Mind: Recalibrating Therapy for a Wired World - The Digital Doctor

But the virtues of the digital age are not always aligned with those of psychotherapy. It takes time to change behavior and alleviate emotional pain, and for many patients constant access is more harmful than helpful. These days, as never before, therapists are struggling to recalibrate their approach to patients living in a wired world.

For some, the new technology is clearly a boon. Let’s say you have the common anxiety disorder social phobia. You avoid speaking up in class or at work, fearful you’ll embarrass yourself, and the prospect of going to a party inspires dread. You will do anything to avoid social interactions.

You see a therapist who sensibly recommends cognitive-behavioral therapy, which will challenge your dysfunctional thoughts about how people see you and as a result lower your social anxiety. You find that this treatment involves a fair amount of homework: You typically have to keep a written log of your thoughts and feelings to examine them. And since you see your therapist weekly, most of the work is done solo.

As it turns out, there is a smartphone app that will prompt you at various times during the day to record these social interactions and your emotional response to them. You can take the record to your therapist, and you are off and running.

Struggling with major depression? Digital technology may soon have something for you, too. Depressed patients are characteristically lacking in motivation and pleasure; an app easily could lead patients through the day with chores and activities, like having a therapist in one’s pocket. Not just that, but the app might ask you to rate depressive symptoms like sleep, energy, appetite, sex drive and concentration in real time, so that when you next visit your psychiatrist, you can present a more accurate picture of your clinical status without having to worry about your recall.

When it comes to collecting and organizing data, software is hard to beat. But information has a tendency to spread, especially digital information. To wit, electronic medical data containing sensitive personal information can be released, either accidentally or deliberately, and disseminated. Anyone who has followed the hacking of supposedly secure and encrypted financial databases knows this is not a remote possibility.

More worrisome to therapists, perhaps, is that technology also enables access: These days patients reach out via text, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter. For some of them, the easy connectivity that technology makes possible is a decidedly bad idea.

Take a patient who has a fundamental problem in maintaining intimate relationships and who can’t tolerate being alone without feeling bored or anxious — in other words, a patient with typical features of borderline personality disorder. Not surprisingly, such a patient would love instant access to a therapist whenever an uncomfortable feeling arises.

In this case, connectivity would interfere with the central goal of any reasonable treatment, namely acquiring the skills to manage painful feelings by oneself and the ability to tolerate some degree of disappointment. Access-on-demand would mitigate efforts to develop patience and frustration tolerance, and might encourage a sense of entitlement and an illusory notion of power and control.

But perhaps the more difficult challenge is this: By removing barriers to access, digital technology can make therapists more real and knowable to their patients. This cuts both ways.

Recently, a patient I had treated for depression was struggling with the approaching death of his beloved dog. Just divorced, he was dreading another loss. One night while surfing the Internet, he came across a piece I wrote years ago about the death of my own dog.

“So you understand what it’s like,” he said during one of our sessions. This discovery made him feel understood and comforted.

Sometimes, though, digital technology can undermine the clinical rationale for a therapist to maintain distance.

For example, in insight-oriented psychotherapy, which focuses on unconscious processes at the root of personal conflicts, the patient essentially uses his relationship with the therapist to understand how he structures relationships with people in general. The therapist must be free to “become” many different important people in the patient’s life; the more the patient knows of the therapist’s real life, the likelier it is that the treatment will be confounded.

Imagine how you might feel if you had a philandering parent and were having trouble in your own relationships, and you discovered that your own therapist was married and having an affair. It would be hard to believe this would not affect your relationship with your therapist.

Many patients don’t want to know how their therapists feel or the details of their personal lives, and for a good reason: It can undermine the perceived authority of the therapist, making patients feel less secure. And it can inhibit patients from being open for fear of hurting or upsetting their therapists.

I wonder if it’s even possible for therapists to remain anonymous in the age of the Internet, where we can all be found in the electronic cloud. A Google search might not reveal a therapist’s deep, dark secrets, but even basic information begins to alter the relationship.

Last summer, a patient learned that I was swimming in a benefit race in Cape Cod because I’d written something about it that was available online.

“Be careful, Dr. Friedman,” he said with a smile on the way out of my office. “I heard there were sharks out there.” Beneath the humor was anxiety — or perhaps something darker.

Digital technology has the potential to either enhance or confound therapy, but much depends on the patient and the condition being treated. Some patients will find that the glowing screen only feeds their psychopathology. Others will find digital technology a boon to self-esteem and assertiveness. We are only beginning to figure out which patients are which.

Dr. Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan.

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U.S. Panel Calls Huawei and ZTE ‘National Security Threat’

The House Intelligence Committee said that after a yearlong investigation it had come to the conclusion that the Chinese businesses, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Inc., were a national security threat because of their attempts to extract sensitive information from American companies and their loyalties to the Chinese government. The companies sell telecommunications equipment needed to create and operate wireless networks, like the ones used by Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Many of the major suppliers of the equipment are based outside the United States, creating concerns here about the security of communications. Those concerns are most acute about Huawei and ZTE because of their close ties to the Chinese government, which the committee said has heavily subsidized the companies. Allowing the Chinese companies to do business in the United States, the report said, would give the Chinese government the ability to easily intercept communications and could allow it to start online attacks on critical infrastructure, like dams and power grids. The release of the report comes as both presidential candidates have spoken of the importance of United States ties with China and have promised to act strongly on Chinese currency and trade practices that are damaging to American business interests. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, has called repeatedly during his campaign for a more confrontational approach to China on business issues, although he has focused his warnings more on Chinese currency market interventions than on the activities of the nation’s telecommunications companies. President Obama has also taken a tougher stance on China recently. Late last month, Mr. Obama, through the Committee on Foreign Investment, ordered a Chinese company to divest itself of interests in four wind farm projects near a Navy base in Oregon where drone aircraft training takes place. It was the first time a president had blocked such a deal in 22 years. The Obama administration has also filed a case at the World Trade Organization in Geneva accusing China of unfairly subsidizing its exports of autos and auto parts, the ninth trade action the administration has brought against China. “We have a process that is not aimed at one specific company but using all the assets and parts of U.S. government aimed at protecting our telecommunications and critical infrastructure,” a senior White House official said. The report was released on Monday morning at a news conference held by Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Representative C. A. Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee. They said that the United States government should be barred from doing business with Huawei and ZTE and that American companies should avoid buying their equipment. The report said the committee had obtained internal documents from former employees of Huawei that showed it supplied services to a “cyberwarfare” unit in the People’s Liberation Army. The United States government, the report said, should go through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an interagency panel that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments, to carry out its recommendations. It also said that committee should block any mergers and acquisitions involving the Chinese companies and American businesses. In the course of the investigation, the House committee said it had uncovered evidence of economic espionage — and officials said on Monday that they planned to hand over the evidence to the F.B.I. Former and current employees for Huawei, the report said, told investigators for the committee that the company had committed “potential violations” in the United States related to immigration, bribery, corruption and copyright infringement. Huawei has been the focus of criticism and security warnings for years, including by the Defense Department. Its expansion plans in the United States have faced resistance from Congress over questions about its ties to the military in China. Huawei denies being financed to undertake research and development for the Chinese military, and its executives have repeatedly insisted that they have nothing to hide. The company issued an open letter to the United States government in February 2011, asking for an inquiry to clear up what it characterized as misperceptions about its history and business operations.
Michael S. Schmidt reported from Washington and Christine Hauser from New York. Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong, and Quentin Hardy from San Francisco.

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3-D medical scanner: New handheld imaging device to aid doctors on the 'diagnostic front lines'

In the operating room, surgeons can see inside the human body in real time using advanced imaging techniques, but primary care physicians, the people who are on the front lines of diagnosing illnesses, haven't commonly had access to the same technology -- until now. Engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have created a new imaging tool for primary care physicians: a handheld scanner that would enable them to image all the sites they commonly examine, and more, such as bacterial colonies in the middle ear in 3-D, or monitor the thickness and health of patients' retinas. The device relies on optical coherence tomography (OCT), a visualization technology that is similar to ultrasound imaging, but uses light instead of sound to produce the images.

The team will present their findings at the Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO) 2012, taking place Oct. 14 -- 18 in Rochester, N.Y.

To monitor chronic conditions such as ear infections, primary care physicians currently rely on instruments that are essentially magnifying glasses, says UIUC physician and biomedical engineer Stephen Boppart, who will present the team's findings at FiO. The new handheld imaging device would give doctors a way to quantitatively monitor these conditions, and possibly make more efficient and accurate referrals to specialists.

The scanners include three basic components: a near-infrared light source and OCT system, a video camera to relay real-time images of surface features and scan locations, and a microelectromechanical (MEMS)-based scanner to direct the light. Near-infrared wavelengths of light penetrate deeper into human tissues than other wavelengths more readily absorbed by the body. By measuring the time it takes the light to bounce back from tissue microstructure, computer algorithms build a picture of the structure of tissue under examination.

Diabetic patients in particular may benefit from the device. About 40 to 45 percent of diabetics develop leaky blood vessels in their retinas -- a condition called retinopathy, which can lead to thickening of the retina, blurry vision, and eventually blindness. The handheld OCT device would allow doctors to monitor the health of the retina, potentially catching retinopathy in its early stages. In some cases, changes in the eye could help doctors diagnose diabetes, Boppart says.

Boppart and his team are hopeful that falling production costs combined with smaller, more compact designs will enable more physicians to take advantage of the scanners, and become a common point-of-care tool. Eventually, they would like to see the imagers at work in developing countries as well. He and an international team of collaborators recently received a $5 million National Institutes of Health Bioengineering Research Partnership grant to further refine the device.

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Dick Costolo of Twitter, an Improv Master Writing Its Script

The audience, le beau monde of cinema, has gathered at the Debussy Theater on this unseasonably cool May morning on the French Riviera. The event, officially the opening of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, will be remembered for freakish storms that left stars shivering on the soaked red carpet. But before the Palme d’Or, a little stand-up comedy from Mr. Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter. He has prepared some sober remarks for the occasion — a paean to the mighty tweet, an explication of how new tools of social media are reinventing business, social activism and everything in between. Nah. Out goes the script. “Since I’ve got 45 minutes, if we can just start with some quick introductions,” he says, gesturing to the front row. “Start over here. Stand up, say what company you’re from and what animal you could be if you could be any animal.” So goes his keynote speech at Cannes. It’s not quite as strange as it sounds. Long before the Twitter revolution and his ascent to the heights of social media, Mr. Costolo was a professional comedian. And you know what? He’s still doing improv — only it’s the business kind. He’ll wax on about growth and revenue like the next C.E.O. But then he’ll dig out a joke and do something that might hurt his business — and miff his investors — because, well, he thinks that something is the right thing to do. He has broken with the pack on the issue of patent infringement, an issue that drives the tech world crazy, and, in stark contrast to Facebook, has let newcomers to the site opt out of being tracked through the service — a daring move, given that Twitter makes money from advertising. Even in Silicon Valley, that Neverland of Mark Zuckerberg and hoodied Lost Boy executives, Mr. Costolo can seem an un-C.E.O. To which he says, essentially, whatever. “People have Plato’s form in their mind of what a leader is, or what a C.E.O. is, and it is a bunch of elements that I really don’t conform to at all,” Mr. Costolo says. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I came to the conclusion that I don’t care.” That kind of attitude could take Twitter to heretofore unimaginable success. Or it could turn it into a B-school case study of a start-up company gone wrong. The choice, for the moment, is Mr. Costolo’s. Today, Twitter seems ubiquitous. But this company didn’t even exist seven years ago. Bankrolled by venture capitalists, it has grown into a multibillion-dollar enterprise with 140 million users worldwide. Although the company doesn’t share its financials, it is estimated that it will have $350 million in revenue this year. “We’re an entire quarter ahead of our projected goals,” one executive says. Its next big step is to go public on the stock market, and insiders say the current goal is to have an initial public offering in 2014. Twitter’s social media twin, Facebook, has already gone public, of course — and, so far, Facebook stockholders have lost billions, at least on paper. Facebook’s troubled I.P.O. hangs over the technology industry as a cautionary tale of how investors can become star-struck. Mr. Costolo didn’t found Twitter. Jack Dorsey, Christopher Stone and Evan Williams did. But today Mr. Costolo is essentially running the business alone, and friends and colleagues say he is eager to build the company. And he has succeeded before. During the early 1990s, he worked at Andersen Consulting to subsidize his comedy career. He tried to explain this thing called the World Wide Web to his bosses, but, he says, they didn’t listen. So he and several co-workers started their own consulting firm, Burning Door Networked Media, specializing in Web projects. Mr. Costolo went on to help found and sell three companies. One of them, Spyonit, notified people when a Web site changed. (This was a decade before anyone had heard the term “real time.”) People used Spyonit to monitor auctions on eBay and to see when comment threads were updated on Web forums. Another of his companies, FeedBurner, helped bloggers syndicate content. FeedBurner was sold to Google in 2007 for more than $100 million. But starting a small company and then selling it to a big one, difficult as it can be, seems easy next to taking Twitter to the next level. On paper, Twitter is valued at close to $10 billion. That means the most likely exit strategy for its initial backers — notably Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Mr. Costolo himself — would be to take the company public. But after the Facebook fiasco, Mr. Costolo will have to persuade Wall Street that Twitter, and its share price, could keep rising. His audience — Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the wider world — is waiting for his next act.
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Acoustic cell-sorting chip may lead to cell phone-sized medical labs

A technique that uses acoustic waves to sort cells on a chip may create miniature medical analytic devices that could make Star Trek's tricorder seem a bit bulky in comparison, according to a team of researchers.

The device uses two beams of acoustic -- or sound -- waves to act as acoustic tweezers and sort a continuous flow of cells on a dime-sized chip, said Tony Jun Huang, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, Penn State. By changing the frequency of the acoustic waves, researchers can easily alter the paths of the cells.

Huang said that since the device can sort cells into five or more channels, it will allow more cell types to be analyzed simultaneously, which paves the way for smaller, more efficient and less expensive analytic devices.

"Eventually, you could do analysis on a device about the size of a cell phone," said Huang. "It's very doable and we're making in-roads to that right now."

Biological, genetic and medical labs could use the device for various types of analysis, including blood and genetic testing, Huang said.

Most current cell-sorting devices allow the cells to be sorted into only two channels in one step, according to Huang. He said that another drawback of current cell-sorting devices is that cells must be encapsulated into droplets, which complicates further analysis.

"Today, cell sorting is done on bulky and very expensive devices," said Huang. "We want to minimize them so they are portable, inexpensive and can be powered by batteries."

Using sound waves for cell sorting is less likely to damage cells than current techniques, Huang added.

In addition to the inefficiency and the lack of controllability, current methods produce aerosols, gases that require extra safety precautions to handle.

The researchers, who released their findings in the current edition of Lab on a Chip, created the acoustic wave cell-sorting chip using a layer of silicone -- polydimethylsiloxane. According to Huang, two parallel transducers, which convert alternating current into acoustic waves, were placed at the sides of the chip. As the acoustic waves interfere with each other, they form pressure nodes on the chip. As cells cross the chip, they are channeled toward these pressure nodes.

The transducers are tunable, which allows researchers to adjust the frequencies and create pressure nodes on the chip.

The researchers first tested the device by sorting a stream of fluorescent polystyrene beads into three channels. Prior to turning on the transducer, the particles flowed across the chip unimpeded. Once the transducer produced the acoustic waves, the particles were separated into the channels.

Following this experiment, the researchers sorted human white blood cells that were affected by leukemia. The leukemia cells were first focused into the main channel and then separated into five channels.

The device is not limited to five channels, according to Huang.

"We can do more," Huang said. "We could do 10 channels if we want, we just used five because we thought it was impressive enough to show that the concept worked."

Huang worked with Xiaoyun Ding, graduate student, Sz-Chin Steven Lin, postdoctoral research scholar, Michael Ian Lapsley, graduate student, Xiang Guo, undergraduate student, Chung Yu Keith Chan, doctoral student, Sixing Li, doctoral student, all of the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Penn State; Lin Wang, Ascent BioNano Technologies; and J. Philip McCoy, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.

The National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award, the National Science Foundation, Graduate Research Fellowship and the Penn State Center for Nanoscale Science supported this work.

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Campaigns Use Social Media to Lure In Younger Voters

If the presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social media like Facebook and Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end. They are taking to fields of online battle that might seem obscure to the non-Internet-obsessed — sharing song playlists on Spotify, adding frosted pumpkin bread recipes to Pinterest and posting the candidates’ moments at home with the children on Instagram. At stake, the campaigns say they believe, are votes from citizens, particularly younger ones, who may not watch television or read the paper but spend plenty of time on the social Web. The campaigns want to inject themselves into the conversation on services like Tumblr, where political dialogue often takes the form of remixed photos and quirky videos. To remind Tumblr users about the first presidential debate on Wednesday, Mr. Obama’s team used an obscure clip of Lindsay Lohan saying “It’s October 3” in the comedy “Mean Girls.” And on Twitter, Mitt Romney’s bodyguard posted a picture of the candidate’s family playing Jenga before the debate. The techniques may be relatively new, but they are based on some old-fashioned political principles, according to Zachary Moffatt, the digital director for the Romney campaign. “The more people you talk to, the more likely you are to win,” said Mr. Moffatt, who oversees about 120 staff members and volunteers. “The more people who interact with Mitt, the more likely he is to win. Social extends and amplifies that.” But as is the way of the Web, a well-intended post or picture on social networks can quickly morph into a disaster. And the slightest gaffe on the campaign trail can become a “Groundhog Day” moment, repeated endlessly. “Even a typo is a big deal,” Mr. Moffatt said. In July, when Mr. Obama told a crowd of supporters “You didn’t build that” while talking about the importance of public infrastructure, the Romney campaign pounced, uploading photos of hot-dog-joint owners and others displaying signs with variations on the slogan “I built this.” And Clint Eastwood’s mock interview with the president at the Republican convention sent the Web into a frenzy. Within minutes, images of Mr. Eastwood on stage, plastered with cutting captions, hit Tumblr, and Twitter was flooded with parodies. Mr. Obama’s team joined in, sharing on Twitter a photo of him in a chair marked “The President,” with the caption, “This seat’s taken.” That retort is in line with the overall social media presence of the Obama campaign, which tends to be sharper and more attitude-laden than the Republican efforts, particularly on Tumblr. The morning after the debate, the Obama Tumblr followed up on Mr. Romney’s reference to cutting financing for PBS by posting something that was circulating on Twitter: a picture of Big Bird from Sesame Street with the caption “Mitt Romney’s Plan to Cut the Deficit: Fire This Guy.” (Laura Olin, who previously worked at a digital strategy agency, helps lend a savvy tone to the campaign’s Tumblr efforts.) Both camps tend to rely heavily on photos, slogans and the like that have been generated by their supporters. The Obama team, in particular, is fond of posting GIFs, or short looping video clips, that have been made by others. These might show the president high-fiving children or hugging his wife and daughters. Other clips poke fun at rivals or give knowing nods to hip television shows like “Parks and Recreation.” At times the campaign’s freer-wheeling tone can get it into trouble: an image it shared on Tumblr that urged followers to “vote like your lady parts depend on it” drew criticism from conservative bloggers and others who thought it was in poor taste. The campaign quickly took down the image, saying it had not been properly vetted. Those who keep up with the Obama campaign on Tumblr seem to approve of the approach — with some posts attracting close to 70,000 “notes,” or likes and reposts from users. “It’s about authentic, two-way communication,” said Adam Fetcher, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. “Social media is a natural extension of our massive grass-roots organization.” By comparison, the Romney campaign’s presence on Tumblr is more subdued, sticking largely to posterlike photos with slogans like “No, we can’t.” Its posts rarely get more than 400 responses. Both campaigns have teams of Internet-adept staff members who try to coordinate their strategy and message across many social sites. They declined to specify how this works, saying they did not want to tip off the competition. But both rely heavily on Facebook and Twitter to solicit donations, blast out reminders of events and share articles and videos conveying their stances. Flickr and Instagram serve as scrapbooks from the campaign trail, showing the candidates trying the pie at small-town restaurants. On Tumblr and Pinterest, the campaigns often highlight photos and other material from supporters. As important as the campaigns say these efforts are, the candidates themselves are not actually doing the posting. But sometimes their wives are. While Mr. Romney has a campaign-run Pinterest board, his wife, Ann, has her own, showcasing her favorite crafts projects and books. When Michelle Obama posts a message on Twitter or shares an image on the campaign’s Pinterest board, her posts bear her initials — “mo” — so they stand out among those generated by campaign staff. Twitter and Facebook are still the biggest avenues for online canvassing, with their broad demographic reach and user numbers that have grown tenfold from four years ago. It may be hard to fathom what posting video clips or music playlists on less mainstream sites has to do with the election. Does it really matter to voters if Mr. Obama has Stevie Wonder on his list, while Mr. Romney prefers Johnny Cash? Though the returns on such efforts are not easily quantifiable, neither party is taking any chances. “What’s the return on putting your pants on in the morning? We don’t know,” said Jan Rezab, the chief executive of Socialbakers, a social media analytics firm. “But we just know it’s bad if you don’t do it.” Coye Cheshire, an associate professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley, pointed to another motivation for such seemingly trivial online updates. “It is important for people to know whether or not a huge political figure shares the same taste as me,” said Dr. Cheshire, who studies behavior and trust online. “And creating a playlist on Spotify is part of what makes them seem more human.”
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Art.sy Is Mapping the World of Art on the Web

But until now, there was no automated guidance for art lovers seeking discoveries online — no “If you like Jackson Pollock’s ‘No. 1,’ you may also enjoy Mark Rothko’s ‘No. 18.’ ”

Enter Art.sy, a start-up whose public version went live on Monday. An extensive free repository of fine-art images and an online art appreciation guide, it is predicated on the idea that audiences comfortable with image-driven Web sites like Tumblr and Pinterest are now primed to spend hours browsing through canvases and sculpture on their monitors and tablets, especially with one-click help.

After two years of private testing and with millions of dollars from investors, including some celebrities in the art and technology worlds, the site aims to do for visual art what Pandora did for music and Netflix for film: become a source of discovery, pleasure and education.

With 275 galleries and 50 museums and institutions as partners, Art.sy has already digitized 20,000 images into its reference system, which it calls the Art Genome Project. But as it extends the platform’s reach, Art.sy also raises questions about how (or if) digital analytics should be applied to visual art. Can algorithms help explain art?

Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art, has his doubts. “It depends so much on the information, who’s doing the selection, what the criteria are, and what the cultural assumptions behind those criteria are,” Mr. Storr, a former curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, said. In terms of art comprehension, he added, “I’m sure it will be reductive.”

The technology, at least, is expansive. To make suggestions successfully, computers must be taught expert human judgment, a process that starts with labeling: give a machine codes to tell the difference between a Renaissance portrait and a Modernist drip painting, say, and then it can sort through endless works, making comparisons and drawing connections.

For the Art Genome Project, Matthew Israel, 34, who holds a Ph.D. in art and archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, leads a team of a dozen art historians who decide what those codes are and how they should be applied. Some labels (Art.sy calls them “genes” and recognizes about 800 of them, with more added daily) denote fairly objective qualities, like the historical period and region the work comes from and whether it is figurative or abstract, or belongs in an established category like Cubism, Flemish portraiture or photography.

Other labels are highly subjective, even quirky; for contemporary art, for example, Art.sy’s curators might attach terms like “globalization” and “culture critique” to give ideological context. “Contemporary traces of memory” is an elastic theme assigned to pieces by the Chinese Conceptual artist Cai Guo-Qiang and the photographer and filmmaker Matt Saunders.

A Picasso might be tagged with “Cubism,” “abstract painting,” “Spain,” “France” and “love,” all terms that are visible and searchable on the site. Jackson Pollock’s works typically get “abstract art,” “New York School,” “splattered/dripped,” “repetition” and “process-oriented.” Predictably, some of those criteria show up on paintings by Pollock’s contemporaries Robert Motherwell and Willem de Kooning, but also on artists from different eras and styles, like Tara Donovan, whose contemporary abstract sculptures using stacked and layered plastic foam and paper plates have also been marked with “repetition.”

As the categories are applied, each is assigned a value between 1 and 100: an Andy Warhol might rate high on the Pop Art scale, while a post-Warholian could rank differently, depending on influences. Software can help filter images for basic visual qualities like color, but the soul of the judgment is human.

“Literally, a person goes in by hand, and they enter a number for all the relevant fields,” Mr. Israel said.

The technical complexity is outweighed by the curatorial challenges. “We learned that the data matters much more than the math,” said Daniel Doubrovkine, 35, who is in charge of engineering at Art.sy. “How are you going to pick something that shows ‘warmth’ with a machine? We’re not.”

Similarly, Pandora has a roomful of musicologists deconstructing each tune; their analysis is then fed into an algorithm, called the Music Genome Project, that recommends songs in its player based on users’ taste and the ratings they give each track. (Joe Kennedy, the chief executive of Pandora, served as a consultant to Art.sy.)

But Art.sy aims to make connections among artworks that are seemingly from different worlds, with a catalog that encompasses pieces from the British Museum, the National Gallery in Washington, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and others. A recent partner, the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in Manhattan, a branch of the Smithsonian, has added objects to the mix, which will be a test of the site’s technology and the parallels it draws, said Seb Chan, the Cooper-Hewitt’s director of digital and emerging media.

Culturally, “what does it mean to recommend a painting from seeing a seventh-century spoon, for example?” he said. Anticipating such questions, the Art.sy staff has a blog explaining how its process works.

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