MIT's developed CNSILK, a robot-slash-silkworm that, in the near future, will be able to sense its structural environment and build around it. Here is that same spiderbot constructing a living space out of thread (which will eventually be replaced by a nylon that's flexy when wet, then hardens once dry).
Earlier today I also read about Narrative Science, a company that uses algos to take raw data and spin stories out of it. Some people are optimistic about this tech's capacity to replace journalism.
When increasingly complex systems are being developed to replace complex human work that traditionally required sharp eyes, a sense of intuition and constructive creativity on-the-fly, I wonder two things:
How do the people who once did these jobs naturally evolve into a more useful position?
What kind of advertising, what kind of media, could be produced as a result?
Constructing a living space around an existing environment isn't that different from building a social network. (That's why books like this are so popular with software architects.) Would robots do this better than we have?
Congested narrator voice aside, there's plenty to be excited about in this video about Sony's ambitions for the future. (I'm really glad there's no 3D TV punting ... that shit was stupid.)
Use of cords and disposable batteries are among the few things this century that frustrate me about our exponentially improving technological landscape. Why are we still using them? Thankfully, viable alternatives are beginning to crop up, like solar- and wind-powered charging stations that you can keep in your pocket.
The ability to measure and track one's own energy use at a glance is also a growing trend in modern tech-savvy architecture. It isn't unreasonable to imagine that in the next handful of years, residences will come equipped with such devices in the same way most cars now come stock with GPS.
But while screens and other wifi-ready affordances proliferate (consider the piece of paper in this video that was apparently also a mobile device), it's important to remember that software must increasingly divorce itself from reliance on hardware -- that is, software must be increasingly hardware-agnostic. Most of your data -- like personal energy use -- will be kept in the Cloud, accessible wherever you are and through whichever device you wish to see it. It's a tough line to walk when the software still needs to be a little bit hardware sensitive (for example, showing information in a different format depending on the device being used).
In any event, it's a brave new world we're walking into. And I can't wait to get rid of all these bloody cables.
Yesterday afternoon at the Lions, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt sat with VP-Google Creative Lab Andy Berndt to discuss innovation, imagination and the internet.
Schmidt kicked off the discussion by pointing out the internet is a special kind of business because it is highly Moore's Law-driven: "If you take a country that's got 40% internet penetration, and you see it in the next five years, broadband penetration will be up to 80%." Your business just doubled and you didn't have to do anything -- this doesn't happen in any other industry.
The idea that your business can be expanded as a function of users broadening your market, as opposed to you taking steps to expand in the traditional sense, is something we are still grappling with.
"The implications for this consumer-driven phenomena are not well-understood," Schmidt said, pointing out that the Middle East's current ongoing social media-driven struggles for democracy are a good example of the unexpected fruit such phenomena yields. This is just the beginning of users' muscle-flexing.
Read the rest of this nummy num-num on Yahoo! Scene, for which I'm doing Cannes Lions coverage this year.
However much you may advocate the adoption of the electric vehicle, it's still difficult to face skeptics whose arguments often boil down to "we're not ready for that." That statement is usually supported by a number of vague "facts" that betray how little we actually know about electric cars: the little mileage you get, how they're too slow to drive on freeways, how it only makes sense if you have a house with a garage so you can plug it in...
(Actually, this last is a problem, but what if we all make like Manitoba and start changing our communities as a function of where we're headed? A plug on every street, sir!)
I like this ad because it distills all the cloudiness surrounding the electric transport quandary into one reasonable message: We've already switched to electricity for many things; why not for travel?
The ad preps you for this message by depicting everyday scenarios in which electric gadgets -- blow dryers, vending machines, credit card readers -- possess combustible engines, with all their fickleness and the pollution that comes along. The people in the ad simply live with it, the same way we live with car pollution.
That they never complain, never so much as wrinkle their noses, is part of the ad's charm: it enables you to laugh at the grace with which all that exhaust is dealt, to see the situation with clearer eyes, to accept that we've also been a bit silly about this, because it's what our society has collectively decided to accept, in the same way the ad's fictional society accepts combustible engine computers and toy dogs.
All this builds elegantly in your mind as the piece progresses. The narrator only raises her voice to drive the tagline and brand home. But the crazy thing is, you feel convinced.
UPDATE:Jeff Kwiatek sent over this variation on the ad for the Nissan Leaf, which launched on the same day:
The two companies are basically one (Renault holds something like 43% of Nissan, and the latter holds something like 15% of the former, so it's all one big mutual neck-sucking fest). It isn't unusual for companies of global scale to have a kind of "share with pride" policy on the inside, which doesn't exactly thrill their myriad agencies, but it does save them money: a good idea on one side of the world gets generously replicated elsewhere, or for a "different" brand.
I have to say though, the Leaf variant lacks the finesse of Renault ZE's "The Electric Life." Even its name fell a few points on the je-ne-sais-quoi scale: "Gas Powered Everything"? Would a little less obviousness have killed us?
Don't you love how those ears perk up when she gets all feeny?
When I came home from Switzerland yesterday, The Man was all in a state about NeuroWear, the people behind the technology above.
"Do you think it's real?" he wondered.
Why not. It was only last month that I mentioned mind control tech was the new frontier, and NeuroWear's Nécomimi thing, which is basically a mood ring, doesn't represent the most serious ways in which mind-interfacing technology has advanced (1, 2, 3). But it does represent how cheap the technology has become, how sensitive, and how important it'll be for the future: people are playing with it.
To wit: BCI (brain computer inferface) users can even make beats.
I wouldn't worry about everybody and your mom getting "Nécomimi" bunny ears, though. (I am holding out for a tail.) The money's on the gaming industry, and eMotiv is already conducting open experiments in that arena.
Thankfully, there's hope. Today's big wave is mind control -- that is, our minds controlling other stuff (at least for now).
Last week during MIPTV's Connected Creativity segment, Baroness Susan Greenfield talked about how the mind works and is changing as a result of our technology adoption. She began her talk with an interesting statement that the mind is a place that (ideally) can't be hacked.
That's increasingly less true, and Greenfield betrays this herself by admitting we do change as a function of how we use technology.
We've opened APIs to our minds. We are constantly experimenting with new -- even bionic -- capabilities. We readily throw out what doesn't work, and keep what does, from the most banal -- vigilantly recording our present whereabouts on Foursquare and Facebook, stringing thoughts into something coherent to publish on Twitter -- to the large-scale and networked: organising to elect our first black President, to raise funds for the Japan tsunami, to remotely rebuild the Rainbow Warrior alongside Greenpeace.
Where to go from here? Directly to the source, with minimal middleman between point A (the brain) and point B (the intended outcome). And there's work in that direction. Two technologies I've seen this past week include:
The elusive E-Mote. Basically a neurons-reading remote control. We only have a vague understanding of how it works -- or is meant to work -- coupled with a slick video of people changing TV channels with their minds, bringing delightful new hijinks to family dynamics:
Emotiv. For the time being this is an enclosed platform with apps built to work specifically with the technology. It is marketed to developers and researchers and costs a trifling $299. At MIPTV, Gavin McGarry claimed he tried it and was, like, crushing human heads with his superbrain and whatnot. (We survived, but I can see Gavin being the Carrie of the new millennium.)
I haven't any thoughts on where this is going (my opinions are heavily influenced by fringey Star Trek characters who used USB ports in their heads to hack safes at constant risk of brain damage by firewall). I do think we are moving in a direction where technology grows closer to the body, more like an extension of our own appendages, and we'll see ever more experimental (and cheap!) takes on closer human/machine integration.
I say this because as we grow more dependent on items like the iPad and iPhone, and their myriad capabilities that change our whole days, we must move toward carrying less technology with us, not more. These items are already quite small, intimate and relatively close to us all the time.
Tread lightly, mice and men. What comes next is bigger than compulsive live-published geolocal check-ins. And it will come with great responsibility (and probably a new iteration of Angry Birds).
There are few ways to credibly reinvent the logo. (Consider.) But as our perception of what is grows more fluid, I suppose it only makes sense that people are trying to lend the same freedom to logos without compromising what they're supposed to stand for (the fixed aspect of a brand's spirit).
The MIT Media Lab found a really cool way of doing this: the algorithmic logo. It lends just enough fluidity to yield 40,000 different image variations - without losing any of its core qualities. In that way it's the perfect representation of this media space: fixed, but not; consistent, but flexible; unchanging but dynamic by nature.
Using three colors plus black, the algorithmic design features three intersecting spotlights that can be arranged into 40,000 unique shapes and 12 colors. Researchers can individualize the logo for their business stationery yet still link themselves to the Media Lab. The concept is geeky, serendipitous, and a melding of math and design to arrive at a different way of looking at things.
Fitting that the logo now spearheads a brand that hasn't been able to settle on a visual identity for decades.
Work by Brooklyn's own E. Roon Kang and Richard The of The Green Eyl.
A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict. Many of the most recognized writers on the singularity, such as Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, define the concept in terms of the technological creation of superintelligence, and allege that a post-singularity world would be unpredictable to humans due to an inability of human beings to imagine the intentions or capabilities of superintelligent entities.
Although Claude Shannon made inroads, in general we're finding that it's incredibly difficult to teach robots how to learn. The process involves a number of factors: recognising mistakes, determining what elements of a situation are worth incorporating into the refinement of a method, recognising the real-time value of a factor whose value may change from one situation to the next, etc.
But we've also discovered that the best way to teach a robot how to learn is to expose it to as many humans as possible - humans willing to teach it how to be better by giving the robot naked insight into their behaviour.
The rock-paper-scissors-playing computer that The New York Times has built is a perfect example of this. Instead of randomly generating moves, it gathers data based on your decisions, to "exploit a person’s tendencies and patterns to gain an advantage over its opponent." Throughout the game, the computer will tell you what it is "learning."
BTYB Corning, which aspires to be the enterprise whose dreams catch fire with the mainstream. (The trick: we can all be inventors, but we can't all be Apple. Cross your fingers!)
What comes to mind when I watch this is Minority Report, which didn't come out that long ago (2002). But as a testament to how much more quickly technology is advancing (than ever before in history, that is), the future promised to us by MR's touchscreens and eye-recognition ads seemed probable but too remote to touch. Now I feel that we're careening so fast in that direction that this vision is almost passé. It's like, just bring it already.
If you're in advertising, technology, R&D, planning a startup of your own, or are just a dreamy futurist, I recommend going through PSFK's "The Future of Real-Time." It defines relevant topics like human sensor networks, personal census, data democracy, mobile communities and context cartography. Each is illustrated with a number of concrete and current examples.
Perhaps most importantly, it will take your thinking about real-time tech out of "Twitter! Foursquare!" stasis, which I imagine will be a welcome relief.
For ye futurists in training, WESC gives us Karmatech, a line of tennis shoes outfitted with RFID that users opt to activate once they get home.
The video illustrates the possibilities and setbacks: an RFID-outfitted "social shoe" can automatically update your socnets and flash personalised (if otherwise unimaginative) hello's to you from the brand while you're out in the world, struttin' your shit. (Mini Cooper did something similar using billboards and RFID-equipped keyfobs in 2007.)
Park your foot against the side of a participating bar to get a free drink on WESC, have a photo of you instantly sent to your Flickr, or even access VIP toilets.** o_O
Google Goggles is one of those hyper-useful services that seems so deceptively simple, we've wondered for years why it didn't exist: why can't you photograph something and run that image in a search engine?
Well, huzzah! Now you can. And from your mobile phone, no less.
Observing that a number of people were apparently using Goggles to snap photos of ads, Google Mobile's engineering team decided to put five super-powerful advertisers together and get them to try incorporating its capabilities into their marketing. The advertisers represented nearly all major industries: T-Mobile, Diageo, Buick, Disney and Delta Airlines. This video is basically the result of that experiment:
For the time being, advertisers' ideas are simple enough: when a user photographs your ad via Goggles, sponsors can drive them directly to their brand/campaign site to continue the "experience" the person's allegedly having, face-to-face with billboard, or punt them stuff.
That's big already. (Bypass those narsty QR codes completely!)
But think bigger. Faced with a movie poster, a resto ad or a saucy pair of shoes, you can immediately drive users to useful data: the closest retail store. Showtimes. A reservation maker.
The question now is adoption, and for Google, that might not be an obstacle. An NPD Group survey found that between July and September, a whopping 44% of new smartphone users in the United States purchased an Android phone. So if the next generation of Google smartphones come stock with Goggles, running invisibly in the background and integrated in your photo features (Search/Use as Background Image/Send to Contact), this is going to explode.
Explode, we say! And all the better for the advertisers and the Foursquare/Yelp/Gowalla junkies, because this presents the perfect marriage of search, geolocation and the deliciously instant gratification of a user's curiosity.
Crypton Future Media creation Hatsune Miku is the perfect entertainer: 100% synthetic, tireless, unpaid and a show-stopper. She's also mostly crowdsourced (see link).
Honey's trying to break into the English-speaking market. Help a hologram out by Liking her Facebook page.
"An event you won't want to miss." That's the oft-repeated slogan from the invitation Google's sent to Silicon Valleys crème de la crème for its search keynote, 9:30 AM Pacific, at San Francisco's MoMA.
Since, speculations have taken seed everywhere they could find a little soil. For example, the particle movement simulator logo that appeared on Google.com yesterday brought back latent questions about whether Google may release a breakthrough on its ongoing quest to be able to search your DNA.
...a wee bacteria, "written" into being by using a sequence of four DNA nucleotides like programming code.
"We can write anything we want," said [Frances Arnold, a synthetic biologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena]. "The problem is that we don't know what to write."
