The Silicon Hospital
An open source model for medical care; a cool kiss; Dirt Road Diary: quit-claim deeds and the GI Bill.
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Happy Valentine’s Day!
THE SILICON HOSPITAL
I missed this at the time, but last month’s announcement from Openwater deserves some attention.
Openwater has been working for some years now on a “new paradigm in which many diseases and conditions can be detected, diagnosed and treated, non-invasively using the best tools of our time: scalable semiconductor systems; evolving software algorithms; and more.”
The burden of the announcement appears to be that they are opening up all their intellectual property — software, hardware, research data — via open source contracts, to allow others to build on what they have accomplished. They say they are transforming Openwater into “the world’s first open-source, open-patent, open-clinical-data, and open-safety-sharing company, centered on the new idea of the Silicon Hospital.”
I’m not sure I exactly understand the Silicon Hospital idea, but I get that it has to do with their technology for medical diagnosis and treatment. You can read about that technology at the Openwater site, and even dig into their Git repositories.
That announcement sent me sifting through my files for something that I had written about Openwater and its founder, Mary Lou Jepson, a while back.
So as background, here’s some of what I wrote about her and her work a few years ago:
Mary Lou at MIT
Mary Lou Jepsen developed the first holographic video system in the world. At MIT, she invented the OLPC (one laptop per child) computer and launched a billion-dollar business supplying hundred dollar computers to children in developing countries. Her OLPC computer is still the most energy-efficient computer ever built.
But at age twenty-nine, Mary Lou Jepsen thought she was going to die. She was in a wheelchair, unable to walk or to think clearly — “I couldn’t subtract,” she has said, capturing the degree of her impairment with a typically nerdy example — and she was sleeping twenty hours a day.
Her doctor ordered an MRI, and it turned up a tumor. The tumor was benign, but it was nonetheless causing havoc, pressing on her pituitary gland. Surgery was successful, her symptoms went away, and she got back to pursuing her groundbreaking research. All fine.
Well, not exactly. As a result of the operation, her body was now incapable of producing hormones, and since that time she has kept herself alive with a rigid schedule of hormone supplements.
This health data is interesting and it makes her accomplishments all the more impressive, but the point of telling about it here is that the experience led to her latest project, which may turn out to be the most important work she has ever done.
While Jepsen was undergoing the MRI, while she was inside that claustrophobic giant magnet, she entertained herself by analyzing what was going on. And because that’s how her mind works, she thought about how to improve the technology. It’s really kind of crude, she thought. I wonder how we could increase the resolution — and while we’re at it, make it smaller. A lot smaller.
Mary Lou’s Laser Focus
Her experience with holograms gave her an appreciation for what can be accomplished by narrowing your focus. Focus in on exactly what you want to see or to do, and you can reduce the energy requirements and the overall cost to achieve your actual purpose. MRI involves giant magnets; Jepsen was convinced that giant magnets were not necessary. She started thinking about wearable MRI. A stylish knit cap, say, that could do low-power MRI constantly.
The research she did was promising, and she started a company to pursue her idea. Her focus with the company was precise, but Openwater’s mission sounds wildly ambitious: “a new era of fluid and affordable brain-to-computer communications.” Sorry, what? Brain-to-computer communications? Sounds like mind reading, right? Ha ha.
No, seriously. Can MRIs really read people’s minds?
Yes, Jepsen says. MRIs can, in principle, predict what words you are thinking of and what images are in your mind.
She bases her conclusion on existing public research. For example, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley examined functional MRI data collected while subjects listened to stories for hours at a time. By modeling the three-dimensional structure of the data collected, they were able to explore how semantic categories map to this structure. They found that that the semantic system is organized into intricate patterns that appear to be consistent across individuals. Consistency is research gold. Consistency in scientific research results is a sign telling the researchers, “Look here.” Consistency often means predictability. And indeed, the Berkeley results imply that patterns observed in MRI data are predictable from the semantic information presented to the individual and vice versa, and that this mapping, in some sense, is a language. Jepsen thinks we will one day be able to read that language.
But that’s out at the edge of her work; her Openwater focus is specifically on developing tools for diagnosis and treatment of diseases. One day in the not too distant future, you may be wearing a stylish cap that is monitoring your brain for abnormal activity, processing the raw data with a tiny microprocessor to turn it into medical diagnosis or reassuring text messages, protecting your health in real time.
Or something like that. Jepsen hasn’t released details of just how the devices would work. But that’s the goal, medical applications.
Mary Lou and Openwater Today
That was what I wrote a few years ago. Jepson’s recent announcement indicates that the technical details of the devices Openwater has been working on will now be public and open sourced. This seems like a development worth watching, and I plan to.
DIRT ROAD DIARY
But now here’s something completely different. Recently I’ve been sharing entries from my Dirt Road Diary, stories of growing up in my old neighborhood. This time I’m telling the origin story of that neighborhood, and since this story involves events before I was laying down reliable memories, I enlisted a co-author to fill in some of the details I wasn’t sure of: ChatGPT. I’ll clearly identify her contributions.
The End of the Road
When the United States entered World War II, Dad joined the Army at his local Tony, Wisconsin, draft board, was shipped off to Texas for basic training, and almost immediately went mad.
After drilling for weeks in the Texas sun, Dad began to experience high fever, skin rashes, crippling joint pain, fatigue, and eventually bizarre hallucinations. That last symptom was what got him discharged. He was classified under Section VIII: Mentally Unfit for Service, and sent back to Wisconsin.
Dad got better, though there were periodic flare-ups, though nothing as serious as his experience in Texas. It would be years before Dad’s problem was diagnosed as systemic lupus erythematosus. From that point on our family doctor would be a dermatologist, which also worked out well for me and my annual bouts of poison ivy.
But back in 1945, Dad was taking what jobs he could get with his 8th-grade education, Mom was pregnant with me, and we were living on the road. For a while Dad had a gig painting water towers, which meant moving from town to town. Once you’ve painted the town’s water tower, you need to find another town, and another water tower. For a while they tried their hand at managing a bowling alley in Iowa, living over the bowling alley itself. But the constant sound of bowling balls crashing into pins apparently interfered with their toddler’s sleep, and Mom put her foot down, telling Dad it was time to buy some land and put down roots. No more of this living on the road.
So they moved to Indiana, rented a tiny house near Mom’s parents, and started looking for land. Although Dad, never having been in active service, wouldn’t have qualified for GI Bill benefits, that law did indirectly benefit the family.
The Quit-Claim Deed
Here’s where I rely on ChatGPT for some details:
“The GI Bill, officially known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law passed by the US Congress in order to provide a range of benefits to World War II veterans returning home from the war. Among these benefits was the opportunity to attend college or vocational school, to receive low-cost loans to start a business or buy a home, and to receive unemployment benefits.”
I asked ChatGPT for more information about that, with particular reference to housing developments:
“The GI Bill played a significant role in promoting the post-war housing boom, as it enabled millions of veterans to purchase homes with little or no down payment. This, in turn, fueled the growth of suburban housing developments across the country, which were typically built on large tracts of land on the outskirts of cities and designed to offer a suburban lifestyle with plenty of space, greenery, and modern conveniences.
“The origins of housing developments date back to the late 19th century, when land developers began buying up large tracts of land and dividing them into smaller lots for sale to individual homeowners. However, it was not until the post-war period, with the expansion of the highway system, that suburban housing developments truly took off.”
But they weren’t all successful, were they?
“Despite their popularity, however, many housing developments of the era were built by inexperienced developers who lacked the necessary capital or expertise to complete their projects. As a result, many of these developers went bankrupt, leaving their unfinished projects and debt behind.”
So how would you buy a lot in a bankrupt housing development?
“One way that developers sometimes transferred their assets and liabilities was through quit-claim deeds, which are legal documents that transfer any interest or claim that the grantor may have in a property to the recipient. However, quit-claim deeds do not offer any guarantees or warranties about the property’s ownership or condition.”
Bon Air Vista
And that was how my parents were able to purchase three adjacent lots in a failed housing development a couple of miles south of Elkhart, Indiana. The development had advanced to the point of defining property lines, running in electricity, laying out dirt roads, and even building a few houses before it went belly-up. And the development had a name: Bon Air Vista. That quit-claim deed and associated bargain-basement price was our ticket in. We had a home, we were putting down roots. All our three-lot property needed was a well. And an an outdoor toilet. And a house.
That first winter we made do with somewhat less.
To be continued.
BEFORE YOU GO…
The Pragmatic Bookshelf
I was the editor on this book and I’ve it before, but gosh darn it, I want to recommend it again, because I really think you’ll enjoy it. Currently Away is a true-life adventure: the story of a couple who were struggling with multiple issues and decided, what the heck, let’s hit the road. Only in a boat. Have you heard of The Great Loop? They did that.
Blogroll
Kent Beck’s advice for geeks
When We Were Trekkies
Tales from the Jar Side
Tom Lehrer Songs and Lyrics
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
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AI Supremacy
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ICYMI
Last week I wrote about Apple Vision Pro. You can read all the 2023 back numbers of Swaine’s World at my blog home.
Coming Attractions
Just more of the same: explorations in generative artificial intelligence, tech news, writing advice, book recommendations, and Dirt Road Diaries.