Future

"Le future" according to french graphists

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I do like this drawing made by Sylvain Euriot (for the graphic collective 'Kung Fu). It's taken from their special issue about "in the future". The caption says "still no flying cars": I really think it's a nice metaphor for futurism: 50 years ago we were expectin huge, visible and disruptive changes that did not happen the way we thought. In this picture everything seems very 20th century and it's the reality but in this context one can find less visible tremendous changes "behind the windows" of those buildings...

7 books to read according to Howard Rheingold

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Howard Rheingold wrote a clever piece in the last issue of Strategy Business. It's called Best Business Books of 2005: Seven Ways to See What’s Next (registration required). He presents 7 books he considers as important for future forecast:

These books are at best sketches of what aspects of future life might look like. It’s up to you to weigh the authors’ insights against their biases. But if any of these books seem particularly contrary to your own values, pay closer attention to them: If you want to see clues to what hasn’t happened yet, you need to recognize the meaning of what is right in front of you in new ways. Sometimes, that means looking through the eyes of those with whom you disagree. Precisely because their views conflict with yours, they might be seeing aspects of reality that you fail to see, refuse to see, or don’t want to see.

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson

In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara

The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Howard Kunstler

Massive Change by Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries

Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means To Be Human by Joel Garreau

A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel H. Pink

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman

Having read some of them, I find interesting the way Rheingold describes what he found which findings are relevant to his concerns.

Valuing experiments for Design

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Very smart article in Business Week about innovation, companies and the value of experimentations/tests. The author's point [Tim Brown who is IDEO's CEO] is that "successful organizations need to experiment with new concepts in order to actively shape the future instead of waiting for it to shape them".

how do you make change predictable? How do you anticipate the impact of disruptive new ideas, new technologies, and new innovations that you or your competition might discover?

Experimentation is well understood in the R&D laboratory, where scientists and engineers test hypotheses and translate their observations into possibilities for the rest of the company. And every executive appreciates the value of controlled tests to evaluate the market potential of a new offering or direction. (...) Experiments let you take your ideas, speculations, and hypotheses, and put them into tangible and testable forms. They enable you to practice the future before you get there. They can inspire both organizations and their customers to head toward an exciting, profitable future that they can influence.

We expect every experiment to produce an output we can communicate or experientially evaluate in some qualitative way. The result might take the form of a tangible prototype or a storyboard or video that lays out a future scenario. Or the experiment might simply provide new insights, such as a novel framework or new principles that can constitute a platform for innovation.

Managers should aim to have a balanced portfolio of experiments: some short-term and intended to create new ideas, some medium-term designed to take your company in new directions, and some long-term that will deliver new insights about the future.

Why do I blog this? I fully agree with this, it reminds me the artifact-oriented forecast Jason Tester do at the IFTF, trying to embed news ideas and concepts into something physical to make the forecast more concrete.

Forecasting not predicting

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I like Paul Saffo's take on forecasting:

I'm a forecaster, which means I'm not a futurist and I do not predict. My job is to map a "cone of uncertainty" that spreads out from the present at any given moment of time or any given topic, and say what lies within it. The reason why it's forecasting and not predicting is predicting assumes a deterministic universe. God has a plan that's all written out, all you can do is get an advance peek at the plan. But why bother peeking since you can't change it? Forecasting assumes that the cone of uncertainty is also the cone of possibility, that by thinking logically about what likely outcomes might be, one can influence those outcomes for better or worse. And so our job is mapping that uncertainty to help people understand what is possible.

In addition I also agree with his statement about innovation and technology:

It's my belief that technology does not drive change. Technology merely enables changes. It creates options and opportunities that as individuals and as communities and as entire cultures we choose to exploit. And it's our response to the technologies that drive change. In other words, first we invent our technologies and then we use our technologies to reinvent ourselves...our families, our societies, and our entire cultures.

Why do I blog this? I think Saffo is one of the best person to explain forecasting-related discussions; the fact that he is straight to the point and that he has good/relevant examples is great.

After the human/robot interaction, another trend tis the mixed-societies composed of animals and artificial agents

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Robot/Robot and robot/human interactions are an important new trend in the field of HCI (as mentionned here). As a matter of fact, there is another tendency in robot research lately: mixed societies composed of animals and artificial agents. An example of this topic is the "Leurre" project (EU-funded project):

LEURRE is a project on building and controlling mixed societies composed of animals and artificial agents. The main goals are:
  • to study, experimentally and theoretically, the global behaviours of mixed-societies composed of animals and artificial agents;
  • to develop models and tools for such mixed-societies;
  • to provide a general methodology towards the control of mixed-societies;
  • to validate the concepts by applying this methodology to the control of experiments in the laboratory and in agriculture.

An interesting summary of the project in the following paper: Building Mixed Societies of Animals and Robots by Caprari, G., Colot, A., Siegwart, R., Halloy, J. & Deneubourg, J.-L. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine. 2004. .

They designed insect-like robots called insbot. The mixed society is made-up of American cockroaches and insbots:

The most interesting results is reported as follows by the PCWorld:

</td InsBot, a small robotic interloper that is capable of infiltrating groups of roaches, making friends with them, and luring them to places where exterminators can do their thing. InsBot gains the trust of the insects by mimicking their movements and scent.

Yes the InsBot has the capacity to modify its friends’ behaviour! The point is to control animals thanks to technology. There is a similar project at the University of Singapore which I already mentioned in this blog: Poultry Internet. Another related project consists in letting an animal like a cockroach to control/interact with a robot.

For fans of fab prefab: fabprefab.com

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fabprefab.com is a good resource on moderne prefab dwelling. Their list of prefab is insightful.

Predominant mass-market housing programs such as project homes or tract housing largely fail to meet the desires of people who appreciate a modernist design aesthetic. Custom-designed modernist architecture is beyond the financial reach of many people and so prefab is viewed as a design and production ideology that has the potential to deliver affordable modernism. While kit or prefab homes have been available in a range of either "traditional" or "alternative" forms for many years, surprisingly few prefab homes exist that truly embrace modernist ideals.

Modernist prefab is still more of a meme than a marketplace. Most projects are “in development” and relatively few prefabs are available for immediate purchase.

While architects are clearly interested in exploring the use of prefabrication methods in design and construction, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Marketing a turn-key prefab dwelling is as much about understanding a business model as being able to design a structure. “Commercialization” is traditionally the domain of speculative builders and property developers rather than design professionals. So who will successfully bring prefab projects to market? What forms will winning business models take?

My favorite is definitely the first penthouse: However the problem is that put it in a boring way: I would have preferred to have this right above the street as in Alain Bublex's project "Unités mobiles d'Habitation" located on buildings' roofs:

Reverse engineering on search engine uses

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IC agency, a geneva-based internet agency is focused on competitive intelligence as well as gaining a better understanding of what customer wants. Their point is to provide their clients with "creative insight and technical expertise in integrating autonomous online and offline marketing strategies". They recently released a world watch report in which they show today's trfends by monitoring customer inquiries and behaviors. Accessing those data allowed them to "track developments which can impact the competitive advantage of your own patents and trademarks". This is an intreresting approach that might effectively used in forecasting and customer/user analysis. Their study is focused on 12 prestigious brands on 5 markets, based on a comprehensive study of 25 million searches. The one available is about the luxury watch market (it's Switzerland yes).I would be interested to expand this methodology or adopt it for my needs, especially in the domain of location-based services. But how do they access the data????

technovelgy: where science meets fiction

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A great new resource I discovered lately: technovelgy:

Explore the wide variety of inventions and ideas of science fiction writers - over 775 are available on Technovelgy (that's tek-novel-gee!). Use the Timeline of Science Fiction Invention or the alphabetic Glossary of Science Fiction Technology to see them all, look for the category that interests you, or check Science Fiction in the News and watch sf come to life

When design takes neuro-stuff into account

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Having a former background in cognitive sciences /neurosciences, I have still some old knowledge to understand when neurostuff pops in my radar. There seems to be new trend lately: the future use of neurosciences/neuropsychology/neurocognition to design and as a news resource to build better user-centered products. A good document of this is Tom Stafford and Matt Webb'sMind Hacks. I think I read something about it but I am struggling right now to find where I've put it. Besides, the IFTF blog about the future of marketing addresses the issue of neuroethics and neuromarketing sources

A lack of think tank in France

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A paper in the Le Journal du Net deals with the lack of think tank in France. According to them, here are the figures:

Region Number of think tank Number of think tank employees
Europe 149 4950
France 7 145

7 is not a lot and it's less than Germany (23), the UK, (16), Belgium (12) and Austria (11). Apart from the classical critique (french think tank lacks of visibility since they just publish in french), the article explains that France has not a big "thing tank" culture and the activities carried out by those structures elsewhere (like... in the US) are undertaken by other institutions/groups of people (minister cabinet, political club, research institute...).

ebrain = ebay for researcher

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eBrain is an ebay-like website that instead of seelling goods aims at trading jobless over-qualified frecn researchers. French PhD and Postdoc now get more and more trouble finding jobs in their homeland and then stay in the US/Canada or some friendlier places to do R&D business (well that is why I am in Switzerland). Anyway, some want to go back home but there are no jobs for them, either in universities (where new positions are often taken by friends) and private companies (they prefer hiring engineers).

Kids, media and multitasking

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(via), a Kaiser Family Foundation survey focused on kids behavior towrds new media: Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds. The report is here (.pdf).

A national Kaiser Family Foundation survey found children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using “new media” like computers, the Internet and video games, without cutting back on the time they spend with “old” media like TV, print and music. Instead, because of the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time (for example, going online while watching TV), they’re managing to pack increasing amounts of media content into the same amount of time each day.

The study, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds, examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 3rd through 12th graders who completed detailed questionnaires, including nearly 700 self-selected participants who also maintained seven-day media diaries.

The part about multitasking is important:

26 percent of kids in 2004 said they "multitasked" when using any form of media, up from 16 percent five years earlier. That could mean a child downloading music over the Internet while talking on the phone, or chatting online while watching a favorite TV show.)...) ...

Some lab about interaction design I check on a regular basis

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Bruce Sterling\'s take about his digitized belongings

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Bruce Sterling's column about how he digitized his belongings while moving from Austin to Pasadena.

When I was formerly a Texan author-journalist type rather than a Californian "visionary," I naturally lived like a pack rat. Then I drove my hybrid electric across I-10 to the gloriously unfurnished Pasadena pad over here, and I suddenly realized that I can thrive with something like 8% of my former possessions. Not that I've lost them. Basically – and this is the point for SXSW-I attendees – they've all been digitized. They got eaten by my laptop. There's an Apple Store a block away, where Mr. Jobs is selling iPods like Amy sells waffle-cones when it hits 105 degrees. So, where're all my records and CDs? They're inside the laptop. DVD player? Laptop. Newspapers? I read Google News in the morning. Where're my magazines? I read Metropolis Online, I write stories for SciFi.com. Where's my TV? I got no TV: Compared to Web surfing on broadband wireless, watching a TV show is like watching ice melt. I tried real hard to sit down and watch a television dramatic episode recently – it felt like watching Vaudeville, with a trained dog act and a guy juggling plates. TV is dying right in front of us. It's become a medium for the brainwashed, the poor, and the semiliterate. Where's my fax machine? Laptop. Mailbox? Laptop. Filing cabinet? Laptop. Working desk? Laptop. Bank? Laptop. Place of business? Laptop. Most people I deal with have no idea I'm here in California. They'd never think to ask me. Why should they? They send e-mail, they get what they want, game over.

My laptop is even a library now; I've taken to reading books as e-text. For instance, a freeware, public domain version of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Silverado Squatters.

New blog about the future of marketing

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After Future Now, IFTF came up with a new blog on the future of marketing: IFTF's future of marketing

Why are we creating a new blog on the future of marketing?

No, I'm not trying to become the Nick Denton of futures blogging. Okay, maybe I am, just a little bit. But there are bigger reasons for launching this new blog.

First, there are few professions or industries that are likely to be transformed as much by the trends the Institute has been following-- the growth of mobile communications; the rise of the geoweb; the coming of pervasive computing; and the merger of the digital and physical worlds, among others-- as marketing. Traditional marketing could be destroyed or radically reduced in scope, much as online travel sites have cut into the travel service industry. It might rearrange the balance of power between professionals and swarms of amateurs, as has happened with blogging and journalism. It could create a new, mirror-image world of advertising geniuses outside the traditional companies (think of the open source software movement). Or it might do something else entirely.

The purpose of The Future of Marketing is to chart what futures are possible for marketing, and to capture interesting experiments happening today that could point to important future practices. Spinning off our scan of marketing as a separate blog will also allow Future Now to concentrate more on emerging technologies and their social implications. Doubtless there will be some cross-posting between the two. One can only hope so.

From what I've read it's promising.

Microsoft Research China\'s take on Innovation Management

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Microsoft's Hong-Jiang Zhang: The Process of Product Innovation in ACM's weekly newsfeed <a href="http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/Ubiquity".

UBIQUITY: And what are your biggest challenges?

ZHANG: I think number one is simply that it's never been easy to transfer research innovation into product, so that's really been a challenge. Researchers tend not to think about actual products, and when their solutions are 90 percent accurate and complete, they tend to think that's good enough, and they consider that the problem's essentially solved. But if you're working on actual products you can't say that 90 percent is good enough and just move to something else. (...)

UBIQUITY: What are the backgrounds of those people?

ZHANG: Mostly computer science related. (...)

UBIQUITY: No marketing people in the group?

ZHANG: No, we're not doing marketing, but we do have a couple of people doing market research just to try to predict technology and market trends, but we don't do marketing as such because we're not doing end-product release. Our work goes into Windows, Office, and other products, such as MSN and Media Center, all those things. The whole range of Microsoft software. We do have a few projects focused on local users here in Asia, but mainly we are focused on global users,

Vow nobody coming from market research or social sciences there? They had not been caught in the "end-user focus" momentum. Of course they say that they don't do end-product release but they claim that they want to transfer research innovation into product. I am lost/confused.

Misuse or Underuse of Competitive Intelligence in the USA

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(via), Outward Insights, LLC conducted a a survey about the effectiveness and use of competitive intelligence across a number of industries. The results are interesting:

A majority of U.S.-based companies that claim to use competitive intelligence (CI) to guide their decision-making processes either don't use intelligence enough or use it the wrong way. This excludes nearly 30% of companies that don't even have, or don't feel the need for, a CI system, despite today's ultra-competitive environment. (...) Among other key findings:

  • Wide industry differences were discovered among respondents.
  • Twenty-nine percent of respondents admit that they do not have "an organized and systematic way to deliver competitive intelligence," including 14% of the respondents with more than $1 billion in revenues.
  • Of those lacking "an organized way," 28% said they don't have a need for it and 17% said they are unsure how to do it.
  • Nearly 40% said they "rarely or never" incorporate likely competitor reactions into their new product plans.
  • Bank of America is the top "eagle," the best corporate intelligence user, according to the respondents.

(...) Indeed, one of the most beneficial aspects of competitive intelligence - the ability to receive early warning of competitor activity or emerging industry trends - is going largely unrealized. Only half of the companies surveyed said they had a process for "delivering early warning of emerging threats and opportunities." (...) Additional problems respondents believe hampers the success of CI in their respective companies includes:

  • Insufficient funding - 43%
  • Internal bureaucracy - 41%
  • Intelligence team lacks sufficient clout - 28%
  • Executives do not recognize value of intelligence - 20%

A momentum in easy-to-use products

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According to MSNBC, we are reaching a momentum in easy-to-use product (like say ipod the PalmPilot or the Google Web site). They points on several reasons for this:

partly due to a growing consumer backlash against complexity (...) The move toward ease-of-use is being driven by economics, according to IBM Fellow Curt Cotner. The cost of hardware and software has been decreasing, and companies are now focusing on how to lower costs in terms of people, since fewer people are needed to maintain simpler systems. This strategy is key to IBM's goal of becoming the vendor of choice for small- and medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford expansive IT workforces. Cast Iron Systems CEO Fred Meyer comments that software has been made so complex that it cannot support 90 percent of its desired applications, and he thinks software designers and computer manufacturers are simplifying their products because of user demand. A major challenge to maintaining simplicity is muzzling engineers' urge to bundle snazzy features into the newest gadgets: "The desire not to over-engineer a phone is just as difficult as it is to add new features," says Kyocera's John Chier.

Why do I blog this? Finally user-centered design goes mainstream, it's very good for consumers/end-users. We all finally take advantage of the 'HCI' added value. Question to be answered:

  • ok my ipod rocks and using goolgle through my firefox toolbar is great but what about my horrible DVD player? and my shitty fridge? there are still areas to explore!
  • my grandfather is as lost with an ipod as with his 10 years old tv remote control. Let's think about elderly or children or people with disabilities
  • what about services? now that end-user studies has been mainstream in product design, what about service design? or even architecture?
  • What's the next move with product design?

Well it's just few issues that popped up into my mind, there should be plenty of others?

Research at Accenture Labs

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People curious with what Accenture does might have a look at the webpage of the different lab they have:

  • Palo Alto: artificial intelligence, virtual worlds and visualization techniques, Media & Entertainment Services.
  • Chicago: Intelligent Objects and Environments, Information Insight and Workforce Performance Enhancement + Silent Commerce Center which explores how advanced tagging and sensor technologies can make everyday objects intelligent and interactive.
  • Sophia Antipolis (France): Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing, Information Insight, Human Performance, Media & Entertainment Services and Privacy & Rights Management.

Why do I blog this? Information about world lab is important. An private lab does not always present so many information about their projects. One of my favorite is the Reality Mining Tool that employs new visualization tools designed to help process information, browse reality and make decisions in the future.