The Future is Here, Proclaims Jeff the Great

Google is one step closer to directly connecting our brains to all of the information in the world. Thats the end goal...just think about something and you'll automatically just know all. It will pop into your brain from nowhere.

Think I'm crazy? Well, I probably am but thats not the point. One of my favorite books is called The Big Switch written by Nicholas Carr. Near the end of the book, about how computing is following a similar path towards a ubiquitious commodity, Carr talks about Goolge and their founders vision for our future. Long story short, organizing the world's information, their stated mission, is only a means to the real end. The real end goal of Larry and Sergy is to 'plug' our brains directly into the internet. Google Glass is the next major step in that direction.

Here is the idea. First, we store and organize all the world's information. Next, add cameras and microphones to our daily lives. Then, begin monitoring our brain waves in order to connect brain patterns to what we see, hear, and say. With enough data and enough processing power, we can start to connect the dots between our thoughts and information.

Google Glass is a significant step in that direction. Glasses with a camera, microphone, and a heads up display. Without any action on your part, they'll be able to identify a person standing in front of you, and display relevant information about that person automatically. This is not some futuristic device that a bunch of nerds are dreaming about. Google Glass will ship to its first set of customers in the summer of 2013, with general availability by the 2013 holiday season.

Next step will be the ability for the glasses to analyze your brain waves. They'll record how your brain behaved when you saw the person standing in front of you, and how your brain behaved when the info about that person was displayed to you. With enough data like that, from you and hundreds of millions of other people, they'll eventually be able to know when you want info purely based on brain waves. Google is essentially the worlds largest research project to map the brain. Its a project that I consider to be bigger than sequencing the human genome, as the US did from 1990 through 2003.

So in the very near future, when you see me or someone else wearing those odd looking Google Glasses, dont laugh at us. Remember that we are contributing to humanity's largest research project that will lead to your grandkids having a direct thought connection to all the information ever recorded in human history.

This is gonna be big.

Jeff the Great Reveals the Truth

You are being lied to. In fact, everyone in the US is being lied to. A massive conspiracy is being perpetrated right in front of you.

The lie? The lie is that CPR works. Truth is, it doesn't. Let me explain.

I was recently reading the Wall Street Journal online when I stumbled across an interesting article from a retired Professor of Medicine about how doctors die differently than the rest of the population. The article points out that doctors are more likely to have advanced directives (what they want done or not done to save their lives) and implies that doctors are less likely to want cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) performed.

Why wouldn't a doctor want someone to perform CPR in an effort to save their life? There are many reasons, but here is one that will surprise you. Doctors know that CPR doesn't work. Yes, you read that correctly. CPR does not work.

The same Wall Street Journal article points out that while the media depicts CPR as a lifesaving tool (communicating a 75% success rate), in real life CPR rarely works. How rare, you ask? Its bad. Real bad. The article goes on to tell us that CPR is only successful in 8% of cases. Success being defined as living at least one month after being resuscitated. So in other words, 92% of CPR recipients will either die immediately or within 30 days.

Those are some pretty poor odds.

I was reminded of this statistic during the past week when I heard that the Oregon State Legislature was considering a bill (SB 275) that would require all high school students to learn CPR as a pre-requisite for graduation. While our budgets are strained and the education provided is a joke by many measures, our elected officials are spending time (and potential education dollars) to teach our kids to do something that fails 92% of the time.

I just wish I was aware of SB 275 when I was in Salem last Monday, lobbying for support of HB 2636 to improve STEM education in our state. The ridiculous CPR bill would have been a nice example of why our education system needs to be changed and focus put on things that matter.