[ExI] Attention Spans Decreasing?

[Anders Sandberg]

spike <spike66 at att.net> , 28/1/2014 9:09 PM:


Entomology is far too vast to even attempt memorization of anything other than a few score of the more common species.  The field of buggery is just too big to get our heads around it.
Amen to that. 
I can't even list all the major subgroups of beetles, despite collecting them. Let alone identify a random species. 




 

What I want is to carry all my bug books with me by some means.  I think some derivative of Google glass is the answer.  I don’t need to carry it on my head.  My tablet already has a camera good for close-up applications, or rather adaptable for that purpose.  It has a standard-spectrum light source, so the internal camera can get color, it has a big enough memory to do practical image matching. 
The challenge is getting good pictures of the detail features. Telling carabid beetles apart depends on the texture of the elytra (requires a good light reflection to be visible on blackish species) and often exactly on which segment there are setae. Getting these picture when the little bugger is going about its business or trying to escape is hard even with good cameras; the guide might need to act as a decision tree asking you to try to image the next relevant feature. The electronic bug identifier is going to be a real challenge to build... but I wouldn't be surprised if one could use some big data approaches to circumvent the oftentimes brittle identification routines used in entomology. 
In 20 years time we will just get a DNA fingerprint instead. 



In physics we talk about parallel universes.  We have a parallel universe right under our feet: bugs and humans coexist with each taking little notice of the other except in a very few special cases, such as ants in the house.  Under the feet of the bugs exists yet another universe parallel to theirs, with life forms too small for the bugs to see or notice or care about.  I want a special instrument that I can carry, a digital microscope, where I can observe that parallel universe, then have that instrument Bluetooth the image to my tablet, and have my tablet look it up and teach me things, right there in realtime.
Maybe a little telepresence bugbot?


Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University
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