A recentish clip of the 3D environment with touch zoom and pan:

Here are some more clips:

This is a clip of some gameplay!

And this is an intro sequence test, most of this will change, but the pink screen UI I think is here to stay!

Here are some simple 2D graphicsI designed for a pseudo 2D mode where the animals are billboarded to face the camera. This is a bit cuter and better for kids than the current static 3D models. Ideally the pieces will be 3D and animated but for now this will be the cute mode.

more coming soon

(Tim Tregubov, CS80 Spring 2011)

I had wanted to play/hack a Kinect so I completed an independent study project researching motion detection techniques, physics reconstruction, and geometry sculpting. I implemented a program to sculpt some 3D geometry with your hands using the Kinect.

Originally the goal was simple: do some Kinect programming. It then morphed into what was going to become a physics based game in which you have to define physical properties of objects using intuitive physics based gestures. For instance to define the bounciness of an object you would set the coefficient of restitution by showing the dropped-from height and the first bounce-up-to height using your hands – simple yet also correct. For friction you could indicate the angle of incline necessary to break static friction with you arms. Other properties were harder to do intuitively. One idea was a constant force model in which a progress bar would indicate some total possible energy available to expend and a user would, for instance, mime lifting an object and the progress bar (on a simple timer) would indicate how much force they need to lift the object (mass in relation to earths gravity), the longer (per distance) it took, the more mass the object had. This was starting to become less intuitive.

The final physical property was shape, and with that came the idea of exploring mesh deformation using the Kinect. So the final project after much paper reading became simply to implement some of that. I had never done any motion programming or any image recognition so playing with this was interesting. After coming up with a fairly uninteresting demo of the coefficient of restitution, I focused on mesh manipulation.

Mesh manipulation (such as in 3D sculpting tools like Mudbox) turned out to be difficult problem to do well. The geometry tended to get pretty ugly after too much vertex displacement without resorting to lots of tricks to keep the triangles average sized and regular shaped and without subdividing them when they get too stretched out (what you see in the demo is pretty simple: a laplacian smoothing is applied periodically to keep vertices from getting too crazy)

I also wanted to be able to push and pull so I learned a bit of image processing to recognize open vs closed hands. Open hand pushes the vertices away while closed pulls them toward you. The pixels of the hand are extracted based on the depth map and hand point from the Kinect and then using the number of convexity defects in the contour to determine whether it is open or closed.

Skills:

• Unity3D
• C#
• OpenNI (for skeletal mocap and gestures)
• OpenCV (for hand image processing)

What would this organ do? You realize that it must make decisions, as that is what “will” allows you to do.  But how will it do so?  You realize that learning is involved – that this organ needs to take into consideration past events. Oops, you have just created the deterministic willer!

Ok ok, let’s back up a minute.  If we don’t take into consideration past events… well then the decisions it would make would have to be random.  Is that what we want? Not really, random decisions won’t get this new life form very far!

What other decision mechanisms could we come up with for this organ?  Well it could be influenced by some predetermined set of rules or genes that get better over time, but that’s just another determinism!

Ideally what we want is something that is influenced by past events (learning). Something that can improve its programming over generations (genes). And finally something that can decide to do OTHER than its deterministic inputs dictate (the free part).

Turns out that the brain marries randomness with learning and genes in a perfect way to achieve just this!  We already have an organ that will purposefully introduce randomness into our thinking process so that we can come up with unique solutions and choices that are not predetermined by the universe or by our genes and past experiences (at least not exclusively).

Here’s a paper I wrote about this that goes into this in more detail.  The brain is sooo cool.

AI Randomness 
The field of computer artificial intelligence often finds algorithms that use randomness extremely useful. Simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, random walk, stochastic algorithms and neural networks, cryptography, random constraint satisfaction, and even the common quicksort all employ randomness to some degree or another (Russel, S. J., Norvig, P., 2003). Randomness is often used to get an algorithm unstuck or to allow an algorithm to find an approximate solution much quicker than it would take to find an optimal one (finding the optimal solution in large state spaces is very often simply not computationally feasible).

For instance, in simulated annealing a local search algorithm will randomly choose among nearby solutions in an effort to prevent getting stuck at a local optimum (ibid., pg 120). A local search algorithm is an algorithm that changes the current state (or states) based on information it knows about surrounding states rather than exhaustively searching down paths from a start state. A simple example of this is the hill climbing algorithm (ibid., pg.122). The algorithm simply examines positions in the search space adjacent to it’s current position and picks the better one. When nothing adjacent is better it stops. However, stopping at this point does not necessarily imply the best solution: this might be the top of a small hill that is next to a big mountain. To make this algorithm not get stuck at local maxima, whenever it gets to the top (since we are talking about climbing), instead of claiming victory it should attempt a random jump to another location, but remember the last highest peak. This way after some number of maximum random jumps the algorithm will either find the global optimal or the best it could find in the given time. The physics annealing analog is repeatedly heating a metal (to progressively less high temperatures) and allowing to cool in between cycles to align the crystalline structure into continually smaller-finer crystals. Thus instead of simply randomly jumping the algorithm could assign a lowering probability for each step as it jumps to avoid jumping too far as it narrows in on the actual optimum (ibid., pg 124).

Genetic algorithms (and stochastic beam search on which they are based) can be explained in terms of evolution. In stochastic beam search a greedy local search such as hillclimbing is run some n number of times in parallel. At each step, n of the best possible successors are chosen at random with a decreasing probability assigned to each given its value (provided by some heuristic value function) and the current time step. The biological analogy to this is natural selection. Each successor state is an offspring of a parent state organism and the successors are selected based on their fitness. Genetic algorithms take this a step further by combining two parent states analogously to sexual reproduction. They are similar to stochastic beam search except with the addition of a few steps that deal with crossing the ‘genes’ of the parent states. States are usually stored as sequences of characters or numbers and after being crossed are also randomly mutated.

These are just a few examples of randomness in AI computing. These are fairly simple examples however, a larger problem for AI is what to do when the world is complex and uncertain. Simulated annealing and stochastic beam search are part of the Monte Carlo family of algorithms that use randomness to help deal with uncertainty in large numbers of inputs. Any large scale modeling with uncertain inputs requires probabilistic reasoning which often requires randomness to deal with any sort of large connected network (ibid., 530).

In these algorithms, randomness plays a part, however the other essential part is probability. Without probabilistic reasoning, no complex modeling, learning or planning given uncertain inputs could be possible (ibid., 480). Bayesian networks are perhaps the most famous of probabilistic tools used to compute the probabilities of unknown variables using networks of connected probabilities. At the neuronal level in the physical brain probability plays a big role. The research areas most clearly connecting AI to the human brain are artificial neural networks.

Artificial neural networks can have a fairly simple mathematical model. A neural network is composed of units connected to each other. Each connection has a weight which not only carries the ‘strength’ of the connection but also whether it is excitatory or inhibitory (the numerical weight is signed). Each node has inputs (which are summed), an activation function (either a hard threshold or a sigmoid) and output links to other nodes (ibid., 728). After training, an artificial neural network can not only encode complex boolean operations but also can function as short term memory (if connected as a recurrent network with reafferent loops). The significance of this model is that although it is quite simplified, it shows a probabilistic network analogous to the neural network of the cortex.

Probabilistic Neurons
Since the brain’s neuronal circuitry is the basis for artificial neural networks, there are clear parallels even though the actual system is much more complicated than the computational model. The weights can be conveyed not only by width of the synaptic gap (usually around one forty-thousandth of a millimeter (Penrose, R., 1989)) but more importantly by the timing of the axonal pulses (Freeman, W. J., 2000, pg. 41). The presynaptic electrical axonal pulse has a constant current height and so the strength of the signal is conveyed by the rate of the pulses. The dendrite of the postsynaptic neuron (via the action of neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft) integrates these pulses into a amplitude modulated wave input for the postsynaptic neuron. The various currents from the dendrites on the postsynaptic neuron are summed up in the trigger zone near the nucleus of the neuron. That current is what triggers the neuron and is capable of being measured as potential in an electroencephalogram (EEG) (ibid., pg. 42). If the current reaches the action potential then the neuron will trigger it’s own axonal pulses. The axonal pulses take some time to travel but there is no attenuation of the signal – this is essential to be able to transmit values over long distances without losing energy. Dendrite current modulation is different – it is able to integrate with currents from other dendrites in the cell body current loop. This enables the summing of potentials (ibid., pg. 46). One thing to note about the pulse-width conversion (ibid, pg. 46) is that it is not stepped or linear but rather sigmoid (leaning s) shaped. Slow at low and high activation but increasing linearly in the middle. By this action the neuron reacts differently to incoming pulses given its current state.

Some neurons have leaky terminal membranes allowing a slow change in potential (Burns, B.D, 1968, pg. 23) . This causes them to fire at random intervals. Taken alone this periodic random firing does not amount to much, however given the density of neuronal connections, it is useful to also consider the action of groups of neurons rather than single individuals. A noticeable group effect that occurs is subthreshold oscillation. For each neuron to stay alive it needs to periodically activate (Freeman, W. J., 2000, pg. 41). There appear to be synchronization waves that result in periodic rises in subthreshold membrane neuron potential. These result from a collective pattern of recurrent excitation and inhibition from interneurons (shorter local reach neurons (ibid., pg 39) (Buzsaki, G., 2006). Not every neuron fires every time but collectively there is an oscillation pattern. This oscillation constrains the times during which neurons may fire and thus produces a synchronizing effect (Buzsaki, G., 2006, pg. 76). Neuronal firing often needs to be synchronized to produce the desired effect – if two neurons fire and if, because of the oscillation, the probability that they will fire simultaneously is increased, they are more likely to push a third neuron over it’s activation threshold. If the neural process is widely distributed and complex then the synchronicity becomes even more important in it’s constraint of timing differences because of distance (ibid., pg. 115). There are several different oscillation frequencies ranging from multiple seconds to 600hz. Since they temporally constrain neural firing the different frequencies have different purposes/ranges. Fast oscillation is more appropriate for local, small distance neural patterns whereas slower clock speeds allow neurons further apart to cooperate. Additionally the oscillations are not constant, they are perpetually attracting and repelling each other as they do not have any stable phase relationship. Thus, they interfere with each other, but that chaos and fluctuation may be a necessary part of the temporal organization of the brain as a whole. All of this oscillation can be seen as noise, not only because the neurons are firing without any external stimuli but also because the relationship between all the different oscillation frequencies is e (2.71), the natural logarithm – this results in a chaotic pattern that appears like “pink” noise on an EEG (ibid., pg. 113). “Pink” noise is also known as complex noise – this is because its power ratio is 1/f, meaning that the amplitude of the waves decreases as the frequency increases. Although to a physicist this would simply suggest that it is a noisy system, what appears as noise is also a chaotic yet functional synchronizer and organizer of neuron systems (ibid., 119). The same neurons participate in multiple rhythms, and the oscillating groups can change and influence each other.

The brain not only gives rise to large-scale, long-term patterns, but these self-organized collective patterns also govern the behavior of its constituent neurons. The firing patterns of single cells depend not only on their instantaneous external inputs but also on the history of their firing patterns and the state of the network into which they are embedded (Buzsaki, G., 2006, pg 122).

However, these collective patterns are transient, they fluctuate around different brain areas, organizing temporal information where needed on specific time-scales depending on how large of a neuronal pattern is needed. “Transient order emerges from halfway between order and disorder from the territory of complexity” (ibid., pg 135).

It turns out that the power ratio of the pink noise also happens to fit the data for other time-related brain tasks: forgetting, habituation, music and speech. The brain is not competing with its own noise, it is in essence harnessing the noise as multiple dynamic timing devices synchronizing particular groups of neurons for specific tasks at specific clock rates. Indeed because of this very action, and the fact that neurons are strongly interconnected (some pyramidal cells can have thousands of dendrite connections sites (Buzsaki, G., 2006, pg. 32)), even small local perturbations can become amplified and spread throughout the network.

This amplification is of great importance. Consider a neuron that is almost ready to fire, but does not quite have enough current to reach it’s action potential. A noise input could cause it to fire when it otherwise would not have. Because the noise is stochastic, the neuron’s firing is not deterministic. It may or may not fire depending on the noise in the system around it. Small weak local signals can become noticeable when the noise bumps it up. Additionally small periodic signals can act as attractors to the noise oscillation and can in effect draw attention to themselves by pulling the oscillation frequency toward their own.

Given these mechanisms it is evident that neuronal firing is probabilistic. Even sensory neurons such as the ganglion cells in the retina have been shown to have unpredictable responses (Burns, B.D, 1968, pg 28). This behavior is of interest because it allows for a break with deterministic, simple input-output machine operation and allows a greater uncertainty to exist.

Brownian Motion
Another source of uncertainty in the brain could be brownian motion. Brownian motion is the basis for brownian noise. Brownian noise is also called random walk noise and has a power density ratio of 1/f 2 (Buzsaki, G., 2006, pg. 121). It gets its name from brownian motion. Brownian motion was originally discovered by Robert Brown, a biologist, who noticed that particles of pollen on the surface of water will move around erratically (Nelson, E., 1967, pg. 11). The concept was later further worked on by Einstein who in part used it to prove the existence of atoms. The basic idea is that a larger particle surrounded by a myriad of smaller particles suspended in a liquid or gas that all have their own movement will be pushed around by the motion of the smaller particles in a random fashion. Brownian motion over longer periods/distances is random, but can be predicted at short intervals by the average velocity and density of the molecules in the suspension (Buzsaki, G., 2006, pg. 121). It has been shown that brownian motion applies to all biological systems, “as a result of thermal agitation processes, molecules are constantly on the move, colliding with each other and bouncing back and forth” (Marguet, D., Lenne, PF., Rigneault, H., He, HT., 2006, pg. 288). On a macroscopic level however brownian motion is a diffusion process.

Diffusion processes have the following main features:  (1) the diffusion rates are temperature-depen- dent, (2) as collisions with other molecules slow down diffusion processes, the higher the molecular density of a medium is, the lower the diffusion rate will be and most importantly, (3) as the random forces generated by collisions have no preferred direction, diffusion will cause a tendency towards homogeneity. (ibid., pg. 288)

Marguet et al suggest that any variability in activation of the postsynaptic neuron would be due purely to ”stochastic variations in basic presynaptic elements, such as the vesicle volume, the vesicle docking position, and the vesicle neurotransmitter concentration” (ibid., pg. 298) rather than any variability due to brownian motion. So although brownian motion is used as a diffusion process and is certainly harnessed by the brain to effect homogenous dispersal of neurotransmitters in the synaptic cleft, it is not responsible directly for any variability in actual neuronal firing.

Quantum Theories
There are many theories involving consciousness and quantum theory. The problems with these theories is that the brain is too hot to be susceptible to any currently known quantum effects. There is too much classical noise and complexity for a single quanta to have any effect at all. A single cell in the retina may react to a single photon (which would be a quantum event) however our brains need at least seven neurons to react to actually perceive it (Penrose, R, 1989, pg. 516). Additionally, most neurons in the brain require many neurotransmitters to trigger many sodium or chloride channels to open which in turn could trigger the neuron to fire. This would require too many quanta to be useful. However, theories abound of either undiscovered cells that respond to single quanta or computational complexity that can only be solved by quantum computation. Additionally there are dualist theories that a mental energy influences the physical brain through quantum effects. These theories attempt to escape from determinism and provide a explanation why free will is non-determined. Christoff Koch (2006) provides an eloquent rebuttal of quantum theories, for now at least:

The content of consciousness is rich and highly differentiated. It is associated with the firing activity of a very large number of neurons spread all over the cortex and associated satellites, such as the thalamus. Thus, any one conscious percept or thought must be expressed in a wide- flung coalition of neurons firing together. Even if quantum gates exist within the confines of neurons, it remains totally nebulous how information of relevance to the organism would get to these quantum gates. Moreover, how would it be kept coherent across the milli- and centimeters separating individual neurons when synaptic and spiking processes, the primary means of neuronal communication on the perceptual timescale, destroy quantum information?

It is far more likely that the material basis of consciousness can be understood within a purely neurobiological framework, without invoking any quantum-mechanical deus ex machina. (Koch, C., 2006).

Consciousness
How do these various theories relate to consciousness? Randomness can be, at least partially, an escape from determinism. If every neuron firing were physically determined then there is no way that we as as ‘free agent’ could have chosen differently from how we did choose. This breaks a mandate of ‘free will’: we are free to have chosen differently from how we did choose. However, going too far toward randomness would break the other mandate of ‘free will’: our actions belong to us and reflect who we are (and that our actions are not simply random). A middle ground would surprisingly satisfy both of these criteria and allow a free will that is both based on our past experiences but is not tied down to them deterministically. If the system is probabilistic, then at any point we can say both, “I could have done differently,” and “I chose that way based on my past experiences, based on who I am.” At least semantically this fulfills the requirements of free will. Additionally, it is hard to imagine what third rule would invalidate this solution and would at the same time define the concept of free will in such a way as to keep the common intuition of what it is. Wegner in “The Illusion of Conscious Will” poses a thought experiment of inventing a Free Willer – an organ that makes free will choices. Such an instrument cannot ignore past experiences as that would be meaningless, and it cannot be purely random as that is equally meaningless. How do the various sources and types of randomness affect the free will problem?

AI randomness is an example of how randomness is useful purely computationally. AI algorithms attempt, at least in part, to make sense of a complex uncertain world and to make internal models of it and for this they need randomness. This does not imply that the human brain requires randomness in the same way however.

The probabilistic nature of neuronal firing and the noise of oscillation appears very promising however. Not only is a neuron not guaranteed to fire when presented with some stimuli, but it may also fire randomly when presented with stimuli that should be too weak. This creates an instability in the system allowing alternative solutions and unpredictable effects. Rodolfo Llinas (2003) goes even further to claim that conscious experience is created by the temporal organization provided by oscillatory synchronization.

Quantum effects could provide a very interesting source of uncertainty in the brain, but unfortunately there is no current reason to think that that it does.

Conclusions
It appears from this summary of some of the primary randomness theories that indeed there are some sources of randomness in the brain. However, not all of these sources are useful for a discussion of consciousness. For instance, no solid proof exists for quantum effects in the brain. Brownian motion in the synapse is useful for diffusion but not specifically for volition or free will. However oscillation and pink noise provide an interesting systemic effect that should not be overlooked. If this noise is truly stochastic and unpredictable enough it provides a middle ground between the two opposites of randomness and determinism and allow us to feel that our decisions are our own.

References: Burns, B. D. (1968). The uncertain nervous system. London: Arnold.
Buzsáki, G. (2006). Rhythms of the brain. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Freeman, A., Libet, B., & Sutherland, K. (1999). The volitional brain :Towards a neuroscience of free will. Thorverton: Imprint Academic.

Freeman, W. J. (2000; 1999). How brains make up their minds. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hutcheon, B., & Yarom, Y. (2000). Resonance, oscillation and the intrinsic frequency preferences of neurons. Trends in Neurosciences, 23(5), 216-222. doi:DOI: 10.1016/S0166-2236(00)01547-2

Koch, C., & Hepp, K. (2006). Quantum mechanics in the brain. Nature, 440(7084), 611-611. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/440611a

Llinás, R. (2003). Consciousness and the thalamocortical loop. International Congress Series, 1250, 409-416. doi:DOI: 10.1016/S0531-5131(03)01067-7

Marguet, D., Lenne, P., Rigneault, H., & He, H. (2006). Dynamics in the plasma membrane: How to combine fluidity and order. The EMBO Journal, 25(15), 3446-3457. Retrieved fromhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.emboj.7601204

Nelson, E. (1967). Dynamical theories of brownian motion. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Osaka, N. (2003). Neural basis of consciousness. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Pub.

Penrose, R. (1989). The emperor’s new mind :Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Russell, S. J., & Norvig, P. (2003). Artificial intelligence :A modern approach (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall/Pearson Education.

Ventriglia, F., & Di Maio, V. (2002). Stochastic fluctuations of the synaptic function. Biosystems, 67(1-3), 287-294. doi:DOI: 10.1016/S0303-2647(02)00086-2

(Gunkless SolidWorks Design: Tim Tregubov, Spring 2010)

For the “flagship” engineering class my group, Divya Gunasekaran, Elizabeth Klinger, Alannah Linkhorn, Pavel Sotskov, and myself, designed and built a self-cleaning drain. It was a small device that would retrofit in your shower drain and was foot powered to help clear clogged drains. By the end of the course we had a working, tested prototype.

Working Prototype

My goals for the class on the outset were: to learn some machining and SolidWorks — basically an engineering experience outside of electronics and computer engineering. That happened, along with some fun design stuff and a lot of report writing and gantt charting.

My contributions to the project were:

• SolidWorks design
• rapid prototyping (Object Eden)
• some lathe and milling machining work

Here is our final presentation

Some of my initial brainstorming sketches:

Annotated SolidWorks concept:

SolidWorks Templates for milling:

Rapid prototype pieces:

The final machined prototype:

The DLPFC
With the onset of modern neuroscience a common question often discussed is: where in the brain are self-regulation, executive control, free will, volition, selection, short-term memory, attention, planning, and overall consciousness located and by what neurological processes do they occur. The prime brain areas that is thought to be responsible are the frontal lobes. However a problem is presented when studying this area in humans: comparison to monkey’s brains has been difficult as the PFC, prefrontal cortex, is structured somewhat differently (Petrides, M., Pandya, D.N., 1999 and Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 21) and thus comparisons can be complicated, and invasive techniques are largely limited to non-humans. Lesion studies have sometimes led to seemingly contradicting results that are hotly debated. However researchers agree that the prefrontal cortex as a whole is the essential area responsible for higher behavioral functions. One of the essential brain areas associated with these psychological processes is the DLPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This area appears to be critical for working memory, planning, selective attention, temporal integration and volition.

Location and Structure
The DLPFC is located in the middle frontal gyrus and is typically defined cytoarchitectonicaly as Brodmann areas 46 and 9 (Berntson, G. G., & Cacioppo, J. T., 2009, pg. 586). BA8 is also sometimes considered the posterior DLPFC or simply adjacent to it (Miller, Earl K., Cohen, Jonathan D., 2001, pg. 169). The DLPFC is one of the last areas in humans to develop and myelinate as the brain myelinates back to front (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 15).

Connections

A critical aspect of the DLPFC is that it is extraordinarily interconnected with other brain areas and is the most connected of all the PFC areas. It is connected to sensory and motor cortexes as well as interconnected with other PFC areas.

Sensory Cortex Connections
BA46 and BA9 have connections to the visual, somatosensory and auditory projections via the occipital, parietal and temporal cortices. Both areas are also connected to the multimodal rostral superior temporal sulcus with neurons responding to multi-sensory inputs. (Miller, Earl K., Cohen, Jonathan D., 2001). The posterior parietal cortex in particular plays a large role in that it is both a mutli-modal area and is related to spatial working memory, attention. It has also been implicated in having a role in intention (Libet et al, 1999).

Motor Cortex Connections
BA46 is particularly connected to pre-motor areas; it has connections to the SMA, the pSMA, the rostral cingulate, the lateral frontal pre-motor cortex and to the cerebellum and superior colliculus ( Miller, E. K., Cohen, J. D., 2001. pg. 175). BA46 also sends projections to the BA8 frontal eye fields and indirectly receives inputs, along with the all of the prefrontal cortex, from the basal ganglia (pg. 175).

Prefrontal Interconnections
All of the prefrontal areas are interconnected to a large degree. BA46 and BA9 are both connected to the orbital and medial prefrontal areas (BA 10, 11,13,14) as well as to each other. BA9 is connected to the ventrolateral areas (BA 12,45). BA8 connects to BA46. These interconnections not only allow indirect communication to other systems that are connected to other prefrontal areas (such as the limbic system through the medial PFC areas), but also provides a way for disperse systems to be indirectly wired together through this central area. The convergence of cortico-cortical pathways suggests that part of the DLPFC’s operation is as a cross-modal area of association (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 34).

Experimental Connections
An experiment that supports this prefrontal interconnectedness theory (Tomita et al, 2001) studied top-down communication from the prefrontal cortex to the inferior temporal cortex (which has been shown to store long-term visual memories (Miyashita, Y., 1993)). The inferior temporal cortex receives visual input contra-laterally from the occipital lobe and the two sides are sub- cortically connected. In this experiment two monkeys were given split visual stimuli and were trained to associate certain cues with categories of stimuli. Then the connection between the inferior temporal cortices was severed – to theoretically prevent a cue presented to the ipsilateral side (the side that did not see the choice) from activating a category recall on the contralateral side. The bottom-up condition was when both the cue and the choice were offered to the same contralateral vision field, and the top-down condition was when the cue was offered on the ipsilateral side while the choice was offered on the contralateral side. The results, measured via single neuron recordings, showed that when the direct connection between the sides of the inferior temporal lobe was severed there was a delay in recall but that the ipsilateral side never-the-less showed correct activation. This experiment suggests that the visual information travelled through the prefrontal cortex connections. To confirm this finding the connections to the prefrontal cortex from the inferior temporal cortex lobes were severed and only then did the monkeys fail the task.

Functionality
Given the strong interconnectedness of all the prefrontal areas, it is no surprise that a compartmentalization of each cytoarchitectonic area would be an oversimplification (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 6). All these areas work together to achieve its various executive functions. However, these areas do have discernable specializations and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in particular has a number of fortes including basic working memory, cross- temporal/modal integration, temporal ordering, planning, acting and rule encoding, selective attention, will and volition.

Working Memory
It is commonly agreed that the lateral prefrontal cortex plays a large role in working memory (Curtis, C. E, D’Esposito, M., 2004). However, precisely how it works and what role the DLPFC plays in it is disputed. Special types of neurons called memory neurons are certainly necessary if not sufficient. Memory neurons are neurons that in a delay task appear to activate during the delay period between a presentation and a recall of a stimuli. Some activate during the stimulus, others right after, and even others stay active for a while. The DLPFC has more memory neurons than any other prefrontal area (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 247). As a side note, the Frontal Eye Fields – area 8 – contains memory cells that are particularly attuned for eye saccades to cued locations, whereas in areas 46 and 9 there is some evidence for memory neuron specialization toward spatial tasks. There are however memory neurons in many other areas of the brain, including the thalamus, inferotemporal cortex and basal ganglia, but those memory neurons appear to be specialized toward the sensory task of the particular area, whereas in the prefrontal cortex the memory neurons are more multi-modal. The simple existence of memory neurons is not enough to show the DLPFC’s role in working memory.

Working memory as a function of the DLPFC has been primarily shown via delay tasks with either lesion patients or appropriately trained animals with ablations/lesions or reversible lesions via cooling. Commonly a delay task will begin with the representation of a cue. The cue informs the participant about a choice that is to be made later (usually the location of a salient item such as food). Then the cue is covered up for some amount of time: the delay period. Following this a choice is presented – the correct choice being informed by the cue presented prior to the delay. In many studies of animals, when the delay is non-existent or very short, the DLPFC lesioned animals perform normally, but as the delay increases so success at the task drops (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 144). Similar tasks however that do not have any spatial element have shown no difference in some experiments.

These lesion studies lead to the theory that the DLPFC is particularly important for spatial working memory. However there remain questions as to what role the DLPFC plays in working memory. The interconnectedness of the DLPFC plays a vital role in its working memory functionality. A study of the interaction of the DLPFC and other brain areas (Fuster, J. M., Bauer, R. H., & Jervey, J. P., 1985) shows working memory to be more than a few memory neurons but a distributed representational network encompassing many brain areas. In particular it reveals the DLPFC as a top-down moderator of “online” working memory tasks. The study used a Peltier chip to cool down the DLPFC and the inferotemporal cortex in turn. Single neuron recording was used to record the activity of memory neurons sensitive to certain colors in the inferotemporal cortex. The monkeys were trained in a color match delay task. As they performed the task the color sensitive neurons in the inferotemporal cortex would activate on the working memory of the cue color. However, when the DLPFC was cooled the firing rate of the inferotemporal neurons related to the working memory of the task would attenuate and the animal, additionally, would not be able to perform the task. This suggests a modulation effect from the DLPFC to the inferotemporal cortex, where the sensory memory for this particular task was represented, at least in part. This experiment was also performed in reverse: the inferotemporal cortex cooled and the DLPFC activity measured during the same delay task. The results were very similar: there was a modulation effect in addition to lowered task performance. Fuster makes the supposition that the model for working memory is that of,

“a frontal substrate of executive memory cooperating with other brain structures, cortical and subcortical, for the maintenance of working memory. The function of working memory would be distributed, much as its neural substrate, albeit under a degree of prefrontal executive – or ‘top-down’ –control.” (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 251)

Reverberating reentry is the method by which these cortico-cortical/cortico- subcortical memory loops are maintained neurologically (pg. 252). Projections to and from posterior sensory cortices and the DLPFC reverberate back and forth, each moderating and resubmitting the memory back into the loop as needed. The theory outlined by Fuster (pg. 296) is that the DLPFC is involved in the selection and maintenance of working memory and that the representational aspect of any particular memory requires the brain areas which are specialized to the sensory features of that memory.

There have been many PET and fMRI studies that have localized spatial working memory to the DLPFC especially in monkeys, however in human studies not only has it been harder to pinpoint some studies seem to suggest that the DLPF’s role is quite more elaborate and involved.

Cross-Temporal Integration
It has already been demonstrated that the DLPFC has a particular importance in temporal integration. Simple recognition tasks without a delay do not appear to trigger the DLPFC. Additionally, as already mentioned, the greater the delay the more a DLPFC lesion causes impairment. Several studies show DLPFC lesioned monkeys

“deficient at tasks in which temporal frequency, temporal order, or temporal sequence is of the essence. [..] The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex seems most important for the mediation of the cross-temporal contingencies, as delay tasks require” (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 145).

This is not surprising as working memory is an essential component of temporally organizing cognition and behavior.

Cross-Modal Integration 
Much of the DLPFC’s functionality can be attributed to how interconnected it is. This interconnectedness however not only enables cross-temporal integration but also cross-modal integration – neurons that receive projections from multiple sensory areas are the mechanism behind this.

Fuster demonstrated cross-modal integration with a single neuron recording study performed on monkeys (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 226). The monkeys were trained to associate an auditory tone with a particular visual stimuli – in this case a color. The experiment first presented the animal with the auditory cue and then after a delay presented two colors buttons – the animal would need to choose the correct one that corresponded with the learned association. Single cell neurons were recorded in the DLPFC that responded both to the auditory cue and to the color. Thus the sensory rule for the experimental condition was encoded in a multi-modal association. This is a precursor to the rule encoding functionality that the DLPFC is implicated in as well.

Planning, Acting and Rule Encoding
The DLPFC is essential to the “ability to maintain any memory, recent or remote, in the active state for the prospective performance of a goal-directed act” (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 146). Performance of a goal directed act requires planning for the act and acting on in the plan. Related to this is the ability to encode the rules that may be required for the task. The beginnings of rule encoding are in the cross-modal associative abilities of the DLPFC.

A recent study showed that even abstract mathematical rules can be encoded in the DLPFC (Bongard, S., & Nieder, A., 2010). The monkeys were trained to distinguish numerosities with greater and less than rules. The stimuli were varied and so the monkeys were unable to build concrete associative relations between specific numbers. Using single cell recordings the study found that there were neurons that fired specifically when a rule-indicating cue appeared and during the application of that specific rule. The suggestion here is not that numerosity itself is encoded in the DLPFC rather only the selection of choosing greater or less than as rules for executive control. Numerosity itself is a function of the posterior parietal cortex. It is also important to note that the DLPFC abstracts rules only when the task surpasses some basic difficulty.

White and Wise in a 1999 study showed that DLPFC neurons were involved in rules involving both spatial and non-spatial cues with specific eye movements and hand gestures. As in many of these sorts of studies, using single cell recording, they found a significant number of neurons that were selective for changing rules and applying them.

Planning is a task that is commonly associated with the prefrontal cortex in general, but also with the DLPC in particular. A study by Morris et al in 1993 showed DLPFC activation during the tower of london task. The tower of london is a task design to test logical planning ability and is similar to the towers of hanoi puzzle. A common lay association with planning is internal silent speech. A study by Ryding et al in 1996 showed DLPFC activation during silent counting but not during counting aloud. The study attributes this activation to the attentional component of counting internally, although it is not obvious why there is a difference between the two in terms of attention. Slightly more modern theories of the DLPFC may attribute this activation to the selective goal of speaking internally or to the monitoring needs of the feedback loop given the lack of audible feedback.

Selective Attention and Monitoring
If the DLPFC helps to maintain goal related working memory, does it also participate in the selection and attentional aspects related to the goal as well? An fMRI study by D’Esposito et al in 1995 seems to indicate that this may be the case. The experiment consisted of two tasks, a spatial-rotation task and a semantic-judgement task. When performed singly neither task required working memory and thus did not show any DLPFC activation. However when the tasks were to be performed simultaneously (sequentially but rapidly) the DLPFC showed significant activation.

Hare et al (2009) showed that goal related decisions require DLPFC modulation of a value signal provided/computed by the VMPFC. DLPFC activity increased in subjects during successful self-control trails involving choosing healthy over unhealthy-but-liked food. The experimenters suggest that this result helps confirm the theory that the DLPFC acts via its connections to other brain areas to promote goal-oriented behavior.

The DLPFC has also been shown to be activated when a task requires higher levels of monitoring. The silent counting experiment by Ryding shows this to some degree. Another set of tasks that shows DLPFC involvement are self- ordered tasks. In these tasks the subject is shown a set of stimuli and then is asked self-order them. This requires the subject to keep the memory of which items have been selected and which have not been selected yet in working memory and requires them to monitor those memories as they choose objects. Petrides showed that self-ordered tasks involved DLPFC activation while externally-ordered tasks did not (2000). Additionally he showed that the more items were involved in the task the higher the activation regardless of whether the stimuli were spatial or not. This result seems to indicate that monitoring is an additional feature of the DLPFC.

Will and Volition
Given the DLPFC’s role in so many aspects of “executive control” perhaps it also has a role in the voluntary choice of actions that is so tightly associated with the concept of consciousness.

“Damage in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in humans leads to a lack of spontaneous activity, distractibility by environmental cues, and the repetitive, stereotypic use of inappropriate behavioral responses (perseveration). These phenomena may indicate an inability to choose or initiate the correct course of action.” (Freeman, A., Libet, B., & Sutherland, K., 1999 pg. 16).

Frith defines the actual act of such choosing as “a deliberate selection [that] is subjectively experienced as willed and occurs when we have a choice of action. [These] spontaneous or self-generated actions are not specified by an external trigger stimulus, but are internally driven.” (Frith et al, 1991). One of the main findings on volition and the DLPFC is his PET study of word generation and finger movements.

The word generation experiment consists of 3 conditions: in the first the subject hears a list of random words and repeats each word. In the second the subject hears words that have unambiguous opposites and must say out loud the opposite words. The final third condition the subject hears the word “next” and must choose a word that starts with a preset letter. The idea is that the first two conditions are “externally specified” (Frith et al, 1991); the word to repeat is unambiguous and no choice exists. In the third condition however the subject must pick a word. The PET scans showed no difference in rCBF between the first two “externally specified” conditions while the third condition showed increased left DLPFC rCBF.

The finger movement part of the experiment had similar results (although rCBF was increased bilaterally in the finger condition). The conditions were similar: in the first the subject had one of two fingers tapped and they had to raise that same finger in response, in the second they had to raise the opposite, and in the third free-willed condition they had to choose which finger to raise.

One problem with the word generation part of this experiment is that there is a small working memory component – that of keeping the already stated previous word in mind. However, a later study by Desmond et al in 1998, changed the condition to involve no working memory by simply giving the participant different word stems that required choice of completions on each trail. This study had similar results except with fMRI. Further studies by Libet and Jahanshahi showed that temporal choice about when to make the movement also activated the DLPFC (Freeman, A., Libet, B., & Sutherland, K., 1999 pg. 19).

However the DLPFC, as has been previously mentioned, does not act alone in any of this. In each of these tasks the DLPFC worked with other brain areas by virtue of its interconnectedness (Freeman, A., Libet, B., & Sutherland, K., 1999 pg. 20). The conclusion may be that the DLPFC “plays a role in the selection of action, [but] the performance of the action itself is facilitated by ‘lower’ motor regions, such as SMA and basal ganglia” (pg. 21). And furthermore, the “DLPFC seems to be involved in keeping possible action in mind before they are executed, and selecting which one will be performed” (pg. 27).

Disorders and Lesions
What role does the DLPFC play in human disorders? Lesions of the DLPFC contribute to a myriad of symptoms including: lack of drive and awareness (selective attention suppressed), visuospatial neglect (FEF damage), “frontal dynamic aphasia”: reduced verbal production quality, apathy and “dysexecutive syndrome” leading to being “incapacitated in initiating spontaneous and deliberate action” (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 198). Working memory deficits contribute to a myriad of failures upstream including in action selection, temporal integration, and goal oriented planning. The DLPFC is also implicated in several neurological disorders.

Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is commonly marked by such symptoms as poor speech, temporal integration problems, hallucinations and lack of volitional control. A study by Weinberger et al in 1986 showed via a PET scan study that there was a lack of appropriate increase in DLPFC activity in schizophrenia patients while performing the Wisconsin card sorting task, which has been shown many times to elicit DLPFC activation. This study was later expanded on in 2002 by Meyer- Lindenberg et al to not only using PET to study rCBF during the WCST but also presynaptic dopamine. Their study showed an inverse correlation with reduced DLPFC activation and increased striatal 6-FD uptake, leading to the conclusion that dopaminergic transmission dysfunction in schizophrenia may be DLPFC related. Since schizophrenia is characterized by, “the failure to construct logically coherent temporal configurations (gestalts) of thought – and consequently of speech and behavior” (Fuster, J. M., 2008. pg. 313) – that precisely implicates the DLPFC in terms of working memory and temporal integration problems.

Conclusions
A summary of DLPFC working memory involvement is provided by D’Esposito et al:

When the amount of to-be-remembered information presented at the beginning of a delayed-response trial approaches or exceeds short-term memory capacity […], dorsolateral PFC is preferentially engaged. Dorsolateral PFC-supported processes may facilitate the efficient encoding of information. During the subsequent delay interval, when no information is accessible to the subject, both ventro- and dorsolateral PFC are recruited. If manipulation of this information is additionally required during the delay period, dorsolateral PFC is recruited to an additional extent. Upon the presentation of the probe stimulus, when a subject is required to make a response based on what was presented at the beginning of the trial, dorsolateral PFC is again engaged, presumably as the subject scans the information that was retained across the trial and chooses an appropriate motor response. […] Together, the results of these studies highlight the temporal dynamics of PFC function during working memory task performance. (2000)

However it is obvious from the DLPFC’s involvement in selection and planning and volition that its function cannot be limited to only working memory. Selective attention is at the most basic level attention to internal representations. These internal representations are maintained by working memory and thus these two are closely related. Additionally planning involves attention to future possibilities, what Ingvar (1985) called “memory of the future”, and is thus also closely related to working memory. It appears that although there is no cohesive theory for the DLPFC, a general sense could be that all things DLPFC are related to temporal integration across multiple sensory modes. The interconnectedness of the DLPFC is its defining characteristic.

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In positive psychology the term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to describe this is “flow”. In his seminal work on flow, Csikszentmihalyi uses various experiential self-report methods to study flow, and he has found some key techniques that can help in achieving this state. However, he does not mention the biological mechanisms behind flow. Examining this connection leads to some interesting findings. If the brain functions during a state of flow include the brain’s attention pathways, then this likely implicates dopamine as one of the brain chemicals through which flow is experienced. Dopamine is in part not only responsible for regulating attention but is also the primary neurotransmitter of reward. Is flow then a state of constant dopamine rush–a stream of attention and reward causing a physical high? This would explain the addictive nature of flow. Additionally we could then draw further powerful conclusions about the utility of flow in our lives. Specifically a relationship between flow and dopamine suggests further directions of research relating flow to Ritalin and education. There are thus three main topics to address in attempting to make a case that more research into this area would be indispensable:

1. What are the cognitive pathways involved in flow?
2. Is dopamine the cause of flow?
3. Is education a practical application for flow theory? Understanding how flow happens and how it relates to attention and reward can be potentially useful in developing new techniques for learning and also can have broader significance such as in finding non-drug based treatments for attention disorders.

What are the cognitive pathways involved in flow?
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) defines flow as “an intrinsically motivated, task- focused state characterized by full concentration, a change in the awareness of time (e.g., time passing quickly), feelings of clarity and control, a merging of action and awareness, and a lack of self-consciousness”. He claims that there are eight contributing factors to this feeling (p.49):

1.  A challenging activity which requires skills
2.  The ability to concentrate on the task
3. The task has clear goals
4. There is immediate feedback
5. There is deep involvement in the task
6. There is a perception of control
7.  Sense of self disappears
8. Sense of time is altered The experience of these is so rewarding that people spend their lives in search of activities that can cause it. Csikszentmihlyi studies flow using a survey technique he invented called ESM (experiential sampling method). Over the course of his experiments he has given thousands of participants beepers that go off at random times during the day. The participants then record what they are doing and answer a few questions about how they feel. He found that the conditions necessary for a task to induce flow are that the task is challenging but that the agent has the requisite skills to undertake it, and that as the agent performs the task it remains interesting and provides feedback so that the agent can experience reward. If the task is too difficult the agent would feel stressed or anxious and if the task is too easy it would lead to boredom.

Given this definition of flow an analysis can be made of the cognitive tasks involved. Most of the eight factors are either specific to the domain of the task (such as the skills required) or are feelings evoked during the activity. However, two are directly related to a cognitive ability. The ability to concentrate on the task and to be deeply involved in it requires attention.

William James (1890) gives us the most widely used definition of attention:

It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit [absentmindedness] in German. (pg. 403)

This definition, in and of itself, is remarkably similar to that of flow. Flow in part requires a singular type of attention. If all the right circumstances are present and attention is engaged then flow happens. Neuroimaging has shown that attention as a cognitive system is spread through several brain areas, however higher level attention, also called executive control (not simply visual attention), is located primarily in the frontal cortex (Miller, E. K., Cohen, J. D., 2001). Executive control is the system responsible for planning, initiating behavior, inhibiting inappropriate responses, abstract thinking, and attentional selection (Goswami, U., 2008). To be able to focus on something the mind needs to be able to ignore irrelevant stimuli. During flow the mind also needs to be able to initiate actions and plan the next move. The effects of time altering and sense of self that Csikszentmihalyi mentions are both correlated to this part of the brain as well.

Is dopamine the cause of flow?
It has been shown that the neurotransmitter dopamine is part of the attention regulation system (Nieoullon, A. 2002). Dopamine is one of the primary mechanisms in the brain’s reward circuit and takes part in the inhibitory part of executive control (pg. 63). Dopaminergic system deficiencies are often cited as causing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and the primary treatment for ADHD is via drugs such as Ritalin (pg. 57). Ritalin is an amphetamine derivative and is functionally similar to cocaine (Genetic Science Learning Center, 2010). Its primary method of action is increasing the levels of dopamine available in the brain. The principal effect of extra dopamine in the brain is increased energy and improved attention. However, Ritalin is often abused not only for the attention enhancing properties but also for the cocaine like euphoria that can occur at higher doses. Conversely drugs that treat schizophrenia are dopamine antagonists that by reducing the available dopamine in the brain also reduce motivation and attention (pg. 72) and even in some cases prevent all feelings of pleasure (anhedonia) (Surguladze, S. et all 2002 pg. 451).

There is evidence that dopamine is essential to the mechanisms of creativity, ideation, and learning. The dopamine pathway increases both arousal and goal- directedness and at the same time decreases inhibition and suppresses competing behaviors (Flaherty, A. W., 2005. pg. 149). To confirm the connection between dopamine and attention, one particular study used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning – dopamine receptors were tagged with radio isotopes and the subjects were asked to perform working memory and sustained attention tasks. The scans then showed if dopamine receptors were activated during the tasks and in which brain areas (Aalto, S., Bruck, A., Laine,M., Någren, K., Rinne, J. O., 2005). One of the brain mechanisms involved in all of this is a brain circuit that senses expected and unexpected rewards and then signals (via dopamine) that we should learn from them (Arias- Carrión, O.; Pöppel, E. 2007, pg. 486). This system is responsible for not only gambling addictions but also for much of our unconscious goal-directed motivation (pg. 484). For instance the dopamine reward and attention circuit has also been shown to be integral in game playing (Koepp,M.J. et al. 1998).

It would be an oversimplification to say that dopamine alone was responsible for all the feelings associated with flow. It is, however, fair to say that it is strongly implicated given its crucial role in attention regulation, reward and learning. This would suggest that flow is really those moments when the brain is in a highly attentive state, when it is being rewarded constantly for each action, and when it is learning at each of those reward moments. What Csikszentmihalyi is offering in his book is a methodology for creating the right circumstances to help facilitate this continuous cycle of expectation/reward/learning that is suggested by the dopamine connection.

Is education a practical application for flow theory?
It is no wonder given the power of flow that Csikszentmihalyi has also turned his attention to studying flow in educational settings. One of the essential parts of flow is that the activity is autotelic, that is has intrinsic motivation in and of itself (Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1990, pg. 67). Usually we start an activity because of an external goal, however as we continue that activity there is the possibility of starting to enjoy it for its own sake. That is one of the preconditions for flow and it is also evident in the learning patterns of toddlers – for instance a child after just starting to read will read everything in sight (pg. 130). However in the typical school system flow is hindered by many factors: the distractions of the classroom, the uneven skill level of the class, the anxiety inducing difficulty of certain subjects and the boring simplicity of others. Therein lies the difficulty of the educational system, how to teach unwilling unmotivated students material that is either too hard or too easy in a setting that is distracting.

Csikszentmihalyi proposes that the techniques of flow be used. His first proposal is that students be given the initial extrinsic motivation by example. Teachers who enjoy what they do most often have students who also want that same enjoyment (pg. 133). Given a positive model, the next step is to match the difficulty of the material with the abilities of the students. In a large classroom this is a challenge that does not have a ready solution. Finally, feedback needs to be immediate and learning tasks organized in attainable steps (pg. 131). Eric Jensen (1995) has this message for teachers:

Teaching in a way that encourages students to reach the flow state may be one of the most important roles you have. In this state, learners are highly internally motivated, and learning becomes enjoyable. Help learners reach flow by setting up favorable conditions for it. […] learning will likely be stifled by a rigid structure. Keep challenge high but stress low. Let learners set the pace while you provide the support. Have them design a complex project that is personally relevant, and then vary the resources to keep the task appropriate to their ability levels. Make it exciting; use teams, simulations, technology, and deadlines while maintaining the appropriate levels of guidance […] (pg. 137).

Hektner and Csikszentmihalyi (1996) say that “in order to maintain the enjoyment of flow, people must continually engage in new challenges to match their increasing skills, and they must perfect their skills to meet the challenges” (p. 4). Csikszentmihalyi then proposes that some of the biggest dangers to flow are an overemphasis on rules, evaluation, focus on competition and the ensuing self-consciousness that arises from that (Csikszentmihalyi, M., 1990, pg. 137). These unfortunately are staples in many educational systems. Jensen (1995) goes so far as to call these methods brain antagonistic in his practical book on brain-based teaching (pg. xiii).

It is at this point that dopamine enters the picture. As schools struggle with students’ attentional problems, pharmaceutical companies and modern psychiatry have provided the answer in the form of dopamine increasing drugs. In 2005, 29 million prescriptions for Ritalin and related drugs were written, nearly 80 percent of them for children (Pettus, A., 2006). Regardless of whether ADHD medications are over-prescribed or not, it is obvious that a problem exists.

There have been followup studies into flow and learning (Egbert, J., 2003) showing that flow can exist in classroom settings and that it can be used to achieve higher rates of self reported interest and energy (Rathunde, K., Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2005). In a comparison study of learning states in traditional versus Montessori schools, Csikszentmihalyi found that optimal experience (a term used to describe a positive, flow-inducing, learning state) leads to more undivided interest in the material by the students (pg. 506). A case may thus be made that flow techniques should be further studied not only in the context of enhancing the school experience, but that innovative methodology may be used to alleviate some of the need for amphetamines in schools.

In 1933, John Dewey suggested that the best state of mind for learning is one that is “playful and serious at the same time” (p. 286). Today one can certainly imagine an educational setting where: the material is custom tailored to each student’s ability level, the teacher enjoys the material, and in which the student, excited to learn, can engage with the material fully to the point of losing track of time. In a traditional classroom this still seems difficult to accomplish, even with all the techniques that Csikszentmihalyi (2005) and Jensen (1995) mention. However there is no technological barrier to design a system in which students learn through a technology (in a system that automatically adjusts for difficulty like the one employed by the GRE test) such that their minds can be optimally activated. Brain antagonistic models of learning have shown themselves to be problematic at best and in the search for a new methodology perhaps flow theory can provide some insight into the problem of attention and motivation in students.

The correlation between flow and dopamine shows us an area ready for further exploration. If the techniques of flow elicit a type of dopamine high, then studying these methods may provide answers to attentional disorders. This can also drive the realization that the mechanisms behind creative passion are similar to the mechanisms of cocaine addiction, and that can perhaps help find answers to what pushes people toward one or the other or both. Learning can and should be joyful (Wolk, S., 2008) and addicting, flow and dopamine shows us a way to make it so.

References:

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I remember the moment when first I became fully conscious of my eternal meaninglessness – the horror I felt. With time I came to understand that my previous life, filled with hopes and dreams, was as absurd as my rock and mountain world. I lied to myself then in order to avoid becoming conscious of the true nature of existence. Now I have no such luxury, the stark landscape, unchanging except through my actions, reminds me continually of the futility of my labor.

Mercury says that Camus once wrote about me, “His fate belongs to him.”¹ He calls me an “absurd hero.”²  I now accept this role. My existence is an analogy for the futility of rebellion – there is no escape from the absurd. I have no hope of completion and no hope of a purpose. Hope would be a lie – I can not console myself with lies. In my acknowledgment of my own ridiculousness I find freedom. I am free to experience, to find joy within myself or to not, and I am free to create my own happiness, even while I am not free from the binds of my curse.

Another mortal writes, “Because there is no absolute certainty to which to turn, each person must discover ultimate purpose on his or her own.”³ Is my revolt in spite of meaninglessness my purpose? More often than not I get so caught up in the pure action of my task, nothing else about my condition matters. However, I have accepted that although the task is itself futile, I am free to enjoy it. The feeling of my body straining against the massive weight, navigating the treacherous terrain, my ragged breath, the pulsing of my immortal heart, these things I look forward to. This world is my creation. By my actions I define it. It is my flesh and blood and thought, and thus my purpose.

I listen to my breathing. I start my descent down my beloved hated mountain. My parting thought at Camus is this: He should not use me as an example of an “absurd hero,” as by that action he gives my existence semblance of meaning. He takes away my freedom to pursue my own meaning. Is his “absurdity” the lack of knowledge of the bigger context or the knowledge that any bigger context is meaningless? If the context of my existence is a persistent analogy for absurdity then it might cease itself to be absurd. Perhaps Camus was simply ignorant of the larger context of his existence as a tiny thread in the cloth of existence, locally appearing insignificant but with ripples of continuity that pervade everything.

Camus maintains that it is an ascesis to be an absurd creator. This I can understand. I lean into my burden, striving for the purpose of striving or for the purpose of illustration, either way happy to be reunited with my boulder.

notes

1 Camus, A. (1964). The myth of Sisyphus,and other essays. New York: A.A. Knopf. (pg. 123)

2 Ibid. (pg. 120)

3 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991; 1990). Flow :The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperPerennial. (pg. 225)

FRAMBERG MAGAZINE INTERVIEW (Issue: March, 2018)
Today we interview Tim Tregubov,  one of the visionaries behind a small company that might just be changing the way we interact with the world.  C.com is responsible for MultiPhen technology and the company is developing promising new applications that will further integrate adaptive intelligent systems with the human system.  The company is being heralded as a forerunner of a new type of business model which they are calling engaged activism.   We will find out what makes him tick, what C.com is all about and how it originated.

Framberg: So you are one of the founders of C.com? 

Tim: Yep. Although it wasn’t like we just had a great brainstorming session and out popped a company.  In fact I’d say c.com isn’t a company at all, and it is my hope that it never will be!

It started as just a group of friends pulling allnighters in a computer lab at college.   We made a good team and had a blast doing it.  Then we all graduated and got “real” jobs.  We ended up working cold rainy nights sitting in front of computers in cubicles doing other peoples’ bidding.  The good times were just a memory.  Many years later, we’d get laid-off from our jobs at the big corporations to be replaced by new dream-filled youth – youth just as ready as we were to give up their dreams, creativity and energy in exchange for job security.

Framberg:  So what happened, that’s not the end of the story right?

Tim: Not at all.  In fact, that never happened!  If it had happened, c.com never would have even been a twinkle in our eyes. I say this as a warning to anybody who has had an idea but wants to put it off in favor of making some money first.  Don’t put the golden handcuffs on, rather grab your friends, grab your idea and sprint out onto the playing field.  If there is one time in your life when you should do this it is now, not later.

So what really happened was that we kept trying ideas.  My ideas were always a bit grandiose and self involved but they were cute.  I have always been an excitable person and tend to dive right into an idea.  Not being a great swimmer I tend to cannonball.  This sets off lots of waves and people get wet. Diving right into this analogy – this would whet their appetite. Sometimes one of the ideas would spin off an idea wave that we could surf.  This is not to say all the ideas were mine – I’m going to get beat up back at the office for this.

Framberg: Why do you say that c.com isn’t a company? What is it?

Tim: c.com is really more of a family.  If you prefer the word company we insist on the older interpretation of the word – the theater company – the company of companionship.  The organizational structure of c.com is less of an ‘inc’ and more of a fellowship.  This sort of company is based around the passion of the founders.  There are no employees per se, everybody is an owner. There is no boss.  We only work on projects we really love. We don’t compromise our projects for investors or clients but work for the love of the thing rather than for the monetizing of it.  From the beginning we knew we didn’t want to be VC controlled vaporware. What is our mission?  Simple. Create.

Framberg:  Just to create?  Isn’t the company involved in certain particular areas?

Tim:  It isn’t “just”!   We create because it is imperative.  Your readers have perhaps heard of the existential maxim “existence precedes essence.”  We have a duty to create the world as we believe it should be. So it isn’t just lighthearted play. I believe strongly that once we realize that we are completely responsible for the world, and that by each of our actions we define the world, in part, according to our wishes – then it becomes clear that our actions do not simply exist in a void and certainly are not just harmless. Quite the contrary.  In fact, every action has meaning and at c.com we strive toward having a socially positive impact on the world.  Every project we undertake has a socially positive foundation.  Whether it is a new educational toy for improving math skills in preschoolers or a social network to promote micro-philanthropy for schools in Ghana, all our projects at their core try to focus on improving the human condition.

Framberg:  That is quite a philosophical underpinning for a company! Is this what you call engaged activism? Those sound like lofty ideals, but how do you manage in practice?

Tim: Yeah, this is definitely a part of engaged activism.  When we started we had two main goals. One was to do work which we personally found engaging.  In the lab we would pull allnighters not because we had to but because we were in the zone. We were fully “into” our work. We also enjoyed each others’ company.  So our primary motivation was “engaging work with cool people.”

Our second tenet was that our work had to be meaningful.  We wanted to contribute to society and be able to believe in what we were striving toward. So our secondary motivation was “socially positive projects that we all could believe in.”  Most importantly we didn’t want to simply donate some part of our profits to good causes, we actually wanted our projects to be good causes themselves!  If you are working with people you like, on a project you believe in, and the work itself is rewarding then you are addicted and fulfilled and happy.

Framberg: What about creature comforts though?  What about money?

Tim:  When we started we all worked for free.  We lived in our parents’ basements or at our friends’ houses.  We worked nights and we barely scraped by.  We were happy.  I believe that the usual things people work toward, money/fame/success/comfort, can all be side effects of impassioned work.  If we loved what we did and put that love into our work then this would be recognized and appreciated.  This was all secondary to the actual fulfillment of the work itself.

Framberg:  Are you happier now that you have achieved some success?

Tim:  I wouldn’t say that the success has any bearing on my happiness.  I was happy homeless and I am happy now.  We have cooler toys in the office though now, and with the added success we can create better more interesting things.

Framberg:  Homeless?  Would you like to share that story?

Tim:  [Laughs] In college one summer I lived in a van.  It was my parents’ van and I pimped it out so I wasn’t exactly being homeless.  I was however a bit persecuted by the campus police and had to park discreetly at night.  Some nights I spent in the Walmart parking lot. I showered at the computer science building, so it was really actually rather comfortable.

Framberg:  So tell us more about yourself.  When you are not living in a van what do you do in your free time?

Tim:  Free time?  Mostly I hang out at the studio.  That is what we call the office. I also hike a lot and spend time with the family.  I have an 8 month old daughter, Anki, we hang out at the studio together all the time.  She is a genius in the making I can tell.  Her favorite toy right now is this really expensive prototype “light goop”.  It glows and changes color depending on the shape it is in.  It is not yet practical to mass produce, but she loves being the only one in the world with one.

Framberg: Is that a MultiPhen technology?

Tim:  All of our tech is MultiPhen these days.

Framberg:  What is MultiPhen exactly?

Tim:  We don’t rightly know ourselves.  Actually, it is simply a buzzword I came up with to call our technology.  We were making things that interacted at multiple levels and exhibits multiple phenomenons?   MultiPhen simply sounded cool.   People love buzzwords.

Framberg:  We suspected that was the case all along.  It sounds like you are a bit of a free thinker.  Have you always been a rebel?  Did that help you get to where you are?

Tim:  I wouldn’t say I am a rebel.  [Laughs] I have not had a traditional path though.  My life used to be controlled by fear.  It made me not take the traditional path to college when I should have, instead I tried to start my own web design business after high school and failed.  Then I worked as a programmer for a short while and then as a sysadmin at the college where I eventually started taking classes, and even more eventually graduated from.  That experience changed me quite a bit, I became braver and started moving through life faster.  Went to grad school right after that and started c.com.

I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes.  It is unfortunate that wisdom cannot be taught but must be learned from experience.  I know that my strange background has helped make me who I am and I do not regret it.  I only wish that I had gained the wisdom of how to be braver and happier earlier.  I still like to do things a bit differently, but now it is a choice and partially an affectation – I am much less subject to the anxieties that plagued me when I was younger. This path of discovery, though, made me open to learning and exploring and playing at points in my life when other people were concentrating on other things.  I think I was fairly self-restricted as a teen, more so than is normal, but as the years went by I became more internally free and rediscovered that play and energy of childhood.  A lot of what I have achieved has been due to this process of discovery.

Framberg: What is in store in the future for you personally?

Tim:  That is a good question.  More of the same!  In college I took a class that brought up the question of happiness and one thing that we did in the class was identify our main strengths.  My top five strengths were creativity, curiosity, love of learning, energy and appreciation of beauty.  As long as I am able to express my strengths and believe that I am making a positive contribution to the world, then I am happy.   My family, my friends and c.com have enabled me to live the good life so far.  I hope I am up for the challenge of raising my daughter and future little c.com’ers.  That is my next big life challenge.

When I look back on moments when I have been happy I find that they are often connected with actions. I would be happy going to the beach with people. I would be happy watching hulu by myself. I would be happy when people appreciate me or praise me at work. I would be happy hiking and I would be happy skiing. All of these moments of happiness involve action.

Skiing is one of those actions that makes me happy. The beauty of the winter landscape, the rush after a good run and the thrill of surviving a double black, these combine to force my frozen face muscles into a permanent grin. Having just come back from a weekend ski trip, both the physical happiness of skiing and the more emotional happiness of being with friends are still vivid in my mind.

The pleasure of skiing, according to my Intro to Psych class, is dopamine based: excess dopamine is generated by the opioid effect of the endorphins coursing through my body which are themselves released during strenuous activity. The neurotransmitter dopamine is responsible for reward and pleasure. This effect is physically addictive and is the primary mechanism behind drug addictions. When my body clicks into a rhythm of motion, when that rhythm is true and enables my skis to smoothly cut through the snow, then I can fly down the mountain and pull up to the lift grinning and panting like a madman. The feeling, if I can describe it, is the feeling of success, invincibility and wholeness; not just the wholeness of body and mind, but also of body with skis and with the mountain. This may sound hyperbolic but what is necessary for this feeling to happen is for my mind to trust my body, for my body to trust my skis, and for my skis to feel the snow and find a line that flows with it not against it. Skiers always talk about the elusive great run of the day, when suddenly it all clicks into place. Like gambling it is that rush of the great run that keeps them going back up the chair in the freezing cold over and over.

This is the same feeling that I experience when I get into the flow of coding or drawing or even having a stimulating conversation. Many people have written about the pleasure of flow² and I can attest that I crave this state above many other things in life. This feeling of warm excitement mingled with conviction opens the mind’s gates. I become smarter, better, faster and stronger when I am in this state. This kind of happiness begets more happiness and thus it is no wonder that it is so sought after. With enough happiness I feel invincible.

This weekend however was not only about skiing but about spending time with close friends. What surprised me was that we did not even ski much. In the past I have sometimes been accused of having frantic skiing syndrome. I always had to be at the mountain when the lifts opened and would bring lunch in my pocket so I could eat it on the lift and not have to stop. However, this time I was happy to lounge about with my friends over a long breakfast and to not even ski at all on Sunday. The common goal we had was to be with each other; it had somehow surpassed the external goals we had shared when we became friends in the lab originally. I was happy to simply spend time with them, playing board games I was terrible at and not feeling self-conscious when I did not score a single point in a game. Perhaps the common aspect between that physical happiness of flow and of hanging out with my friends was that in both cases the feeling of trust was strong enough to not have any reservations or feelings of self-consciousness. In Intro to Psych I learned that oxytocin is a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of attachment and trust. It also reduces activity in the amygdala and by this action reduces feelings of fear. This feeling of comfort without any fear is my holy grail. As with the physical happiness this is empowering. For me it seems that happiness is directly related to not feeling self-conscious. When I find that zone doing something challenging yet rewarding or am with people who accept me, then it is that I also feel happiness.

By this definition when I am unhappy the exact reverse is true. When I am failing at something or when I feel self-conscious, then it is that I feel unhappiness. I am most unhappy when I am afraid. I have recently realized that much of my life I have made decisions based on fear. Those moments when I succumb to fear are the worst moments in my life. Not only do I loathe myself for succumbing to the fear, but I also loathe myself as I try to justify it and attempt to reason that the decision was for the best. The feeling of unhappiness that ensues is overwhelming. There are many components to this unhappiness: regret, hopelessness, shame, helplessness and depression. At these moments my mind is a constricted knot of anxious thoughts. I feel physically ill and my insides feel like they mimic the state of my mind.

When I was a teenager I remember a few families going on a picnic to a lake. There was a high jump tower there off of a bridge. I was so terrified that I would be pressured to jump with everybody else that I ran away. I spent the whole day by myself off in the woods by the lake trying to avoid anybody who might ask why I was not with the group. To this day I regret that cowardliness. I have since conquered my fear of jumping off of high places to some degree, but that memory is a constant reminder of pure unhappiness. These days I have learned to deal with situations better, but I still tend to have avoidant behavior that will periodically cause me personal shame.

I can not say how often I am happy or unhappy; no more or less than my perception of the norm for others. However after thinking about the state of mind I am in when I am happy or unhappy I realize that they are both closely tied to fear; happiness is the absence of fear and unhappiness is fear and its aftereffects. All my happinesses can be said to be variations on this basic theme.

notes

1 Lewis, C. S. (1960). The Four Loves. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1960. pg. 57.

2 Haidt, Jonathan (2006). The Happiness Hypothesis. New York, NY: Basic Books.

This may sound hyperbolic, and indeed such thoughts can lead to Matrix-like imaginations of possibilities. In my case they often do. However, back on planet earth, this interest guided me to take a digital electronics class to learn how to make electronic toys, child development classes to learn how memory develops, computer science classes for implementation, and education classes to learn about what is being done in this field. I also started thinking about various experiences in my life through the lens of this interest. I would like to write about a few of these experiences and how they all contributed to my interest in this subject.

Several summers ago I spent a month in Russia. My parents are from Moscow and on a whim I decided to go there to discover my roots. One of my goals was to visit parts of Moscow that my parents had told me about. This meant that I spent a lot of time on the subway going from place to place, taking pictures and meeting people. One experience on the subway changed how I thought about public education. The Moscow subway is one of the deepest in the world – designed to function as a bomb shelter. This meant the escalator rides were steep and long. Along the way there was a city wide public announcement system that spouted such epitaphs as: “Protect the heritage of your Russian roots. Love the language of Pushkin and don’t swear” and “Be kind to people. They deserve your respect as you do theirs”. I was astounded at the blatant social brainwashing and quickly learned to disdain the announcements. Later on the subway a large group of rowdy teens came into the car. At the next stop a few older people stepped onto the train and none of the teens moved. A bit later an announcement came on, “Be nice to those older or weaker than you. Give your seat to the elderly or to those with young children.” At the very next stop when some older people again came onto the car. This time however a few of the teens got up and let them sit down. I doubt they realized why they did this as even I had started blocking out the announcements.

I was confused after seeing this. Moscow was dirty and people were mean. They needed this basic sort of public education which their parents weren’t able to offer because they themselves did not know it. Was this a dystopian brain- washing or was it an example of proper use of educational policy because it was for a social good? I was surprised how strongly I was affected by this seemingly small incident. I realized that an societal educational system must burden itself with teaching how to live in society and that society can be improved by this. However, at the same time it must walk a very careful line and not cross over into brain-washing. What is the role of education in society? This is not an easy question, but it does bear thinking about.

After my Moscow trip I had the opportunity to teach a few high-school students Russian. This was quite possibly one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. I had never taught before and approached it with a lot of energy, or so I thought. The students outpaced my energy level by orders of magnitude. They would jump to answer questions, blurting out answers and giggling with excitement. They were learning Russian for the fun of it, as it was not offered at their school and they just wanted to learn for themselves. It was inspirational to watch them and a rush to be needed by them, to be the source for their excitement, to be wrung dry by their questions. I am sure I learned a lot more from this experience than my students.

Moving closer to home, I have a three year old niece who is unbelievably adept on the computer. Not only does she have the physical coordination for moving the mouse and the knowledge of how to drag windows and files around but she is addicted to starfall.com. This site is a free educational site for kids. It has fun songs and graphics with a myriad of different exercises. She spends hours on the site. She knows her alphabet, can count fairly well, and has a great vocabulary. All of this without any pressure from her parents and, since she is too young for even pre-school, no school. When I was her age my mom would read to me certainly and we would do a little bit of alphabet work in Russian, but it was a struggle for both of us. What amazes me so much is how much time and effort she is more than willing to put in herself. She would rather play alphabet games on starfall than play with her toys. This is because the learning is a game in itself. Since she plays on the adult’s computer she gets to play with a toy that belongs to her parents. Often she will exclaim, “I go work on starfall now!”. She may use the word ‘work’ but she very clearly enjoys it (most likely she uses that word because her parents will often ‘work’ on the computer).

That a three year old is so interested in the animated colorful world of a computer game should come as no surprise. For me, watching her enjoy learning and easily grasping letters and numbers really underscores the potency of technology as a learning tool.

These few small experiences along with many others have all contributed to my interest in learning with technology. The digital electronics class I took this summer was perhaps the most fulfilling class I have ever taken. In groups of two we designed and built an electronics project from scratch. My interest in learning informed our choice of project. We were toying with the idea of using an accelerometer (a chip for detecting motion) somehow, and I was thinking of various toys that could be reinvented digitally. For instance the tilt-maze game is both ubiquitous and yet also not very interesting. Once you have the dexterity to beat it you might as well throw it out. How much more interesting would it be if you had to solve a moving maze and also take the shortest path through it for points based on the least number of steps taken. We implemented this game on a small eight by eight matrix of multicolor led lights. When it came to designing the levels for the game we realized that there were many more possibilities than we originally envisioned. The maze could appear to be a multicolor fire spewing dragon with a particular precious stone on his tail that is the target of the level, or it could be man eating plants that open in a certain sequence. Designing, programing and building this game was challenging and we stayed up many late nights. At the same time it was extremely fulfilling and made me very happy. By the end of the class we had a working game that people enjoyed playing and which also had an innovative brain puzzle aspect to it.

All these stories may appear disjointed, but the connection is that they all spurred my interest in new technologies for education. This leads to an interesting question: since I put a lot of effort into this interest and am contemplating grad school in related areas, does it make me happy? Mostly it has entailed work, exams, projects and sleep loss. On the other hand, just thinking about some of the possibilities ahead stirs up a great excitement in me.

I am convinced that this area can use a lot of work. For instance the area of math education is a prime choice for new ideas. I grew up with a math phobia in grade school. My teachers were terrible, using performance pressure and boring teaching to induce fear in their students. However, it is possible to have fun with math without the pressure and competition that seems to often lead to math phobia. One current research project that might help is siftables (www.sifteo.com). These are little cubes that can display letters, colors and number and react to each when in close proximity. Kids can play with the blocks that change and interact as they move them. A math game with siftables could display numbers and math operands and react as students move the blocks to form equations. Tangible media such as this has huge potential. The fact that this area is growing and new is exciting.

Still, exciting is not necessarily happy. In my case however, simply being creatively busy does make me happy. My parents are both artists and when I was growing up I remember in the evening after a late European style dinner ending around 10pm my dad would say, “ok I’m going downstairs to work some more.” I grew up in a house where it was never OK to not have a project going. Now I find that I am unable to simply do nothing. Even when on vacation I have a hard time relaxing without some purpose tugging at me. I have noticed that during those times when I don’t have a project in the works, I not only feel useless but almost physically feel sick. This is the antithesis of happiness. Thus being busy with projects in an area I am interested (especially one that can bring inspiration and learning to others) brings me a lot of joy.

It appears that a common thread ties together a lot of my recent college experiences. It has emerged slowly and is still not completely formed, but at least right now I feel a pulling that gives me a direction to work toward. This will most likely all change as I gather new experiences, but for now I enjoy it.

By breaking the traditional boundaries of scale (Glassman, J. 2002) and the “territorial trap” (Agnew, J., 1994) of geographical state-based social identity these various technologies are changing the geopolitical landscape. New media are being used by various actors including politically oppressed parties, minority ethnic groups, non-governmental organizations and civil societies across the world for the purposes of collaboration, drawing attention to causes and issues, and expressing opinion and positions.

The “imagined geographies” of Edward Said, the language and the cultural expressions used to describe people and places that are ‘other’, have heretofore defined geopolitical relations. The popular conceptions of what other places are like, are in essence largely imagined. However untruthful these representations may be, they do exemplify deeply embedded coded attitudes about these spaces. It is thus informative to try to understand what the imagined geographies of various geopolitical actors are and to attempt to unpack them into the ingrained conceptualizations that a particular culture has about another. Perhaps in the study of interconnected social networks it is now possible more than ever before for cultures to be able to see themselves in the imagined geographies of others. The power and effects of these media can be captured in several recent events.

Iran: dissemination and organization
When the results were announced after the June 12th Presidential Elections in Iran as a landslide win for the incumbent Ahmadinejad, there were widespread protests of election fraud. Iran, with its largely youthful population (almost seventy-five percent of the population is under 30 (Hamedani, N. 2009)) is also quite well connected in terms of new media. With 600,000 Facebook users, more than 400,000 regularly updated blog sites and other Persian-language social networks, SMS text messaging, one third of the population with access to internet and two-thirds on mobile phones (Sohrabi-Haghighat, M., Mansouri, S. 2010), Iranians were able to quickly start a groundswell civic movement in response to the election results. On June 17th, largely through the use of Twitter to get the word out, supporters of Mousavi rallied in Tehran. Prior to this, the Iranian government was already disallowing unfettered access to the internet, blocking many sites allegedly for pornographic content but also for political content as well. However in the wake of this unprecedented use of social media for oppositional organization they took swift action in an attempt to prevent further use: foreign journalists were forbidden from reporting and satellite communications were jammed, SMS texting on the mobile network was disrupted and the internet was throttled to a bare minimum (ibid). However these efforts were not effective enough and were not quick enough. The protesters were still able to upload videos of the brutal police repression and the riots in the streets from their mobile phones and indirectly to YouTube. At the height of the protests Iran related Twitter tweets came in at a rate of 15,000 per hour (ibid).

In the foreign media these videos and posts were shown over and over – in particular a harrowing mobile phone video of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, dieing from gunfire on the street. However, the official Iranian government news attempted to downplay the size of the protests and showed the protesters to be disruptors of the peace. In the west the main news outlets were eager to show the grainy and raw seeming video. Without their own journalists on the ground, they simply broadcast the citizen media. Both because of the sheer amount of material and the rapidity of events, material was reported without confirmation. The citizen media had practically taken over foreign news outlets as well.

This is a remarkable example of the power of decentralized social networks allowing for the collaboration of protests and, in this instance, the birth of the “Green Movement” in Iran (Diamond, L. 2010). Demonstrating the larger geopolitical entanglements between the U.S. and Iran, the U.S. State Department requested that Twitter postpone a scheduled downtime so as to not hinder any protest communication (Drezner, D. 2010). Not only was the movement able to form despite the censure and repression of the Iranian government, but it was able to continue planning and executing protests for months after the initial protests, albeit in later stages to mourn for those killed in the repression rather than to continue the ultimately failed election protests. Additionally because of the blackout on foreign reporting, internationally the citizens media was practically the only media, this was an unprecedented event and, since then, has contributed to many news outlets aggregating citizen media into their daily news cycles (Zuckerman, E. 2010).

This is only one recent example of the use of new media for dissemination and organization. In neighboring Iraq new media has been put to a very different use.

Iraq: cracking imagined geographies
The U.S. Iraq war of 1990-1991 is barely remembered by the younger generations of Americans. Any dissent that did exist to Desert Shield and Desert Storm is all but forgotten and buried beneath images of a successful and high-tech military success. The internet in those days was fledgling and largely inaccessible to anyone but researchers and military. The majority of Americans only had traditional mainstream media access through TV or print media. According to one reporter on the ground in Iraq at the time, the mainstream media in the U.S. was self-censoring – only showing anesthetized images and shielding the public from some of the more horrific aspects of Desert Storm (Gregory, D. 2004).

The mainstream media for a large part of the Second Gulf War (2003-) has also been largely pro-American biased and propagating the imagined geography of the U.S. government. However, now there are more options. Foreign media, including Al-Jazeera with it’s very different perspective, is readily accessible online. Additionally, as seen in the case of the Iranian “Twitter Revolution”, citizen media can be a powerful alternative news source. In the early days of the Second Gulf War a Pew poll showed that fifty-six percent of internet users in the U.S. were going to online sources for their information about the war (Madanmohan Rao 2003). With this war came the major advent of “warblogs.” “The Iraq War represents a significant online-news milestone. We now have the content and the infrastructure in place for serious purveyors of Internet news to call themselves mainstream media […] it truly is a defining moment” (ibid, pg. 6).

Warblogs such as Salam Pax, Riverbend, and Juan Cole’s Informed Comment have attracted millions of readers and eventually resulted in published books and have been highly regarded and referenced by mainstream media (Drezner, D., & Farrell, H. 2004). Salam Pax (the Baghdad Blogger) and Riverbend both provided personal narratives of the war in Iraq from a completely different perspective than the embedded journalistic establishment. Part of what makes blogs so effective is that

“for readers worldwide, blogs can act as the “man on the street,” supplying unfiltered eyewitness accounts from foreign countries […] For salient topics in global affairs, the blogosphere functions as a rare combination of distributed expertise, real-time collective response to breaking news, and public- opinion barometer.” (ibid, pg. 3)

What is so different about the Iraqi case from the Iranian bloggers is that there is no active state suppression of these blogs. Bloggers in Iraq are, however, limited by the availability and stability of the internet connections and electrical supply. These are not small hurdles and in many cases can be as effective at preventing the non-privileged from being heard as active state censorship.

Blogs allow geopolitical jumping of scale: “the scaling up of social struggles from local to regional, national, or international” (Glassman, J. 2001). By allowing voices that would typically go unheard to be heard, blogs allow local issues to interact with transnational actors which eventually in some cases can result in political action. They “ allow many online activists to make direct appeals to the global public sphere, bypassing editorial gatekeepers in traditional media outlets” (Drezner, D. 2010). For those outside of Iraq, the ability to see a view from the inside provided by such bloggers as Salam Pax, unfiltered by the imagined geographies of their own press corps, is essential to having a more accurate and a more critical geopolitical understanding of the war. These horizontal lines of communication enable transnational civil societies which can in turn effect geopolitical outcomes.

Others and Caveats
There are many cases of new media being effective in bringing about action. Whether it is the ultimate release of the imprisoned Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi through the “boomerang effect” (Drezner, D., & Farrell, H. 2004), or the planning, execution and Indymedia reporting of the Battle of Seattle (Juris, J. 2005), or the coordination of the “Orange Revolution” in the Ukraine in 2004 (Drezner, D, & Farrell, H. 2004), or the Zapatistas in Mexico jumping scale and eliciting international funding for their cause (Juris, J. 2005), or the organization of the Philippine EDSA Revolution in 2001 leading to the overthrow of then President Joseph Estrada, all these cases are enabled by social media.

There are also cases where the new media networks have helped the spread of information and “alternate” viewpoints and have influenced civil societies. These include the Iraqi bloggers attempts at changing public opinion in the western world and the spread of information about the Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007 (Diamond, L. 2010) with the effect of bringing international attention, sanctions and international protest movements organized through Facebook. It may appear that social media is a power for “good” and that the further spread of these technologies will only benefit global society. However there are many caveats that are often overlooked. To date these technologies are still largely dominated by the developed world. Access remains a challenge in many parts of the globe. As with any technology, infrastructure needs to be built. What differentiates the internet from older media technologies is that it is decentralized and infrastructure can be built up in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. Censorship in repressive regimes is a bigger concern. China has one of the most well developed internet censorship infrastructures:

Fifty-thousand Internet police prowl cyberspace removing “harmful content”—usually within 24 to 48 hours. Students are recruited to spy on their fellows. And the regime pays a quarter of a million online hacks (called “50-centers” because of the low piece rate they get) to post favorable comments about the party- state and report negative comments. (Diamond, L. 2010, pg. 74)

This is in addition to limiting access, imposing regulations requiring the use of real names in blogs, and going so far as to, during times of crisis, simply shut off all access completely. In countries where internet access is mostly government controlled (such as in North Korea) this can certainly hinder coordination attempts during times of political upheaval. For instance, the Chinese government blocked local internet access during the 2008 Tibet protests (ibid). Access even to such a decentralized resource as the internet is uneven across the globe, however under any repression there will be attempts to circumvent access controls and censorship. In Iran, for instance, people used Tor, an open network relay to allow anonymous access to blog sites through a number of relay points.

Governments are also using social media for their own purposes and for the purposes of repressing the very freedoms of expression that social media is allowing in their citizens. In Iran the government used the same social networks to identify and arrest Green Revolution leaders. In Belarus in 2007 “smart mob” protests were thwarted by government monitoring of LiveJournal blog sites. As one Belarusian commentator wrote, “Social media created a digital panopticon that thwarted the revolution; [it was] infiltrated and hopelessly outgunned by the power of the state…The emergence of new digital spaces for dissent also lead to new ways of tracking it” (Drezner, D. 2010, pg 36). This of course works both ways in a virtual media race.

However, new media use is not limited to governments and “good” civil societies. Other non-state actors, such as terrorist organizations, can use these same technologies just as effectively. Cell phones were used during the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in the final stages of coordination, but other technologies are also employed for the purposes of terror. Mexican drug cartels post YouTube videos of killings as warnings (ibid). Hacktivism is closely related to cyber-terrorism and can be used by governments and non-humanitarian groups just as easily. In the Mumbai attacks of 2008 mobile phones, Google Earth and various other technologies were used to plan and coordinate the attacks (Kaplan, C. 2009)

Thoughts
As we can see, the interconnected and decentralized new media networks are powerful tools. There have been studies done of the effects of decentralized social networks in terms of geopolitics and global civil society, however not as much work has been done on the analysis of the content of the citizen media for the purposes of breaking through imagined geographies. As of 2010, BlogPulse reports that there are more than 144 million blog sites. Because the the interconnected nature of blogs (bloggers will often link to posts in other blogs) a hierarchy of blogs develops, with a trickle up effect of opinion from smaller blogs up toward bigger blogs with more readership (Drezner, D, & Farrell, H. 2004). The blog hierarchy aggregates public opinion (at least the opinion of the online public) and presents it to the rest of the world. The opinions may be biased, one-sided and ignorant, however, they are reflecting of a side of societies that before now has gone unheard or has been repressed. Individual issues have been analysed with the help of online media, such as a study of nationalism in Zambia reflected in an online community (Fergusun, J. 2003). However there do not appear to be any broad spectrum analyses of online public thoughts.

Mainstream media in the U.S. is starting to incorporate “Elite” blogs, Tweets, and some rudimentary opinion representation from social networks, however this is an unscientific endeavour and is tainted with selection bias. Aggregator sites allow people to submit links to articles and posts and to vote on them (Zuckerman, E. 2010). These sites have become quite popular and allow an easier navigation of the otherwise unnavigable chaos of online opinion.

What does not exist however is a visualization tool providing a global geopolitical opinion survey. There are some attempts at building tag clouds from the top topics being discussed, but usually these are limited to English language blogs only and do not provide an interesting metric. However a tool that allowed a geographic analysis of local voices has the potential of opening this world to a much broader audience. If it were possible to analyze the blogs and comments and social media of various areas, grouping them together and then geolocating them onto a map allowing for the browsing of issues and opinion. Additionally the ability to search for specific targets of opinion would be essential. For instance, searching for America would show the opinions related in the blogs from various geographic areas. This sort of visualization could be a useful tool in combating the imagined geographies that have continued to define and drive conflict throughout the world.

References

Agnew, J. (1994). The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory. Review of International Political Economy, 1(1), 53-80. doi:10.1080/09692299408434268 Brunn, S. D., Cottle C. D. (1997).

Small States and Cyberboosterism. Geographical Review, 87(2), 240-258. doi:10.1111/j.1931-0846.1997.tb00073.x Diamond, L. (2010). Liberation technology. Journal of Democracy 21(3), 69-83. Retrieved July 20, 2010, from Project MUSE database. Dodds, K. (2007).

Geopolitics: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Drezner, D.W. (05/01/2010).

“Weighing the Scales: The Internet’s Effect On State-Society Relations.”. The Brown journal of world affairs(1080-0786), 16 (2), p. 31. Drezner, D., & Farrell, H. (2004).

Web of Influence. Foreign Policy, (145), 32-40. Retrieved from MasterFILE Select database. Glassman, J. (2002).

“From Seattle (and Ubon) to Bangkok: the scales of resistance to corporate globalization”. Environment and planning. D, Society & space (0263-7758), 20 (5), p. 513. Hamedani, N. (2009).

“The World Is Watching”…a Blurry Picture in Iran. The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 28(6), 11-13,16. Retrieved August 12, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1875867041). Häkli, J. (2001).

In the territory of knowledge: state-centred discourses and the construction of society. Progress in Human Geography, 25(3), 403-422. Retrieved August 12, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 1082224611). Juris, J. S. (2005).

The new digital media and activist networking within anti-corporate globalization movements. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597(, Cultural Production in a Digital Age), 189-208. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25046069 Kaplan, C. (2009-12).

“The Biopolitics of Technoculture in the Mumbai Attacks”. Theory, culture & society (0263-2764), 26 (7-8), p. 301. Lithgow, M.. (2007, October). The cultures of citizenship: Exploring the ties between media literacy, blogging and democracy. Our Schools, Our Selves, 17(1), 177-189. Retrieved August 13, 2010, from CBCA Complete. (Document ID: 1385429291). Madanmohan Rao. (2003, January).

New Media: Countering US Mainstream Media Views in Iraq War I and Iraq War II. Media Asia, 30(3), 133-137. Retrieved August 13, 2010, from ProQuest Asian Business and Reference. (Document ID: 548340201). Sohrabi-Haghighat, M., Mansouri, S. (2010).

‘WHERE IS MY VOTE?’ ICT Politics in the Aftermath of Iran’s Presidential Election. International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, 8(1), 24-41. Retrieved August 12, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 2082649231). Zuckerman, E.. (2010).

International reporting in the age of participatory media. Daedalus, 139(2), 66-75,154. Retrieved August 12, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2024538961).

(Divya Gunasekaran and Tim Tregubov, Summer 2009)

Our goal for this project was to create a simple, but addicting game that played off of old-fashioned handheld and vintage arcade games, but utilized newer technology that allowed for a more modern feel and the implementation of more exciting features. We succeeded in creating a challenging game that takes the user’s movements as inputs via an accelerometer to move the player on the board, which consists of a small 8x8 RGB LED matrix with a seven-segment display showing the timer and score. A piezo is also included to produce different sounds for specific actions in the game. These components contribute to a gaming experience that is stimulating both tactilely, visually and aurally. The game design also makes the game easy to reprogram to include more levels and additional features.

Details

This was perhaps the most fulfilling class I have ever taken. In groups of two we designed and built an electronics project from scratch. We reinvented the original tilt-maze game as a digital moving maze on an RBG 8x8 LED matrix controlled via accelerometer. Our maze designs included a multicolor fire-spewing dragon, a volcano, and an alien space ship with lasers.

People enjoyed playing the game and we were asked to come back to demo it at various Engineering School events.

The experience of building a working, playable, and enjoyable electronic toy was very empowering.

The basic details of the project and what I learned:

• Digital circuits and logic
• VHDL FPGA programming
• Project design
• Accelerometer programming
• LED multi-segment RGB display programming
• Piezo programming

Here is the full project report with schematics and software design.
(note: section 7 with complete code is omitted, but I may post it if people are interested)

The Greenlite Project: An animated polar bear which aims to educate students about the impact of electricity and other resource use.

This was a Siggraph 2009 information aesthetics video submission we made. Although we didn’t get into the information aesthetics category we did end up with a Siggraph Poster and were invited to a Panel. This video provides a good summary of what the project was about.

Greenlite Dartmouth (aka TellEmotion)

Together with one of my favorite professors and two other students we founded a startup called TellEmotion (from Tim/Evan/Lorie/Luke). The idea was to present electrical usage in an intuitive emotionally appealing way. We designed and implemented a system for reading electrical meters on campus which would then feed into an animation of a polar bear. The state of the bear would change based on the how efficiently the resources were being used. If electrical usage was up (either compared to historical data or to some target goals) then the bear would be unhappy and its environment would be melting, if electrical usage was down, then it would play and be happy. This was based on some research that showed that behavior change is sometimes better driven by emotional rewards rather than strictly financial considerations. The system was a success and is now installed in many dorms and buildings on the campus as well as in other schools nationwide. Although the most benefit comes from the educational aspect of the system, it has been shown to decrease energy usage over time.

Semi-Publications

Here is a paper we submitted to Siggraph (not accepted): Greenlite Dartmouth

Here is our Poster (was accepted): Greenlite Poster

Original Flash Version

My contributions ranged from system design and implementation to administration. I worked on a number of pieces, including the communication with the electrical meters, brainstorming design and system architecture, poller (Java), server configuration and fronted display configuration and setup. Additionally in the video you can see some parts of a 3D environment that I designed (with help from Craig Slagel and others), as well as a brief glance at a 3D Dartmouth campus for which I wrote the Unity3d code to do a navigation map.

Brief Technical Details: The fronted was flash and GWT with the Java backed and mysql database fed with minute by minute electrical data by a Java poller. More details in the paper.

3D Version

Toward the end of my time with the project I worked on a more game-like realtime interactive 3D variant in which everything responds to the energy use. This was designed as a web demo so the energy use is controllable by clicking on the light bulbs. Other parts of the environment also react to various things, the bear can look at the monitoring station (update: the image source for the realtime graph is no longer available), and pretty much everything in the world responds one way or another to the energy use.

Brief Technical Details: I implemented this in Unity3D in C# using models I created in Maya. All the polar bear animation is motion capture of… me… The system does have the capability to connect to the metering backend and get realtime energy data (same as the 2D version), however for the web demo that is turned off.

Try it out, click around! Polar Bear 3D demo

Lessons Learned

I learned a lot on this project, from electrical metering to architecting a larger scale software project to working with motioncapture and a 3D game engine. Another important lesson was that 3D is not necessarily better. Although people responded positively to the 3D animations (more so the quadruped version in the video than the biped in the web demo), the 3D version would have required many more man hours and at that stage in the project was simply too work intensive.

You can see it all live at Dartmouth right now here: Greenlite Dartmouth

This was an awesome summer. I lived in a van and spent two nights+ a week in the drawing studio. Unfortunately most of these photos were taken with a phone camera and so the quality is not that great. I’ve given most of them away so no chance of retaking. There were lots more but the photos were simply too blurry.

When I was a kid I used to love drawing, but by puberty I had exchanged it for computer games and model airplanes. When I took drawing in college it was like I was a kid again. This was another one of those fulfilling classes by the end of which I was confident that given some charcoal and paper and time I could create an aesthetically unoffensive and even possibly recognizable likeness of anything.

Spooked and Confused
Final 3D animation project from CS42 at Dartmouth. I worked on this with: Graham Baecher, Jen Huang, and Justin Slick. Some good times spent in the lab!

Spoiler Alert

What I worked on:

• Animation:
  • Intro Lamp
  • UFO flying/landing
  • Angry and Biting
  • “Mine Mine”
• Modeling:
  • Glamber’s head and face
  • Glamber’s eyes
  • Parts of the environment
  • Parts of ship
  • One pumpkin
• Skinning/Rigging:
  • Glamber Skin
  • SpaceShip Rig
  • Pumpkin blend shapes
• Texturing/Visual Effects/Rendering:
  • Glamber Texture
  • Glamber’s Eyes texturing/lighting
  • SpaceShip Glow Effect
  • Environmental Fog and Lighting
  • House texture
  • Hills texturing
  • Pumpkin Zapping effect
  • Pumpkin smoke
• Sound:
  • 1/2 sound effects/music

When Google acquired SketchUp in 2006, they announced a competition for college students across the nation to model their campus in 3D using SketchUp, and then to geolocate the buildings in Google Earth. Seven winning teams would then be invited to a three day SketchUp seminar at Google Headquarters in Palo Alto and their models added to the official buildings layer in the Google Earth database. In a span of about 2 months, I helped lead a team of 10 individuals who collectively took over 2000 photographs and modeled over 130 buildings. On the day of the submission deadline, we submitted a complete model of the entire Dartmouth campus. A month later, among 350 teams, we were announced as one of the winners.

(some of my Dartmouth SketchUp models)

This was an important project for me, mostly because of the friends that I made, but also because it was one of several things that got me into digital arts.

(celtic knot carving)

I used to do a lot of wood carving, chip carving in particular. This is a style of woodcarving found in traditional folk art around the world. Geometric patterns composed of 2, 3, or 4 sided pyramid shaped chips are carved out of the surface, usually with a single knife. Each chip comes out as a single piece. It can be used to decorate large building surfaces as well as more intricate pieces such as boxes or art frames.

(Carving a simple frame out of butternut. Swallowtail shaped chips allow for more intricate designs)

Here are some samples of my carvings. Most of these are carved in butternut. Not all are chip carvings – there are celtic knot style as well as some relief work.