Did Plato discover Neural Networks?

Here's a bit of history, I'm dredging up an argument that filled my final year at Uni. Basically, I actually find this interesting, and no-one else seems to, so by putting it out on the net, maybe I'll get some comments. Apologies for the need for joining the dots of this together, but if I have to explain it more than this then either I would be very rich or very stupid, and I'm definitely not the former!
My final year thesis was supposed to be about a face recognition system that parsed language descriptions and searched a database of face elements (facets?? ;) to produce a match. Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull. I decided to do a half-arsed program to do what was required, and focus my attention on the write-up, which turned into a discussion of the Philosophy of form and recognition.
Turns out that going back to Greek times gives a pretty good insight into the problem, perhaps because the thinking was more pure and less polluted by other thought. To paraphrase Newton "If I cannot see the ground, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants". Plato and Aristotle had a fundemental difference in how they saw the 'Form'. Aristotle believed that the archetypal 'horse', for example, existed in reality. Plato believed the ideal form only exists in the mind (actually he doesn't say exists, but can be seen). In other words, the concept of the 'horse', the form, is reflected in the real horses that exist in reality. We can look at a new animal an classify it as a horse because it fits the form of a horse that we carry in our mind.
This is very interesting because it means that the form of the horse is matched in our mind with the ideal form or paradigm symbol, but that form is not concrete. Plato does not really say it, but I contend that we cannot see the ideal form in our minds, but we are nevertheless aware of it, and thus, if we want to create an image or sculpture of a horse, we are able to create one based on the re-cognition (sometimes just breaking a word down gives an insight) of the horses we have seen in the past. I think Plato would have said that the form we create is not the ideal form but an imperfect reflection of it, however it would also be true that the more horses we see and the more detail we see them in, then the closer to the ideal form we can get. Thus a master builder can build a better house or a master sculptor (of horses) can scuplt a better horse.
There have been articles I have read subsequently that talk about breaking down objects into facets, attributes that all things of this type have in common, but tie these things to later philosophy, rather than the basic Plato/Aristotle divide.
Back in 87 I looked at some of the physiology work done by Lettwin et al on the optic nerves and began to get an inkling of how the brain maps fairly closely to the Platonic philosophy. The pattern of activation of neurons within the brain strengthens with repeated exposure, connections between neurons reinforcing each other and producing the non-concrete form.
Concepts are formed out of the simultaneous activation of many different activation paths, effectively producing recognition of simple forms and then combining these into recognition of more complex ones. Lettwins experiments showed patterns of activation that represented circles, squares and triangles, but these would have been further combined to represent a fly, for example.
The key to intelligence is creativity and here is where it starts to get a bit theoretical ( ;-)
What if connections form between proximate neurons when activations happen contemporaneously? This would create links between forms that originally had no connection.
My contention was that the level of adrenalin and other chemicals in the 'environment' of the brain, facilitate or inhibit the formation of these connections, thus allowing traumatic experiences, such as fire, hot, pain to be linked (learned) in the mind very quickly. It is interesting that in our behaviour we will often perform some self-reinforcement in these cases, touching the thing that was hot one more time - just to make sure.
Back in 87 my conclusion was that in order to build a 'brain' that was intelligent you would need to have a process(or) for every neuron, to handle it's interactions with the other neurons and it would also need a substantial amount of 'state' information. It would also need an 'emotional controller/facilitator' to broadcast to the network.
I'm very interested in the new IBM processor that might be a step along this road. Once I have read a bit more about it, I'll post some more. Or if anyone reads this blog (and knows more than I do) let me know!

Patently obvious...

The patent saga between Blackberry and NTP shows the European Parliament in no uncertain terms why software patents are just plain wrong!
We can argue all day about the merits of the NTP patents, whether they were too general or whether they had some merit, but we just come back to the same conclusion.
The only people who benefit from the whole software patent nonsense are blood-sucking (is there any other type?) lawyers!
There is a huge difference between patents and copyright, it is clear that people should not be allowed to profit from copying something done previously, but that is ensured through copyright laws. Patents are abused by shell companies that play the system.
In my view patents should only be granted in very rare circumstances, when it is absolutely crystal clear that it is not prior art or recombination of prior art. The patent offices do an extremely poor job of assessing originality, but just because something is original doesn't mean it deserves a patent! Richard Stallman describes the problem better than I could.

Olympic Ideals....

Here's where I get to do a plug for Plato, albeit a tenuous link. Plato said (I'm paraphrasing, so don't haul me over the coals if I'm not verbatim) that all things in the real world are merely imperfect reflections of the ideal form in the mind. An idea I have had for a long, long time is that of online sports participation. The 'taking part' is already happening and has been for a long time (e.g. Starcraft etc) but what I'm talking about is watching, and it's starting to happen.
The prime example to use to illustrate the point is online football where 2 people play each other over the net and the rating of the winner increases, the loser decreases. There are probably leagues too! The question is when people will actually start watching these games on a large scale, kids already prefer playing the video version to watching the real thing, and there's already live broadcasts of video game matches in Korea.
The key is to creating some game superstars, which is done by having a prize tournament and getting some personalities to take part. The games also need to be watchable, but we already have some ideas in those areas from the TV guys.
Perhaps the way to do it initially is to have the watching happen over the internet in the same way you play the game, perhaps even have some form of audience participation, equivalent to the cheering of the crowd in a real event. Perhaps something that directly influences play in a minor way.
It's all part of communities on the web, and the social interaction that we all crave. We all want to be part of something larger, and the traditional sporting institutions are becoming stale and outmoded.

Clicking Hell!

This article in The Feature by Carlo Longino, talks about the reason why browsing hasn't really taken off on a mobile. Usability. I can't count the number of times that I've needed to access information on the internet where my only access was the mobile, but only in the cases where the information was critical (what was the damned address of the place I was going to!?) have I managed to persist and get the necessary information.
It's just too damned hard to go through all that scrolling and clicking, even if the speed is sufficient, which it usually isn't (though strangely this seems to be due to the fixed part rather than the mobile part, it seems operators have very small pipes to the general internet!).
A new paradigm is necessary, to allow access to information in significantly shorter steps. My view is that the key to this is the community. The community performs it's own partitioning of the internet, brings the relevant closer and pushes the irrelevant further away.
You've seen sites like Linkedin and others that connect people together, what we need is a similar thing for ideas and information. Flickr is a start, but it's current scope is somewhat trivial. Take Flickr and move it 3 generations out and we might have something useable.
Try thinking about a trip to the mall, typically you will have a place from where you know how to get to your favourite shops, and the mall may even be organised according to subject matter, e.g. Food court, or electronics shops.
Now imagine this; as part of the community I have a number of contacts, who share things in common with me, so when I am looking for information they may already have it. Because I am only searching what has already been found, my search can be less specific, e.g. 'Martin O'Neill' as a member of the Celtic FC community has a fairly clear meaning.
Of course, people are not one-dimensional and are likely to be a part of several communities, and the information map is also navigable, e.g. 'fwd, fwd, left, up' might take me to the range of wines in Oddbins.
There is also currency of information, which again can be controlled by the community implicitly and the paths less travelled fade to grey (sorry, no design implication intended). I found this link related to iPod navigation that reveals a similar train of thought. Also, this interface design has some interesting community based ideas.
Ok, enough for now... my train of thought has derailed due to hunger.

I love this story about implanting RFID chips. It's the start of a slippery slope, but I'll sign up for the ride!
There are a lot of philosophical arguments about ID cards and personal freedoms, but when it comes down to it, databases probably already know enough about you for it to make little difference.
We are all publishers of information, how much we let out and to whom should be more controllable, and that is where there should be more effort. Not in banning RFID implants, but allowing us to determine what is published to whom.
My long standing strategy fof Mobile operators (and fixed wire too, for that matter) has been to own the identity and authorisation pieces, yet it is Microsoft that is one of the primary movers here (read this for their view, it's surprisingly open and...well...good! - did I really say that!).
But back to RFID...Imagine combining this with mobile access terminal (ok, a phone!), you have a full personal POS terminal. The RFID can tell the vendor the relevant address to authenticate with (ok, the phone number!).
There are some who still think of holding the balance or rating on the handsets, but that is akin to keeping your money under the bed. People have infinite patience when cracking a safe that is sitting in their livingroom. They have rather less time on a central system.
One thing about the article on RFID. did you notice the word "revellers"? this belongs to a sub-class of words that are only used in journalism! Since when do people say "I was at a party last night, loads of revellers!". Any others people have noticed?

Frontierland

I happened to read about this place on the web today, and it started me thinking...
Can a group of people just decide to declare themselves independent?
What is the definition of a nation? With the internet shrinking the world, it could become fairly common for people to want to do exactly that.
The Sealand issue is a difficult one, but is peculiar to Sealand, not High Seas platforms of any kind, but the principle is interesting. A platform, moored or moving or fixed to the seabed in international waters, that is inhabited by a group of like minded people, might easily be considered a nation. It raises a lot of questions, but what would they need in order to survive ?
- Food (not too hard with hydroponics and fish farming advances)
- Water (desalination plants)
- Power (waves, sun and wind within easy reach! Tech advances for power generation and storage have made this much more plausible than before)
- Communications (satellite comms and VoIP have suddenly made this easy too!)
- Weapons (pirates are everywhere!)
- Money (here's the problem one. How do you have a bank account if you don't live anywhere recognisable and don't have 3 months utilities bills? - why do banks need that if they give you no credit!)
The key advances have come in communications. I could now conduct my entire life from somewhere in the middle of the Indian ocean, and no-one need know that was where I was. In fact, I may be there while I'm typing this!
To me the implications of this could potentially be huge, like the crack in the dam. My dependance on the state, and likewise, the state's ability to control me is being eroded. A significant number of people may decide that their nation has little relevance to their lives, and a geo-political reorganisation may take place. This is a new century and I fear the world will not look the same by the time we get to the end of it. I also hope it won't.

E911 additives

More discussion on this regulatory problem here. This problem seems to me to be based around somewhat old technology. We seem to be addressing it assuming that the infrastructure must operate the way it does now.
What does an E911 service have to do? It must allow you to communicate with the relevant authority, it must allow them to determine your place of calling, and it should be reliable; specifically not dependant on your credit with your communications provider.
Clearly, the ability to communicate with the authorities is not diminished by IP based tools, only enhanced, for example by messaging and presence. It would be simple enough to configure and route a specific number (e.g. 911) to the current fixed line providers too.
The issue comes in detemining location, especially in the expanding wireless internet arena. For example, with Wimax, how will the location of a node be determined and reported?
Personally I would favour the introduction of GPS into all mobile communications hardware (laptops, pdas). It might add something to the cost of the hardware (about $129 currently for an add-on for PDA), but the cost would come down rapidly because of the volume, and the benefits would go far beyond the E911 capabilities.
This hardware can then be E911 certified and the guidelines would be that a communications provider must verify (through SNMP-like approach) that the equipment connected (at the time of intial connection!) is certified hardware. If you don't know what I'm talking about and want to know more, Skype me!

In this way, in order for a service such as Skype to be sold (note emphasis) to you, Skype would have to verify the GPS location through some standard protocol (but you could always use your mate's phone for sign-up).
If you use a non-certified phone, then you don't get E911 service.

Bass-ackwards: Reprise

I have been doing quite a lot of thinking about the network recently. This is partly inspired by some of the things I read
on telepocaypse.net and on skypejournal.com. Martin Geddes, in his diatribe (well, a few lines anyway) on Bass-ackwards hit on an interesting concept. What if we extend this concept out and say that, in fact, the entire telecom industry is bass-ackwards?
'Convergence' and 'triple-play' and content services are all the rage, but the telcos have no idea how to do them and it's not their core competence.
But why are telcos always trying to make their crust on the downlink? Sell this to the customer, sell that to the customer, deliver TV, deliver content etc.
Turn around, for gods sake, stand with your customers and face the ravening hounds of ecommerce that are attempting to force themselves down the same downlink.
Telcos should stop treating the customers like cattle, to be milked for all they're worth, and instead help them to achieve the best use of the network. Telcos control the access, they just seem to be unaware of the power that brings them.

Be at the edge, looking in, instead of at the centre, looking out.
In a P2P world, the edge is where it's at!