Extreme life logging

If you had the ability to do perfect life logging, would you? In particular, if there were a technology that allowed you to create a holographic 3D movie of you day, from beginning to end, down to the smallest detail, do you think that would be a good thing or a bad thing?

I can see how this would be convenient. You could jot down notes and immediately discard them. You could go back even years later and see whether you took care of any given task on any given day. You could properly monitor your exercise and diet, or really anything else of interest to you.

There are so many useful possibilities here. Assuming, of course, that the technology exists to support all this.

But putting aside the technical hurdles, I wonder how we would deal with the privacy issues. It’s one thing to take a selfie with your phone, it is quite another to have every aspect of your existence existing somewhere as a detailed digital record.

I suspect that in a world where such extreme life logging had become widely adopted, people might need to be a much stronger layer of personal and verifiable data security. And even then, I’m not convinced that this would all be a good thing.

Parallel open fifths

As I am reading through Jimmy Webb’s brilliant book Tunesmith, I am learning all sorts of wisdom — not just about writing songs, but about so many social constructs around songs that I never before thought about.

For example, he points out that composers for the soundtracks of Hollywood movies long ago invented a musical shorthand for Indigenous people in the Americas. Such people were invariably introduced, whether in dramas or comedies, by musical sequences consisting of base notes moving together in parallel open fifths.

Meanwhile, he points out, the same composers developed a different shorthand for people from East Asia — sequences consisting of treble notes moving together in parallel open fourths1. By now I am sure you have heard both of these motifs many times.

What’s interesting — and disturbing — here is that these two remarkably similar musical motifs really have little to do with the actual people being caricatured. They are musical shorthands invented by White people to immediately evoke a cartoon version of “the exotic other” for an audience of White people.

Why is such a similar pattern used in both of these instances? Do parallel open intervals possess some intrinsic quality which to White folks suggests “Exotic other people who are not like us”?

1) Thanks to DB Porter.

Cross Reality

The acronym XR used to refer to “Extended Reality”. But more recently I see that it is referring to “Cross Reality”. The general idea, as I understand it, is that Cross Reality is an overarching term that describes all of the possible ways to “cross” things that are virtual (like computer graphics) together with things that are real (like physical objects and other people).

So the term Cross Reality, or XR, is meant to encompass Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). I can see how it is useful to have a single term to talk about the entire larger topic.

On the other hand, the word “cross” itself has multiple meanings, which can lead to some confusion. Part of me sees the term “Cross Reality” and just thinks “The Gods are angry.”

Patterns

When you travel around the world, you can’t help but notice that many cultures have a unique language of abstract visual patterns. These patterns show up on pottery, fabrics, walls and many other surfaces.

Korea, China, Indonesia, Japan, various parts of India, different indigenous nations in the Americas — each has a distinct visual language, with its own mathematical underpinning. There are sometimes connections and influences between the patterns of one culture and another, but each culture’s family of patterns is unique and instantly identifiable.

I wonder whether there is a universal visual language of such patterns. Perhaps some unifying mathematical framework could tie them together, describing each unique cultural variation within the context of a single unifying theory.

Songs that don’t rhyme

I realized only this week that one of my favorite songs of all time, Paul Simon’s America, contains no rhymes at all. If you don’t believe me, you can listen for yourself.

I’ve been listening to this song for most of my life, and yet I have never noticed that before. It seems like an odd thing to never have noticed.

I wonder what other great songs contain absolutely no rhymes (even internal rhymes). Given my experience with America, I don’t think that I’m the best person to come up with a good list.

Undetected earworm

Today I suddenly realized that I had been playing the same song over in my head for about an hour. And that is a startling thing to realize.

I guess on some level I had been aware that it was happening, but other things were going on, and so somehow I hadn’t really noticed. But then when I did notice, I became conscious of just how long that same tune had been playing non-stop in my head.

I wonder how common this is, the sudden realization that you’ve been harboring an undetected earworm. Maybe there is something in our brains that tries its best to protect us from this knowledge, lest we go mad.

If that is the case, then maybe we experience a lot more earworms than we ever realize.

Crowded

Today I was in a crowded department store. I had trouble keeping track, through the crowd, of the location of the person I had come in with.

One problem was that the aisles with all the stuff were taller than my companion, and I don’t have X-ray vision. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought to myself, if I had a pair of glasses that simply showed me the location of my friend, right through those aisles.

Unlucky four

I learned today that in South Korea the number thirteen is not considered unlucky. Elevator buttons do not jump mysteriously from twelve to fourteen, because thirteen is just another number.

On the other hand, hospitals in South Korea do not have a fourth floor. Apparently, the number is four is associated with death. Not really where you want to be in a hospital.

So I assume that hospital evevator buttons jump from three to five. Which presumably solves the problem.

Except I wonder whether the people on the “fifth” floor of the hospital are just a little nervous.