Ubiquitous computing and foresight

The Bell&Dourish paper I've blogged about last week is still sparking some interesting discussions (interestingly it's not only ubicomp researchers but also architects). What is interesting to me is how this discussion about focusing on the ubicomp of today and less about proximal future connects with the discussions I had with Bill after the LIFT07 foresight workshop. The "here today" versus "could be tomorrow" argument is indeed one of the underlying questions of foresight versus design practice. In Bell and Dourish article, the authors critique these earlier visions of a proximal future not to complain about past visions, nor to understand why we haven't gotten there but rather because it allows them to question an important assumption made by ubicomp researchers: the coming of a so-called seamless world with no bugs and perfect could of connectivity (that do not hold true as Fabien described it at LIFT07).

So the point here is the importance of the "why question", the crux issue that the LIFT07 workshop addresses; critical foresight is about asking why something worked, why someone would want the future you propose or why the path proposed is possible. In the context of this ubicomp paper, some additional questions about the future of ubiquitous computing can be asked: what would we want: a short term vision of the next incrememental ubicomp 'project' or a new strong vision (as Weiser's calm computing was). But what might be needed for having this strong vision is clear and lucid description of the why that eventually lead to a point people could aim at.

So there could be an interesting exercise to think about when criticizing the intelligent fridge, CAVES, intelligent assistants or other ubicomp dreams that failed. That could be a good agenda for a possible workshop at some point.

LIFT07 workshop "Re-designing the city of the future"

Some notes about the foresight methodologies discussed at the LIFT07 workshop "Re-designing the city of the future" that I co-organized with Bill Cockayne last week. The purpose of the workshop was to a gather an heterogeneous crowd of people to discuss topics regarding the city of the future. The point in preparing this workshop was also to deal with new methodologies, to better structure foresight ideas (for instance to go beyond the design scenarios developed in the past series of blogject workshops). This is why I teamed up with Bill who gave an insightful presentation of critical foresight tools that I describe hereafter.

As opposed to design (i.e. build/invent/create), foresight is about critically explore assumptions, build models & develop questions about the long term future. One of the pre-requisite of the workshop was to read various papers that exemplified different visions of the future: Fast, Huge and Out of Control, Metropolis (1999), 'Future Cities', Time, 1929 and 'January 3000 A.D.', Harper's New Weekly Bazaar, 1856. The reading of those papers was meant to spark some discussion about critical foresight: Did any of the authors did each guess correctly? If no, why were some guesses so bad? What were the changes? Were these changes social or technical? Was it a driver or a reaction? Global or local?

Then Bill introduced the first "tool" in the form of a petal graph. This is basically a diagram where he mapped each critical aspect of change that the group listed. The goals is then to find the commonalities of all these aspect, what goes in the center of the flower.

The petal graph is indeed a good tool to realize how the future is a complex problem. One one hand, it's uncertain (not measurable). On the other hand, it's ambiguous and we do not even know what to measure. However, this does not mean that we cannot make assumptions: "You can't predict the future, but you can invent it" as the motto says. The point here is not too do futurism but to look at data and use analytical reasoning to discern what might exist and what we could build. Thus, the value do not lay in predictions but in the underlying discussions: the "why" of predictions: we thus focus on the questions generated, not the answers. This said, the crux issue in foresight is to be critical about what others says about "the future". This is why we looked at different material, be it press article, journal papers or the Walt Disney's EPCOT center video. In a sense, the main goal is to explore, deconstruct, and critique the futures envisioned by others as a methodology of understanding, using a multidisciplinary approach. The following step was to use three tools for foresight thinkings: S-curves, x/y axes and white/hot spots.

The s-shaped curve is the canonical representation of how an invention evolves over time from the idea to the mass-market commercialization (plateau) with every technologies/instance that occurred in between (and caused the raised of the curve). This tool enables the discussion about the social/technical changes that allowed this progression. Lots of questions can be asked using this curve: Why do so few futures seem to follow the path? This helps contextualizing what's going next.

Then we picked up 2 dimensions/topics that can interact and represented them on cartesian axes.

The choice of these axes is important since it is meant to generate "questions". Once the axes are defined, this is a tool to discuss stories/concepts/inventions and position them in the quadrants according to the 4 dimensions that has been set. This allows to have white spots that can be considered as opportunities (or they don't exist for a certain reason that should be discussed) and hot spots with a high density of existing examples.

Based on white/hot spots and depending on the time range, one can then unfold the history backward as represented on that picture to answer the question: how did we get to this spot, when were the changes? Doing so need to think about early indicators of change, whether those changes are already in view, what type of events? where would this events be likely to occur.

Once this was done, Bill introduced tools for "Foresight Thinking for Designing": observe, analyze and prototype. Observing is a matter of thinking about people today and at future time: assuming that people will change, what would be the reasons/motivation/driver, when thinking about change what are the early indicators (triggers or incipient)?. The analysis part is mostly about questions: ideas are fine but questions are more important and assumptions critical. Finally, the prototyping part concerns the models but also the underlying assumptions, questions, and changes. The best models generate questions around the areas of highest change. And finally the last step is to communicate, which can take various forms: stories (short stories, speculative fiction, science fiction, counterfactuals), scenarios/personas, movies, maps (Cross-impact, Trends, S-curves) or even tangible artifacts.

We then constituted 5 groups who had to use the previous tools to had to develop a future to report about the "city of the future" and tell this to the others at the end of the workshop. If I have time I'll post about the workshop results but to me the most important thing was the discussion it fostered (especially among groups).

The ubiquitous computing of today

Finally, after a LIFT I managed to have more time for reading good papers such as Yesterday's tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision by Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish (Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2006). The paper deeply discusses Mark Weiser's vision of ubiquitous computing, especially with regards to how it has been envisioned 10 years ago and the current discourse about it. In fine, they criticize the persistence of Weiser's vision (and wording!). To do so, they describe two cases of possible ubicomp alternative already in place: Singapore (example of a collective uses, computational devices and sensors) and South Korea (infrastructural ubiquity, public/private partnerships).

Their discussion revolves around two issues. On one hand, the ubicomp literature keeps placing its achievements out of reach by framing them in a "proximal future" and not by looking at what is happening around the corner. Such proximal future would eventually (for lots of ubicomp researchers but also journalists and writers) lead to a "seamlessly interconnected world". The authors then express the possibility that this could never happen ("the proximate future is a future infinitely postponed") OR more interestingly that ubiquitous computing already comes to pass but in a different form

On the other hand, ubicomp research is very often about the implementation of applications/services, assuming that the inherent problems would vanish (think about privacy!).

Therefore, what they suggest to the research community is to stop talking about the "ubiquitous computing of tomorrow" but rather at the "ubiquitous computing of the present": "Having now entered the twenty-first century that means that what we should perhaps attend to is ‘‘the computer of now.’’". Doing so, they advocate for getting out of the lab and looking at "at ubiquitous computing as it is currently developing rather than it might be imagined to look in the future". And of course, they then points to an alternate vision that Fabien discussed last week at LIFT07:

the real world of ubiquitous computing, then, is that we will always be assembling heterogeneous technologies to achieve individual and collective effects. (...) Our suggestion that ubiquitous computing is already here, in the form of densely available computational and communication resources, is sometimes met with an objection that these technologies remain less than ubiquitous in the sense that Weiser suggested. (...) But postulating a seamless infrastructure is a strategy whereby the messy present can be ignored, although infrastructure is always unevenly distributed, always messy. An indefinitely postponed ubicomp future is one that need never take account of this complexity.

So what's the agenda? Based on William Gibson famous quote about the future being there and not evenly distributed, they encourage that:

If ubiquitous computing is already here, then we need to pay considerably more attention to just what it is being used to do and its effects. (...) by surprising appropriations of technology for purposes never imagined by their inventors and often radically opposed to them; by widely different social, cultural and legislative interpretations of the goals of technology; by flex, slop, and play. We do not take this to be a depressing conclusion. Instead, we take the fact that we already live in a world of ubiquitous computing to be a rather wonderful thing. The challenge, now, is to understand it.

Why do I blog this? Best paper for weeks. This particularly resonates to the way I think about Ubicomp... meaning that no the recurrent intelligent fridge some have dreamed of 10 years ago is not the "fin de l'Histoire" (end of History). I really like when Bell and Dourish bring forward issues like ubicomp can rather be exemplified as Cairo with its freshly deployed WiFi network set to connect all the local mosques and create a single city-wide call to prayer than having a buddy-finder locator.

Moreover, the authors express their surprise to the fact that researchers are still positing much the same vision as years ago. This reminds me the ever-decreasing time-frame futurists tried to predict: the year 2000 was really the ending point and prediction were always targeted to that period. Now that we're in the (so-called?) 21st century, it's as if there could be no other future.

Anyway, that's a call to go "on the field" and see what's happening and the effects of technologies.

City of the future workshop

Today starts the LIFT07 conference with a day devoted to workshops. Along with Bill Cockayne (Stanford Center for Critical Foresight), we co-organized a session entitled "Re-Designing the City of the Future".

This workshop will begin in the use of existing futures and critical foresight methods to understand how the future is being envisioned. Then using design research tools, participants will design social, technical, and business innovations that could exist in 2015 and 2025 regarding the future of the City. Key skills will be the integration of analysis with experience, foresight with design thinking, and building and communicating prototypes for the future.

More about that later.

Futurists and the word "yet"

In the last issue of Strategy Business, there is a long in-depth interview of Alvin Toffler about his the book he wrote with his wife "Revolutionary Wealth". While the whole interview is a must-read for people interested in foresight, innovation, prosumer revolution and stuff like that, I was bemused by this excerpt:

S+B: When I looked at Future Shock recently, I was surprised at your stridence. You wrote of the acceleration of the pace of change as an illness, “a cancer in history.” With 35 years of hindsight, would you still describe our situation that way?

TOFFLER: Well, I might tone down some of the language. I was 35 years younger. But I think the basic argument of the book stands. We’re always asked what we got wrong, and we did get a few things wrong. That’s inevitable when you’re looking 30 or so years ahead. The hardest thing to forecast is timing — when certain events would happen. We said, back then in 1970, that humanity would clone animals, and that has happened; we said that we would also clone humans, and I still think that’s likely. But we were wrong in the timing. We said that these would happen by 1985. We didn’t make that date up. We got it from one of the world’s leading Nobel Prize–winning biologists, who happened to be rather more optimistic than he should have been.

There’s another passage in the book where we talk about throwaway products, that someday we may be wearing paper clothing. And we aren’t. Yet.

I always get a laugh from an audience when I say, of course, we futurists have a magic button; we follow every statement about a failed forecast with “yet.”

Why do I blog this? the power of words always strikes me.

How to drop evidences of futuristic technical development

A quote I like, taken from "What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations Of Philip K. Dick" (Gwen Lee, Doris Elaine Sauter, Tim Powers). Also pointed by Tim Powers in the introduction of the book:

"That's another technical advice, you casually have one character say to the other, 'Where did you put the biochips?' 'I put them back in the cupboard where they belong.' That's all you need to say... See it's amazing how easy it is to write if you know how...

Why do I blog this? PKD's was of describing the future is awesome, I really like the way he only drop words and concepts that build a sort-of ambiance of the future.

Google Earth + sketchup = non avatar based metaverse?

Seen last month in CNN Money, this article describes how the through the combination of satellite maps and 3-D software (the 3D modeling program SketchUp), Google Earth is turning into a virtual online playground. Some excerpts I found interesting below. It starts like the Second Life crazyness:

You can already download user-generated layers that sit on top of Google's 3-D Earth and show you, for example, the location of celebrity houses or hiking trails or famous landmarks. One dating service has even started showing people looking for partners as a Google Earth layer. Real estate companies have started showing off virtual versions of their buildings (for sale in the real world) on Google Earth. SketchUp allows them to build entire models of their apartments, right down to the microwave oven.

And the more interesting stuff is coming along:

The result could be that we'll soon populate a virtual version of planet Earth instead of the made-from-scratch metaverses like online games or Second Life. The main element Google Earth is missing today is avatars (...) "I would expect to see someone using Google Earth as a virtual social space by the end of the year," says Jerry Paffendorf, research director of the Acceleration Studies Foundation

Then the article starts describing how the Web can become a 3D metaverse-like environment with blabla and stuff that I am still dubious about. Why do I b log this? Even though I am not very enthusiastic about the whole article there are some relevant stuff here. Of course, stories such "Consumers could fly into the virtual New York, go shopping in a virtual Times Square, get past the velvet rope at a virtual Studio 54 and chat with an avatar dressed as Andy Warhol" always get my hackles up. The journalist seems to stretch out a bit his conclusions. IMO what is interesting with google earth and sketchup is the creativity it allows not that it can be the basis for the future of the web. This said, I additionally think it's very interesting to have a non-avatar based virtual environment; it's indeed a model on which interesting things could be done (though I feel like some avatar will pop up at some point).

A quote by Rodney Brooks

A quote from Rodney Brooks forecast in NS that I found relevant:

Show a two-year-old child a key, a shoe, a cup, a book or any of hundreds of other objects, and they can reliably name its class - even when they have never before seen something that looks exactly like that particular key, shoe, cup or book. Our computers and robots still cannot do this task with any reliability

Why do I blog this? the quote is self-revealing to me, especially with regards to AI promises.

The rest of the excerpt that I haven't reproduced here is about the fact that, though we handled the generic object recognition problem, researchers still need to benefit from psychophysics and brain to open up the possibilities of more thorough recognition.

Various vectors

Various link that may or may not make sense in the near future:

• halloweenmonsterlist is a comprehensive list of DIY hack/make for halloween. There are some very smart motion detector stuff and of course BBQ boneyards
• Bitchun society is a web platform that aims at applying Cory Doctorow's Whuffie notion of social capital. Whuffie is the personal capital with your friends and neighbors: you can give and receive Whuffie... a sorta social software and use a whuffie tracker. The website does not describe the implications of such a platform... that would only show its effects if the there is a critical mass of users.
• Using brain signals to play video games appears to be more and more common. Some scientists managed to make a kid playing Space Invader by recording brain surface signals through electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity detection. The good thing is that it is "non-invasive" (meaning that you don't need to have some crazy electrodes inside the brain).

Why do I blog this? those are just hints/signals that I ran across during lunchtime. What's the connection between them?

Combining foresight and ethnographical insights

Embed: Mapping the Future of Work and Play: A Case for “Embedding” Non-Ethnographers in the Field is a paper by Andrew Greenman and Scott Smith which has been presented at EPIC 2006. The paper describes a very curious idea of combining an “ethnographic walking tour” with futures and foresight methods. The point of this is to improve and validate foresight exercises with direct observation.

we wish to explore the possibilities of how ethnographers might create spaces designed to encourage business decision makers to witness the sensemaking that is produced during ethnography. (...) Walking the city became an opportunity to experience the situated learning explorations ethnographers often make. The act of walking was critical for physically embodying participants in a milieu, rather than showing them a video or interpreting textual accounts. The rationale was to engage in contemplating what de Certeau termed the “ensemble of possibilities”, from which, individuals evolve “ways of operating”, as they navigate the constraints and opportunities of urban places (1984). Walking was presented as an opportunity to explore the city as an “archive” of culture (Donald, 1999, p7).

Here is how the process looked like:

Embed was the name given to a half-day walking tour, DVD and map devised to compliment a two day futures workshop in London. The event was held in June 2005 and focused on the future of work and play in Europe. Day one consisted of a workshop introduction to Futurist research. Participants were encouraged to conduct scenario planning. This involved synthesizing major trends and transitions which the Futurists expect will impact on work and play over the next 20 years in Europe. On the second day participants were invited to witness three “zones of change” in London to further explore, validate, or amend the views developed on the first day. The driving forces included the following; immigration, technology development, cultural values, economic policies and an aging population.

Why do I blog this? I found interesting this idea of combining an ethnographic approach with futurist consulting methods. Looking at the paper is also good to see how they organized it and what came out. Also, it is worth to check the PDF of the expedition "map" (5MB).

Future literacy at Philips

In this Philips column "new value by One Design" entitled Making sense of the future give some food for thoughts about foresight:

Philips Design's foresight research takes into account technological change but understands that this is driven by human interests and their context. This means also taking into account culture, society, individual value systems, economic and political change and the physical environment itself. Specifically, it looks at what the implications of changes in these areas could mean for sustainable and increased business growth aligned to the organization's values. (...) people are very much at the center of the foresighting process hich as Green explains, "offers us a much richer set of insights to drive innovation. Looking through the lens of people, you have a higher hit rate."

So, who used foresight scenarios at Philips? "Foresight provides an approach to engage strategic infl uencers and decision makers in the organization to deepen the collective understanding of the systemic nature and potential consequences of emerging changes. The approach can inform, empower and inspire the 10 organization to refl ect on its own potential to infl uence the path to a preferable future of sustainable growth," says Reon Brand, Senior Director Foresight, Trends & People Research.

Why do I blog this? only to help me making sense of what a company like Philips expect from foresight issue. I am curious about the process and wonder to what extent their user experience research feed foresight scenarios along with tech roadmaps. Might be interesting to see the whole process.

CNIUM2006: surface subways, prabsence and the "why" question

The CINUM seminar just ended, so here are some raw thoughts about the whole event (drawn from my impression + discussion with various people there). The idea of these 2 days was to mix expert discussions and group workshops to - in the end - develop foresight scenarios (2026). The audience was very broad and largely made up of local people (south-east of france), some researchers mixed with execs from big french companies (banks or consultancies) and a media crowd. To me, it was interesting to see the different representations that people have from the future (which easily crystalized or clashed during scenario development); and very often, there are people convinced by bright futures ("there will be no poor") and others that expects war and destructions, little in between. In addition the technologies that are mentioned seem to be largely inspired by what the media presents (the coolness of grid computing but less mentions of lower-hyped sensors application). In my field (HCI and games), there are now great expectations towards gaming, very well directed to education and digital entertainment (I'm actually not sure whether those promises can be held).

Something that also struck me in conversation in the recurrent confusion between access to infrastructures (internet access, access to digital libraries or e-shops) and access to knowledge: it's as if information was equal to knowledge (something Daniela Cerqui also noticed in her talk).

Some random thoughts about talks:

• A pertinent concept coined by Daniel Kaplan (was that you?): "prabsence" = the active management of one's on-line presence/absence.
• Abdullah Cissé (from Senegal) had a good point in his talk about Africa and technologies. He described how Africa (and its important amount of youth people, especially in the future) will participate in the shaping of technologies. This because of the ever-increasing hyper-connection between people from the South and the african diaspora (circulation of tech, creation of new usage as reported here) and also partly because african tech-culture might be mixed with Magic. The fact that he pointed the importance of magic in technology from an african perspective is interesting with regards to the recurrent discussion about this topic lately (see at ubicomp2006 for instance).
• Gerorge Amar, the head of the RATP foresight department (public transport in Paris) was nice. He explained how the most important innovation in city transport were... bikes and tramways (not that new but reshaped in European cities of the 21st century with new services like Velo'v). Then he exemplified other innovation using two nice examples: the pedibus and Curitiba's Bus System. The pedibus is basically a walking school bus (very common here in Switzerland). The routes are determined by neighborhood associations and signage is installed along the way to mark out this course. The Curitiba's Bus System is a different example: the city has real bus stops that looks like metro station, creating a sort of "surface subway" (a physical oxymoron. For Georges, these examples shows how innovation can appear in public transport in unexpectected ways. As a foresight manager, he's interesting in looking at this idea and see how it can be translated in real project.

• Even though I knew their presentations, Regine and Adam gave two important talks that (IMO) were important in framing the boundaries of what we can expect. Regine addressed how artists have relevant contributions to questioning foresight and its technologies. Adam brought back material from his book to discuss how design of new technologies must take the users and their context into account. This had some resonance with my talk about trends in how the Internet reshape our experience of places, things/objects and people.
• Daniela Cerqui's presentation was also insightful. As an anthropologist, she stated that we all have an opinion towards technologies and that the discussion of the impacts of technologies is a never-ending story. To her, even the word "impact" is strong and relates to how meteorites can crash on Earth. Her stance was that the real question is rather "why we live with technologies?" or "why would we want X or Y tech?". What are the starting points? the ending points? What are the criteria? She mentioned how this is always too "implicit", not discussed and that we all have a responsibility. The talk underline that before thinking about the impacts, we'd better having a responsibility in the construction of tech. And the underlying idea of her research is the definition of the human beings we all have, which also remains implicit and not discussed. Based on her study of Kevin Warwick's implants, she presented different points she wanted to discuss. The first one was that the idea that "we're already cyborgs, we have cochlear implants, glasses..." is flawed because adding those tech at some point we might reach a point of no-return. The second point was that the human body seems to be the last frontier (after the pervasive computing = the environment): the fusion that targets immediate mediation in a society of "maximal efficiency". Finally, Daniela showed how the discourse about therapy and enhancement is very ambiguous: phenomenon that were not considered as handicaps are redefined over time and one thinks that if we can do it, so let's do it... The problem lies indeed in a simple fact: the same technologies allow to repair and to enhance.

Anyway, it was great to be invited here (thanks Daniel Kaplan, Daniel Erasmus and AEC), meet up with relevant people, discover new faces and produce content. Why do I blog this? to keep track of this event and sketch out the main ideas that I bring back in my doggy bag(s).

Facts from today for the seminar

Deeply engaged into the CINUM seminar, I just have time for few facts I ran across this morning on the ACM Tech News:

Designers will be able to convert a sketch of a Web page into a functional Web page using a new software tool that is being developed by researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The software tool, InkKit, which works with a tablet computer that has a stylus, also makes use of some sophisticated rules that will allow it to transform code drawn by hand into a real program. (...) Intel researchers looking to develop a shape-shifting fabric are confident that such an intelligent fabric can be created, but add that the software needed to control millions of tiny robots would be more of a challenge (...) A Greenpeace analysis of just a handful of laptop computers revealed harmful chemicals, indicating the enormous scope of the problem facing regulators in enforcing new rules, such as the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, to rein in the use of toxic materials in electronic products. (...) The US Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of "sentiment analysis" software by a consortium of major universities that uses natural language processing technology to scan foreign publications for negative views on America and its government.

Why do I blog this? since we're working today on foresight scenario, I brought up some facts (randomly, just a vague selection here) to be discussed.

Heading to Cinum

Today, I am heading to Margaux (small french town close to Bordeaux) to attend the CiNum seminar (i.e "Civilisations Numériques" = "Digital Civilizations") to meet up with nice brainiacs:

Ci'Num is a 3-year collective and open strategic foresight process which focuses on "Digital civilizations". Its goal is to create a worldwide community of thinkers and stakeholders, working together in order to identify opportunities and challenges for the future of civilizations confronted with (at least) to main transformations: globalization and digitization.

The underlying issue at stake here is that:

"Digital civilizations" describe the sets of values, social bonds, cultural creations, institutions, economic forces, spaces, artefacts… that emerge from the gradual blending of the physical and digital worlds. The implications of this concept are broader and deeper than those of the "Knowledge society", as it incorporate intent, collective action, as well as cultural and social diversity.

Digital civilizations are not just shaped by technological and economic trends – rather, they shape technology and the economy as much as they are shaped by it.

Digital civilizations are shaped by people – individuals and communities – as much as by institutions and corporations.

Digital civilizations are shaped by well-known megatrends (such as ageing populations, urbanisation, energy shortage, global warming…) as well as a constant flow of disruptive innovations and social changes.

I have luckily been invited there to give a talk there about the Internets and how it creates new experience for Things, People and Places.

Technorati Tags: cinum

Interview of BT Futurologist Ian Pearson

ITWales interview of Ian Pearson (BT's "futurologist") raises some interesting issues. Some excerpts about the methods:

How do you and your colleagues make your predictions?

I track future technologies that are coming over the horizon, so as soon as we learn that somebody is doing some research in a particular field, we start putting that together with all the other bits of research that everyone else is doing, and try to figure out what people might try to use that for once it becomes real technology in a decade or so. If one person is doing research on this, and another is doing research on that then companies A, B and C may be able to make products using that kind of basic technology, and if we can anticipate what they might look like then we might figure out how people will use those in society and in business to change their lifestyle.

It's a question of second guessing what people will do, which requires sitting around and talking about it an awful lot really. What we end up with is a whole stack of possibilities of how people could realistically use technology to improve their lives, or get market advantage, or whatever, and if there are good enough reasons for doing that then we can be fairly certain that people will actually do it. If, on the other hand, it's just a whacky idea, like networking every single thing in your home so that you can close the curtains from the comfort of the office, then not many people are going to want to do it, so it would probably be a flop in the marketplace. So we use common sense to throw away the things that people probably won't want to do, and filter out those things that are quite realistic, and will succeed in the market. (...) In terms of keeping up, I wouldn't say that I do. I stopped keeping up round about 1993 or 1994! Since then things have been moving so fast you can't really keep up, all you can do is hope to not fall too far behind. I don't pretend to keep track of 100% of new technologies now. I keep track of some of the key ones, and there are still some surprises (...) In terms of filtering them, the only tools that you can really use are ordinary everyday common sense and some business intuition.

Why do I blog this? apart from methodological content that struck me, Pearson discusses lots of issues (ranging from androids to computers writing their own software, as well as security and 'biology IT'), some of his thoughts are quite relevant. The most down-to-earth ideas he describes are related to "social computing".

Hakim Bey's spoken dub

Excerpts from "Final Enclosure": spoken words (on dub music) of Hakim Bey and french dub band Brain Damage (extract from the Spoken Dub Manifesto album):

There’s nowhere to go! This is the final enclosure!

You know science fiction novels about societies of the future which are completely contentless in some way, in which the social has really, really been abolished. All the science fictional images of transcendence are all bullshit as far as we can see. You know, the aliens have been a big disappointment, time travel doesn’t seem to work, there’s nobody leaving on other planets, it’s not even anything useful to steal there. I mean it’s just a big … you know … it’s the end!

Spime meme map

A quick overview (transcribed from the slides) of Bruce Sterling's "Spime Meme Map" he presented yesterday at Ubicomp 2006 (I just copied his slides):

It's basically a map of the characteristics of a spime, with different examples of bricks available today (web2.0 but also others) that would enable to design such a thing.

IEEE forecast survey

In the last issue of IEEE Spectrum, there are results from and IFTF/IEEE survey about what developments IEEE Fellows expect in science and technology in the next 10 to 50 years. It's called "Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon" and was written by Marina Gorbis and David Pescovitz & IEEE Fellows Survey. Some excerpts I found pertinent below. First they start bursting tech bubbles:

As our population ages and needs more care, there will be fewer young people to provide it. But don’t expect to fill the personnel gap with humanoid robotic nurses (...) Forget about being chauffeured to work by your car; the Fellows doubt that autonomous, self-driving cars will be in full commercial production anytime soon. And though they say Moore’s Law will someday finally yield to the laws of physics, slowing the increase in computer performance, the IEEE Fellows don’t expect to get around the problem by using quantum weirdness to perform calculations at fabulous speeds. Seventy-eight percent of respondents doubt that a commercial quantum computer will reach the market in the next 50 years. (...) no space elevators in most of their forecasts

Then they give some more theoretical issues about foresight:

“We tend to overestimate the impact of a technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run,” observed former IFTF president Roy Amara (...) A few were uncomfortable making forecasts, arguing that science and technology are unpredictable. At IFTF, we wholeheartedly agree. Trying to predict specific events and timing is best left to astrologers. Instead, our researchers in Palo Alto, Calif., look for signals—events, developments, projects, investments, and expert opinions, like those provided by this survey—that, taken together, give indications of key trends. Observed as a complex ecology, these signals reveal where these developments may be taking us. (...) “While technology may permit many of the forecasted accomplishments to occur, human beings may well resist their implementation,” writes electrical and computer engineering professor Andrew Szeto of San Diego State University in his survey comments.

As Yogi Berra reportedly said, “The hardest thing to predict is the future.” And as we’ve said, our survey does not try to predict the sci-tech future but merely to uncover key directions. So although we may not be able to say that in 2015 a space elevator will be shuttling goods and people into orbit or that in 2020 we’ll all have robot servants, we can foresee that in the next several decades we will be building our infrastructure in a new way: we will have unlimited computing resources, live in a sensory-rich computing environment, and reengineer ourselves and the biological world around us. Understanding these larger trends helps organizations think about adapting to the future, and thus shaping it.

Why do I blog this? I like this idea of bursting bubbles and there are some good insights to gain from it. Besides, the article gives interesting ideas and signs about possible avenues.

How to build foresight scenarios

I finally ran across a relevant paper that clearly explain the methods of scenario-building in foresight. It's called "How to Build Scenarios" by Lawrence Wilkinson. Some excerpts of the methodology:

scenarios are created in plural (...) specially constructed stories about the future, each one modeling a distinct, plausible world in which we might someday have to live and work. (...) the purpose of scenario planning is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. It's about making these forces visible, so that if they do happen, the planner will at least recognize them. (...) Note that the scenarios don't fall neatly into "good" and "bad" worlds, desirable and undesirable futures. (...) Once we've identified those implications that work in all of the scenarios, we get on with them in the confidence that we're making better, more robust plans. (...) For these we want to know the "early warning signs" that tell us those scenarios are beginning to unfold.

The method is pretty straight-forward:

1. Scenario planning begins by identifying the focal issue or decision (...) So we begin the process by agreeing on the issue that we want to address
2. we next attempt to identify the primary "driving forces" at work in the present. These fall roughly into four categories: Social dynamics , Economic issues, Political issues, Technological issues
3. After we identify the predetermined elements from the list of driving forces, we should be left with a number of uncertainties. We then sort these to make sure they are critical uncertainties. (...) If we can simplify our entire list of related uncertainties into two orthogonal axes, then we can define a matrix (two axes crossing) that allows us to define four very different, but plausible, quadrants of uncertainty. Each of these far corners is, in essence, a logical future that we can explore.
4. We return to the list of driving forces that we generated earlier; these dynamics become "characters" in the stories that we develop. (...) we recognize that the "real" future will not be any of the four scenarios, but that it will contain elements of all of our scenarios.

Futurology

Michael Rogers a MSNBC columnist yesterday described his thoughts after the World Future Society’s annual meeting in Toronto dealing with foresights and futurology. Here are some excerpts I found interesting:

Some presentations were quite speculative: one fellow describes neural implants that would rewire our brains to let us perceive things like a fourth primary color. (“Why would we want to do that?” one audience member wanted to know. The speaker explained: “Because it would be interesting.”)

Other presentations were serious looks at corporate future-gazing by companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Philips and BASF. It’s clear that European firms tend to be more interested in futurism — which they often call foresight analysis — than are Americans. (...) There was, however, relatively little focus on more negative aspects of human behavior, beyond a few sessions on the future of law enforcement and terror prevention. On balance, the futurists seemed to be an optimistic bunch, which may be self-selecting. If you’re going to spend your career thinking about the future, you might as well feel good about it. (...) in the end, making lots of accurate predictions isn’t necessarily the job of the futurist. It’s more the act of stimulating creative thought about the future that, in turn, influences how we act today. At the Toronto conference, veteran futurist Joseph Coates put it this way: “Being right or wrong isn’t so much the point as being useful. The ultimate purpose is to change people’s minds.”