IFTF's Future Now

links for 2005-06-17

• SET Statistics
  Statistics on science and technology in the UK, published by the Office of Science and Technology.
  (tags: c2st uk science technology)
• City Emerges as Model in China's Effort to Reverse AIDS Record - New York Times
  The storefront looks like just another downtown shop. But inside, health workers offer tests for H.I.V. and dispense methadone to drug users. Upstairs, a nonprofit group offers counseling and support for anyone with H.I.V. or AIDS.
  (tags: China health)
• New Scientist SPACE - Technology - Space suits with geology skills built in
  A prototype systems "analyse[s] rock formations in the astronaut's field of vision and issue[s] an alert when it detects rock types that need to be sampled."
  (tags: ubicomp space)

links for 2005-06-16

• Study of national culture catches on in China
  "the College of the National Culture Study will feature the four traditional categories of Chinese writings, that is, Confucian classics, history, philosophy and belles letters."
  (tags: China culture education)
• Plain Technology (Technology Review)
  "Amish life might not be utopian, but it remains one of America's oldest and most robust technological experiments, with something to teach the rest of us. When all else fails, try a little Gelassenheit."
  (tags: culture technology)
• Aiming for the Sun
  Profile of solar power startup Nanosolar
  (tags: energy technology)
• BT online telephone directory
  (tags: uk)
• Environmental Policy under Conditions of Complexity
  Outlines the concept of "post-normal" science, and its implications for science and science-related policy.
  (tags: c2st policy science)

More on Google map hacks

About a month ago, we talked a bit about Google map hacks. Now Barney Pell, who is with Mayfield and is rocket scientist-level smart (he was a research director at NASA for years), explains their significance:

First, I expect to see many more applications of maps + data on the internet. It won't be long before anything that has geographical information will be so tagged and will be usable within search and other applications. The Geographical Information System (GIS) revolution is going to be big.

Second, these examples show the value of outside developers building on tools developed by search engine companies. Unfortunately, it is hard to build real businesses around such applications because the search engine companies typically restrict API usage for noncommercial purposes. At some point, I expect them to find appropriate licensing mechanisms. It would be great to build a business around Google's massive index of web pages in which we could offer vertical search services and pay per query we send to the Google database, without restrictions about how we want to use the data.

Technorati Tags: geoweb

Where's Doug?

Tom Foremski complains (following up on an earlier piece) about how the Valley has ignored Doug Engelbart-- and unintentionally demonstrates what he's complaining about.

Silicon Valley lauds this person and his work and his influence, and ignores him for more than 20 years? I cannot understand this attitude. Why isn't Doug sitting at Stanford University, guest lecturing from time to time?

The thing is, Doug actually does guest lecture at Stanford from time to time. (He did a course in 2000.) And Stanford and Institute for the Future (ahem) co-sponsored a day-long symposium on Doug's "Unfinished Revolution" in 1998-- almost six years ago. There were a flurry of tributes to him a couple years ago, and a more informal set now, thanks to the John Markoff book.

Still, while Doug's accomplishments are formidable, it now seems okay in the official culture of Silicon Valley to Forget Doug Engelbart. Our collective attention fixes on him briefly, but it's hard to stay focused; and eventually, we all seem to forget about him. Until the next round of tributes, and the next set of complaints about the lack of recognition.

In a forthcoming essay, I say that Doug is the Roy Orbison of Silicon Valley-- innovative early in his career, then forgotten for a long time, and honored in his old age. Foremski's post suggests that that's not quite true. Doug is more like Death in the Terry Pratchett novels: a character who's indispensable, who keeps showing up, but who ordinary humans can't quite recognize, and can't quite remember. People see Death, but their brains just can't handle processing the signal that says, "I see Death;" so through the miracle of neural plasticity, the brain translates him into Santa Claus, or nothing at all.

This is absolutely not to say that Doug doesn't deserve all the credit he now gets, and that in a fairer world he wouldn't get even more; it's an attempt to identify a weird blind spot in the Valley's collective consciousness. It seems absolutely determined to honor Doug, and at the same time ignore him.

Technorati Tags: Silicon_Valley, What the Dormouse Said

Culture is destiny

The International Herald Tribune has an article about cultural and national differences in cell phone use in Europe. It's an example of the growing appeal of ethnographic studies among technology companies-- and the degree to which culture, not technology, is destiny.

A mobile tale of three cities

Amparo Lasén, a Spanish sociologist, is completing a study conducted for the Digital World Research Center at the University of Surrey in England of mobile phone users in London, Madrid and Paris to compare behavioral changes between cultures and over time....

"Europe is looked at as a broadly similar market," Lasén said. "But in studying mobile phones you can see details in each country can change enormously."... Actually, there were not many surprises for people already familiar with the daily cultural habits of Spaniards, Britons and the French, Lasén concluded.

Londoners tended to be the most reluctant users of mobile phones in public and Madrid residents the most talkative. Parisians had the strictest rules governing mobile phone etiquette, and they often felt free to enforce it on others, her study showed.

The reaction toward other mobile phone users varied by cities. Loud conversations in public spaces are tolerated in Madrid, prompt gentle frowns in London and cause Parisians to intervene with complaints....

Modern love sometimes involved the mobile phone, with Lasén observing a number of people in both Madrid and Paris kissing while on the phone. No such thing took place in her observations in London.

"These were neither simple goodbye kisses nor short telephone conversations," Lasén said. "Such behavioral habits could make users reluctant to adopt use of videophones."

There was yet another difference Lasén found as her study unfolded that supported cultural stereotypes. She discovered that the residents of each city reacted quite differently to her as she worked.

Parisians frowned, Londoners pretended not to notice and people in Madrid didn't mind.

Thanks to the TELECOM-CITIES list, which pointed me to this article. I'm proud to say that one of the list's guiding lights, Anthony Townsend, is due to join the Institute shortly. Doubtless the quality of the blogging will go up after he's around.

links for 2005-06-15

• Chinese peasants rise up over pollution
  "...a glimpse of a gathering force that could help shape the future of China: the power of spontaneous mass protest. "
  (tags: China Asia protests environment)
• Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future
  "To explore how the nation can best advance science and technology for improved economic performance over the next 10 to 20 years, the NRC organized the National Forum on Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future, which was held in F
  (tags: policy government R&D c2st)
• EPO-JPO-USPTO Statistics and Reports
  (tags: patents c2st)
• Patent Statistics Reports Available For Viewing
  USPTO statistics.
  (tags: c2st US patents)
• OECD work on patents
  "The OECD has made considerable efforts to develop patent data and indicators that are suitable for statistical analysis and that can help address S&T policy issues. The patent database includes EPO, USPTO and "Triadic" patent families indicators."
  (tags: c2st OECD patents)
• U.S. Patent Statistics Summary Table, Calendar Years 1963 to 2003
  (tags: c2st patents US)
• Number of Utility Patent Applications Filed in the U.S., By Country of Origin, 1965-2003
  Very useful table showing number of countries filing patents in the US over the last 40 years. Interesting trends.
  (tags: US patents c2st)
• ATIPS
  "The rapid increase in worldwide patent right demand indicates that request for patent right protection is no longer limited to USA or Japan."
  (tags: c2st patents Asia)
• Current Intellectual Property Issues in Nanotechnology
  Many governments have "invested billions of dollars in advancing their own nanotechnology programs. The nanotechnology race is thus well underway and the first to secure the relevant intellectual property rights will be in the best position to reap the gr
  (tags: nanotech patents c2st)

links for 2005-06-14

• Who's Mentally Ill? Deciding Is Often All in the Mind
  Culture and mental illness, e.g., "Japanese doctors tend to be attentive to men's complaints of mood problems, and dismissive of women's. The result: depression rates are higher in men than in women, the reverse of the United States and much of Europe."
  (tags: health psy)
• Microsoft joins hands with Yahoo!, Google to censor China's web - Yahoo! News
  (tags: society China)
• The Underground Publishing Industry in China
  one of the most profitable industries in China: "2,600 sales points, 4,000 printing factories and more than 100 underground publishers form an independent underground publishing empire, nicknamed "The Other Money-Printing House" of China."
  (tags: China Asia books economi)

Quote of the day

We herald the PC revolution, but we should remember that it made us forget to share.

From Ross Mayfield, "Doug Engelbart, Rebooted."

This is something I've been thinking about after reading What the Dormouse Said: that the deep irony of the personal computer revolution was that it started out as a reinterpretation of time-sharing, and progressively was whittled down from a vision in which people would have computers that talked to each other, to computers that would just talk to their users.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, What the Dormouse Said

Rebuilt

I'm reading Michael Chorost's new book Rebuilt : How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, which in a moment of weakness I agreed to review for a newspaper. It's a quick read, but a very stimulating one.

Chorost is a Bay Area technical writer who, in 2001, lost his hearing. The book is about his experience with a cochlear implant, and learning to hear again.

Though the book is just "about" those things in the same way that Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents is about programming: it's really a set of essays on the relationships between technology, humanity, and identity. And it deals with a set of experiences-- implants, endless tests, learning how to hear (or read, speak, walk, etc.)-- that will become increasingly common in the future. Two major demographic trends-- growing life expectancy, often involving recovery from a major illness or crisis that would have killed you in the past; and the increasing ability of doctors to save children with disabilities that in an earlier age would have kept them from living through childhood-- suggest that more and more of us are going to go through this kind of experience.

More on the book later.

Technorati Tags: cyborg, Rebuilt

links for 2005-06-12

• Farmer Du Wenda's Flying Saucer
  an artistic collaboration about the future in China
  (tags: China future technology)
• China Internet Research Center/online gaming
  good Chinese English-language site for collecting info on online games
  (tags: China games)
• Why China Loves Globalization by Hu Jintao - The Globalist
  We in China have identified the goal for the first 20 years of this century.
  (tags: China Asia future economics)