Posts Tagged TED

When cars talk, this is what they’ll tell each other – Computerworld

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Technology on May 10, 2013


When cars talk, this is what they’ll tell each other

Your next car may even know the destination of other vehicles around it on the highway

By Lucas Mearian

May 10, 2013 05:56 AM ET

Computerworld - Researchers are developing machine-to-machine (M2M) communication technology that allows cars to exchange data with each other, meaning vehicles will soon know what the cars all around you are doing on the highway.

Your car, for instance, could “see” the velocity of nearby vehicles and react when they turn or brake suddenly. And with computer algorithms and predictive models, your car will be able to predict where other vehicles are going and measure the other drivers’ skills — ensuring you’re safe from their bad moves.

“We’re even imagining in the future cars would be able to ask other cars, ‘Hey, can I cut into your lane?’ Then the other car would let you in,” said Jennifer Healey, a research scientist with Intel.

[Related stories: Building the zero-fatality car and The connected car arrives]

Intel is working with National Taiwan University on M2M connectivity between vehicles as a way to make roads more predictable and safe.

“Car accidents are the leading cause of death in people 16 to 19 in the United States. And 75% of these accidents have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol,” said Healey, who delivered a TED Talk on the subject in March (see video below).

She recounted her first accident when she was a young driver: The driver she was following on a highway slammed on his brakes and the resulting collision totaled her car. “I think we can transform the driving experience by letting our cars talk to each other,” she said.

That idea came from caravanning, Healey said, citing an available, but-not-yet-deployed technology that uses direct line of site infrared (IR) and a range finder in order to automatically adjust the speed of cars so they can travel at a measured distance from each other. In other words, they’re electronically tethered to one another.

Instead of using IR, the researchers wanted something that is omnidirectional. They tried radio communications, but quickly discovered that omnidirectional radio signals tend to bounce off vehicles, making them unreliable at high speeds.

So Healey and university researchers began using unique Internet Protocol addresses for vehicles, which would allow them to be instantly identifiable to nearby cars around on the same network.

“Imagine a group of cars traveling down the road together as an ad hoc network,” she said. “Let’s say you are three cars ahead of me and I get those IP packets that say I’m the packet from the blue car whose GPS position is here. Now I can associate my position with the unique ID of that physical blue object.”

Along with a steady stream of data a bout the GPS location of cars around you, your car could also know drivers’ intentions.

This video shows how machine-to-machine sensing works. Each vehicle that enters another vehicle’s range is detected and data is exchanged about speed and location. Vehicles automatically slow to allow others to pass or traverse an intersection.

 

“I could [upload] my route to the cloud and, for example, let cars around me know I’ll be on Rte. 101 for the next 10 minutes, and then I’m going to exit,” Healey said. “You’re augmenting on-road perception.”

With a large enough cloud infrastructure, driver history could also be added, allowing cars to adjust their distance based on the safety record of other drivers. For example, a vehicle might identify a problem driver and simply monitor his or her car more carefully than other vehicles that have not been flagged.

“The car could passively let the driver know that red Jetta is someone you may want to watch more closely,” she said.

Healey said the technology to create an automobile cloud network is readily available, but it’s the reliability and scalability that remains unproven.

One obvious issue is bandwidth. Wireless communications vary by region, so while the system might work well in an urban setting, in a more suburban or rural area radio communications might be too slow to transmit accurate data.

Another problem is speed and traffic congestion.

“So if you’re driving at 85mph, there is a physical problem of transmitting radio packets fast enough to exceed your speed such that other people can get it and react to it in time,” she said. “So you’d have to start publishing a plan to go 85mph in my lane up Rte. 101. So I want to announce to cars 10 miles ahead of me that I’m doing that.”

Of course, drivers may not want to publicize their plans to exceed the speed limit. “Law enforcement doesn’t tend to like 85mph lane splitters,” Healey said.

In additiion, the more vehicle there are, the more complicated the data exchange on an ad hoc network, Healey admitted.

“I can show you a Taiwan intersection with 100 cars coming into it. That’s a problem,” she said. “We’re doing it for three cars, but can we do it for 100? [If] you can do this in a Taiwan intersection with four lanes and scooters coming across … then you have a real situation.”

 When cars talk, this is what they’ll tell each other – Computerworld.

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Sherry Turkle Says Younger Kids Can’t Handle Facebook Because Teens Fret About Looking Cool Online | Techdirt

Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Social, Social Media, Society on June 22, 2012


Sherry Turkle Says Younger Kids Can’t Handle Facebook Because Teens Fret About Looking Cool Online

from the oh-the-unprecedented-horror! Dept

 

There have been many different definitions of “childhood” in history. Often, it meant “a series of fevered illnesses preceding a constant fight for survival,” or if you were lucky, “a brief period of unpaid labor in preparation for a life of poorly-paid labor.” The nominal modern notion of an extended formative stage of life, and the fact that it’s actually possible for some people, seems like quite the accomplishment in that light—but it’s noteworthy that, on the whole, every generation of children has managed to muddle through somehow, adjusting society’s norms and standards as it goes. And the culmination of all that change is modern humanity: still far from perfect, but no more or less fundamentally flawed or fundamentally gifted than we ever were.

So how likely is it that Facebook is going to be the thing that finally ruins children forever? Well,according to Sherry Turkle in a recent interview with TechCrunch’s Greg Ferenstein, it’s a very serious concern—so serious, in fact, that she can talk about it for almost fifteen minutes without really saying anything (watch the full video below).

Now, I wouldn’t wish her non-specific wrath on anyone, but Mark Zuckerberg must have known he’d be getting a dose of Turkle-talk when the news broke that Facebook is considering new access systems for kids under 13, who are currently technically banned by the rules. Never mind that nearly 40% of 10- to 12-year-olds are already on Facebook, often with the knowledge and support of their parents—in fact, apparently Facebook should be working to correct that errant behavior, not recognize and accommodate it. Why? As Turkle so eloquently puts it, “what Facebook does is it forces you to have a Facebook profile.”

Indeed. And according to her, kids just can’t handle that. This is apparently based on her conversations with kids over 13, who report getting stressed out about the identity they present online:

This is something that’s difficult enough for high school kids. Should I say I like Harry Potter because that’ll show that I’m cool, does that show like I have a childlike side and that’s cool, or is that too nerdy, or…? Just agonizing over decisions like this.

Yes, you read that right: teenagers are worrying about how to look cool. It’s shocking, I know. Turkle thinks that this pressure is now greater than ever because kids have a central online identity, which makes them less able to experiment with different ways of defining themselves—and that they will later be haunted by digital records of their past. There’s some truth to that notion, but it’s hard to see it as much of a problem—we’re talking about broad, shifting trends in the way people communicate, and such trends are the progenitors of societal norms, not slaves to them. If, in 20 years, there is no such thing as a political candidate without an embarrassing photo lurking online, then we can fairly assume society will not be so excitable about such photos; if, when today’s nine-year-olds enter the workforce, they all have to ‘fess up to that [insert silly subculture] phase they went through in high-school, it’s not going to cripple them all emotionally—it’s going to foster an environment where people are less embarrassed and judgmental about such things.

As for having this start a few years earlier, it’s still hard to see the problem—especially when so many kids are already doing it. Obviously nine-year-olds shouldn’t be completely unsupervised on Facebook, nor should they use it without some guidance and advice from their parents—but there aren’t really many things that nine-year-olds should do completely independently anyway. Plus, part of Facebook’s whole plan for new children’s access is to provide better parental controls and simpler, more emphasized privacy settings—so all those young kids who are already using Facebook can hopefully do so more responsibly. Will there, as Turkle fears, be some parents who are overactive in defining their child’s online identity, making personal decisions for them and living through them? Probably—and that might be concerning if it was a new issue, and not one of the oldest and best-known tropes in the parenting-mistake canon.

But then there’s Turkle’s corollary fear, which is that kids aren’t learning human interaction:

At that age anything that takes time away from what you learn face-to-face, the skills of negotiation and being attentive to tone and the delicate kinds of things that you learn when you’re with kids and you’re with your friends and horsing around and really learning how to be a friend face-to-face and the messiness and complexity of human relationships, that’s not good. This is a time when kids need to be encouraged in every way to spend that time face to face, and even suggesting that Facebook is something they might want to do just presents the wrong signals.

Maybe Turkle is unaware, but for most of us, online social skills are now really, really importanttoo. There are unwritten rules and codes of etiquette, and hard-to-define skills of empathy and intuition, in the digital world as well—and online etiquette is only going to be more nuanced and complex when today’s kids are all grown up. Facebook and other online communication is now a pretty big part of the “messiness and complexity of human relationships”, and keeping kids away from it is definitely not going to alleviate social confusion. It also seems likely to create an immediate sense of exclusion from both their peers and society in general—but Turkle doesn’t think so:

First of all, the notion of ten-year-olds and nine-year-olds being ostracized for not being on Facebook – I think that’s a pretty quick jump. 

…

The argument for why kids need it is: that’s where the social events are posted, that’s where kids are sharing where the parties are, where the events are. I’m saying that at ten, it’s better that those things happen in person. Parents should be encouraging children, as much as they can throw their weight behind it, for those things to still be happening in person at that age.

I’m not sure how it’s any kind of stretch to say that kids will feel ostracized for not being allowed to do what their friends are doing—and we’re not talking about jumping off a cliff here. And apparently it’s not enough that kids are still going to each others’ birthday parties—as in, events where they spend all day engaging in face-to-face socialization—Turkle thinks they need to be told about them in person too. I guess that way they’ll be prepared for the adult world, where we all hand-deliver our invitations.

The simple reality is that, yes, Facebook presents new and different social challenges to kids. Every generation has faced unique challenges, because the social landscape is always changing. Every change also presents new opportunities, and while Turkle is worrying about kids getting less face-to-face interaction, those same kids are building whole new kinds of communities that cross traditional borders. Some things will be lost, of course, and to sometimes pine for a “simpler time” is a natural thing in moderation, but Turkle actually wants to talk about the “cost-benefit analysis” of broad social change. How is that even possible with something that can’t be quantified? As a psychologist, Turkle should spend her time looking at ways to maximize thegood aspects of social media, instead of fearmongering about the supposedly bad ones.

 Sherry Turkle Says Younger Kids Can’t Handle Facebook Because Teens Fret About Looking Cool Online | Techdirt.

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