Have You Been Debating What Color Some Random Dress Is All Day? Thank Fair Use

from the and-we-look-forward-to-the-eventual-copyright-fight dept

Yesterday evening I saw a tweet zip by in which some very smart people I know and respect appeared to be arguing about the color of a dress. It seemed like a weird thing, so I went and looked and saw what appeared to be a white and gold dress. No big deal. But, other people insisted that it was blue and black. Vehemently. At first I thought it was a joke. Or an optical illusion. Or maybe it depended on your monitor. But I called over a colleague here in the office, and she swore that it was blue and black. And I was 100% sure that it was white and gold. If you somehow live under a rock, here's the image: We now know the "truth" (sort of) -- which is that the dress itself really is blue and black, but thanks to the lighting and some odd visual tricks it appears white and gold to a large part of the population. For what it's worth, many people report that after a period of time it switches, and that's true for me too. Late last night I took one last look (after everyone else in my family swore that it was blue and black) and I saw it blue and black. Amusingly, at almost exactly the same time, my wife suddenly saw it as white and gold. My mother-in-law suggested we both need to seek mental help. There are fights like this going on all over the internet, with lots of people trying to decipher why this image seems to work this way. So why are we writing about it here? Because it's Fair Use Week, and what a great fair use story.

This image isn't just being showed everywhere, it's being modified, flipped, adjusted, poked and prodded as people discuss it in all sorts of ways (comment and criticism). And it's all fair use. Take, for example, our own Leigh Beadon, who put forth on Twitter a theory about why different people see it in different ways:

I think the dress is all about sensitivity to blue. pic.twitter.com/rnWD473AQ8

— Leigh Beadon (@marcuscarab) February 27, 2015

In our internal chat, he was also submitting additional images as he played with the image. Take, for example, this one, where he played with the brightness levels:

Ok, thanks to @marcuscarab for min & maxing the brightness. I still see both as white and gold, but... pic.twitter.com/pRIiTJn5yK

— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick) February 27, 2015

And tons of others have weighed in as well. Even software maker Adobe got into the discussion:

For those seeing #WhiteandGold in #TheDress (http://t.co/pNG9tXu5pU), @HopeTaylorPhoto ends the debate. pic.twitter.com/W7TwQJy13m

— Adobe (@Adobe) February 27, 2015

" And someone else posted a helpful video modifying it:

MT @hopetaylorphoto: #TheDress problem has been solved s/o to @Adobe and @Lightroom: pic.twitter.com/y4nzLeI2PN

— Adobe (@Adobe) February 27, 2015

Vice has an amazing story in which they present the image to a color vision expert who is so stumped he admits he may give up trying to cure blindness to devote the rest of his life to understanding the dress. The folks over at Vox both insist that the color changing can't be explained and that it can be (journalism!). The folks at Deadspin say you're all wrong and the dress is actually blue and brown. Almost all of these are using not just versions of the image, but modified ones as well, to try to demonstrate what they're talking about.

And there's been no talk about copyright. Because we don't need to be discussing copyright, because this is all fair use. Last night, some were pointing out that this was such an "internet" story that it's great that it came out on the same day the FCC voted for net neutrality, but I say it's an even better way to close out fair use week, with a great demonstration of why fair use matters.

Filed Under: blue and black, color, copyright, dress, fair use, memes, perception, white and gold

DailyDirt: Fooling Your Senses

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Visual illusions can be fun to observe, and there are countless examples that trick human perception into seeing things that aren't real. However, other senses can also be fooled. As computer interfaces try to engage more senses (eg. touch, spatial awareness, etc), there may be interesting applications for tricking human perception for virtual reality environments. We may also just learn more about how our brains work. Here are just a few illusions that might seem creepy or cool, depending on your point of view.

• The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) is a trick that fools your brain into thinking that a fake rubber hand is actually your own hand -- causing the person to recoil if the rubber hand is attacked or threatened. You can re-create this illusion yourself at home -- if you have a realistic-looking rubber hand just lying around. [url]
• An interactive project creates a 15-minute simulation of what it might feel like to have Parkinson's disease. Using a combination of video and a haptic feedback glove, this augmented reality setup expands on the Rubber Hand Illusion to trick a person into feeling involuntary hand tremors. [url]
• For many years, some people have reported mysterious or supernatural feelings of a ghost-like presence, and oftentimes these experiences are accompanied by medical conditions such as epilepsy, stroke or other neurological disorder. Researchers studying this strange brain illusion have developed a robot that can induce the feeling in healthy people, and this experimental device could make it easier to study this "phantom presence" phenomenon. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: augmented reality, brain, haptics, illusions, perception, rhi, rubber hand illusion, senses, simulation, virtual reality

DailyDirt: Time Flies When You're...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of myths and aphorisms about the passage of time. A watched kettle never boils. Time flies when you're having fun. However, these observations could lead to some important discoveries about human psychology and how our brains perceive and remember various events in our lives. Does "proportionality theory" really explain why 8yo kids and 80yo senior citizens judge time differently? Here are just a few links on the topic of time.

• Does the perception of time really speed up as you get older? It depends on the time frame -- days and weeks may pass at a normal speed, but it's the years that seem to fly by. [url]
• The perception of time passing can be changed by emotions (fear seems to slow time down), disrupted routines and new experiences. Also, drugs that affect dopamine function in the brain (eg. Ritalin, Adderall and anti-psychotic drugs) can speed up or slow down how a person perceives time. [url]
• If the maximum sentence for criminals is life in prison, could we make the punishment worse by giving inmates drugs that make the time seem to pass more slowly? Obviously, there are some serious ethical questions about customizing punishments with technology, but it's an issue that should be debated as medicine comes up with ever more ways to extend human lifespans. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aging, drugs, lifespan, perception, psychology, punishment, time

Tone Of Comments Affects Perception Of Online Article's Content

from the who-are-you-calling-names? dept

One of the defining characteristics of online journalism is the possibility for readers to respond immediately, and to debate with each other in the comments -- something that was much harder and slower in pre-digital days. Generally, that has been regarded as welcome, since it means that authors can engage more easily with their readers, and the latter become active participants rather than simply passive recipients.

However, some research in the field of science journalism suggests that there might be a serious downside to this ability of the readers to express their views freely:

about 2,000 people were asked to read a balanced news report about nanotechnology followed by a group of invented comments. All saw the same report but some read a group of comments that were uncivil, including name-calling. Others saw more civil comments.

"Disturbingly, readers' interpretations of potential risks associated with the technology described in the news article differed significantly depending only on the tone of the manipulated reader comments posted with the story," wrote authors Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele.

"In other words, just the tone of the comments . . . can significantly alter how audiences think about the technology itself."

Although the research was about science articles, it would be reasonable to assume a similar effect occurs for most kinds of online journalism, with "uncivil" comments leading to skewed perceptions of the matter being discussed. Good thing Techdirt readers never resort to name calling...

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: comments, perception, tone

DailyDirt: Better Than 20/20 Vision...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The next big thing for computing could be a flood of wearable electronics. Google Glass has been getting some media attention, but for a long time people have been trying to avoid wearing eyeglasses (eg. LASIK, contact lenses, etc). Still, the possibilities of augmented vision seem pretty cool, and here are just a few other projects that could be better than seeing with your own eyes.

• FlyVIZ gives you eyes in the back of your head with a headset that gives you a 360-degree field of vision. Users seem to maintain a sense of depth perception, and the headset apparently doesn't cause nausea, motion sickness or visual fatigue. It takes about 15 minutes to adjust to it, and that's not too bad if you never take it off again.... [url]
• The FDA has approved a bionic eye implant from Second Sight that serves as a retinal prosthetic. The device, called the Argus II, is meant to help patients with advanced retinitis pigmentosa, but maybe someday similar devices could augment normal vision. [url]
• Wearing a computer display on your eyeball could be better than hauling around goofy-looking glasses on your head like Google Glass. Innovega has a prototype called iOptik that provides a heads up display on a contact lens. The US military is testing it out, but it could be available to the general public in a couple years. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: argus ii, bionic eye, eyesight, eyewear, flyviz, glasses, hud, implant, ioptik, perception, retinal prosthetic, retinitis pigmentosa, vision, visually impaired, wearable electronics
Companies: google, innovega, second sight

Study: Gamers Better, Faster At Interpreting Visual Input

from the look-over-there! dept

As someone who considers video games my primary source of entertainment media, I'm among a group that tends to cringe whenever I hear about the next study done concerning video games. Whether it's agenda-driven crackpots claiming a link to violence, despite many other studies showing the opposite, or even positive studies on games and children that you just know will produce a backlash, these things tend to get people riled up. So it's somewhat nice to see a study that doesn't take on the more ideological positions normally discussed, but instead just looks at one positive effect gamers experience.

I'm talking about a recent study out of Duke that suggests gamers simply see the world differently, or at least get more out of visual perception than those who don't play games.

"Gamers see the world differently," said Greg Appelbaum, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Duke School of Medicine. "They are able to extract more information from a visual scene."

Each participant was run though a visual sensory memory task that flashed a circular arrangement of eight letters for just one-tenth of a second. After a delay ranging from 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds, an arrow appeared, pointing to one spot on the circle where a letter had been. Participants were asked to identify which letter had been in that spot. At every time interval, intensive players of action video games outperformed non-gamers in recalling the letter.

This seems to jive nicely with common sense. Video games are visual medium that specifically tasks players to read what they see and react accordingly. Still, with all the talk you tend to hear about how the youth of the world is turning into a zombie army of button mashers, it might be easy to lose perspective on all the effects, particularly those that are positive. What the study essentially is saying is that gamers tend to be more observant and better able to make quick decisions based on what they see than non-gamers. There is, quite obviously, a host of real-world arenas where this kind of skill is valuable.

More interestingly, this isn't simply a function of memory retention. The brain of the gamer is truly trained specifically to see more, not remember more, and to exact a proper decision for what is around them. The authors of the study are planning on following this up with a look into brain-scans and MRIs, so perhaps we'll learn even more about how and why gamers see the world differently.

Filed Under: perception, studies, video games, visual input

DailyDirt: People Colored

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There used to be Crayola crayons labeled "flesh" -- which was re-named to "peach" in 1962, and now Crayola has a pack of eight crayons specifically called "multicultural" that includes: black, sepia, peach, apricot, white, tan, mahogany and burnt sienna. However, there are other colors that have been used to label people, like red and blue. The history of these color associations isn't so black and white. Here are just a few interesting links on how we've changed looking at colors over the years.

• Red states and blue states didn't always refer to Republican and Democratic electorates, respectively. Red and blue were frequently used to describe American political affiliations, but which color represented which party was not consistent until relatively recently (ca. 2000) -- for instance, during the Cold War, who wanted to be described as "red" in American politics? [url]
• Studies of how linguistic descriptions of color affect the way people perceive colors have rekindled the idea that language can shape how people think. And that's doubleplusgood. [url]
• Babies used to be dressed up in all white, but then little boys started only wearing blue... and girls would wear only pink. Again, this convention wasn't settled on for a long time, and it could have easily gone the opposite way (boys in pink, girls in blue). The real loss is in gender neutral colors for children's clothing.... [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: babies, blue, color, crayons, democrat, perception, red, republican
Companies: crayola

DailyDirt: Blue-Green Or Green-Blue Crayons?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Human perception can be pretty strange sometimes. People with synesthesia experience some mixing of their senses, so that they can hear colors or taste colors. But the English language even contains some interesting phrases to describe various feelings, such as "green with envy". Here are just a few more interesting examples of sensory perception.

• The vast majority of people are trichromats who can perceive about a million shades of color, but there are also dichromats who see fewer colors -- as well as tetrachromats who can see a hundred million colors. But even if you can see those extra millions of colors, it's a bit difficult to describe them to others in words. [url]
• Movie posters from 1914 to 2012 are mostly blue and orange. The distribution of colors isn't too even, and the spread of the use of blue appears to be growing over time. [url]
• The color of food can really affect how it tastes. Red-colored drinks seem to taste sweeter for some people, and people are pretty bad at tasting flavors when the color of a drink doesn't match its flavor. [url]
• Adults and infants may perceive colors very differently -- with babies seeing colors directly, but adults seeing colors based on language interpretations. Interestingly, some Russian speakers may be able to see more shades of blue than English speakers. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: color, perception, senses, synesthesia, tetrachromats

Even If You Know About The Gorilla, You Might Not Catch The Unexpected

from the did-you-see-it? dept

There's a very famous perception experiment, which many of you have probably seen. If you haven't, you should watch it here before reading on: I will admit that the first time I saw it (at a conference), I totally missed the gorilla. Totally. Of course, once you've seen it or know about it, it's hard not to see it. And, by this point, so many people have seen it, that the overall video test has lost much of its power. So the folks behind it decided to see what would happen if they knew you were looking for the gorilla, and came up with the following: Basically, they assumed that people were now looking for the gorilla, and got people to more or less focus on that, and miss the "new" changes. Once again, I have to admit I totally missed the changes. As the researchers are pointing out, this suggests that even if you're "expecting the unexpected," it's often difficult to notice it actually happening. As the researchers behind the videos note, many of the folks out there who use their original video to teach people to "expect the unexpected" are missing the point:

"A lot of people seem to take the message of our original gorilla study to be that people don't pay enough attention to what is happening around them, and that by paying more attention and 'expecting the unexpected,' we will be able to notice anything important," he added. "The new experiment shows that even when people know that they are doing a task in which an unexpected thing might happen, that doesn't suddenly help them notice other unexpected things."

The guys behind the videos have done some other unique experiments as well, which you can find on their website. The other one I really like is this experiment involving a guy asking a pedestrian for directions, where the guy asking for directions is secretly "switched" with someone else in the middle, and 50% of people don't even notice:

Filed Under: attention, perception, unexpected

Has Google Reached The Perception Tipping Point?

from the an-important-question dept

Last week, Anil Dash wrote up a thoughtful post wondering if Google had hit its "Microsoft Moment," which I'll loosely paraphrase as the moment when more people were afraid (or, at least, were marginally distrustful) of the company than that loved the company. For many years, part of Google's success has been based on its ability to "not be evil." That mantra -- often misinterpreted -- tried to get the company to focus on putting the user first, which, in turn, led many people to trust Google and its quirkiness. And yet, the company has grown bigger and bigger and bigger. And the fear over what that means has only grown -- some of it reasonably, some of it certainly driven by competitors and critics. While I believe that the folks at Google really do still think of themselves as being totally customer focused and still try to present themselves as that quirky Google, they're reaching a point where they need to do a lot more to support that perception outside the company. Because it's really not getting through in many cases.

We've noticed this a bit ourselves, with some of the moves the company has made in the last few years showing a distinct change in tone. Whereas there was a point that Google seemed to be defending legal battles on principle, when the company capitulated with the record labels about YouTube, with the Associated Press and, most recently, in its (still in court) book settlement, a different story emerged. In all of those cases, the deals made Google stronger -- while making competitors weaker by not standing up for some key principles. Google started to use its massive cash coffers not to defend key principles, but to dump the problem off on smaller players. Of course, I believe this has already started to come back to haunt the company. The fact that publishers knew they could get a book settlement out of Google was because it had given in on the YouTube and AP deals without standing up for fair use.

Either way, it became quite clear that Google was no longer Silicon Valley's defender. It was Google's defender. And, of course, some will argue that's exactly as it should be. Google has no responsibility to stand up for the principles of others. At the same time, many will claim that Google would be silly not to use its money to harm competitors. But these all showed a particularly un-Google-like view of the world. It was that "don't be evil" stand that made people trust them. It was that belief (real or perceived) that Google was entirely focused on making the world better for everyone that built up that trust. These moves (and some of the moves Anil discusses in his piece) may make the shareholders happy in the short-term. But they end up harming reputation in the long-term.

As Google is fighting accusations of antitrust, the message it keeps trying to spread is that competition is only a click away. The company would be wise to remember that itself, because sometimes it doesn't actually act that way.

That said, I don't believe the company is acting "evil" or that it should be accused of any sort of antitrust violations. But the company has certainly acted a lot less "Googley" lately, and Anil is correct in saying that it appears a lot of folks internal to the company don't really recognize that (or want to believe it). It's definitely hard to keep that kind of culture and attitude as a company gets bigger (and, as some of its earlier employees sail off). And, to its credit, Google has certainly been able to keep a "good" reputation for a lot longer than other companies (and longer than many suspected Google could keep it). But that message has been drifting, and Google would do well to recognize how the external world is perceiving it.

Longtime Googler Matt Cutts responded to Anil's analysis in what I'd consider to be an open letter to other Googlers to take Anil's words seriously, rather than angrily (or just dismissing it as idle criticism). Hopefully that message gets through.

Filed Under: business, perception
Companies: google