The World of Peter J Bentley

BCS talk - The Legacy of Turing

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:48:40 GMT

I was recently asked to participate in a British Computer Society evening dedicated to the legacy of Alan Turing. It was a fascinating event, with speakers describing different aspects of Turing's legacy to our society today - his papers; how he inspires gay people today. I spoke about Turing's contribution to Computer Science (and also took the opportunity to mention my forthcoming book Digitized briefly). It was a nice opportunity to explain the importance of Turing's ideas; if you want to watch what we all said, a video is available online at the BCS website here.

Robocop and Artificial Intelligence

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:33:27 GMT

Today I was invited to attend the screening of the original Robocop movie, and then have a live chat with the audience about it. One of my more unusual public appearances perhaps! The invite came from science in the pub, who like to screen classic movies and then have an hour's discussion of the themes explored in each film with a designated expert. Our chat was also recorded by James O'Malley for the Pod Delusion - you can listen here. I think I mentioned scenes from the movie a few times so might help to see the film first!

Digital Biology eBook Edition

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 11:58:23 GMT

While work activities have slowed down during the Christmas break I've taken the opportunity to wrap up the new eBook edition of my first popular science book Digital Biology and release it to the online stores. This is a new revised edition with a new preface and footnotes which bring the reader up to date with research since this book was first written ten years ago. I also adjusted the text here and there - for example I can no longer refer to "cream coloured computers" any more - the days of IBM PCs and their single colour scheme are long gone! It was a lot of fun revisiting this book again, and it made me realise how my writing style has matured over the years. It also made me realise just how much (and in some cases, how little) progress we have made in the research areas of digital biology in the last ten years.

You can find this new edition of Digital Biology online here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Biology- ebook/dp/B006RBGMUI

and here:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/digital-biology/id497529197?mt=11

Digitized cover

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:45:52 GMT

A year after this new book was commissioned, and it is with the publisher, Oxford trade. I've had a lot of fun writing it - I was lucky enough to interview many pioneers of computer science, old and new. We've now decided the best title should be Digitized and we've decided on the cover, see below. There was quite some discussion about what message should be encoded in the QR code that forms part of the cover design. See what you think! The book will be published in March 2012. We plan to have a book launch and signing on March 26 in Waterstones, Gower St, London.

Pre-social networks in New Scientist

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:52:34 GMT

I'm quoted in another New Scientist article, this time about some interesting work performed by one of Boeing's research groups. It's a system that uses a combination of the Wifi and Bluetooth trace from your gadgets to plot where you've been, and then make predictions about where you will go next. Paul Marks calls it a "Pre-Social Network". But its timing - when privacy invasions are in the news every day - could have been better. The article is online here.

I like New Scientist because they quote fairly. For those who want to know exactly what I said to Paul when he asked for a quote, it was this:

This seems like a very interesting piece of work. It is likely that this kind of prediction would be very accurate - people tend to follow regular patterns of behaviour, even walking the same routes each day. There is clearly a valuable aspect to generic and anonymised predictions like these, for they would allow us to ensure that the necessary computer resources are in the right places at the right times - so everyone would always have a good wifi signal for example.

However there are clearly some major privacy issues. It does paint a slightly Orwellian picture: how would you feel if your future movements and even your future happenstance meetings were all predicted in advance by exploiting your previous patterns of movement? The police might love it as a way of predicting the movements of criminals (akin to Philip K Dick's "Minority Report"), and advertisers would love it as a way of tailoring adverts, but what if anyone could predict exactly where you will be and who you will be with? It's a stalker's dream!

Speaking personally, I am comfortable with the idea of the technology around me being optimised for my personal usage - if I walk through the park each day I'd be pleased to have wifi access optimised for my usage as I walk. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that my movements and social interactions could be predicted, and that prediction could be available to anyone. If it is anonymised so that specific places become "hotspots" for meeting people with specific interests this may be better; although I question the need for computer predictions to enable this.

But what do I know? It would not surprise me if Google+ or facebook has this feature by this time next year...

Reader comment for The Book of Numbers

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 03:36:51 GMT

Every author likes to hear from their readers, especially when they express their own enthusiasm in the subject. Here's a recent message:

Hello, I am really enjoying your book on mathematics. I am attempting to teach myself math and my question may sound ridiculous, if it does, I apologize. I was reading where you said the irrational numbers are between the spaces of rational numbers. It is so beautiful and poetic, I wasn’t sure if you were being literal. I have a fascination of the space from 0 to 1, and this sentence began a new fascination. Thank you for any response.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book! Math can involve a lot of imagination, where we think about strange spaces that may only exist in the world of numbers. It's true there are an infinite number of irrational numbers that live in between the rational numbers - it's up to you whether you wish to think of them as "spaces" but I think it can help if you are a visual kind of person.

Thank you much for responding. I forgot to say that the book is not only delightful but beautiful.

CNN quote

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:39:54 GMT

The use of smartphones for mobile sensing is really starting to take off. One group in EPFL uses an iphone coupled with several adhesive ECG sensors to enable patients to monitor their own hearts. Software on the phone can automatically detect if there may be a problem and alert the doctors. It's an ECG version of the kind of technology we're developing for iStethoscope. CNN asked me to comment on the work; you can read about it here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/24/tech/mobile/heart-monitor-smartphone-app/

iStethoscope Pro in the media

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:22:02 GMT

It's the app that never stops! I've been asked for permission for my iphone app iStethoscope Pro to appear in the "Yearbook for Physicians and Dentists," which is published annually by a German savings bank at quite a large scale: 50,000 copies. In the chapter on "Trends and Future" this year, there will be a section on Medical Apps which features my little app. Details of the yearbook are online here: http://www.rebmann-research.de.

I also just gave a talk at a NERC-funded Mobile App Workshop, held at 86 St James' Street in London. It was filmed, so you may be able to find the talk online sometime in the future. Details of the event here.

IT Future of Medicine

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:06:54 GMT

I've been asked to be a consultant on the IT Future of Medicine EU Flagship project proposal team. This is an exciting vision of the future of medicine, where computers will be used to model all aspects of patients to provide doctors with personalised predictions of likely illnesses for their patients. The flagship, if funded, will be something of the scale of the Apollo Space Programme - integrating data and models with the latest high performance computing, cloud computing and mobile computing technologies. My experience in modelling, for example as described in the book On Growth, Form and Computers (and in the work with many of my PhD students) and medical computing - for example, through the iStethoscope Pro app should hopefully be of some benefit!

iStethoscope Pro on BBC TV World

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:56:34 GMT

My iphone app iStethoscope Pro is in the media again, this time appearing as a short piece in the BBC World TV Healthshow, series 1, episode 2. Rockhopper TV films this show in the new Cancer Research building in London. Although it's broadcast all over the world with audience figures more than 200 Million, it's not shown in UK and most of USA, so if you can't find it online on Rockhopper's website, here's a link to the iStethoscope segment.

iStethoscope Pro is also being featured next month in Freundin magazine a fortnightly women's lifestyle magazine in Germany. Many thanks to everyone for their interest!