Shallow-fakes have been around for quite awhile

Dougio

Polar bear on Lake Jefferson, Minnesota

Caught on a date with Laura Bush

It seems like the general public has finally awakened to the fact that not all you read or see on social media is real. After 25 years plus of hammering the importance of information literacy to our students (and staff), will the warnings voiced by school library and technology leaders finally be heeded?

It’s taken pop culture star Taylor Swift becoming the victim of deep-fake pornographic images posted to X to create an outcry. Despite the outright lies and fabrications by politicians and their followers, we as a society seem to be complacent about the sewage that floats about in our social networking feeds. Until now when poor Taylor is being targeted by image prevarication. 

The images above were ones I used in my slideshows when giving talks on the importance of verifying the information one found on the internet. Most often, the images were accompanied by the laughs they were intended to evoke. (I always believe humor was more effective when trying to make a point.) 

The images were, of course, created prior to the now available deep-fake AI tools now available and don’t take a very expert eye to see that my (much younger) face was pasted on to existing photographs. And while the lake in the picture was just outside my backdoor, the polar bear was a stock photo image. To the best of my knowledge, Minnesota has not yet experienced an influx of polar bears on our lakes. 

I do hope the Swifties have more success in combating the naive acceptance of the validity of junk posted on X and other social media than I did in all my years of giving talks and writing articles like Survival Skills for the Information Jungle. Let’s hope they demand some policing of these popular platforms, strengthen their own critical abilities, and don’t simply “shake it off.”

Building exercise into one’s daily routines

While I have long been a committed and active YMCA member and regular walker, I know I can get in better physical condition if I just make a few changes to my daily habits. I don’t know if they will really help much, but I’ve been trying to remember to:

• To go up from sitting to standing without using my arms to push me up. From low seating, this is more challenging than one might expect. It’s not just leg strength, but balance that gets a little practice. Oh, when I think about it, I go the opposite direction without the use of my arms as well - trying not to make a plopping sound.

• To climb stairs without the use of bannisters. Another chance to work my legs and core instead of my arms. It’s another chance to practice one’s balance as well, when descending. I also try never to place something on the stairs to be taken up later. I just make the full trip each time. 

• To purposely park at some distance from the entrance of stores or other venues. Given our -0 temps lately here in Minnesota, I’ve sort of ignored this one. I find my own behavior ironic when I look for a parking spot as close to the Y’s entrance as possible. While the number of steps each time i park may not be many, I expect over the course of a week, they may add up.

• To walk up escalators. I do this perhaps not as much because I want the exercise, but because I lack the patience to simply stand. See “What escalators tell you about people.”

I suspect there are many more habits I could establish in my daily routine to increase my strength and stamina. Dear Readers, let me know what ones you might consciously perform!

Is your map app destroying your brain?

 I use GoogleMaps on nearly a daily basis, despite being a fan of paper maps. (See But I miss paper maps.)

As Blue Skunk readers may remember, I have been doing a lot of volunteer driving for a nonprofit that supports senior citizens.* Three to five times a week, I give rides to people who can no longer drive to a medical appointment, to a hairdresser, or to a grocery store. Living in a fairly large metro area (Minneapolis-St Paul), I am constantly driving on unfamiliar streets to unfamiliar destinations. The Twin Cities seems to have one health care facility for every two citizens just to add to the confusion.

So GoogleMaps is very helpful indeed. My phone connects to my car’s dashboard monitor using Android Auto and a little Bluetooth receiver. I can watch the app in real time while driving. Much like having a human navigator, it tells me where to turn. But it also shows me the speed limit and warns me of potential traffic problems ahead. As I tell my passengers, my AI overlord doesn’t always show the shortest route, but it always shows the fastest route. And it is usually dead-on predicting the ETA. To say I have grown dependent upon GPS may be an understatement**.

So I was a bit alarmed when I read in last week’s newspaper:

…recent studies suggest that ceding the planning and execution of daily travel to global positioning systems can exact a cognitive price. That is, when GPS use becomes habitual, it’s not just the skills associated with reading a map that get rusty… the hippocampus, an ancient structure located deep in the brain, behind the ear and near the base of the skull…oversees spatial orientation and memory, is key to planning and decision-making and appears to play a role in our ability to imagine the future. …recent research suggests that we stop exercising that important part of the brain when we rely on GPS. “Ask the Doctors” Mankato Free Press, 1/8/2024

So, what to do? Revert to old paper maps - or simply hope the cognitive decline is not too fast and not too steep?

I am not sure it has to be an either/or proposition. Before each trip I take using GoogleMaps, I look at the complete route. The area’s major highways and streets are familiar to me and I can usually get close to my destination without using either a paper or electronic map. I sort of know in my head, the general route I will be taking. I don’t see much difference between looking at it on paper or on a screen. 

I also often rely on my clients to give me directions. Some of these folks have been residents of their neighborhoods for decades and have been going to their doctors or supermarkets for many years. They can direct one on a preferred route. I have one woman who was a former taxi driver and enjoys traveling the smaller streets, avoiding the major thoroughfares. No problem.

And finally, traveling on extended road trips while on vacation is a great opportunity to return to paper maps and practice one’s skills in using them - and pump a little oxygen into the hippocampus. When my friend and I take a road trip, the passenger usually sits with the Rand-McNally or state road map on their lap, tracking the trip's progress. We see it as a challenge to not consult the GPS at all. Growing up with printed maps, we usually do rather well.

So despite the potential danger of over-using my GoogleMaps, I will continue to do so. Recognizing, of course, this is simply one more way that AI will come to dominate my pathetic, biological life…

*I joke to my first time clients that they should relax - the company requires that I bring back at least 80% of my riders alive. Some laugh; some look a little alarmed.

**This applies to relying on GPS when I hike and bike as well.