Technology to help the faceblind?

I was watching this online commercial about how Google pictures its Project Glass working:

 

If this kind of technology became common, one of the positive effects I could see would be for people who struggle with face blindness.  It wouldn’t be a very big leap to create a way to “label” people with their names.  The names could even follow them around like the labels hovering over characters in video games like Minecraft:

My brothers and I exploring the uncharted seas together. (The name labels are too small to read, but you can see they are there.)

 

That’s certainly what I would do with it!  It could also help with executive dysfunction by providing a framework for keeping an organized schedule, kind of like how the guy in the commercial uses it as a dayplanner.  I truly believe that the technology of the Internet has been and can be a tremendous help to people with Asperger’s if it’s used wisely.

 

At the same time, though, I can also see lots of potential drawbacks.  One, of course, is the fact that you have to wear the Star Trek-like headset that might make you look a bit like this:

Did Google make Geordi's VISOR?

 

Or, at least, like this:

Major Kira tests another Google prototype?

 

Of more concern is the fact that other people would have the advantage of using this information too.  A salesman could use it and say, “Oh, here comes a guy named Nathan; my records say he just visited a Star Trek site.  I’ll try to sell him my Star Trek DVDs.”  That would be annoying.

Even more likely is that Google could sell ad space, so if I used this as my dayplanner, it would be yet another way to advertise, this time literally right in my face!  The commercial, after all, is not just targeting ukelele-playing boyfriends– it is also catching the notice of businesses like the bookstore, the concert promoter, and the coffee truck, which all get business from the guy in the commercial thanks to Google’s invention.

It’s also interesting to ponder how such a device could affect the way people think.  One commenter on the news article announcing this project said something like “Goodbye spontaneity.”  It’s true– what might seem freeing to people who struggle with organization and socializing could be very restricting to people who are social by nature.

And if you have a guide to help do something for you, it might cause you to stop exercising the muscle (or in this case, mental facility) that allows you to do it yourself.  The idea is a little amusing to me– could reliance on technology like this make everyone think a little more like an Aspie?

Air Fortress: Storytelling in a video game

A lot of video games are patterned after movies, with voice acting, cutscenes, and creative use of camera angles.  The goal is to make players feel as if they are controlling the events of the scene they are watching, or even to imagine themselves as a character within the game’s world.  One of the things I love about old video games is that the best of them accomplish this in creative ways, even in a very limited medium.

One of the oldest games on my top 80 list is Air Fortress for the original Nintendo.  The concept is simple, but it combines two different video game “genres” in a clever way and uses music to tell a suspenseful story.

The first thing you’ll see in the video is the poorly translated story of the planet FARMEL, which was having the GLORIEST DAYS before it was attacked by these mysterious AIR FORTRESSES.  In a plot development that gets used more often than you’d think in video games, the leaders decide that because this mission is so dangerous, the best course of action is to send one person to take on the fleet by himself.

That man is the intrepid HAL BAILMAN with his LIGHTBRASNER.  (Based on another version of the game with a better translation, they meant to say “LIGHT-BLASTER.”)

I love those cheesy stories for old video games– they can be hilarious!  Needless to say, this game does its best storytelling without using words.

There are eight levels in the game, one for each Air Fortress in the fleet.  The video shows you level 1, and believe me– the makers of the game were being kind to the player in this level.  Later levels get more difficult very quickly.  I don’t remember if I even made it halfway through this game back when I used to rent it as a kid.

Every level has three basic parts:

1. Approaching the Air Fortress by rocket sled.  This part of the game is a side-scrolling shooter, like Gradius, Defender, and other classic arcade games.  The screen scrolls by itself, and you have to pilot the sled to avoid the walls of the fortress and the enemies that fly around and try to shoot you down.  If you collide with any of these things, your rocket sled is destroyed, and you only have three of them.  It’s crucial at this stage to pick up the energy (E) and bomb (B) power-ups for you to use in the next section.

2. Inside the Air Fortress on foot.  Here, the game turns into more of a standard platforming game, in which you can explore in any direction.  The goal is to find the main power reactor of the Air Fortress and destroy it.  I like the way the energy meter doubles as fuel for your rocket boots in this part of the game.  This means that you have to be careful about how much you use the boots, because draining your energy puts you at more risk of being destroyed by an enemy.  It also places a limit on the amount of flying you can do; if you run low on energy, you will need to stay on the ground for a while as your energy recharges.

3. The escape.  This is where the game really draws you in to the story.  When you destroy the main power reactor, the whole fortress goes dark and quiet, unsettling music begins to play.  The Air Fortress is going to explode in a few minutes, and you need to find your rocket sled and escape before it does!  In the first level, the game designers were feeling generous, so they put the exit right behind the reactor.  But in most of the levels, you have to go searching for it.  You might pass the exit on your way in to the reactor, or it might be in a part of the fortress you haven’t seen yet.

The game doesn’t give you a timer, so you can’t know for sure how much time you have to find the exit. After a while, you start to hear a low rumble and the screen begins to shake.  The shaking gets gradually more severe and the rumble grows louder until it almost drowns out the music.  The screen begins to flash white just before the end until the entire screen is washed out, and — GAME OVER.

The game is great at building tension, and it’s here that you reap the benefits of collecting (E) capsules during the rocket sled section– the more energy you have, the more you can use your rocket boots to hurry through the air fortress.

 

Changes

Hello again!  I decided to try out a different blog theme for this page.  All of the content is the same still.  What do you think?  I like the colors in this one, but the old one had a less complex background and may have been easier to read.

In general, people usually don’t like changes that aren’t necessary, but sometimes people on the autistic spectrum can be bothered by changes that others barely notice.  A couple of months ago, I read a blog entry posted by a mother whose little girl is on the autistic spectrum.  It was about a time she found her daughter struggling to hold back tears, telling herself “Sometimes things change, and that’s okay” in a method she had practiced to calm herself down.  The cause for her distress was that the TV show she was watching had changed its opening sequence for a new season.  She had been expecting the familiar opening that had been there every time, and something different was suddenly in its place.

I found that post very moving, because I can remember going through some of the same things as a young child.  One time, I was watching an episode of Sesame Street that somehow involved a marching band visiting the show.  I can barely remember the episode itself, but I do remember that as the credits rolled, they had the marching band perform the theme instead of using the piano and harmonica recording that had appeared every other time.  I was caught totally unprepared and burst into tears!  On a half-conscious level, I was familiar with each note and time interval in the song, and not only was the band using totally different instruments to play it, but they weren’t hitting all of the notes exactly right!  I just wanted to get away from it.

I had a similar reaction if I was listening to a song and the record or tape speed got messed up and the sound got distorted.  I always found it very disturbing to hear something familiar distorted into a grotesque form, with the essence of the original still there, just… twisted.

I am thankful that, as I have grown up, I have become less sensitive to that sort of sensory input.  I’m not entirely sure what has helped me besides experience, but I suspect that my love of science fiction may have helped me in this area.  Science fiction often uses a distorted or unfamiliar point of view to show readers or viewers something about human nature.  It can use a creature from another world as a mirror for ourselves, or it can show the consequences of our ideas by removing all limitations and showing what kind of future might result.  I’ve come to appreciate how storytellers use the weird and unsettling at times to tell a story of great importance and beauty.

Like anyone, I still worry about unwelcome changes in my life, of course.  But I still have the same thing to cling to as I did when I was a child– God never changes, and he has promised me that I belong to him.  Despite all the things in life that can scare or worry me, God is over them all, and he will not break his promises.

“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

– Malachi 3:6

Hmm– I think I’ll keep this background for a while.  It seems to be helping me to start writing again.

It’s been way too long since I posted about a video game

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned a couple of games that are near the top and middle of my all-time ranking, but what sort of game is just barely good enough to make it onto my list of 80 favorites?  I’m glad you asked!

The answer is A Boy and His Blob for the original Nintendo, which is at the same time one of the most creative games ever and one of the most poorly made.  The hero in this game is the eponymous unnamed boy, who happens to have a pet blob from another planet.

The pudgy, white blob (named “Blobert”) follows the boy around everywhere, either out of loyalty or because the boy keeps feeding him jellybeans.  He loves jellybeans (unless they are ketchup flavored, and really, who can blame him for that?).

Each flavor of jellybean causes the blob to transform into a different object, which introduces the puzzle aspect of the game.  For example, a licorice jellybean will turn the blob into a ladder, a punch-flavored jellybean will turn him into a hole in the ground (punch a hole; get it?), and a cola jellybean will turn him into a giant bubble.  There are about 15 flavors of jellybeans in all, which is a good thing, because the boy is pretty useless on his own.  He can’t even jump.

What little story exists in the game goes like this:  You need to search the caverns underneath New York City for treasure, which you can then use to buy vitamins at the store.  Then, you can turn the blob into a rocket and travel to his home planet of Blobolonia, which for some reason is overrun by candy-based enemies.  (Hence the need for vitamins, I guess?  The game’s overall position on the “healthy vs. unhealthy” food debate seems a bit murky, since jellybeans, peppermints, and vitamins help you, while marshmallows, cherries, and popcorn kill you.  Besides that, everything makes perfect sense, of course.)

Here’s a sample of the gameplay:

There are some things to like about the game.  The puzzle aspect can be a lot of fun.  Also, it’s cute the way the blob follows you when you whistle.  Especially funny is how the blob’s smile instantly turns into a frown if you throw a jellybean that he can’t catch.  I also like how the game plays little musical stings sometimes when the blob transforms.  (On the other hand, the entire game uses basically the same tune with just a little variation once you reach the blob’s planet.)

But you don’t have to play the game long to realize its flaws.  When confronted with enemies, the boy’s only options are to run past them or die.  Deciding where to punch a hole is a process of trial and error, since there’s no way to know how long a drop there will be aside from painful experience in prior lives.  And it’s way too hard to control that bubble underwater!

Star Trek

A young James T. Kirk watches as the U.S.S. Enterprise is built.

Producer J.J. Abrams has brought Star Trek back to life with a film full of action and spectacle that ranks among the best summer popcorn movies for filmgoers looking to have fun at the theater.  But what really makes Star Trek a success is how much its story is grounded in the character qualities of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew of the starship Enterprise.  Don’t let the flashiness and fast pace of the story fool you– this movie works because it recaptures the spirit of the original Star Trek series.  The only major criticism I have is that the plot relies too much on coincidences during the middle of the story.

One of the smartest things that Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman did was to wipe the slate clean and retell the story from the beginning.  I love the various Star Trek series and can go on about them for hours, but I don’t have trouble admitting that adhering mechanically to every bit of minutia in the Star Trek Encyclopedia tends to restrict storytelling and drive new fans away.

Take Captain Kirk’s backstory, for example.  Several episodes of the show back in the 60s alluded to Kirk having served on this or that ship, or having lived on a certain colony, in order to give Kirk a personal connection to whatever the story was about.  About the only common thread was that none of these stories matched with what was said about Kirk’s past in any of the other episodes.  (Let’s not even get into how many times old girlfriends of his show up without ever having been mentioned before!)

Of course, Star Trek fans have been able to piece together a coherent story about Kirk’s past from all of these separate little mentions.  And a few of them feared that any movie that didn’t carefully follow that story would somehow mess up Star Trek’s history– even though Kirk’s backstory had never really been intentionally written; it just sort of “grew” out of the work of many different writers!

Mercifully, the new Star Trek movie ignores all of that concern from the very beginning, in a breathtaking battle sequence that drives home the danger of space travel and the nobility expected of a starship captain, and forever reshapes the life of the young James T. Kirk.  The characters are the same, but this is a new story, and anything can happen!

Let me assure you– even if you have never watched any Star Trek before, you won’t be left out of the story– this movie is the beginning, and no Star Trek Encyclopedia is necessary.

There are spoilers in the remainder of my review.  If you don’t want to be spoiled, go see the movie right now!

Empathy

Back when I was trying to figure out if Asperger’s syndrome could explain some of the things about how my brain works, I found that some of its traits, like focused interests and social anxiety, described me very well.  One thing that didn’t seem to fit at all, though, was the trait of “lacking empathy.”  My difficulty has tended to be hypersensitivity to others; if others are upset, I’m upset.

In online discussions between people with autism or Asperger’s, I’ve seen a lot of people express similar thoughts.  While a few claim that they do indeed struggle with the concept of empathy, many others say that they don’t think that the description of autistic people as “lacking empathy” is right.

I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to this apparent discrepancy, but I’ve thought about it a lot.  This post will be a rather loose collection of those thoughts:

1.  It matters a lot what you think the word “empathy” means.

One reason that I don’t like the “lacking empathy” description is that people can have very different definitions of the word.  I always thought of empathy in terms of caring about another person’s feelings.  If you empathize with someone, it means that you care about what they are going through enough to imagine yourself in their place and feel some of the same emotions as they do.  Paul writes in the book of Romans that followers of Christ should exhibit this trait:

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

When I read about Baron-Cohen’s theory that autistic traits are linked to difficulty developing a theory of mind, it bothers me because the concept of a person with no empathy is scary to me.  According to the theory, a person with an impaired theory of mind would have more difficulty putting themselves in another person’s place.

2.  What would a person with no empathy be like?

I imagine that a person with no concept of empathy would see other people as unreal or hollow, as cardboard cutouts with no feelings of their own.  Such a person could be very harmful to others, because there would be no reason for them to interact with others except to please or entertain themselves.  That sounds more like a sociopath than an autistic to me, and I think that linking the two would be a severe misunderstanding.

Based on what I’ve read from others who have experiences with sociopathic behavior, a sociopath will often come across as very charming and charismatic; they know the right “buttons” to press to get the responses they want from a person, but they don’t really care about them.  I think that’s pretty close to the opposite of an person with autism or Asperger’s.  They might be awkward, standoffish, or even rude because they have trouble with the social norms, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about others.

3.  Maybe psychologists are using a different definition of “empathy.”

Some of what I have read indicates that what I have been calling empathy is really sympathy.  Here’s how Wikipedia’s editors defined empathy, for example:

“Empathy is the capability to share and understand another’s emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes,” or in some way experience what the other person is feeling. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, sympathy, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.”

This definition seems to indicate that empathy is purely the ability to sense or know what another person is feeling without them telling you, and that whether you care how they feel or not is a totally separate matter.

I have a little trouble understanding this concept, though– if I am “sharing” another person’s happiness or sadness, and if have put myself “into their shoes,” how is it even possible for me to simultaneously not care about how that person feels?  If I truly didn’t care that another person was sad, why would the fact that I know they are sad make me sad?

On a message board, I read the following attempt by an person with Asperger’s to explain what empathy means, and I thought it was interesting:

“I believe empathy is one of the biggest problems for aspies. Others’ feelings, motivations, hidden agendas, interests, plans, goals are a mystery to us, we lack the intuition to capture them, we lack the antennae to tune into them.

This is not to be confused with lacking compassion. Once I know what another may be going through, I am extremely compassionate.

Empathy is the ability to figure what the other is feeling. It’s what good salesmen are best at. They intuitively know how to catch your interest, what will hook you, what will make you feel at home with them. They’re not necessarily compassionate. The fact that they can figure you out easily doesn’t mean they care for your sufferings.”

This leads me to another question:

Mr. Data learns to dance

I’d like to share a funny clip from one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Data is an android who wants to become more like a human.  In this story, two of his friends are getting married, and he wants to be ready to dance at their wedding.  He has heard that the ship’s physician, Beverly Crusher, knows how to dance.  Logically, she is a good person to ask for a dancing lesson.

(This clip also includes a short scene at the beginning involving a misunderstanding, but I’m mainly interested in the long dancing lesson scene in the middle.)

As an android, Mr. Data’s brain is an incredibly powerful computer that is excellent at recognizing and reproducing patterns.  He only has to see something once to learn it, and he has a perfect memory, so he will not forget.  That’s why it is so easy for him to learn to tapdance; all he has to do is copy Beverly’s steps.

In some ways, my Asperger’s brain can be a bit like a computer, in that it learns most naturally in a step-by-step process.  (I don’t have the advantage of Data’s perfect physical coordination or memory, though, so learning to tapdance would be nowhere near that easy for me!)

But when it came to learning to dance with a partner, even Data’s supercomputer brain was having trouble keeping up!  Why?  Because it is still using step-by-step procedures to describe how to dance, and every new thing Data has to keep track of means that the procedure has to become more complicated.  In the course of this scene, he learns that he needs to

• move his feet along with Beverly’s
• not step on her feet
• lead the dance
• improvise new steps
• do all this without watching his feet
• not hold Beverly too tight
• smile; look like he’s enjoying himself

And this doesn’t even mention trying to talk to the person he’s dancing with!  Each one of these things multiplies the complexity of the program Data’s brain uses to describe how to dance.

I sometimes wonder if this story was written by someone familiar with Asperger’s (of course, back when this was written, they probably wouldn’t have known what it was called).  I think it provides a great example of how it’s possible to be super-capable in an area that many people find hard, but to have great difficulty with something seen as “easy.”

Beverly was surprised that Data had so much trouble dancing with a partner when he learned tapdancing instantly.  But Data’s procedure-based thinking doesn’t lend itself to learning to dance.  A good dancer isn’t consciously thinking about any of the things in the list I gave above; at some point, it becomes innate and the dancer relies on intuition and emotion to stay in step.

That can be a very difficult leap for a person with Asperger’s to take; my brain wants steps and procedures to follow.  And keeping track of all of the steps and procedures to participate in something like a conversation or a dance can be absolutely exhausting!

What else was Beverly surprised that Data didn’t know in this scene?  He didn’t know that tapdancing isn’t usually done at weddings!  The thinking that led him to ask Beverly for a lesson was totally logical, but the possibility that people could mean different things by the word “dancing” didn’t occur to him.

One thing that is admirable about Mr. Data in his quest to become more human is that he doesn’t let embarrassment discourage him.  (Of course, not having emotions may give him a bit of an advantage there.)  If he gets something wrong, he just adjusts his thinking and tries again.  It can be a lot harder for those of us with emotions to risk embarrassment when we’re trying something new, but sometimes it’s the only way to learn.  It helps a lot to have patient teachers like Beverly in this scene, or like many of mine in real life.