It seems to your humble moderator that this kind of computer technology comes under the category of “Big Brother.” It’s easy to say that this kind of thing will be used for productivity gains, but it’s waaaay too easy to corrupt something like this into an all around spy tool that can be put to used by any group from private industry to government to military.

From the Register, UK:

It gives a whole new meaning to the word “micromanager.”

Judging from a recent patent application, Microsoft hopes to build some sort of “activity monitoring system” that keeps an eye on worker productivity using various “physiological or environmental sensors.” These sensors would track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response.

Yes, galvanic skin response is what drives a lie detector.

Redmond sees this system as a way for companies and, um, governments to monitor “group activities.” “In particular, the system can monitor user activity, detect when users need assistance with their specific activities, and identify at least one other user that can assist them,” the patent application reads, in classic patent speak. “Assistance can be in the form of answering questions, providing guidance to the user as the user completes the activity, or completing the activity such as in the case of taking on an assigned activity.”

In other words: If you don’t do your duty, the system will make sure your duties are assigned to someone else.

The system is designed to provide its unique brand of “assistance” as workers slave away on various computing devices, including desktops, laptops, and cell phones. But it doesn’t just track your physical use of such devices. It also monitors things like “frustration and stress.”

Imagine the ways that something like this can be abused and it can gives your humble moderator nightmares. Of all the technologies in the scitech realm, perhaps computer technology is the easiest to corrupt. Keep in mind that the data that these systems can collect is sent to backup logs and can be used to put together “productivity” profiles over years.

EASILY corruptible! *shiver*

This one is definitely for everybody whether they get into computers and technology or not. Maybe I should say it’s better for people who aren’t into computers.

I’ve been internetting since 1991 and hate to think of the number of home pages that I’ve had since then. This is before even mentioning getting tired of how tired I get of some of the lousiest sites on the planet blaring out, “MAKE US YOUR HOME PAGE!” Blech.

But I’ve finally found one that I really like. Symbaloo is a wonderfully simplistic site that allows you to organize a basic set of pages with a symbolic interface that boils down to a set of buttons that can be programmed to hit sites of your choice.

Your humble moderator believes he has definitely found his homepage into the indefinite future!

This really doesn’t fit in the SciTech sphere, but one of the nice things about having a blog is being able to dump bookmarks into it so that they don’t get lost

But be that as it may, this looks like a fascinating site. It has a series of links to tutorial sites that can teach you to do most anything through the use of video tutorials. I didn’t realize there were nearly that many video tutorials out there but one of the entries CLAIMS to have links to 49,000 video tutorials from around the web. But some of them are being produced by the sites themselves so the numbers should be growing really quickly.

I haven’t been through the list yet, but surely they have some entries about science and technology or other more specific science like biology, computers, chemistry, medicine etc.

I love scrolling down to the comments sections of sites like this. Not only do you get even more entries to lists like this, but you also find out which ones are the duds and not worth wasting time on

I was flipping through some global bookmarks that other people have found and made public at www.diigo.com and saw that Scientific American magazine has an interesting looking article about raising smart kids.

I haven’t read the whole thing yet but it’s high on my reading list. Some say that intelligence is a result of biology and some that it’s a result of environment. Me? I’ve been a computer geek from way back and have a bit of a different take on what makes someone intelligent.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve run across people who, when I tell them that I’m a voracious reader, go “ewwww. I don’t like reading!” I have very few peeves, but I guess this is one of them. I tend to gravitate away from people like this.

Well, for me, that’s half of the intelligence equation. Try operating your computer without a sufficient amount of data. See how short that operation is going to be.

No matter HOW bright your genetics makes you, without the data to operate on, that innate intelligence is going to go to waste, like a rose blooming in a desert and there’s nothing that modern science, technology or medicine can do about it.

So sit back, have a drink and see if you can raise smarter kids and secure their future without them knowing about it

Greetings folks!

My name is Dean and I’m your humble blog moderator. I’ve always been fascinated in Science and Technology and it seems that for years now, areas of research have been gaining momentum at warp speed which is fascinating in itself. Though I’m not a scientist and don’t even play one on TV, I love the turns that science and technology are taking and want to share some of my more interesting findings of a SciTech nature with others.
I saw it put best years ago in, I dunno, some old magazine I ran across. “The augmentation of the intellect of man.” That’s what I’m after. I’d already been in the computer biz for quite a few years, but now watching nanotechnology taking shape and watching the discoveries of both outer and inner space that are taking place, I can’t for the life of me think of a better time to be alive.

Be warned however, that this is likely to be a hodgepodge of different subjects, astronomy, gadgets and gizmo’s, nanotechnology, chemistry, medicine, who knows. Whatever piques my interest is likely to end up here.

So sit back with a cup of java and let’s relax in each others company as we watch the human future unfold before us.

Dean