Consider this as you get ready for your New Year’s celebration tonight… What if you could drink all you want, then pop a pill to become sober?
Apparently, there are some researchers working on just the very thing: an alcohol substitute that gives you a buzz, but comes with an “antidote” that sobers you up and prevents a hangover.
At first glance, this sounds like a great advancement for society. Think of the possible benefits… a reduction in drunk driving accidents… less public rowdiness… no more pesky sunglasses after a night of binge drinking…
I sit here, though, and wonder if this doesn’t bring about a whole new set of health questions:
- What if you get so drunk that you pass out before you can take your “sober pill”?
- Can you get faux-alcohol poisoning by consuming more than your body can take?
and money questions:
- How much more would you be charged for this than a drink with regular alcohol?
- What about fraud? (I mean, how would you know until later if you had real or faux alcohol)
and moral questions:
- Would drinking at lunch (or even worse, on the job) now be considered socially acceptable?
- What if an alcoholic switched to faux-cohol to hide his/her problem?
Regardless, sounds like such a world is a far way off. According to the article, this idea is still without corporate backing, and it’s unclear if this could even be regulated or approved. So, in the meantime, you will just have to consume your alcohol in moderation (except for maybe tonight!)
Happy New Year 
Your Digital Portrait, by ‘Personas’ at MIT
With every blog post and web page, you leave online trails of information for search engines to follow later. What does the sum of this trail say about you? Is this an accurate picture or just random data?
The Sociable Media Group at MIT Media Lab wanted to explore an answer to that question with a digital exhibit using “sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity.”
Translated, this Personas project shows how the Internet sees you. It’s easy enough to use, just type in your name.
Of course curiosity got the best of me and I had to try it. Just watching the program work is rather interesting – it’s a little transparent in the sense that you see the text being processed so it’s not so much of a data black box.
While interesting, it doesn’t seem totally accurate, at least to my eyes. I am certainly reminded that information without context is just data.
Since I am at an AIGA retreat this week, I thought it would be interesting to see what the system did with a little cheat, so instead of a name I typed in “AIGA the professional association for design” and this popped up:
At a minimum, I think I’m going to hang on to this colored bar and use the “dna strip” in a personal project somewhere. That alone should make for a good story!