Second international School On Mind, Brain And Education

2007, May 22-26

JAPAN

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Life tapestry: weaving reality, driving human growth
Steve Jobs, one of the most successful entrepreneurs, has looked in the mirror every morning and asked himself for the past 33 years: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" The mirror has the power of making one see the truth. Surprisingly, unlike dramatic progress in media technology, the mirror remains unchanged since mythical age.
The situation is changing thanks to new sensor technology. The authors have developed a wrist-watch-shaped sensor based on 3.4-cc, sub-micro-ampere ultra-small computer technology. This is called Life Microscope [1]. It allows one to look into oneself. The image, which one was unable to look in a conventional mirror, appears. Acceleration, heart rate, and temperature are recorded 24/7, and the signals are sent wirelessly to servers. Signal processing of these "debris signals" visualizes various facets of one's life.
I (KY) myself have been living with it on my wrist for more than a year. Every sign of my behaviors, which include activity level, sleeping conditions, and frequency components, are visualized as graphical pattern in real time. The rich patterns life reality produces remind one of weaving a tapestry.
This "Life Tapestry" allows one to be aware of daily regularities and fluctuations through patterns, which one would not be aware of without it, and make reflection on one's conducts beyond analysis possible. Without Tapestry the past is only in our memory (or physical brain), event by event. The signs left in the Tapestry prompt one (brain) to recall past and stories beyond time passing.
Knowing past is about changing the future. The reflection affects the mental model and changes the behavior. The change in behaviors changes the pattern and influences the reflection. My behaviors and generated patterns have continuously been influenced by the past Tapestry patterns. I have successfully recalled the most fulfilling period of the year and repeated it by this pattern feedback. This is seen as that Tapestry works as an extension of brain and is becoming a key contributor of learning cycle.
In addition, the weight and subjective five ratings, namely spiritual, physical, social, intellectual and execution, have been recorded and they are correlated with the Tapestry patterns. The result is that one's next-day weight and ratings are predicted using Tapestry patterns. Real-time feedback of these results, ones of such examples is "weight forecast," enables awareness and spontaneous behavior changes.
Human growth is limitless. The key is the reflection. The 20th-century productivity growth model, which Frederick W. Taylor [2] initiated, was to decompose work and replace constituents with tools, such as computers and machines. In the new 21st-century model, novel sensor technology brings about new mirrors, and prompts reflections and growth. I have experienced unimaginable growth owing to this in a past year. I dare to call this as an evolution without waiting for a genetic change. There was an explosion in a variety of species on the earth in Cambrian period, in which the "birth of an eye", namely a sensor, is claimed to contribute much to the explosion [3]."Human x Sensors" has the potential to induce the second Cambrian period on the earth.