Category Archives: Evolution

Photo: C. S. Lewis, via Asar Studios/Alamy (Celestial Images).

Editors note: To mark the release on November 3 of the new C. S. Lewis biopic,The Most Reluctant Convert,we are running a series of articles exploring C. S. Lewiss views on science, mind, and more.

SPECIAL LIMITED-TIME OFFER:Get a FREE chapter exploring C.S. Lewiss views of intelligent design from the bookThe Magicians Twin

Was C. S. Lewis a theistic evolutionist? He certainly wasopento the possible common descent of humans from lower animals, although he also expressed some reservations (see the full Chapter 6 of my bookThe Magicians Twinfor more details).

But I would argue that regardless of Lewiss views on common descent, it would be misleading to classify himself as a theistic evolutionist as that term is commonly understood today.

Theistic evolution can mean many things, including a form of guided evolution, but many contemporary proponents of theistic evolution are more accurately described as theistic Darwinists. That is, they do not merely advocate a guided form of common descent, but they are attempting to combine evolution as an undirected Darwinian process with Christian theism. Although they believe in God, they strenuously want to avoid stating that God actually guided biological development.

For example, AnglicanJohn Polkinghornewrote that an evolutionary universe is theologically understood as a creation allowed to make itself. Former Vatican astronomerGeorge Coyneclaimed that because evolution is unguided not even God could know with certainty that human life would come to be.

And Christian biologistKenneth Millerof Brown University, author of the popular bookFinding Darwins God (which is used in many Christian colleges), insists that evolution is an undirected process, flatly denying that God guided the evolutionary process to achieve any particular result including the development of us. Indeed, Miller insists that mankinds appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out.

In short, many modern theistic evolutionists want to retain a belief in a Creator without actually affirming the guidance of that Creator in the history of life. In their view, the Creator delegated the development of life to a self-contained mindless process from which mind and morals emerged over time. Modern theistic evolutions attempt to strike a third way between materialism and intelligent design with a kind of emergent evolution has all the logical coherence of a circular square, or theistic atheism.

Lewis was familiar with attempts in his own day to imbue blind evolution with some sort of purposiveness while still denying the operation of a guiding intelligence, and he was not persuaded. This was where he ultimately broke with Henri Bergson, a French natural philosopher and Nobel Prize-winner whose anti-Darwinian writings had heavily influenced Lewis.

Bergson, in addition to critiquing natural selection, offered his own alternative to Darwinism, a muddled proposal for a vital force that somehow impels the evolutionary process toward integrated complexity without the need for an overarching designer. Lewis never attacked Bergsons critique of Darwinian natural selection, but after he became a Christian he repeatedly attacked Bergsons non-intelligent alternative. He did the same with George Bernard Shaw, who extolled a similar view to Bergson of emergent evolution, the view that although evolution is not actually guided by an overarching intelligent purpose, purposeful structures that transcend blind matter somehow emerge from the process.

In a section ofMere Christianitythat is too little read, Lewis dissects this supposed third way between outright materialism and a history of life guided by design:

People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet evolved from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the striving or purposiveness of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mindstrives or has purposes? This seems to me fatal to their view.

In his novelPerelandra, Lewis satirizes the incoherence of the emergent evolution view, which he assigns to the villain of the story, Professor E. R. Weston, a scientist run mad. Lewis gives Weston a speech of non-sequiturs and mumbo-jumbo where he solemnly appeals to the unconsciously purposive dynamism and [t]he majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements toward an ever-increasing complexity of organization, towards spontaneity and spirituality. Weston ultimately identifies this blind and unconscious purposiveness with what he calls the religious view of life and even with the Holy Spirit.

The hero of the story, Dr. Elwin Ransom, is not impressed. I dont know much about what people call the religious view of life, he replies. You see, Im a Christian. And what we mean by the Holy Ghost is not a blind, inarticulate purposiveness.

Near the end of his life, Lewis read prominent theistic evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardins posthumously published bookThe Phenomenon of Man, which proposed yet another kind of emergent evolution. Lewis filled his copy of the book with critical annotations such as Yes, he is quite ignorant, a radically bad book, and Ever heard of death or pain? (The last comment responded to de Chardins statement that Something threatens us, something is more than ever lacking, but without our being able to say exactly what.)In his letters to others, Lewis called de Chardins book both commonplace and horrifying,and he derided de Chardins position as pantheistic-biolatrous waffleand evolution run mad.

Lewiss rejection of emergent evolution exposes why his way of thinking is ultimately so friendly to intelligent design. Lewis knew that ultimately there is no third way, no half-way house, no magical hybrid: Biological development is either the result of an unintelligent material process or a process guided by a mind, aka intelligent design.

One cant split the difference. One has to choose. That being the case, Lewis thought that a mind-driven process is a far more plausible option than a mindless one.

This essay was adapted from Darwin in the Dock, Chapter 6 ofThe Magicians Twin, edited by John West. For reference notes and sources, please consult the book version.

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CS Lewis and Theistic Evolution - Discovery Institute

Image credit: Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The latest Science Uprising video covers human evolution, and features geologist Casey Luskin and biologist Jonathan Wells:

For more on a specific issue touched on in the episode, check out a classicID the Futurepodcast with Dr. Luskin. He tackles a neo-Darwinian assertion that theistic evolutionists Francis Collins and Karl Giberson make inThe Language of Science and Faith. Giberson and Collins capitalize on the popular notion of Neanderthals as pre-human, cavemen-like beasts in order to bolster their claims for common ancestry. But what sort of common ancestry? And do experts even agree that Neanderthals were drastically different from Homo sapiens? Luskin explores the connection between Neanderthals and humans and points to the growing evidence that Neanderthals interbred with our species, buried their dead, employed technology, had a brain size equal to or even slightly larger than that of Homo sapiens, and were essentially just another race of humans. Some have attempted to use Neanderthals to help bridge the enormous gulf between humans and ape-like predecessors, but its increasingly clear that that dog wont hunt. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

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De-Humanizing Neanderthals: A Darwinist Dog that Won't Hunt - Discovery Institute

Photo credit: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Picture the size of a dragonflys head, including its eyes and brain. For such tiny assets, one would think its capabilities would be severely limited. But powered flight? Targeting and chasing and intercepting a fast-darting prey? Never underestimate the ability of biological design to pack these feats and more into a tiny space. The secret lies in the engineering. Engineers routinely work with optimizing performance within constraints.

In PNAS, Sara Nicholson (Flinders University, Australia) and Karin Nordstrm (Uppsala University, Sweden) took a look at how dragonflies and other targeting insects achieve Facilitation of neural responses to targets moving against optic flow. Optic flow is just what it sounds like: optical information that flows past you when you are moving. Gamers know all about simulated optic flow. They try to stay focused on their objective when information and noise is moving around them. Think jump to light speed in Star Wars movies, or dodging rocks as Han Solo tries to negotiate an asteroid belt to get to a planet without getting hit. Optic flow is a major issue for flying insects, and dragonflies come well equipped to deal with it and use it.

Nicholson and Nordstrm consider how insects succeed at targeting prey. Consider the noisy environment involved. Get into a dragonflys head, like an X-wing gunner, and visualize all the clutter in the heat of battle: enemy craft on the left and right, coming in from a distance, and pieces of debris passing above and below you. Rapid correction of pitch, yaw, and roll is required for your seat and for the craft, but this only adds to the visual confusion. Insects face an even greater challenge, because their fields of view are highly textured, and their prey is small compared to the background. The prey, moreover, is constantly darting in unpredictable directions. Efficient target detection is a computationally challenging task, they say, which becomes even more difficult when done against visual clutter.

Dragonflies (order Odonata) and hoverflies (order Diptera) are among insect flyers equipped with special neurons for targeting with optic flow.

The ability of insects to successfully pursue targets in clutter is thus remarkable and suggests a high level of optimization, making the underlying neural mechanisms interesting to study. Indeed, insects that pursue targets, including predatory dragonflies and robberflies, as well as territorial hoverflies, have higher-order neurons in the optic lobes and the descending nerve cord that are sharply tuned to the motion of small, dark targets. Target-tuned neurons often have receptive fields in the part of the compound eye that has the best optics. Target selective descending neurons (TSDNs) project to the thoracic ganglia where wing and head movements are controlled, and electrically stimulating dragonfly TSDNs leads to wing movements. Taken together, this suggests that TSDNs subserve target pursuit. However, how TSDNs respond to targets moving against translational and rotational optic flow is unknown.

One strategy for staying on course is to keep ones forward vision on the prey, to lock on to the target like fighter pilots do. (This is called gaze stabilization.) Another strategy is to watch for anything that moves against background. Those are helpful for initial targeting from a stationary position, but things quickly get complicated when taking flight.

However, as soon as the pursuer moves, its own movement creates self-generated widefield motion across the retina, often referred to as optic flow or background motion. In addition to self-generated optic flow, when a pursuer is subjected to involuntary deviations away from their intended flight path, for example by a gust of wind, this also generates optic flow. Quickly correcting such unplanned course deviations is essential for successfully navigating through the world.

When everything is moving hunter, target, and background what then? If the hunter rotates, everything in the field of vision rotates with the same angular velocity (rotational movement). If the hunter turns, by contrast, more distant objects move more slowly (translational movement). Surprisingly, many flying insects show behavioral segregation between rotational and translational movements, they say. How this may influence target detection is currently not known. Into the lab they went.

The authors put a hoverfly into a flight simulator, where they could control what kind of motion it perceived with programmed moving dots. Using electrodes, they watched the response of its TSDNs.

We found that orthogonal optic flow attenuated the TSDN target response but to a lesser degree than syn-directional optic flow. This suggests that the vector divergence between the target and the optic flow is important. Most strikingly, we found that counterdirectional optic flow increased the TSDN response to target motion, if the target moved horizontally. We found that projecting optic flow to only a small frontal portion of the eye was sufficient to elicit both TSDN attenuation and facilitation. As descending neurons control behavioral output, the response attenuation and facilitation could play a role in modulating optomotor, or gaze stabilizing corrective turns, as needed during target pursuit.

The first experiments showed that the neurons responded most strongly to counteracting optic flow: i.e., when the target was moving opposite the background optic flow. They narrowed it down further and found that frontal optic flow was required and sufficient to trigger TSDN response. In summary, our results show that a small spatial window of optic flow in either the dorsal or ventral visual field is enough to strongly attenuate (Fig. 3B) or facilitate (Fig. 3C) the TSDN response to target motion. That appears to be a clever strategy for making the most of a limited set of neurons.

This suggests that the level of vector divergence between the target and the optic flow influences the TSDN responses, so that maximum attenuation is generated at minimum vector divergence, whereas maximum facilitation is generated at maximum divergence.

Further experiments with pitch, yaw, and roll seemed to support this elegant, simple strategy. Since there are other neurons participating, though, the true picture is more complex. Further experiments altering the density of dots added some complications. Upstream small target motion detectors (STMDs) also inform the TSDNs, but in different amounts depending on the type of motion. Vector divergence from optic flow, therefore, was not enough to explain all the responses. Some neurons may inhibit other neurons in some motions but facilitate them in other motions. Further work will be required to disambiguate all the factors in play.

Nevertheless, our findings make behavioral sense. Prior to initiating target pursuit, male Eristalis hoverflies predict the flight course required to successfully intercept the target, based predominantly on the targets angular velocity. To successfully execute an interception flight, the hoverfly turns in the direction that the target is moving. In doing so, the hoverfly creates self-generated optic flow counterdirectional to the targets motion. In this case, the TSDNs would be facilitated, which could be beneficial. Importantly, the facilitation would take place across a range of dot densities, suggesting that even relatively sparse background textures would affect the TSDN response.

When the TSDNs are quiet, the insect can assume it is still on target with the prey. Only when contrary optic flow is perceived does the TSDN signal that a course correction is required. How head movements and wing movements factor into these rapid decisions remains to be discovered. The authors did not speculate about how these organs, neurons, and responses might have evolved.

A cover story of the IEEE Spectrum shows a magnified dragonfly head. Thats where all this processing goes on. The story, Fast, Efficient Neural Networks Copy Dragonfly Brains, tells how An insect-inspired AI could make missile-defense systems more nimble. The author, Frances Chance, works at Sandia Labs on dragonflies. Like Nicholson and Nordstrm., she does flight simulations but in simplified software models instead of making actual measurements on the insects neurons. Was a reference to evolution really necessary or helpful in her opening paragraph?

In each of our brains, 86 billion neurons work in parallel, processing inputs from senses and memories to produce the many feats of human cognition. The brains of other creatures are less broadly capable, but those animals often exhibit innate aptitudes for particular tasks, abilities honed by millions of years of evolution.

Her article contains some amazing facts: those ants in your pantry have 250,000 neurons, while dragonflies have close to a million. Dragonflies intercept and capture 95 percent of the prey they pursue. Their eyes are faster than ours, operating at the equivalent of 200 frames per second. Without access to GPS, a compass, or gyroscope (as far as we know), a dragonfly successfully intercepts hundreds of mosquitos per day.

What intrigues Chance is how these insects do so much with so little. The AI products that make news come at a huge processing cost. These small animals rival our best capabilities in some aptitudes, and they do it by balancing simplicity with sophistication. Her model results appear oversimplified. Maybe that is due to her assumption of evolution:

It is possible that biological dragonflies have evolved additional tools to help with the calculations needed for this prediction. For example, dragonflies have specialized sensors that measure body rotations during flight as well as head rotations relative to the body if these sensors are fast enough, the dragonfly could calculate the effect of its movements on the preys image directly from the sensor outputs or use one method to cross-check the other. I did not consider this possibility in my simulation.

The simulated dragonfly does not quite achieve the success rate of the biological dragonfly, but it also does not have all the advantages (for example, impressive flying speed) for which dragonflies are known.

Frances Chance is mesmerized by the navigational achievements of insects, and glows with imagined possibilities for biomimicry. She knows she needs to check her simulation against real world dragonflies. ID advocates should encourage her to do so, because often the sophistication of biological engineering that implies designing intelligence is seen in the details.

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Dragonflies Make the Most of a Tiny Brain - Discovery Institute

Researchers have announced the naming of a newly discovered species of human ancestor, Homo bodoensis.

The species lived in Africa about 500,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene age, and was the direct ancestor of modern humans, according to scientists. The name bodoensis derives from a skull found in Bodo Dar in the Awash River valley of Ethiopia.

Scientists said that the epoch is significant because it was when anatomically contemporary humans, Homo sapiens, appeared in Africa and the Neanderthals, known as Homo neanderthalensis, in Europe.

However, some paleoanthropologists have described this period as the muddle in the middle because human evolution during this age is poorly understood.

Dr Mirjana Roksandic, of the University of Winnipeg in Canada and the studys lead author, said: Talking about human evolution during this time period became impossible due to the lack of proper terminology that acknowledges human geographic variation.

Under the new classification, Homo bodoensis will describe the majority of Middle Pleistocene humans from Africa and some from south-east Europe, while many from the latter continent will be reclassified as Neanderthals.

Christopher Bae, from the department of anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and one of the co-authors of the study, said the introduction of Homo bodoensis is aimed at cutting the Gordian knot and allowing us to communicate clearly about this important period in human evolution.

Roksandic concluded: Naming a new species is a big deal, as the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature allows name changes only under very strictly defined rules.

We are confident that this one will stick around for a long time, a new taxon name will live only if other researchers use it.

The findings are published in Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews.

In August, the Guardian reported that archaeologists unearthed ancient DNA in the remains of a woman who died 7,200 years ago in Indonesia, a discovery that challenged what was previously known about the migration of early humans.

The remains, belonging to a teenager nicknamed Bess, were discovered in the Leang Panninge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Initial excavations were undertaken in 2015.

The discovery, published in the journal Nature, is believed to be the first time ancient human DNA has been discovered in Wallacea, the vast chain of islands and atolls in the ocean between mainland Asia and Australia.

The DNA was extracted from the petrous part of Besss temporal bone, which houses the inner ear. Researchers said the intact DNA was a rare find.

This article was amended on 29 October 2021 to replace the main illustration.

Originally posted here:

Human species who lived 500,000 years ago named as Homo bodoensis - The Guardian

Smartwatches are an integral part of wearable technology. They are becoming increasingly popular among consumers who want to improve their activity strategy. Watches have been around for centuries to not only tell the time but also to show fashion trends. Over the years, eyes have evolved in unique ways that have made them stand out as an innovation. The ability to tell time is vital. This is a sign of how closely watches and people work together to develop a cohesive community. It would be pretty different to describe watches than previous models. A regular watch tells you the time, but smartwatches are geared toward technology. You can access them all via blue tooth and voice command.

The dominant impact of electronics and computers on people is numerous. This is where they come in. The new watches are a great addition to your daily life as an activity tracker and multi-purpose device. They have a mobile operating system and a visual display that you can attach to your arm. Check some watches here. They can run mobile apps like mini computers and relay digital information via a smart device. A smartwatch can be more valuable than clothing if it is worn when it is needed. It measures 1.5 inches in size and has a high-resolution pixel. This makes it easy to read the text and bright images, which will satisfy your needs.

Although the rate of smartwatch adoption is relatively low, it is steadily growing as manufacturers invent to make them more than just a way for users to receive notifications from their smartphones. Technology companies primarily manufactured them, but now traditional watchmakers are beginning to make their designs. You can divide them into four categories: alerts, security, health, and alerts. Each has its main functional capabilities. The micro control unit is used to coordinate and control the functions of the sensors, including the CPU, blue tooth, and vibrator. It also controls the GPS, gyroscope, and graphics. The smart health watchs core is made up of sensors and means for input data. This allows the devices attributes, such as the ability to combine functions, to be combined.

It is a popular item that researchers agree with. However, the trend is still in development. This watch has a solid meaning to make the owner feel comfortable and interact based on their desires. They are reasonably priced, and there is more competition among manufacturers to lower the price and improve the technological capabilities of the watches. The latest models are fashionable, sporty, and luxurious. A new generation of technology is being discussed, where a smartwatch could be a smartphone within itself. Consider the personal value they can bring to your life, not just in terms of price but also reliability and a new futuristic concepts.

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Evolution Technology of Watches - South Florida Caribbean News

Do you remember when the idea of KITT, the chatty Knight Rider car, still blew you away? Or when Blade Runner Eric Decker verbally commanded his computer to enhance photos of a crime scene? The idea of being understood by a computer seemed futuristic enough, let alone one that could answer your questions and understand your commands.

About the Author

Graeme John Cole is a contributor for Rev, creator of the world's most accurate automatic speech recognition engine, Rev.ai.

Today, we all carry KITT in our pockets. We sigh when KITT answers the phone at the bank. The personality isnt quite there yet but computers can recognize the words we say near-perfectly.

Michael Knight, the Knight Rider hero who partnered with his intelligent car to fight crime, was skeptical at the thought KITT might understand his questions in 1982. But the development of speech recognition technology had been underway since the 1950s. Here's a closer look at how that technology has evolved over the years. And how our ways of using speech recognition and speech-to-text capabilities have evolved alongside the tech.

The power of automated speech recognition (ASR) means that its development has always been associated with big names.

Bell Laboratories led the way with AUDREY in 1952. The AUDREY system recognized spoken numbers with 97-99% accuracy in carefully controlled conditions. However, according to James Flanagan, a scientist and former Bell Labs electrical engineer, AUDREY sat on "a six-foot-high relay rack, consumed substantial power, and exhibited the myriad maintenance problems associated with complex vacuum-tube circuitry." AUDREY was too expensive and inconvenient even for specialist use cases.

IBM followed in 1962 with the Shoebox, which recognized numbers and simple math terms. Meanwhile, Japanese labs were developing vowel and phoneme recognizers and the first speech segmenter. It's one thing for a computer to understand a small range of numbers (i.e., 0-9), but Kyoto University's breakthrough was to 'segment' a line of speech so the tech could go to work on a range of spoken sounds.

In the 1970s, The Department of Defense (DARPA) funded the Speech Understanding Research (SUR) program. The fruits of this research included the HARPY Speech Recognition System from Carnegie Mellon. HARPY recognized sentences from a vocabulary of 1,011 words, giving the system the power of the average three-year-old. Like a three-year-old, speech recognition was now charming and had potential but you wouldnt want it in the office.

HARPY was among the first to make use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM). This probabilistic method drove the development of ASR in the 1980s. Indeed, in the 1980s, the first viable use cases for speech-to-text tools emerged with IBM's experimental transcription system, Tangora. Properly trained, Tangora could recognize and type 20,000 words in English. However, the system was still too unwieldy for commercial use.

We thought it was wrong to ask a machine to emulate people, recalls IBMs speech recognition innovator Fred Jelinek. After all, if a machine has to move, it does it with wheelsnot by walking. Rather than exhaustively studying how people listen to and understand speech, we wanted to find the natural way for the machine to do it.

Statistical analysis was now driving the evolution of ASR technology. In 1990, Dragon Dictate launched as the first commercial speech recognition software. It cost $9,000 roughly $18,890 in 2021 accounting for inflation. Until the launch of Dragon Naturally Speaking in 1997, users still needed to pause between every word.

In 1992, AT&T introduced Bell Labs Voice Recognition Call Processing (VRCP) service. VRCP now handles around 1.2 billion voice transactions each year.

But most of the work on speech recognition in the 1990s took place under the hood. Personal computing and the ubiquitous network created new angles for innovation. Such was the opportunity spotted by Mike Cohen, who joined Google to launch the company's speech tech efforts in 2004. Google Voice Search (2007) delivered voice recognition tech to the masses. But it also recycled the speech data of millions of networked users as training material for machine learning. And it had Google's processing clout to drive the quality forwards.

Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana) followed just to stay in the game. In the early 2010s, the emergence of deep learning, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and Long short-term memory (LSTM), led to a hyperspace jump in the capabilities of ASR tech. This forward momentum was also largely driven by emergence and increased availability of low-cost computing and massive algorithmic advances.

Building on decades of evolution and in response to rising user expectations speech recognition technology has made further leaps over the past half-decade. Solutions to optimize varying audio fidelity and demanding hardware requirements are easing speech recognition into everyday use via voice search and the Internet of Things.

For example, smart speakers use hot-word detection to deliver an immediate result using embedded software. Meanwhile, the remainder of the sentence is sent to the cloud for processing. Googles VoiceFilter-Lite optimizes an individuals speech at the device end of the transaction. This enables consumers to train their device with their voice. Training reduces the source-to-distortion ratio (SDR), enhancing the usability of voice-activated assistive apps.

Word error rate (WER - the percentage of incorrect words that appear during a speech-to-text process) is improving vastly. Academics suggest that by the end of the 2020s, 99% of transcription work will be automatic. Humans will step in only for quality control and corrections.

ASR capability is improving in symbiosis with the developments of the networked age. Here's a look at three compelling use cases for automated speech recognition.

The podcasting industry will bust through the $1 billion barrier in 2021. Listenership is soaring and the words keep coming.

Podcast platforms are seeking out ASR providers with high accuracy and per-word timestamps to help make it easier for people to create podcasts and maximize the value of their content. Providers like Descript convert podcasts into text that can be quickly edited.

Plus, per-word timestamps save time, empowering the editor to mold the finished podcast like clay. These transcripts also make content more accessible to all audiences, as well as help creators improve their shows searchability and discoverability via SEO.

More and more meetings take place online these days. And even those that dont are often recorded. Minute-taking is expensive and time-consuming. But meeting notes are an invaluable tool for attendees to get a recap or check a detail. Streaming ASR delivers speech-to-text in real-time. This means easy captioning or live transcription for meetings and seminars.

Processes such as legal depositions, hiring, and more are going virtual. ASR can help make this video content more accessible and engaging. But more importantly, end-to-end (E2E) machine learning (ML) models are further improving speaker diarization the record of who is present and who said what.

In high-stakes situations, trust in the tools is essential. A reliable speech-to-text engine with an ultra-low WER removes the element of doubt and reduces the time required to produce end documents and make decisions.

Do you think Knight Industries ever appraised the transcript of KITT and Michael's conversations to improve efficiency? Maybe not. But, turbo-charged by the recent move to working from home, more and more of our discussions are taking place online or over the phone. Highly accurate real-time natural language processing (NLP) gives us power over our words. It adds value to every interaction.

The tools are no longer exclusive to big names like IBM and DARPA. They are available for consumers, businesses, and developers to use how their imagination decides as speech recognition technology steadies to overtake the promises of science-fiction.

Interested in speech recognition? Check out our roundup of the best speech-to-text software

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The evolution of speech recognition technology - TechRadar

Much of mainstream cinema hinges on the what-if. What if love at first sight were real? What if heroes never died? What if a troubled family could find its way back together?

Most movies keep that happy ending in sight throughout. Its part of the pact that cinema makes with its audience : that the world it offers an escape into will be more pleasurable than the world that waits outside the theatre doors.

Horror turns that pact on its head. It harks back to our earliest tales, the ones etched on cave walls and in other dark places. It allows the audience to tap into some of our most primal fears (of the other, the unknown, of death, of each other and of ourselves), but in relative safety, cloaked in metaphor and cushioned by the knowledge that the worst will soon be over, and we will have survived.

Whats being called elevated horror in Hollywood today (think of films such as Parasite, US, Get Out, Hereditary and Candyman) turns that pact on its head too. There may be survivors but there is no end. The horror is inside but its also whats outside the theatre doors.

Racism, capitalism, patriarchy, killer cops.

Its us and what weve become. Stripped of metaphor, of control, of the what-if.

***

It wasnt always so. If we look at early mythology, weve always constructed fearful others, and they were often beings who had some control over our life or could create difficulty for us, says Kendall Phillips, professor of communication and rhetorical studies at Syracuse University, New York. Phillips has spent decades researching controversy and conflict in popular culture. Hes written books on the horror genre that include A Place of Darkness: The Rhetoric of Horror in Early American Cinema; Controversial Cinema: The Films that Outraged America; and Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture.

Even in the earliest cave paintings, the animals are often monstrous and terrifying. The mythological gods were both awesome and terrifying. We as humans, living a kind of precarious existence in a world full of dangers, needed somehow to make sense of those dangers, so we turned them into stories. Made them a little more controllable. And we could use those stories to teach the next generation how to be respectful of the world full of danger.

Some of these bogeymen havent changed. Some have changed dramatically.

Some of the earliest horror films in Hollywood played on a fear that has remained persistent through most of recorded history: the fear of the non-conformist. The films Dracula and Frankenstein were both released in 1931. Dracula was a foreigner with a very unusual way of life , threatening to corrupt the righteous. Frankenstein was an internal threat, of our own creation, a misfit born of a combination of hubris and rampant genius, meant to hold promise for Man but turning into something that cant b controlled.

The obvious metaphors for life in the industrial age are a reason both tales originally written by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley in 1897 and 1818 respectively have retained their sense of timelessness. Once Man began to turn cities into metropolises and the whole world into a giant factory, the threats we were posing to the pre-industrial way of life became both undeniable and unalterable.

I would say the core to the definition of horror is that it is some type of narrative or symbolic engagement, some type of media focused on the creation and examination of fears, internal and external, Phillips says. When horror films are really effective, they dont just say, heres the monster, but they really ask us to look into the eyes of the monster, and ask, why is it that this is threatening? Why am I afraid of this? And in some ways to ask us to see from the point of view of the monster, how they got to where they were.

***

Not all Hollywoods ghouls have great depth and prescience. Some just have immense staying power. There are always going to be ghosts and assorted undead creatures; people possessed by evil spirits; a killer in the woods; an evil toy; flesh-eating creatures from a nether- or other-world, all of which play on our fundamental fears of death and the beyond, regret, guilt, the unknown.

Its the monsters that morph with a changing society that make for the most interesting stories. As far back as 1945, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the movie based on Oscar Wildes 1890 story of a man whose features remain unchanged for decades but whose hideous misdeeds are reflected in a portrait, served as a metaphor for what was seen as the growing hypocrisy, vanity and self-centeredness of the insulated upper classes.

By the 1960s, new kinds of psychological and internal conflicts were being reflected on the screen, mirroring the failures of a modernising society that left the individual alone, isolated, unmoored. Horror films such as Psycho (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Exorcist (1973) reflected fears about how society was changing, how rapidly it was changing, and about the inherent weakness of the nuclear family, says Phillips. Even when evil is at the door, the people within cant work together.

Things became more complicated as we moved into the 60s and 70s, where filmmakers were as likely to see the traditional family as a source of monstrosity. Think of Rosemarys Baby (1968), The Omen (1976), The Stepford Wives (1975).

***

Going back to scary tales teaching young people how to survive in a world full of dangers, whats another word for that? Conformity. And horror is a genre that lets you show young people what happens to those who dont listen.

Enforcement of conformity is definitely a deep part of horror, especially in the American context. Americans are much more anxious about sex than violence. So even in those earliest films, after Dracula is killed at the end, the two main romantic partners, Jonathan and Mina are together and he carries her up the stairs and the wedding bells are ringing. The audience feels, oh good, the happy family is back together, Phillips says. Were happy the same at the end of Frankenstein too as Dr Frankenstein announces that hes going to be married. And so theres very much a deep-seated root of traditional heterosexual normative marital relations as the norm. And the monster is often threatening that core norm.

Down to the slasher films of the 1980s and 90s, the first youngsters to be killed off would typically be those whod snuck off, often slightly high, to have sex. The final girl, the audience surrogate and eventual survivor, tended to be the most virginal of the lot.

***

Elevated horror, the term being used for the genre-breaching, cliche-defying horror films emerging from Hollywood in recent years, brings the audience face to face with the monsters among us and within us. But in place of comfy metaphor, these are tales lit up by anger and accusation, often devoid of hope.

In the movie US (2019), a black family is attacked by lookalikes. In Get Out (2017), a young black man visits his white girlfriends childhood home and ends up battling her family and community for his life. Both were directed by black filmmaker Jordan Peele.

In Parasite (2019), the Korean film that was the first non-English winner of the Oscar for Best Picture, the monster is every person with more than they need, and the capitalist system that lets them keep it. Squid Game, also South Korean, plays on the same theme but with arguably more savagery; here the person exists in a system so monstrous that the individual has no value, even to themselves, except in relation to what they own or can wrest from others.

I do feel we are in the middle of what I would call the third golden age of horror. The first was the 1930s, the second in the 1980s, with films that combined the work of people such as Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick. And I think this is the third for the sheer variety of films capturing audiences, being successful, engaging people in political conversations, focusing on the diversity of voices, giving importance to subjects of mental health, Phillips says.

In the 2014 film The Babadook, a single mothers grief for her dead husband becomes the monster, and the victim is her six-year-old son. In Ari Asters Hereditary (2018), the demon is patriarchy. In The Purge series, its society again. The films tell the story of a seemingly normal, crime-free America in the near-future. But its a dystopian world where the country celebrates an annual national holiday known as the Purge, a day in which all crime, including murder, becomes legal for a 12-hour period.

In the black filmmaker Nia DaCostas 2021 Candyman, it is the police, eventually once the sign that it was over and all would be well who are the monsters, perpetuating a monstrous system.

This sense of an overarching threat that exists among us, in Phillipss opinion, comes from the realisation that the systems we thought we could trust, systems that we are now inextricably locked into, are broken or are breaking down.

So if you want to be entertained this Halloween, pick the undead creatures lurching from the crypts, or the slasher in the woods. But if you want to really be scared, pick from the list above, and be prepared to come face to face with monsters it is up to you to help slay. Or is it?

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Madhusree is a feature writer who loves Kolkata, is learning to love Mumbai. She loves to travel, write and bake

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From graveyard ghosts to elevated horror: A Hollywood evolution - Hindustan Times

I became a newspaper reader as a child on Sunday mornings.

Before Mass, The Topeka Capital-Journal was divvied up among the family, and we would fight over who got what. Dad always got the news, of course, but the rest of us argued and negotiated over the comics, Parade magazine, and the sports section. I was partial to a section called Midway, a full-page feature about the people, places and stories that helped me discover Kansas as an amazing and cool place. Wed swap sections, then pile into car for church, sometimes dragging our part of the paper with us. Occasionally, sections of the paper disappeared before they got passed around. Somebody left it in their room, or left it in the car.

Looking back, though, I realize Sunday was the only day we did that. Dad managed grain elevators around Kansas, and was usually out of the house early, often before anyone else was awake. He didnt have time to read the paper in the morning on most days, and certainly not during harvest. That came in the evening, after supper. Chores were divvied up among the kids, who always argued and negotiated over that, too whether someone was getting away with less, and who slipped away before all the work was done, and why certain siblings always had to use the bathroom when it was time for chores.

Dad ignored it; he was reading the paper.

The only interruption I remember came during Lent, when wed recite the rosary after dinner, taking turns as kids speed-praying through it when it was our turn to lead, before shifting into that routine of paper and chores.

Ive been thinking about that a lot lately, about routine.

Like Dad, I rise early and am often out of the house before anyone else is awake. I have the good fortune of getting to read a lot of the paper the night before, of course, but not always, and not all of it. I think Ill catch up first thing in the morning, but its often night before I get a chance to finish reading it. I sometimes set the weekend paper aside, because I still like a Sunday morning read, taking it out on the deck when the weather cooperates.

Our readers have been emailing and calling since we announced a change in the way we will deliver papers, a change that begins Tuesday. Thats when the print edition of the Globe will be delivered to subscribers by the U.S. Postal Service no more contracted carriers.

For some of you, that will mean getting your paper later that morning, for others it will be the afternoon. For many, it will mean reading the paper in the evening, after work, but it will still be same-day delivery. Some readers have canceled, but when I get a chance to talk to them, I encourage everyone to stay with it, to give it a try. Routines change, but they just become new routines.

As I think back on it, I realize that was one Kansas familys routine decades ago; it also is the norm for many families today, given that 27% of our readers already get their paper in the mail. And, because we are having a hard time finding and keeping carriers in this job environment, that number is bound to keep growing.

Well get the papers to the post office early in the morning, youll get yours in your mailbox that same day.

Most of our readers have told me they understand the industry dynamics today, that newspapers are evolving. For me, the most appealing development has been the switch to digital. It means I can still read my paper first thing in the morning at joplinglobe.com, and it also allows me to read The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and some of the regional papers of which I rotate subscriptions, including Springfield, Kansas City and Northwest Arkansas.

I have always been a newspaper reader, but because of digital I am more of a newspaper reader today than I have ever been. Thats not so much an evolution, as a revolution, working in our favor. I also encourage readers to give us the try online if they havent already. A lot of readers tell us they like it once they get started. You could, frankly, spend all morning on our website, given that it has much more news and other features than we can put in the paper. But, of course, there are chores to do.

Because of this, you can take every newspaper you want with you wherever you go, just like we did when we were children, except now it is on our phones, available via apps, which means you dont have to fight each other for a favorite section. Sometimes, when Beth is singing at Mass, we go early so she can warm up, and I stay out in the truck and read the papers until its time to go in, speed-praying because I lingered too long over some article or column that I was reading on a newspaper app, not paying enough attention to the time.

Funny how evolution and revolution swing back around, history repeating itself.

However you read the paper, the Globes commitment is unchanged: To keep you informed. About news. About sports. And to continue telling you about the people, places and stories that make Joplin and the Four-State Area such an amazing and cool place too.

Stick with us. Were not going away, just making some changes. And if you would like help setting up your digital access, call us at 417-782-2626.

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Andy Ostmeyer: Evolution, revolution and history coming full circle - Joplin Globe

TORONTO, Oct. 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OverActive Media (TSXV:OAM) today unveiled the evolution of its plan for its previously announced performance venue, and secured lease terms approval from the Exhibition Place Board of Governors in Toronto, paving the way for a final review and approval by Toronto City Council later this year.

Over the past eight months, we have worked hand in hand with all of our city partners to bring our collective vision for the venue to the next level, and we could not be more excited to finally be able to share our latest plans with our fans in Toronto and the world, said Chris Overholt, President and CEO of OverActive Media. Toronto is one of the best entertainment markets in the world. We have worked closely with our partners to begin to realize the immense potential of this region of the city while furthering Torontos position as a global esports hub. Our vision is to create an unparalleled experience for fans and entertainment artists alike.

Located in the heart of the historic Exhibition Place, the theatre-style entertainment venue and hotel complex is a strategic element of the approved master plan for the region previously established by city officials. Positioned on the north side of Lakeshore Blvd., and across from Ontario Place, the venue is expected to become the epicentre for what is starting to emerge as Torontos future meeting place for sports, media and entertainment.

"Today, we are embracing an exciting vision of the future by approving OverActive Media's plan and secured lease terms, said Exhibition Place Board Chair and Councillor Mark Grimes. On behalf of Exhibition Place's Board of Governors, we will continue to build on our rich history and showcase innovative spaces in our ongoing evolution. I proudly welcome OverActive Media to create an engaging space to meet the needs of our diverse and dynamic community."

With a projected completion date of 2025, the 7,000-seat venue is designed to be a destination at its core. The facility plans to host more than 200 events a year, driven primarily by premium music and entertainment bookings. It will also serve to attract major city-wide conventions, corporate events and product launches, awards shows and naturally, a full slate of esports events increasing over time. Additionally, it will provide a home for the citys two professional esports teams, Toronto Ultra of the Call of Duty League and Toronto Defiant of the Overwatch League. Prior to the pandemic, OverActive Media had scheduled sold-out live events for its Overwatch League franchise, Toronto Defiant. As live events continue to return, there is a demand amongst premium acts of the world for the size and type of venue it plans to deliver.

We took a bold step forward together today toward realizing our vision to build a preeminent performance venue in the city of Toronto, one that we believe will serve as a new home for the biggest music and entertainment acts of the world and a favourite venue for todays generation of fans, added Overholt.

Developed by global design firm Populous, the designs are purposeful, intended to create an engaging space for all fan activations, events and programming. Key design features and highlights include:

Located along the waterfront, the performance venue offers prominent open public space with stunning views and pedestrian access.The in-bowl design caters to traditional music acts, largescale events and the best in esports competition and entertainment.The hotel tower offers unobstructed 360-degree views, including Lake Ontario and the remarkable Toronto skyline.Situated between the venue and hotel is a privately owned public space (POPS) an urban room that joins the venue and hotel, allowing for additional programming opportunities and chance meetings to occur.The interior design of both the venue and the hotel offer authenticity and a refined sense of style, inclusive of distinct influences which are uniquely Toronto.

Over the past several months, weve had the opportunity to engage with OverActive Media, the Exhibition Place Board of Governors and the City of Toronto to carefully choreograph the relationship between the venue, the hotel and a new urban room that connects the two, said Jonathan Mallie, Senior Principal and lead designer for Populous. The design has evolved to further integrate a dynamic building program and expression into the fabric of Toronto.

For more information, please contact:

Leah Gaucher, Director, PR & Communications, OverActive Media (647) 924-2614 lgaucher@oam.gg

ABOUT OVERACTIVE MEDIA

OverActiveMedia (TSXV:OAM)is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with operations in Madrid, Spain and Berlin, Germany. OverActives mandate is to build an integrated global company delivering sports, media and entertainment products for todays generation of fans with a focus on esports, videogames, content creation and distribution, culture, and live and online events. OverActive owns team franchises in (i) the Overwatch League, operating as the Toronto Defiant, (ii) the Call of Duty League, operating as the Toronto Ultra, (iii) the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), operating as the MAD Lions, (iv) the Superliga, operating as the MAD Lions Madrid, and (v) Flashpoint, operating as MAD Lions Counter Strike:Global Offensive (a franchised league operated by B Site Inc., a company in which OverActive holds a minority interest), as well as other non-affiliated CS:GO tournaments and leagues. OverActive also operates both live and online events, operating as OAM Live and maintains an active social media presence with its fans and community members, operates fan clubs, and other fan-related activities that increase the reach of its brands.

ABOUT POPULOUS

Populous is a global design firm that designs the places where people love to be together, like Yankee Stadium, the London Olympics, and the Super Bowl. Over the last 38 years, the firm has designed more than 3,000 projects worth $40 billion across emerging and established markets. Populous comprehensive services include architecture, interior design, event planning and overlay, branded environments, wayfinding and graphics, planning and urban design, landscape architecture, aviation and transport design, hotels and hospitality, and sustainable design consulting. Populous has 18 offices on four continents and more than 600 employees with regional centers in Kansas City, London and Brisbane.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains statements which constitute forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, forward-looking statements), including statements regarding OverActives proposed development of a venue and its plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations with respect to future business activities and operating performance. Forward-looking statements are often identified by the words may, would, could, should, will, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, expect or similar expressions.

Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not based on historical facts but instead OverActive managements expectations, estimates or projections concerning future results or events based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates of management considered reasonable at the date the statements are made. Although OverActive believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed thereon, as unknown or unpredictable factors could have material adverse effects on future results, performance or achievements of the OverActive. Among the key factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements include the following: the potential impact of OverActives qualifying transaction on relationships, including with regulatory bodies, employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; changes in general economic, business and political conditions, including changes in the financial markets; changes in applicable laws and regulations both locally and in foreign jurisdictions; compliance with extensive government regulation; the risks and uncertainties associated with foreign markets; and other risk factors set out in OverActives filing statement dated July 2, 2021, a copy of which may be found under OverActives profile at http://www.sedar.com. These forward-looking statements may be affected by risks and uncertainties in the business of OverActive and general market conditions, including COVID-19.

Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although OverActive has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended and such changes could be material. OverActive does not intend and do not assume any obligation, to update the forward-looking statements except as otherwise required by applicable law.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Photos accompanying this announcementare available at:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5d2a3117-be94-4d50-ba1f-1986eeec9252

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cc959f8c-9c52-40df-8956-2665fb587bfd

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fcdfc4f0-6ede-4776-ac89-df6fef814232

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OverActive Media Reveals Evolution of Its Design for Performance Venue - KULR-TV

In association with AdsWizz.

Ahead of ATS London 2021, Pierre Naggar, SVP global demand at AdsWizz, outlines how audio has changed and what this has meant for advertisers in this Q&A.

Digital audio and streaming have been growing over the last 4 years and the pandemic has only accelerated the trend. This acceleration may be partly attributed to screen fatigue and also the need for information, distraction, and entertainment during a period of limited or no movement.

Although radio maintains its prevalence because of the scale of its audience, the penetration of podcast listeners in Europe tripled between 2015 and 2020, reaching almost 25% of the European population. In the UK alone, a Mediatel survey showed that 18% of people listened to podcasts each week in 2020, double the number who listened two years previously, and up from just 1% in 2015. Now, individuals in the UK listen to almost 60 million hours of podcasts per week, double that of two years ago and seventeen times 2015 listening figures.

However, despite this spike in listening figures, the budgets for audio advertising are well below consumption, and marketers are showing a strong desire to be educated on the benefits of audio advertising.

The growth of the audio industry can be largely attributed to the advancements in technology over the past few years. Technology has aided the industrys growth by improving both the way we access and the way we create new forms of content. Tech has helped to build the infrastructure that enables publishers to make their digital audio supply available to buy programmatically.

In terms of formats, ad sequencing within podcasts tells a richer story with multiple ads across one or several episodes. Podcasts produce premium content and have highly engaged audiences, but historically, it has been painful for brands and agencies to plan and buy in the space due to its fragmentation, targeting limitations, and lack of automated tools. In response, AdsWizz developed solutions to enable buyers to plan campaigns across thousands of shows, and have created robust contextual targeting capabilities that go beyond show-level or keyword targeting. We also automated premium formats, such as host-read ads within podcasts, thanks to the ability to insert ads dynamically. Previously, they used to be stitched together by content creators and there were no in-depth targeting or measurement options. Weve also created ShakeMe, which is a motion-activated format that allows engagement and measures effectiveness by letting the listener shake their phone to complete an action.

In terms of personalisation, technology allows audio buyers to reach listeners in more personal ways through rich audience segment targeting, such as geo, device type, genre, language, weather, points of interest, demographic, behavioural segments and more.

We are also seeing an increase in programmatic buying across the audio ad industry, as technology also allows us to help publishers and advertisers to match ad content to the right audiences in order to give them maximum exposure/engagement which in turn increases their ROI, amongst other benefits.

Pierre Naggar, SVP global demand at AdsWizz

Changes in this space have been on the horizon for some time, and even though we see constant changes still taking place with more to come in the future, publishers in the audio ecosystem have learnt the lessons of the past and have been developing solutions to overcome the audience ID challenge. Some of them, such as Soundcloud and Bauer, have invested in their first-party logged-in data to build a trusting relationship with their listeners, meaning they can offer advertisers a way to target valuable audiences. Others, especially in the podcasting space (where cookies and MAIDs are unavailable) are leveraging AdsWizzs contextual solution based on speech to text transcription to categorise their content for targeting as well as for brand suitability. This is a major step forward and a great solution to reach audiences who listen to their favourite podcast shows and are extremely engaged.

These changes affect the advertising industry as a whole, but we have been able to adapt quickly to these changes and are continuing to monitor developments so we can stay at the forefront of innovation.

Voice plays an increasingly key role in our everyday life, with smart speakers and voice assistants becoming more prevalent and influencing our lifestyle and behaviours. This opens up new opportunities and over the last few years, we have seen the first examples of interactivity, which are becoming more sophisticated as we experiment and learn. For instance, our own Innovation Lab is testing new voice interactions using synthetic voices as well as new calls to action such as send me a sample, book an appointment or Order a product, which make the whole experience more interactive for the user but also enable us to measure the success of a campaign.

Theres certainly a lot of opportunity within the audio industry and we are looking to see how these evolve over the next few years, especially in gaming and social, where audio fits particularly well and there are active audiences.

ATS London 2021 will take place on 3rd-4th November at Lee Valley VeloPark. Tickets and further details are available via theATS London 2021events hub.

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The Evolution of Audio Advertising - Q&A with Pierre Naggar, AdsWizz - ExchangeWire