Nursing a dinosaur: Or, "Computer on your face? Still not cool" c/o Chen, NYT

A gifted copy of the NYT has already paid a dividend providing a post. There's another reporting the launch of Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro. 

Through Chen's tech report we learn, or are reminded that "Google, Meta, Snap, Samsung and Sony" and other companies, have been trying to create VR headsets as an experience for over the past 12 years. Familiar barriers to entry (for all) still make themselves known: physical - weight, energy - battery, purpose - getting tasks done, the graphics - 'tech', hence the market key - of cost. It is integrating these that might also be termed 'maturity' - the time is, finally right. The term has always been somewhat unfortunate but where is the killer-app?

Jurassic World: Aftermath. Credit: Coatsink

Chen's trials of VR headsets old and new includes what seems the ubiquitous dinosaur app.

I can relate to the 'dinosaur' moniker, given the veritable dinosaur represented by models of care and nursing theory; and yes that one, the dinosaur riding the bike to a new (health) career in 1977.

Apple bills this launch as the start of:

"'spatial computing,' which blends data with the physical world to make our lives better."

In a way, this oft-repeated situation can be summed up as socio-technical reality, travelling through various iterations until capability and maturity of technology come of age. 

Now it's not just hi-res graphics, it is video quality imagery. Recalling an interface in my first HTML editor, I wonder if there is an opportunity being missed?

Unpicking Apples' 'spatial computing' which in short = data + physical world + lives better (purposes) tech is persistently predictable in going for the commercial jugular. Perhaps there is an intermediate step which software developers have sought to leverage over many years. 

'Data' here, means care concepts, or as the context dictates. Hodges' model as a data, information, knowledge, educational (e.g., case study) portal. 

Given a specific context what concepts might we 'find' at a,b,c and d below; and elsewhere in the model? How do we characterise the 'individual', the group? While in a virtual (and conceptual / threshold space: Hodges' model!) this might, encountered as text be a less virtiginous and tiring  experience*? Hodges' model is an ideal fit in fact - well a candidate space at least.

Consider how far, since the early 2000s and 2012 (not to mention 1991) technology (hard and soft)  has come in terms of language understanding and AI - ChatGPT. Hodges' model can leverage this in the first instance. As a template Hodges' model is a proverbial virtual lab - a potential situated corpus - also awaiting its dinosaur.

Individual
   |

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

Group

a) user (sector) purposes concepts critical thinking reflection model, modelling	b) space 3D - graphics representation health / nurse theory models  of care
patient/carer engagement metric for: self care integrated care person-centred care integrated care c)	open source/commercial apps outcomes prevention sustainable health care determinants of health d)

Brian X. Chen, Computer on your face? Still not cool. Tech, The New York Times International Edition, January 30, 2024, p.14.
https://nytimes-en.com/2024/01/25/why-making-face-computers-cool-isnt-easy/

*https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-vision-pros-scary-side-effect/ar-BB1i6Hln

(The tech giants will battle it out.)

Images: 

Jurassic World: Aftermath - https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/jurassic-world-aftermath-brings-vr-horror-to-the-oculus-quest-this-week-2840584

Fossilized evidence of the dinosaur - as expected from the archive:

WHERE HAVE ALL THE NURSES GONE? (1991)

https://web.archive.org/web/20091205090804/http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/Introvrn.htm

The above is included in the fourth row of the SCIENCES collection of links at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100327172004/http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/linksTwo.htm

Dear Apple,

... and Google, Microsoft, Amazon et al.

By any stretch of the four* care

 (knowledge) domains, the following does 

not  

provide a holistic view 

of a person's health...

 

"Give your patients a more holistic view of their health.

Empower your patients to access and securely store their health records right on their iPhone using just their credentials from your existing patient portal.

Learn more about health records on iPhone"

 

*Four - embedded within the fifth - the spiritual.

Ballets of corporate, Governmental, Social and Individual conscience

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

individual

c ons cien ce	Health services and services infrastructure
Why do we pay taxes as a society?	2012 Apple UK turnover £1,178m Corporation tax paid on UK profits £1.7m (2011: £1,013m £15.7m)

group - population

Q. Does the current state of corporate taxation globally influence the scope, efficacy and ability of governments and WHO to recommend and direct global public health and positive health promoting policies?

My source: Houlder, V., Pickard, J. (2014) Tech giants' £54m bill fuels tax row, Financial Times, FT Weekend, 4-5th January, 2014. p.1.

Note to Steve ... Godspeed

I never met you Steve, I wish I had and the other people still working in the circles, squares, triangles and all those chaotic - contrail - lines you moved in - and still move in - now from a step afar.

Thanks for the Macbook I use every day. Since 2008 it's been a real pleasure.

A seminal movie moment for me is that scene - the match-cut - in 2001.

You know, the one with the app - ape - early hominid - learns to kill and throws a bone to the sky and it is transformed into a spacecraft.

http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754333349729529/retro-spacecraft.html

Tell me Steve: if I throw an iPhone 4S skyward, or one yet to appear - an i7 maybe - could you and your new friends change it into a starship?

Not just for me: for everyone.


Where have you been already? I'd be off to M31 looking back every so often. What a trip that must be. Perhaps you've already seen that double Milky Way yet to appear in the night sky?

I encountered Apple at the Which Computer Show so many decades ago and in Byte, a 3D star map program for the Mac. Not being able to afford a PC never mind a Mac someone let me run the program at the Show. I still have that disc somewhere (I hope). It was a marvel that little program. Now, of course there are astro apps galore.

I really know nothing of you Steve, and yet your work, ethos, drive, and contribution is plain to see. I have not pre-ordered your biography [but if family and friends are reading this... ]. Your passing has made me reflect though.

Your commencement address to the students at Stanford on the news media made me realize I am doing what I love to do: both full-time and part-time. How to reconcile the two!

Thinking about your passing (this way) you've definitely tapped my shoulder as you've passed by.

You prompted me not to think about how much things have changed in my field - community mental health nursing and information tech since I started working; but to wonder, to project myself into the future (as we always should - as you did with the knowledge...) and ask: How much will things have changed from now. What is questionable, wrong, archaic about our current attitudes and practices?

More than anything Steve - Mr Jobs - thanks for that. You will be greatly missed.

Little boxes, little boxes ....

We are obsessed with 'boxes' - many of us especially so - at this time of year.

We cut and dice Nature into categories - boxes for things and concepts. Leaving the car and aircraft aside, being somewhere else - means thinking out of the box. Materialism? Well that is thinking out of the box taken to the extreme since materialism has us:

• filling boxes
• shipping boxes
• and the populous buying the latest and greatest of them.

(What would I like for Christmas? Well, I could really put a MacBook to good use - please!)

It used to be you shook the box - something rattled. These days silence prevails. The contents are virtual. The only rattle is from the dosette boxes. Count them out - M:T:W:T:F:S:S....

Science and medicine in particular has a thing about boxes. Of course, I have to put my hand up here as Hodges' model is not exactly quadratically challenged. It's rather ironic that in order to think out of the box, Hodges' model encourages us to think in four or five (spiritual) of them!

The business community is equally obsessed. The box clichés abound loud and clear in group, consultancy and change exercises. Of course the problem is when we only think in one box then things can come unstuck. They are often blinkered and this makes sense at times. As mentioned previously, medicine very frequently has to deal with life saving interventions that need snap decisions. I don't think it would go down very well in a crisis that someone pipes up "Now hold-on everyone we need to reflect on this, let's proceed in an holistic manner." At other times though critics point the finger, when people are treated purely in a box called 'SCIENCES' and the person becomes a mere adjunct to the box: a sticky label with a diagnosis (or two) written on it.

Nurses pride themselves and their person-centred caring approach on seeing the individual, not just the diagnosis.

Health professionals spend several years getting to know their box(es). The SCIENCES anatomy, biochemistry, physiology... Now in medical training doctors spend more time on communication skills. All health and social care professionals are prepared to 'travel', i.e. to put themselves in the patient's (carer's) shoes and see the world through their eyes. Increasingly in all human activities one discipline depends on the combined contributions of many others. Maybe that's why there's so much emphasis on words and disciplines like - integrated, transdisciplinary, socio-economics, interdisciplinary, psychosocial and geopolitical. New disciplines like neuromarketing emerge which we can expand in the respective boxes - e.g.

• INTRAPERSONAL box: behaviour, experiments, priming, freewill, ethics, personal choice, memetics
• POLITICAL box: consent, advertising, legislation, neuroeconomics, public health, governance-control, measures
• SCIENCES box: functional-MRI, bioinformatics, research programmes
• SOCIAL box: media, language, mental pollution, social nets, cultural acceptance, public perception

Using the model and 'travelling' you don't have to think of it as being 'in' or 'out' of boxes. Draw Hodges' model on A4 paper:

[Archived]:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060705190702/http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/index.htm

OK, now mentally fold it - one way - then another.

Suddenly disparate ideas, issues, techniques are thrown together. As physicists show (in theory only alas) as our learning grows, our previous journeys (new experiences - role plays, placements, secondments...) mean we don't have to travel the full distance. You too can warp space. In addition you are better equipped to take the patient and carer (student, whoever) with you and (try) to get their engagement.

It's true that many of these combined horizons may not work, but that's the nature of risk and creativity for you. Boxes! Do take care how you handle yours. Look out for those edges too - the leading edges change constantly....

Image source: Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc.

iPhone™, Open Handset Alliance™ - Android™

With the iPhone now available here in the UK, the mobile market is bound to change and quickly - the latest and greatest never last long.

"Unlimited data" sounds great, but the usual fair use caveats apply.

Elsewhere, Google has announced the Android Developer Challenge, supporting OHA ...

Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.

We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available.

On the OHA site -

Participate in the Android Developer Challenge, which will give away $10 million to developers who build apps on the platform.

Better watch that market space!

Drupal NW England User Group, Podcast II? Hot Potatoes and Apple

With apologies to readers elsewhere, but it looks like the 1st Drupal NW user group meeting scheduled for next Wednesday 10th may be in Manchester 7-9.30pm and not Preston. I'm awaiting news of the exact details. I was going to stay on at work and catch up on electronic-Care Programme Approach data entry. Also an opportunity to learn and test, but I'll reserve some other time. I'd prefer Manchester really for other reasons.

Reading and searching Drupal resources this Content Management System [CMS] is really powerful - the themes, modules, and the code under the hood - CSS, PHP, Ajax. I've had two books sat on the shelf, well now the dust has gone Babin's Beginning Ajax with PHP and Darie et al Ajax and PHP are good intros.

This weekend I'll draft out a structure for the first draft experimental site. A case of looking at the existing website and asking what content can readily be 'saved'. Brian's original notes will certainly have a home there, plus the h2cm and website chronology. (Currently) the Drupal community offers a timeline module - the solution is based on the SIMILE project from MIT, but this may be too grand for my needs?

Some 18 months ago I updated the multiple choice questions using Hot Potatoes, they have been sat off-line ever since. Now with Drupal I can check on the available educational modules. The meeting will help next week. I know nobody else is going to do this for me, that'd spoil the fun. It's listening and seeing what others are doing - a gravitational assist! Anyway I'm really looking forward to it and Yorkshire Sculpture Park too a week Saturday.

Podcasts: Yes I know part 1 is looking lonely (and needs to be improved upon).

The audio kit is back from Danny - our eldest - which I used for the first podcast. I've three drafts ready to roll, including the one that wrote itself on the trip to London last year when I managed to visit Tate Modern. Must get over to Tate Liverpool sometime. When I do record Part II, I'll use the software to put it together in parts - easier on the voice. We'll see if we can have that done for the year end.

Dan is buying an iMac and reckons I should head that way. I've visited the Apple Store in Manchester and no doubt about it absolutely cool kit and apps. If you were reading the QUAD earlier in the year I visited the Regent St store in London - cool then too. In the late 1980s-early 90s I think it was Bruce Webster in Byte magazine who did a 3D-star map program for the Mac. I wrote (yes that long ago) and he duly replied with a disc. I still have the letter and disc somewhere. Finally got to see the program on the Apple stand at the Which Computer Show in Birmingham. Those shows were quite something, for the UK at any rate, three halls at the NEC.

I've always had an affection for Apple - the beginning, the design, style and innovation, the OS developments. The market has needed that green presence even if it has waxed and waned. So when funds allow and Apple pick up the real green agenda as suggested in the Mac mags - then the podcasts might trip more lightly! In the 80s Acorn helped me out with special pricing for the BBC micro, but there's no time to justify any serious development efforts at present. Plus there's the small matter and foggy remoteness of steep learning curves...