From: msmith01@flash.net
Subject: SNET: Big Blue's Big Brother Lab
Date: 25 Apr 2001 09:09:01 -0400
To: Mark
-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,43186,00.html
Big Blue's Big Brother Lab
By Elisa Batista
Apr. 24, 2001 PDT
SAN JOSE, California -- Viewing the future through the eyes of IBM
scientists at the Almaden Research Center is both awesome and unnerving.
Imagine living in a world with sensors inserted everywhere, including
sunglasses, so any time you meet new people their names appear before
your eyes.
If you're blind their names could be whispered to you through earplugs,
thanks to voice-enabling software. Even if you don't speak the same
language as the people you encounter, you'll have their words
translated for you in real time.
No one would remain anonymous -- you'd know the name of anyone you
encountered in the world.
To the chagrin of privacy-minded people, crossing that fine line into
someone else's space is part of IBM's job -- especially in the field of
pervasive computing.
Perched on top of rolling green hills that resemble a golf course
without the carts or people, the Almaden Research Center stands alone in
a secluded section in the southeast portion of Silicon Valley. There
isn't even cell phone coverage out here, which is a sharp contrast to
the saturated technology hub just to the north.
But this hive of activity, IBM's second-largest lab and the one that in
1956 developed "magnetic storage" -- what eventually became the hard
drive, is abuzz with curiosity. The IBM scientists cooped up in the
building are working on projects they believe will revolutionize the
universe.
IBM touted 2,886 patents last year, of which a third -- 962 concepts --
shipped in the form of products. IBM raked in $1.6 billion in
intellectual property license fees last year, according to company
spokesman Tim Blair.
Blair said the scientists' work underwent a series of "complex reviews"
by the business development office to determine which of their ideas
would become products. Blair emphasized that the business department
doesn't give the inventors a quota or tell them what to make in the
labs.
"You can't tell a painter what to paint," he said.
However, even if a product doesn't make it into the hands of the public,
the concept for the invention could survive. Daniel Russell, the senior
manager at the Almaden Research Center, draws an oft-repeated analogy
with how wireless evangelists predict that streaming video over mobile
devices will become a hit.
"Video streaming on mobile devices is oversold," he said. "(The killer
application for wireless devices) will be something other than you
thought."
Still, after spending an afternoon perusing the wacky ideas of
scientists in a lab -- which is filled with cameras and sensors -- it's
easy (and fun) to slip into their psyches and dream how the inventions
could be used someday.
The scenario of everyone in the world knowing each other's names would
be possible if everyone's face were scanned into a database. Then a
camera with gaze-tracking technology -- which IBM calls the "Vision Pad
Identifier" -– would identify the face and display the name of the
person in a device, such as sunglasses.
IBM showed off the technology, or what exactly would appear in the
sunglasses, with a photograph of actress Alyssa Milano and her name
displayed. Another photograph showed a police officer wearing headgear
with a camera. To demonstrate how the camera would adjust itself to
identify a person or object, a robot named Pong noisily adjusted his
ping-pong eyes to gaze at someone in the room.
It was creepy.
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