Paul Virilio and accidents

Just finished reading Paul Virilio's book "L'accident originel" in the train this morning. It was amazingly interesting, here some excerpts of an interview of the author about this book:

Accidents have always fascinated me. It is the intellectual scapegoat of the technological; accident is diagnostic of technology. To invent the train is to invent derailment; to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck. The ship that sinks says much more to me about technology than the ship that floats! Today the question of the accident arises with new technologies, like the image of the stock market crash on Wall Street. Program trading: here there is the image of the general accident, no longer the particular accident like the derailment or the shipwreck. In old technologies, the accident is "local"; with information technologies it is "global." We do not yet understand very well this negative innovation. We have not understood the power of the virtual accident. We are faced with a new type of accident for which the only reference is the analogy to the stock market crash, but this is not sufficient.

The whole book deals with this idea of accidents ("ce qui arrive" / "what happens"), dromology, relation to space, speed and media. It comes form an exhibit he worked on at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, advocating for a future "Museum of the Accident": here's what he says: "Is the reconstituted accident a foreshadowing of the Museum of the Accident?":

I also like his point of how technology reshapes the spatial praxis as well as the notion of familiarity I addressed yesterday:

I think that the infosphere - the sphere of information - is going to impose itself on the geosphere. We are going to be living in a reduced world. The capacity of interactivity is going to reduce the world, real space to nearly nothing. Therefore, in the near future, people will have a feeling of being enclosed in a small, confined, environment. In fact, there is already a speed pollution which reduces the world to nothing. Just as Foucault spoke of this feeling among the imprisoned, I believe that there will be for future generations a feeling of confinement in the world, of incarceration which will certainly be at the limit of tolerability, by virtue of the speed of information. If I were to give a last image, interactivity is to real space what radioactivity is to the atmosphere.

Why do I blog this? because I like what Virilio expresses and how he does it.

New blog about space/place/locative tech: smartspace

Found via Technorati: smartspace by Scott Smith of Social Technologies (an international futures research and consulting firm based in Washington, DC):

Welcome to Smartspace, a new blog about annotated environments, intelligent infrastructure and digital landscapes--the merging of technology with the environment around us, and the overlay of digital environments on the physical ones we inhabit.

This includes discussions, observations and insights on ubiquitous and embedded computing, mapping, location-based services, surveillance and tracking, geotagging, smart homes, intelligent environments, the annotated reality, and virtual worlds, where the increasingly intersect with the physical.

An increasing amount of interest, research, development, investment and regulation is being directed at the world of smart spaces. The purpose of Smartspace is to provide context and explore implications of the convergence of the above mentioned factors as they relate to these activities. Hopefully we will feature interviews, guest authors, and other interesting features and contents that make Smartspace a compelling read.

I found it because he expanded the discussion about my post about the giving of one's location while calling with a cell-phone, Scott adds this intriguing walkaround:

Meanwhile, I find it interesting that, while we are waiting for applications that alert the person on the other end of a mobile discussion automatically as to our location as the call comes in, it would be easier at the moment to take a picture of myself on the train and MMS it to my wife using something like ZoneTag, allowing her to see where I am before I call. Talk about a workaround.

Indeed, image can bring the context that the user wants to show, with the level of accuracy (in terms of contextual cues) the user may want to show and convey in his/her message.

Why do I blog this? another interesting contributor in the field of social usage of space/place/locative tech, very relevant ideas so far.

Life on cell phone?

(Via emily) The Korea Times has a good piece about researchers at Samsung electronics who want to bring cell phones to life through the use of avatars that will have the ability to think, feel, evolve, and interact with users.

The team, led by Prof. Kim Jong-hwan at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, is hooking up with Samsung to create the attention-grabbing software outfitted with ``artificial chromosomes.''

``This software can feel, think and interact with phone owners. It will breathe power into cell phones, bringing the gadgets to life,'' Kim said. (...) h's former top lieutenant Lee Kang-hee said a three-dimensional avatar will lurk inside the cell phone and adjust itself to characteristics of the cell phone carriers.

``It's just like a sophisticated creature living inside a cell phone. An owner will be allowed to set its first personality by defining the underlying DNA,'' said Lee, who will join Samsung Electronics tomorrow.

``However, it is up to the avatar how its personality develops with the owner. Its personality can get better or worse depending on how people treat it,'' he said.

Lee added folks will be able to deal with loneliness felt by the avatar, which will pop up on the phone when they feel alone, by touching a button.

Should the owner refuse to respond to the signal, the avatars will change their personalities either to express such feelings more often or just to become depressed, according to Lee.

Why do I blog this? this is very close to one of blogject scenario we thought at the workshop.

EU research project that focuses on "Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture"

The mGain project is a FP6 EU research project that focuses on "Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture".

What constitutes mobile entertainment? Our approach is inclusive instead of restrictive, including all entertainment delivered through a mobile device, whether it be a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant or a handheld gaming device. This way we can address the foreseeable convergence of the various mobile technologies. Examples of such mobile entertainment include but are not restricted to mobile games, music, video and gambling.

The mGain study project has six connected objectives:

• To understand mobile entertainment concepts and culture, including legal and social aspects of mobile entertainment.
• To understand possibilities and restrictions of existing and emerging mobile entertainment technologies (including wireless communication and handheld devices).
• To understand the business models of the emerging mobile entertainment industry.
• To benchmark the European situation with North America and Asia-Pacific.
• To provide guidelines for industry and policy makers, including instruments and incentives needed to encourage implementation of the guidelines.
• To provide input for preparation of Framework Programme 6 in the areas of mobile entertainment services and technologies.

Why do I blog this? this project targets interesting and pertinent questions. Some documents are available on-line, they provide very good insights about the European players, business models, the technology involved and what is at stake. Check the Mobile entertainment State-of-the-Art for instance. This is a nice complement of the iPerg project which looks at different questions and is more related with pervasive gaming.

Self-Replication of a LEGO station by a robot

Self-replication robotics is a curious domain. Unlike, self-reconfigurable robotics, the idea is to utilize an original unit to actively assemble an exact copy of itself from passive components. Greg Chirikjian of John Hopkins University created a self-replicating robot capable of driving around a track and assembling four modules into a robot identical to the original.

Prototype 1 is a remote-controlled robot, consisting of seven subsystems: the left motor, right motor, left wheel, right wheel, micro-controller receiver, manipulator wrist, and passive gripper. This particular implementation is not autonomous. We built it to demonstrate that it is mechanically feasible for one robot to produce a copy of itself. The prototype was made of LEGO parts from LEGO Mindstorm kits.

Why do I blog this? well, would the interactive toys of the future by like that?

A manifesto for networked objects - Why things matter

Julian finally released the manifesto about the future of artifacts and the Internet of Things. It's called A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabiting with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos in the Internet of Things. And of course the short title is "Why Things Matter" which nicely expressed the fact they - hey - in the future things will matter. The document elaborates on the idea of the blogject topic, answering to two questions: first, why would objects want to just blog? Second, why would I care if objects "blog"? It presents the idea of objects that blog, which characteristics they would have (traces, history, agency), which protozoic blogjects we've already seen (Aibo blog, the pigeon blogger...), what's at stakes and why do people envisionned that concept. My favorite part is certainly the end:

Forget about the Internet of Things as Web 2.0 and networked Barcaloungers. I want to know how to make the Internet of Things into a platform for World 2.0. How can the Internet of Things become a framework for creating more habitable worlds, rather than a technical framework for a television talking to my refrigerator? Now that we've shown that the Internet can become a place where social formations can accrete and where worldly change has at least a hint of possibility, what can we do to move that possibility out into the worlds in which we all have to live?

Why do I blog this? this is connected to the blogject thoughts I already discussed here, especially with regards to the workshop we had before lift06. The document also deals with issues very close to my current reseach (for instance when it's related to space/place and behavior).

Self-reproduction of a physical, three-dimensional 4-module robot

(via) this is amazing Self replication project carried out at Cornell University by Viktor Zykov, Efstathios Mytilinaios, Bryant Adams, Hod Lipson.

Self-replication is a fundamental property of many interesting physical, formal and biological systems, such as crystals, waves, automata, and especially forms of natural and artificial life. Despite its importance to many phenomena, self-replication has not been consistently defined or quantified in a rigorous, universal way, nor has it been demonstrated systematically in physical artificial systems. Our research focuses both on a new information-theoretic understanding of self-replication phenomena, and the design and implementation of scalable physical robotic systems where various forms of artificial self replication can occur. Our goal is twofold: To understand principles of self-replication in nature, and to explore the use of these principles to design more robust, self-sustaining and adaptive machines.

The website provides an example:

Self-reproduction of a physical, three-dimensional 4-module robot: (a) A basic module and an illustration of its internal actuation mechanism; (b) Three snapshots from the first 10 seconds showing how a 4-module robot transforms as its modules swivel simultaneously. (c) A sequence of frames showing the self reproduction process that spans about 2.5 minutes. The entire reproduction process runs continuously without human intervention, except for replenishing building blocks at the two 'feeding' locations circled in red.

The video is stunning. Lots of precisions can be found in the faq.

A good read about this: Zykov V., Mytilinaios E., Adams B., Lipson H. (2005) "Self-reproducing machines", Nature Vol. 435 No. 7038, pp. 163-164

Why do I blog this? during my undergraduate studies I often encountered the very idea of self-replication, this is a very concrete example of how it can be embedded into real artifacts.

RFIDs seminar in Geneva (ITU)

Once in a while, some news coming from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) pops up into my RSS feed aggregator. This time, it's about a workshop that happened last week in Geneva about "Networked RFID: Systems and Services". It addresses arphids (RFID) capabilities, security concerns, new services (ranging from ladies' shoes inventory management system to container tracking) and new business models. A session interesting from my point of view is the one called "Introducing RFID - Visions and Implications". The conclusion of this session are:

• RFID is part of a larger vision of future technological ubiquity, combined with sensors & developments in nanotechnology, creating an “Internet of Things” [Yes Fabien the ITU does not talk about a web of things...]
• The future will be ubiquitous, meaning “universal, user-oriented, and unique”, but also “alive”!
• It will be deployed by end-users and not necessarily centrally managed (“paintable”)
• The pervasive nature of RFID comes with key challenges: standardization, governance of resources, consumer protection, namely privacy and data protection
• (...)
• However, standardization remains fragmented, interoperability and interference keys hurdles
• In addition, user acceptance suffers from concerns over consumer privacy, data protection and security
• ITU can play an important role in furthering international standardization efforts in addition to raising awareness about the challenges and opportunities of this exciting technology

Why do I blog this? The ITU is the place where people scale in scope, importance, and innovation to provide the necessary frameworks, protocols, and service capabilities for the achievement of new ITs platforms. In this context, it's interesting to see that they seem to be more enthusiast towards this than it was for the Web (they did not believe in the web few years back). Besides, it's good to see that they don't this "Internet of Things" for granted given existing issues (security/privacy, interoperability...).

Finally, it makes me wondering about how this thingy-internet/web might appear (especially if we think in terms of blogjects or postblogjects) and a corollary issue: can we do that (i.e. a world of communicating objects) without the internet?

Shaping Things and game design

Thanks Julian for pointing me on Raph Koster's thought about Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things. The blogpost deals with the connection game designers can draw from the book. Here are some exerpts I found pertinent:

Gizmos are what we live in and around today: networked objects, highly featured and accreting more every day, user-alterable, and essentially interfaces more than objects. Those who use them are now end-users. (...) Our use of metrics in the game industry is nigh on nonexistent. We know close to nothing about how exactly people play our games. Despite the fact that we play on connected computers, running software that is full of event triggers that could be datamined, we still playtest by locking a few dozen people in a room and asking them what they think. Regarded in that fashion, it’s simply astounding that the games are working at all. (...) We tend to datamine a fairly good set of metrics from our games, but they are almost all aimed at tuning the game, rather than being aimed at understanding the player. One of the comments that Bruce makes about gizmos is that they invite the user into the process (...) The passive consumer is a dying breed. (...) Bruce goes on to discuss rapid prototyping, which he dismisses as primitive. His real goal is something he calls “fabbing,” which is basically the apotheosis of the current 3d printers. But it strikes me that just as virtual spaces with user modeling are pretty good pre-visualizers, it’s objects in a virtual world like Second Life that are really true spimes: ‘fabbed,’ in his sense, by being created just by specifying them; often higher in detail in the spec than can actually be rendered; networked and capable of intercommunication, tracking their own history, and so on; and even possibly transparent, in the event of the ability to copy some of the script code off of one.

Why do I blog this? the connection between the book and game design is not explicit of course but Koster has interesting points, especially about active consumerism ('consumactor' as we saw at Lift06) and the potential of virtual world to be pre-spimes.

How to behave if robots rebel

Via nxtbot, How to Survive a Robot Uprising by Daniel Wilson is a funny resource on how to behave in case if robots rebel.

If popular culture has taught us anything, it is that someday mankind must face and destroy the growing robot menace. In print and on the big screen we have been deluged with scenarios of robot malfunction, misuse, and outright rebellion. Robots have descended on us from outer space, escaped from top-secret laboratories, and even traveled back in time to destroy us.

Today, scientists are working hard to bring these artificial creations to life. In Japan, fuzzy little real robots are delivering much appreciated hug therapy to the elderly. Children are frolicking with smiling robot toys.

It all seems so innocuous. And yet how could so many Hollywood scripts be wrong?

So take no chances. Arm yourself with expert knowledge. For the sake of humanity, listen to serious advice from real robotics experts. How else will you survive the inevitable future in which robots rebel against their human masters?

Of course it's humour but we might see this kind of stuff in the future:

DESTROY OR DISABLE EXPOSED SENSORS

Sensors are by far the most vulnerable, exposed parts of any robot. Destroy or disable outward-facing sensors such as cameras. A handful of dirt, mud, or water will suffice. It is hard for a robot to wipe mud from its eyes when it has whirring buzz saws for hands.

My favorite advice is certainly "SEARCH THE HOUSE FOR UNUSUAL ITEMS: Check the robot's quarters for stashed weapons, keys, or family pets".

Why do I blog this? apart from the funny aspects and the fact that I like this kind of drawings, some slogans ('resistance is futile') made me think about Anti-Pop Consortium (scifi hip-hop from NYC). In addition, it's interesting to see how underlying messages about technology and robots like this are beginning to be disseminated in various ways.

RepRap: Replicating Rapid-Prototyper

RepRap: Replicating Rapid-Prototyper.

The RepRap project is working towards creating a universal constructor by using rapid prototyping, and then giving the results away free under the GNU General Public Licence to allow other investigators to work on the same idea. We are trying to prove the hypothesis: Rapid prototyping and direct writing technologies are sufficiently versatile to allow them to be used to make a von Neumann Universal Constructor. (...) A universal constructor is a machine that can replicate itself and - in addition - make other industrial products. Such a machine would have a number of interesting characteristics, such as being subject to Darwinian evolution, increasing in number exponentially, and being extremely low-cost.

A rapid prototyper is a machine that can manufacture objects directly (usually, though not necessarily, in plastic) under the control of a computer.

An experimental prototype at LinuxConf Australia 2006:

Check the work in progress on the reprap blog.

The quotes gives some ideas of the scenarios:

I have no need to buy a spare part for my broken vacuum cleaner when I can download one from the Web; indeed, I can download the entire vacuum cleaner. Nor do I need a shop or an Internet mail-order warehouse to supply me with these things. I just need to be able to buy standard parts and materials at the supermarket alongside my weekly groceries.

Kids, toys, interactivity and the next big thing

The NYT gives a list of digital electronics between adult technology and children's play:

Fisher-Price, synonymous with Elmo and Power Wheels, will introduce a digital music player and digital camera for children ages 3 and older that will be sold during the 2006 holiday season.

Tek Nek Toys will show off a small digital music player with built-in speakers and flashing lights, called CoolP3 Fusion, for children 4 and up. Emerson Radio will introduce a SpongeBob SquarePants speaker system for MP3 players and SpongeBob SquarePants digital camera.

In perhaps the most extreme example of the trend, a company called Baby Einstein will introduce a baby rocker with an MP3 adapter and speakers. (...) No wonder, perhaps, that last year Hasbro introduced a digital video camera for children ages 8 and older and Disney introduced an MP3 player for children as young as 6.

Executives at Fisher-Price, a division of Mattel, said the company's MP3 player and digital camera, both priced at $70, are specifically designed for young children, with a rugged design that can survive repeated four-foot drops and big easy-to-use buttons that simplify the technology.

The Kid-Tough Digital Camera, for example, has two view finders — much like a pair of binoculars — rather the single window found on the adult version; two large handles to steady it before shooting a picture; and a two-step process for deleting unwanted pictures verses the four- or five-step version on a typical camera.

That's what happen when toy companies marketed digital electronics to "tweens". The article describes how toy designers took kids' skills into account as well as the need for a ... hum.. "contextual help":

Because not all preschoolers can read a song title before hitting the play button, the Digital Song and Story Player relies on easily recognizable icons to symbolize each song, like a star for "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or a barn for "Old McDonald."

Both products take a minimalist approach. The digital camera has only five buttons. "We analyzed what kids did with these products and what appealed to them and threw out what they didn't need," said David Ciganko, vice president for product design at Fisher-Price. (...) With both technologies, however, it is mommy and daddy who will have to do some of the accomplishing. A parent's help is required to download new songs on the digital music player and upload photos to a computer before printin

Finally, it describes one of the most important concerns:

Marianne Szymanski, creator of Toy Tips, a research firm based in Milwaukee, said that for the most part digital electronics promote a solitary pattern of play, for example, a child sitting alone listening to music on headphones.

"I am not saying tech is bad, but we need toys that encourage social interaction in the preschool years, not those that don't," she said.

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to see this trend of having more and more adult features in toys. Now I think the next step is to introduce more interaction on top of those interactive toys, just as it happened on the web with social software. The next big thing is definitely social software for kids (expanding the idea of myspace, cyworld...), like having some object-centered social software to share your neopets, your game scors, habbo hotel design...

Technology forecasting strategies

This morning in the train I skimmed through a neat report called ""strategies in technology forecasting and roadmapping" by Corporate Executive Board (this doc can be bought here). The document summarizes approaches to implement roadmapping practices to evaluate technological developmentopportunities with respect to internal capabilities and external conditions. Some excerpts I found relevant:

Firms utilize technology roadmaps to process information gathered from forecasting activities and create a visual depiction of internal capabilities, future objectives and how they may be reached in terms of existing market and competitor conditions.

APPROACHES TO FORECASTING

1. Extrapolators believe that the future will represent a logical extension of the past. For this group, large-scale, inexorable forces will drive the future in a continuous and reasonably predictable manner. Thus identifying past trends allows for a rational prognosis of future trends.
2. Pattern Analysts believe that the future will reflect a replication of past events. This is based on the assumption that trends and events occur in identifiable cycles and predictable patterns.
3. Goal Analysts believe that the future will be determined by the beliefs and actions of certain individuals and institutions. Thus the future is best projected by examining the stated and implied goals of these trendsetters and decision-makers, i.e., the longer-term implications of their goals.
4. Counter-Punchers believe that the future will be a result of actions and events that are essentially unpredictable. This thought process approaches the future by monitoring technical and social changes then identifying a range of possible trends and events. Flexibility is inherent in this approach.
5. Intuitors believe the future will be shaped by a complicated mixture of factors – trends, random events and the actions of key trendsetters and decision makers. This group sees no rational technique for forecasting the future, therefore it is best to gather as much information as possible and rely on information processing to handle change as it occurs.

Reference to find:

Vanston, John H. and Lawrence K. Vanston. “Planning Tools for Informed Decisions: Technical Trend Extrapolation.” Technology Futures, Inc. White Paper.

Why do I blog this I am currently trying to formalize a bit my activities related to technology forecasting, that's why I am reading/blogging these sort of cases... The report also describes a methodology to do technology roadmaps (still have to work on this part).

Bruce Sterling's talk at LIFT06

Here are my notes from Bruce Sterling presentation at LIFT06: Spimes and the future of artifacts by Bruce Sterling. Some exceprts which are very insightful in terms of what would be a "world-with spime", the point of his next novel:

so... now the challenge for the year is to try to describe in a novel what its like to wake up in a world of spime, i try to get this cultural experience down on paper, i will have characters on paper that will be surrounded with spimes

what different does it make between the world i describe and the world with spimes: the primary advantage of a spime world is inside my head because i no longer inventory my positions in my head, i don't care about what i own, there are all inventoried to other magical inventory-voodoo, a spimming process for which searchin/sorting works with a hosted machine

so i no longer remenber where i put or find things or they cost... an so forth I just ask and then I am told, with instant real time accuracy... we have an internet of things with a search engine so i no longer search for my shoes in the morning, i just google them and as long as machines can crunch complexity, this interface makes my relationship to object much simpler and more convenient that today! in a way that it never was before and if it does not it will never be adopted, it is not stable not a universal system, everyone will have their own reaction to spime with extreme conditions, conditions of catastrophy, of extreme poverty... and complete material lost... evacuation camps, prisons... the ultimate versions: clean room, lifesupport systems in hospital, true bohemian madness, complete collamity between people and objects

where do i expect it to come from: from where it's like now, there won't be big decisions, but a natural evolution from the world of digital devices people already carry: laptop, mp3 players camera phones, wands and the wifi, broadband that are serving them in location and the global internet and this big social generated objects, social applications

and now I am trying to write a novel where somebody wake up in the moning unexcited about this, not excited, unexcited... new things saying hello, all things dying off, ghosts, shopware, possessions are waiting creation or their shipment to the junkyard

Some of the questions also address how it's going to be like:

- daniel k.schneider asks: "a preview question: in your novel what would your characters encounters as major problems, because a novel needs problems"

it may be dramatic to have a book without problems, it's not a utopian system, it will be in 30 years, will last liek 20 and then would be replaced by another society.., so my characters would have 2 types of problems: the legacy of the past they will try to reform with their spiming systems and the difficulty of this new protocracy, other things coming in that will make their system tearing apart... there will be new problems due to this technology... i expect them to have protocratic problems: objects will work and other not, state of the art means break down next month, cutting edge will mean borken down last week

- alexandra deschamps-sonsino: do you expect people to have different emotional responses compared to today's objects?

yes of course, i suspect people will have an emotional response which departs the object per se and kind of bleeds over into your records over the departed objects and your plans to have another objects. I have a very similar emotional response to anovel manuscript because I began my career on a manual typewriter so i can recall when a holographic manuscript with sweated blood over was like absolutely vital and valuable "i have got the original manuscript!": that's gone, there is no original manuscrit there is no even orignial file! you're lucky if you have a file that you can send to the publisher and everybody comes back "wow this "bruce sterling treasure dot pdf" BUT it does not mean that i care less about my book but rather that i care about where i got the book, where the book is moving... so my book becomes less physical and more relational, the more like a social process and you feel very differently.

imagine tableware or cars or appartments, things you bought at ikea... yes the construction of emotions change radically and may become more intense like the teddy bear you had when you 6 months never really leaves you, you can get another one, an absolute physical replica and if you could do that would you really want it? if you have the perfect record of the teddy bear and can make another one that is practically identical do you need the teddy bear ot is the teddy bear just a hardcopy of a teddy-bear supports system? and if thats' the case, isn't it the support system that you are nostalgic about? i remenber how ive got that bear on ebay and then i saw it on amazon and here is the record on the paypal transaction and not you! your child! it's as truggle and that's why I am paid to write novels!

About forecasting, intelligent fridge and emotions

In the BBC article The business of future gazing by Spencer Kelly, there are some pertinent elements about forecasting ideas:

"So if I'm tracking what people are starting to do research and development on today, by going to conferences and reading technical magazines and stuff, I've got a fair idea of what's likely to be around, and I can guess fairly accurately how long it's going to take before it comes. (...) "Then using common sense you can discount the ideas, like internet fridges, which are never going to take off. [Ian Pearson] The idea of incorporating a computer, which has got a lifetime of about a year, into a fridge which has to last 10 years just doesn't make any sense, so you can say there's probably no real mass market for internet fridges." [Of course I like that, the 'internet fridge' has always seemed to be dull IMO]

In fact, the intelligent fridge is just one of many inventions we were promised, which failed to take the world by storm. Of course it is much easier to explain why something did not work, than trying to predict what will work in the future. (...) But even while laughing off the internet fridge and the flying car, today's futurists continue to make outlandish predictions. (...) "You can get really focused on technology and the latest innovation, but the fact is the future is about emotion. It's about how people feel about technology, it's about how people actually want to live, and that's what really makes the difference." [Patrick Dixon] (...) The futurologists are not trying to make them happen, they are just considering the implications of them happening.

As Adam Greenfield says on Anne's post about forecasting and design, it's rather heading towards being a "critical futurist, exploiting some of the potential you're diagnosing in the current, scenario-based futures planning model."

Bruce Sterling at LIFT06 + Blogject Workshop

Well it seems the whole lift06 conference is doing fine. I am very happy of Bruce Sterling's keynote about spimes and the new ecology of things. The reason why I say so is because it really wrap up in a very down-to-earth idea what we - as lab researchers - might are expecting. The spime concept as he expressed can be described by 6 things:

1. interactive chips, objects can be labelled with unique identity
2. local and precise positioning systems
3. powerful search engines
4. 3d virtual models of objects
5. rapid prototyping of objects
6. cradle to cradle recycling

Bruce elaborated on these concepts and how they would foster innovations AND problems. What was great was the way he articulated this to the novel he is currently writing.

And since the community (researchers, designers, foresight people...) is arguing about 'disambiguating (or not disambiguating) the current terminology, what Bruce put together was very relevant, commenting on expressions like 'everyware', "ubicomp", "infocloud" (yes but only if the cloud give birth to the objects...), "storytelling"...

Now, with regard to the blogject workshop we had yesterday (I'll transcript my notes later on, it was really interesting and lots of issues has been raised, thanks people!), Bruce Sterling commented on what we discussed: instead of having objects that produces some content, wouldn't it be - instead - the object that may be produced by the content?? (the infocloud?).

I also appreciated the most important question behind this: "why the hell would we need spimes?", his answer is that it may eventually lead (and hopefully for us) to a sustainable world (and from I discussed with his wife, it could also leads to some minorities emancipation).

Bio-hijacking by terrorists

Could Terrorists Hijack Your Brain? is a good paper by Emily Singer which deals with this potential fact: technological advances in the not-so-distant future may make it a possibility.

Most bioweapons research has focused on traditional biological agents, such as anthrax and smallpox. But that focus is dangerously narrow, the report says; emerging technologies in biotechnology and the life sciences could be hijacked to take control of genes, immune systems, and even brains. (...) the report recommends that technologies with dual-use potential -- those that can be used to either help or harm humanity -- be continually reassessed to take account of rapid advances in biotechnology

Some examples of bioterrorists threats:

Newer technologies such as targeted delivery methods that zero in on the immune or neuroendocrine systems could make it easier to use bioregulators in insidious ways.

Terrorists could also co-opt relatively new technologies, such as synthetic biology, which aims to build organisms that can detect or produce chemicals or perform other functions; and RNA interference, a technique that allows scientists to easily control gene expression.

Why do I blog this? I don't want to play the party pooper here but I was interested in this balance: being careful with technology that may help humanity because they could easily be reversed...

Human-Robot Interaction Studies

As the robot field grows, there seems to be some research projects which focuses on human-robots interaction (we already saw some examples with autists and robots). For instance, at the University of Hertfordshire, scholars are studying how robots could be social companions. There will be a BBC show about it:

The University of Hertfordshire has taken the robot out of the laboratory and has it living in a house nearby as part of a study of human-robot interaction.

The study, which will be broadcast on the BBC Three Counties’ John Pilgrim Show, on Wednesday 25 January as part of a two-hour feature on the University, aims to research how humans can comfortably interact with robots.

John Pilgrim how computer scientists and psychologists are working to understand how groups of individuals would like robots to look and behave, whether they need to be humanoid or just a computer on wheels, and the level of closeness and eye contact they would like if they had a robot living with them. (...) “We are studying how a robot companion can be personalized and modified according to people’s different preferences, likes and dislikes.”

More about it here.

Also check this conference which is organized next month about this very topic. There seems to be room for investigating 'user experience' of robots, with respects to specific topics. For instance in this paper: Empirical Results from Using a Comfort Level Device in Human-Robot Interaction Studies (by K.L. Koay, K. Dautenhahn, S.N. Woods and M.L. Walters from the University of Hertfordshire), the authors used a quantitative analysis to analyse the comfort level data of 7 subjects with respect to 12 robot behaviours as part of a human-robot interaction trial.

On a different note, I like when the first reference of such academic paper is a sci-fi novel: Asimov, I. I, Robot, Grafton Books, London, 1968.

Socio-Cultural Anthropology of Pervasive Computing

Dr. Daniel Cerqui-Ducret is a social and cultural anthropologist who works on neat project:

My researches focus on the development of the new information technologies and the 'information society' these technologies are supposed to create. In such a society computers are more and more integrated everywhere in our environment ('pervasive computing'). Furthermore, chips and human bodies are merging and such a symbiosis has consequences for the future of humankind. I am especially interested in how engineers who work on these new technologies see this future: what is (descriptive aspect) and what should be (normative aspect) a human being according to them?

Furthermore, I am interested in the ethical and social aspects of the convergent robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology, as all of them are merging to modify humankind.

Why do I blog this? Since she works close to our school (EPFL is close to the University of Lausanne) I'd love to hear her perspective on pervasive computing.

Besides, her current project is pretty interesting:

currently carrying out a two years research (since June 2004) in the Department of Cybernetics of the University of Reading, where Kevin Warwick was , in 2002, the first human with a chip implanted in his body and directly linked to his nervous system.

On the one hand, I am doing an ethnographical job in this Department, which means following Kevin in his activites, trying to understand which are his main values and how a cyborg culture can be promoted.

On the other hand, as I think that social scientists must be engaged, I collaborate with Kevin in order to make him aware of he main social. ethical, philosophical and anthropological issues related to his work.

Moreover, we are using our original collaboration to produce common papers. We hope that it will make social scientists aware of how far Kevin is going in his researches, and computer scientists aware of the fundamental issues raised by their practices , even if they are convinced that technology is just a neutral tool.

Naive extrapolation

Yesterday, the Financial Times had a smart article about what the author called "naive extrapolation", i.e. "fastening on some current trend, projecting it forward, to exaggerated extent and with exaggerated pace".

The result of naive extrapolation is overestimation of the pace of short-run change and underestimation of the scale and nature of long-run change. None of us is very good at visualising worlds that are fundamentally, rather than incrementally, different from the one we know: and the things that change the world fundamentally are usually things that are not yet widely identified or understood.

Prediction is hard, especially when it concerns the future. It is safer, and more common, to predict the present: and such predictions are much better received, so that is what most futurologists do. The lesson for those who must nevertheless prepare for the future is to be uncompromisingly cynical and recognise that those who claim to know what the future holds reveal only their own ignorance. Listen to people who are genuinely expert in specialist fields rather than those who profess to understand how the business world will evolve. But most of all, recognise how little about the world we can ever really know.