Smartphones for the blind and visually impaired

A truly worthwhile use of smartphones - "Disruptions: Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World" http://t.co/b4t8K0Ibx9
— Kenneth D. Pimple (@Ethical_PICT) September 30, 2013

"The Cyborg Era Begins"

Talk about your pervasive technologies.

Here's a bit more from the summary: "In the lab, cling wrap–like circuitry draped over the hearts of test animals can track the activity of each of the heart's four chambers and kill tissue that initiate potentially deadly arrhythmias. Other arrays penetrate brain tissue to monitor the abnormal nerve firing patterns in epilepsy or induce gene expression in the brain tissue of mice." 

From summary: "Electronic components are invading the body." - "The Cyborg Era Begins" | @sciencemagazine s.shr.lc/ZWbIyN
— Kenneth D. Pimple (@Ethical_PICT) June 7, 2013

Book on ethical guidance for PICT on its way

Emerging Pervasive Information and Communication Technologies (PICT): Ethical Challenges, Opportunities and Safeguards 

Edited by Kenneth D. Pimple,  Ph.D.

To be published by Springer; expected publication date June 30, 2013.

Description

This book provides a wide and deep perspective on the ethical issues raised by pervasive information and communication technology (PICT) – small, powerful, and often inexpensive Internet-connected computing devices and systems. It describes complex and unfamiliar technologies and their implications, including the transformative potential of augmented reality, the power of location-linked information, and the uses of “big data,” and explains potential threats, including privacy invaded, security violated, and independence compromised, often through widespread and lucrative manipulation.

PICT is changing how we live, providing entertainment, useful tools, and life-saving systems. But the very smartphones that connect us to each other and to unlimited knowledge also provide a stream of data to systems that can be used for targeted advertising or police surveillance. Paradoxically, PICT expands our personal horizons while weaving a web that may ensnare whole communities.

Chapters describe particular cases of PICT gone wrong, but also highlight its general utility. Every chapter includes ethical analysis and guidance, both specific and general. Topics are as focused as the Stuxnet worm and as broad as the innumerable ways new technologies are transforming medical care.

Written for a broad audience and suitable for classes in emerging technologies, the book is an example of anticipatory ethics – “ethical analysis aimed at influencing the development of new technologies” (Deborah Johnson 2010).

The growth of PICT is outpacing the development of regulations and laws to protect individuals, organizations, and nations from unintended harm and malicious havoc. This book alerts users to some of the hazards of PICT; encourages designers, developers, and merchants of PICT to take seriously their ethical responsibilities – if only to “do no harm” – before their products go public; and introduces citizens and policy makers to challenges and opportunities that must not be ignored.

For more information

"A Hearing Aid That Cuts Out All the Clatter"

Here's a rarity: A story with good news and, as far as my imagination can stretch, no down side ("A Hearing Aid that Cuts Out All the Clatter," by John Tierney, New York Times, October 23,2011).

A relatively inexpensive "hearing loop" - "a thin strand of copper wire radiating electromagnetic signals that can be picked up by a tiny receiver already built into most hearing aids and cochlear implants" - installed in the floor around the edges of a room can transmit the signal from a microphone directly to the receiver, called a telecoil, or t-coil.

Hearing aids work best in relatively quiet places, where there are few sources of noise. In a subway or other crowded, busy place, hearing aids amplify all of the noise indiscriminately, creating a true cacophony from which it is difficult to distinguish the sounds that matter. The hearing loop / telecoil combination solves that problem, at least at events where microphones are used.

The technology "has been widely adopted in Northern Europe" and is catching on in the U.S.

Could it have a down side? I suppose so, but I don't see it.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Mind-controlled robots, the Supreme Court on GPS, Wii without a wand, and computers that write

A small avalanche of PAIT-related articles buried me this weekend; let me see whether I can dig my way out.

• Disabled Patients Mind-Meld With Robots by Sara Reardon (ScienceNOW, September 6, 2011) - Using Skype and wearing "a cap of tiny electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes," two people "whose lower bodies were paralyzed and who had been bed bound for 6 or 7 years" controlled the movements of a modified commercial robot - Robotino -100 kilometers away. They used only their brain waves - no moving eyes, no twitching fingers. The paralyzed subjects had been trained for 1 hour a week for 6 weeks. The system had been tested earlier with non-paralyzed people, and the paralyzed subjects "performed just as well as the healthy subjects." Think of what this would mean to paralyzed people and their friends and families - it would be a miracle.
  
  My enthusiasm is, of course, always tempered by caution. The Hollywood version would have someone hack the system and take control of the robot to frame a paralyzed person for murder. My real concern, though, is accessibility. There's no mention in the article how much this rig would cost, and the manufacturer of Robotino, Festo Didactic, lists all of the prices associated with Robotino as "on request." I fear this is an instance of "if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."


• Court Case Asks if ‘Big Brother’ Is Spelled GPS by Adam Liptak (New York Times, September 10, 2011) - At least three federal judges have compared the use of global positioning system (GPS) devices by police to George Orwell's novel, 1984. In November, the Supreme Count "will address a question that has divided the lower courts: Do the police need a warrant to attach a GPS device to a suspect’s car and track its movements for weeks at a time?"
  
  The answer seems obvious to me (hint: it begins with a "y"), but with the current court I'm not making any bets.


• Remote Control, With a Wave of a Hand by Anne Eisenberg (New York Times, September 10, 2011) - "Scientists at Microsoft Research and the University of Washington have come up with a new system that uses the human body as an antenna. The technology could one day be used to turn on lights, buy a ticket at a train station kiosk, or interact with a world of other computer applications. And no elaborate instruments would be required." No need for a Wii wand or the Kinect's cameras that track motion.
  
  Nothing is said about whether this technology could be used to identify and track specific individuals (is your repertoire of everyday gestures as distinctive as your face or fingerprints?).


• In Case You Wondered, a Real Human Wrote This Column, allegedly by Steve Lohr (New York Times, September 10, 2011) - I had heard some time ago about the effort to make computers write newspaper-style sports articles based solely on the statistics of the game. That such writing would soon be indistinguishable from prose written by a human sports writer I did not doubt. The time seems to be near.
  
  Somehow I can't get excited by this one.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

"A high-tech solution to an older-age issue"

This story from yesterday's Marketplace Morning Report describes an alternative to renovating your home to make a welcoming space for your elderly parent. The "med-cottage" (or "medcottage;" it's spelled both ways in the transcript) is a "little prefab house that sits in the backyard. It leases for $2,000 a month. Behind that vinyl exterior there are motion sensors."

The sensors detect when the cottage's inhabitant gets out of bed, uses the bathroom, and more. "All that information feeds realtime to a website you can check like email. An iPod app is in the works."

A team of researchers at Indiana University is examining ethical issues raised in this kind of high-tech elder monitoring. The project is called Ethical Technology in the Homes of Seniors, or E.T.H.O.S. It would be interesting to know how much effort the designers of the medcottage put into considering the ethical issues raised by their product.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Ethics and Assistive Technology Survey

Researchers at the University of British Columbia recently posted a survey on Ethics and Assistive Technology Survey. The group's early survey on robot ethics appears still to be open.

From their Web site: "The purpose of the surveys is to facilitate well-informed discussion and explore attitudes about complex issues related to ethics (including animal welfare) and scientific and technological developments."

Thanks to Colin Allen (a member of the PAIT Planning Committee) for bringing these surveys to my attention.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director