a thousand tomorrows » society

sensing sentiments

Nik — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:56:45 +0000

Social media, location-based services, anywhere-anytime internet access etc. offer major opportunities for mass-sampling people’s moods, sentiments and emotions.

In October of last year, Facebook started correlating status updates of their (US) users with the Gross National Happiness Index. Later, results from the UK, Canada and Australia were added to the mix. According to a recent article in Fastcompany:

“Facebook demonstrated that the vast historic record of status updates is a potential goldmine of information that could easily be raked through by sociology analysts keen to work out when it’s best to deliver an advert for particular products, or perhaps even to promote a particular political message.”

Indeed, sentiment analysis as the game is called (see also here), is not only interesting for artists and gadgeteers, but also for businesses and public institutions.

The concept is not new, in 2001, webdesign meeting point k10k.net launched Moodstats, a webbased effort to enable people to share their moods. Yet, now that our physical and virtual action patterns are becoming increasingly intertwined, applications like iPhone app Glow enable anywhere, anytime, sentiment sampling.

In most current applications, people are still required to express their mood, emotional state etc. Language processing algorithms can help to analyze this data. The next step is obviously to have emotion sensing technologies (e.g. Philips Design’s VIBE) reading, interpreting and allowing us to communicate our emotions directly. Imagine your t-shirt changing color depending on how you feel, for example.

Image by Glow

the power of 8

Nik — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:17:06 +0000

We were delighted to take notice of another project which shares our passion for positive, optimistic futures! Our friend and much admired fellow design fiction future-storyteller Anab ‘Superflux‘ Jain was one of eight people (others included a biotechnologist, a policy advisor, a permaculturalist, an educator, a retired civil servant, an urban designer and an architect ) involved in a unique project which ran from June 1st 2009 to October 11th 2009 to imagine ‘optimistic futures’. Funded by the Arts Council England and Watermans Gallery, the Power of 8 was part of the London Design Festival 2009. The magnificent 8 welcome you to Acres Green …

“Rolling orchards stretched beyond us as we wandered through the edible gardens of Acres Green. Spots of colour peppered the greenery and branches hung low with the weight of ripening produce. As we looked closer we saw that each tree was actually growing different varieties of fruit. What we originally understood as a tangle of different trunks was actually an intricate technological graft. On parting the leaves we found strange flesh-like prosthesis that seemed to bind limbs from different species together. We realised that to maximise harvests the communities of Acres Green were experimenting with augmented orchards and designing strange new natures.”

Check out the Power of 8 website to feed on more, nifty futurefood incl. pan-city feral cidre businesses, Beamer Signum Apis Melifera aka beamer bees, living hills, flocking clouds, etc. Well done, 8!

Image courtesy of The Power of 8

peak lithium?

Nik — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:38:24 +0000

As car manufacturers shift away from oil and towards electricity to power our future vehicles, a new race is on. The target this time: lithium, basis for the lithium-ion batteries to be found in everything from electric vehicles, to mobile phones, cellphones, laptops, anti-depressives etc. The place: Chile (for now), Bolivia (next) … The salt lakes near Uyuni in Bolivia are believed to contain an estimated 28 millions tons of lithium, or 90% of the world’s reserve according to experts. The car industry currently runs on 16.000 tons per year. As the production and demand of electric cars ramp up, the demand for lithium is expected to be anywhere between 54.000 and 500.000 tons per year. At such rates, estimates of shortages starting from as early as 2015 are no exception as automobile, pharma, ICT and many other industries will be fishing in the same pond for the same type of fish.

Although lithium is no fuel (it is not consumed through usage) and lithium-ion batteries ‘can be recycled’ (note: they do contain substances harmful to the environment in case they should end up in landfills and pollute water reserves) other worries arise concerning the socio-economic impact of lithium mining activities in the aforementioned countries.

On a more fundamental level – a more philosophical one if you wish – nature and history teach us that monoculture is generally a bad idea (cf. resilience). So whether we like it or not, we need to (re)learn to think in terms of a mix, of diversity once again.

Image courtesy of PeriodicTable.com

it’s not about fixing the car

Nik — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:53:57 +0000

In the past months newspapers have been full of high profile people declaring how the automobile industries in Europe and the US have missed their window of opportunity to transform themselves. Critical voices are bemoaning lead positions lost to automobile companies in booming markets such as China and India, where the focus on hybrids and electric vehicles appears stronger.

So much emphasis is being place on not having the right new car line up to face the future that one wonders why so little attention goes to ‘mobility‘ as a system that needs fixing instead of merely ‘the car‘. Joel Makover - author of Strategies for the Green Economy - illustrated this beautifully a while ago in his blogpost entitled: Reinventing Mobility: It’s Not Just the Cars, Stupid! One could even assert that radical innovation efforts in this respect are hindered by government subsidies ‘to save the industry’ (cf. the argument: ‘too big to fail’).

We have seen cars running on electricity, on air, on algae, on acid, … yet they are still cars as we know them (no, we are not fishing forflying cars). And cars, no matter how nifty, pose certain problems … e.g. idle time storage (aka parking), they rely on heavy, expensive infrastructure subject to wear and tear (cf. roads), they tend to clog rather than swarm intelligently, they are driven by people – like it or not, we are a mitigating factor in terms of safety, efficiency, etc. etc.

Friedman already reminded us that historically speaking truly radical innovation is most unlikely to come from the regime players, the dinosaurs. So imagine IKEA building cars … is what design student Robert Larsson set out to explore in his concept vehicle. How about looking at the automobile industry as a major smart grid player. Or imagine a carmaker shifting to become a smart grid energy player. MeetSchwarmStrom or an ambitious network of mini gas-fired power plants for the home (goal: producing as much as two nuclear reactors within a year). Lichtblick and Volkswagen team up to … perhaps become a major future energy player on the smart grid market? With cars charging at home and charging or providing peak balancing to homes, offices, etc. (after all they spend the majority of their lifetime parked, +90% according to some).

Most of you will be aware of MIT’s Smart Cities project featuring stackable cars (like shopping carts indeed), roboscooters and mobility on demand services. Also Carlo Ratti’s Senseable City Lab at the same MIT looks into ways in which are cities and its users could become smarter, something of which also mobility could benefit in myriad ways. Check out the beautiful EyeStop (up for testing in Turin, Italy). In this respect, of course there are the major IT players looking into the role ICT could play in untying the knot we have gotten ourselves into, e.g. IBM’s intelligent transport. Yet mobility is not only about cars and their infrastructure, we tend to forget about walking. Take a step back and think about it: how much space in a city goes to car-related mobility – which means standing still most of the time and hindering human traffic – and how much is actually still people-space?

If you do wanna see a far-out car concept that could tackle some of mobility’s challenges, check out designer Ahmad Filiz‘s fascinating globule concept design for Peugot.

WFS: 20 forecasts for 2010-2050

Nik — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:25:40 +0000

In a special report The World Future Society shares 20 trends and breakthroughs – recent forecasts from WFS members and its magazine, The Futurist – which they consider “likely to affect your work, your investments and your family” between 2010 and 2050.

The Race for Genetic Enhancements Will Be What the Space Race Was in the 20th Century

Water Becomes the New Oil

WiMAX Networks Will Soon Create Country-Wide Wireless Internet Access

By 2025, the Worldwide Average Life-Span Will Be Extended by One year Per Year

Bioviolence Becomes a Greater Threat

Invention Becomes Automated

Japan Dominates the Race for Personal Robots

Holographic 3-D TV

The Holy Grail of Computers Becomes a Reality

Electric Cars Become Fully Practical by 2020

Religion Growing in China while Secularism Grows in the Middle East

New Oil from Old Wells

Green Gold: Algae’s Huge Potential as Biofuel

Nanotechnology May Alter the Value of Diamonds and Other Precious Commodities

The Millennial Generation Will Have Major Impacts on Society

Quantum Computers Revolutionalize Information Around 2021

Breakthrough DOUBLES Solar Energy Output

Consumers Will Take Active Roles in Inventing New Products and Services

Virtual Education to Enter the Mainstream by 2015

Genetic Research May Soon Conquer Most Inherited Diseases

feeling Earth’s heart beat

Nik — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:10:14 +0000

The Apollo mission gave us pictures of our planet from space. Finally we could behold our planet from a distance. We could look at it as an object on the table in front of us, within reach, and as we did our planetary awareness grew. Confronted with several planetary challenges now, our planetary conscience is now gradually shaping up as well. Aside from looking at our planet, NASA‘s Earth Observation System (EOS) reads our planet through satellite data. Access to this information is a prerequisite for learning to understand our planet better. Now we can not only look at our planet, Prof. Shin-ichi Takemura’s amazing Tangible Earth project allows us to interact with our planet and the data emerging from it by touch.

In view of coming up with solutions to the challenges we are facing, sensing our planet has become sheer necessity. We increasingly do so in real time as well: within mouseclick reach we check webcams on the other side of the planet, we can download data from weatherstations around the world, etc.
Until recently, the sensing world was pretty much the playing field of NASA and the likes. The future promises to be more open in this respect (see also open source efforts such as GSN) and consequently much larger – and since we’re talking data: more powerful. Years ago, in describing his wish of an Earth Witness Project, our fellow future explorer Jamais Cascio already pointed to opportunities opened up by the convergence between labs on chips, mobile phones and sharing networks to create an open global sensor network.

Now several companies and grassroots initiatives are preparing to put technology in the hands of citizens. Already we can deduce a lot of information from information we leak by the mere usage of our communication technology, as Carlo Ratti‘s Senseable cities team at MIT shows us. Nokia’s Eco Sensor Concept plans to make us more active participants in the game. Imagine millions of always-on, networked tricorder-like devices sensing our planet : local data + networks + sensemaking = global intelligence. Hewlett-Packard is developing the equivalent of a globally distributed stethoscope (CeNSE) to monitor our planet’s health, and look to nanotechnology as an enabling technology. “The motivation for this work is realising and understanding the planet is sick and the disease is us.”, says Dr Stan Williams of HP’s Information & Quantum Systems Laboratory.

An often forgotten challenge is how to use tech already out there to turn them into sensors for our health and that of our planet. Think about the tech equivalent of using ‘useless’ bath-tub ducks which fell off a ship, to study ocean currents.

back to reality

Nik — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:38:41 +0000

You must have noticed as well. The signals have been there for at least a few years, yet they are sounding ever louder. People are increasingly hungry for the real thing, the meaningful, to reaffirm not merely their uniqueness or personal identity, but also their humanity, their grounding, to deepen their experiences, to contribute to something beyond mere consumerism.

Urban farming is on the rise, DIY stores are buzzing with activity, eco-tourism is hot, slow food gains ever more adepts, homegrown fruit and home-baked bread taste for more … Is the economic downturn pulling our feet back to the ground? No, it might amplify things, but things started way earlier. Does the increasingly virtualization of our experiences, of our relationships with both stuff and people, make us nostalgic for more ‘human’, more ‘tangible’ times of direct interaction? Is the superficiality, the airiness of consumer culture making us feel lost? Are we longing to beat negative talk & hear-say with positive action? Trendwatchers say that – in large numbers – we are looking for authenticity, others call it ‘back to basics’, although there seems to be more to it than just another label. Some sociologists fear we are sitting on a timebomb, and refer to a growing gap between those able and willing to follow the ever increasing pace and demands of contemporary post-industrial society and those unable or unwilling to do so.

On several occasions, the past year, the ever lovely and inspiring Monocle magazine focused our attention on the revaluation of craftsmanship in the designworld. Yes, I hear you say, people pay for exclusivity. Indeed they do, yet there also seems to be a material and a human connection we are looking for: who touched it, whose hands made it, who/what inspired it, who breathe life into it, which story does the object tell, who fixed it, does it become nicer as it ages, what makes it mine, … A world of abundance, of anywhere-anything-anytime seems to be raising questions faster than answers. On several fronts, a sense of poverty of meaning is becoming ever more apparent.

One response to this appears to be to ‘bring back touch‘, to bring us back ‘in touch’ with ourselves, the people, things and environments around us. No, there is nothing esoteric to it, on the contrary, it appears to be hard work in the material world. Check out MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects which organizes Ghost lab, “an education initiative designed to promote the transfer of architectural knowledge through direct experience – project-based learning taught in the master-builder tradition – with emphasis on issues of landscape, material culture, and community”. One week to design a building, one week to build it with local materials and the group’s own hands, all on the coast of Nova Scotia; because architecture is more than computer-aided-design and books, databases and deskwork cannot account for the majority of tacit knowledge and know-how that leads to excellence.

Not only summerschools or craft schools, but also universities are gradually rediscovering the benefits of master-apprenticeship models of learning. A one-to-one relationship as a context for deeper learning, a stimulus to multigenerational dialogue and knowledge management, a celebration of the unicity of skills and approaches, personal attention and responsibility etc. Each and every one of these elements appears to fit remarkably well within the contemporary context of educational needs and solutions, even (or perhaps especially) in times of teamwork and participatory design.

An increasing number of universities, such as Harvard, is actively encouraging students to take a gap-year before entering university: to strike out on their own, to set or sync their priorities, to feed their personal interests, to invest in their personal development, to give back to their community and the world at large, to take the time to grow into fuller, more complete crewmembers of Spaceship Earth …

Scanning for other signals, one could say that there is an element of nostalgia involved. Vintage design is hot, steampunk makes the futuristic seam less otherworldly, the wear and tear of materials having lived a life of meaning, having a history, makes us feel alive, it reaffirms our being human in a context in which the new is leading to fatigue. Is it a style, a fashion, a mere craze? Elements of it yes, yet it feels like there’s a deeper ground to it as well. Looking forward to hear a sociologist, anthropologist, psychologist on this instead of yet another marketeer.

What does it mean for the future people dream of? To be continued, no doubt …

autonomous living unit

Nik — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:47:09 +0000

Le Corbusier once described the house as a machine for living in. Designer Eduardo McIntosh designed a whole series of such machines and called them Autonomous Living Units. His work was presented during the Future Cities: Past, Present exhibition at the d3 gallery in New York last month.

“Autonomous Living Units is a somewhat satirical project that stands at the intersection of the current housing crisis, the tendency of people in developed countries to live on their own and the trend of turning architecture into a consumer product. The project poses a scenario in which living units ( homes) have evolved into the most minimal yet visually alluring objects that can still provide for the basic needs of the 21st century human being. Because of the morphing of architecture into furniture, the Living Units could be inserted in derelict areas and ruined housing projects.”

Via Boite-a-outils

vegetal city

Nik — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:04:58 +0000

Until the end of September 2009, the Musée du Cinquantenaire in Brussels showcases Vegetal City, an absolutely fascinating overview exhibition on the work of Luc Schuiten, the belgian visionary architect, illustrator, author. Years ago Schuiten started working on his archiborescence vision on urban development, as an alternative future to look out for, a way out of the current-day unsustainable impasse.

Vegetal city is a vision of a transformed society driven by a quest for sustainability in which notions of biomimicry provide for a solutioning framework.

“We can’t carry on with individualistic attitudes which boil down to ‘I’ll just do my own thing and let the rest of the world go by.’ We need to change the way our entire society thinks in order to make it compatible with the rest of the world of which it forms part, and on which it ultimately depends.”

Schuiten understands the power of stories to convey his vision. As such he moves beyond the mere aspect of ‘visualizing’ what one means.

Check out the unique exhibition and/or the book.

future shock: the movie(s)

Nik — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:23:56 +0000

In 1970 the futurologist Alvin Toffler published Future shock … a book about signs of the time and of times ahead, times in which the (increasing) speed of scientific and technological progress oversteps the pace of the human heartbeat. It becomes too much for many to digest and a sense of discomfort rather than techno-enabled comfort sets in.

Few people remember – hey, I wasn’t even born yet – that in 1972, a documentary version was made of the bestselling book, narrated by Orson Welles. Although over 30years old, there remains a contemporary relevance to the story being told. Some might even see a few parallels between “the future shock” phenomenon and “the singularity”.

Sit back and enjoy the movies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Via Smashing Telly