IFTF's Future Now

Amateurs versus professionals

A pretty good overview of the debate over amateur versus professional media creation at Knowledge@Wharton.

Of course, in most cases the answer will be "both." The real debate will be over the details.

Technorati Tags: amateur, DIY, pro-am

Cool bar

The i-bar, a 10 meter-long bar that's also an interactive display.

Technorati Tags: displays, entertainment, pervasive computing, ubicomp

The future, by Braniff

Via city of sound, a fabulous 1975 (update: or possibly 1965) commercial about the future of air travel:

The commercial is like a catalog of things that make futurists' professional lives hard.

• The design tries really hard to Look Like the Future. Everyone is wearing these robe-and-cowl things (the women look like Bene Gesserit going clubbing). Chairs have been replaced by giant eggs. (Perhaps in the future people are hatched; the commercial doesn't go there, thankfully.)
• Absolutely ordinary human activities have been automated. People don't walk any more: instead, their chairs are pushed around by robots or something.
• More seriously, the commercial makes the classic mistake of positing vast technological changes, with no accompanying social changes. When you watch, notice that the pilots are all men, and the cabin crew is all female. This is something you see in lots of "home of the future" exhibits. Geoffrey Nunberg wrote about this (PDF) so eloquently, it should be called the Nunberg Error.

But, on the plus side, the commercial does have a personal jet pack.

Technorati Tags: airport, future, travel

FCC Report on TV

The FCC released its 12th annual report on TV competition.  It is 162 mind-numbing pages of acronyms, stats, footnotes and government speak.  Highlights are:

1.  the death of TV hasn't quite happened yet as the average american household watched 8 hours and 11 minutes of TV per day last year.  This was an all time record.

2.  The average american person in the average amercan household watched 4 hours and 32 minutes, another all time record.

3.  There are 109.6 million TV households in the US, up from roughly 100 million in 2000.  65.4 million have cable, 26.1 million have satellite, and 15.4 million rely on traditional TV station broadcasts.  The rest (2.7 million) have a mix of things the FCC refers to as "wireline and wireless other". 

The report is available in pdf and word formats.

iTunes ministore, privacy, and the future of information

Recently, as many people know, there was a little flurry over the latest version of iTunes and its Ministore feature. It took off on the 11th when Boing Boing reported that

A new version of Apple's iTunes for Mac appears to communicate information about every song you play to Apple, and it's not clear if there's any way to turn this off, nor what Apple's privacy policy is on this information.... iTunes [6.0.2] had a new pane in the main window -- the "Mini-Store" which showed albums and tracks for sale by the artist whose song was presently playing.

The story broke earlier in the day on since1968. Some of the reactions to the feature were easily predictable: privacy advocates protested; others have defended Apple specifically; and a very few have taken the attitude that computers are dangerous places, and if you're not prepared to defend yourself, too bad. As the debate over it progressed, it struck me that there were a couple interesting things emerging from it.

One was the character of the objections to the service. Some people complained about the fact that iTunes was collecting information about people were listening to-- indeed, what songs they were clicking on. A small number of people complained that the service wasn't very good, and that the recommendations were kind of unsurprising. But many people didn't object so much to the idea of having a recommendations system built into iTunes, but that it turned itself on without first obtaining the user's permission.

In other words, the debate wasn't focused exclusively around the fact that information was being collected; it was the conditions under which it was gathered, and the quality of the service. For some, the failure to disclose is the bigger of the two problems. Rob Griffith's piece in Macworld is illustrative:

Yesterday, Apple’s iTunes 6.0.2 update was released, and offered these features, according to the Read Me:

iTunes 6.0.2 includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.1.

What it also offered, but didn’t bother to disclose, was the addition of a bit of potential spyware to the iTunes interface. As reported originally on since1968.com, and then followed-up on boingboing and other sites, the new iTunes MiniStore, which appears directly below the song list area in the main iTunes window, watches what you click on in iTunes and sends that information across the Web to a remote server. When you double-click a song to play in your Library or playlists, the display in the mini-store changes to reflect ‘matches’ based on what’s been selected, as seen below....

[T]his isn’t about the MiniStore itself. It’s about Apple’s attitude in rolling this change out to the millions of iTunes users, without as much as a peep about what’s going on behind the scenes.

No company, even one I admire as much as Apple (I did spend nearly five years of my life working there), should start transmitting personal data over the Internet without my explicit permission and a clear explanation of how it’s being used. In addition, if a company is collecting this information, I have a right to know exactly what’s being collected, and what the company plans on doing with my personal information.

"[A]lso offered, but didn’t bother to disclose:" as I read it, the non-disclosure is where things go wrong.

Another commenter drew an interesting distinction when they wrote,

When iTunes reports back to base what you’re playing it’s evil. When Last.FM reports back what you’re playing it’s really neat.

Last.FM is a service that collects this data and uses it to construct recommendations, and to identify people whose musical tastes are similar to yours. In other words, it's equal parts recommendation system and social software.

The comparison is noteworthy. First, Last.FM a service that you sign up for: you register an identity, download some software onto your computer, and activate the software. It's impossible to accidentally be part of it. Second, users get something out of it: the chance to find out about music that they might not otherwise hear, and to find out about people who share their tastes. Third, the service doesn't tie recommendations to sales in a straightforward way: in other words, it's not gathering information about you in order to more effectively sell you stuff.

One other notable aspect of the l'affaire iTunes was how quickly users figured out what was going on. By the end of the 11th, so far as I can tell, people had figured out what information iTunes was sending out; when it sent it out; and where the information was going.

So what does this all tell us?

Recommendations and social software-like services are going to have an element of transparency, whether you like it or not. For companies, until there's a magic communications technology that makes it possible for computers to send information without users finding out about it-- which these days basically means something akin to telepathy-- it's worth assuming that people will find out what you're doing. (The same rule will probably hold true for RFID, which communicates wirelessly.)

For users, this means knowing that a service you sign up for will be gathering information about you; the question is whether you what you get out of the deal makes that worthwhile. After all, people make these bargains all the time, even if they don't think about them in quite this way. There's a piece of software that reads every single e-mail message I get, even before I see it. Sounds scary, right? It's called a spam filter. There's also a company that knows every single thing I've bought with my credit card; it's called my credit card company, and one reason they gather that information is to prevent malicious use of credit cards. In each case, the trade of surveillance for additional security feels worthwhile.

But such exchanges are going to become more a feature of our lives online, as more companies try to exploit the value of recommendation services, as more software is built with the assumption that you're always online (are there any Apple dashboard widgets that work if you're not on the Web?), and as more people discover the virtues of being always connected. Trading privacy is, in a sense, implicit in a move to a more pervasive, always-on, social software-enhanced world; the challenge at this point may be to understand what you're getting into, and to pressure developers to design these services in ways that minimize the downsides.

(This leaves unanswered a deeper question: whether the preservation of this kind of information-- in the form of log files, giant databases, etc.-- itself constitutes a problem. As Slate recently commented about the DOJ-Google fight, "however brave Google's current stance may be, the legal debate over Google's compliance misses the deeper and more urgent point: By keeping every search ever made on file, the search-engine companies are helping create the problem in the first place.")

The controversy also suggests that opt out should be the default. Apple has released another version of iTunes that asks people if they want to use the service, and informs them that it can be turned off; once that came out, the controversy pretty much disappeared. Offer people the opportunity to sign up, but don't just do it and force them figure out how to disable the service later.

Technorati Tags: itunes, pervasive computing, privacy, social software, ubicomp, Web 2.0

Virtual guitar, real game

Recently we noted the Virtual Air Guitar project, and the philosophical contradictions therein (namely, creating a virtual version of what's already a virtual activity). Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson writes in Slate about the new Guitar Hero Playstation game, the growing popularity of new kinds of game controllers, and its implications for the boundaries between games and reality.

First, Guitar Hero. It's a "game," inasmuch as you play it on a Playstation. But basically, what you do is, well, play guitar:

Strap on your Guitar Hero SG controller, plug-in, and CRANK IT UP. Guitar Hero™ creates all the sensations of being a rock star, as you rock out to 30 of the greatest rock anthems of all time and more.

Soundtrack includes songs as made famous by such legendary artists as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie, Boston, Sum 41, Ozzy Osbourne, Audioslave, White Zombie, Franz Ferdinand, and The Ramones. So kiss that air guitar goodbye and get ready to rock.

(Interesting mix of generations there: I'd guess the universe of players who'd listen to both Boston and Sum 41 is pretty small.)

Why's this matter? Game-specific controllers have, with very few exceptions, been the kiss of death for video games. But that may change, Johnson argues:

With its upcoming Revolution console... Nintendo will ship its next-generation box with a remote-control-shaped wand that tracks motion on three axes....

Nintendo has figured out that gamers don't want to pay an extra $20 with each game just to have a unique controller. That's why the Revolution wand has a tiny port on the bottom into which you can plug other control mechanisms. Need a guitar? All a manufacturer has to do is build a cheap, plastic shell with a few buttons. And all you'll have to do is slide the Revolution controller inside and go. With the promise that every single Revolution console will have the wand to build off of, developers will surely take more design risks.

Golf clubs and baseball bats seem likely. We'll almost certainly see swords. Even baby dolls could be rigged to accept the Revolution controller as part of a family simulation, à la the Sims. If the Revolution makes the price of peripherals negligible, we may be entering a new stage of gaming: the virtual reality era. Instead of trying to force our way into worlds with awkward headsets and body suits, we'll be doing the next best thing: taking a little bit of the game out of the virtual world and putting it into our own two hands.

Technorati Tags: digital/physical, games, music

iPod my ride

Institute friend Peter Hesseldahl writes about iPod integration now influencing car buying:

Several people (no, not from Denmark) have told me how the integration of an ipod with the stereo system was a major factor when they choose their new, expensive car. Amazing how a $250 gadget can determine the purchase of product that's a hundred time more expensive.

Übercool adds to the story:

Few carmakers realize it yet, but seamlessly integrating an Apple iPod with a new automobile is influencing a lot of car buyers.

In one sense it's amazing, as Peter says; but two bigger trends make it make more sensible.

First, plenty of car buyers expect to spend a lot of time in their cars. In major metropolitan areas in the U.S., drivers can spend a couple hours a week-- or, added all together, several days a year-- commuting to and from work (see below). Then add shopping, chauffering kids, etc., and you get a substantial amount of time.

(Source: U.S. Census press release)

This connects to the second trend. More people-- in particular, families in the U.S.-- treat cars not just as transportation devices, but as living rooms. It's where families catch up; sometimes where they eat; and increasingly cars are equipped with comfy chairs, DVD players, and other entertainment systems. So having your music with you-- or more specifically, being able to carry some functionality from your living room to the car-- shouldn't come as a surprise.

Or perhaps the connection comes from another source: cars = mobility; iPod = mobility; ergo, cars = iPod.

What'll really be amazing is if bicycle designers start playing around with iPod integration: adding little speakers on the handlebars, say.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cars, ipod, travel

It's the reference to pervasive computing that makes it

The Virtual Air Guitar: all you need is a rock'n'roll attitude

As computers learn how to enhance and augment every form of human endeavour, it was only a matter of time before talentless, uncoordinated individuals such as your humble writer could indulge their musical ambitions and produce sounds to match those in their dreams - and the Virtual Air Guitar project appears to be well on the way to setting would-be musicians free, without the need for even an instrument.

When someone writing about the virtual air guitar can invoke pervasive computing, you know some kind of tipping point has been reached.

But wait a minute. The term "virtual air guitar" ought to be a mind-bending logical construction. After all, air guitar isn't a thing, it's an activity-- playing an imaginary guitar. But the virtual air guitar layers technology atop this imaginary activity, and makes it real: you actually generate chords when you're "playing" the virtual air guitar.

As Keanu Reeves said in The Matrix, "Whoa."

Technorati Tags: digital culture, digital/physical

d.j. DIY

A couple months ago, I had the chance to write an op-ed piece for the San Jose Mercury News about how the iPod becomes the myPod (short version: it's the music, stupid), and how, while we think of personal music players as, well, personal, they're likely to get more social in the future. Wired News reports on a phenomenon moving the iPod in that direction: bars and clubs having the equivalent of open mike nights, or stereo systems in which people can plug in their iPods and share their music with other patrons:

iPods Top Jukeboxes, DJs

The jukebox at the bar Brian Toro manages isn't gathering dust just yet -- but it may only be a matter of time. The popular nightspot is among a growing number of places across the country where people can bring their iPods and other portable music players and, for as long as the bartender allows, share their personal favorites with the crowd.

"Everybody wants to be a DJ," says Toro, a 29-year-old Californian who recently moved to Chicago and now manages Bar Louie in the city's Gold Coast neighborhood. "People enjoy having a little control in their lives."...

Experts who track technology trends say they're not surprised people are sharing more music in public.

"It's the same thing as sharing a hot new 45 or tape or CD," says Susan Barnes, associate director of the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York.

She also sees it as more proof that -- while some have accused a new wave of music listeners of shutting out the world with their headphones -- technology is actually encouraging people to socialize.

"All this stuff is set up for people to meet other people -- not isolate," Barnes says.

John von Seggern, a laptop DJ and producer in Los Angeles, also sees DJing as part of an overall movement toward decentralizing control of many forms of media -- whether it be through podcasting, blogging or musicians and authors offering their work direct for downloading on the internet.

This is also interesting as an early, DIY example of one of the fixtures of the pervasive computing vision: the availability of hardware that users can borrow for limited, negotiated periods of time. (See Roy Want's discussion of the personal server for an example.)

Technorati Tags: cooperation, ipod, music, pervasive computing

More work for mother, more commercials on the DVR

If you asked a roomful of historians of technology to list the books that impressed them most as students, and demonstrated the power of the discipline to surprise and illuminate, one of the books that would end up on a lot of lists is Ruth Schwartz Cowan's More Work for Mother.

The book asked a simple question: why was it that, almost a century after the introduction of labor-saving technologies in the home, women spent almost as much time doing housework as their grandmothers? The answer was that while the washing machine, vacuum cleaner, and other household appliances have made individual tasks easier-- it's certainly easier to put clothes in a washing machine than to do them by hand-- the appliances have also changes who does housework, and how often those tasks are done. (Details are in the extended post.)

The big lesson is, to understand technologies, you've got to pay attention to how technologies fit into people's lives, and how they affect patterns of behavior-- not just what they're intended to do. Today's Mercury News has a piece that serves as a reminder of this lesson: apparently, while DVR (digital video recorder) users fast-forward through commercials, they watch more hours of TV, so it may all be a wash. Says the article:

Even though nine out of 10 people with digital video recorders say they usually fast-forward through commercials, broadcast executives argued Wednesday that doesn't mean the death knell for advertisers.

People with DVRs watch more television, and even if they zip through ads, they notice them....

[T]he industry's chief fear is that people with DVRs will completely tune out commercials.

That's not completely unfounded: a CBS survey found 64 percent of DVR users said they always skipped commercials and another 26 percent said they skipped them most of the time. A separate study by Forrester Group put the ``skip'' rate at 92 percent.

But Alan Wurtzel, NBC's chief researcher, said it was an ``urban myth'' that DVRs make commercials worthless.

The networks said their research showed that a majority of people are watching their screens even while darting through the ads, and most of these notice the ads. (Still unanswered is how much these spots are sinking in as they speed by.)

More people are also likely to say they skip ads when they actually don't, they said.

This suggests that the challenge for advertisers may be to design commercials that can get their message across in, say, 5 or 10 seconds-- short enough so that viewers find it easier to sit through them than use the fast-forward function-- or find other ways to adapt to viewers who watch more TV, but have the capacity to cut (but not eliminate) the amount of attention they give to ads.

There was another interesting point:

The ability to watch without being tied to a schedule can significantly increase the visibility of programs that might not be appointment viewing. For example, people with DVRs are watching the WB shows "Supernatural" and "Smallville" at more than twice the rate of people without the machines.

Technorati Tags: smart_home, STS, television, work