Iran to release computer game “The Age of Heroes” based on Shahnameh

Reposted from the Tehran Times:

The Ferdowsi Foundation proposed the initial concept and Iran’s Modern Industry Center produced the game.

The game has been produced in the action genre by Iranian experts, and revives the Iranian culture and traditions of championship with the help of good deeds and decency.

The locations and the environment of the game are based on Iran’s culture, geography and climate, featuring its epic music and Persian characters in traditional costumes situated in Persian historical monuments.

Over ninety legendary figures based on Shahnameh’s stories are designed into this game. The main story happens in nine legendary lands including Sistan, Sarsabz, Kuhestan, and Atashfeshani.

The user must make use of various kinds of weaponry to fight against the evil characters of the story in order to learn the secret of invulnerability.

Dialogues play major roles in the game and the user must talk with the characters inside the story to find the right path.

The major character is named Atar who is the son of Pishdad, the Sistan’s wise and honorable commander. Zabol, the capital of Sistan, is the cradle of Persian art and literature and is the initial location where the game begins. The land has been captured by the demons and Atar is invited by other Iranian heroes and the men of letters to fight against the demons.

The other tales and characters in this game are derived from Shahnameh’s characters such as Arash, Siavash, Fereidun, Kaveh, Esfandiar, Rustam, and Zal.

The Ferdowsi Foundation is planning to introduce the game “The Age of Heroes” as an Iranian cultural production among the Persian speaking nations in Iran and the world.

The Allegory of the Cave

Is ignorance bliss? Plato seems to argue against ignorance in his writings, but with a cautionary tone. Two relatively recent movies entertain Plato's allegory, concerning acceptance of a comfortable illusion versus the knowledge of a disturbing truth.

The Wachowski Brother's The Matrix is loaded with references to Plato's juxtaposing themes. Whether or not Ancient Greek philosophy was the primary inspiration was put to rest by Matrix producer Joel Silver. After Larry and Andy Wachowski screened the Japanese anime film Ghost in the Shell for Silver, they told him they wanted to make that film with live actors[1,2].
Ironic to their message of anti-materialism, both have spawned a mini-industry of sequels and spin-offs.

Variations of The Cave:

• Simulacra and Simulation by the French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard. In the movie, the book is used as a hiding place for Keanu Reeves' illegal disks .
  
• Psychoanalyst and theorist Bracha L. Ettinger's "Matrix" notebooks from the 1980s and her Matrixial theory from the 1990s. The image at the beginning of this post is one of her paintings.

What does it mean?

The cave is the world.

The chains are our imagination

The shadows represent our knowledge.

Individual education can save you; each of us has the ability to think beyond the limits.

Think for yourself; question authority.



References

1. ^ Joel Silver, interviewed in "Scrolls to Screen: A Brief History of Anime" featurette on The Animatrix DVD.
2. ^ Joel Silver, interviewed in "Making The Matrix" featurette on The Matrix DVD.

Sustained Emotionally coloured (sic) Machine-Human Interaction using Nonverbal Expression

Recent articles concerning the emotional development of machines lead to some interesting conjectures.

Cordis Article

Eureka Alert

How much emotion would be required to classify something as human-like in intelligence?

And just how complex is an emotional mind?

As we learn more about the human brain, it is starting to look like we might be underestimating the complexity as well as the adaptability of human cognition. If knew pathways can develop (see previous post in this blog), can a machine attain human emotion without the same spontaneous, undirected flexibility? My guess is that this flexible dynamic is going to be an extremely difficult obstacle to overcome.

As with most discoveries, it isn't always what we find out. It's the questions and what we don't know that are the most intriguing outcomes.

Neuroplasticity:

How Technology and Biology Combine to Cure Brain Damage

Neuroplasticity is the name given to the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. For example, if one hemisphere of the brain is damaged, the intact hemisphere may take over some of the damaged section's functions.

In order to reconnect, neurons need to be stimulated through activity. Some recent inventions have shown technology's promise in augmenting the stimulation of neurons to compensate for injury and disease.

Paul Bach-y-Rita's Tactile Vision Sensory Substitution (TVSS), developed with Carter Collins at Smith-Kettlewell Institute has helped the blind see again. As the next video shows technical developments, such as miniaturization and electrical stimulation, have helped advance the use of sensory substitution devices.



Understanding the abilities of the brain is fundamental to effective teaching and learning. By stimulating appropriate sensory inputs, we can help learners build neural connections that enhance their cognitive abilities. For some under-served populations it would be like seeing education for the first time.

The Darwin chip

Darwinian Evolution on a Chip Paegel BM, Joyce GF PLoS Biology Vol. 6, No. 4, e85 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060085.

The article cited above was published by the peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Public Library of Science (PloS). In their paper the researchers detail how an automated device evolves a biological molecule, on a chip, propagating a population of RNA enzymes.

Relax, this won't immediately spawn the rise of complex Artificial Intelligence. It does pushes a couple more steps down the path though. Combining the concept behind the Pleo, mentioned in yesterday's story, with the ability to produce biological growth will either excite that inner geek you've been cultivating or we'll see you at the sporting goods store stacking up on survival gear for the robot wars.

Maybe it's true; I watch too much Battlestar Galatica, but this is a good starting point for discussing ethical developments in the biology and technology realms. The American Journal of Bioethics covers topics ranging from cloning and genetics to health law and research ethics. Traversing these domains gives us a chance to get our bearings and understand the slippery terrain of bioethics. Some further resources for your digital traveling pleasure are:

National Institutes for Health (NIH)
The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania
The President's Commission on Bioethics

As long as the dialogue continues we have a chance. It's when they stop talking that it's time to start stockpiling resources. Good luck and say hi to the Cylons for me.

Pleo

Ugobe, the innovative Emeryville, Ca. based toy company, has achieved quite a feat with their robotic life-form called Pleo. The oft delayed release of Pleo was worth the wait.

Pleo is designed to resemble a Camarasaurus. The Camarasaurus was a late-Jurassic North American herbivore. They grew to 60 feet in adulthood, but were Pleo's size as a newborn. The rest of Pleo is a product of technology, applied design principles, and psychology.


Technology:

• camera-based vision system (for light detection and navigation)
• two microphones, binaural hearing
• eight touch sensors (head, chin, shoulders, back, feet)
• four foot switches (surface detection)
• fourteen force-feedback sensors, one per joint
• orientation tilt sensor for body position
• infrared mouth sensor for object detection into mouth
• infrared transmit and receive for communication with other Pleos
• Mini-USB port for online downloads
• SD card slot for Pleo add-ons
• infrared detection for external objects
• 32-bit Atmel ARM 7 microprocessor (main processor for Pleo)
• 32-bit NXP ARM 7 sub processor (camera system, audio input dedicated processor)
• four 8-bit processors (low-level motor control)

Design Principles:

Ugobe designs lifelike creatures, capable of displaying organic movement and adaptable behaviors. Ugobe accomplishes this by combining sensory, electro-mechanical articulation, and synthetic neurostimulation to create the lifelike appearance of its robots.

Psychology:

Particular attention was paid to the human neurological responses; those elements are exhibited through interaction between Pleo and the environment. The classic push and pull between nature (programming) and nuture (stimulus) determines Pleo's personality.

The line between them and us was always so definite. I'm less certain these days. That's fine with me, though. Certainty never was all it was cracked up to be anyway.

Applied Biomelds

Time to climb back aboard for the biomeld journey. The three video logs describe applied instances of technology integrated with biology.

Each step taken is a step toward enhancing our abilities. Fortunately, the need for specialization and collaboration has led to an unprecedented level of information sharing and we are able to see, hear, and read about these innovations. Which do you find the most surprising?

Storytellers in the metaverse and beyond...

Take my book. It's free.

Giving away books as podcasts is new way to promote sales.

The San Francisco Chronicle Article, linked above, details the advent of reverse publishing. Okay, so they don't call it reverse publishing, but the traditional direction would be to take a book from written format to audio. With the ease of podcasting publishing has been turned in the opposite direction. Hence, reverse publishing.

By generating an audience through storytelling the artist is using modern technology to tap into an ages old tradition. Through our storytellers and shamans, myths lead and guide humankind in life. Nobody tells it better than Joseph Campbell to Bill Moyers, in the Power of Myth series.



No matter the technology we employ, our stories come back to the basics.

Education and Digital Society

Issues confronting e-Learning professionals

Avoiding the strange and unusual crossroads of biology and technology for a moment, this posts topic is grounded in applied technology and less so in the theoretical. A portion of the impetus for this topic comes from the last post concerning what the Internet Archive does in the accomplishing their mission - Universal Access to Human Knowledge.

The first item on the list is a discussion from an Educause podcast. The genesis of the discussion topic was in an ECAR project. ECAR is the Educause Center for Applied Research.


Podcast: Challenging IT Leaders to Mashup, Twitter, Tag, and Poke: New IT Strategies for a Digital SocietyNumber two comes in the form of an example video explaining quantum mechanics. Is this an example of effectively applying technology in an educational environment.



The applied vs. theoretical dichotomy has existed for quite some time. One area of grand prediction, but little application has been e-books. We've been waiting for some time to find the tipping point where e-books become the norm on campus. An indicator that we are crossing the threshold, could be when librarians and archivist don't feel the need to preface any advocacy of digital books, by assuring their audience there will still be traditional books along with electronic books.

This most likely raises more questions than answers, which is the whole point after all.

Fjording the digital divide

Internet Archive Brings Free Ultra High-Speed Internet to Public Housing

Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to preserving a record of the Internet and to increasing access to the Internet, today began offering free Internet service to public housing projects at speeds far greater than any other city resident can receive.

Valencia Gardens Housing, with 240 units, is the first area to be connected in a pilot project that expects to wire more than 2,500 units in the city in the next eight months, according to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.

What makes the project unique is that the apartments will be connected to the Internet, and to the educational resources at the Internet Archive, at 100 megabits per second (Mbits/second). That speed contrasts sharply with the normal Internet service offered by telephone companies, which is usually less than 6 Mbits/second.

The residents can instantly view DVD-quality videos of the thousands of lectures and other educational information from the Internet Archive's collections, as well as traditional Internet access.

The Internet Archive is able to achieve this high speed by connecting the San Francisco municipal fiber optic network, which runs through the public housing developments, to an Archive switching center, which connects to the Internet.

“We are pleased to be the first non-profit organization to bring public housing online,” Kahle said.

He added: “We are excited to see much faster access to the Internet as a way to experiment with advanced applications, and are pleased that the underserved get first access to advanced technology.”

NYtimes: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/low-income-residents-get-high-speed-access/

CNET: http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9904821-52.html

ValleyWag: http://valleywag.com/373658/brewster-kahles-internet-archive-brings-broadband-to-sf-housing-projects

Romona has a posse

My fairly recent relocation has helped with the goal of being exposed to great minds. At the Archive, its common to discover an MIT educated, computer science, buddy of our founder wandering the halls. It's an inspiring intellectual atmosphere.

The progression seems to have gone, hearing or reading about the big minds, seeing their lectures and appearances, to working around them. Still another layer to peel before working directly with those included in the inner circle of expanding consciousness. Ray Kurzweil is one of the biggest of those minds.

This month's Wired magazine has an eight page piece about the futurist and inventor. If immortality can be achieved through concentrated brilliance and theoretical mathematics, Kurzweil will be the one to do it. Even the LGBTQ community can love a man that wants to transcend gender through the recompiling his conscience in a synthetic lifeform named Ramona.

While the concept of expanding consciousness through technology might seem strange to some, it is considered inevitable by many artificial intelligence experts, including Dr. Bruce Runnegar, UCLA professor and former director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute (NAI); Digital Space Corporation CEO and researcher, Bruce Damer; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, foremost researcher in Friendly AI at the Singularity Insitute.

read Wired article

boldly going

Last week's story on the Mind Game Controller looked into emerging technologies used to entertain the minds of humans. We've grown accustomed to digital gaming technology being in the forefront of computer engineering. The boundary between purely biological lifeforms and strictly artificial lifeforms has blurred with a recent announcement.

Clive Thompson on Why the Next Civil Rights Battle Will Be Over the Mind

The Wired article, linked above, could easily cause significant anxiety. This could be an area of the unknown worthy of fear. Human ingenuity at circumventing supposedly fool proof systems can be counted on to find new and interesting hacks for the mind reading technology. It brings up a whole new concept for the crime of identity theft.
Or you could think someone into a James T. Kirk level of agony.
or for those with a dystopian outlook on life we bring you, straight from the Dept of Defense, a video exibiting the ironically titled Active Denial System.

Personalized fit

This week's project was mentioned in the previous post and John's response reminded me of something that is a natural part of my teaching process. Tailoring material to fit the individual remains a priority in my design and development of appropriate instruction. The last post serves as a good example of the process in action.

At the moment, the primary audience for this blog consists of three grad students -a techie, a science teacher, and a sports management expert - who are all taking an instructional computing course at the same time. A few others check in occasionally, but for the most part that's our group. With such a small collection of readers, it's fairly simple to pick examples of interest to the other members.

So John mentioned in a response that it was cool to discuss something he was interested in. The choice of material was intentional. A story combining science, technology, and sports seemed to be much more compelling than forcing my course mates to read only what I think is noteworthy.

How many classes are designed around standards, testing, and defined criteria, but forget that we are individuals with specific interests, desires, and passions? This has been a point of frustration for me in the past. After coming to the realization, that extraordinary courses would be uncommon by the very nature of their being extraordinary, my design and use of individualized educational technology has flourished. Maintaining this approach in the face of criticism, unbelief, and difficult authority figures has not been easy. Maturity and experience have been helpful, but intellectual honesty has been the most helpful trait.

Controlling the world with your mind

There's this nagging feeling, I've overlooked something in Second Life. Earlier posts have alluded to this distraction. Asking questions, seeing what other minds are writing , and visiting the multimedia coverage on the most well-known metaverse have all been distractions of late.

In respect to how this synchs up with any biotechnology application, a recent development in brainwave identification technology appears promising "biomelds." Biomelds are the biological equivalent of browser mash-ups in the information technology world, an add-on that enhances a pre-existing organism. Oscar Pistorius represents something close to a biomeld, but his add-on is at the macro level and doesn't get all the way down to the micro, nerve and digital connection, level.

The following serve as more appropriate examples of recent biomeld developments:


A nanotechnology biosensor for Salmonella detection

Nanovalves for Drug Delivery: A nanoscopic valve that responds to pH changes.

Eye Implants for Cats Could Help Blind Humans See

What does all this have to do with brainwaves and Second Life? A thought experiment, initiated during an Instructional Computing class at UF, collided smack into this story describing a cybertelekinetics biomeld called Mind Gaming. The headset in the Mind Games application taps into the wearer's thought patterns and brain physiology to control external movement. As recounted by Joel Garreau, in his book Radical Evolution, testing with the brain signals of primates into manipulating electromechanical devices has been taking place for sometime at DARPA, the secret defense research organization. With Emotiv's Mind Game controller being released this year, the behind closed door science of the military is quickly becoming the rest of the world's reality.

The class project is to identify design alterations based on present knowledge in the fields of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. We can pick anything to redesign, so my thoughts have drifted to melding the brainwave controller with one or more of the educational, immersive, virtual environments; appropriate examples of which are Second Life, Gaia, 3D learn, and Whyville. Follow up postings to this project are forthcoming.

Any ideas? What would you do with this new toy?

Power of the People

How do we enact change?

The biological evolutionary process provides some clues. A few, small adaptations occur over a long period of time. The mutations that work best survive to be passed on to subsequent generations.

Can this work for ideas? Richard Dawkins calls them memes. What questions are sparked by Dr. Dawkin's concept and how has the cumulative effect of seemingly minuscule alternations in our cultural consciousness altered our world?

Come one, come all!

Since we have new viewers, let's cover this blog's basic features.

Purpose
Identify new developments in cognition and human augmentation(transhumanism), as well as to examine the intersections where human culture and biotechnology interact.

Navigation
On the right hand side, you can step up to the video bar where you will find the weekly video selection. And under the bar, is a daily feed of news aggregated from Ray Kurzweil's Artificial Intelligence Net. The rest is the usual Archive and Profile information. This week we will start the BS (Biotech and Society)blogroll.

Enjoy,

Be nice; say hello to the bearded lady on your way out.

Has Second Life lost its luster?

Second Life Pageviews expressed as a percentage of available audience over a three year span.


http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1407952648/bctid1443716894


The Second Life(SL) video, linked above, is the multimedia companion to the three page San Francisco Chronicle article in Sunday's Travel Section. Are things going great at SL? Linden Labs, the San Francisco based creator of SL, appears to be populated with upbeat workers, but there are those declining numbers to give you pause.

Our easily distracted, conventional media, outside the Bay Area might have found some other shiny new toy. On the popular Digital Campus podcast, from the Center for History and New Media, the moderators seriously questioned the role a virtual world such as Second Life plays in education. This back and forth has been going on for a couple of years with many institutions represented in SL Education Programs.

The many and varied opinions are the lot we have earned by the thoroughness of our of information webs. Avatars might be fashionable today, but keep an eye out for an evolving grid.

Biotechnology and Society: An exploration of the ethical landscape surrounding the emergence of biotechnology.

This course explores the ethical and social impacts of shifting scientific paradigms. We will examine the basic science of emerging biotechnological advances and some problems associated with them.

Readings and sources, from recent interdisciplinary literature, will help form the basis of our search. The rapidly changing nature of technological innovation provides a wealth of new material, but we will also look to centuries of human experience for ethical reference points in considering the broad social implications of these rapid changes.

A. Verbal-Linguistic

The Playing Field

1. Genetic Engineering – How we react to it
2. FAQ - Transhumanism
3. Politics and Policy: A Defense of Transhumanism
4. History of Science
5. Xenotransplantation
6. Article on Neuron Control

Some of us might not have written in an MLA format. Maybe we aren't familiar with the technologies used in this course. For these types of questions, the resources listed below are provided to describe, serve as examples, and as relevant information sources needed to interact effectively in this web-based setting.

Support Resources

1. Writing in a digital environment.
2. The how’s and why’s of podcasting.
3. Roles of the distance learner.
4. A Biotechnology Web Portal

B. Logical-Mathematical

The material included in this section displays cost and benefit analyses for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) or Biotech crop yields. View the three sites below that form a general favorable analysis of GMO. After reviewing these pro-GMO sites, search the web for information presenting an oppositional viewpoint and post the url link for two sites you find to be persuasive.

1. Biotech Acres: Global Biotech Plantings Show Double-Digit Growth for 10th Straight Year
2. Economic Benefits of Biotech Crops
3. Video: Clive James on the Promise of Biotechnology — CBI

C. Visual-Spatial

These interactive global maps will help you visualize the growth of technology in general and biotechnology specifically. The last map, Earth at Night, provides a nice visual companion to understanding where the industrialized and non-industrialized sections of the world are located.

After reviewing the maps, find two universities or research centers on different continents that are conducting research into biotechnology. Post a picture related to each school you find. Please include a a label or ensure the school is easily identifiable to other readers of the wiki.

Global Maps of Human Technological Development

World Stem Cell Map	Origin of Food Production Map
Biotechnology Clusters Map 2006	Digital Innovation Map 2000

Electrification - Earth at Night

Mayhew & Simmon (NASA/GSFC)

D. Bodily-Kinesthetic

Information for those wisjhng to attend the International Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, Ca. Click on the image below for conference information.

E. Interpersonal

This blog is an example of interpersonal collaboration, as each student will have avenues for interaction and posting.

F. Intrapersonal

How will these new developments affect me? Glad you asked. Visit these sites and explore the personal nature of the biotech (r)evolution. After reading these articles, post on the class wiki your answer to the question, "How could this or similar technology be used to enhance your own healthcare?"

Diagnosis and Medicine in a Pill
The Future Begins Today