IFTF's Future Now

HP: This is Your Brain on Email

I have used a Blackberry for about three years now, and have noticed that I glance at the messages far too often, it has started to gain some of crackberry label given it, at least for me. Its convenient, yes, but also addicting. I notice it too being used by many more people in the halls these days. So its a good idea to understand what this continual connectivity means to us. Then I saw an article in CIO Insight, about research work at HP: "...a study on "info-mania" that suggests that too-frequent checking of e-mail and voice mail can lower your IQ up to ten points—which, for those keeping score, is a greater drop than researchers found in studying the effects of smoking marijuana ..."

Here is the HP page that introduces the study: ...HP calls for more appropriate use of “always-on” technology to improve productivity..., and their full HP Guide to Avoiding Info-Mania. The CIO Insight article also contains some reasonable criticisms of the study.

Guess-the-Google

This is serious fun.

Basically, it returns thumbnails from a one-word Google Images search. You have twenty seconds to guess what word was used to build that search.

This is part of the same category of phenomenon as Google Map hacks, and whose significance is explained here by Barney Pell: an example of what begins to be possible "when online data plays well together."

At last year's NPUC conference, I remember Brewster Kahle saying that he looked forward to the day when it would be possible to create something as interesting as Google every month. Maybe we're drawing incrementally closer to that dream.

Technorati Tags: innovation, internet, visualization

links for 2005-07-22

• Looking for Innovation? Just Add Batteries
  "The power issue will not go away" in computing and mobile communciations, and power will be a significant issue for pervasive computing devices-- and even the evolution of pervasive computing.
  (tags: energy ubicomp c2st)
• RFID in Japan: Miragraphy - RFID enabled mirror
  (tags: anthonytownsend rfid Japan)

Norbert Wiener Biography

Physicist Freeman Dyson provides a thoughtful review of Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Wiener, brilliant and eccentric thinker about computing technologies, worked well before the emergence of the microprocessor and the Internet. His book, Cybernetics, led to new thinking about how digital and analog systems could lead to computing.

I just completed it, this is an excellent bio of Wiener, and especially his position in mid 20th century technology. An 18 year-old Phd in math from Harvard, a child-prodigy and someone who established some of the underpinning of 21st century computing. He founded cybernetics as the science of feedback and forecasting. His much told idiosyncrasies at Harvard are well related. The book drops a bombshell, suggesting that a life-long rift with the neural pioneers McCullough and Pitts was caused by a lie told by Wiener's wife in a fit of professional jealousy. Its also suggested that this changed the early history of neural approaches to computing, which could have led to a closer integration of digital and analog approaches. All involved are now gone, so its hard to tell if this disclosure is true. After WWII Wiener became strongly anti-military, anti-industry and curiously anti-automation (well described in his book The Human Use of Human Beings). This limited his involvement with the emergence of computing, largely funded by the military.

The science he founded called cybernetics, faded away as a formal area of study, the essence of it ultimately became artificial intelligence. This led me to take a another book at his seminal popular work Cybernetics. The first 50 pages of that book are still a good read, later it becomes densely mathematical. This was surprisingly a best seller in the 60s.

Also, this book led me to another early pioneer of telecommunications, Oliver Heaviside (after which the atmospheric layer was named, and the song in Cats popularized) Heaviside made some key technical contributions to long-distance telephony, neglected to patent the results, and died penniless. There is a 1988 bio of Heaviside thats worth a look.

Giving it away

In a piece provocatively titled "Are we losing our innovation religion?," EDN executive editor Bill Schweber worries that "outsourcing of innovation starts a dangerous downward spiral," and that companies that aren't careful about it will end up paying companies to learn to be their future competitors. Today, he notes, companies

can outsource product design to a third party, which in turn may use big chunks of external IP (intellectual property); you can outsource physical manufacturing; and now, you can even outsource your research and development.... [C]ompanies are using this approach and the results in apparent cost (read "people") savings. What's left? Not to worry, many say: The companies that outsource so many aspects of their roles can do the upfront product definition, as well as the product marketing. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it?

However, all this outsourcing buries a reality: Once your outsource partners learn how you define products, how you market them, and whatever other "secret" understanding you have or you assume that you have, and you have an "in" on your markets, those partners no longer need you. It's that simple. The "secret sauce" you think makes a difference may not be such a secret or maybe isn't the barrier to entry that you thought it was.

Technorati Tags: business, globalization

Batteries, the soft underbelly of pervasive computing

Some time ago I wrote a piece about how the limiting constraint to the evolution of pervasive or ubiquitous computing would not by anything technical, but speedy, convenient repairs. I was kidding a little bit, but not much.

Of course, there are a million and one details that have to be worked out before the grand vision of pervasive computing can become reality. One that's easy to overlook, but impossible to avoid, is battery life. Compared to the other technologies that will enable pervasive computing, batteries are dull, as unsexy as screws or nails. But, as an opinion piece posted at RedNova this past Sunday put it, better batteries are essential to the future of pervasive computing:

Power generation is a critical enabler for the continued growth of our industry, where rapid innovation will make a difference....

We are edging closer to an "Internet of things," where any substantial thing, from a soup can to a machine part, carries an identifier or a sensor, wirelessly connected to a corporate, public or home-based network. In the short run these electronic devices will be powerless, such as present-day RFID tags, or smart cards. But in the long run many of them will be powered. The key hardware constraint to turning the pervasive computing vision into reality will be how this will happen.

One of the fascinating sidebars to computer evolution has been the ingenious ways engineers have figured out how to squeeze down computers' power requirements, and how to design power supplies to meet shifting market needs. You only have to imagine a mesh network of thousands (or millions) of tiny sensors scattered over, for example, a field, to see how power sources have become a big deal....

So, IT executives, add batteries and power generation to your list of innovations to watch, no matter how boring they appear to be.

Technorati Tags: energy, pervasive computing, ubicomp

links for 2005-07-21

• China's Evolving Blogosphere
  "Blogchina is now the nation's largest blog site. Two million bloggers are registered and on an average day about 300,000 entries are updated. Fang says that if the site continues to grow at this rate, the number of BlogChina users will exceed 10 million
  (tags: China Internet cyberspace)
• Pistake Urinal
  Urinal tests for STDs and Bluetooths the result
  (tags: bluetooth wireless urban)
• Google gets a presence in Brazil; to open a R&D center for Latin America
  "Google has bought Brazil's Akwan Information Technologies and will use it to set up a R&D center for Latin America." Akwan is located in Recife, capital of Pernambuco.
  (tags: globalization search Brazil)
• How Earth-Scale Engineering Can Save the Planet
  "Maybe we can have our fossil fuels and burn ’em too. These scientists have come up with a plan to end global warming. One idea: A 600,000-square-mile space mirror."
  (tags: environment space future)

links for 2005-07-20

• Apparel Maker Tags RFID For Kids' Sleepwear
  (tags: rfid wearable anthonytownsend)
• Futuribles - Prospective Studies and Foresight
  "Futuribles explores current issues, the world’s possible futures (futurs possibles), and policies and strategies to consider."
  (tags: future)
• Can science be directed? (New Scientist)
  Discussion with Steve Fuller, Martin Rees, Vandana Shiva, and William Stewart
  (tags: c2st science future)

Talk amongst yourselves: Aircraft turbulence self-reporting

A NASA press release describes a system for having aircraft automatically report to other planes and ground control when they hit turbulence. Flight crews are often too busy dealing with the problem to report it, so the system is designed to automate the process. It's another small building block in creating not just smart devices, but ones that are sociable, too.

Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and AeroTech Research (USA), Inc., Newport News, Va., have developed an automatic turbulence reporting system.

The Turbulence Auto-PIREP System (TAPS) is being tested on more than 80 Delta Airlines passenger jets. Researchers say TAPS technology improves aviation safety. When pilots know there's turbulence ahead, they can maneuver to avoid it or ensure passengers and flight attendants are seated and strapped in.

"TAPS automatically broadcasts turbulence encounter reports from aircraft and allows other planes and people on the ground to use this information," said NASA's Turbulence Prediction and Warning Systems project manager, Jim Watson. "Pilots describe turbulence encounters over their radios and by text reports called Pilot Reports (PIREPS). They tend to under-report when they encounter rough air, because they're busy trying to fly through or around it," he added.

"TAPS provides real-time turbulence information that has never been available," said Paul Robinson, President of AeroTech Research. "The beauty of TAPS is, it is only software and uses equipment already on the aircraft, making it inexpensive and easy to install."

Atmospheric turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to passengers and flight crews in non-fatal airline accidents. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) statistics show an average of 58 airline passengers are annually hurt in U.S. turbulence incidents. Ninety eight percent of those injuries happen because people don't have their seat belts fastened.

Turbulence encounters are hazardous, and they cost airlines money and time. The encounters cause injuries, flight re-routing, late arrivals, additional inspections and aircraft maintenance....

TAPS' automatic, accurate and timely reporting of turbulence encounters is almost immediately displayed on computers on the ground and received in the cockpits of other aircraft. The system's processing of encounters takes into account how various aircraft respond to turbulence. TAPS allows pilots to see the reports for the area ahead of their aircraft; controllers to see reports relative to air traffic and airline personnel to evaluate the impact on their operations; all in real-time.

It strikes me that transportation systems are a near-ideal environment in which to test and deploy these kinds of smart, sociable systems.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, collective intelligence, travel

links for 2005-07-19

• Whose Oil Is It? Property Rights at Issue in China - New York Times
  "For those in China who urge a strong, transparent justice system, the prospectors' demand for better compensation or restitution of their wells goes to the heart of the question of what sort of society China is to become: one of full property rights and
  (tags: China energy law)
• Presence? Mark Me Absent
  "Microsoft is leading the charge to make 'presence' ever-present, and not just in instant-messaging. But is presence really progress?"
  (tags: place/space digital/physical ubicomp)
• 125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature
  "Science Magazine and its online companion sites celebrate the journal's 125th anniversary with a look forward -- at the most compelling puzzles and questions facing scientists today."
  (tags: future science)
• New Scientist Entering a dark age of innovation
  Physicist Jonathan Huebner "says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since."
  (tags: technology innovation future)
• Forecasting the Growth of Complexity and Change
  Argues that "we have already reached the maximum rate of growth for complexity [on Earth], and that in the future complexity's rate of change (and the rate of change in our lives) will be declining."
  (tags: future innovation)