Morning Scepticism: Convenience

For years I lived a dishwasher-free existence, so washing dishes was merely a nightly event. I didn't mind so much, it wasn't so annoying. But in the last two places I've lived, I haven't had the need to do it anymore. Both had dishwashers, so cleaning dishes became a matter of stacking and putting away, while the cleaning was done by a machine. Though now I'm not sure whether it's a good thing. The dishwasher uses more water, more electricity, doesn't do as good a job, and the current dishwasher is rusting stainless steel. If it weren't so gosh darn convenient, I'd go back to doing it by hand!

Morning Scepticism: Knowing Your Genome

Imagine being born with a hereditary disease that you know you have and puts an absolute upper limit on how long you will live. In that scenario would you wish you didn't know? Yet for those of us who have no known condition, we can have our DNA scanned for key allele variants that could let us know about future problems. And as time goes on, this knowledge will only get better. So the question is do we want to know? Because the knowledge is available, if we choose not to get tested then we could miss something that could help prolong our life. The knowledge could serve as useful, it could just show something unfavourable that can't be treated. Is the bliss of ignorance worth the risk of not knowing something that might actually help to prolong your existence?

Morning Scepticism: Dead

While many look to psychics or religion for a connection with the dead, it's technology that's able to provide us the opportunity. It started with simple things like art and storytelling, then changed with the invention of writing. Through paper more was able to be left to us and to have a wider reach, then with photographs then the ability to record voice and now video. We can look to myth and magic all we want to communicate with the dead, but it's through technology that the dead can communicate with us.

So Cool!

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-08/ohri-stw081910.php

A new study from researchers in Canada and Sweden has shown that biosynthetic corneas can help regenerate and repair damaged eye tissue and improve vision in humans. The results, from an early phase clinical trial with 10 patients, are published in the August 25th, 2010 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

"This study is important because it is the first to show that an artificially fabricated cornea can integrate with the human eye and stimulate regeneration," said senior author Dr. May Griffith of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, the University of Ottawa and Linköping University. "With further research, this approach could help restore sight to millions of people who are waiting for a donated human cornea for transplantation."

The cornea is a thin transparent layer of collagen and cells that acts as a window into the eyeball. It must be completely transparent to allow the light to enter and it also helps with focus. Globally, diseases that lead to clouding of the cornea represent the most common cause of blindness. More than a decade ago, Dr. Griffith and her colleagues began developing biosynthetic corneas in Ottawa, Canada, using collagen produced in the laboratory and moulded into the shape of a cornea. After extensive laboratory testing, Dr. Griffith began collaborating with Dr. Per Fagerholm, an eye surgeon at Linköping University in Sweden, to provide the first-in-human experience with biosynthetic cornea implantation.

Together, they initiated a clinical trial in 10 Swedish patients with advanced keratoconus or central corneal scarring. Each patient underwent surgery on one eye to remove damaged corneal tissue and replace it with the biosynthetic cornea, made from synthetically cross-linked recombinant human collagen. Over two years of follow-up, the researchers observed that cells and nerves from the patients' own corneas had grown into the implant, resulting in a "regenerated" cornea that resembled normal, healthy tissue. Patients did not experience any rejection reaction or require long-term immune suppression, which are serious side effects associated with the use of human donor tissue. The biosynthetic corneas also became sensitive to touch and began producing normal tears to keep the eye oxygenated. Vision improved in six of the ten patients, and after contact lens fitting, vision was comparable to conventional corneal transplantation with human donor tissue.

"We are very encouraged by these results and by the great potential of biosynthetic corneas," said Dr. Fagerholm. "Further biomaterial enhancements and modifications to the surgical technique are ongoing, and new studies are being planned that will extend the use of the biosynthetic cornea to a wider range of sight-threatening conditions requiring transplantation."

In my first year of university, I did a subject called "Introduction To The Senses", which was a look at the relationship between biology and information content. While the professor teaching can be summed up by a Futurama quote ("I don't know how to teach, I'm a professor!"), nonetheless the subject contained some really interesting things about how the senses work and some glimpses to the prospects of machine augmentation. That was back in 2003!

When I hear about technology such as this, it really does excite me. Not because I'm hopeful of any of that transhumanism stuff, but because I find the technology fascinating. It's amazing just what we can do with technology already, and this is just at the beginning of an emerging field. So cool!

Are Books Going To Be Obsolete?

From a discussion in the comment section on a Pharyungula post came the conjecture that e-readers will make books obsolete. It's an interesting conjecture, one that might have plausibility given how we've seen other media made obsolete by advances in technology. Born into a world with cassettes and records, first the CD and then the MP3 format have changed how society listens to music. Cassettes are dead, records limited to an esoteric market. CDs are currently in decline.

I still buy CDs, but I'm really not sure why any more. Any CD I buy goes straight in the computer to be digitised into MP3s. Then that CD sits unused on a shelf taking up space. MP3s don't have the fidelity of CDs but that doesn't really matter. It sounds almost the same and is far more convenient. Truth is that most people don't need CD quality, especially when listening through the terrible generic iPod headphones.

And as for portability, I have access to my music on my computer, on a network media player, and on my MP3 player at the push of a button. Instant access of digital music pretty much whenever and wherever I want. CDs just can't compare, not to mention are more prone to data loss through the flimsy nature of CDs. But what of books?


Medium matters
To think of media like music or video, it's important to remember our relationship with the product. A record is useless without a record player, as is a CD or an MP3. A record player is useless without a record, just as a record is useless without a record player. To simplify things, the record is the information content and the record player is what changes the information into music.

This is the digital gap. Take the text file on your computer, the medium it is stored in is a series of 1s and 0s that can be decoded into text. It's hardly a complicated shift, but one nonetheless. To make it a little more complex, that decoded message is then encoded into the output format to be displayed.

By contrast, a book in itself doesn't need any of that translation. The information content as in the medium by which it is viewed. When you buy a CD or a DVD, you're buying the information. But to use that information you need a medium which can translate it. A book has no such requirements, once in possession of the book it can be viewed anywhere without needing to be decoded.

Consider even the problem of translation. If like me you have a lot of books, getting them into a digital format is tough. CD to MP3 is really easy, it's a digital to digital transition. Even an analogue to digital transition between record and MP3 can be done without too much difficulty (though cleaning up a record is time-consuming). But to spend time digitising books is a huge and lossy endeavour - all for the same portability as a book affords.


A digital future
This is not to argue that e-books aren't a good idea. There are several advantages to e-books and to owning an e-book reader. The first is distribution. We don't even need to imagine the instantaneous, low-cost delivery system. Most books being less than the size of a song in terms of data, getting information and having access to it anywhere in the world is a great idea.

Since I'm a programmer I have a number of programming textbooks. Carrying these around is no easy task, I'm shuddering at the thought of moving because of the number of books I have. Digital media makes sense for a lot of tasks, if I had my collection purely electronic I would have my entire library on a small medium. Textbooks are much worse for this than novels.

Digital media is easy to back up too. It doesn't fall apart through multiple readings, and any loss of one copy can be easily be replaced through a proper backup system. The flip-side of this ease of use is one of the evils of the digital age: Digital Rights Management. With a physical book, one can easily lend it to friends or even keep a copy of something if its deemed inappropriate. With DRM technology, the fundamental use of books in that way is restricted. It puts ways too much power in those providing the translation.

Even something as simple as a manufacturer going out of business could mean the permanent loss of information. Owned books that are rendered unreadable. It's not just instances like Amazon remotely deleting books from kindle users, without having open standards that aren't locked in any way can this potential problem be averted.


Lessons from the paperless office
In the 1970s, predictions were made about the office of the future. Paper would be made redundant as digital technology became available. Yet for a time the digital age meant an increase in the use of paper. The technology didn't make paper obsolete, it was complementary to the use that was already there. Even now as I look around the offices that I work in, there's plenty of paper everywhere. A computer in the middle of the desk and paper surrounding it.

As much as I would prefer to do all things digital, at times I need paper print-outs of specifications and documents in meetings. What's on the computer is no doubt vital to the business experience (indeed it is my livelihood!) but it hasn't yet met the versatility of paper, and won't completely without serious changes to technology or business practices.

Sure, if computers were utilised in a proper way paper would be redundant. After all, there's nothing really that can be done with paper business-wise that computers couldn't handle. A change here and there to how things are done and suddenly we're living in the reality of a digital age. Yet this is not happening. I'd attribute this not to the habits of people in charge, but that offering comparable functionality isn't enough. If it ain't broke, don't fix it comes to mind.

It's not out of habit that paper is not obsolete, but that despite offering advantages in some respects it would take a lot of change to replicate some of the processes that are already provided. This lesson, I feel, can be transferred over to books. Ask yourself how books are used, not just by yourself but in general. The information content of a book can be easily replicated digitally. But can the digital use of a book match the versatility afforded?

How would libraries work in a digital environment? What about sharing between friends? Handing down of books through generations? Giving away books to strangers? That books in themselves are both information and information delivery all in one, this affords the book a versatility that cannot be easily matched.


My personal hope
I really enjoy reading, even though I have music at the touch of a button I still more often than not carry a book with me for my ride to work. Having an eReader would not diminish that experience, it might even enhance it in some ways. As soon as I heard of electronic readers I wanted one. Now I'm waiting for the price to come down enough in order to justify a purchase.

I don't think books will die, at least not for a while. Books have what other information mediums lack, which makes it very hard to see how books will be replaced. What I do find impressive is the possibilities that the digital medium gives to enhance the story.

Right now I'm reading Gödel, Escher, Bach and some of the examples in the book would be even better illustrated through the use beyond words and pictures. If the music notation of Bach in the book could be something more than just sheet music - it could play the example. Concepts illustrated in words could be highlighted through interactive examples. To think of the possibilities for future books is amazing.