Pranav Mistry 谈“第六感官”技术的惊异潜力

关于这个演讲

在TEDIndia演讲中，Pranav Mistry示范了几项让实体世界和信息世界产生互动的工具，包括深入检视他的“第六感官”装置，以及划时代的纸“计算机”。在现场问答中，Mistry说，他要开放“第六感官”背后的开放源码软件，使其应用的可能性无限延伸。

关于 Pranav Mistry

Pranav Mistry是“第六感官”装置的发明者；这是个可佩戴的装置，能够使真实世界和信息世界间产生新的互动。

为什么要听他演讲：

Pranav Mistry是MIT媒体实验室顺畅介面组的博士研究生。在他于MIT做研究前，曾担任微软的 UX（使用者经验）研究员，毕业于印度理工学院。Mistry 对于整合数位信息经验，与真实世界间互动方面的研究充满了热情。

Mistry过去在MIT的研究项目包括：智慧便利贴（Quickies），它可用于搜寻并发送提示讯息；可绘3D图的笔；及TaPuMa，就是可感知的公共地图，功能就像是实体世界的Google。他的研究兴趣还包括：手势与感知的互动，普及运算，人工智能，机器视觉，集体智能与机器人。

Pranav Mistry 的英语网上资料

首页：Pranav Mistry

项目：Sixth Sense

项目：Quickies

项目：TaPuMa

项目：Inktuitive

[TED科技?娱乐?设计]

已有中译字幕的TED影片目录（繁体）（简体）。请注意繁简目录是不一样的。

Pranav Mistry 谈“第六感官”技术的惊异潜力

我们生长在和周围物体互动的环境里，有很多很多物体是我们每天都要用到的。和大部分计算机设备相比，这些物体有趣多了！当我们提到物体，就自然而然出现与这东西有关的另一件事－就是姿势，也就是：我们怎么使用这些物体？我们在日常生活中如何使用这些物体？我们不只用不同姿势来使用物体，也用来和别人沟通。合十的姿势，可能表示尊敬某人，或者是－在印度，不必教，连小孩都知道。这手势是指板球中“4次跑垒”的意思，这成了我们的生活常识。

所以，我从一开始就很有兴趣，想了解我们对于日常用品和姿势有何认知，以及如何将这些物品运用在我们和数位世界的互动上。为什么没有键盘和鼠标，我就没办法使用计算机?也不能像与实体世界沟通那样使用计算机?

我从八年前开始进行这场探索，从我桌上的鼠标开始，我不是将它用于计算机，而是拆开它。你们或许都知道，在那个年代，鼠标里面有个球，还有两个滚轮，所以当鼠标移动时，滚轮会告诉计算机，球滚动的方向。我对这两个滚轮很有兴趣，但还需要多几个，所以就跟朋友借他的鼠标，一直没还他－这样就有了四个滚轮。有趣的是，我怎么使用这些滚轮？基本上，我把它们从鼠标里拿出来，放

在一条线上，有线、滑带、和一些弹簧。我做出的，基本上是一个感应姿势的介面装置，像个动作感应装置，成本只要两美元。所以，不论我在实体世界做什么，就会复制到数位世界里。只要用这个我8年前做的小东西就可以，那是在20xx年。

我对于整合实体和数位世界有兴趣，我想到便利贴。我想,“何不让实体便利贴的介面，整合到数位世界中呢?”在便利贴上，写给我妈妈的留言纸条，变成简讯传递；或是写在纸上的会议通知，自动和我的数位行事历同步－待办事项会自动在计算机上同步。你也可以在数位世界里搜寻，或者是,你可以写下问题, 如 “Smith教授的地址?”然后这个小系统就会把地址打印出来，这就像是个纸做的输出入系统，只用纸就可以制作。

另一项探索是－我想制造一枝可以画3D效果的笔，所以就设计出这支笔，能够帮助设计师和建筑师，不只以三度空间思考，也可以实际画3D图形，这样用起来就更直觉多了。

我又想,“何不做一个实体世界的Google地图?”不必输入关键词找东西，只需将物体放在地图上。如果我把登机证放上，它会显示登机口的位置；放咖啡杯，它会显示咖啡厅位置，或垃圾筒位置。

这是我早期所做的一些探索，因为我的目标是紧密衔接这两个世界。在这些实验中有一个共通点:我尝试把实体世界一部份带进数位世界中。我把某些物体，或现实生活中直觉式的东西带进数位世界里，目的是让计算机介面更趋直觉式。

但是后来我了解到，人们并不真的对计算机感兴趣，人们感兴趣的是信息。我们想知道更多事情，我们想知道周围的各种动态。

所以，大约在去年，去年年初的时候我开始想,“我何不颠倒研究方向呢?”或许,“不如把数位世界的数位信息描绘在实体世界里?”因为这些影像，事实上都被限制在这些方形的装置里，再放进你的口袋。我何不把这个形体打破，把信息放进日常生活中?这样我也不必学新的语言来和这些像素沟通?

为了实现这个梦想，我真的想过把一台大型投影机放在头上，我想，这就是为何它叫做“投(头)影机”，对吧?我照着字面意思做了，我把自行车头盔稍微割掉一点,让投影机可以放得进去，这样，我就可以用数位讯息将环绕我的真实世界扩大。

但是后来，我发现我也想和这些数位像素互动，所以我加了一个小摄影机，当作数位眼睛。之后, 我们更进一步,做成使用者导向的颈挂型式，就是大多数人所知的“第六感官装置”。

这技术最有趣的地方是－你可以把数位世界带着走，到任何地方都可以！你可以使用周遭任何表面或墙壁当成介面，这台摄影机追踪你所有的动作，不论双手在做什么，它都了解姿势的含意。还有，你看那些色笔，那是我们最初使用的型式，可以在任何墙壁上画画；可以停在墙壁前面，开始在墙上作画。而且我们不只追踪一根手指，我们让你可以自由使用双手全部手指，所以你可以实际用双手去放大、缩小地图，就是捏画面所呈现的图形。事实上，摄影机是用来收集所有影像，执行图形边缘辨识和颜色辨识。有很多小程式在里面跑，技术上有点复杂，但在某种意义上来说，给了你一个更能直觉使用的输出结果。

我更兴奋的是，可以带到户外去用，不必掏出口袋里的照相机，只要摆出一个照相的姿势，它就替你照相了。

(掌声)

谢谢！

拍完之后，随便找一面墙，就可以开始浏览这些照片，或是,“我想修改一下这些照片，然后用电子邮件寄给朋友”。我们所寻觅的世代，是信息处理能确实与实体世界融合在一起。当然，如果没有任何平面可用，就用手掌作简单的操作吧！看这个，我只用我的手，就能拨电话号码。摄影机不只了解你手部的动作，而且很有趣的，它还知道你手里拿的是什么东西。

我们现在正在做的是－举个例, 在这里，这本书的封面，正在和线上数以百万计的书封面比对，找寻这是哪一本书。一旦找到资料，它会找到更多相关书评。或者，可能纽约时报有个有声的简介，你就可以在实体书上，听到有声的书评。(“在哈佛大学的著名演讲…”)。

这是欧巴马总统上周来MIT的演讲。(“…我特别要感谢2位杰出的MIT…”)。我在户外，从报纸上看到他演讲的实况录像。你的报纸会给你看实时天气报导，不必去更新资料－这原本要上计算机才找得到,是吗?

(掌声)

我回印度时,只要拿出我的登机证，就可以知道我的班机延误多久。因为在这种时候，我不想打开iPhone点选某个功能图案。我相信此技术不只改变这个－是的…(笑声)也会改变我们和别人交流的方式，不只在实体世界里。好玩的是，我在波士顿的地铁上玩踢乒乓球游戏，在地上玩,不错吧?(笑声)我相信当这种技术和实体生活融合在一起时，想象力是唯一能限制我们的东西。

但很多人会说，我们的工作不只和实体物品有关。事实上，我们做的大多是会计、编辑这类的事，那该怎么办呢？很多人很期待新一代的平板计算机上市，与其等待，我干脆自己做一个﹐只用了一张纸。我把摄影机上的－所有网络摄影机都内建有麦克风，我把麦克风拿下来，把它夹在－就像是做了个夹式麦克风－夹在纸上, 随便的一张纸，每当我碰到纸的时候，这在纸上接触的声音就会通知计算机，摄影机追踪我手指的移动。

当然，你也可以看电影 (“午安，我叫Russell”) (“…我是第54团的荒野探险者”)。

当然也可以玩游戏 (汽车引擎声)摄影机知道你拿纸的方向，就可以玩赛车游戏 (掌声)。

很多人一定早想到了，当然，还可以浏览。对，当然可以浏览任何网站，甚至在纸上做各种运算，在任何你有需要的地方。更有趣的是，我对如何把这个功能变得更强大点很感兴趣。当我回到桌上，我可以捏住那个信息，然后放到我的计算机屏幕上，这样我就可以用桌上计算机了。

(掌声)

干嘛只用计算机?用纸也很好玩。纸的世界充满乐趣，我把文件的一部分放在这里,第二部份来自另一份文件－然后调整这里的信息。好，然后我说,“OK, 看起来不错，我要打印出来”就有了一份打印文件。这样－工作流程比我们一般所用的方式更趋直觉式了，像20年前的工作方式，而不是像现在，要在两个世界间切换。

最后，我相信把信息和所有物件整合，不仅能帮助我们消除数位落差，消除两个世界间的鸿沟，还可以以某种方式帮助我们保有人性，加强我们与实体世界的连结。最终会帮助我们，不要变成坐在另一部机器前面的机器。

就这样。谢谢。

(掌声)

谢谢。

(掌声)

Chris Anderson：嗯﹐Pranav，首先，你是个天才！这太不可思议了,真的！你预备怎么做? 想开个公司吗﹖还是继续研究下去? 或有其它的打算?

Pranav Mistry：很多公司－其实就是媒体实验室的赞助者，有兴趣以其它方法继续研究。像行动通讯公司和印度非营利组织的应用方法便不同。这些机构想“为什么只有?第六感官??我们应该为残障人士，设置?第五感官?”就像是哑巴，这种技术可以让他们用另一种方式“说”出来，像是配个喇叭之类的。

CA：你自己的打算呢? 要留在MIT吗？还是你也要参与这些计划?

PM： 我正试着让这技术更广泛的被人们使用，让大家都能开发自己的“第六感官”装置。因为硬件其实不难制造，自己做也不难，我们会提供所有开放源码软件给大家，可能从下个月开始。

CA：开放源码？哇！

(掌声)

CA：你会回到印度做这些计划吗?

PM：是，是的，当然。

CA:你的计划呢? 关于MIT的?还有印度的?未来怎样分配你的时间?

PM:这里有很大的能量。很多东西可以学。你刚刚看到的，都与我在印度所学有关。如果以成本效益考虑，这个系统只要300美元；和2万美元的Surface Table，或其它类似产品相比，或甚至2美元的鼠标手势系统，当年可能要价 5,000 美元?当我在一场研讨会上，把这东西展示给印度总统Abdul Kalam看时，他说:“我们应该在Bhabha原子研究中心里，用这个技术做些研究”。我很期待可以把这些技术带给普罗大众，而不是把这些技术留在实验室里。

(掌声)

CA：目前来过 TED 演讲的人之中，你可以称的上是少数2、3个世界上最顶尖的发明家之一，TED很荣幸能邀你来这里演讲，非常感谢，真是太棒了！

 

第二篇：TED演讲：每个人都能掌握的记忆技巧

TED演讲：每个人都能掌握的记忆技巧

I'd like to invite you to close your eyes.

Imagine yourself standing outside the front door of your home. I'd like you to notice the color of the door, the material that it's made out of. Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles. They are competing in a naked bicycle race, and they are headed straight for your front door. I need you to actually see this. They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty, they're bouncing around a lot. And they crash straight into the front door of your home. Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you, spokes end up in awkward places. Step over the threshold of your door into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side, and appreciate the quality of the light. The light is shining down on Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster is waving at you from his perch on top of a tan horse. It's a talking horse. You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose. You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth. Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room. In your living room, in full imaginative broadband, picture Britney Spears. She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table, and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." And then follow me into your kitchen. In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road and out of your oven are coming towards you Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz," hand-in-hand skipping straight towards you.

Okay. Open your eyes.

I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest that is held every spring in New York City. It's called the United States Memory Championship. And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back as a science journalist expecting, I guess, that this was going to be like the Superbowl of savants. This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies, widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep.

(Laughter)

They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers, looking at them just once. They were memorizing the names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers. They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes. They were competing to see who could memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest. I was like, this is unbelievable. These people must be freaks of nature.

And I started talking to a few of the competitors. This is a guy called Ed Cook who had come over from England where he had one of the best trained memories. And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize that you were a savant?" And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant. In fact, I have just an average memory. Everybody who competes in this contest will tell you that they have just an average memory. We've all trained ourselves to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory using a set of ancient techniques, techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece, the same techniques that Cicero had used to memorize his speeches, that medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books." And I was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?"

And we were standing outside the competition hall, and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant, but somewhat eccentric English guy, says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist. Do you know Britney Spears?" I'm like, "What? No. Why?" "Because I really want to teach Britney Spears how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards on U.S. national television. It will prove to the world that anybody can do this."

(Laughter)

I was like, "Well I'm not Britney Spears, but maybe you could teach me. I mean, you've got to start somewhere, right?" And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me.

I ended up spending the better part of the next year not only training my memory, but also investigating it, trying to understand how it works, why it sometimes doesn't work and what its potential might be.

I met a host of really interesting people. This is a guy called E.P. He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, the very worst memory in the world. His memory was so bad that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem, which is amazing. And he was this incredibly tragic figure, but he was a window into the extent to which our memories make us who we are.

The other end of the spectrum: I met this guy. This is Kim Peek. He was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." We spent an afternoon together in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books, which was scintillating.

(Laughter)

And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises, treatises written 2,000-plus years ago in Latin in Antiquity and then later in the Middle Ages. And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. One of the really interesting things that I learned is that once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today. Once upon a time, people invested in their memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds.

Over the last few millenia we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet to the scroll to the codex, the printing press,

photography, the computer, the smartphone -- that have made it

progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. These technologies have made our modern world possible, but they've also changed us. They've changed us culturally, and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively. Having little need to remember anymore, it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how.

One of the last places on Earth where you still find people passionate about this idea of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory is at this totally singular memory contest. It's actually not that singular, there are contests held all over the world. And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it.

A few years back a group of researchers at University College London brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab. They wanted to know: Do these guys have brains that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours? The answer was no. Are they smarter than the rest of us? They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests, and the answer was not really.

There was however one really interesting and telling difference between the brains of the memory champions and the control subjects that they were comparing them to. When they put these guys in an fMRI machine, scanned their brains while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and pictures of snowflakes, they found that the memory champions were lighting up different parts of the brain than everyone else. Of note, they were using, or they seemed to be using, a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation. Why? And is there something the rest of us can learn from this?

The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catchup.

This is my friend Ben Pridmore, three-time world memory champion. On his desk in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards that he

is about to try to memorize in one hour, using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered. He used a similar technique to memorize the precise order of 4,140 random binary digits in half an hour. Yeah.

And while there are a whole host of ways of remembering stuff in these competitions, everything, all of the techniques that are being used, ultimately come down to a concept that psychologists refer to as elaborative encoding.

And it's well illustrated by a nifty paradox known as the Baker/baker paradox, which goes like this: If I tell two people to remember the same word, if I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy named Baker." That's his name. And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker." And I come back to you at some point later on, and I say, "Do you remember that word that I told you a while back? Do you remember what it was?" The person who was told his name is Baker is less likely to remember the same word than the person was told his job is that he is a baker. Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. What's going on here?

Well the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you. It is entirely untethered from all of the other memories floating around in your skull. But the common noun baker, we know bakers. Bakers wear funny white hats. Bakers have flour on their hands. Bakers smell good when they come home from work. Maybe we even know a baker. And when we first hear that word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date. The entire art of what is going on in these memory contests and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life is figuring out ways to transform capital B Bakers into lower-case B bakers -- to take information that is lacking in context, in significance, in meaning and transform it in some way so that it becomes meaningful in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind.

One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this dates back 2,500 years to Ancient Greece. It came to be known as the memory palace. The story behind its creation goes like this: There was a poet called Simonides who was attending a banquet. He was actually the hired entertainment, because back then if you wanted to throw a really slamming party, you

didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet. And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door, and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses, kills everybody inside. It doesn't just kill everybody, it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition. Nobody can say who was inside, nobody can say where they were sitting. The bodies can't be properly buried. It's one tragedy compounding another. Simonides, standing outside, the sole survivor amid the wreckage, closes his eyes and has this realization, which is that in his mind's eye, he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting. And he takes the relatives by the hand and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage.

What Simonides figured out at that moment is something that I think we all kind of intuitively know, which is that, as bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories. If I asked you to recount the first 10 words of the story that I just told you about Simonides, chances are you would have a tough time with it. But I would wager that if I asked you to recall who is sitting on top of a talking tan horse in your foyer right now, you would be able to see that.

The idea behind the memory palace is to create this imagined edifice in your mind's eye and populate it with images of the things that you want to remember -- the crazier, weirder, more bizarre, funnier, raunchier, stinkier the image is, the more unforgettable it's likely to be. This is advice that goes back 2,000-plus years to the earliest Latin memory treatises.

So how does this work? Let's say that you've been invited to TED center stage to give a speech and you want to do it from memory, and you want to do it the way that Cicero would have done it if he had been invited to TEDxRome 2,000 years ago. What you might do is picture yourself at the front door of your house. And you'd come up with some sort of an absolutely crazy, ridiculous, unforgettable image to remind you that the first thing you want to talk about is this totally bizarre contest. And then you'd

go inside your house, and you would see an image of Cookie Monster on top of Mister Ed. And that would remind you that you would want to then introduce your friend Ed Cook. And then you'd see an image of Britney Spears to remind you of this funny anecdote you want to tell. And you go into your kitchen, and the fourth topic you were going to talk about was this strange journey that you went on for a year, and you have some friends to help you remember that.

This is how Roman orators memorized their speeches -- not

word-for-word, which is just going to screw you up, but topic-for-topic. In fact, the phrase "topic sentence," that comes from the Greek word "topos," which means "place." That's a vestige of when people used to think about oratory and rhetoric in these sorts of spatial terms. The phrase "in the first place," that's like in the first place of your memory palace.

I thought this was just fascinating, and I got really into it. And I went to a few more of these memory contests. And I had this notion that I might write something longer about this subculture of competitive memorizers. But there was a problem. The problem was that a memory contest is a pathologically boring event. (Laughter) Truly, it is like a bunch of people sitting around taking the SATs. I mean, the most dramatic it gets is when somebody starts massaging their temples. And I'm a journalist, I need something to write about. I know that there's this incredible stuff happening in these people's minds, but I don't have access to it.

And I realized, if I was going to tell this story, I needed to walk in their shoes a little bit. And so I started trying to spend 15 or 20 minutes every morning before I sat down with my New York Times just trying to remember something. Maybe it was a poem. Maybe it was names from an old yearbook that I bought at a flea market. And I found that this was shockingly fun. I never would have expected that. It was fun because this is actually not about training your memory. What you're doing is you're trying to get better and better and better at creating, at dreaming up,

these utterly ludicrous, raunchy, hilarious and hopefully unforgettable images in your mind's eye. And I got pretty into it.

This is me wearing my standard competitive memorizer's training kit. It's a pair of earmuffs and a set of safety goggles that have been masked over except for two small pinholes, because distraction is the competitive memorizer's greatest enemy.

I ended up coming back to that same contest that I had covered a year earlier. And I had this notion that I might enter it, sort of as an experiment in participatory journalism. It'd make, I thought, maybe a nice epilogue to all my research. Problem was the experiment went haywire. I won the contest, which really wasn't supposed to happen.

(Applause)

Now it is nice to be able to memorize speeches and phone numbers and shopping lists, but it's actually kind of beside the point. These are just tricks. They are tricks that work because they're based on some pretty basic principles about how our brains work. And you don't have to be building memory palaces or memorizing packs of playing cards to benefit from a little bit of insight about how your mind works.

We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged. We remember when we are able to take a piece of information and experience and figure out why it is meaningful to us, why it is significant, why it's colorful, when we're able to transform it in some way that it makes sense in the light of all of the other things floating around in our minds, when we're able to transform Bakers into bakers.

The memory palace, these memory techniques, they're just shortcuts. In fact, they're not even really shortcuts. They work because they make you work. They force a kind of depth of processing, a kind of mindfulness, that most of us don't normally walk around exercising. But there actually are no shortcuts. This is how stuff is made memorable.

And I think if there's one thing that I want to leave you with, it's what E.P., the amnesic who couldn't even remember that he had a memory problem, left me with, which is the notion that our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?

I learned firsthand that there are incredible memory capacities latent in all of us. But if you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.

Thank you.

(Applause)