CrossPost: Lytro v. Abundance

Posted by Steve Smith on Mar 01, 2012; 7:11pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/CrossPost-Lytro-v-Abundance-tp7333744.html

This seems to fit the FRIAM list a little better but I suspect many on Discuss are here as well.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Lytro v. Abundance
Date:	Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:08:50 -0700
From:	Steve Smith [hidden email]
To:	[hidden email]

Interesting, but I don't think that Ansel Adams would be impressed. I wasn't.

Nor Gabriel Lippmann, upon whose work the Stanford/Lytro was ultimately based.

With earlier conceptual precedent from Franciscan Roger Bacon and Leonardo DaVinci (Radiant Pyramids), informed by Alhazen's c10 Book of Optics being the introduction of the intromission over extromission theory of light and visual perception.  Roots of the same concepts have been traced back as far as Aristotle and Archimedes.

My own work in the development of camera arrays impinges on this.   The obvious utility is capturing real-world scenes for reconstruction (many uses for this).   The 7D plenoptic function (x,y,z,rho, theta, lambda, polarization angle) is an unrealizable (by current technology) ideal of which the Lytro roughly manages only a subrange of the first 6 minus Z ...   a small 2D patch (imaging array) pointed in a direction with a restricted field of view, with sampling in 3 (r,g,b) bins for Lambda and no explicit polarization information.   These new developments are fascinating!  

<careening-toward-abundance>
Referencing Kotler's "Abundance" and Owen's commentary about computational sociology, I think this (Lytro and other "light field" or "plenoptic" cameras is a good example of the kinds of (exponential?) advances being made in many fields.  It is notable that under the current model, a fairly "mundane" commercial exploitation of such deep conceptual work is required to advance it significantly.  A *lot* has happened in the last 104 years. What are the implications of that?

As a side note, it is worth acknowledging that a great deal of the theory involved in Integral Imaging, Light Fields, etc.   was applied effectively in Phased Array and Synthetic Aperture Radar (including the VLA, VLBA and other radio astronomy).

Lippman may also have been pursuing the commercial angle when he won his Nobel for (pre-holographic) use of interference patterns for color photography.   The multiple patents on pinhole-array (vs lense-array as with Ng's-cum-Lytro work) in the 30's were clearly struggling toward commercial advantage which was never apparently realized.

The huge body of work from the Soviet Union (70's-90's) in the area was certainly being pursued for *practical* if not explicitly commercial advantage. 

Alhazen ( Ibn al-Haytham, c10-11 Muslim scholar) did his seminal work while imprisoned in Egypt by the Caliph for refusing (not being able?) to regulate the Nile.    His work in general was used for practical purposes but seems to have been driven by a more pure desire/interest in knowledge.  His Book of Optics being a good example.  He has often been given credit for providing some of the earliest precedents for the Scientific Method.  His work in the area might be considered more "pure" perhaps.   He appears to have been a genius both in thought and action.

Aristotle is given credit for somewhat "pure" thought but Archimedes' career was filled with military inventions (most relevant to this discussion, his development of parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight on enemy ships and set them aflame).

<careen directly-into-abundance/scarcity>
I tend toward preferring the Darwinian model of evolution, including evolution of society and of ideas (Dawkinsian Memes?).   With that in mind, I believe that "on average" the "advances" in technology will have survival value for the phenotype (the individuals and groups where they are invented/discovered/applied). 

What I'm contemplating here is the question of Darwinian evolution vs the Singularity.   I may have commented before here about my observations across many scientific phenomena of Sigmoidal Functions.   I have not heard Kurzweil or any of the other Utopian Singularians acknowledge this (though I might not have been listening closely).  To them, everything appears to be exponential (huzzah!).   Many processes *do* naturally exhibit compound growth, but they also experience *saturation*, leading to sigmoidal curves which rise rapidly, cross  some asymptote and then flatten off.    Moore's Law of computational speedup, is an example where the "piecewise sigmoidal" curves roughly add up to a curve with a lower exponent.   With each "saturation" of a given technology (e.g. light lithography, e-beam lithography, ... ), a new invention (e.g. molecular fabrication) is developed which again reaches some "saturation" or other natural limit, etc.   A kind of herky-jerky exponential growth curve, if you will.  Quantum computing changes the paradigm, not just extends it into new regimes.  Sorry Von Neumann!

One fundamental limit to growth in human culture/society seems to be the rate at which human beings can assimilate new technology, new ideas, and maybe most importantly new paradigms.   I believe (with only anecdotal support) that one of the time-constants that is invariant is the time for a human being to grow to maturity.  In our culture that is 20-30 years, in some it may be as little as 15.   The key is that new ideas and new paradigms may only take hold in those who grew up under their influence.   An adult may be able to conceive of something new, even invent/develop/build it, but it may require an embryonic personality (growing, developing child) to really internalize and embrace it.   For example, those of us (and we are many here) who came to the Internet (or Cell Phones or ...) as adults might well have a qualitatively different understanding/perception of the technology, it's uses, and who we are because of it than those who were born to it (our younger members, say under 30, were children when the internet went public (was invented by Al Gore???)).   It may take multiple generations to actually fully internalize and exploit the changes.  

It is not just the time-constant of individuals assimilating the implications but also of the changing relationships that result.  The Amish, before they adopt a new technology, ask "who will I become if I use this new thing?"  Few if any of the rest of us ask that... and by extension, the question of "who do we collectively become?" also never seems to get asked much.   There are "popular" social theorists such as Esther Dyson who seem to be asking these questions, at least superficially...  Who else is asking?  Kotler/Diamandes?

Kurzweil posits other mechanisms (mostly machine-intelligence-augmentation) for the exponential change in human capability, but I think that there will still be a fundamental limit imposed by the way our brains wire up as we become adults.  Methinks Kurzweil is too focused on his own personal infinite longevity and intellectual ascendance to consider any models that require multiple generations of humanity to realize/experience a singularity.   I forget if he has children himself, but I think he'd rather experience the singularity himself than produce progeny (grand-progeny) who will emerge on the other side of said singularity.

That said, I also think that paradigms are key and paradigms are built on metaphors, are in fact, themselves metaphor complexes (or complex metaphors)...   For an adult population to change qualitatively, I believe they need to be introduced to new (and compelling) metaphors.   The rhetoric about "winning hearts and minds" is an example of where we go wrong.  I *do* believe that adults can develop a *working understanding* of new paradigms but not so much a deep intuitive acceptance/embrasure of the same.   I'm not a developmental psychologist, and they may have more insight into this, but my experience (anecdotal) is that old dogs don't learn new perspectives, at best we learn new tricks.

My own utopian tendencies (unfounded desires?) supports the thesis that the world population can go through some kind of phase change based on material abundance.   An important component of this phase change is how a culture can change it's paradigm from scarcity to abundance?   Biblically (similar stories in Quran and other texts with origin stories), Adam and Eve fell from Grace and were ejected from Eden.   The Abundance hypothesis would be a return to Grace, to Eden as it were.   We still have survivors of the holocaust in our midst, some of us here even grew up in the Great Depression.   Most of us were raised by people who experienced the Great Depression and WWII (from varying distances).   Those were all experiences of great scarcity.  Scarcity of resources, and scarcity of safety, and scarcity of hope for many.  

Much of the third world and the "emerging nations" have suffered from acute scarcity, magnified (in perception, if not in fact) by their exposure to the first world.   I wonder at how that can be transcended?   Perhaps a "mere" generation (15 years?) can blunt it.  Maybe the first wave of children born without explicit malnutrition (or threat of it) or explicit exposure to extreme elements, to capricious disease, etc.   will adopt this new paradigm of abundance while puzzling at their parents, grandparents adherence to another model based on famine, exposure, disease, etc.  Maybe the Arab Spring is paving the way for the children being born in the next few years to be the foundation of that change.   Maybe the growth crises-paradoxes in China wrought in part by the single-child and preference for a male heir will be a foundation.   I don't know how to frame the plight of Subsaharan Africa's violence in a good way... but there may be a Phoenix hiding in those ashes as well.

There is anecdotal (maybe more documented but only barely?) evidence of the renaissance being a rebound effect of the decimation of population in the Dark Ages.   When half the population of Europe died within a short time, the material goods did not die with them, and a temporary spike in abundance was thereby experienced.  It is widely suggested that this abundance slingshotted Europe into a new age.   It's a good story, and I like it.  I don't know if it is true or how anyone can be sure.

I suppose I should just read Kotler/Diamandes' book...  but idle speculation on a mail list is so soothing and a smaller investment of my "oh so scarce" time!   And then there is that silly distraction of trying to participate in the development of new technology and it's applications...   another vice partially sublimated by idle speculation about light fields, integral imaging, plenoptic functions, etc.  when will I ever find time to do that when I'm procrastinating on doing my taxes and billing my clients by reading/writing e-mail to the list(s)?

Carry on,
 - Steve

On Mar 1, 2012, at 8:41 AM, Chuck Baldwin wrote:

Today on NPR:

https://www.lytro.com/camera

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