This blog is a record of the research I am conducting for my MFADT thesis.

My exploration began with an interest in experimental prosthetic design. Its direction is being determined.

Ubiquitous computing interface

The Attention-Span Myth in the NY Times. While it could benefit from some more support material and it has an reliance on references to literature, I enjoyed its devil’s advocate stance.

Here I hazard some connections and deductions on dicey support…

What does it mean to remember?

I was listening to the “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat” segment on Radiolab. In it they mention that a memory takes on physicality as a sequence of proteins in the brain. Tested in rats, if the process of forming this sequence is prevented (chemically) then a memory is not formed. Additionally, if the same chemical intervention is performed at the act of remembering, the memory is erased – the proteins are dissolved, scrambled, whatever.

So the act of remembering is an act of re-creating memory.

In light of this, what are the goals of cognitive prosthetics and memory augmentation? (Perhaps the conflation of the two is not judicious.)

One goal is the supplementation of human memory. My address book – digital or not – assists me in recalling a volume of information that I would have great difficulty recalling otherwise. I enter names and contact info into my address book so that I don’t have to rely on keeping that info in my brain. (This is a fundamental facet of of writing, right? It is a supplement to human memory.)

So memory augmentation as memory supplement is a giant bucket that we can pour our memories into. Recently we’ve seen some writing (Is Google Making Us Stupid) and artwork (If Search is our memory) address the large digital bucket – the internet – and how it affects our native ability to remember and the meaning of remembering. The thesis of many of these musings is that digital memory augmentation at large scale is bad for our innate abilities to remember.

Let’s assume that this is true – the crutch of digital memory augmentation is eroding our human abilities to remember. For cognitive prostheses then, what about the goal of augmenting not the volume of our memory but our ability to remember? I cannot provide citation of the top of my head, but it feels like I’ve read that memory can be exercised and kept fit. Use engenders ability.

Supplements discourage exercise. Exercise encourages remembering. Do memory exercises help prevent or allay conditions such as senility or dementia? What technologies do we have to support the exercise of memory?

End thought. I’m tired.

Will the oracle of craigslist yield anything interesting?

This past Wednesday I presented the work I’ve done so far on the Methodological module. An extremely birds-eye view. Way too broad and unfocused in my opinion. Need to double down now.

So for the Writing & Research class that I am enrolled in, we are tasked with writing six “design briefs” over the course of the semester. I’ve written two so far. #1 is here; #2 is here.

Yesterday (Friday) I presented the research that I’ve done for the “Social Module”.

I began compiling information on assistive tech such as use, categories, applicability, examples. So far, I’m pulling from one source, Assistive Technology: Essential Human Factors by Thomas King. Here’s the first version.