Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Future Face - The Principal Eigenface?
Future Face, an exhibition at London's Science Museum, asks this question: Will the widespread use of digital enhancement to "improve" faces in photographs suggest the kind of face that people will have in the future?
Sandra Kemp, the exhibit curator, is a leading academic in visual culture. She notes that many people no longer have "sticky photo albums" - that is, they no longer have hard copy output of their pictures. Instead, pictures are held in digital format and viewed on computer screens or televisions. She points out that these pictures can be photoshopped at will and "people are enhancing their faces all the time." She states:
"We are subtly being conditioned by the digital face and heading towards a face which no human being could have been born with. This face is smooth and narrow, with a small jaw, big lips and manga Japanese eyes for the females."
(From Future Face Book)
It is an odd coincedence that we should have the technology to alter this most important of human identifiers at exactly the same time that we are working hard to develop face recognition technologies. After all, your face is your most frequently used ID - you show it everywhere you go. We are hardwired for biometric face recognition. Newborn infants have been shown to track faces immediately.
Face recognition software typically works by using a set of eigenfaces, which are essentially standardized facial features derived from a statistical analysis of many pictures of faces. A large sample of digital images of human faces, lined up at the eyes and mouths, is sampled at the same pixel resolution. The principal eigenface in a set looks like a fuzzy averaged androgenous human face. The others add the necessary variations.
(From Eigenface)
Many of us who have digital photo albums with simple photo-editing software have done "clean-up jobs" on our faces, or those of our loved ones. People who have plastic surgery done are just "photoshopping" their actual face. What happens when more and more people seek an idealized look, an average of the most beautiful faces? You would get a generic beautiful face for everyone - and a lot of useless face recognition software (which has a high rate of failure even now, with all of our different, imperfect faces).
Science fiction writer William Gibson, in his novel Count Zero, had a pretty good handle on this idea in 1986 when he refers to a sort of statistical beauty; an average of pretty faces:
"He would have expected a routine beauty, bred out of cheap elective surgery and the relentless Darwinism of fashion, an archetype cooked down from the major media faces of the previous five years...Early work on computerized face recognition was done in the 1960's; the first work on eigenfaces was done in 1989. A number of face recognition products exist today; you may see some of them at Customs desks around the world.The faces ... were like God's own hood ornaments."
Read more about the Future Face exhibit and article; thanks to ratchet up for the pointer; read more about eigenfaces and face recognition.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/22/2004)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Index of related articles:
Biometric security overview
Biometrics Glossary
Characteristics of successful biometric identification methods
Biometric identification systems
Biometric technology on the leading edge
Biometric identification - advantages
Biometric security and business ethics
Biometric authentication: what method works best?
Iris Recognition
Iris Scan
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
SensorWake Scent-Based Alarm Clock
'The odalarm awoke Jorj X. McKie with a whiff of lemon.' - Frank Herbert, 1977.
Ulm Sleep Pods For The Homeless
'The lid lifted and she crawled inside...' - Larry Niven, 2000.
Prophetic Offers Lucid Dreaming Halo With Morpheus-1 AI
''Leads trail away from insertion points on her face and wrist... to a lucid dreamer...' - Peter Watts, 1999.
Navajo Say Human Cremains On The Moon Is 'Desecration'
'Like all loonies, we conserve our dead...' - Robert Heinlein, 1966.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
Elon Musk Says Robotaxis Will Be Ready This August, 2024
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Moonwalkers AI-Controlled Electric Shoes
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
Steve Jobs: 'Capture The Next Aristotle - With AI'
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
Electric Catamaran 'Explorer Eco 40m' Has 'Solar Skin'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
Orbital Mechanics, The Liftoff, The Turnover, The Retrograde Burn
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
Harvest Power From Tears And Blinking With Smart Contact Lens
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
Europa Clipper Plate Carries A Special Message
'...a universal cryptogram — yet it is one which can be interpreted by any intelligent creature on any planet in the Solar System!'
Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional
'With a whir, the Scarab shot from the concealing shadows of the corner where it had hidden itself.'
AI Enhances Images Your Brain Sees
'I could have sworn the psychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as reality itself'
Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI
'Stasis, cold sleep, hibernation, hypothermia, reduced metabolism, call it what you will - the logistics-medicine research teams had found a way to stack people like cordwood and use them when needed.'
Deflector Plasma Screen For Drones ala Star Wars
'If the enemy persists in attacking or even intensifies their power, the density of the plasma in space will suddenly increase, causing it to reflect most of the incoming energy like a mirror.'
DIY Robotic Hand Made After Loss Of Fingers
'I made them... with the fine work of the watchmaker...'
