Can Virtual Reality Help Ease Chronic Pain?

After an hour-and-a-half bus ride last November, Julia Monterroso arrived at a white Art Deco building in West Hollywood, just opposite a Chanel store and the Ivy, a restaurant famous for its celebrity sightings. Monterroso was there to see Brennan Spiegel, a gastroenterologist and researcher at Cedars-Sinai who runs one of the largest academic medical initiatives studying virtual reality as a health therapy. He started the program in 2015 after the hospital received a million-dollar donation from an investment banker on its board. Spiegel saw Monterroso in his clinic the week before and thought he might be able to help alleviate her symptoms.

Monterroso is 55 and petite, with youthful bangs and hair clipped back by tiny jeweled barrettes. Eighteen months earlier, pain seized her lower abdomen and never went away. After undergoing back surgery in September to treat a herniated disc — and after the constant ache in her abdomen worsened — she had to stop working as a housecleaner. Eventually, following a series of tests that failed to reveal any clear cause, she landed in Spiegel’s office. She rated her pain an 8 on a 10-point scale, with 10 being the most severe.

Chronic pain is generally defined as pain that has lasted three months or longer. It is one of the leading causes of long-term disability in the world. By some measures, 50 million Americans live with chronic pain, in part because the power of medicine to relieve pain remains woefully inadequate. As Daniel Clauw, who runs the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, put it in a 2019 lecture, there isn’t “any drug in any chronic-pain state that works in better than one out of three people.” He went on to say that nonpharmacological therapy should instead be “front and center in managing chronic pain — rather than opioids, or for that matter, any of our drugs.”

Virtual reality is emerging as an unlikely tool for solving this intractable problem. The V.R. segment in health care alone, which according to some estimates is already valued at billions of dollars, is expected to grow by multiples of that in the next few years, with researchers seeing potential for it to help with everything from anxiety and depression to rehabilitation after strokes to surgeons strategizing where they will cut and stitch. In November, the Food and Drug Administration gave authorization for the first V.R. product to be marketed for the treatment of chronic pain.

 

The Uber Leak Exposes the Global War on Workers

‘Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.’ Those were the words of Nairi Hourdajian, Uber’s head of global communications, in a message sent to a colleague in 2014 as the company was facing the prospect of being shut down in Thailand and India.

Revealed as part of a trove of more than 124,000 leaked documents and correspondences from 2013 to 2017, dubbed the ‘Uber Files’, the admission gets to the core of how Uber became the globe-spanning transportation company it is today: by breaking laws, evading authorities, cultivating connections with powerful people, and putting its drivers on the frontline of the backlash. The documents provide new details on aspects of the company that have come to light in recent years.

The Uber Files show how the company recognised it needed to get close to politicians to ensure it wasn’t regulated out of existence. David Plouffe and Jim Messina used connections and goodwill from their time in the Obama administration to help Uber expand across Europe and the Middle East, including getting US diplomats in France and the Netherlands to intervene on the company’s behalf. Uber also developed close relationships with former British chancellor George Osborne, French president Emmanuel Macron when he was economy minister, former European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes, and Toronto mayor John Tory, just to name a few.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/07/uber-files-leak-gig-economy/

 

US firms love Indian tech bosses: are IITs and ‘jugaad’ the keys to their success?

When Twitter this week appointed Parag Agrawal to succeed Jack Dorsey as its new CEO, the platform was awash with excitement and pride from Indians.

“Is this the Indian virus – the ‘Silicon Valley CEO virus’ – for which there is no vaccine?” joked businessman Anand Mahindra of the Mahindra Group.

Agrawal is the latest in a long line of India-born executives to head a US technology firm.

Ever since waves of graduates from Indian institutes of technology (IITs) – the country’s top engineering colleges that are funded by the government – began migrating to Silicon Valley in the 1980s for better work opportunities, they have been breaking barriers in the US.

Some prominent names include Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet; Microsoft CEO Satya Narayana Nadella; IBM CEO Arvind Krishna; Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen; and George Kurian, CEO of data storage company NetApp.

These success stories have fascinated Indians and many reasons have been offered to explain it. One is sheer timing.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3158228/us-firms-love-indian-tech-bosses-are-iits-and-jugaad-keys-their

 

The Metaverse Must Be Stopped

Mark Zuckerberg wants us to believe he’s figured out how we’ll socialise in the future. On 28 October he outlined his vision for the metaverse, a virtual environment where we can hang out, shop, and work. Yet its realisation depends on Facebook and various other companies jumping into the metaverse space to develop the technologies it will depend on, and requires the public to buy into a vision where we spend more time sitting at home with virtual reality headsets on instead of going out into the physical world.

Silicon Valley has a long history of big dreams that are not realised, from the libertarian utopia that the internet was framed as in its early days to the ubiquitous autonomous vehicles that were supposed to have replaced car ownership by now. The metaverse is likely to suffer the same fate, but that doesn’t mean it will have no impact at all. As Brian Merchant has explained, the tech industry is in desperate need of a new framework to throw money at after so many of its big bets from the past decade have failed, and the metaverse could be poised to take that place.

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/11/metaverse-big-tech-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-microsoft-vr-gig-economy-internet-gaming-fortnite

 

The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport

In the 1890s, the biggest cities of the western world faced a mounting problem. Horse-drawn vehicles had been in use for thousands of years, and it was hard to imagine life without them. But as the number of such vehicles increased during the 19th century, the drawbacks of using horses in densely populated cities were becoming ever more apparent.

In particular, the accumulation of horse manure on the streets, and the associated stench, were impossible to miss. By the 1890s, about 300,000 horses were working on the streets of London, and more than 150,000 in New York City. Each of these horses produced an average of 10kg of manure a day, plus about a litre of urine. Collecting and removing thousands of tonnes of waste from stables and streets proved increasingly difficult.

The problem had been building up for decades. A newspaper editor in New York City said in 1857 that “with the exception of a very few thoroughfares, all the streets are one mass of reeking, disgusting filth, which in some places is piled to such a height as to render them almost impassable to vehicles”. As well as filling the air with a terrible stench, the abundance of horse manure turned streets into muddy cesspools whenever it rained. An eyewitness account from London in the 1890s describes the “mud” (the accepted euphemism among prudish Victorians) that often flooded the Strand, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, as having the consistency of thick pea soup. Passing vehicles “would fling sheets of such soup – where not intercepted by trousers or skirts – completely across the pavement”, spattering and staining nearby houses and shop fronts. Manure collected from the streets was piled up at dumps dotted around major towns and cities. Huge piles of manure also built up next to stables and provided an attractive environment for flies.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/03/lost-history-electric-car-future-transport

 

Socialist Cyborgs

In the spring of 1989, a virus began attacking computers in Europe, the United States, and Asia. During every sixteenth run of an infected executable file, the virus overwrote a random sector of a machine’s hard disk and manifested the phrase “Eddie lives… somewhere in time” on the monitor. A signature declared the virus’ origin: “This program was written in the city of Sofia (C) 1988–89 Dark Avenger.” 

Dark Avenger was the most prolific of a number of hackers that emerged in Bulgaria in the late 1980s and 1990s. In December 1990, The New York Times reported that the Eastern Bloc nation had become a major infection vector in the new information economy. The late John McAfee told the newspaper, “I would say that 10 percent of the sixty calls we receive each week are for Bulgarian viruses.” By another estimate, around ninety out of the 300 then extant viruses for IBM machines originated from the country. In 1997, Wired called Bulgaria “the heart of darkness.” 

How could a small socialist country become ground zero for so many digital epidemics? The conventional narrative of Eastern European communism is one of technologically backward states that failed to enter the information age, locked behind an impenetrable Iron Curtain that prevented both people and ideas from circulating. In Bulgaria, however, the electronic industry’s success was considered a key component of achieving the state’s ideological and economic dreams. The Bulgarian Communist Party hoped that the computer would usher in a communist utopia. Automation would streamline planning through a nationwide information network, and man would be free from menial tasks. More pressingly, the party was betting that computers could revive an economy that had once been the second fastest-growing in the world, but was floundering by the 1980s.

https://logicmag.io/kids/socialist-cyborgs/

 

A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness

The package arrived on a Thursday. I came home from a walk and found it sitting near the mailboxes in the front hall of my building, a box so large and imposing I was embarrassed to discover my name on the label. It took all my strength to drag it up the stairs.

I paused once on the landing, considered abandoning it there, then continued hauling it up to my apartment on the third floor, where I used my keys to cut it open. Inside the box, beneath lavish folds of bubble wrap, was a sleek plastic pod. I opened the clasp: inside, lying prone, was a small white dog.

I could not believe it. How long had it been since I’d submitted the request on Sony’s website? I’d explained that I was a journalist who wrote about technology – this was tangentially true – and while I could not afford the Aibo’s $3,000 (£2,250) price tag, I was eager to interact with it for research. I added, risking sentimentality, that my husband and I had always wanted a dog, but we lived in a building that did not permit pets. It seemed unlikely that anyone was actually reading these inquiries. Before submitting the electronic form, I was made to confirm that I myself was not a robot.

The dog was heavier than it looked. I lifted it out of the pod, placed it on the floor, and found the tiny power button on the back of its neck. The limbs came to life first. It stood, stretched, and yawned. Its eyes blinked open – pixelated, blue – and looked into mine. He shook his head, as though sloughing off a long sleep, then crouched, shoving his hindquarters in the air, and barked. I tentatively scratched his forehead. His ears lifted, his pupils dilated, and he cocked his head, leaning into my hand. When I stopped, he nuzzled my palm, urging me to go on.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/10/dogs-inner-life-what-robot-pet-taught-me-about-consciousness-artificial-intelligence

 

The materiality of the cloud

In his 1992 essay ‘There is No Software’, literary scholar and media theorist Friedrich Kittler argued that modern writing is governed by commercial companies such as IBM.[1] By buying computers with proprietary parts and programs whose source code is hidden from view, we are only allowed to create in ways that are already pre-determined. Programming languages cannot exist independently of the hardware and processors that interpret and run them. Since virtually all writing today is done on computers, and the hardware used to write is proprietary, software and the act of writing itself have ceased to exist, according to Kittler. In short, we can only write in ways allowed by technology companies and market forces.[2]

Kittler’s insight that software is indistinguishable from the hardware on which it is run is a crucial one. In addition to limit how we write, this means that the software – which is often referred to as weightless and intangible – like everything else in our known universe is limited by its material conditions.

In an economy based on growth, the palpable material aspect of software is even more highlighted. When software development is rushed, resulting in badly tested, unstable code, it does not only break itself but also risk rendering its hosting hardware useless. Anyone who has tried to upgrade their smart phone knows that the new software might very well occasion the purchase of a new phone, if it turns out that the hardware is no longer compatible. This, of course, is not unintentional.

In mainstream narrative, technology as a public good is the political gospel of the day. Countless initiatives aim at making industries, schools and homes more environmentally friendly through the implementation of new technical solutions. Digitization, with its hyper-accessible, paperless society, represents the modern hope of an ever-accelerated efficiency. All you need is an Internet connection – the rest is in the cloud.

https://www.eurozine.com/the-materiality-of-the-cloud/

 

Wie Big Tech die Pandemie «lösen» will

Nie habe es «einen wichtigeren Moment» gegeben, verkündeten Apple und Google am 10. April gleichzeitig auf ihren Websites, um «an der Lösung eines der dringendsten Probleme der Welt zu arbeiten».

Die beiden Monopolisten teilten mit, gemeinsam eine Plattform für das sogenannte Contact-Tracing zu entwickeln – eine Technologie zur Nach­verfolgung von Corona-Infektionen via Smartphone. Man werde, so die Verheissung, «die Kraft der Technologie nutzen (…), um Ländern auf der ganzen Welt zu helfen». Mit anderen Worten: Die Ingenieure aus Kalifornien treten auf ein Neues an, die Menschheit zu retten, sie vom Schlechten zu erlösen. Frei nach dem Google-Motto: Don’t be evil – sei nicht böse.

Nur wenige Wochen zuvor hatte der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten deutlich gemacht, dass auch er auf genau das vertraute. «I want to thank Google», erklärte Donald Trump auf einer Medien­konferenz. Danken dafür, dass dort «1700 Ingenieure» eine Website für ein flächen­deckendes Covid-19-Testing entwickelten. Auch er gab sich überzeugt, dass damit allen Menschen, überall, geholfen wäre: «We cover this country and large parts of the world.»

https://www.republik.ch/2020/05/09/wie-big-tech-die-pandemie-loesen-will

 

Met de hyperloop duurt Amsterdam – Eindhoven een kwartiertje

De transportrevolutie van deze eeuw begint in een weiland boven Groningen. Althans, dat is de overtuiging van Tim Houter (27). Tussen de koeien langs het Slochterdiep verheft zich binnenkort een stalen buis op palen, 2,6 kilometer lang en anderhalve meter dik. De witte constructie zal slechts drie meter boven het gras uitkomen, maar de beloften reiken sky high. Het is de testhyperloop van het Delftse bedrijf Hardt, de eerste in zijn soort ter wereld, zegt werktuigbouwkundige Houter in een videogesprek. Hij is ceo van Hardt, dat in korte tijd uitgroeide van studentenclubje tot bedrijf met twintig werknemers en miljoenen tot haar beschikking. ‘Er zijn nog een hoop Delftse mensen van het eerste uur.’

De bedrijfsmissie: het bouwen van een hyperloop. Deze futuristische reisbuis is een concept van de Canadees-Amerikaanse techgoeroe Elon Musk. Het is in feite een magneetzweeftrein, maar dan kleiner, die voortbeweegt in een vacuüm getrokken buis op palen. Zonder luchtweerstand moeten de reiscapsules een snelheid van duizend kilometer per uur gaan halen, vergelijkbaar met het vliegtuig, alleen dan met een laag energiegebruik. Qua technologie is Musks ontwerp niet eens zo vernieuwend: de hyperloop is een samenraapsel van bestaande kennis. Dat is juist het mooie ervan, stelt Houter. ‘Magnetische levitatie is bewezen, vacuümpompen doen het en in het maken van stalen buizen zijn we bedreven. Het is alleen nog zaak deze technologieën samen te voegen.’

https://www.groene.nl/artikel/niets-minder-dan-een-revolutie