How to sense and make sense of subtler factors that govern our behaviors, the choices we make as individuals and as part of groups. The point here is that there are some obvious physically measurable; things like body weight, miles driven, CO2 let out, around which we can develop diagnostics and policies. But these measurables are often the consequence of choices that are less tangible, like body image, the urge to stand out or blend in and so on.
I think we can sense these things as well by measuring brain activity or signs of mood changes in written communications. So as we get better at analyzing and archiving vast amounts of data we will find ourselves extending the frontiers of what we can gather. Many disciplines outside of the hard sciences will advance because of their ability to finally measure more things. So I would emphasize data analysis and also new ways of thinking of sensing.
Author: Ramesh Rao
Ramesh Rao is professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, and director of the San Diego Division of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology. Rao earned his BE degree with honors in electronics and communications in 1980 from the University of Madras in Tiruchirapalli, India. He received his MS degree in 1982 and Ph. D. degree in 1984, both at the University of Maryland, College Park. Since then he has been on the faculty of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently Professor and Director of the San Diego Division of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology. In April 2004, he was named Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Telecommunications and Information Technology. His research interests include architectures, protocols and performance analysis of computer and communication networks. He has authored over 100 technical papers, contributed two book chapters, and led many major interdisciplinary and collaborative projects as principal investigator. He was the Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and was a member of the Editorial Board of the ACM/Baltzer Wireless Network Journal as well as IEEE Network magazine. He has been twice elected to serve on the Information Theory Society Board of Governors ('97 to '99 and '00 to '02).
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