Copyright: 2006

Publisher: Viking Penguin

A fascinating look at the many facets of noise.  This book has plenty of information for even the casually interested reader in the first half of the book.  Topics covered include the legal issues of noise, the harmful effects of audible noise and the impact of new types of noise such as email spam.  In the second half, the "professor" in Kosko comes out and he delves into some of the equally fascinating, if not technically more difficult aspects of noise.   If you have a layman's interest in topics such as chaos theory and quantum physics then you will be pleasantly surprised that Professor Kosko can bring noise theory down to a level that mere mortals such as myself can grasp if not fully understand. 

[Notes]

Following are some major concepts and their approximate location in the book.  These are some of the topics that caught my interest and do not by any means encompass the full breadth of material covered in this wide ranging book. 

The Noise-Signal Duality

This is a recurring theme throughout the book but is discussed in detail in the first chapter.  Noise isn't alway noise, or rather, what is noise to you, might be music to your neighbor.  To illustrate, if a noisy neighbor plays his or her music too loud, you consider that noise.  Yet if you pull your neighbor aside and ask them how they can stand that "noise" they will likely explain that they LIKE their music that loud.  So noise is simply an unwanted signal... unwanted at least by the person who considers it to be noise. 

Consider this concept in the light of your office layout.  Some office managers insist that high cubicle walls cut down on noise and increase productivity.  But what if the walls of your cubicle farm are blocking out important information that needs to be flowing throughout your organization?  What if your sales associates don't hear the buzz about new product development that might energize them and give them incentive to hit the phones or streets even harder?  What if your customer support reps stare blankly at a screen looking for answers to a question that the person 3 feet away has already answered five times today?  These are information flows that are difficult to formalize and yet are vital to creating a competitive edge for your business. 

So why don't we knock down all the walls like Capital One did then information can flow as free as it wants?  Well, in many (if not most) environments, that's not an option due to the noise-signal duality problem.  I want my sales people to know about the latest and greatest coming out of product development but I don't want my sales people hunkering under their desks in order to hear the customer who is trying to place an order.  

What is the solution then?  How do we deal with this noise signal-duality in an office environment.  The Capital One solution seems to be to have open offices but make it possible for their people to work anywhere using wireless technology.  In designing our new office space for Eclipse Software Systems Inc. where I am a programmer, we have taken this concept into consideration by developing an open space for developers that is separate from the other spaces and yet very accessible.  In addition we have carefully considered the placement of the Sales and Support departments so they are near each other, with open enough spaces to allow for communication, but enough separation to keep the noise down.  Other concepts we are looking at are full headsets for phone conversations and white noise generators to help cut down on unwanted signals. 

Using "noise" to cut down on "noise"?  Yes, Professor Kosko also covers that topic in his book!

Stochastic Resonance

How can noise be a good thing?  One of the more interesting topics in this book is how noise can be used to benefit certain processes.  For instance background noise matching a mother's heartbeat can be added during a sonogram to allow a doctor to hear a baby's heartbeat. 

The term "stochastic resonance" refers to this helpful benefit from certain types of noise in certain systems.  Dynamic, non-linear systems are the ones that typically gain the most from added noise.  The chapters on Stochastic resonance are pretty heavy with technical information but are worth wading through if you want to read some interesting concepts.  Specifically pay attention to the discussion of thresholds and how information is conveyed using them. 

Random Thoughts

• Did you know that white noise really isn't white?  Because technically white noise is noise that contains frequencies from an infinite range of frequencies, white noise with any amplitude would require an infinite energy source.  So what we call white noise is really "pink noise".
  
• There are a countable infinity of infinities according to most mathematicians.
  
• CD's sample at 44.1Khz sampling rate because the ear tends not to hear frequencies above 20Khz.  Sampling rates that are twice the frequency value ensures that all of the frequency content of the original signal will be captured after passing through ideal low-pass filters.