Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
LENA: Baby's Verbal LifeLog
LENA (Language Environment Analysis) is a product that captures up to 16 hours of your child's aural environment. The device takes that material and then evaluates it to check your child's exposure to verbal stimulation, and provides a measure of your child's language use.
Technovelgy readers are familiar with the idea of a lifelog; a device that you can hang around your neck to take pictures at regular intervals of whatever you are seeing. The concept and device were originally developed by DARPA in 2003. DARPA eventually canceled it, in part due to privacy concerns.
Microsoft also got into the act; their SenseCam was a device designed to take pictures at a regular interval. (The Momenta PC is a much more attractive concept.)
The military wanted to develop the LifeLog for intelligence-gathering purposes. The stated intent was "to be able to trace the 'threads' of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships."
It sounds like a blue-sky kind of project; however, it appears that the SenseCam Seems To Help Dementia Patients. By briefly reviewing what they had seen over the course of the day, people with mild dementia were better able to orient themselves and answer questions about what they did that day. In other words, regular use appeared to improve recall.
It appears that the trick is not to gather the information, but to try to make sense of it and to use it. This proved to be the case for the LENA child language device as well.
On the basis of recordings from 314 families, Infoture engineers claim that the number of conversational turns and the entropy measure track closely with language ability as determined by speech professionals. Children with diagnosed language delays, for example, have lower entropy scores than children of a similar age who are developing normally.
I'm just trying to imagine the legal nightmare of dozens of kids in elementary schools with various devices hung around their necks. You'd want GPS, of course; you can get good information by seeing where your child wanders on the playground and how long she stays there. You'd want to measure the time and quality of interactions with teachers and other children. Just imagine trying to get permission from all those people to record their likeness and words.
Perhaps those of us who value their privacy will want an anti-LifeLog - a device that sends out an electronic signal to all LifeLog-style devices that states that we do not wish to be photographed or otherwise recorded.
Read more about LENA - Language Environment Analysis and check out the LENA Research Language Environment Analysis Systems website.
The company’s engineers soon found that conventional speech-recognition software was not up to the task. The sounds a baby might encounter — a raspy grandparent, a TV commercial, a sibling’s chatter — were simply too varied to analyze successfully. The best solution, it seemed, was to eschew the identification of particular words and focus on a recording’s acoustic features. Modeling every conceivable sound in a household, they designed a system that distinguishes different voices from one another, gives a rough count of the number of words directed at a child and counts also the number of conversational “turns” that are taken as child and interlocutor exchange words.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 2/24/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")
FTC: Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers
'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.' - Pournelle and Niven, 1981.)
Perching Ambush Drones
'On the chest of drawers something was perched.' - Philip K. Dick, 1956.
India Ponders Always-On Smartphone Location Tracking
'It is necessary... for your own protection.' - Jack Vance, 1954.
LingYuan Vehicle Roof Drones Now Available, ala Blade Runner 2049
Accompanied by a small selection of similar ideas from science fiction.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
