The Clandestine University November 15, 2011
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Musings.Tags: Cambridge, Clandestine University, Official University, Reality, utopia, vision
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A recent article by Thomas Doherty in the Timer Higher Education, suggests that within increasingly polished ‘Official Universities’, Clandestine scholarship is becoming the only way to carry out real research and teaching.
Doherty argues that with :
“Transparency playing as a poor substitute for truth; and raw Information supplanting the curiosity-driven demands for critical knowledge that are the primary concern of a serious university, there exist at least two universities within each institution: an “Official” one and a “Clandestine” one.” (text slightly adapted)
He goes on to detail all the things that the Clandestine university does but cannot admit to. Things which are fundamental to keeping the heart of knowledge-generation beating, but which don’t officially exist. (more…)
Motion-capture Tech… June 16, 2010
Posted by Mike Gulliver in Technology.Tags: 3D motion, Kinetic, machine translation, motion capture, Tech, vision
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Two pieces of technology that it’s worth pointing out with regards to motion capture.
The first is the MS Kinetic, which is now available for pre-order… it’s certainly not going to be able to capture fine movement… However, there’s some indication that it successfully gets away from the wearing of sensors and potentially opens the way to explore aspects of remote movement detection.
The second does offer more fine control… but only from one digit. Developed by people at the University of Tokyo, it tracks a fingertip – allowing for traces to be plotted in 3D. Whether this can be expanded beyond a pointing-device controller remains to be seen… but it’s pretty funky to watch in action
I’m not really sure why I find either of these exciting, except that it’s a sign that technology is finally beginning to move into a visually-oriented realm…
Perhaps it’s also evidence that my long held dream that language interfacing might be entirely automated (and so do away with the need for interpreters… or the ‘have to’ about minority language-users having to bow to the pressure of the more powerful linguistic communities) is not dead… and has begun to entertain the possibility of giving parity to visually mediated languages.
