jtotheizzoe:

What’s better at facial recognition, Facebook or your brain?

Ever wonder how your brain can recognize and remember so many faces? Ever wonder how we train computers to do the same? Vanessa from BrainCraft looks the science of recognizing faces square in the… face?

Bad: It joins in that annoying way that many things about relatively-unusual conditions have of assuming their audience doesn’t contain anyone who experiences it (a falsely-inclusive “we” to refer to “normal” people).

Good: Finally a non-proso who’s noticed that facial recognition technology cries out to be used in assistive tech. (I swear to god, it’s like the people in charge of this sort of thing are deliberately trying to come up with every possible use for artificial facial recognition except the obvious one.)

(Come on, The Future, you’ve been a good home to me. You’ve given me those lovely photographs of Martian desert, full of colour and detail, the next-best thing to being there. You’ve given me multiple pieces of tech that are literally out of Star Trek. Give me a glasses-mounted HUD that flags passing acquaintances with their names. I know you can do it. Google Glass has been dancing around the edge for, what, a year now? I’d prefer an attachment to the glasses I already have, but as long as I can get them in prescription and they cost less than, oh, say twice as much as regular prescription glasses, I’ll settle for buying a new pair. Please, let me have this.)

---

Tags:

#prosopagnosia #(cell phones and e-readers) #(and I suspect you could turn a smart-watch into something very like a combadge without much tinkering) #the power of science #with power comes responsibility #and that responsibility takes many forms