Off Course-On Target

Snowflake Eyes?

Back in 2000 I had the honor of writing a vision paper for ASTD and the National Governor's Association called "Into the Future".  I included some of my thoughts and excitement at the time about the notion of augmenting our eyes by having additional layers of information overlaid on top of what we are "really" seeing.  I described things like being able to walk around the ruins of an ancient city and be able to see drawings, photos and video of what it would have looked like hundreds of years before.  In the years since my excitement has continued to grow and I’ve written more and more articles on this and all other forms of augmenting our “cognitive capacities” and there have been more and more advances on transforming this vision into reality.

 

Google has just released an update on their work on “Project Glass” and some new prototypes they are testing with wider audiences now.  One of their new examples can be seen in these photos for a pair of frames that sit above your eyes and provide information by looking up or another pair of more traditional glasses where the information is projected onto the clear glass lenses.

 

 

Nick Bolton provides a more comprehensive overview of this type of augmented reality in his NYT “Bits” article “Google begins testing its Augmented Reality glasses”.  Personally I’m more excited and interested in future models Nick also notes of wearable and imbedded technology such as the contact lenses pictured here.  I’ve posted previous articles with more of my thoughts on these such as this one on “Augmented Reality in Contact Lenses”.

 

Personally I will also welcome and be first in line for things like embedded ear buds that would give me additional sound and control to augment what I am hearing and a similar form of embedded microphones to augment my speech and vocal output.  Begin to imagine having a camera, earphones and microphone literally “on you” or “in you” at all times?!

I’m pretty confident that groups of bright people all over the world will continue to develop every better augmented reality technology at an exponential rate and in all cases I think the greater challenge befalls the rest of us to begin figuring out how to use these well and how to deal with the inevitable pitfalls and more negative consequences all great innovations and inventions bring with them. 

For example how will we deal with this significant additional increase in the information at our avail?  In some of the more negative initial reactions to Google’s update some have already begun to worry about the likelihood that our eyes will be “augmented” with even more marketing images and this is a legitimate and inevitable concern. 

However these new forms of information delivery and consumption are inevitable IMHO and so let’s just get over it and get on with it!  WE get to chose how to use these new tools and information influx.  As Clay Shirky put it so well; “There’s no such thing as information overload, just filter failure”.  While there is no question we have lots of progress to make in overcoming “filter failure”, we ARE making progress and it seems to me that failure is the root of most learning so it is all good. 

So let’s continue to develop better ways of filtering information in the Snowflake Effect tradition of getting just the right information for just the right person at just the right time in just the right context, and so on.  We certainly have as much more more learning and creative thinking to do in coming up with new habits, conventions and techniques that will ensure that exponential innovation also leads to exponentially better living and learning!

Let’s start thinking about what an incredible way of augmenting our learning these kinds of “glasses” can be by enabling us to add additional information to what we are seeing before us.  And note how Google’s Project Glass also includes a wearable camera.  This makes taking pictures and video more instantly available anywhere, anytime and more transparently for us in that we would always have a camera available to capture serendipitous moments and memories by simply blinking our eyes or some other simple gesture.  While there is always the “scary” part of how this can and will be used, this capability will also let us continue to live more IN life’s moments, enabling us to learn and live life more fully in the process.

It will take us many years to develop new conventions for all these kinds of new technology as well such as how do we best ‘interface” with them for things like gesture based control with our eyes.  How do we learn to use these to improve our connections with others and not interfere?  Gee, if you think people’s behavior with the use of cell phones and texting in the middle of a conversation are a problem just imagine what it will be like when we don’t even have to look away or down to see that new call coming in!! 

As usual, it all comes back to and down to each of us snowflakes.  WE are the ones who are responsible for our own behaviors and need to learn how to use and control the tools and technology we are surrounded by such that they increase our connections and conversations with the other special snowflakes around us. 

I for one could not be more excited by both the new technology arriving daily and the new challenges and learning that lies before us and in many ways is already here.  The best way I know of to counter FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt) is to run TOWARDS it rather than away from it by increasing our curiosity and learning of things we don’t know.

Snowflakes Effect Hits Financial Models: Snowflakes funding Snowflakes

The evidence that the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is continuing to build at an exponential rate continues to show up just about everywhere I look. One dimension of the Snowflake Effect that has not received a lot of discussion yet is the financial side if the story; how will the mind boggling numbers of personalized solutions needed every day be funded?  What are the new financial and business models going to be in a Snowflake Effected world?  If as I believe more and more of us are going to become designers and producers and creators by making our own “stuff”, and especially if others are asking us to make and share some for them, how will we pay for this?   Well, why not apply the Snowflake Effect to funding itself?

Microtizing Finance, Credit & Loans

In fact this the Snowflake Effect has already hit funding models already and we are seeing more and more examples and growth of these wild new models.  One of the hallmarks of the Snowflake Effect is breaking things down into very small components whether that be each of us as unique individuals or each unique moment in time or small parts that can be reused and reassembled into infinite numbers of unique new assemblies Lego block style.  This same “microtization” trend is increasingly taking hold of financial models and enabling each of us 7 billion plus snowflakes to not only become designers, creators and producers, we are also becoming financers and funders. 

One example you have likely heard of and many of you are already participating in is that of microloans, microfinance and microcredit.  Essentially this is where once snowflake can loan small amounts of money to another snowflake or individual cause.  As is often the case this is not a new idea or invention but what is new is the scale and reach of these models.  Back in 2006 Kevin Kelly posted this good overview of “Micro-Loans Online” which he introduced by saying:

This year the father of micro-finance and founder of the Grameen Bank won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in inventing and promoting micro-loans in the developing world. A micro-loan is as little as a few hundred dollars invested into a one-person business with minimal qualifications. That tiny borrowed amount can launch a vegetable stand, repair shop, or bicycle taxi -- a living in other words. As each micro-loan is repaid (and most are), the effects of that small goodness are amplified and leveraged by being loaned out and invested again and again. Micro-loans are the world's only perpetual motion machines.

Snowflake Effect Hits in Financial Models in Developed Regions

Most of these micro loans and micro financing have been focused on dealing with poverty and developing regions and they continue to escalate in both numbers and positive effects.  Somewhat newer and greatly increasing the scope of this Snowflaking of financing is their application to the financing of individuals and small businesses in developed regions and markets.  One of the more noteworthy examples is Kickstarter  which has the tag line of “A new way to Fund & Follow Creativity” and bills itself as being “The world’s largest funding platform for creative projects”.  The model is essentially the same where anyone can pledge any amount, typically one to one hundred dollars, towards a specific project that someone has proposed on the site.  As they point out this is not about lending or investing as each project creator maintains complete control and ownership of their work.  Those who pledge money are also protected because no money changes hands unless the project reaches its funding goal within a set time.

You can check out the Kickstarter web site and Kickstarter blog for more information and examples of the enormous range of ideas, products and services being developed which include everything from software applications to games to art to books to home hardware.

How well is this working?  Well Kickstarter recently had a record setting day with two projects exceeding $1M each in pledges and $1.6M being pledged in 24 hours.  All this from individual snowflakes like you and me.  In fact they had quite the day as they also saw New York’s city council endorse the site as a way to highlight community projects that need funding

It was also noteworthy to me how different the two projects were that exceeded the $1M in pledges.  The TechCrunch review of this eventful day highlighted this nicely:

Often Kickstarter is thought of as a venue for people with very limited means but a good idea to execute that idea. The Elevate Dock is a good example of this.

But Double Fine is an established game studio with office space, employees, and many products under its belt? Why should it go to Kickstarter? Well, Tim Schafer explains that in the video, at least for this project: no publisher would go near a point and click adventure game, but they knew at least some people wanted it. Reasonable enough.

The question, really, is why we even question it. If people want to make something, and people want to fund it, why shouldn’t it be on Kickstarter? The easy stuff — cool accessories or small devices that need a little capital to get started — are just the first wave. Why not pothole repair on a neighbourhood street? Why not a new coffee shop? Why not a feature film? Some of these have been tried, no doubt, and perhaps failed — but the principle is sound:

If you want to make it, and others want you to make it, this is a way for you to connect.

Why not indeed!!  What if the impossible isn’t?

Snowflake Effects on Learning

As you can see then, the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization continues its exponential growth and influence on almost all aspects of our world.  For those of us who look at the world from the perspective of learning, my ongoing question and fascination is with how the needs for each of us as individuals and as societies are changing and being changed by the Snowflake Effect.  The personalization of learning itself such that each learning moment is more successfully and deeply personalized is happening at an equally exponential rate with more examples of this showing up every day.  However an even larger and multiplying effect is the need for a whole new set of skills, knowledge and competencies each of us snowflakes are going to require to survive and thrive in the rapidly evolving new snowflaked world we are creating and will live and learn in.

I fully realize that this all continues to sound unimaginably large and impossible.  And yet as the examples of financial models I’ve highlighted above show, we are surrounded daily by more and more examples of how the impossible isn’t.  The oxymoron of typical Snowflake Effect models that are infinitely scalable AND sustainable turns out to be true!  Or as Kevin Kelly put it; “Micro-loans are the world's only perpetual motion machines.” 

Add enough snowflakes together with these kinds of models and you have a perpetuating avalanche of invention, discovery, creativity, production and happiness.

The Snowflake Effect on the World of Things

NOTE: The following is the second excerpt from the small contribution I was proud to have made to the “Learning Perspectives 2010” collection put out by The Masie Center in memory and commemoration of Jonathan Kays.  (see previous postings for details). 

It is my contention that changes falling resulting from the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization such as the Third Industrial Revolution I covered in the previous posting and the dramatic transformation of “physically real” things are disruptive changes that will shake up and shape our future at a holistic and societal level.  In addition to their direct use and applications to learning my greater concern and excitement is on the new skills, competencies and knowledge required by all of us as “students” living in this world and therefore the challenges and opportunities this presents to learning, education and training.

Enjoy and please add your comments or create your own postings with your reactions!

- Wayne

The Snowflake Effect is causing dramatic changes in the world of things as they rapidly transform from being mass produced to mass personalized and, in the process, become snowflakes themselves. Flexible manufacturing was one of the initial enablers of this transformation, but that was just the beginning. With the advent of more computer-controlled design and machining, and, more recently, the introduction of affordable 3D printers and scanners, we are seeing an increase in the personalization of individual items that can be designed and produced to match the unique context of an individual person/situation for no more - and often for less - cost than previously mass produced things.

This is about disruptive innovation: not disruptive elimination. We do not want or need everything to be unique. Large scale items such as airplanes and cruise ships will likely continue to be produced in quantity; but even now, these items are uniquely built to match the individual customer and be adapted to match some specific routes or conditions. Many large scale items are already being designed and built so that they can be changed over time to match contextual changes, whether predicted or not. For example, several of the world’s naval forces are building their newest ships so that they can be reconfigured to match different contexts of use, like switching from a configuration best suited for military situations to one that better accommodates response to natural disasters.

There will likely always be a need for some mass produced parts. We will still want large numbers of exactly the same thing (like fasteners, screws, nuts, bolts, etc.). There will be instances when many people will want to have the exact same thing and there will continue to be fads around popular books, songs and movies. But these will be at the front end of the Long Tail and small in number. As you move down the curve of the Long Tail, you find that more and more things for more and more people have less and less in common.

For example, even if I really like the pen you just showed me and we can “print” an exact duplicate for me, I might want to modify it a bit - to be shorter, heavier or more curved to better fit my hand and match the way I write. The same dynamics will play out for coffee cups, eyeglasses, shoes, chairs and certainly our learning in both process and content. In this way, there will be an equivalent Long Tail of things and it will be a spectrum with products falling at all points along the exponential curve towards uniqueness. As we are seeing with the Long Tail effect on music, movies, books and the like, the transition will be such that the volume of objects at the unique end of the tail will rise dramatically and become the majority in terms of instances, business and learning.

Above and beyond being mass customized and personalized by their design and production, things are increasingly connected to each other and us as we use them. One version of this is often referred to as “The Internet of Things”. A commonly cited example is the way in which home appliances are being connected to each other and the Internet for everything from monitoring energy use to setting thermostats and timing when to turn things off and on. All the items in your fridge are able to dynamically update their status in terms of how full they are, their expiration date, peak freshness and so on to help you choose what’s best to make for dinner tonight and what to pick up at the grocery store on your way home.

Start to think smaller and smarter: imagine and prepare yourself for things like “smart” and digital dust, dirt, pixels, locations, ink dots and paint. Products or “things” are going to increasingly be snowflakes themselves; alike, perhaps, but no two exactly the same. Just like us, as things become more like snowflakes, they too will start to have their own identity, networks, conversations and even their own “social networks”. Indeed, if you’re paying attention, many already do! But it is the more far reaching and latent effects of these changes - especially those on how, when, where and what we learn - that are most exciting.

The revolution in the world of learning is upon us and it is as daunting as it is exciting and powerful. The best way to predict the future is to design your own; therefore, we can strategically and serendipitously lead the transformation of learning, training and education rather than have it happen to us. By exploring and better understanding current trends and directions of the Snowflake Effect on the world of “things”, we will be able to bring the power of mass personalization to the world of learning. Each of us will be able to experience great learning moments every day.

Related articles

• The Snowflake Effect the Third Industrial Revolution (waynehodgins.typepad.com)
• Snowflake Socialize Your Burger? (waynehodgins.typepad.com)

The Snowflake Effect & the Third Industrial Revolution

NOTE: The following is an excerpt from the small contribution I was proud to have made to the “Learning Perspectives 2010” collection put out by The Masie Center in memory and commemoration of Jonathan Kays.  (see previous posting for details).  This topic and my perspectives on us entering a third Industrial Revolution is one I have been having a great deal of fun presenting and discussing for quite some time now and it seems to be generating some of the most excitement and resonating more profoundly with more people as I’ve done so recently.  My intent with this posting is to provide you with a quick synopsis (consider the source!) of my perspectives on the Snowflake Effect and the resulting Third Industrial Revolution, and then follow with more details and directions I believe this is taking us.  The potential of these changes continue to be a source of great excitement and inspiration for me and I hope it has a similar effect and value for you.

Enjoy and please add your comments or create your own postings with your reactions!

- Wayne

The Snowflake Effect & the Third Industrial Revolution

The overarching theme that will shape the future of not only learning but most all of our societies, organizations and communities is the escalating transformation of our society from one that is shaped by mass production to one that is shaped by mass personalization. For several years now I have synthesized a large number of major trends and patterns into this massive global and societal shift - which I refer to as the Snowflake Effect - that is driving a complete reset of the world as we know it.

Within this context of transformation to mass personalization, a new revolution is coming into focus: a third Industrial Revolution. As with the previous two Industrial Revolutions, this third version is both sculpting and itself being shaped by an emerging society resulting from the mass exodus from a world governed for over a century by mass production to one made up of societies, communities and organizations characterized by pro-active individual members. These people take on increasingly direct roles in the design, creation and use of the new forms of learning. They feed a constant stream of real time data about their reactions, thoughts and ideas, which provide feedback loops for evolutionary self-improvement cycles.

The Snowflake Effect

The Snowflake Effect started with the simple observation that we are all unique individuals: no two are alike, just like snowflakes. What’s more, so too is each moment in time, each situation we are in and each group of people we are with unique. They are distinctive combinations, just like the crystals of a snowflake. This is certainly not a new observation or condition and has arguably been true for as long as we have existed; yet, this poses the intriguing question:

If our uniqueness as individuals is so obvious and has been so true for so long, then why do we live in a world designed on the assumption that we are all the same?

This question has haunted me for many years now, like the small irritant of a grain of sand that causes a pearl to form in an oyster. In this case, my articulation of the Snowflake Effect is the resultant pearl.

One of the results of technology improvements over the past 50 years is that our world is getting smaller as distance and physical separation become lesser issues. We are more connected with more people in more ways than ever before. While we need to continue to work on distributing access to these advances to all of the world’s populations, it is increasingly true that we can communicate, socialize and work with anyone anywhere. We can access food and other products no matter where they come from or what season it is. We live in a world of increasing abundance and the rate of change is exponential. It has hit a tipping point, triggering immense and often seemingly impossible transformation all around us.

From Mass Production to Mass Personalization

In many ways, we can trace this focus on sameness back to the first two Industrial Revolutions and our transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. Initially, mass production only applied to manufacturing, but over the course of a century or more, mass production has expanded and extended to the point where it now permeates and, in many ways, defines the world in which we live. Our thinking and assumptions are largely based on the principles of mass production. Consider for example how we design almost everything. We typically start with a problem or a need that is shared by a large group of people. Given the usual time, energy and cost that creating something new requires, the larger the group, the better. Once we have the design for a product, it is mass produced. If the design is for a service, we put together a process and supporting resources so that same service can be delivered to as many people as possible. This is how most governments, businesses and schools work. Consider how most education models work: with standard objectives, text books, curriculum and schedules. It’s no coincidence that our education models were largely created at the beginning of the first industrial revolution to meet the demands of a new factory work force.

Prior to the first Industrial Revolution, only a privileged few were able to get just what they wanted, whenever they wanted it. With the advent of mass production, it became possible for many people to buy a car, a home and become educated; however, this highly scaled model was made possible by mass producing and delivering the same solution for everyone.

Mass production worked very well and we have spent over 100 years improving and refining it to become a very efficient model. In many ways, we have mass production to thank for the transformation of our world into one of abundance for more and more people. But, in spite of - or perhaps because of - this abundance, the predominance of a mass production mentality is no longer sufficiently meeting our needs. It is at odds with our uniqueness when we only have mass produced choices which must be, by definition, compromises for the solutions we really want. This gap is now being closed as we shift from mass production to mass personalization.

The Snowflake Effect is largely about context-based design and the notion of personalized fit. It is about getting things just right. Products and services have the greatest value when just the right people have just the right things at just the right time in just the right way in just the right place. Just as the answer to most questions usually begins with “it depends”, so too does all design need to be dependent upon our unique personal contexts: the unique sets of conditions and characteristics of any situations that determine how well a solution of any kind fits each of us as unique snowflakes.

In the past, we have accepted any mismatch as perfectly reasonable and the best we can expect within typical constraints like budgets, time, community, family, etc. After all, to think otherwise, to imagine a future where most things are just right for you would mean that we’d need to have a different solution for every person, every day - in fact, most likely many times every day! At the time I am writing this, almost seven BILLION people inhabit the planet, and there are 24 hours in a day. That equates to at least 168 billion unique solutions per day and at least 61.32 trillion unique solutions per year! We all know that is impossible.

Or is it? Such outrageous and exponential scaling certainly will be impossible if we continue to rely on our existing mass production mentality and models, but we are increasingly surrounded by more and more examples and evidence of new models where extreme mass customization is not only possible, but already happening on a previously impossible scale. There exists proof that, both as unique individuals and as groups, we can have just what we need, when, where and how we need it. We are increasingly surrounded by examples of what Kevin Kelly succinctly called “impossible in theory, but possible in practice”. Look at some examples in our everyday life: we are increasingly able to get just the right fit for the music we listen to, the news and information we consume, the clothes we wear, the products we buy and the way we can often find just the right information when we need it. This doesn’t happen often enough, but it is occurring more frequently. Check out the developments in areas like personalized manufacturing with 3D printers and 3D scanners, real time information, recommender systems and others you have probably recently experienced. While it is still very early in this transition and we are still surrounded by more mass production than mass customization, the new models and our new behaviors are evolving with accelerating velocity.

Two key enablers of the Snowflake Effect are mashups and modularity. Mashups, a relatively new term but not a new idea, are a unique assembly of pre-existing items to form a new integrated whole. Modularity refers to having things in very small and interchangeable modules. This can be compared to simple Lego^TM blocks, which can be used to create almost anything imaginable by snapping together new combinations of these pre-made plastic blocks. Think about, for example, how you find and listen to music today: you find individual songs rather than whole albums and you put together your own unique playlists based on personal recommendation systems (that are built upon your unique preferences and recommendations from others). This stands in stark contrast to the previous “mass production” models of buying albums and listening to top 40 radio stations. Similar transitions toward mass customization are happening with what we read, what we watch, who we converse with and how we organize ourselves. Mashups and modularity enable the infinite scalability required by the Snowflake Effect for every person, every day.

Note that mass customization and getting things just right does not eliminate and, in fact, includes some products and services that will still be mass produced and remain the same. There will still be “hits” and fads. We will still have some songs, movies, books, presentations and keynotes that millions, even billions, of us are universally drawn to and find valuable; however, these will no longer be the most common or the most used resources. Instead, we will have a very full spectrum of the “Long Tail”, a concept from retail that describes a strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities, usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities: http://www.longtail.com/. These range from huge hits on one end to completely unique, extremely personalized items on the other end. The big change will be an inversion of where the greatest volume of solutions, products and services are found along the curve of the Long Tail, with the vast majority of what we each choose to use coming more and more from the unique end of the tail. The total volume of low popularity items already dramatically exceeds the volume of high popularity items in areas like books, music and video. This trend will dramatically increase; we will continuously find individual items and mash them together in the marvelously messy mix of choices we make.

The 3^rd Wave: Industrial Revolution 3.0 = Learning Revolution 3.0?

The third Industrial Revolution is driving this change. I make this observation in part based on a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler called The Third Wave. I have long believed that Toffler was an extremely prescient author, seeing the changes looming ahead. I also believe that even he underestimated the time it would take for these changes to visibly emerge along with the effects they would produce. I’ve most often referred to Toffler’s earlier book Future Shock, published in 1970, where he created the portmanteau word “prosummer” by combining producer with the word consumer. Toffler coined this term to describe the future society he saw where we would not be neatly dived into categories of active producers and passive consumers; instead, these would blur and merge as we all became inextricably and intimately intertwined with the processes of creating. While this has taken much longer than Toffler anticipated, everyone reading this article is a living example of a prosumer. We are all becoming much more active and passionate participants in designing and building our respective futures. I can’t imagine a more positive pattern that bodes well for all of our futures to be bold and bright.

It is Toffler’s book Third Wave, however, which contains the most significant and relevant observation affecting the future of learning and our world. Toffler did not directly refer to a third Industrial Revolution and simply referred to a Third Wave, however he did outline just such a revolution. The Wikipedia entry defines the three waves as:

· Toffler’s First Wave as the settled agricultural society which prevailed in much of the world after the Neolithic Revolution which replaced hunter-gatherer cultures.

· The Second Wave was the Industrial Age society, which began in Western Europe with the Industrial Revolution and subsequently spread across the world. Key aspects of Second Wave society are the nuclear family, a factory-type education system and the corporation.

Toffler wrote:

“The Second Wave society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine these things with standardization, centralization, concentration and synchronization and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.”

· The Third Wave is the post-industrial society. Toffler says that since the late 1950s most countries have been in transition from a Second Wave society into a Third Wave society.

Thirty years later, this Third Wave is in fact a Third Industrial Revolution. It started back in the 1950s and has been slowly but exponentially increasing. We are now at its tipping point and seeing the more startling and dramatic changes being produced. Contemporary examples include such things as 3D scanning and 3D “printing”, which enable us to copy, modify and print any physical object, including those that are complete working assemblies, like motors, pumps, watches and anything else that strikes our fancy.

More recently (April 2010) urban theorist Richard Florida has put forward many similar views of a third revolution in his book “The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Posterity”. Florida provides some good historical background on the previous two Industrial Revolutions and an analysis of how current world economic situations are contributing to the third one. Florida does a good job of debunking many common myths and The Great Reset details his observations on the changing social characteristics and geographical concentration of creative knowledge workers in mega-regions around the world and the need for a very different and highly mobile work force. Overall Florida adds to those pointing to the need for an equally great reset of our education and training systems and the way we learn in general.

The third Industrial Revolution will require an equal or greater revolution in education, training and learning to fulfill and drive the new forms of creation and our new societies. What does this really mean in terms of learning and performance? One good outline of some skills and competencies required by this Third Industrial Revolution can be found in Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind[1]. Dan describes the shift from skills and competencies required by the former Industrial Revolution - which are mostly associated with the left side of the brain (i.e. analysis, sequential reasoning and text) - to a focus on right brain skills and competencies (i.e. synthesis, holistic reasoning, context, images, design and pattern recognition).

The question for learning professionals and organizations - the question the rest of Learning Perspectives 2010 explores - is what will YOUR role be in this process? Will you lead or follow? Will you shape or be shaped? Will you be part of the solution or part of the problem?

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§ [1] See also Elliott Masie’s Interview of Daniel Pink at http://www.learning2007.com/university/2005/8/10/dan-pink-interview-a-whole-mind-audio-podcast-text-transcript-new.html

Prosthetics are a great source of learning for us all

You may have read some of my previous postings on prosthetics and how they are being dramatically affected by advancements in 3D scanning and printing.  But there is so much more benefits that prosthetics are providing for many other advancements and in particular the ability to control them directly with the brain, as outlined in the article below.

Oh, and when it comes to prosthetics I’ve noticed that many assume that this only applies to military personnel and casualties of the atrocities of war, but these are actually a small minority of the need and use of prosthetics and other areas such as accidents and birth defects account for many more.  Whatever the cause the future of prosthetics is looking brighter than ever and how great is it that these advancements can not only bring such transformative change to those in need but can also provide additional benefits for the rest of us as well. 

This whole area of enabling direct connections between the brain and external devices from prosthetics to eyes to computer interfaces is going through some remarkable advancements and I’m convinced they will be the source of many spin off advantages for an even wider array of applications.  As the article outlines, there is still some major challenges to overcome but this initiative and funding by DARPA focused on finding solutions is promising.  Prosthetics and brain control are definitely worth watching for more glimpses of the premature arrival of the future and answers to my ongoing quest to have us all change our assumptions and to be planning and wondering around the question of “What if the impossible isn’t?”

DARPA aims to control prosthetic limbs with brain implants

By Andrew Nusca | Mar 10, 2010 | 1 Comment

• As the use of prosthetic limbs increases in military veterans, the Pentagon is investigating prostheses that are more durable, reliable and directly controlled using brain implants.

DARPA, the military’s research arm, said it will launch the next phase of its decade-old Revolutionizing Prostheticsprogram, which had an original goal to create a fully-functioning, neurally-controlled human limb within five years.

Though the agency has made considerable progress — human trials of the DEKA Arm are underway, and a neurally-controlled arm is under development at Johns Hopkins University — it hasn’t yet achieved its goal.

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Minority Report-ing for Duty Soon?

Image by gunthert via Flickr

Seems like today is filled with examples of science fiction becoming reality and adding to my WITII? list of “What if the Impossible Isn’t?”  Below is the latest example of some significant advances in gesture based computing, Minority Report style.  Be sure to follow the link to the full article for some great videos to show you how this works.

For me gesture based computing is but one of the many exciting ways we are finally closing the gap between ourselves and the “machines” we interact with.  These kinds of far more natural based interfaces which also include things like touch based interfaces, voice controlled and direct mind/brain controlled interfaces. 

The iPad Is Step 1 In The Future Of Computing. This Is Step 2 (Or 3).

by MG Siegler on Feb 16, 2010

In 2008, I attended a meeting in Madrid, Spain that featured the coolest demonstration I had ever seen. The problem was that I wasn’t allowed to talk about what I had seen because the company was still in stealth-mode. More importantly, several governments, including the U.S. government were still exploring various parts of the technology for next-generation computing systems, so parts of this were very confidential. By the end of that year, Oblong Industries had revealed itself, but still little was said about its project. Finally, people are starting to talk about it.

While we may not have been at this year’s TED conference, apparently, Oblong was. And apparently, it wowed the crowd. And it should have. If you’ve seen the movie Minority Report, you’ve seen the system they’re building.

No, really. The co-founder of Oblong, John Underkoffler, is the man who came up with the gesture-based interface used in the Steven Spielberg movie. And now he’s building it in real life.

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Remember when we thought it was impossible to get all the metadata we needed?

In a former lifetime when I was championing metadata and standards around the world one of the most common questions and reasons for doubting this was the future, was that it would be impossible to ever have enough metadata.  Where was it all going to come from and who was going to create it all?  With most people still thinking that metadata was the same as library cards in the catalogue and that all metadata had to be entered by us humans, it was a reasonable concern.  I remember my dear friend Erik Duval and I, and others, suggesting that this was not impossible at all and that much of the metadata would come from automated metadata generation.  At the time we could only point to a limited number of very early examples.  Clocks and GPS sensor in cameras for example could automatically add time and location to the information of each photo which also includes all the details of the camera used, exposure settings and more.  But this was barely the beginning and now it seems like I’m finding more examples everday and ones which are creating metadata at a truly breathtaking rates and scale.  And not just simple metadata but very rich and deeply detailed sets of metadat are being created.

A recent example (below) prompting this post was how SimpleGeo, (a relatively small starttup that hasn’t even launched!), is already indexing over one million locations PER HOUR.  Listen to to SimpleGeofounder Joe Stump describe some of the metadata this is generating and just one example of how this could be used in this quote from

"Location-based devices only provide a latitude and a longitude, sometimes an altitude," he said. "What they don't provide is a ZIP Code, city, state, county, weather data, messages and photos posted near the site. They don't provide business listings, Wikipedia entries, census data (for demographics), articles written or posted near the location," all of which SimpleGeo does. For example, a location-based game set in San Francisco could accurately display its players gleaming in the California sun, or obscured by Golden Gate fog, based on the real-time weather data from around town.”

Check out “SimpleGeo Now Indexing 1m+ Locations Per Hour” post by Marshall Kirkpatrick for more details and the fuller story.

Even this is but the beginnings of the gathering of metadata snowflakes as they pick up speed rolling down the hill turning into an exponentially growing snowball and avalanche of metadata.  Watch more so for the kinds of previously unimaginable benefits and capabilities which all this metadata will enable.

Babel Fish getting closer?

In Douglas Adam’s fun look at the future in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there is something he called the Babel Fish which was literally a small fish which “when inserted into the ear converted sound waves into brain waves, neatly crossing the language divide between any species you should happen to meet whilst traveling in space.”

As change continues at its exponential rate more and more of science fiction such as this becomes reality.  While we are still some time away from full realtime audio translations, we continue to get closer and closer as some of the recent announcements from Google for example demonstrate. In the posting below you can see how Google Goggles enables you to take a picture of some text such as a menu item and have the image converted into text via OCR and then translated. 

UPDATE:  Here's a recently released video to show you all this and more:

And at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Feb 15, 2010) Google CEO Eric Schmidt demonstrated some upcoming speech to text based translations where your can say a sentence into your phone for example and have this come out as translated text appearing on the screen.  This in turn could be converted via text to speech so the person you are talking to could also hear it in their language.  Real time translated conversations are likely still several years away, but examples like this show that it will likely be sooner than we expect.

However what caught more of my attention was his more general observation about the confluence of powerful devices connected to much more powerful 'cloud' servers to deliver

"things you can do that never occurred to you as being possible."

Quite right Eric and thanks for adding to the growing list of examples to my ongoing asking “What if the impossible isn’t?”

Google Goggles Getting OCR Translations

by Erick Schonfeld on Feb 16, 2010

In his keynote speech today at the Mobile Web Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed off what could end up being a crucial tool for anyone trying to figure out a menu in a different language or a street sign in a foreign country.Google Goggles, which creates search queries based on images instead of typed-in keywords, will soon start to be able to translate from foreign languages usingGoogle Translate. It will do this using optical character recognition to first convert the images of letters into words it can understand, and then put those through Google translate

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Color eReader uses less power than B&W eInk?!

Definately my WITII? (What if the impossible isn’t”) example of the day!

Color e-reader uses butterfly-based technology to save power

CrunchGear by by Devin Coldewey on February 15, 2010

Oh, biomimetic desigin. Is there anything you can’t do? Well, at any rate, you’re doing this, which is cool enough for now. Qualcomm is putting out a new display technology they call “Mirasol,” which uses reflective bits of color to display an image, much like the way the iridescent scales on butterfly wings do. They claim it draws even less power than e-ink, which is really saying something.

 

Rethinking maps, photos and search

MS Adds much more than Bling to Bing Maps

I continue to be impressed by all the great work coming out of Microsoft Research the past year or more and this presentation by Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows some of the most recent examples.  They are certainly providing great answers to my constant asking of “What if the Impossible Isn’t?”

I picked up on Blaise and the work he and his crew were doing over a year ago, initially with their creation of the Seadragon technology which they brought with them when they joined MS research and used it to create Photosynth which continues to amaze and impress me as well.

It seems like much of their research is centered around visual computing and interfaces and in my post a few days ago “Seeing is Believing 2.0?” I mentioned two other MS Research projects in this area, Pivot and SecondLight.  Today this presentation by Blaise is online from the TED 2010 conference where he shows how they are integrating a lot of technology including Flickr, Seadragon and Photosynth along with some Augmented Reality into Bing maps to enable some amazing new capabilities and possibilities.

Watch the video and I think you too will be impressed not only at the technology but with the new level of functionality and value these mashups are driving into maps.  It is really the whole area of using location as the grounding context for a huge array of other information and uses.

The New Frontier?  Going Inside

In one of my original postings on Photosynth I suggested/hoped that what we would see next was an ability a bit like a “cosmic zoom” * where we could zoom either up or down almost infinitely.  Up into the cosmos of space and down onto not only the street but inside of buildings and then below into the sea. 

* If you’ve never seen Cosmic Zoom, or it has been a while since you watched this 1968 video/animation from the National Film Board of Canada, I’ve embedded it at the bottom so you can treat yourself.

As usual change is occurring exponentially so it looks like Microsoft already has my wish!  As you’ve hopefully just seen in the video above Bing maps now provide an inside view capability where we can go from the outside street views into the inside of buildings.  They gain this in part by having dedicated “backpack cams” which can be taken inside public buildings and places to provide detailed inside views.  But my real excitement is about the ability to “go inside” via all the geo tagged photos from “the rest of us” that are posted to Flickr.  This is where the power of Photosynth really shows some promise to me as it stitches together any number of photos by aligning them in 3D space such that we end up with a highly integrated patchwork of all these interrelated photos.  This scales extremely well when you think of how many photos there are in Flickr (5,384 posted in the last MINUTE, 2.2 million geotagged the past month) and the Seadragon technology allows this to all happen extremely fast and with no apparent slowdown no matter how images are involved.  You’ll also see in the demo how they are able to add in video including a live feed that is similarly aligned within the maps and photos.  Imagine when (surely not if) there is the ability to similarly include all the videos up on the web and not “just” photos.

Look Up!

As if this wasn’t all more than enough to continue my fascination, it looks like they are also addressing my cosmic zoom up wish as well.  At the very end of the video Blaise was out of time but managed to demo an upcoming integration of Worldwide Telescope into Bing maps.  I what i thought was a very intuitive implementation you can simply look up into the sky to start seeing the imagery and data of the night sky from wherever you are standing (on the map). 

Location as Context

As I mentioned at the beginning I think we need to start thinking less about these as “maps” or at least redefine what maps are as we evolve more ways to use location as a central form of context within which we work with an view data, especially visual data.  Time is another bit of context and while it is not shown in the video above, because all the photos and imagery is time stamped you can go back and forth in time as well to see what things looked like in the past and then by adding layers on top, Augmented Reality, we can also see future scenarios such as buildings and reconstruction for example.  Blaise mentioned in the early part of his demo that they have found examples where Photosynth has included some very old photos and by setting the time back they are able to see the streets of Seatlle with horses and carriages. 

Rethinking & Redefining

So as you are thinking about all these new capabilities start to think how this is all part of fundamentally redefining or notion of maps and more so of search, (think spatial) and how we are quickly transfoming from consumer to creators.  These and other changes are also tranforming how we find, discover and learn just the right people, things, locations at just the right time.

PS.  FWIW, keep your eyes on both what’s coming out of MS Research as well as what lies ahead for the increased amount of collaboration between Microsoft, Yahoo, Flickr and Facebook.

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