SynapticNulship

As a riff off of Matthew T. Dearing’s “We Are All Makers” post, I wanted to rant about the anti-makers.

I do like the fact that there are so many makers and hackers; I’m not sure if their numbers are increasing as there’s always been craftsmen and hobbyists, but I hope so.  Certainly it’s going on a lot even physically near me (in Cambridge MA), and I am sometimes a maker—I’m into building robots and costumes (and steampunk costumes).  Some are moving into new realms, such as the DIY bio-engineering activities.

It’s really unfortunate though how many pinheads are downright frightened of the output of makers and hackers.  For instance, in Boston people waste the time of bomb squads to investigate benign glowing objects such as the Ignignokt LED signs placed by VJ Zebbler (who is quite a nice guy; I run into him sometimes in Boston) for a marketing campaign in 2007

Boston Police display the ATHF advertisment

and the LED board on a shirt worn in an airport (also 2007) by MIT undergrad Star Simpson.

Boston Police display Star Simpson's LED shirt

It’s not limited to Boston, of course—when I went with an MIT team to San Diego several times with our autonomous underwater vehicle, there were those observers who claimed we had some sort of bomb.  But they were half-kidding and didn’t call the police on us.

It’s really scary that even in a college town full of hackers and makers and researchers (and trust me the stuff in labs looks much scarier than a simple LED board), and we have idiots who think glowing lights will explode and that exposed circuit boards (or even breadboards) == terrorism.

Perhaps I’ve created a straw man—is there anyone really so extreme that they can’t stand anything DIY?  Or is it just that each person prefers their DIY hobby, but is easily intimidated by others’ hobbies that they don’t understand?

Or is it that some people don’t want to understand weird and pointless making and hacking—as Dale Dougherty said in the TED video referenced by Mr. Dearing, a lot of making is done for reasons the makers make not even know.

Are people afraid of glowing boards and exposed wires simply because that always accompanies a bomb in movies?  The sad truth is that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) do exist in real life; warfighters in the Middle East encounter them (sometimes tragically) every day.  But the grotesque paranoia about complex and/or electronic DIY projects that seems to have gripped some people in the US is dangerous.

The reason the fear is dangerous is that makers shouldn’t have to worry about being arrested and/or shot because some dimwits are afraid of the “magic” which is normally covered up behind shells of molded plastic.

Image credits:
1-3. Unknown.
4. Bunnie

Cross-posted with Science 2.0.

Recently I visited the Museum of Sex in New York City.

Museum of Sex

I took a few photos, mostly of robotics and/or cyborg related exhibits.  There was also a comics exhibit (I didn’t bother taking any photos) which was somewhat interesting, such as Superman co-creator Joe Shuster’s racy drawings, including some copies of Nights of Horror.

The “Sex Lives of Animals” exhibit was quite interesting also, including a large model of a dolphin inserting its penis in another dolphin’s blowhole (by artist Rune Olsen).

dolphin sex sculpture

Anyway, artist Michael Sullivan makes these weird models of robots, a tie-in to his stop motion film The Sex Life of Robots:

Iron Hole?

Deeper into the Iron Hole

There was a separate area for “Robots and Figurines” but it was disappointingly sparse.

Robots & Figurines. And...um...masks.

Since you can see it in the reflection, I might as well throw this one in:

Torpedo Tit Catsuit

A concept of wearable computing that is somewhat different than what I’ve seen before:

I'm not sure what's going on here.

side view

The next photo shows examples of Realdolls.  And if you think this is getting weird, visit their website, where you will learn that elf ears can be added to a female doll for an extra $150.

Realdolls (much better than Fakedolls)

One of the early uses of the electric motor was for female stimulation.  Sears Roebuck used to sell vibrators.

Old fashioned vibrator

And that concludes this brief survey of the Museum of Sex.  I wouldn’t make a special trip for it, but if you happen to be in NYC, I recommend checking it out.

Image credits:  All photos taken by the author Samuel H. Kenyon, except for dolphins from Rune Olsen.

I improved my TRON:Legacy-esque illuminated vest and added some illuminated leg cladding. Here is a photo of me from last night (New Year’s Eve):

Me at GALACTICA: A TOGETHER NEW YEAR'S EVE @ Think Tank, Cambridge MA

What Worked

This time the vest front and back worked without fail for several hours.  The overall design worked—everybody either understood the TRON reference or thought it was cool even if they had not heard of TRON (yes, there are many people who have no clue what TRON is despite all the advertising).

The leg cladding looked really cool, but it only worked for a few minutes.

leg cladding

What Failed

One point in the EL wire on my left leg right before the knee failed before I even got to the destination.  After a while the EL wire next to that one also broke.  Since the leg cladding was one long wire, this caused my entire trousers to be conspicuously not shining.

partially illuminated upper leg plate

So I had to walk around and dance with a bunch of cardboard strapped to my legs for no reason.

the broken connections

Human factors of crotch access: Another problem with the cyber trousers ensemble is due to rushing at the last minute I used just one long wire for both legs instead of two.  This resulted in an illuminated wire going straight across my fly, a clear violation of human factors.  After all, I would be drinking and that will inevitably result in needing to urinate, and hence needing to open my fly. Also if I wanted to illuminate my crotch I could come up with a much more attractive scheme than a wire going straight across.  So my quick fix was to cover it with a black wire shroud and push it against my belt, but that in turn probably made the strain on the EL wire much worse.

The arm band: I figured the tiny connector and wires on my arm band would probably fail, and sure enough they did.  I had added some tape as strain relief but it wasn’t enough:

Lessons Learned

Having dealt with lots of wires and connectors in the past on robotics and wearable computers, I knew that the connectors and wires should be robustified, however I ran out of time before the event.  Also, EL wire really does not handle flexing and pulling very well, so I will pay special attention to that.  Also, a more robust solution than having one long EL wire for both legs would be to have separate EL wires so that if one fails the other will stay illuminated (it’s somewhat annoying though to solder EL wire because you have to scrape the phosphorous off the center lead).

Also, making the cardboard attachments for my legs forced me to figure out how to make crude patterns.  Interesting, but certainly not something I’d want to do all the time!

So, next time we will see what else I can come up with to improve this getup before I get completely bored with it.

One of reasons I like Tron:Legacy is the existence of ISOs.  ISOs are “isomorphic algorithms”, which are lifeforms that emerged–unplanned–from the artificial environment of the grid.  Besides being a cool movie manifestation of ALife and emergent phenomena, there is also an association with certain philosophical and AI ideas via the word “isomorphic.”  The introduction to ISOs may have sounded like a brief moment of technobabble to some, whereas to me it was a brilliant reference to Gödel, Escher, Bach.

In this famous (in some circles) 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter , the author suggests that since isomorphisms produce meaning in simple formal systems (they act as the link between symbols and real world objects) they might be behind all meaning in humans.

Hofstadter says (p. 82):

In my opinion, in fact, the key element in answering the question “What is consciousness?” will be the unraveling of the nature of the “isomorphism” which underlies meaning.

The other awesome element of Tron:Legacy is the digital DNA.  This can be repaired by manipulating the holographic interface of an entity’s identity disk.  In the movie this was demonstrated when Flynn fixed the digital DNA which then somehow resulted in the regeneration of Quorra’s missing arm.  Although this is Hollywood’s presentation of hacking incredibly complex system of codes (note that unlike most movies, Tron:Legacy shows actual UNIX commands being entered in the real world 2010 scenes, saving the fake interfaces for the Grid), it makes one wonder–what if repairing DNA and/or physical body parts really was that easy?

The concept of the ISO’s digital DNA is also a provocative idea aside from the ID disk interface.  Is this DNA better than biological DNA?  Are ISOs truly better than humans?  Or are they simply the Grid isomorphism of “real” world humans?  Flynn talks about all the improvements he can make in the world from Grid projects.  However, Flynn tells his program CLU (which is a partial copy of himself) that there’s no such thing as perfection.  So we are left in the middle ground, and anybody who thought this movie was a simple black and white good vs. evil epic Hollywood effects regurgitation has missed the important grey areas.

Quorra, an ISO

Cross-posted with Science 2.0.