Oh, no, not UX, IoT, N-back and mouse milk again! I know, I know, every time you turn around it's UX this and IoT that. And how many times have you heard of N-back and mouse milk? Sheesh!
Even though I live in a out-of-the-way place, I run into terms and ideas that strike me as interesting. Sometimes, they come in a bunch, piled on top of each other. The O'Reilly blog refers to UX and IoT this morning. I find that it is a good idea to look terms up every now and then to try to keep at least a little aware of what is being talked about.
"UX" uses the same letters as the Latin word "ux" (wife), which my Scrabble and Words with Friends family knows about. They know all the two letter words that these games will accept. They play using the internet and the computers will only accept some words.
In capital letters, UX stands for "user experience." My wife has had a PhD for more than 20 years and when she was studying for it, she used a book called "Plans and Situated Actions" by Lucy Suchman. It is about the theoretical and design problems of designing what a user needs to do to operate a machine, such as a copying machine. If you have used an advanced, complex copying machine that can print in different fonts on different types of paper, on one side or both sides of sheets of paper, can collate the pages and staple them in readiness to hand out to people, you have an idea of the many different paths through the options and controls that a user can take. Studies continue of what sorts of user interfaces and dashboards are most easily understood and used.
"IoT" is even a little hard to read. Is that first symbol a one, a lower case L or and upper case i ('eye')? It is an i, the first letter of the word 'internet'. I.of T. stands for the internet of things, the coming communication between various machines and appliances in your life. I put 'internet of things' into Google and up come ads placed by IBM, Cisco, Intell and GE. Big surprise!
I read the article by Dan Hurley in the current Atlantic about Dr. Sarah Lisanby and her work updating electroshock therapy. We keep an eye on research and treatment for mental problems and Lisanby is finding that modernized electroshock therapy holds good potential for improving lives. Hurley was mentioned as the author of "Smarter", a book about the current state of training that may improve or unleash greater intelligence in people. N-back is a game or exercise used in brain training and mind testing. A person is given a series of symbols and must indicate when the next one matches a target or the second one or the Nth one in the series. As N gets larger, it becomes more difficult to do the task.
In some of our eating adventures lately, I was inspired to wonder how often people were able to eat, say, 100,000 years ago. I am pretty sure they could not count on three full meals a day. I am impressed at how much history and prehistory various experts know. Usually, the scientists and academics can back up their knowledge pretty well so after a little searching, I found "Paleofantasy" by Dr. Marlene Zuk. Her book emphasizes that the animals, the plants and people are undergoing modification and evolution all the time. One focus of discussions of our evolution is milk. The white liquid we pore on our bowl of cereal is actually rather special. We are "mammals", named after the nice, curvy bumps on the chests of our females. Zuk makes it clear that humans are the only mammals who continue to consume milk and milk products after childhood has passed. Some of us have been modified so that we can continue to metabolize the sugar in milk throughout our lives. The scientists are studying the milk produced by other mammalian females, such as mouse milk, and comparing its ingredients with human milk and cow milk. Zuk points out that it takes quite a bit of harvesting to get 8 oz. of mouse milk. She doesn't say what the mice think of these studies.
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