Mann is a founding member of the IEEE Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI).[6][7] He cofounded Blueberry X Technologies and served as its CTO from 2019 to 2021, and is the Chairman of MannLab. He was born in Canada and currently lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife and two children. In the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election, Mann unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Toronto.
Mann with three of his inventions: EyeTap Digital Eye Glass, Smartwatch, and SWIM (Sequential Wave Imprinting Machine) phenomenological augmented reality.
In 1991, Mann was the first to propose and reduce to practice a signal representation based on a family of chirp signals, each associated with a coefficient, in a generalization of the wavelet transform that is now referred to as the chirplet transform.
Eye Glass
"Digital Eye Glass," "Eye Glass," "Glass Eye," or "Glass" is a device that, when worn, causes the human eye itself to effectively become both an electronic camera and a television display.[8] Mann developed this technology starting in 1978.
In 1993, Mann was the first to propose and implement an algorithm to estimate a camera's response function from a plurality of differently exposed images of the same subject matter. He was also the first to propose and implement an algorithm to automatically extend dynamic range in an image by combining multiple differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter.[9][10][11]
"The first report of digitally combining multiple pictures of the same scene to improve dynamic range appears to be Mann." (Robertson et al.)[12] Mann's work on wearable computing was motivated by his early computer vision systems that helped people see better (e.g. while welding, or in other high-dynamic range situations, with dynamic range management, overlays, and augmentation as well as diminishment in both the additive and subtractive sense).[13]
Mann invented an experimental musical instrument that uses pressurized hydraulic fluid, such as water, to make sound. The instrument is played by placing the fingers in direct contact with the sound-producing hydraulic fluid, thus giving the musician a high degree of control over the musical expression in the sound.[14]
Integral kinematics and integral kinesiology
Mann developed principles of negative derivatives (integrals) of displacement, such as absement (the area under the displacement-time curve), as embodied by hydraulophones (water-based instruments).[14] This work has been built upon by others, and forms the basis for a different way of understanding electrical engineering.[15] See also Mann's 2014 paper, "Integral Kinematics (Time‐Integrals of Distance, Energy, etc.) and Integral Kinesiology."[16]
In the 1980s and '90s, Mann developed a number of user-interface strategies using natural interaction with the real world as an alternative to a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI). Mann referred to this work as "Natural User Interfaces", "Direct User Interfaces", and "Metaphor-Free Computing"[17]
Scratch input is an acoustic-based method of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that takes advantage of the characteristic sound produced when a finger nail, stick, or other object strikes or is dragged over a surface, such as a table or wall.
A surveilluminescent wand is a device for visualizing vision and seeing sight, by way of making visible the sightfield (time-reversed lightfield) of a camera or similar computer vision sensor, using time-exposure with array of surveilluminescent lights to make visible to one camera what another camera can see.[18]
This is a wearable computer based on a pendant that contains a webcam and laser-based infinite depth-of-focus projector, and related technologies for gesture-based wearable computing systems.
Video Orbits
In 1993, Mann was the first to produce an algorithm for automatically combining multiple pictures of the same subject matter, using algebraic projective geometry, to "stitch together" images using automatically estimated perspective correction.[19] This is called the "Video Orbits" algorithm.[20][21][22]
Surveilluminescent wand: When moved through space in a long-exposure photograph, it makes the sightfield of a surveillance camera visible.
Mann also works in the fields of computer-mediated reality.[23] He is a strong advocate of privacy rights. His work also extends to the area of sousveillance (a term he coined for "inverse surveillance"). Mann and one of his PhD students, James Fung, together with some of his other students, have been building a cyborg community around the cyborg-logging concept.[24]
Mann, together with Professor Ian Kerr at the University of Ottawa, has written extensively on surveillance, sousveillance, and equiveillance. "Sousveillance," a term coined by Mann, along with the concepts that he and Kerr have developed around these ideas, have created a new dialog for cyborg technologies, as well as related personal information gathering technologies like camera phones. He has created the related concept of humanistic intelligence.[25]
In 2003, Joi Ito credited Mann with having initiated the moblogging movement by creating a system for transmission of realtime pictures, video, and text. In particular, from 1994 to 1996, Mann continuously transmitted his life's experiences, in real time, to his website for others to experience, interact with, and respond to.[26]
His CyborGLOGS ('glogs), such as the spontaneous reporting of news as everyday experience,[27] were an early predecessor of 'blogs and the concept of blogging, and earlier than that, his pre-internet-era live streaming of personal documentary and cyborg communities defined cyborg-logging as a new form of social networking.
Anonequity project
Mann is currently collaborating with a number of researchers including Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology, University of Ottawa, who teaches a course on "Cyborg Law" that uses Mann's book.[28] Mann, together with Kerr and others, are doing an SSHRC-funded project to study the Ethics, Law & Technology of anonymity, authentication, surveillance, and sousveillance, in addition to issues related to cyborg-law. The anonequity project is ongoing, and collaborator Kerr has also researched and lectured widely on implantable technologies.[29]
Awards and honours
Mann was inducted into the McMaster University Alumni Hall of Fame in 2004, in recognition of his career as an inventor and teacher.[30]
While at MIT, in then Director Nicholas Negroponte's words, "Steve Mann … brought the seed" that founded the Wearable Computing group in the Media Lab[31] and "Steve Mann is the perfect example of someone … who persisted in his vision and ended up founding a new discipline."[32][33] In 2004 he was named the recipient of the 2004 Leonardo Award for Excellence for his article "Existential Technology," published in Leonardo 36:1.[34][35]
He is also General Chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society,[36] Associate Editor of IEEE Technology and Society, is a licensed Professional Engineer, and Senior Member of the IEEE,[37] as well as a member of the IEEE Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI).[38]
Mann has been referred to as the "father of wearable computing",[41][42][43] having created the first general-purpose wearable computer, in contrast to previous wearable devices that perform one specific function such as time-keeping (e.g. wristwatch); calculations (e.g. wearable abacus); or Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon's wearable computers, which were timing devices concealed in shoes or cigarette packs and designed for gaining an advantage at roulette.[44][45]
In 2023, Steve Mann ran for Mayor of Toronto.[47] As part of his campaign he advocated for recreational swimming in Lake Ontario, and supported a petition to save the beach at Ontario Place.[48][49]
Publications
Mann is author of more than 200 publications, including a textbook on electric eyeglasses and a popular culture book on day-to-day cyborg living. Selected works:
↑ Mitchell, Marit (13 March 2013). "Meet Steve Mann, father of wearable computing". University of Toronto. Retrieved 28 November 2020. Professor Steve Mann is known as the father of wearable computing...
↑ CXI - Council on Extended Intelligence, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), 2017
↑ The Case for Extended Intelligence - IEEE, Technological Advancement in Service of People and Planet, Pages 1-48, Piscataway, New Jersey, 2018.
↑ Robertson; etal. (2003). "Estimation-theoretic approach to dynamic range enhancement using multiple exposures". Journal of Electronic Imaging. 12 (2): 220, right column, line 26. Bibcode:2003JEI....12..219R. doi:10.1117/1.1557695.
↑ Memory Elements: A Paradigm Shift in Lagrangian Modeling of Electrical Circuits arXiv:1201.1032
↑ "Integral Kinematics (Time‐Integrals of Distance, Energy, etc.) and Integral Kinesiology", by Steve Mann, Ryan Janzen, Mir Adnan Ali, Pete Scourboutakos, and Nitin Guleria, in Proceedings of the IEEE GEM2014, pp 627-629, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, October 22–24, 2014
↑ Intelligent Image Processing, John Wiley and Sons, 2001
↑ Part man, part machine – all nerd `Wearable computer' pioneer Steve Mann keeps one eye locked on the future, Toronto Star, Eric Shinn, July 8, 02:32 EDT
↑ Schofield, Jack (5 April 2012). "Google Project Glass: will we really wear digital goggles?". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2012. Steve Mann, a Canadian known as the father of wearable computing, has been developing systems since the 1980s with obvious industrial, medical and military applications.
↑ Clarke, Peter (8 February 2000). "ISSCC: 'Dick Tracy' watch watchers disagree". EE Times. Archived from the original on 22 January 2013. Retrieved 23 July 2012. Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, was hailed as the father of the wearable computer and the ISSCC's first virtual panelist, by moderator...
↑ Ballingall, Alex (13 February 2013). "Google Glass, smart watches could help spawn wearable computer age". Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 31 May 2013. Retrieved 3 January 2016. Garten also noted a remarkable similarity between the Google Glass and the eyewear technology developed by Steve Mann, a University of Toronto professor known as the "cyborg" for constantly wearing his version of the wearable computer glasses. He's often referred to as "the father" of the wearable computer and augmented reality vision.
↑ Mann, Steve; Hal Niedzviecki (2001). Cyborg: Digital Destiny and Human Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer. Randomhouse Doubleday. ISBN978-0-385-65826-3.
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