Embedded Systems Expo 2011: A Few Notes

Today I was at the 2011 Embedded Systems Conference / DesignCon exposition. I typically attend technology expos in Boston, keeping an eye out for devices and software that I might be able to use in my job. But of course, I’m also interested in what embedded systems technology will enable in the near future. There wasn’t [...]

Syndicated 2011-09-28 04:23:39 from SynapticNulship

The Future of Emotions

I recently happened upon an article [1] about the work of Jennifer Lerner: Lerner is best known for her research on two topics: the effects of emotion on judgment and decision making, and the effects of accountability on judgment and decision making. Recently, along with a number of National Science Foundation-supported scientists, she appeared on the [...]

Syndicated 2011-09-11 04:26:39 from SynapticNulship

I’m Back

To the few people who actually read this blog: I will resume posting soon! I took a break from this blog for a couple months. However, I did not stop writing–I was working on fiction, specifically screenwriting. Stay tuned.

Syndicated 2011-09-03 22:52:17 from SynapticNulship

Posthuman Factors

Apparently a concept I developed in my spare time in 2009, which I dubbed “posthuman factors,” is very similar to some guy’s PhD dissertation in 2010 in which he also used the term posthuman factors.  (And I don’t mean everything in his dissertation, just a lot of overlap.) I recently learned of this through a Wikipedia [...]

Syndicated 2011-06-17 08:53:46 from SynapticNulship

The Patent Plaque

My company gave this plaque to me a while ago for a patent I co-created that was granted by the USPTO last fall.

Syndicated 2011-06-06 02:48:08 from SynapticNulship

The Future of Crowd Madness

“Nothing New Under the Sun” is the title of Robert Silverberg’s column for the June 2011 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Although the sobering thought that humanity keeps repeating certain types of mistakes is not one I particularly relish, it should be discussed. Crowd Stupidity “Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable [...]

Syndicated 2011-05-03 00:41:54 from SynapticNulship

Emotion, Spirituality, and Words

In 2003 I started looking at the science of emotion in order to determine if it would be useful for robots. When I had to do an English paper that year (middler year writing at Northeastern University) I decided it would be something about emotions, but I wasn’t sure at first what the specific [...]

Syndicated 2011-04-11 06:24:06 from SynapticNulship

Architecting Emotional Robots

Creating a robot with emotions is a software development problem. Emotion is a matter of cognitive architecture.  It is part of the information system of the mind.  Recreating “emotions” really means recreating a type of mind that uses internal mechanisms similar to our minds.  Making an emotional machine requires the proper design and implementation and deployment. The [...]

Syndicated 2011-04-08 02:02:46 from SynapticNulship

Prototyping with the Same Tools Developers Use

As I said in the last post, I appreciate the power of GUI prototyping tools.  And I will definitely use them when appropriate. However, I still stand by my philosophy that in many cases a good choice is to make a prototype or mockup with the actual visual development environment that the developers use.  For [...]

Syndicated 2011-03-28 05:13:07 from SynapticNulship

GUI Prototyping at a BostonCHI Seminar

On Friday I attended BostonCHI’s seminar Tools of the Trade: User Experience Research and Design Skills. Since all courses were day-long, I had to choose only one.  My choice was Prototyping Tips and Tools for Effective UX Design. Here is an embedding of the instructor’s Prezi used during the course.  It’s pretty good, except for the [...]

Syndicated 2011-03-28 04:26:33 from SynapticNulship