Off Course-On Target

Is the Sky Really Falling?

I recently read the article "AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010", which is pretty much summarized by the title and the opening line:

"U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010."

You can read more in the article, although they digress into some net neutrality issues.  However, this latest prediction reminds me of similar predictions throughout history that "the end is near", and I'd like to explore them further here.

The "Limits" of Physics

I can recall back in about the late 80's when experts were making similar predictions and warnings that we had reached the upper limit of how fast data could be transferred through phone lines via modems—9600 baud! These same experts claimed that we'd reached the limits of physics and it was just a "fact" that we needed to accept. 

As we can now see (with the benefit of hindsight, of course) that entirely new materials and techniques, such as optical fibre, compression algorithms and other breakthroughs, were developed to get around some of the limits that existed for wire-based data transfer. Wikipedia has a good history of modems, bandwidth, and the inventions along the way.

It's interesting to note that these types of warnings and stories are usually accompanied by quotes from the experts and other "facts", which prove that they are "true" and inevitable.  It reminds me of this quote from a  great scene in the movie Men in Black:

"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

BTW, you can find this quote and just about any other kind of movie-related trivia from the handy Internet Movie Database.

The "Limits" of Technology

Going much further back, dire warnings in the late 1800's said that we needed to seriously curtail the expanding use of horses, cows, and beasts of burden or else the planet would soon be covered in several feet of manure!  The experts had "done the math" and this was an inevitable and irrefutable prediction. But ooops! We didn't allow for the invention of the internal combustion engine, electrical power, and other energy sources that significantly reduced our reliance on animal-based power. Of course, we also didn't anticipate the whole new series of problems and challenges of global warming that many might argue make the manure problem look like a good one!

I sometimes have the sense that some of the more dire predictions about global warming and other imminent disasters are similarly exaggerated and misdirected. Please do NOT misconstrue my comments here to mean that we have nothing to worry about or to work on. I want to champion quite the opposite reaction!  To be sure, all of us have much to be concerned about. We need to be more diligent and work harder than ever to ensure the sustainability of ourselves and our environment so that we can ensure an ever brighter future for us all. 

The "Limits" of Human Capacity, Foresight, and Imagination

History has shown that we are capable of doing some VERY stupid things and can exhibit great ignorance and lack of foresight.  However, as illustrated by my prior examples, history also shows that we need to take into account our even greater human capacity for invention, discovery, creativity, innovation, and design.

I'm sure that many of you may have similar Chicken Little "the sky is falling" * stories, and I'd be most appreciative if you'd post these to your blogs or send comments here to help all of us learn from these historical examples.

I'm was in Mexico recently and I'm told that the story of Chicken Little (and the saying "the sky is falling") are well known there and translates to El Cielo Se Esta Cayendo. For those not familiar with this reference the previous link will give you the background.

In the end, I have huge faith in our collective powers for invention, creativity,  innovation and designing solutions. What we need to watch out for is the flip side of this where we become smug, arrogant, or cynical based on what we "know for sure" today.  I hope that examples such as this latest prediction about the limits of Internet capacity will only serve to help us balance these forces and inspire and motivate us all to work towards new ways to improve our lives and those of all others. 

Rather than imagine what we'll know for sure tomorrow, imagine if ................ Not only is the sky NOT falling, it is the limit of what is possible.

Musical Snowflakes Continue to Fall All Around Us

The world of music continues to be one of the richest sources of examples for the Snowflake Effect, where mass personalization, mass customization, mass contribution are all available to try.

The list of examples continues to grow exponentially.  A "Do It Yourself/ Build Your Own" model calls for a radical redesign, and this is what most products and services will need to adopt if they expect to survive in the future.

If you haven't tried using this aspect of mass personalization in the music services area, I'd recommend you check out the "Social Music Overview" page from TechCrunch for a list of options and a brief overview of each. Then, to best understand and evaluate the experience and the potential, you really need to try it yourself. 

See if you think that there is no turning back now. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back!  The vector of mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect is inevitable and will become the expectation that we have for most products and services, because we now know it is possible—a great thing from my perspective. But let me know your reactions and experiences as well.

Right now though, I'd like to bring a few of the newer developments and advancements from the world of music to your attention. 

Slacker isn't!

My first example is Slacker, and contrary to its name (in many cultures the word "slacker" refers to someone who does not try or work very hard), this site is a real winner. It's currently my top pick for the Snowflake Effect as its applied to music. 

You'll find a good overview of Slacker in this PC Mag review. On TechCrunch, you'll see that the founders of Slacker (each of whom is an online music veteran) have very big ambitions indeed.  In addition to their Web-based music service, which will compete with others such as Pandora, MOG, and Last.FM, Slacker is about to release (Dec 2007) a new portable player, which is reviewed here and is pictured on the left. This new portable player is WiFi-enabled, so you can have music streamed right to it, and synch it with your desktop and music collection. They have also announced a satellite car kit so you can have this music wherever you are. 

One notable addition over most other music personalization services is that the desktop version of Slacker (Windows only for now unfortunately) enables you to incorporate your own music library in the mix. What most impressed me, however, was the well designed interface that enables new degrees of personalization.  I'm referring to the overall human computer interface, not just the way it looks. 

Slacker is impressive and a significant improvement over other services. You can do as much or as little customization as you like quickly and easily. And no matter where you leave off in this customization, Slacker works to the maximum degree possible.

For example, my former favorite, Pandora, requires that you provide constant feedback by indicating that you like or don't like each song. If you stop providing this feedback, then it stops playing after an hour or two. This is all very understandable since it can't continue to improve without some additional input, so it knows if the music is continuing to be just right for you at just that time or not. However, most of us are unwilling or unable to constantly provide this feedback for every song while it is playing—at least not by the current norm of manually clicking a thumbs up or thumbs down button or a 1-5 star rating.  This method is too interruptive on a continuous basis. 

Slacker, in contrast to all the others I know, is set up to do the best it can with however much feedback you give it. Obviously the more you give, the more you get. However, that Slacker will continue to work very hard at playing music that is as personalized as possible to the information you've given it is a huge improvement.

I'm very big on the "discovery factor" of this kind of personalization, and this is another big plus of Slacker, which is why I'm using this as my current best example. As you use the Slacker interface to personalize the music, you are constantly exposed to more and more alternatives. Yet this does not overwhelm you with too much choice, because you can take it or leave it. Again, Slacker maximizes as much feedback as you've given it and keeps on playing great personalized music.  One particularly valuable new function is the ability for you to set the "discoverability" factor to any degree you like.  This is nicely summarized in the PC Mag review:

"To tweak your listening experience further, Slacker provides four ingenious fine-tuning options. Artist Discovery lets you control how much variety you'll get beyond the chosen artists (a lot, a little, or none at all), and Popularity determines whether you get "fringe" song selections, "hits," or something in between. The Favorites tool determines how often the selected station plays those songs you've tagged as favorites. Finally, there's Year, which narrows the selection to Classic, Older, Recent, or Current. (You can leave all these options set to Auto if you'd rather not get so specific.) Neither Last.fm nor Pandora offer anywhere near this kind of fine-tuning; the most you can do is vote yea or nay on the current song selection (which you can do in Slacker as well)."

Social.FM

Want more examples of the richness of the music world?  Check out the just released Social.fm, which is (as you might guess) a widget designed for  music sharing within social networks, such as FaceBook. Read the Nov. 12th Webware review "Social.fm rolls out fancy looking Facebook app, DIY widgets for everyone else" for a good overview of this new service. In addition to a nicely integrated FaceBook version, Social.fm has also announced that they are working on integrating better with with Google's OpenSocial initiative.  This is worth keeping an eye on IF and as OpenSocial creates a standard that enables interoperability for widgets across all applications and OS.  This is still a long way off and somewhat of a long shot, but it's very much worth rooting for and following up on.

Social.fm's announcement of Social.fm Mobile is also great example of convergence. This technology turns your smartphone into a music player for everything from your own music collection to digital radio and podcasts,

So, are you Off Course from your usual thinking, and where you are looking?  Most likely. But On Target? Even more likely!  Enjoy your experiential learning and I'll be back soon with more.

The Lego of Gadgets

How could I not like Rafe Neeleman's recent posting on Webware called "Bug Labs: The Lego of Gadgets"?!  Here's so many of my favorite themes all wrapped into one: Lego block modularity, mashups, gadgets and the whole DIY ethic (Do It Yourself). 

OK, I confess to having a severe gadget addiction that dates back to my early youth in an earlier era where it manifested as hot rods, restoring antique cars, woodworking, metalworking, sewing, and other pursuits. The DIY gene is very dominant in me (along with just being plain cheap). A friend and I were just discussing this idea this past weekend, when it worked out "cheaper" to go buy a new MIG welder and some other tools to build some custom stainless steel brackets that were going to cost too much to have made by a local shop:

DIY labor = less $$ + new toys tools

What's not to love about that formula?

If you have any similar tendencies, do take the time to check out the Bug Labs site. It appears to be the work of a very passionate group—my favorite kind of people! On their new web site, their stated inspiration is:

There are so many great gadget ideas that haven't been thought of yet. With BUG, we want to unlock and inspire the discovery and creation of as many of these devices as possible.

Right now, they have a "BUGbase" unit (image left) which is the size of an old tape cassette (remember those? If not ask your parents) and is (their site described it); "a small hackable Linux computer" that has the basic components you need for most devices such as a CPU, USB, LCD interface, battery, WiFi, etc.

 

Some of their initial add on hardware modules (image at right) include a GPS, digital camera/videocam, touch sensitive color LCD screen and an accelerometer/motion sensor—all of which snap together with the BUGbase, of course, and can be programmed with the open source software SDK.

They apparently have a full development environment called Eclipse which is also open source and according to Rafe's posting, "looks to be philosophically similar to the Bug hardware—that is, highly modular."

While Bug Labs is still pretty high up the geek/DIY echelon, I do hope that this is evidence of an evolution towards a more modular and interoperable level, enabling mashups for hardware, much as we are seeing on the software side with widgets and the like. 

 

Once again however widespread adoption will depend upon the emergence of standards, be they de facto or de jure that will make everyone's modules interoperate and "snap together". What would Lego blocks be without standard "pin" size?! 

On the good news side we are seeing how something like the relatively ubiquitous USB connector has sparked an explosion of devices that all work off this same standard (even with the slight hiccup of there now being two USB connectors—A and B). This ability to use the same cords to plug any USB compatible device into any USB port has been a huge improvement in the interoperability of hardware and the exchange of power and data between such devices as cell phones, cameras, GPS, scanners, printers, etc. Heck, some of them even span the great Windows/Mac divide! 

On the other hand, no one seems to have been able to come up with a standard DC power plug in!  Even within the same manufacturer, it seems like every new laptop I get, for example, has a slightly different size connector, which renders all my other "brick" converters useless and means almost none of us can share them when we are together. 

So here's hoping that efforts like Bug Labs can start to make some significant progress towards standards that matter! In the meantime, all you DIYers like me, have fun creating more mashups, and be sure to share some of your creations with all of us.

Oh Really? - Computational Photography

One of the most significant trends shaping our future is the redefining of what is "real" and specifically, bringing everything and anything into heightened and full three-dimensionality (or more), definition, and fidelity. I refer to "real" in the sense that we believe it "exists", and that we are increasingly:

• Losing the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is unreal.
• Losing the ability to distinguish between originals and copies, real and synthetic, real and unreal, real and virtual, here and not here.

This trend includes such things as the so-called 3D web, virtual worlds, the Internet of Things, 3D scanning and printing, and 3D human/computer interactions and interfaces, to name but a few. Will there be any such thing as "unreal" in the future? 

Since I am fascinated with and fixated on this topic, I'm going to develop it as a theme. Perhaps we'll call it "Oh Really?" and pursue it much further over a long period of time here at Off Course - On Target (OCOT). I've previously written a few articles on this subject, such as Coming Soon to a Desktop Near you:  Massive Amounts of 3D for the Masses and will cover this area more, but we'll also get into some of the many other aspects of the changing (let's hope!) ways we interface and interact with technology and are making these much more "natural" and "real".

For today, I want to briefly bring your attention to some exciting new developments coming out of Adobe Systems R&D work on new 3D camera lenses and some software they've developed for processing the resultant images. As you'll see, this technology opens up whole new possibilities, not just for photography, but for some amazing new ways of "playing with reality" by enabling you to go back into previously photographed scenes and change the images. Adobe is referring to this "computational photography" and as with many of the stories we cover here at OCOT, this one is interesting not only for the specific example, but especially for the larger topics and issues it reveals. 

Here's the story and it comes most appropriately from Dave Story, Vice President of Digital Imaging Product Development at Adobe, pictured here (thanks to Audioblog.fr) holding the original lens.

For a quick overview of Adobe's research, you may want to start by checking out "Adobe shows off 3D camera tech" on Crave. This topic originates from a recent demo Adobe did in France showing their initial R&D work with a prototype camera lens consisting of 19 different lens elements that provided multiple views at slightly different angles and what Dave described as being a bit like what a multi-faceted insect's eye would see. 

Fortunately for us, Luc from Audioblog.fr was at the demo with his video camera and has put up this 10-minute video clip.  When you first get to this site, you will also see that we still have a way to go with machine translation (in this case by Google), but bear with it and be sure to check out the video at the end to get the best understanding of what "computational photography" might lead to.

Of course, the serious fun begins once the hardware and software can take over and use these multiple images and angles to enable some very new and different possibilities. For example, they are now able to dramatically extend the concept and functionality of a "brush" in terms of what you can do with a "virtual brush" when working on photo images. In the video (and this screenshot from it) you can see Dave Story use what he calls a "focus/unfocus brush" to go into a photo and shift the focus from one statue to another in the photo. He goes on to suggest that they can also create a "3D healing brush" that would enable you to, for example, get rid of an obstruction in the original photo.

You will also see how they are able to move the "camera" after the photo has been taken. The movement in this case is very slight, but this idea of being able to capture moments and then go back and manipulate them AFTER the FACT is one of those possibilities which are equally and concurrently frightening and exciting. Something very powerful is going on here. 

Imagine If

Take this out quite a bit further and consider the potential when we have a full set of 3D data for every single pixel in digital images!  Imagine the manipulation you could do to both still and moving images; think about how you could go back into a scene or a "captured moment" and look at things from different angles, perspectives and focus. We've already been seeing advances in video camera work on movies and in televised sporting events, where they are able to move the camera through a full 360 degrees and all six degrees of motion, but now imagine YOU being able to move and manipulate the imagery on your own AND AFTER the fact!

The Future is Already Here

Or consider the uproar that has already been happening around the 3D "maps" that Google, Microsoft, and others are creating by having 3D mapping trucks drive through an area (large cities for now), taking a complete set of digital and laser images of the entire area. These images are then stitched together, so you can go from a spot on a map to "being there", enabling you to look around from that spot and see a full 360 degree surround of what you'd see if you were "really" there. The concern, by the way, is over privacy (or lack thereof) , and of what would be captured by all these images, which are constantly being updated.

This is another one of those things you can really only learn and appreciate by experiencing it, so if you have not already done so try this(I'll use Google for this example, Microsoft and Yahoo offer similar features):

• Go to Google Maps.
• Click on the "10 Market Street" listed in the left window (or anywhere in San Francisco for that matter).
• click on the "Street View" button on the top of the map area.
• Move the "little orange person" icon that shows up on the map to some intersection on the map.
• Move your cursor around in the street level photo image that appears to look around.
• Move your orange person icon up or down the street to look around there.

Scary?  Exciting?  Make you think about more possibilities if this is just rev 1.0?? YES!

And we think we have problems now (and we do) with not being able to tell the difference between an "original" photo, and one that has been altered!  Just imagine the degree to which this technology scales those problems exponentially!  Apropos to our larger theme here of full 3D reality and blurring the distinction between what is real and what is not, you can easily see how this recent example of "computational photography" is taking us in that direction and dramatically transforming what were previously just 2D photos, maps, and images.

"Computational photography is the future of photography," Story said. "The more things we can do that are impossible to do in a camera, the more powerful people's ability to express themselves becomes."

Quite true, and so once again, the great question that arises from such exciting new technology developments is what will you, and we collectively, DO with such newfound capabilities?  And what might we want to agree NOT to do?  What uses can you think of applying this to?  What problems can you now resolve with this?

I hope you will enjoy our foray into the world of 3D and the new reality, which of course is really just a matter of us finally having technology and ourselves catching up to the world as it's always been; VERY real and very multidimensional.  Oh Really?

del.icio.us tags: computational photography, Adobe, Dave Story, reality, real, unreal, photography, 3D mapping, 3D, 3D lenses, Oh Really?

Technorati tags: computational photography, Adobe, Dave Story, reality, real, unreal, photography, 3D mapping, 3D, 3D lenses, Oh Really?

New Perspectives: The Benefits of Looking Up!

Alan Kay (sometimes referred to as the father of the PC, object oriented code, and much more) is credited with saying that "point of view is worth 80 IQ points". This is a catchy way of saying that consciously looking at problems and situations from multiple perspectives and constantly looking for new perspectives to solve problems is an extremely powerful technique and skill to develop.

I suspect that you have many examples in your own life, where you've come up with solutions or have been more creative in your problem solving using some version of this idea. This idea of helping others, as well as myself, to discover and utilize new perspectives is a strategy I use in most of my work, and is a primary goal for Off Course - On Target. So with this in mind, let's see if we can get a bit "smarter" by finding and using a few new perspectives.

Looking up

We humans have a natural tendency to look ahead and down much more than we look up.  It was always a successful strategy as a child playing hide and seek to climb up a tree or onto a top shelf in a closet. And anyone unfortunate enough to have spent time in a hospital bed or on a gurney knows how different the world looks from this perspective and how little attention is paid to ceilings! On the other hand I've noticed that dentists have taken notice and are putting things on the ceilings, such as paintings or televisions, for you to look at while you are reclining in the dentist's chair.

A very recent example of this new perspective of looking up is an exciting new feature in Google Earth called "Sky".  This simple,  but powerful new feature gives you the ability to choose a location on Earth and then turn the "camera" around to look up and see the sky. This amazing tool lets you see and explore stars, animations of the planets movement, zoom in on fabulous Hubble imagery and more. Here is a short video tour that shows Sky in action:

Based on my brief time with this new feature I see this as fun and functional.  How well did your school science courses help YOU understand the spatial relationships of the moon, earth, sun, and stars?  How well can you point out the different stars and constellations in the night sky to your children or others, explaining why they change depending on date and your location? Sky sure seems to help me a lot with this.

To continue with your experiential learning, something we are so fond of here at Off Course - On Target, I highly recommend that you download the newest version of Google Earth and take the Sky feature out for a spin. I think you too will find that it offers some serious fun and lots of learning as well.

And while you're up in the Sky, why not fly?

In some recent posts, I   emphasized the need to avoid what I've characterized as "flapping", that is, copying experts and models of the past, and instead have urged you to focus on the essential characteristics you are seeking to take off and fly.  So it struck me as a nice bit of serendipity to read of the recent discovery of a hidden flight simulator in Google Earth. These secret capabilities, referred to as "Easter eggs" are a favorite of some application developers.

Adding motion is a great way to gain a new perspective, so strap yourself into one of the two airplane options, an F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 seater, and try flying your way over your home region or anyplace else in the world you'd like to see.

To access the hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit Command+Option+A (must be capital A) or Ctrl+Alt+A.  Here is a full list of the keyboard controls for the Google Earth flight simulator. Fasten your seatbelt low and tight and welcome aboard! 

BTW, as you are flying around see how much the realism that comes from flying over photographic images of the "real" earth and sea starts to address some of the limitations of your experiences with less accurate virtual worlds that we've also mentioned in previous discussions, such as in my posting Virtual Lift Off?

Stars to Sea

Another way to use new perspectives is to find ways to tie two or more of them together.  For example, how can the benefits of looking up at the stars, help us when we are down on earth looking out and around us?   

Well, consider sailors who venture out into the open ocean and how extremely dependent they become upon knowing their precise location.  This, of course, helps us just as much with navigation on land. Many of you have experienced the benefits (and aggravations) of onboard GPS and navigation systems installed in new cars you may own or rent.  While modern day technologies, such as GPS and electronic charting, look after navigation with unprecedented ease and extraordinary accuracy, you always want to have a backup or two or three when your life depends upon it! Therefore, the ancient method of celestial navigation is still used as a backup by most who sail the open oceans. 

As an aspiring global sailor myself, I'm busy learning as much as I can about this art and science of finding your way by the sun, moon, stars, and planets, and I'm acquiring skills with sextants and the like. You can just imagine how much Google's Sky makes me "smarter" by helping me to learn these new concepts and skills.  Besides, I just love the juxtaposition of setting my sextant, an 18th-century technology, down beside my oh-so-very 21st-century latest, greatest, high tech GPS system and digital charting screen. 

What examples do you have of using inverted thinking and new perspectives to help you learn more, and be more creative in your thinking and problem solving? Please share your examples through your comments here at Off Course - On Target or in your own postings and I'll continue to do the same.

Thanks!

w
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del.icio.us tags: Sky, perspectives, astonomy, sextant, navigation, stars, sailors, celestial, sailing

Technorati tags: Sky, perspectives, astonomy, sextant, navigation, stars, sailors, celestial, sailing

Virtual Lift Off?

This is the last posting in my recent three-part series on "flapping", where we've been exploring how we are often off target when it comes to being innovative. We often try to replicate how things worked previously ("flapping") instead of focusing on the essential elements ("flying") to give us what we want.

In the first part "Confusing Flapping with Flying", I observed how we finally succeeded at flying when we stopped trying to copy birds and insects and instead focused on the essential elements of flight, such as lift. In the second part "No Future in Flapping", I introduced one of the most recent examples of "flapping"—virtual worlds such as Second Life.

To try to reduce our tendency for flapping or copying the past as we develop these virtual worlds, I asked you to think about the true value of being with people at conferences, in meetings, or in classrooms. What is it that is unique and valuable about these experiences? And to ask yourself how we can use something like virtual worlds to go after these essential characteristics and benefits on a greater scale and frequency. Hope you have given this some thought. Now let's look into this further.

First let me emphasize again that I am NOT suggesting that virtual worlds are a waste of time. Quite the contrary. I strongly encourage you to spend some time in virtual worlds, such as Second Life, if you have not done so recently. I also want to ensure that we don't reject or forget these innovations at this early stage of their evolution, since I'm convinced they will rapidly become significant for most of us. 

Looking more closely at the key characteristics of in-person experiences, we might notice for example that as most of us mature, we develop skills such as the largely unconscious ability to read the body language, gestures, facial expressions, eye movements, and voice inflections of others around us. We rely on these, in turn to figure out:

• Who we trust 
• Who we want to spend more time with 
• The person's mood 
• How interested the person is in our conversation 
• Whether a person agrees or disagrees

We also use many of these same elements to communicate with others in very important ways with a look, a wink, or a sigh. When we are together with others at conferences, meetings, and classes, the most value often comes from the serendipitous discovery of someone who is of great value, because they have deeply similar interests, experiences, or talents. How can we retain and enhance these when we are together virtually?

At the other end of the spectrum in-person gatherings have major limitations. You only have time to attend so many, can only afford the travel for a small number, and only benefit from those who join you in that same place and time. Even when you can be there in person, you usually only benefit from those who either speak your language fluently or when someone is available to provide translations.You also have very limited opportunities and methods of finding others who would be of most value to you. 

Can you see how this kind of analysis helps us to identify the essential elements we want to retain and equally the limitations we want to overcome? Doing so helps prevent us from our historic behavior of copying the past ("flapping"), and keeps us focused on innovating and improving ("flying"). When it comes to person- to-person interactions, meetings, and the like, how can we use something like virtual worlds to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of these essential elements and benefits that physical meetings provide, while concurrently reducing or eliminating their real world limitations?

I don't predict, nor really care if Second Life and Linden Labs are the ones to lead the way out of the flapping stage into much more innovative and beneficial applications. Indeed, history suggests that it will be others. No matter who it is, I'm convinced that things like virtual worlds and augmented reality will bring huge benefits and changes to our ability to learn, collaborate, work, and live together. However, this will await the inflection point that occurs when we focus on taking off and flying instead of running around "flapping" and perfecting the irrelevant. 

As you look at your own behaviors, as you evaluate and experience other "innovations" and the "next big thing", check to see if you are focused more on "flapping" or "flying".  I look forward to seeing you all at increasingly higher altitudes as we "fly" into the future together.

w
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No Future in Flapping!

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Thanks for your many responses to my recent podcast on "Confusing Flapping with Flying". Seems this "flapping versus flying" phenomenon is one that resonated with many of you and my posting helped to shift your thinking towards finding better solutions.

Several of you asked if I could elaborate on this topic more. Are there current. significant examples of this "flapping" model—replicating the patterns of past successes?

Virtual flapping doesn't work either!

The one example that leaps to mind might surprise you. I'm referring to Second Life, which I suspect almost all of you are at least somewhat familiar with. Second Life (often abbreviated SL) has been around for a relatively long time now (since 2003) and has been receiving a lot—some would say too much—attention, press, and hype. It is typically described as a 3D online virtual world that is, as their site puts it, "imagined, created and owned by its residents."  Second Life's Wikipedia entry provides more details, or you can do a quick search on "Second Life" or "virtual worlds" to find reviews, critiques and examples about it

First, let me get this out of the way right up front—I think that what Second Life has done is wonderful. It has done more than anything else to bring virtual worlds to the attention of more people. The hype/PR around it has been nothing short of stunning. SL will undoubtedly be recorded as one of the key milestones in the evolution of virtual worlds and the critical role they will come to play in our lives.

I'm also particularly delighted to see SL and other similar virtual worlds becoming readily accessible to anyone. Virtual worlds are no longer the domain of any one demographic and SL has caused a lot of people, organizations, and businesses to not only become aware of them, but to seriously change their thinking. Some have chosen to take the risks that are required with all major shifts and change. 

If you have not signed up, created an avatar, and spent some time in Second Life, I'd strongly encourage you to do. SL is yet another example where experiential hands on learning is about the only way to truly find out what it is all about and form your own opinions. 

I've only logged about 10-15 hours in SL and have not offered much comment on it or other virtual worlds to date because they are still very much in the "flapping" stage, but I'm anxiously awaiting their evolution and emergence into a more innovative stage of application and value.

While it's true that you really can fly in Second Life (and I suppose you could even flap your arms like a bird), at this point in time, in every other respect Second Life could be the poster child of my story about flapping. Almost everything in SL is an exact copy of our physical or "real world".  As a result, I've yet to see what is innovative or improved by this model. For example, these virtual worlds have exact copies of things like land, in the form of continents and islands. You can build buildings and other objects, you can buy and sell things with cash using "Linden dollars", you can walk around, go inside buildings, sit in desks and chairs, and play "dress up". Where's the innovation and benefits in this?

Yes, it is true that SL lets you meet up with anyone at any time. While this does eliminate some of the barriers and certainly the cost of physical meetings, what advantage does it have over other ways of collaborating via phone, video, Email, IM, and Twitter?   

I am NOT criticizing the technology so much as our limited thinking and use of these technologies. We'd do well to remind ourselves that almost any disruptive technology or innovation that goes on to become very important, starts out being awful or silly or both. Early versions are extremely limited, work very poorly and cost too much. But the essential elements and advantages are there as well if we can look past these early deficiencies. 

Do some of you remember those large heavy bricks some of us so proudly carried around called "mobile phones" for example? 

The first one (1984) weighed 2 pounds, offered 30 minutes of talk time, and sold for $3,995!  But now look where we are!  Here is a fun photo of Rudy Krolopp, lead designer of the first cell phone, posing with the DynaTAC8000X and Motorola's new Razr cell phone from the recent MSNBC article "First cell phone a true 'brick'".

Or for those who are a bit older, how about the first "portable computers" that were portable only in that they had a handle on the top of a 30 pound box! 

As the focus of innovation shifts more and more towards software, the characteristic problems of early innovations also shift from cost, size, or weight to the limited imagination of those developing and using them. In other words, the problem is staring back at us every morning in the mirror! The good news is that the solution is also staring back at us. 

Those flapping away in Second Life know there is a problem and that they are part of it. Proof of its limited advantages and benefits at this stage in the hype cycle that I discussed in a previous post, are clearly borne out by the behaviors of the SL "residents" or lack thereof. This problem was the focus of the recent Wired article "How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life", which details an experience that many find common—it is eerily empty. The lights are on but no one's home! This article questions the huge investment that many commercial companies are making to create a presence in Second Life with virtual corporate buildings, hotels, night clubs, restaurants, and the like. As the worldwide head of interactive marketing at Coca-Cola put it:

"There was nobody else around." He teleported over to the Aloft Hotel, a virtual prototype for a real-world chain being developed by the owners of the W. It was deserted, almost creepy. "I felt like I was in The Shining."

Some of the limitations are based on the current state of the technology and bandwidth. The "fidelity" is still rather limited so virtual worlds still look and feel very distanced from the reality they are trying to replicate. However, as we've seen countless times, such as the cell phone examples above, these limitations are relatively short lived. More rapidly than most people estimate, the performance goes up and the cost comes down—often at exponential rates. I won't digress into any details now, but three areas to keep your eyes on are the development of "presence" technology; high definition visualizations of 3D environments and objects such as people, animals, buildings; and augmented reality.

So let's try to stop flapping and start flying.  Think about this example of Second Life...its potential and its problems.

• What is it about being with people at conferences, in meetings or in classrooms that is unique and valuable?
• How can we use something like virtual worlds to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of these essential elements and benefits of physical meetings while concurrently reducing or eliminating their real world limitations?

See if you can discover what those essential elements are (the "flying" rather than the "flapping") and share them with me. I'll get back to you in a few days and give you my thoughts and ideas about it as well.

Flapping in the real world (something completely different and yet, the same)

Just so we don't completely dismiss the potential advantages of flapping though, I thought some of you would be intrigued by some recent news about the unusual flapping that enables bats and hummingbirds to be such amazing fliers. In the recent Scientific American article "Bat's Wings Strokes Unlike a Bird's" researchers have learned how these flappers are able to hover. In the case of bats, they seem to do so by turning their wings upside down as they flap.  Anders Hedenström of Sweden's Lund University, first author of one of these reports: 

".... that this seemingly awkward motion in fact produces lift, says theoretical biologist Anders Hedenström of Sweden's Lund University, first author of a report published online today in Science. "It actually generates a useful force also on the backswing, which is a very good thing when it hovers,"

Nice validation of our previous observation that one of the essential elements of flying is LIFT and that the point is not so much HOW you achieve lift, but just that you do! 

This study does have some very practical applications for we humans. Hedenström is currently talking to researchers who build small flying machines to see if the wind tunnel results can help out. As he says, the study "gives detailed information about how a small autonomous flying system works."

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Ambient and Informal Information Filtering

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If you are reading this, then you are probably aware of the growing challenge that we all face of information overload. Even if you don't suffer (as I do) from the medical version of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a global level of ADD seems to be affecting us all, because we simply have too many things to pay attention to. 

The Internet has helped us to discover that the more you learn, the more you find things that you don't know, but are interested in. On a daily basis, we are discovering more people, places, things, topics, professions, gadgets, and problems through more avenues than ever before. 

How many times do you find yourself asking "How did I get here?" after following some thread of interesting and related web links? How often do you ask a similar question in a conversation with a colleague or friend?  At least for me, this opportunity for overload on the Internet is one of those love/hate relationships...yet I want more!

BUT I also want to do more RELEVANT finding and learning. Now, I don't want anyone or anything to MAKE the decisions for me, but I'm desperately seeking assistance in making more decisions, faster and better. In other words, I'm looking for "decision support" that is designed to match the exponential increase of learning and information out there. 

This is hardly a trivial problem, nor is it one I suspect we'll have mastered anytime soon, but what I'm finding is that there is an increasing amount of decision support available. So I wanted to bring two kinds to your attention today (if you've got the time and attention?!).

I like to think of information as "that which informs".  It is a simple yet profound perspective that I've found extremely helpful. Claude Shannon, often referred to as "the father of information theory", put it best when he said "information causes change; if it doesn't it isn't information"  For me, information can take almost any form—text, people, drawings, graphics, machines—literally anything I can sense, I suppose. And it is only information if it is new to me, which could mean it is something I've seen before, something that itself might be very old, but is now in a new context, or now I'm able to understand it or see it in a new light. In other words, information is something relevant to what I'm thinking about or working on at the time. 

You can see how this is topic is such an important part of my focus on mass personalization, the Snowflake Effect, and getting everything "just right" as in just the right information to just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right way, etc.

Because if what IS information is all so personal and contextual, then information filtering is itself a tricky business. We only want to filter out the irrelevant stuff, yet that saying about "one person's garbage is another person's treasure" certainly applies to information and ideas. But I worry that serendipitous discoveries of great things will get lost in these information filters.

Therefore, I think that we humans will be a significant part of the process of successful information filtering, and at least right now, what we need is that decision support layer between us, along with the delightful deluge of choices. We need something to act as our personal agent to bring us more things which have a high probability of being relevant, while providing some tools and techniques that help us make better decisions faster.

Ambient Information?

Some of the best information filtering today seems to work very informally or indirectly. I've heard this referred to as "ambient information" by some and I think it's a good description. Ambient information is aimed at reducing data overload. It acts as a "decision support device" by moving the information into the world around us. It is a bit like staring up at the night sky and discovering that you can see clusters of stars best when you don't look at them directly but rather, off to one side. Here are two examples of what I'm referring to as informal information filtering and ambient information:

PARTiCLS:  Paying Attention to Personalized Aggregation

PARTiCLS is a web-based RSS application that appears on your desktop as a constantly scrolling set of headlines for you to consider. It's a bit like a scrolling stock ticker. Developed by the Australia-based startup behind APML, its co-founder Chris Saad described PARTiCLS as "an attention management engine for busy people who deal with a constant stream of incoming information." "Particls to take RSS Mainstream" by StartupSquad provides a more detailed review. I've been experimenting with a "pre-beta" version for the past few months and now it is available as a public beta (fascinating how the whole beta phenomena has evolved, isn't it?).

PARTiCLS is also a good example to me of the maturing of RSS. In particular, it provides a very "Grandma-friendly" interface (this is a reference to my recent "Going after Grandma" post). While RSS is popular with some audiences, it has not been at all friendly to the true masses, who have been slow to use it. Nor has RSS even begun to reach its potential. I'm convinced that RSS will continue to grow and evolve in importance, and applications such as PARTiCLS will help it to make inroads with the masses. It's worth a look.

I'm recommending that you try "learning by doing" with PARTiCLS is so you can experience a form of informal information filtering that I referenced at the outset of this post. To get started with PARTiCLS, you can simply enter any number of words, in any order. No syntax, no forms, just stream of consciousness; whatever comes to your mind at the time. The entry box is available at any time.  It lets you see what your terms are, and you can add or delete them as your interests change.

What I was REALLY hoping to see in future releases of PARTiCLS is the ability to monitor my "attention" and then for it to either start automatically adding appropriate terms to my list or recommending ones for me to add. I'm delighted to see that they have started down this path with "Auto-detected interest" and "Auto subscribe" features that scan your browsing history and detect some of your attention data, and then automatically subscribe you to new sites that you are visiting regularly. 

Something else that really sets PARTiCLS apart from other RSS readers and applications is its ability to sort out how important new information is to you and then use proportionally different means to alert you to it. For example, general information might be displayed on the news ticker that I mentioned earlier, whereas more important items might appear as a popup alert, and urgent information might be sent via SMS to your phone. PARTiCLS has also just added a new "inTouch" option that enables you to embed a PARTiCLS link on your web site or blog. When readers click on it, they can automatically use PARTiCLS to monitor topics that you cover.

I recommend that you take it out for a test drive, and let me know what your experience is like when you do. Does it have the right balance between being a form of "ambient information" or is it too distracting? How well does it help you sort out the important and relevant stuff for you?

Orbs

Even more indirect, informal, and perhaps effective are some emerging "ambient information devices" such as the Ambient Orb pictured here, as well as an ambient umbrella that glows when rain is likely to occur.  Ambient Devices (the company) positions this as being the best of both worlds of "push" and "pull" types of information distribution. In their article about the orb device, the New York Times said :

"This is ambient information''—the newest concept in how to monitor everyday data. We've been cramming stock tips, horoscopes and news items onto our computers and cell phones—forcing us to peer constantly at little screens. What if we've been precisely wrong?"

Since their introduction, some of which were dismissed as "just a fad", there have been some very successful and "serious" implementations. For example in the recent (Aug/07) Wired magazine article "Psst! You're Wasting Electricity", reporter Clive Thompson thinks that "the desktop orb could reform energy hogs".  His article cited the growing use of orbs or other forms of ambient information by power companies to help customers reduce their bills and their energy consumption. For example, Southern California Edison power company got its customers to reduce energy use by 40 percent. This was also after several very unsuccessful attempts using automated phone calls, text messages, and emails. 

With this success, I noticed that Ambient Devices is now selling this "Energy Joule" device that plugs into any wall socket and provides up-to-date readouts of the cost of the energy you are currently consuming. 

But it is this success at changing behaviors that I found to be most interesting and promising here. It fits very nicely with my previous notions of "decision support", since these devices are helping to manage the information overload and helping us make better decisions. 

You may have experienced another form of this if you have ever driven a vehicle with some a real-time fuel consumption readouts on the dashboard. Even better might be one that added the current cost of the fuel and read out in units that we all seem to understand very well and react to—money! 

Thompson goes on to suggest:

"Maybe the real killer app for ambient information isn't alleviating data overload or tracking investments. Maybe it's taming global warming. To improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions, we first need to make omnipresent the hidden facts about our usage—paint them on the world around us." 

Sounds a lot more effective and immediate that many of the other ideas out there and it is one that I could see actually changing behaviors and trends.

Already one company, DIY Kyoto has a device called Wattson that both monitors your energy consumption AND sends the data to a web site so you can compare your usage with others worldwide. As Thompson astutely notes in his Wired article: 

"The hope is that it could spawn a cascade of conservations. It's fun seeing your personal energy tab go down by kilowatts but just imagine watching the world's usage plunge by terawatts or petawatts.  Now that's fun."

For whatever purpose you might have, I'd strongly encourage you to do some experiential learning with these new forms of information filtering and decision support. I'd love to hear about your use of these models and how successful or not they are at changing behaviors and improving decisions.   

In future posts, I'm going to pick up on this idea of using fun for serious purposes, while it seems to produce important results. Stay tuned.

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Whither goes Web 2.0? The value of hype cycles

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I’ve been concerned for some time that hype often interferes with the adoption of powerful ideas, especially when the hype prevents us from seeing how these ideas change the way we think or view the world, or otherwise provide valuable nuggets that we can use later on. This problem is no less true for what has been happening with Web 2.0.

Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering apparently shares this same concern. I highly recommend you take some time to read his recent paper called “Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype" where he says:
 

“Problems not withstanding, we still feel that this emerging standard, combined with other new tools, such as AJAX and open source infrastructures, makes for a new and exciting environment. There's been a tremendous amount of hype surrounding all these new developments, but, for once, we are thinking that there really is some power that is beneath the hype that is worth paying attention to.”

Not only does he talk about the shortcomings of so much hype, but he also discusses a number of things that, parallel my own perspectives:

"The speed and ease at which these new applications were built is what is getting us very excited about the potential of the Web 2.0 world."

And speaking to the power of mashups, which I’ve addressed here at Off Course – On Target, he goes on to say:

"Evocative of Dr. Frankenstein building a monster in his attic laboratory using body pieces he found lying around his neighborhood, people with a little skill can create new applications using common elements found lying around the Web in almost no time at all. As the skill requirements for building these applications are decreasing, we think this opens a whole new world of possibilities."

Jared goes on to offer more examples of the emerging and lasting power of Web 2.0 characteristics such as APIs, RSS as an interface, folksonomies, and connections via social network, then finishes with an emphasis on the faster/cheaper nature of application development as well as some of the work remaining to be done. 

Fortunately, Web 2.0 seems to be progressing through the hype cycle, a concept developed at Gartner, an information and technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The Gartner hype cycle model is too restricted to technology for my liking, but I do find it useful as one form of "value filtering".   

The first three stages of the Gardner Hype Cycle are a great test or filter for new ideas and technologies. If the technology survives the initial hype, then there is really something there of lasting value. I like to put the most focus on things after these initial stages, after the bubble bursts and look for the "residue" that remains—typically very valuable little nuggets we can gather, put to use, and hopefully lead to mass adoption.  Hence my bringing this hype cycle model to your attention as a useful technique and tool for your arsenal to help sort through all the choices and "next big thing".

In my opinion, some parts of Web 2.0 are now moving into these phases the Gardner Hype Cycle:

• Slope of Enlightenment, where the press has lost interest, but some businesses continue to experiment with the technology to determine its benefits and practical application, if any.
• Plateau of Productivity where the technology becomes more stable, and the benefits become widely demonstrated and accepted.

If you find this model valuable, you can check out this list of other industries and topics that Gartner has applied it to. You may also want to check their use of the hype cycle in their "Emerging Technologies" report".  The report has three sections, Web 2.0, Real World Web, and Applications Architecture from August 2006. I think many of the major themes mentioned, such as Collective Intelligence, Mashups, and Location Awareness, have lasting value.

Philipp Keller recently used this model plot out the evolution of tagging (creating metadata) since its inception about 2003.   

Do you feel that you're caught up in a hype cycle?  With all the new tools, technologies and trends coming your way, are you finding it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff ? You might want to try to using Gartner's five phase model to plot these technologies out for yourself to help you decide what's worth keeping.

Hope this helps and as always please send me your comments.

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Going after Grandma!

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On March 21, 2007, David Berlind made a series of excellent points in his post "Dave Winer vs. CNET, platforms of personal expression (PPEs), and why Grandma matters". The title gives you a clue about the wide range of things David takes on in this single post!  His post is a bit of a rant, (something I'm fond of doing too) and it's rather lengthy by some standards, but he makes some great points that I've been meaning to bring to your attention for a while.

David's post might be a bit technical for some, but his points reveal some profound trends and patterns that I believe are of high interest and relevance to everyone here on OCOT. (Off Course - On Target)

I'll leave you to read the first part of Berlind's post on your own, which brings attention to someone I really respect—Dave Winer—who has pioneered a long a long list of technologies (RSS, for example). Back in about 1999, David created one of the first (some would argue the original) blog technologies with a program called "Userland Radio", along with the whole notion of a desktop aggregator. I started using Radio around 2001, and discovered just how powerful the concepts of blogging and aggregating were, and how they contributed significantly to mass personalization. 

Not only that, but Userland spoiled me early on with easy web page creation AND the ability to work equally well online or off. This ease of use is something we still don't find that often. In fact, I lamented about it in a previous post about the whole online/offline issues.

Pioneers rarely get their due, so I was delighted to see Dave Winer receive some long overdue and well deserved recognition for his contributions. However what I really wanted to bring your attention is found halfway through this long post when Berlind makes the great observation:

"Everyone seems to be violating the golden rule of ecosystem supremacy: He (or she) who turns Grandma into a software developer wins. Period. Have we not learned anything from Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel—some of the first pieces of software to do this? Think about it?”

And " ...particularly about the hard work it takes and the challenges in avoiding confusion—that is the Holy Grail. That is what it takes to turn Grandma into a software developer without her knowing it (blogging tools already turned Grandma into a Web publisher without knowing it). That is why people like Grandma are drawn to a platform of personal expression. That is why people like Grandma will stay with or leave a PPE."

I like that! "Platform of Personal Expression"  It gets to the heart of mass personalization and the whole Snowflake Effect that I am so fond of ranting and raving about. I like this notion of being "Grandma friendly" and providing "Grandma glue" as a fun way to bring attention to the critical difference between invention and innovation. Invention is when something is first created, whereas innovation is more about timing—when an invention catches on and is put into mass use. 

As history shows, success often does not go to the original inventor, but rather, to whomever can bring the invention to the masses. And in some cases this is a matter of when the masses are ready! 

Later on in the post, Berlind notes how those who take their eyes off the prize of mass adoption usually falter and fail. Even as fabulous as Userland Radio was, you'll notice that it was not adopted by the blogging masses. I suspect most people these days have never even heard of it. Berlind also notes some recent examples of companies that appear to "get Grandma" such as yourminis and Netvibes.  I  strongly encourage you to check them out.   

Which leads me to Berlind's key point : 

" the idea behind yourminis is that anyone can build a similar Grandma-friendly widget that abstracts an API (or APIs) and share it with the other members of the yourminis community. In other words, to the extent that MySpace, Typepad, and other turnkey platforms for personal expression should be including a directory or palette of widgets from which to choose (and drag n drop), yourminis is now just such a palette, albeit a third-party one."

Netvibes and yourminis are more examples of the power of mashups. In particular they focus on the use of widgets which are little "mini apps" that typically appear as an icon or simple graphic. You can drag and drop or otherwise assemble these into a "just right" collection of functionality (a mashup). VERY Grandma friendly, and no coding required!   

Even better, in terms of mass adoption, as Berlind puts it:

".... the idea behind yourminis is that anyone can build a similar Grandma-friendly widget that abstracts an API (or APIs) and share it with the other members of the yourminis community." 

This killer combination of being both Grandma-friendly and sharable creates an ever expanding cycle of growth and improvement. This cycle is behind the truly revolutionary kinds of exponential growth and change we are seeing around us.  I also find it noteworthy that the yourmini widgets work equally well when you drag them to your desktop OR a web site or blog! Let's hope that soon we will no longer have to make this distinction (web versus desktop) at all!  As they summed it up on the recent TechCrunch post Yourminis Delivering Triple Widget Play:

"Today, with the assistance of Adobe's Apollo platform and some clever thinking Yourminis delivers a triple play of widgets: online personalized desktop widgets, actual desktop widgets and blogs widgets."

While I realize that some find it too simplistic, I'll continue to compare all  of this (conceptually) to the power of a meta-model, which resembles Lego blocks wherein everything is made up of very small self-standing "blocks" that can be "snapped" together to create an infinite number of unique solutions or assemblies (aka mashups). The key characteristics of this meta model include:

• Small as possible, but not one bit smaller. Two tests determine if this "just right" degree of smallness has been achieved:   
  • Do the "blocks" stand by themselves as functional units?   
  • Are they "useless"  by themselves?

While they could be used alone or by themselves (the first test of self-standing), you probably never would. As with Lego blocks, the individual blocks are as small as possible (we don't want to melt them down to liquid plastic, for example), but by themselves they are "useless". We are unlikely to ever use just one block.

• Low-level standards.  With Lego blocks, the "standard" is the pins or nubs on each block. By maintaining this one absolute standard for all Lego blocks, the manufacturer has ensured that regardless of the block size, color or type, regardless of when they were made (old or new) and regardless of what specific set they might be from (space travel, undersea, medieval, etc.) ANY block can snap together with any other block.

In my experience, whether we are dealing with content, code, people (skills, knowledge, abilities), hardware, manufactured goods, or just about anything else, establishing and maintaining this Lego-like meta-model enables solutions to have the infinite scalability, and mass contribution that is at the heart of mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect.

Note, however, that this new era also brings with it a need for much more direct involvement and experiential learning, a.k.a my favorite form—learning by doing!  So PLEASE do everything you can to spend as much time as possible having some "serious fun" trying these things out for yourself and with others around you. 

Software should be and will be a form of personal expression, and I could not be more delighted or excited about how rapidly this is happening and how it is ushering in the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization at a truly global scale. 

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