IFTF's Future Now

Tales of the Blot: Rethinking the Rorschach

The NY Review of Books examines James
Wood et als book: Whats Wrong with the Rorshach?: Science Confronts the Controversial Inkblot Test ... (subscription required) ... Hermann Rorschach invented the idea of an inkblot test in 1921, and it soon became embedded in our cultural psyche. A student of Freud and Jung, Rorschach developed a set of ten seemingly formless bisymettrical inkblots on cards, and a methodology to interpret what patients saw when exposed to the cards. The goal was to produce an experience type (Erlebnistypus) that would lead in part to a clinical diagnosis.

The object was to somehow peer into the operation of the brain, without surgery and before fMRI techniques. A bit of post-victorian science-as-classification.

The book portrays Rorschach as a crank and the test as deeply flawed. Most damning from an analysis point of view, Rorschach and his followers did a very inadequate validation of his classification approach. Nowhere close to statistical significance. It drips with confirmatory bias, and that bias has a strong negative slant. Yet 80 percent of clinical Phd psych programs still emphasize the slant. Why still support what seems to be pseudo-science? Under fire: The International Rorschach Society.

The inkblot tests also reminds me of techniques used by research groups who use choices of pictures to reveal underlying consumer thinking.

This also links to the newly emergent techniques of Neuromarketing (For recent intro see MSNBC article) There MRI techiques are used to collect patterns of blood flow in the brain after people are exposed to stimuli. These patterns are then linked to known behavior. Although I would hope the people developing these techniques know more about classification validation than Rorschach did, there is a clear danger of finding pattern that is not there. (Pareidolia)

Also, look at the Amazon reviews of this book, this is apparently a very polarizing book among the psych community. There are other posts out there about how much is wrong with this book.

Human ID Implants

This is very polarizing topic. Using under the skin RFID implants in humans. Its an approach long used in Veterinary applications. Now some devices of this type have been approved by the FDA for humans. Notable is the Verichip from Applied Digital. Good overview article in ZDNet. I have brought this topic up with a number of people closely involved with RFID in the more mundane supply-chain world, and the reaction is always strong, something like ... it won't happen ... its too invasive ... it will really spook people, etc. They are sensitive to these kinds of applications because they highlight privacy issues. Yet current passive tag technology used in these devices have read distances of only a few cm. True, the basic technology can be extended, so there is a danger that reads can be extended beyond those distances. Yes, there is a danger of mis-use, but compare it against the value of protecting health and lives. Will the use of human implantable tags out-run tagging the average item on the grocery shelf?

Visualizing Wordcounts

If you enjoy words and interesting graphical interfaces, here is an interactive system that ranks and visualizes the most frequently used 86800 words in the Englsh Language.
This reminds me of Edward Tufte's recent work on Sparklines, which combine text and graphical representation.

The Hypotheses below on the meaning of word counts are whimsical ...

... WordCount was designed with a minimalist aesthetic, to let the information speak for itself. The interface is clean, basic and intuitive. The goal is for the user to feel embedded in the language, sifting through words like an archaeologist through sand, awaiting the unexpected find. Observing closely ranked words tells us a great deal about our culture. For instance, “God” is one word from “began”, two words from “start”, and six words from “war”. Another sequence is "america ensure oil opportunity". Conspiracists unite! As ever, the more one explores, the more is revealed ....

A Mathematical Atlas

For those of you interested in math, see The Mathematical Atlas. Includes descriptive, foundational and advanced links. In just a half hour or so of browsing I found several pieces of interest. Wikipedia type coverage with lots of links, but its not a Wiki. Apparently by Dave Rusin and others at Northern Illinois University.

Future Homes: House N at MIT

I have seen a number of very different future homes over the past five years, constructed by hardware, retail, communications and academic enterprises. Some attempted to be complete, some showed only a narrow peek into what our homes could look like. Each has had its own flavor of emphasis. Many have been wildly optimistic as to what an average consumer could reasonably afford in the next 5 years. The cost of such technologies needs to be carefully thought out. Each was also dated in its content, since you can hardly keep up with accelerating changes, or hope to predict what will survive more than a year.

These homes also point to how technologies need standards to interoperate. Their technologies also must operate with existing (legacy?) service devices in the home. A good example of this is in the kitchen, where we expect our refrigerator to last for 15 years, yet the technologies that link to it will likely evolve over 2-3 years. As a result its been tough for devices llike net-enabled refrigerators. How do you integrate these needs with vastly different cycles of evolution?

And, of course, its not all about digital technology. sometimes its just elements of better design that lead to more comfortable, equitable and adaptable results.

Yet, despite many issues, each of these homes were successful in their own way , establishing a context for that future. Based on their questions, visitors all had their own idea of what was important. Some asked detailed technical questions, some pointed out things that were missing, and others suggested that the emphasis was wrong. I always felt that there was a real value in having a physical, as opposed to just a virtual presentation, despite its sophistication. They can be used as reception centers, a nexus for brainstorming, and a means of testing how new technologies work in a realistic environment. I am bullish on future homes, they have helped us plumb the possibilities, and map out a path to make that future work.

Below, an example, from the House_N effort at MIT:

The problem of our epoch is the problem of the house
Le Corbusier (1919)

The problem of our epoch is the problem of the electronically mediated house
House_n (2000)

MIT Changing Places / House_n

Change is accelerating, but the places we create are largely static and unresponsive. House_n is a Department of Architecture research consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that explores how new technologies, materials, and strategies for design can make possible dynamic, evolving places that respond to the complexities of life. Changing Places is a joint Architecture and Media Laboratory Consortium that includes House_n and emphasizes links between the home and places of healing, work, learning, and community....

This site has a large number of 'future home' information resources, excellent for reference. This is an example of a home with a wow factor, but also one which is focusing on specific agendas.

Review of Prahalad, "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"

The Economist has a review of CK Prahalad's new book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Eradicating Poverty Through Profits.

“IF WE stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognising them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.” That “simple proposition” begins a controversial new management book that seems destined to be read not just in boardrooms but also in government offices. “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Eradicating Poverty Through Profits” (Wharton School Publishing), is essentially a rallying cry for big business to put serving the world's 5 billion or so poorest people at the heart of their profit-making strategies.

The notion of looking to the "bottom of the pyramid" (or the "base of the pyramid" as others prefer to put it) is one that deserves plenty of attention, for a variety of reasons: growth potential, innovation potential, and the potential to make the world a better place. (I discuss the concept at greater length in my Red Herring column.)

RFID Patents: Intermec's Play

Intermec, which acquired much of IBM's RFID IP , has some 140 RFID patents and outlines how it plans to manage them. The RFID blog provides some commentary on this and implications for EPCGlobal. You would wonder if IBM regrets selling much of their RFID IP to Intermec, though they remain partners. For a less than up to date review, see a history of RFID.

The RideNow experiment

A few weeks ago, on my Red Herring blog, I wrote about an idea I'd had for doing real-time carpooling. (It's broken up into four parts, starting with this post.) The basic idea was that the same technologies that allow for smart mobs and flash mobs also would allow us to turn cars into a kind of ad hoc public transportation system.

It turns out that someone is trying to put such a system into place. It's called Ride Now!, and its purpose is to bring "Realtime carpools to San Francisco:"

Ride Now is a new, "instant match" car pool system.

Ride Now lets you use the Internet and automatic telephone systems ("press 1 if you want...") to take advantage of car pool parking spaces and car pool lane timesavings.

Naturally I'll be curious to see what happens with it. I suspect that systems like these may suffer repeated failures, then will have one big breakthrough that then becomes the reference design, and reveal the small yet now-obvious flaws that kept the previous systems from taking off.

DIY design

About a year and a half ago, we started talking to clients about the coming age of "desktop manufacturing," a phenomenon driven the convergence of new printing technologies (or actually, the application of existing printing technologies to the manufacturing of things rather than images and text), new materials, the advent of printable electronics, and a greater appreciation of design. (MIT's Neil Gershenfeld calls it personal fabrication, but the basic idea is the same.)

Two pieces that I saw recently struck me as data-points backing up the idea. The first is a Technology Review article about a eMachineShop.com:

It's the Internet Revolution meets the Industrial Revolution: a new program that lets people design 3-D objects like car parts and door knobs in metal or plastic then order them online.

Programs for computer-aided design, or CAD, have been around for decades, but eMachineShop.com appears to be the first service that checks whether a design can be made, tells the customer how much it will cost. If the customer wants the item the design goes to a "real world" machine shop for manufacturing.

Second, Slate's Clive Thompson writesabout "[h]ow industrial design became a weekend hobby:"

Do-it-yourself design will get really interesting when inventors are able to sketch something out and then hold the thing in their hands within a matter of minutes. Today, rapid-prototyping technology—that is, 3-D printers that can instantly crank out a physical copy of anything you design on a computer—is available only to elite design firms. It'll get cheaper within years. Meanwhile, "original design manufacturing" companies overseas are becoming expert at quickly and cheaply cranking out MP3 players and laptops to specs set by brand-name firms like Virgin or Sony. Put those trends together, and it's easy to envision an offshore service that will take my personal design for a music player and crank out 10 copies. Presto: the Clive brand MP3 player! Think of it as vanity electronics—casemodding on a superfast, global scale.

Demographic surprises

Few forces affect the future more profoundly than demographics, but it's one that is easy to underappreciate. Companies are just starting to think seriously about the ways that the aging of the Baby Boomers will affect their business stategies, the products and services they offer, and the ways they relate to their customers, despite the fact that lots of people have been pointing out that the Boomers were almost certain to transform aging and retirement, just as they had changed youth. Demographics is one of those "inevitable surprises" that GBN's Peter Schwartz talks about: a change that we can see coming, but all too often don't see.

Hence American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt's essay on "Four Surprises in Global Demography," published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is worth reading, particularly because it argues for the importance of some unexpected trends in global demographics.

Contemporary world population patterns are shaped by the “demographic transition” concept introduced to the field by the great demographer Frank Notestein several generations ago. That schema offers a stylized description of the great shifts in modern population patterns. Death and birth rates start out high, but more or less in equilibrium. Then, advances in knowledge and improvements in income result in broad declines in mortality, precipitating rapid population increase. Finally, socioeconomic development brings about sustained fertility reductions via voluntary, deliberate changes in childbearing patterns, at which point births and deaths once more come into balance.

While Notestein’s schematic may still describe the human condition in broad stroke, today we can observe some important and surprising exceptions to these generalizations. Four of these unanticipated trends are (1) the rapid spread of sub-replacement fertility, (2) the emergence of unnatural gender imbalances among the very young, (3) sustained increases in death rates, and (4) American “demographic exceptionalism.”