- By Casey Stevens
- Opinions
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The name and content of the column is most definitely 'plural' this week. Not one thought, but a lot of little ones flitting about like our spring birds that don't want to alight for more than a moment or two. Try flitting with them, and me, this week. For your consideration:There is a fascinating story out of Columbia University recently which reminded me of a movie from a few (?) years ago by the name of Minority Report. I'm not sure it was a 'keeper' of a movie considering its plot or star power, but one scene has always stuck in my memory where one of the characters is driving in a city and the billboard above him is 'talking' to him. I mean, the billboard knows the protagonist's name as he looked at the sign and the billboard is actually addressing him by name via BlueTooth, and 'pitches' him for the product being advertised. Mind reading?
Well, mind reading appears to have come a step closer to reality at Columbia. Researchers have been working with people deprived of speech by disease or accident and have now used computer processing on the subject's brain activity to construct clear synthetic speech. In other words, the computer is using artificial intelligence (opposite: organic intelligence) and reading the brain waves of the speech impaired and 'speaking' for the subject who cannot otherwise formulate the words.
The neuro-engineers have been analyzing the brain activity of epilepsy patients by brain implants (nothing new, here, but...) then connecting it to a 'vocoder', turning the electric signals of the brain to voice. An artificial voice that can apparently be understood by anyone, coming from a person who through injury or disease has lost the ability to speak. This is not just translating electric impulse to sound...it is, quite literally, reading the mind of the subject and processing the thought into words. Chinese scientists recently found a way to discern what a subject was looking at by analyzing the brain waves emanating from the subject, in a related manner.
Every human utterance, according to AnJana Ahuja in the Financial Times, 'has its beginnings in the messy crossfire of brain signals.' The goal of the research is 'to detect the signals, decode them using algorithms and then send relevant commands to a device that acts on patients' behalf.' This act may be speech, or, you may have already guessed, an artificial limb.
My tendency to dystopic outcomes immediately started worrying about the unintended consequences, or perhaps intended usages of this newest of breakthroughs that we are calling 'mind reading' for lack of a better phrase. Could it be used for advertising purposes? Mind reading in the hands of Madison Avenue (or wherever advertising plots are hatched these days)? Surely, without too much imagination. How about in job interviews? No doubt a company would find it highly beneficial to 'see' what might really be going through an applicant's mind as they answered questions.
Or am I going too far? Eran Klein, a neurologist, and Katherine Pratt, a post-grad student at the University of Washington, have argued in a recent paper "Should we be able to keep our neural signals private? That is, should neural security (there's a phrase for you in the near future) be a human right?"
Reports (not verified by reputable media as far as I can find) have emerged from Red China that some employees reported having their emotions and moods monitored using 'mind-reading helmets'. This seems so far-fetched as to make me laugh dismissively, a la tin foil helmets, but I think about other things you and I probably laughed at when we were growing up in the 50's and 60's as 'far-fetched' and 'never happen'. Of course, we're still looking for the flying cars, but....So, damaged vocal cords can speak again by reading brain waves, and artificial limbs will do supra-human things with the assistance of 'artificial' brain waves". Not sometime, but now. Meanwhile, social media has turned us into product and your preferences are already 'known'. Unintended consequences are what we call them, but I've no doubt that these experiments and laboratory successes already have their unscrupulous adherents and imagineers.
Fascinating stuff going on with a 'cashless society', by the way. There are many who claim (Elon Musk, that strange pilot of future-ama) that cash is a worn-out and arcane idea and that phone in your pocket is the next purse or wallet. Sweden, especially, from what I've read, is going crazy in the cashless world with many stores displaying 'No Cash Accepted' on their doors. Harrumph...
Meanwhile, Philadelphia, place of my birth, has now become the first U.S. city to ban totally cashless stores, pitting retail innovation against lawmakers who call 'cashless' discriminating and saying they want to protect access to the marketplace. (Agoraphobia may have taken on a new definition).
Staring in July, Philadelphia will require most retail stores (parking lots, hotels, car rental agencies etc., are exempt) to accept cold hard cash. New York City may follow suit and New Jersey's legislature recently passed a bill banning cashless stores. Massachusetts requires retailers to accept cash.
What is going on here? Business says it bodes greater efficiency, which can be interpreted to mean their under-educated employees don't have to count money, make change or balance the cash drawer at the end of their shift. Maybe safety, considering bank deposits? Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the site of this year's Super Bowl, went totally cashless, saying it speeded up transactions and cut down on lines. Inserting cash into kiosks without a fee gave you an automatic card to use at the vendor site. Hmmm...
New York City councilman Ritchie Torres said "I think it's more the future than a fad, and there is a need for a legislative response", while he is sponsoring legislation to ban cashless stores. My libertarian heart is torn, as you might well imagine.
This, no doubt, is an economic issue, as studies have shown that those in lower income brackets use plastic or phone-type payments much less for fairly obvious reasons (this includes many in the 'senior category'). They don't have access to these new forms of payment and probably won't anytime soon.
Maybe it is once again an indication of distrust in technology, but I personally really try to avoid using anything but cash, grocery store excepted, as I have been forced to use a debit card, not a check. Cash just seems normal, and low-tech, and I find comfort in paper v. plastic. It also helps me to actually see the dollars leaving my hand, with a touch of a sense of actually knowing how much I just spent. I don't think kids have this sense, and some studies have pointed out that kids may not have a sense of what to do with actual cash. Ah, the piggy bank as a flash from the distant past. Yes, I distrust the whole blasted system. Turns out that I am probably not alone in this distrust. Note:
Using Federal Reserve data, an economist ('On the other hand') with Deutsche Bank has noted that the volume of $100 bills (U.S.) in circulation has doubled since 2008, the beginning of what is dubiously called the "Great Recession'. I wonder where some people find the time for these research challenges, but that's besides the point.
Are you ready for some staggering numbers? 12.5 billion of these $100 bills are currently stuffed into wallets, shoe boxes, safes and suitcases globally. That happens to be (I'll save you the math) $1.2 trillion, actually eclipsing the $1 bill in circulation for the first time. Elon Musk predicts cash will soon disappear. Well, evidently a good number of people dispute that, or are suspicious of anything that could or would replace it.
Supposedly, economic argument goes that as interest rates rise, demand for cash should go down ("On the other hand"). There goes another economic theory in the trash, I guess. Seems more than a few of these theories have crashed and burned in the past ten years. Also, the Boston Fed reports that on a typical day in America, 5.2 % have a $100 bill on their person. Not me, perhaps not you, but...
Yes, crime and drug trade may play a significant role in this, as it appears that 80% of those $100 bills are outside the U.S. Some are speculating that political unrest and instability may be a part of this. I am reminded of John Updike's character Rabbit Angstrom who, in the 1979 rush for gold ('Rabbit, Redux'), took all his cash and traded it in for gold coins, and actually trying to hold his pants up while walking down his Main Street with the gold coins filling his pockets. In the Middle East, refugees may be hoarding Ben Franklins, and there's always the distinct possibility that the Chinese are suspicious of good times and know the greenback (as the rest of the world does, too) is the source of stability and dependability.
And, then, there's always guys like me who are not totally trustful of the system, who like the feel of money in my hands and know that the greenback is always 'good to go' with no technology to gum up the works. I guess it is almost certainly a matter of viewpoint, and trust. I don't hand over my trust, or my cash, easily or quickly.
Two more quick notes. In 1966, Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would lead to socialized medicine. I have no argument with my own Medicare card, and I adore Reagan, so I can only say that considering all these candidates who espouse 'Medicare for All' that Reagan wasn't off-base, he was prescient, and merely sixty years ahead in his prediction.
And, a bumper sticker seen in Trumansburg: 'Be the human your dog thinks you are'. Cat might fit in there, too, of course. It's a sentiment and human hope that counts, right? May we always strive for the simple goal of being the human our pet is convinced we are. Thanks for listening.
v15i12