Hacker's death, wearable tech, and some Cyberpunk

• White hat hacker Barnaby Jack was found dead in San Francisco this week; he was 35 years old. From the Reuters article on his death:
  

His genius was finding bugs in the tiny computers embedded in equipment, such as medical devices and cash machines. He often received standing ovations at conferences for his creativity and showmanship while his research forced equipment makers to fix bugs in their software.

Jack had planned to demonstrate his techniques to hack into pacemakers and implanted defibrillators at the Black Hat hackers convention in Las Vegas next Thursday. He told Reuters last week that he could kill a man from 30 feet away by attacking an implanted heart device.

• Writing in the MIT Technology Review, Don Norman asks whether wearable devices can augment our activities without distracting us from the real world:
  

Without the right approach, the continual distraction of multiple tasks exerts a toll that disrupts performance. It takes time to switch tasks, to get back what attention theorists call “situation awareness.” Interruptions disrupt performance, and even a voluntary switching of attention from one task to another is an interruption of the task being left behind.

Furthermore, it will be difficult to resist the temptation of using powerful technology that guides us with useful side information, suggestions, and even commands. Sure, other people will be able to see that we are being assisted, but they won’t know by whom, just as we will be able to tell that they are being minded, and we won’t know by whom.

• This CNN.com article looks at "wearable tech that will turn man into machine by 2015" via an hour-by-hour breakdown of a hypothetical day in the life of a wearable tech aficionado:
  

9am to 1pm: Throughout the day you connect to your Dekko-powered augmented reality device, which overlays your vision with a broad range of information and entertainment. While many of the products the US software company is proposing are currently still fairly conceptual, Dekko hopes to find ways to integrate an extra layer of visual information into every part of daily life. Dekko is one of the companies supplying software to Google Glass, the wearable computer that gives users information through a spectacle-like visual display. Matt Miesnieks, CEO of Dekko, says that he believes "the power of wearables comes from connecting our senses to sensors."

• In another article from the MIT Technology Review, Rachel Metz ponders the possibility of smart contact lenses:
  

Researchers at Belgian nonelectronics reseach and development center Imec and Belgium’s Ghent University are in the very early stages of developing such a device, which would bring augmented reality–the insertion of digital imagery such as virtual signs and historical markers with the real world–right to your eyeballs. It’s just one of several such projects (see “Contact Lens Computer: It’s Like Google Glass Without The Glasses”), and while the idea is nowhere near the point where you could ask your eye doctor for a pair, it could become more realistic as the cost and size of electronic components continue to fall and wearable gadgets gain popularity.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Wearable Technologies conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Eric Dy, Imec’s North America business development manager, said researchers are investigating the feasibility of integrating an array of micro lenses with LEDs, using the lenses to help focus light and project it onto the wearer’s retinas.

• Ben Gilbert at engadget reports on prototypical Universal Translators ala Star Trek:
  

The biggest barrier, beyond the translation itself, is speech recognition. In so many words, background noise interferes with the translation software, thus affecting results. But Barra said it works "close to 100 percent" when used in "controlled environments." Sounds perfect for diplomats, not so much for real-world conversations. Of course, Google's non-real-time, text-based translation software built into Chrome leaves quite a bit to be desired, making us all the more wary of putting our faith into Google's verbal solution. As the functionality is still "several years away," though, there's still plenty of time to convert us.

• DVICE writer Colin Druce-Mcfadden looks at the potential of life-size humanoid holograms:
  

There will be limitations, however. It's easy to think that a life-sized human being, standing in your living room, would be capable of giving you a hug, for instance. But if that breakthrough is coming, it hasn't arrived yet. Holodeck creations these are not. And images projected through the magic of HoloVision won't be able to follow you into the kitchen for a snack either — not unless you've got a whole network of HoloVision cameras, anyway.

• Cyborgology contributor davidbanks addresses "what's really disturbing about retailers tracking your every move":
  

The implications of Euclid’s technology do not stop at surveillance or privacy. Remember, these systems are meant to feed data to store owners so that they can rearrange store shelves or entire showroom floors to increase sales. Malls, casinos, and grocery stores have always been carefully planned out spaces—scientifically arranged and calibrated for maximum profit at minimal cost. Euclid’s systems however, allow for massive and exceedingly precise quantification and analysis. More than anything, what worries me is the deliberateness of these augmented spaces. Euclid will make spaces designed to do exactly one thing almost perfectly: sell you shit you don’t need. I worry about spaces that are as expertly and diligently designed as Amazon’s home page or the latest Pepsi advertisement. A space built on data so rich and thorough that it’ll make focus groups look quaint in comparison.

• In the New York Review of Books, James Bamford says the NSA knows "much more than you think":
  

Of course the US is not a totalitarian society, and no equivalent of Big Brother runs it, as the widespread reporting of Snowden’s information shows. We know little about what uses the NSA makes of most information available to it—it claims to have exposed a number of terrorist plots—and it has yet to be shown what effects its activities may have on the lives of most American citizens. Congressional committees and a special federal court are charged with overseeing its work, although they are committed to secrecy, and the court can hear appeals only from the government.

Still, the US intelligence agencies also seem to have adopted Orwell’s idea of doublethink—“to be conscious of complete truthfulness,” he wrote, “while telling carefully constructed lies.” For example, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, was asked at a Senate hearing in March whether “the NSA collect[s] any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” Clapper’s answer: “No, sir…. Not wittingly.”

• Kotaku reports on using the Oculus Rift to pilot a drone:
  

The drone is carrying a laptop so it can communicate with the headset, but right now the sticking point is range; since it's using wi-fi to communicate, it'll only get to around 50-100m.

• Now for the Cyberpunk promised in the post title: the script-writer of the film adaptation of the Deus Ex video game series says the movie will be "a cyberpunk film, not a video game film":
  

"It's not a video game movie, it's a cyberpunk movie," Cargill said. "Eidos Montreal has given us a lot of freedom in terms of story; they want this movie to be Blade Runner. We want this movie to be Blade Runner."

• io9 recently linked to this interview with William Gibson from the Paris Review:
  

INTERVIEWER

There’s a famous story about your being unable to sit through Blade Runner while writing Neuromancer.

GIBSON

I was afraid to watch Blade Runner in the theater because I was afraid the movie would be better than what I myself had been able to imagine. In a way, I was right to be afraid, because even the first few minutes were better. Later, I noticed that it was a total box-office flop, in first theatrical release. That worried me, too. I thought, Uh-oh. He got it right and ­nobody cares! Over a few years, though, I started to see that in some weird way it was the most influential film of my lifetime, up to that point. It affected the way people dressed, it affected the way people decorated nightclubs. Architects started building office buildings that you could tell they had seen in Blade Runner. It had had an astonishingly broad aesthetic impact on the world.

• Finally, a piece by Tim Leary on the "Cyberpunks":
  

The concept was formally introduced in William Gibson's 1984 punkn novel, NEUROMANCER.  Although this first novel swept the Triple Crown of science fiction--the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Philip K. Dick awards--it is not really science fiction.  It could be called "science faction" in that it occurs not in another galaxy in the far future, but 20 years from now, in a BLADE RUNNER world just a notch beyond our silicon present.

      In Gibson's Cyberworld there is no-warp drive and "beam me up, Scotty."  The high technology is the stuff that appears on today's screens or that processes data in today's laboratories: Super-computer boards.  Recombinant DNA chips.  AI systems and enormous data banks controlled by multinational combines based in Japan and Zurich.