IFTF's Future Now

links for 2005-11-30

• Grace Marks : outlookindia.com
  We all know about Third World women and international supply chains. But who expects to find the footprints of globalisation on the slushy streets of Sunder Nagri? This East Delhi slum colony fits everyone's idea of a slum colony—excreta floating in ope
  (tags: gender globalization India inequality)
• Internet Usage by Language - World Statistics
  Number of users by language - - top ten languages
  (tags: China Internet language statistics)
• Intel opens Net cafes in China | Tech News on ZDNet
  "The idea is to let singers and songwriters share their music with Tom Online's target demographic--the young and trendy--as well as make the cafes an "exciting and wholesome gathering place for everyone," said Yit Loong Lai, general manager at Intel Chin
  (tags: China Internet music p2p entertainment)
• Life, part two (November 23, 2005)
  "According to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, research director at the Institute for the Future... the boomers will not retire in commonly recognized ways."
  (tags: demographics work)

links for 2005-11-29

• Upstart From Chinese Province Masters the Art of TV Titillation - New York Times
  the Super Girl phenomenon: "more than 400 million viewers had tuned in, making it one of the most-watched shows in China's television history and creating another blockbuster hit for a group of daring television producers here at Hunan TV in south central
  (tags: China media television youth entertainment)

Old ideas, new applications

David Weinberger has an interesting, short article in Forrester Magazine on Indian librarian Shiyali Ranganathan, and how ideas he developed in the 1930s for classifying libraries are being used today.

Technorati Tags: library

Organic Braille displays

A few years ago, I saw my first braille PC on a commuter train in the Philadelphia suburbs: a BrailleNote note-taker, consisting of a line of Braille display (32 Braille cells, each with eight pins that were raised or lowered by a tiny actuator) and nine keys. It was fascinating to watch it in use, for while I spend plenty of time typing-- physically connected to a computer-- I tend not to notice it (I'm a fast touch-typist), and like many people, think more of the experience of using a computer as a visual thing. An interface that was entirely touch-based, and required you use your hands for reading and writing, seemed like something profoundly different.

Braille displays have traditionally been complex and expensive. So it's notable that Toyko University scientists have created a light-weight, flexible braille display sheet using organic transistors:

Two research groups at the University of Tokyo have succeeded in jointly developing a braille display sheet using organic transistors. The technology uses organic transistors formed on a flexible substrate to drive actuators made of polymer materials. The research groups claim this is the world's first case to be successful in driving a display using both organic transistors and actuators formed on a single substrate.

Putting them both on a single substrate will, I'm guessing, mean lower cost and greater reliability.

Beyond the technical elegance of the organic transistor Braille display, it's notable for another reason: as one article notes, the phenomenon of information or communication "technology developed by or for disabled people migrating into widespread use" is well-established, and goes back to the invention of the typewriter:

Ninety years before [Herman] Hollerith founded IBM, Italian Pellegrino Turri fell in love with blind countess Carolina Fantoni. Wanting to help his lover write legible letters to him, he built her the first typewriter.

Communication then leapt off the page. In Boston, Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 patent for the telephone grew out of his work with the deaf and, a year later, Thomas Edison filed a patent for the phonograph. He listed 10 possible uses for his invention; music was fourth, behind phonograph books in second place "which will speak to blind people without effort on their part."

Braille displays, in other words, are an early example of the tangible displays that we're all eventually going to be using in situations where our eyes are otherwise occupied but our hands (or other body parts) can be used to absorb information.

Technorati Tags: computer, displays

Will the iPod morph in to a personal server

According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, it will, once Apple releases its terabyte iPod:

Say goodbye to your DVD player and Tivo box?

Perhaps, if one analyst's predictions come true -- they could be replaced by the ubiquitous iPod, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who issued a research note predicting products in Apple's pipeline.

While predicting what products the notoriously secretive Apple is going to launch next can lead normally rational analysts into flights of "wild speculation," as Munster put it, he believes the company is gunning to be the consumer hub for digital media -- and that it's got a foundation in place to do that.

Muster said that within five years, Apple could release an iPod with one terabyte of storage -- that's almost 17 times the maximum amount of iPod storage Apple currently offers.

Munster envisions a one terabyte iPod as a portable, "coffee table" media center that would allow users to store hundreds of movies and thousands of photos and songs. Munster wrote that fellow Piper Jaffray analyst Les Santiago, who covers data storage technologies, thinks Apple could feasibly release a $500, one terabyte iPod in the next five years.

[Via Gizmodo, again]

Technorati Tags: Apple, ipod, memory, ubicomp

Samsung claims biggest flexible LCD panel ever

Yet another data-point on the coming world of flexible displays, via Gizmodo:

Samsung claims biggest flexible LCD panel ever

Samsung said it has developed a seven inch TFT LCD which uses thin pliable plastic to display 640x480 resolution colour video.

The panel is thinner, lighter and lasts longer than glass LCD panels, the firm said, and will maintain a constant thickness even when it is bent.... The firm claimed it will be used for notebook computers, cell phones and you will even be able to weave it into your clothes.

Technorati Tags: displays

They're born knowing how to program the VCR, so...

The Wall Street Journal has an article on tech-savvy kids; this snippet via Gizmodo:

8-year-old Lauren's Christmas list includes a cellphone, an iPod, a laptop computer, and no toys. Kids have become the same gadget-obsessed zombies as their adult counterparts, but, boo-hoo, they're often overwhelmed when trying to decide between an iPod nano and the video iPod.

Technorati Tags: children

Jason Tester at NEXT

We make money not art's Regine has excellent notes of Jason Testers talk at NEXT2005, and pictures on flickr.

Technorati Tags: copenhagen, IFTF, NEXT2005

links for 2005-11-28

• Chinese sociologist Li Yinhe on rural problems- Danwei
  "Urban and rural residents do not only belong to two separate levels; they live in two different worlds, they belong to two different ethnic groups."
  (tags: China poverty politics society city rural)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Nude Chat Is Not Illegal In China
  Chinese law grapples with defining gains and moral losses from live nude chat.
  (tags: China Internet morality law sex)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Interviewing People About Censorship in China
  the author of one of the best China blogs in English lays out his approach to the question of censorship: "there will come a day when you won't even need an official pronouncement of freedom of speech because you are too numerous by then and you have the
  (tags: China Internet blogging)
• BBC's Interview of Chinese blogger Wang Jianshuo
  Famous Chinese blogger speaks out on Western media's bias re: Chinese censorship story: ""Rabiya, BBC, and all the big media:

  Do NOT set the interviewees up, do NOT use the interviewees, do NOT manipulate them by cornerning them and directing them to t

  
  
  (tags: China Internet blogging censorship media)
  
  


• 
  
  EastSouthWestNorth: The Self-Description by Massage Cream
  
  
  translation of excerpts from article profiling 11 Chinese bloggers
  
  
  (tags: China Internet blogging media)
  
  


• 
  
  New World Notes: KILLING PRIMMIES
  
  
  Players in SL develop games that don't work when Linden Labs releases new versions of the world. Explores the boundaries of puppetmaster and player, virtual IP, control over virtual space and place.
  
  
  (tags: games space design Internet cyberspace IP)
  
  


• 
  
  A noob comes to town - SLOG
  
  
  On the future of virtual worlds like Second Life: "I am rather sure, that - like it or not - platforms like SL will be used by companies of all sizes for entertainment, training, marketing, collaboration and more and more for sales, too."
  
  
  (tags: Internet cyberspace games business virtual_economy)
  
  


• 
  
  South-South Superpower Science
  
  
  India and China are set to begin joint biomedical research, focusing on both traditional medicine and stem cells -- the latter due, in part, to China's stricter regulatory standards on stem cell work.
  
  
  (tags: China India stem_cells collaboration brain_circulation globalization)
  
  

Biofuels and sustainability

Good short piece by Jamais Cascio on "the biofuel dilemma:"

Biofuels such as biodiesel may prove to be a useful transition technology for the move away from fossil fuels and into the Bright Green world.... But attractive as they are, biofuels pose some sticky problems. Fortunately, a solution may be at hand.

[On one hand, biofuels] can replace fossil fuel uses without requiring significant modification of machinery. Since they are generally derived from vegetation, they're close to carbon-neutral (as the next crop of plants will take up the carbon dioxide released from burning the previous biofuel crops).... But biofuels have some notable drawbacks, too. Making biofuels from plants already in demand for food, such as soy, corn and canola/rapeseed, raises the prices of the food versions and reduces available supplies. And increased demand for biofuels is triggering the expansion of agricultural land, with devastating results in some areas.

Technorati Tags: biology, energy, environment, sustainability