I have always been interested in information processing. It seems to be at the core of all things, whether it's DNA, binary, or social. I think it is inevitable that we will decode all there is to decode, perhaps in a generation, perhaps in a thousand years. If we don't wipe ourselves out as a species, we will eventually create technology and software complex enough to contain sentience.
I have been a filmmaker for the past decade, as well as an actor and fashion model, so my social experiences have been quite interesting. Before that, I was killing my able mind with drug addiction. I've been surrounded by hollywood, and rubbed shoulders with the affluent, and I've been surrounded by junkies and criminals. My take on society and human culture follows the same lines as my take on technology: systems analysis and information processing. That's all there really is. Strip away our human natures, our perception of mortality and the need to 'survive' and 'evolve', and we are left with what we truly are: information processors. As is society at large, and the ecosystem... all forms of information being processed and flowing and evolving. I would assume the universe is the same, and I wouldn't be surprised if all the cosmos did display signs of intelligence and sentience.. processing all the bits and bytes of light and stars and... well.. doesn't take much to see where I'm going with this.
Before film, and before my reckless days of jugglng University studies and corporate government positions and alcohol/drug addiction, ...before all that... I programmed. I had an intuition with computers immediately, a seven year old laying his eyes for the first time on a tandy color computer... on a commodore 64... Atari. Game programming.. processing inputs and visual outputs... it has always intrigued me, and makes sense in the way that only mathematics can: it's pure; it's perfect.
I recently got back into the tech world with my new free data plan, which led to a smartphone (why have unlimited data if you're not gonna use facebook to it's fullest?!).. and my ultra-cheap mobile plan (Wind) didn't do the iPhone, so I went Android. Thank the Universe I did! I quickly found that I could root, mod, and program linux on the device, and thanks to Google's dedication to development and 'open-source', I was soon coding in the Python language on sl4a for android, developing apps for the Android Market, particularely in A.I.
An avid watcher of Ted-talks, I was pressed to investigate ocr technology, as it used to cost a blind person $10,000 USD to get a device that could snap a picture of a book page and read it back in english. I planned and developed an app for android that would do this for free. Now, anyone can download it, if you're interested here it is:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davecote.seesay (it's not revolutionary, but it's A.I. in it's infancy..) this led me to make more advanced versions, including one that does the image-to-speech, but in ANY language, translating text after performing the ocr on it. (
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davecote.seesaytranslate)
Finally, further researching A.I. and possible uses of society's new-found obsession with smartphones and social media, I decided it would be great to perform true computer vision. Image analysis, such as surf; orb.. along with title/meta analysis, to extract a most likey result of what that image 'is'. With online technology where it's at, we have a limitless volume of data to compare against, and so it was possible to create "Android Eye", a smartphone app that analyzes a picture, and not only performs surf, orb, and other image analysis methods, but also compares these results against the limitless supply of online pictures... the end result: the app speaks aloud what it 'thinks' the image is, and shows openly it's thought process as it's determining it's thought processes. An instant hit! Over a thousand installs and I just released it!!!
Android Eye is here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.davecote.androideyesfreeSo now, I am going to get into Robotics, and would really love some insight into the bluebrain project, google's cat-watching-youtube neural-net brain, asimo, and other advanced "thinking" robotics.
Please email me if you have any leads for me, I don't have a million bucks, so I rely on open-source, but I do tend to learn quickly and have alot of time on my hands, I can be reached at info (at) davecote.com
I look forward to any interesting emails:)
Dave Cote
