McGill
In the seventies, I led a split brain existence. At the same time that I was immersed in Quebecois culture (teaching at the french speaking Université de Montréal) I was also working toward my PhD at McGill University where folks spoke mostly english.
The Al Bregman Effect
Albert Bregman is professor (emeritus) of psychology at McGill. Al is the pioneer of a field of psychology known as auditory scene analysis. Al was just at the beginning of his pioneering work on auditory stream perception when I began lobbying him to become my thesis advisor and mentor. This wasn't so easy because I was from another department at McGill and he was very busy. But I persisted; I took all of his classes and studied his papers and articles. Al's famous class on Cognitive Psychology had a profound effect on me. (Steven Pinker was also in that class and wrote a tribute to Al a few years ago in the New York Times. ) Al is one of those rare scholars who is able to convey complex ideas is in simple, clear language. That is primarily what attracted me to Al as well as his humor and humanity.
Working with Al
Working with Al Bregman was a turning point in my life and helped prepare me for my future career in Silicon Valley. Al was my role model for writing and more importantly for thinking things through. Al could be tough. Never particularly enthusiastic about some of my early ideas, he always was generous in giving me time. After two years of intense, sometimes talmudic, discussion and debate and a number of rejected (well, not really rejected but not encouraged), I finally found a direction that looked promising,
Cartoon Strip Analogies
There's lots of research in psychology on how people understand language. Similarly, there lots of research on visual perception. There's very little work on how language and perception are entwined in our interpretation of objects and events. My Phd thesis developed a method of studying some of the interactions between language and perception using what I called cartoon-strip analogies -- simple shapes that could be interpreted as familiar events. The technique allowed me to probe how language and images can interact in generating a meaning that will "fit" both kind of inputs.
Video Induced Self-Dialogue
In 1970, my master's thesis at Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania involved experimenting with non broadcast uses of video technology. One experiment entailed creating a method of simulating what it would be like to see yourself as others see you. To do this, I designed a system using a feedback loop of about 1 second between one's actions and the image of that action. I accomplished this delay by recording the output of a camera on one device and threading the tape physically to a second device for playback. I doubt anyone had ever thought of doing this for video since it's not great for the videotape to have threaded between two machines. (There is a history of studies on delayed auditory feedback). I don't quite remember what triggered the thought in me. In any event, the effect of the delay feedback was eery. You could simulate aspects of having a "conversation with yourself. Unlike a looking at yourself in the mirror or watching recorded video of yourself in the past, this one second delay between action and image gave one a feel of what it would be like to perceive aspects of your own mannerisms -- closer to the way another person would see them. You could wave to your image on the screen and say "hi"; a second later you would see your self waving and saying "hi." You could continue to play around with different behaviors and observe them.
