Steve Mann

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Self-portrait of Mann in 1981 with wearable computing apparatus.
Self-portrait of Mann in 1981 with wearable computing apparatus.

Steve Mann is a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto.

Contents

[edit] Education

Mann holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD in Media Arts and Sciences '97) and McMaster University, where he was also inducted into the McMaster University Alumni Hall of Fame, Alumni Gallery, 2004, in recognition of his career as an inventor and teacher.[1] While at MIT he was one of the founding members of the Wearable Computers group in the Media Lab.[2] In 2004 he was named the recipient of the 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence for his article "Existential Technology," published in Leonardo 36:1.[3]

[edit] Ideas and inventions

  • Chirplet transform, 1991: Mann was the first to propose and reduce to practice a signal representation based on a family of chirp signals, each associated with a coefficient, in a generalization of the wavelet transform that is now referred to as the chirplet transform.
  • Video Orbits, 1993: Mann was the first to produce an algorithm for automatically combining multiple pictures of the same subject matter, using algebraic projective geometry, to "stitch together" images using automatically estimated perspective correction. This is called the "Video Orbits" algorithm.[4] See also US Patent 5,828,793, Method and apparatus for producing digital images having extended dynamic ranges.[5]
  • Comparametric Equations, 1993: Mann was the first to propose and implement an algorithm to estimate a camera's response function from a plurality of differently exposed images of the same subject matter. He was also the first to propose and implement an algorithm to automatically extend dynamic range in an image by combining multiple differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter.[6] See also US Patent 5,706,416, Method and apparatus for relating and combining multiple images of the same scene or object(s).[7]
  • Hydraulophone: Mann invented a musical instrument that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid, such as water, to make sound. The instrument is played by placing the fingers in direct contact with the sound-producing hydraulic fluid, thus giving the musician a high degree of control over the musical expression in the sound.[8]
  • Sousveillance and CyborGLOGGING

Mann also works in the fields of computer-mediated reality. He is a strong advocate of privacy rights, for which work he was an award recipient of the Chalmers Foundation in the fine arts. His work also extends to the area of sousveillance (a term he coined for "inverse surveillance"). Mann and one of his PhD students, James Fung, together with some of his other students, have been building a cyborg community around the CyborGLOGGING concept.[9]

  • Mann, together with Professor Ian Kerr at the University of Ottawa, have written extensively on surveillance, sousveillance, and equiveillance. "Sousveillance", a term coined by Mann, along with the concepts that he and Kerr have developed around these ideas, have created a new dialog for cyborg technologies, as well as related personal information gathering technologies like camera phones. He has created the related concept of Humanistic Intelligence [10]
  • Joi Ito, a leading researcher in moblogging, credits Mann with having initiated the moblogging movement by creating a system for transmission of realtime pictures, video, and text. In particular, from 1994 to 1996, Mann continuously transmitted his life's experiences, in real time, to his website for others to experience, interact with, and respond to.[11] His CyborGLOGS ('glogs), such as the spontaneous reporting of news as everyday experience,[12] were an early predecessor of 'blogs and the concept of blogging, and earlier than that, his pre-internet-era live streaming of personal documentary and cyborg communities defined cyborglogging as a new form of social networking.

[edit] Mann as cyborg

NOW, The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Life have all described him as "the world's first cyborg", from his early work with wireless wearable webcams.[13] Mann's publications include the book Cyborg: Digital Destiny... and the textbook Intelligent Image Processing, describing his early adoption of an alternative life style with significant and interesting ideas. In 2001, filmmaker Peter Lynch directed Cyberman, a film about Mann's life and inventions.

While some describe him as the founder of the field of wearable computing based on his early work in personal imaging, there is controversy surrounding the exact definition of wearable computing, and whether any one person can be considered to have invented it. For example, wearable computer imaging systems were described, hypothetically but not actually reduced to practice (i.e., not actually invented) by Vannevar Bush in his essay "As We May Think" in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945. Wearable devices for timing the trajectory of the balls on a roulette table were built and used by Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon who first published their work in 1966, but it is uncertain whether these devices could be considered computers, in the modern-day interpretation of a computer as a general purpose device (any more than one might consider a windup wristwatch to be a computer, i.e., although it computes and displays time, what makes something really a computer is its generality of purpose). Likewise, an abacus worn around the neck on a string could be called a wearable computer, but it's not quite in the spirit of Mann's idea of a general purpose device worn during all waking moments. Predecessors like the wristwatch, the shoe-based gambling timers, etc., were used for computation of specific tasks, whereas Mann's invention was a general-purpose field programmable computer inserted into the visual reality stream of all day-to-day tasks.

[edit] Anonequity project (Mann, Kerr, and others)

Mann is presently collaborating with a number of researchers including Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology, University of Ottawa, who teaches a course on "Cyborg Law" that uses Mann's book [1]. Mann, together with Kerr and others, are doing a SSHRC-funded project to study the Ethics, Law & Technology of anonymity, authentication, surveillance, and sousveillance, in addition to issues related to cyborg-law. The anonequity project is ongoing, and collaborator Kerr has also researched and lectured widely on implantable technologies [2].

Self-portraits of Mann with wearable-computing gear from 1980s to 1990s.
Self-portraits of Mann with wearable-computing gear from 1980s to 1990s.

[edit] Publications

Mann is author of more than 200 publications, including a textbook on electric eyeglasses and a popular culture book on day-to-day cyborg living. Selected works:

[edit] References

  1. ^ www.mcmaster.ca/ua/alumni/gallery/mann.htm. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  2. ^ wearcam.org/nn.mpg. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  3. ^ mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/awards2004excellence.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  4. ^ wearcam.org/orbits.htm. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  5. ^ "Virtual bellows: constructing high-quality images from video.", In Proceedings of the IEEE First International Conference on Image ProcessingAustin, Texas, November 13-16, 1994.
  6. ^ wearcam.org/comparam.htm. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  7. ^ "Compositing Multiple Pictures of the Same Scene", Proceedings of the 46th Annual Imaging Science & Technology Conference, May 9-14, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993.
  8. ^ wearcam.org/acmmm2006/index.htm. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  9. ^ glogger.mobi. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  10. ^ Mann, S. (May-June 2001). "Wearable computing:toward humanistic intelligence". Intelligent Systems 16 (3): 10-15. 10.1109/5254.940020. 
  11. ^ radio.weblogs.com/0114939/outlines/moblog.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  12. ^ wearcam.org/eastcampusfire.htm. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  13. ^ www.cnn.com/TECH/9604/08/computer_head/. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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