Smartphone Intelligence ?

Neck problems, increased RF exposure, screen brightness light exposure induced sleeping problems, data addiction, information dependance, computer abuse, internet codependence, increased wireless service costs, increased annual spending on mobile electronics & accessories, could the smartphone revolution be giving rise to the human machine hybridization that paves that way to technological singularity! 


As Mobile Gigabit Speed Sensor Fusion IO Platform Computing 

Driving the development of Self Driving vehicle artificial intelligence, the commercially successful adoption of self driving vehicles in all sectors will only accelerated as machine driving proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is safer with ongoing software upgrades than any human pilots. Today millions of people are badly injured because of human driver errors, many tens of thousands more are killed. In the USA alone more than 40,000 people die every year in auto accidents. 

You might be wondering what Smartphones have to do with self driving cars. They are the same kind of mobile computing platform. Technologies that were developed for smartphones are enabling the development of self driving vehicles. 

Humans have neurological deficits that cause injuries & death. The human is the most important component of a moving vehicle as its thinking operator today. Self driving car will use general intelligence technology to combine machine vision, high speed information analytics, sensor data integration, and adaptive deep learning so that thinking computers will drive with greater precision, reduced emissions, improved energy efficiency, and generally greater overall net savings with improved performance. 

Computer controlled fleets of P2P peer to peer mesh networking will allow all the self driving cars to talk to each other, sharing information dynamically in real time. Smartcar's vehicles will also integrate with V2G technology so that intersections and freeway ramps will be able to communicate with the vehicles. 

Science fiction energy technology with solid state lithium ion, sodium & aluminum ion, lithium sulfur, and lithium air is already emerging as the dominate innovation trend in automotive power technology. Look at the Tesla Model S with its lithium ion battery, over the air software updates, clean electric operation, large bright touch screen, etc, and you can see how the smartphone and awesome electric vehicles have a lot in common. 

The computational infrastructure on todays vehicles already operating on more than 70 different embedded computer modules as of 2008 in luxury models. Even affordable cars from 2005 like our Toyota Prius II came equipped with more than 40 embedded industrial computing modules. These small low powered often fan-less designs govern the operation of the fuel injection, hybrid power train, battery charging, vehicle stability control, traction assist, and other advanced IT enable feature enhancements like lane keep assist, driving mode selection, adaptive cruise control, pre-collision warning, collision prevention, and many other emerging features. Our 14 Honda CR-z for example has a high brightness screen built into the rear view mirror. When your put the manual transmission stick into the reverse gear selection position the screen magically appears in the rear view mirror, normally hidden by the reflective mirror surface. A camera just above the real plate convey video data to this rear view monitor to enhance backup safety by presenting the driver with an digitally enhanced rear view perspective. 

As a sensor infused handheld internet connected computer, a smartphone is a powerful information tool, with HD cameras that can function like an alarm clock, a weather station with color radar maps, a music & video streaming platform, as a search engine base, and mobile internet device that can leverage the power of powerful online platforms like Youtube where you can watch videos about practically anything.

The Everywhere Camera

The camera features on smartphones are so good that the worlds Camera makers are giving up manufacturing "point & shoot" cameras, as the market for those cameras has almost disappeared because of smartphones. Those same camera sensors in the smartphone are enabling machine vision on vehicles. Light sensors, accelerometers, gyroscopes, touch screens, high performance low power ARM GPU/ CPU SOC's. The technology in smartphones will enable A.I. to inhabit self driving cars with more embedded information technology in every newly designed model. By the early 2020 we will see self driving cars starting to reach the mainstream car buying markets. By 2030 self driving cars will become the dominate vehicle piloting norm after many years of proof, data collected showing that machines can drive with greatly enhanced safety vs human drivers. The computer is never emotionally disturbed, tired, or distracted. Pure rational logic with ongoing software updates, deep learning technology, and fleet connected shared learning that enables the entire fleet to improve any time any self driving car learns anything new. When people make mistakes driving there is rarely any shared learnings; usually people just commiserate their mistakes with their peers, or the mistakes they see other people making all the time in traffic today!

Natural Language A.I.

"Hey Siri" or "Ok Google" is enough to spark a remarkable type of everyday interaction between a natural language artificial intelligence engine as the human who is provoking the interaction. We have to be careful with this power, use it thoughtfully and hopefully to the enhancement of our lives.

Favorite Tool

Smartphones are a versatile tool, a jack of many modern information trades, essential for many jobs, people have come to feel attached to their iPhone or Android phone of choice. Look at how often you see people with smartphones in their hands today. The trend is extending to geriatric populations and children, when the young & old are also using smartphones when they are out & about. Pokemon Go or as a GPS, people making phones calls and text each other, they also stream music on the go, watch youtube videos, Facebook network, email and photography & more.

Breaking Glass Screens 

Oddly smartphones are the most abused kind of mobile electronic device. Despite paying upward of $650 for one, people carelessly drop their glass screen phones on concrete all the time! Every 2 seconds someone breaks a smartphone screen in the USA. Metal cases also end up scratched, dented or bent beyond repair. Once aluminum is bent, it is hard to fix. A twisted iPhone 6 or 6S or 7 for example can become impossible to repair if the frame is badly bent.  At least Apple made the iPhone 7 stronger than the iPhone 6 & 6s, noteworthy after a phenomenon called "Bend-gate", where people are able to easily bend their iPhone 6 or 6S to a destroyed state with forces that even weak people can generate in their hands. Larger, thinner & weaker as a result, the design of the iPhone 6 & 6s was not aimed at mechanical strength. Apple also failed to ship a good battery in many iPhone 6 & 6S models. Nothing as bad as the Samsung Note 7 fires, but still a blemish in Apple's otherwise noteworthy history of selling really nicely designed, well made, enduring products.

RF Hazards

Radio frequency radiation may cause cancer by imparting enough energy at the chemical bonds in DNA to cause genetic damage in the cells of tissues that comprise the human body, some 10 trillion cells. The SAR rating system for phones was to give you the consumer a reference point for absorbed RF energy, but this fails to be useful to people because the average person does not understand absorbed radiation in a way that would make the SAR rating intelligible. Buyer Beware, do your online research!Honestly, RF at the 700-2000 MHz range for phone tower transceiver function is mostly going to cause tissue heating. If you have ever made a long mobil voice call on a cell phone held in your hand against your heat, you have probably experience the 1w of microwave heating I am talking about. The real hazard is near the tower, where very high RF levels are present. Fortunately people do not normally hang out all day at the base of a tower, though they are installing towers on office building where people are near the tower all day long. Time will tell as a body of health history data emerges for big data analytics. For now we know that it is safer to use your phone on speaker phone mode, 3 feet away from your body. Place the phone on a flat elevated surface, step back and turn the volume up. In a parked car you can place the phone on the plastic dashboard or center console or passenger seat. If the phone is operated away from your body, it will have better reception, your wet tissue soaks up and suppressed the RF signals that the phone uses to connected to the tower. 

Neck Strain

If you look at how people conduct themselves staring into the glowing glass faces of their phones, neck bent down as though the user were staring at their feet, or at something on the ground immediately to the front of where they are standing, the neck & spine problems doctors have noted as an increasingly common since 2007 when the first iPhone launched have an obvious cause. To avoid neck problems life your head up as though you are looking at the horizon and hold your phone out directly in front of your face. For extended use this might seem tiring for your arms, but perhaps its worth considering how often you are using your phone, to who's benefit and why! 

Light Induced Sleeping Problems

Your eyes contain a high resolution optical sensor system that detects ambient light levels & uses this information to calibrate the endocrine & histological chemical balance used to program your circadian rhythm. Sleep architecture quality depends on a natural circadian rhythm timing that was disrupted when humans developed artificial lighting technology. Fortunately the system is not only sensitive to light intensity, but also the color temperature of the light. Warm orange yellow tones & red light of low energy help to induce calm relaxation, stress reduction and the onset of sleep hormones that help people fall asleep. Green white, daylight, cool white and high color temperature bright white lighting helps to stimulate wakefulness. People use special white light boxes to help with SAD or seasonal affective disorder in gloomy areas like Seattle, where the lack of winter sun levels causes peoples neurochemistry levels to droop. Bright daylight colored lighting helps to trick the brain into thinking we are in bright sun. The mood boosting, energy boosting effects of bright blue green white light are well proven. Apple recently upgraded OS-X and iOS with something called "Night Shift" which changes the white balance of the display from bright white to warm white & lowest screen brightness. This emerges on top of long term research showing how people respond to different color temperatures & intensities of light. If you want to see how much light your phone is beaming into your eyes, go lay down in a dark room with your phone in standby (screen off). Close your eyes for about 2 minutes to adapt to the darkness. Turn your phone screen away from your face & unlock the phone & look at how it behaves like a flashlight, the screens backlight blasting tons of photons all over the place. This is how smartphones are causing sleep disorders, they are pumping peoples eyes with enough photons to trick their brains into thinking its morning time instead of night. The brain responds by decreasing blood plasma levels of melatonin & increasing plasma levels of cortisol. Dim your artificial lightings at night & try to stick to warmer color temperatures if you are having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep. It can take a few weeks to recalibrate your circadian rhythm with deliberate evening light intensity reduction via dimming and warm color lights. Dimmer 2000K light is optimal for for calm relaxation and sleep promotion. 4100-6500K is optimal for wake promoting energy enhancing effects. 

Data Addiction 

The human cortex programs itself to respond to stimuli from our eyes (vision), ears (hearing), smell (biological gas/fume/ vapor analytics), taste (liquid chemical analysis), and propiception from the middle ear & pressure feedback points in our feet & joints. We even use vision for balance to find the horizon and align with gravity. 

Computer screens of all kinds, be that cell phones, tablets, laptops, desktops or TV screens, they are pumping our brains with ideas, concepts, lots of light and audio information. Our powerful vision & perceptual brain information processing is hijacked when we watch content. Think of how movies are able to evoke emotions & thoughts, feelings, experiences, etc. Why do people watch movies ? What about TV ? Radio ? Internet? What are people doing with access to this information, and what is the information doing to the people? Stimulating their cortex, that grey matter where complex though happens. 

With glowing screens we can overstimulate our minds. I watched a lot of TED videos, one after the other, was doing blog article research, streaming music, hour after hour on my Saturday afternoon off and actually overwhelmed my information intake capacity. Reading & watching lots of content all at once propelled my mind into a swirl of ideas. Reading my old 12th edition chemistry text book earlier in the data further populated my mind with ideas about matter, energy, & reality. The combination will give rise to lots more posting. 

We have to be careful with our children fragile rapidly developing minds. They are more sensitive to data that adults who have had a full upbringing of TV level Movie desensitization. A young child is the one who most vulnerable to over stimulation of the context with cell phone & tablet computers that they can touch & interact with. The internet is a dangerous double edged sword for a young mind, full of content that is totally inappropriate for children. Parents need to carefully monitory & control what their children are doing online, on tablets & phones. Stick to using there information technology as a fun education & entertainment platform of infotainment to enchant their brains with intelligence, virtues, knowledge, understanding, logic & intelligent reasoning. Think about what you are letting your children do with computers. 

GPS Information Dependence

I feel a kind of temporal intelligence decline as I rely on my phone for navigation, but feel that it is better to know how to get to the new place on the first try, rather than manually driving around in time wasting traffic congestion trying to find a spot without GPS asset. The deferral of useless reference knowledge can be a positive or negative thing. Long ago philosopher warned of an era where people will appear to have deep knowledge about subjects for which they have extremely limited understanding, differing to search engines or A.I. for the answer to queries of all kinds, even using natural language as though we were talking to someone when we do an OK Siri, Hey Alexa or OK google voice interaction today. 

Origins of Posts

A long time ago in the early 2000's I was thinking about the flatness of content online. There is a lot missing watching a youtube video about something that is present when you actually go do that thing in first person. Watching a video about hot air ballooning is different that riding a hot air ballon in reality. Watching videos about snowboard or race car driving is very different than doing those things in reality. The flat window like screens we use today are partially responsible for this "flat at an arms distance safe" perspective. When we mount the screens on our face, with Google Cardboard or Daydream and see the content in natural 3D, this helps to break down the flatness of screens to bring a physicality to the content. Augmented reality with the Microsoft Hololens and virtual reality with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. We are going to look at content in more intense ways with virtual & augmented reality. Eventually people will jack computer directly into their brains. Elon Musk & the "Neural Lace" as an early primitive example! 

I became even more skeptical of smartphones when I started to see a slump in innovation around 2012. Today in 2017 smartphones are already a mature technology. Today Fitbit reigns supreme in the wearable computer category. The Surge Sits on my wrist, undulating it sensor array as I type up this posting. I wonder how many steps it will count for the writing wrist movements (typing) on an old macbook.

You tell me if smartphones are really a smart idea!