some cases) providing this information to whoever wants access to it for whatever reason. More interesting is the fact that we are connecting apps like Foursquare to our Twitter accounts, which we sometimes connect to our Facebook accounts and other publicly available accounts like Tumblr, Identi.ca, etc.

Foursquare was designed to be a fun way for us to keep track of where are friends are (hopefully only the ones we truly trust), incorporating the fun/reward factor with badges, mayorship, etc. If you are diligent about using the app, it also is giving people an idea of what your daily routines are, good, bad, ugly and indifferent.

This behavioral data collection phenomenon is not just limited to Foursquare either. Think about all the areas now in which people make available data about themselves. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and the fairly recent wider opening of LinkedIn’s API channels can you give you all the info you need, a 95% heuristic view of a person’s life, just shy of physically hanging out with them in their own living room. If you are a social/tech guy like me using all these services, people can now know your name, your aliases/monikers used (47project for instance), your work history, your hobbies, your music interests, what you look like, your schedule, social and business affiliations and the convos you have within those circles…..all of this is pretty much excessible through API’s. They can also, after finding all that out about you, wormhole into your friend’s lists and find out all of those exact same details about them if they’ve posted it anywhere online. This is a really gnarly concept. The gnarliest part about it is that we are feeding it by choice. It’s not all bad but there’s awareness and responsibility that comes with the use of all these cool apps and sites.

Mindfulness

If you are like me at all, waiting hungrily on pins and needles for the next new social app phenomenon to grace your news feeds, so you can be the first to slam it onto your Blackberry, iPhone, or Android, plugging in your login creds, getting on yet another grid, remember that the more of these sites and apps you use, and the more info you choose to reveal about yourself publicly online, should be kept proportionately equal to the amount of vigilance and proactive awareness you should have about the possibilities of your data being used and/or misused.

Other Great Articles on The Subject

ZDNet: Please Rob Me: Ethical or not? [poll]

Mashable: Are We All Asking to Be Robbed?

CNET: The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com

Information Week: PleaseRobMe.com Solicits Social Theft

Onward.

DNA: Science, Subversion & The Future

Posted by – February 5, 2010

Opinions & Conversation

Recently I was privy to an interesting conversation on my Facebook page where I had posted an article on CNN: “The government has your baby’s DNA“, written by Elizabeth Cohen. The overall premise of this article is the debate on whether or not it’s safe and ethical to store information about a person’s DNA, or not.

At first glance after reading the article, I wondered to myself what really is the issue “problem” with this concept? So at the risk of sounding clueless, I posted the status/comment, “…not sure what the big deal is here” and I was genuine when I posted it. I’m glad I did as it brought in some really great comments.

If you push conspiracy theories aside, and fundamentalist religious practices that may be opposed to it as well, what is the real harm in retaining that data? Here are a couple posts with varying and opposing views from that conversation on Facebook:

“…so from a law sort of standpoint you could be falsely accused of a crime, your DNA coming close to matching that of the assailant. In this day and age of CSI, Bones, NCIS, etc. people think they know what they need to know about DNA. You’d pretty much be hosed. Even if you were eventually found innocent your life would pretty much be a shadow of it’s former self.”

“Big concerns are the potential for abuse by insurance companies or future employers, as well as general privacy issues with this being easy to obtain. Do you really want someone with a little cash (e.g. aforementioned employers, government, tabloid reporters, political opponents, etc) to be able to find out you have Klinefelter’s syndrome, or a predisposition to schizophrenia?”

“So I fall on the side of making genetic testing manditory for every newborn. There are so many genetic issues (David mentioned Klinefelters as an example) that if treated early can help improve the quality of life of the individual who has it. Too many people find out about this stuff later in life and say “that explains it!”. Anyway, I think once the intial screen and notification is done, the DNA should be “separated” from its owners name and used for whatever (except cloning)”

Is The Extreme Polarization of Approach The Only Option?

I think all the points I quoted above from others are completely valid. I think the bigger question here, in my opinion of course, isn’t should we retain the data or not. The bigger question really is: Can we do it in a way that is ethical so that the benefits of this data analysis are yielded by humanity while the DNA data itself is owned, protected and secured by some sort of diverse council or committee of people to keep things objective when it comes to the release of information. Membership of this council or board can have a set of strict prequisites the aid in the protection of this data and it’s proper use. For example those nominated are not allowed to have a strong affiliation with any religious sect, political ties to special interest groups or parties, etc.

I know to some extent I’m oversimplifying it here and that with every well-intentioned person, there are 10 people with bad intentions unfortunately. The dilemma that I have morally is this I guess….why completely avoid something that can have great benefits for those with a predisposition to diseases, syndromes, conditions and other various health problems, out of fear that it will get into the ‘wrong’ hands? Why not try and figure out a way to have an objective process that is well thought out and governed by a globally represented scientific/healthcare community to manage and protect it for good use? Of course bad people do bad shit but if we shut down every innovative and positive idea intended for the better out of fear (like doing business online), then we might not get anywhere.

Onward.