<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Hi Brian,</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Thanks for copying me on this email. I am happy to clarify. Regarding Brian's comments:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">I very much appreciate Margaret's input on this issue.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">However, my own reaction to this project, when Deb Roy first mentioned it to me about a year ago, was different from Margaret's.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">I considered it a remarkable opportunity for a busy father to spend more time with his child than might otherwise be possible.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">Personally, I still very much value the fact that I was</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">able to join work and family life for several years in the process of recording and transcribing speech samples from my own children.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; color: rgb(0, 14, 220); min-height: 13px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"><BR></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">As a busy father I must concur that this project gives me every excuse to spend more time with my son!</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">I agree with Margaret that one of the big outputs of this type of project is in the area of systems computing and terabyte storage management.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">This work will inevitably have consequences outside of the field of child language.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">For example, there is an interesting project here at CMU that seeks to use similar video technology to monitor patients in extended care centers to make sure that they are receiving care and attention when required.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Again, this is on target. The high-performance computing infrastructure and audio-visual analysis software we are developing will likely have applications in a broad range of domains beyond our interest in language acquisition.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">On the issue of IRB review, I understand that there is no intention to publish these data generally, so the concerns that Margaret raises in that regard would not apply.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Correct. Due to the private and relatively comprehensive nature of the data, we have not made any commitments to share a single bit of it. Over time, as we come to better understand methods for sharing that would work, we will consider releasing small fragments of data while ensuring all privacy concerns of all participants would be met. By the way, this is why my wife (also a researcher interested in language) and I decided to do this with our own family -- to sort through methodology issues with our own data first. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">We have certainly had detailed interactions with IRB on this. MIT would not support it, nor would the NSF fund it if the protocols were not carefully designed to safeguard all obvious privacy/consent issues.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">Margaret assumes somehow that the child cannot leave the house.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">I don't see anything that suggests this to be true.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">I am copying this message to Deb Roy so that he can perhaps further clarify us all regarding such details.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Yikes, what a frightful idea! I just spent a wonderful morning on the deck with my son; we are planning summer vacations; walks in the park and visits to friends houses are regular activities etc. etc. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Our goal is to record a large part of my sons waking hours in the house -- when we are out of the house, we have decided not to record anything at all (we thought about audio only but even that is too complicated to keep up for a sustained period for a variety of reasons). Over the months our son will naturally be out of the house for larger and larger chunks of time so the amount of coverage is expected to progressively diminish. Recordings are often off over dinner which is when gossip often happens etc. The goal here is to find a balance between capturing all waking hours (which is now technologically feasible) and what is practical/acceptable. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">As an aside, it's funny how many people think of Big Brother, the Truman show, etc. -- these all assume an incorrect mental model of the audience for the data. We are maintaining the data on a secure server, with carefully controlled access to a handful of researchers, and we are evolving new privacy policies over time to deal with issues as we understand them. The primary "audience" for this data will be pattern analysis and machine learning algorithms, not humans. </DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">On the negative side, I must say that I am not much of a fan of the fisheye lens video view.</FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC">My Ross used the fisheye lens a lot in his skateboard videos, particularly in facial close-ups, and that was indeed creepy!</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; color: rgb(0, 14, 220); min-height: 13px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#000EDC"><BR></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">We went with this compromise since there is no one place to point a static camera with regular lens in a room and get sufficient spatial coverage. The alternative -- a moving camera that tracks people -- would definitely be creepy! Clearly there are many important aspects of social interaction (e.g., eye gaze) that we will lose, but we are not aware of any technology (yet) to get highly detailed visual information that will also provide comprehensive coverage over space and time.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Regarding Margaret's comment:</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313">Thinking about what a relatively small set of fixed-position cameras and mics</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313">is likely to capture, or not capture, one could easily write this off as primarily an</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313">exercise in systems computing and terabyte storage management. </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313"> </FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313">However, eventually</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313">someone is going to attempt something similar with more plausible recording technology.</FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; color: rgb(53, 99, 19); min-height: 13px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" color="#356313"><BR></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I feel this comment misses an important point -- we are already in the realm of "plausible recording technology". I realize movable cameras and wearable mics are the norm (I have worked with both in the past). One challenge with ultradense longitudinal recordings is to rethink instrumentation. For example, relying on wearable microphones is simply not practical -- not for 12 hours a day for 1000 days! (think: bath time, throw-ups, multiple changes of clothes in a day, etc.). A design goal in our project was to eliminate any wearable equipment, exposed wiring or other recording equipment -- any of those seemed to me a bad idea for long term use in a home. The quality of boundary layer microphones from ceiling height surprise most people who work with conventional portable recording equipment. I'm happy to share details with anyone interested.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Regards,</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Deb Roy</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">------------------------------------------------------------------------------</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Deb Roy</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Director, Cognitive Machines</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">AT&T Career Development Professor</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">The Media Laboratory</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:dkroy@media.mit.edu"><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">dkroy@media.mit.edu</SPAN></FONT></A><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">www.media.mit.edu/~dkroy </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"> </SPAN></FONT><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">www.media.mit.edu/cogmac</SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 11px/normal Lucida Grande; min-height: 13px; "><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BODY></HTML>