IFTF's Future Now

links for 2006-06-30

• Julian F. V. Vincent
  A short bio on Julian F. V. Vincent, a leading figure in biomimicry currently at the University of Bath. For Alex's research.
  (tags: biomimicry JulianVincent UniversityOfBath UK)
• The Material World
  Transcript of an interview with Julian Vincent and Colin Humphreys on Radio 4's "Material World", in 1998 on the future of biomimetrics.
  (tags: biomimicry UK JulianVincent)
• Smart by Nature
  An essay on biomimicry from the University of Bath - "Lightness; the inevitable renaissance of minimum energy structures"
  (tags: biomimicry UniversityOfBath)
• The Future of Futurism - Down with the techno-utopians! Up with the techno-realists! By Reihan Salam
  On various schools of futurism, epitomized by Glenn Reynolds and John Robb (neither of which would describe himself as a futurist, I think, but there you are).
  (tags: futurism e21 technology)
• Current projects at University of Bath's Centre for Biomimetics
  Most of the projects involve Julian FV Vincent. The "Home" button will take you to a page with several more biomimicry related pages.
• China Internet Marketing
  Internet Timeline of China--material for graphic timeline
  (tags: China Internet history)

links for 2006-06-28

• China May Fine News Media to Limit Coverage - New York Times
  "Journalists say they receive a steady stream of bulletins from the Propaganda Department forbidding reporting on an ever-expanding list of taboo topics, including "sudden events.""
  (tags: China media censorship government politics)
• The Not So Good Earth - New York Times
  "And so after years of suffering with increasingly foul air and sandstorms fed by a growing man-made mountain of coal waste, now 50 stories high, created from an open pit mine, the residents say they have had enough. They have petitioned to leave this vil
  (tags: China pollution environment water energy rural)
• CCR- Vision 2020
  "The Technology Vision 2020 is a call to action, a strategic plan, for the U.S. chemical industry. Chemical companies must innovate and change to keep the U.S. chemical industry competitive in the global environment."
  (tags: chemistry future science)

links for 2006-06-27

• Geoengineering: A Climate Change Manhattan Project (Stanford Environmental Law Journal January, 1998)
  "In the wake of Kyoto, the time has now come to expand our policy horizons to include geoengineering, the direct manipulation of the Earth's climatic feedback system, as a serious alternative to ineffective and contentious regulation."
  (tags: environment climate geoengineering)
• How to Cool a Planet (Maybe) - New York Times
  "[S]ome of the world's most prominent scientists say the [geoengineering] proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming."
  (tags: climate environment geoengineering)
• BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Guns and sunshades to rescue climate
  "[T]he most radical of all geoengineering concepts involves nothing less than moving the Earth itself, cooling the planet by shifting its orbit further from the Sun."
  (tags: geoengineering climate environment)
• Geoengineering our way out of trouble (21stC, Fall 1996)
  "In the past decade a handful of scientists and engineers have offered some big, bold, and highly controversial schemes to avert impending global environmental problems. These... range from ortho-tech to Star Trek, from massive reforestation efforts geare
  (tags: geoengineering climate environment)

Manufacturing in Silicon Valley again?

There are several articles this week on NanoSolar and their plans to build a factory in the Bay Area to manufacture a new form of photovoltaic cell. Business Week has an article that highlights their use of printing technology to make solar cells:

The company expects to assemble the cells into more than 1 million solar panels annually in another factory near Berlin that it plans to open next year. It figures that making its panels will cost as little as 10% of what it costs to turn out current panels, eventually putting them within financial reach for lots more consumers.

Since the 1970s, most solar cells have been made of silicon and manufactured like computer chips-- a costly process. By contrast, NanoSolar plans to produce so-called "thin-film" solar cells, making them by printing special-purpose ink on sheets of lightweight foil. "The major breakthrough here is we move the solar business from the economics of the semiconductor business to the economics of the printing business," Straser says.

That move, Straser figures, will allow NanoSolar to operate 5 to 10 times more efficiently than traditional solar-cell manufacturers, measured by the ratio of capital expenditures to revenues. If all goes as planned, Wall Street analysts should eventually be able to predict how much additional revenue NanoSolar will generate for every dollar it spends to increase manufacturing capacity-- a heretofore difficult feat in the solar industry.

Yet another example of printing technology making its way into manufacturing (something we've previously written about in early 2004, late 2004, and late 2005). But why do this here in the Valley? According to the Mercury News,

[CEO Martin] Roscheisen [whose "great great grandfather founded the Germany's first regional electricity utility," according to SiliconBeat] said Nanosolar decided to open a factory in the Bay Area, rather than in China or another developing nation, because being close to its R&D center in Palo Alto was important, and because labor costs are a relatively small part of the overall operation since so much is automated.

It's also a good bet that there will be a lot of tweaking that'll have to be done to the manufacturing process as they ramp up, and having the R&D and manufacturing people close together will make it easier to deal with problems. You can only successfully outsource what you understand well.

Technorati Tags: manufacturing, printing, Silicon Valley, solar power

Future of search: tags?

James Altucher argues in the Financial Times (sub req) that "The next killer application in the field of Internet search engines is tagged searching across multiple social networking sites"-- and that Yahoo! could be a the big winner in this game:

Yahoo has quietly acquired Del.icio.us and Flickr.com. Terms were not disclosed.

How come? Because they were so cheap they aren't material to Yahoo. Yahoo gets content and user experience.

Lloyd Braun, the head of content (and former head of entertainment at television channel ABC-- think Lost and Desperate Housewives-- both of which he developed) has been spearheading these efforts to get into tagged search.

And Terry Semel, former head of Warner Brothers and now chief executive of Yahoo, is no stranger to content either. Yahoo will dominate the tagged search arena and advertisers will stand up and take notice.

Technorati Tags: folksonomy, search, social software

links for 2006-06-26

• Keeping Faith in China - New York Times
  "The total number of Chinese Christians today probably exceeds 40 million, and some estimates go far higher.

  "This is growing explosively," said Wang Wenjing, baptized a year ago and now caretaker of the Ark Church, a prominent underground church whose

  
  
  (tags: China religion)
  
  

links for 2006-06-25

• Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
  "In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone."
  (tags: america communication culture society networks)

links for 2006-06-24

• Kathy Vian: “Las redes saben decidir mejor” de Novatec
  An interview (in Catalan, I think) with IFTF director Kathi Vian.
  (tags: IFTF future endofcyberspace technology)

Adam Greenfield on Everyware

Adam Greenfield gave a talk at the Institute today. Here are the notes:

What

AG's notion of ubicomp draws on Weiser's vision of computing being "invisible but everywhere around us" (weiser 1990), built upon very cheap computing "spread around like grass seeds", and "embedded, wireless, imperceptible, multiple, and post-gui" (AG, 2006).

This would generate new kinds of modalities of interaction, particularly design "dissolving into behavior."

It would also allow for the instantiation of computing and interaction with it at a wide variety of physical scales, at the level of the body (Body Media SenseWear), the object, the room (Sensasell), the building, the street (Shinjuku RFID lamppost).

But they're also networked together, which allows for some really interesting interactions; and hard to see, literally and figuratively (because you can't detect or sense embedded computing). So what does this look like?

Meaning

In the PC age, you have clear interactions and presentations of self: it's obvious to others that you're online, and it's obvious to you what technologies you're using (or are studying you). In everyware, in contrast, users aren't knowingly engaged in a technical interaction; they're surrounded by many devices, systems and services; their positions (location, orientation) matter.

"The way the self is perceived is beyond the user's control."

Desigers "need to take particular care in crafting these experiences, because... everyware can be engaged" inadvertently, unknowingly, or unwillingly.

When

Isn't this all science fiction? No. Here are three straws in the wind:

Octopus (1997): RFID-based smart card infrastructure in Hong Kong, adopted by 95% of the population, and is used constantly-- at vending machines, public transportation, as a key, an e-money. You don't get much more ubiquitous than this.

New Songdo (2004): Korea's ubiquitous city, filled with RFID, sensors, etc..

Mastercard Paypass (2005): RFID-embedded credit card. Market research suggested that people would spend more when they can just swipe and go; but it hasn't worked out, in part because Paypass is more of a stand-alone system than Octopus. Still, it's a signal that these kinds of everyware are coming to the U.S.

Why Do It?

Why are companies into it?

• Money.
• Structurally latent. IPv6 gives enough address to provide a vast number of addresses.
• "It's technically sweet."
• Public safety.

How

How to design systems that respect prerogatives of civil liberties, privacy, etc.? AG suggests five ethical principles:

1. Default to harmlessness. Everyware "should default to a mode that ensures their users' safety." It's beyond graceful degredation, because everyware takes so much responsibility upon itself to take care of people.
2. Be self-disclosing. You should be able to see what systems are operating in a space, both to geeks and to people who aren't wired up. This requires "a new universal vocabulary of signs" for everyware; and the ability to look under the hood.
3. Be conservative of face. Everyware should not "unnecessarily embarrass, humiliate or shame their users." Nor should it completely dissolve the boundaries of privacy that people expect.
4. Be conservative of time. Don't "introduce undue complications into ordinary operations." Having physical equivalents of Clippy the Office Assistant would be a pain.
5. Be deniable. Everyware "must offer users the ability to opt out, always and at any point." If ubicomp systems offer some functionality and benefit, opting out should just turn those off. (How do you opt out of being photographed by surveillance cameras?)

Technorati Tags: design, digital-physical, end of cyberspace, Everyware, IFTF, pervasive computing, ubicomp

A Fresh look at Consumer Robotics

Recently took another look at what I call consumer robotics. That is, robotics that are useful in the average home. Have been reading about useful robot butlers for a very long time (the 60s?). They are still not there, but applications like the floor-sweeping Roomba got me interested again. Also has some implications regarding how consumers will clean their homes in the future, of interest to us. Just did a quick search to get an update and discovered the blog Robot Stock News, which covers the work at IRobot quite nicely and appears to be up to date. It would appear that IRobot has more happening in the military world than with home care. Notably in their PackBot applications. Meanwhile Clorox is still making fluid for the Scooba floor washer, though the arrangement has received some critical comment. The Japanese work on eldercare robotics may the most important for consumer applications in the home in coming years, though what I have seen so far seems to be overplayed. Worth following closely, though. The Economist provides a broader perspective.