[Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought

Wed Mar 28 15:30:40 UTC 2012

Dick,

I realize this discussion could spin off topic here, but I think there is another perspective to this.  
First, I would not object in the least if some people spent some time developing object and facial 
recognition software.  There are some times when this could be useful.  I believe that some work has 
been done by Kurzweil, for example, and I am aware of some other similar projects.  That doesn't mean 
that more couldn't or shouldn't be done.

If I had just lost my sight, this might be something I would miss more than I do.  However, it isn't as 
though I have no picture at all of people with whom I interact.  Voices are very unique and work well to 
recognize someone I have previously met and there are other techniques that can fill in the gaps.  In 
your note below you said in part, "I wouldn't be sitting around waiting for Microsoft, Google, Apple, or 
some other large company to solve my problems. I would be working to solve those problems myself."  
Well, quite honestly, facial recognition simply is not a priority for me.  I am affected much more by 
the fact that on my job I have 16 on-line courses to get through that use Adobe FLASH in such a way as 
to be very difficult to navigate.  I am prevented from accessing my credit union site independently 
because there is a CAPTCHA at every login.  I found it difficult to register my Asus netbook because an 
inaccessible JAVA app was used to get me to a perfectly accessible web site.  I can't change certain 
settings on my home stereo because switches have been replaced by menus and there is nothing out there 
yet that will read these, although my 35-year-old Optacon can be used to some degree.  So how is it that 
my best recourse is a 35-year-old device given the power of today's technology?  

My point here is not to scold as we have been sort of scolded, but to point out that many of us see 
bigger problems in our everyday lives that could likely be solved with the appropriate application of 
research.  Do I ever wish I could share the vision of a beautiful sunset that I hear discussed?  Of 
course I do sometimes, but I find beauty in things that do not involve sight that replaces some of what 
I am missing.  My goal in life is not to synthetically get everything that I am missing by not seeing, 
it is to have the tools to let me live a full life which particularly means keeping my job and seeing 
that other blind persons have the opportunities that I have had.  There are times that knowing what kind 
of a reaction is on the face of my children or a friend would be nice, but it will never mean as much as 
the information I get when they hug me or I hug them.  In the scheme of things, facial recognition just 
isn't that important and in my mind it leaves other more immediate problems unsolved.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 08:04:29 -0500, Richard Baldwin wrote:

>Apologies to those who haven't seen all of the response postings due to
>cross listing of the original post and to whom this post probably won't
>make sense.

>If I were blind and could purchase all of the necessary hardware, including
>gigabytes of USB storage for a few hundred dollars, I wouldn't be sitting
>around waiting for Microsoft, Google, Apple, or some other large company to
>solve my problems. I would be working to solve those problems myself.

>If Bill Gates and Michael Dell had that attitude, there wouldn't be a
>Microsoft. IBM would "own" the computer market on a worldwide basis.

>Dick Baldwin

>On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:03 AM, Carolyn MacLeod <Carolyn_MacLeod at ca.ibm.com
>> wrote:

>> Not sure if this is useful, and you probably already know, but Microsoft's
>> Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa and iPhoto (and some others) have a
>> feature called face-tagging.
>> They work surprisingly well, although they need someone to identify photos
>> and confirm guesses, and they do make some ridiculous mistakes sometimes.
>> If you have Windows 7 or Vista, you may already have Windows Live Photo
>> Gallery installed - to find out, open the Start menu and type "Windows
>> Live Photo Gallery" in the Search field, then Enter.
>> If not, here's a link with a download button:
>> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/photo-gallery
>> Carolyn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From:
>> Richard Baldwin <baldwin at dickbaldwin.com>
>> To:
>> BlindMath Mailing List <blindmath at nfbnet.org>,
>> seeingwithsound at freelists.org
>> Date:
>> 03/27/2012 11:05 PM
>> Subject:
>> [Blindmath] Facial recognition -- food for thought
>> Sent by:
>> blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org
>>
>>
>>
>> Most of the math courses that I completed in public school and college
>> mainly involved completely deterministic concepts such as finding unknown
>> in sets of algebraic equations, proving theorems in geometry, proving
>> identities in trigonometry, solving triangle problems using trigonometry,
>> differentiating functions, integrating functions, playing around with
>> solids of revolution, etc. They were all good exercises for the brain but
>> were not very close to real-world problems.
>>
>> When I made it into engineering college, the problems and their solutions
>> were closer to the real world but only barely so.
>>
>> When I completed my first engineering degree and went to work in the real
>> world, I learned very quickly that problems in the real world are far from
>> deterministics. In other words, there are very few problems in the real
>> world that have deterministic solutions. Problems in the real world
>> usually
>> involve a mix of mathematics, statistics, physics, engineering, computer
>> science, and other technologies, and there is rarely a single correct
>> solution for any problem.
>>
>> Furthermore, the solution to most problems requires the design and
>> implementation of complex mathematical algorithms, and those algorithms
>> are
>> most commonly implemented using a computer of some sort. (In my opinion,
>> every student that receives a technical degree should be required to learn
>> to program well in at least one programming language.)
>>
>> By now you must be wondering where this is all heading.
>>
>> I saw on TV today that shopping malls and large department stores are
>> installing electronic billboards that use facial recognition to display
>> advertisements that are likely to be of interest to those persons who can
>> see the billboard.
>>
>> I have no idea what the facial recognition algorithm is for categorizing
>> the viewers in a way that allows for a selection of appropriate
>> advertisements. However, this tells me that the algorithm doesn't require
>> a
>> supercomputer to implement. The algorithms must be implemented using
>> modestly priced computer hardware. Otherwise, they would be too expensive
>> to include in such billboards.
>>
>> This makes me wonder if it might be possible to use a small portable
>> computer to develop a system that will do facial recognition on people
>> whose faces appear in the field of view of a miniature video camera
>> embedded in eyeglass frames and to speak information about those people to
>> the wearer of the glasses.
>>
>> Science fiction? Maybe so and maybe not.
>>
>> Dr. Peter Meijer has demonstrated that it is possible to couple a video
>> camera built into eyeglass frames with a small portable computer and an
>> appropriate software program (The vOICe) and to create soundscapes that
>> some blind users find very beneficial (see http://www.seeingwithsound.com/
>> )
>> as they move through the world.
>>
>> Not being blind, I can't imagine what it would be like to interact with
>> other people that you can't see. However, it seems to me that it would be
>> beneficial for a blind person to know something about another persons
>> before a conversation begins. Depending on capability, this could range
>> all
>> the way from rudimentary information such as the probable sex and likely
>> age of the person, to detailed information such as the identification of
>> prior acquaintances by name.
>>
>> Perhaps it is time for a group of blind mathematicians, physicists,
>> engineers, statisticians, and computer scientists to band together to
>> produce such a system and to publish it as an open source
>> hardware/software
>> system.
>>
>> Food for thought,
>> Dick Baldwin
>>
>> --
>> Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
>> Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
>> http://www.DickBaldwin.com
>>
>> Professor of Computer Information Technology
>> Austin Community College
>> (512) 223-4758
>> mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
>> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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>-- 
>Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
>Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
>http://www.DickBaldwin.com

>Professor of Computer Information Technology
>Austin Community College
>(512) 223-4758
>mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
>http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
>_______________________________________________
>Blindmath mailing list
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