Forget microfilm, here is the nanobook. Together with the Nano Imaging Facility of Simon Fraser University , artist Robert Chaplin created the world’s first nanobook “Teeny Ted from Turnip Town”, measuring a mere 69 x 97 microns. And yes, the book has an ISBN number.
Nanotechnology is not only inspiring many artists and designers, also the scientists and technologists are starting to see the potential of art and design to catalyze dialogue between the labworld and society at large. In similar fashion, the belgian nanotech player IMEC teamed up with our friends over at AddictLab a while ago. The project, named “in.tangible/scape.s” aims to bring the fascinating yet often obscure world of nanotechnology to life through art and design, a wonderful way to breathe life into yet nonexisting futures. An inspiration book on the results of the joint research project is under publication.
Together, both partners also set up NanoDesignAwards, of which the first edition will take place in 2009.
Microsoft moves to patent technological means to enhance or enforce good manners on people with respect to their ways of using technological devices. Think of it as the digital ‘service’ equivalent of the no-smoking sign.
First it was the family, the home where children received their basic education in terms of norms, values, good and bad manners. Then it became the school’s job. Now technology steps into the equation as well …
Let us hope that people find more poetic ways and means of getting the message of good manners across than showing a dialog box message on the screen of your electronic gadget. Will your cell phone whisper to you “don’t shout”? or increase the volume on the other end so you don’t start screaming in the first place? Context awareness of technology is one of the – if not the – primary prerequisite for smart behaviour. Linking social values to the concept of smart is one way to enhance user experience not merely for the user but also his/her surroundings (human/natural/physical. It is important to note however that these values are often culturally defined or biased.
For those interested in more experimental/poetic ways to influence people’s behaviour when using for example mobile phones, check out IDEO’s Social Mobile Phones ’shock-therapy’ project by Crispin Jones & Graham Pullin.
Honda already came up with its Puyo, begging to be touched, featuring soft curves & soft materials. BMW’s design guru Chris Bangle takes it a step further and developed Gina (Light Visionary Model), a smooth concept car covered in stretchable fabric (on top of a metal wireframe) able to shapeshift on demand. Headlights appear in a smooth motion when needed, doors open like curtains being pulled back/draped, …
“the Gina consists of a flexible ‘skin’ stretched over a metal wire structure enforced with carbon fibre. It allows the driver to change the shape of the car ‘on the fly’ – the rear spoiler can be raised, for example, while the rocker panels can effectively be bodykitted out.
It’s a similar story on the inside, where the steering wheel and instrumentation sit within the centre console and slide into position when the driver pushes the start button.”
The blob meets the car. Seamlessness, smooth morphing/shapeshifting … imagine being able to decide not only the shape of your car and change it yourself, but also its shapeshifting behavior or the characteristics (e.g. stiffness, colour, ) of the material itself. Could smart cars – as body and skin become ever more flexible in design – anticipate upon impact when a collision becomes unavoidable and shapeshift into a form optimized to minimize damage? Fascinating.
On the basis of co-creation and open innovation ideas the Dutch Favelafabric launched the “Future of entertainment”initiative. Aimed primarily at young digital natives, they decided to set up a three-stage system to involve the core user group of their yet to be designed online music service in the conceptualization of it.
Stage 1: How do you experience (finding & getting, playing & experiencing, organizing & sharing, creating & promoting music)?
Stage 2: What are your ideas on … ?
Stage 3: Best ideas
An incentive system dubbed Sharepoints, allows the top 100 most (pro)active contributors to take part in the profit of the new service (total of 5% of profit generated in first 12months after launch or 1m € max. to be distributed proportionally among top 100). New ideas/experiences, voting other ideas, giving feedback each allow contributors to earn Sharepoints.
$100.000-$60.000 today (in 4 weeks time), maybe $5.000 (in 24h) by the end of the year, possibly $100 or less by 2012. That is how much it will cost to sequence your full genome.
Low price means high accessibility. Full genome sequencing will be the 21st century’s blood & urine sample. Your ‘personal map’, your ‘personal risk profile’, your ‘personal manual’ for the price of 10 music albums on iTunes. It takes no genius to see the far reaching consequences of such a development in terms of both possibilities as well as responsibilities.
The method and technology developed by BioNanoMatrix is able to sequence long strands of DNA, up to 2.000.000 letters in length currently and rising, and looks at physical location as well as sequence information at the same time, saving loads of computational time as well. The method and technology is being enhanced now to allow for much longer strands of DNA.
“Further speeding up the process with novel chemistry and advances in nanofabrication, the companies will develop a device that can simultaneously read the sequence of multiple genomes on a single chip.”
Why can’t you plug a version 2.0 component into your car to replace that 1.9b or why can’t you exchange a diesel engine for a gas one? Why can’t you do that? Because it wasn’t designed as such: neither the notion of car-consumption, nor the car itself.
Several collaborative car design initiatives are seeking to redesign the car: to make it smarter, make it cleaner, make it cooler.
We already wrote about Markus Merz & Co’s OScar a while ago, but also check out the Society for Sustainable Mobility’s Open Source Green Vehicle Project, aka Kernel with its modular (nearly) ‘hot-swappable’ design. Or have a look at the Vehicle Design Summit‘s goal to collaboratively build a plugin-hybrid, low-cost, 200-mpg four seater for the Indian market. Also the big boys are in: Sabic‘s set up C,mm,n, an open-source car project ran by 3 three technical universities in the Netherlands. Then there is always the (Progressive) Automotive X Prize Foundation putting $10 million on the table for any team that comes up with a practical mass-producable car getting at least 100mpg (see also here).
As one can notice most initiatives focus on energy (if not fuel) efficiency, some also focus on materials, while few take a full 360° view on production, consumption, waste cycles etc. They are all still counting in gallons, the cars still look like ‘todays cars’. This both means that the threshold for people to switch to such a ‘car’ will be low, yet it also shows how the traditional concept of a car as we know it remains unaltered, hence raising the question as to where the real long view lies. Radical innovation is needed and efforts in this direction thus ought to question deeper lying assumptions of what a car is, could and should be.
As has been shown, our awareness of our planet, our ecosystem, our society, our behaviour etc. changed dramatically from the moment we were able to observe Mother Earth from the outside, from space. We could suddenly link what we experienced ‘down here’ with what we saw from ‘up there’. Our outer and inner perspective suddenly became linked as we were looking at the bigger pictures of ourselves from outer space. It are these kinds of feedback loops which propell human insight forward.
Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics, recognized such feedback loops as core to all intelligent systems. His findings formalized the notion of feedback and influenced a wide variety of fields ranging from engineering to computer science, from biology and philosophy to social sciences looking at the organization of society.
In his latest TED talk, neuroscientist and inventor Christopher deCharms shows how his company Omneuron is using advanced fMRI technologies to look at the happenings inside our brain in real time, in 3D. The sheer possibility of looking at what we think, feel, do ‘up there’, opens up a whole new era of discovery and remediation (e.g. chronic pain control). Psychiatry, pharmaceuticals, surgery were three major categories of treatment. Now there is a fourth. Check out the video here.
Advances in neurofeedback technologies and treatments have already shown some of the ways in which increased awareness of our brains’ activities can be used to enhance training, revalidation and for other purposes as well (e.g. gaming).
Think ahead. Imaging techniques are advancing rapidly and molecular imaging is all the hype now. Think about zooming in from brain to brain area to cell level. Which new pathways does this open up?
The European association of plastics manufacturers, Plastics Europe, … commissioned UK futurist Ray Hammond to write a book about the world in 2030, with a special focus on the challenges for plastics.
Changing demographics, extreme weather conditions, peak-oil, resource-conflicts, surveillance society, hyperreal leisure time, robots, sustainable globalisation, healthcare revolution, virtual companions, biodigital interfaces, the global brain, new retailing, …
A summary of the book including a first response of the plastics industry on the challenges ahead, can be found here.
Regenerative medicine is gaining momentum. The Department of Defense announced the launching of a new 5-year initiative to boost developments in the field, entitled “the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM)”.
“The newly established Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, known by the acronym AFIRM, will serve as the military’s operational agency for the effort [...] A key component of the initiative is to harness stem cell research and technology in finding innovative ways to use a patient’s natural cellular structure to reconstruct new skin, muscles and tendons, and even ears, noses and fingers [...]“
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, S. Ward Casscells, expects full functional regeneration of fingers and toes within 5 years. AFIRM is a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Both will act as co-leaders in the initiative and receive half of the total grant of $85 million to develop new treatments for wounded soldiers. The teams working on the project include collaborators from 15 other institutions. Director of the McGowan Institute, Allan J. Russell, will co-direct AFIRM (see Alan’s inspiring TED talk here).
Several medical fields are aiming for regenerative solutions to avoid rejection of foreign tissue, prostheses, etc. In the field of oral care for example, UK-based Odontis is searching to grow entire replacement teeth. Other initiatives, such as that by Prof. Sally Marshall at the University of California are looking for solutions to remineralize parts of teeth (see here).
The road is long but every small success, because of its profound impact on the quality of lives of people, will revolutionize the medical field in the broad sense.
The Bank of America teams up MIT’s MediaLab to set up a Center for Future Banking. The new center will operate with a $3-5m annual budget for a period of five years and
“… explore new ideas in banking by inventing technologies that reveal and leverage insights across a wide range of physical and social scales, from one-on-one customer interactions to global transactions. Researchers will address such questions as: ‘How can every customer be empowered with the knowledge and tools to take better control of their financial futures?’ ‘How will banking interactions evolve as a customer’s physical and virtual worlds become completely intertwined?’ and ‘How will social networks and mobile platforms transform customers’ banking experiences, making it easier, more convenient, and better integrated with their daily lives?’.”
Prof. Deb Roy, Chair of MIT’s academic program in media arts & sciences who will lead the project, says:
“We will create a focus of intellectual energy that brings together researchers with radically different perspectives, including behavioral economists, social scientists, computer scientists, psychologists, designers, and others who share a passion for invention. It’s a recipe for producing unexpected new ideas that will trigger significant innovations in the world of banking.”
The world of banking is changing drastically, not only from within, but in major ways also under influence of external developments, which pose new challenges for existing players in the field as well as opportunities for new ones. For example, on the ‘cheap end of innovation’, discount banks popping up everywhere are forcing many players to change their businesses and offer added value in new innovative ways. Worldwide, local and networked communities are stepping up to fill gaps left by the business players and open new markets, introduce new (or redress old) models also in the banking sector. While still marginal now, initiatives such as Zopa, a p2p online loan bank, or community bank Umpqua (experience-designed by Ziba), but also initiatives such as the Grameen Foundation‘s microfinancing model (see also a previous post), the Children’s Development Bank by Butterflies in India, investing in kidpreneurs show the changing face of banking and the mechanisms behind it. As customers become pickier and more demanding, technology offers new possibilities and banks realize customer-centred reasoning pas off, many future-oriented initiatives of existing banks are focusing on improving the overall customer experience through better, more human-centred design of their spaces and products. See for example Deutsche Bank’s Q110 bank of the future. They also aim to enhance simplicity, flexibility and customer enjoyment.
Feel free also to check out this (slightly dated) IBM podcast on the future of banking (or read the transcript).
Inspired by the X-Club, our fellow future explorers over at IFTF launched the X2 projecta while ago. This ‘open’, collective research initiative aims to
“identify major trends and disruptions in science, technology, and the practice of science over the next twenty years and their impacts on the larger society.”
IFTF previously also conducted the UK’s Office of Science and Innovation’s Deltascan, creating a database and map of trends and forecasts regarding the 50-year future of science and technology.
Mid-January Italian comedian Luciana Littizzeto commented on the underlying problems of the Naples’ waste problem, saying: “We are the only species that shits more than it eats!”.
Naples’ problems are far from solved, yet as in many difficult situations, the local community found ways to turn the situation’s threats into opportunities or in this case: trash into cash. Among other things, they organized a ‘trash market‘ selling reusable trash items. In a sense their scavenge hunt selections were not based upon material value of the found objects per se, but on the added value they might represent for their ‘customers’, i.e. their neighbours. What is worthless to one, can still be of high value to another.
Cradle to cradle design teaches us that waste is food. It signifies changes the starting position of our design endeavours. In this period of transition, we are of course required to deal with the waste that is present and unfortunately still continues to be produced. A series of initiatives is now now looking how to turn trash into cash or rather how to make the most, the best of the leftovers of our consumption society.
In the US, in Colorado, Professor of Architecture Julee Herdt is aiming to turn the state’s landfills into harvesting areas for new, environmental friendly construction materials. In New Zealand, ScionResearch runs the Waste2Gold Project, trying to accomplish three goals: a) using waste as a bio-processing feedstock,
b) combining waste with other materials for added value products and c) recovering energy and chemicals from wastes and residues. Examples Scion is working on include bacteria to turn waste into biodegradable polymers, new composite mixes (e.g. controlled-release fertilisers, biodegradable plant pots, panels, and other moulded plastic products), biomass energy sources (e.g. biogas, liquid biofuels, wood pellets etc.)
A nice trip through the history of ‘waste & wealth’ can be found at WasteAge.
Flexibility, plasticity, elasticity … concepts about to move into the material world.
Imagine transformers, not as a mechanical capability but as a material characteristic. Imagine all problems where different contexts require different form factors, different functionalities etc. yet basically only one underlying system.
The Nokia Research Centre and Prof. Mark Welland’s Nanoscience Centre at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge developed Morph, a concept for a shapeshifting multifunctional device based on nanotechnology.
“Nanotechnology allows control of physical properties of nanostructures and devices with single-molecule precision.”
Watch Morph’s concept video here and see how Morphsenses our environment, scans our food, etc. See how its nanowire grass recharges the device via solar power, how its superhydrophobic surface repells dirt and keeps it clean, how its nanoscale structure allows the device to stretch and change shape (a nanoscale mesh of fibres controls the stretching when folding for example rendering parts of it tough and strong as spider silk), its surface (able to shift shape depending on context) is responsive to touch (yes, buttons in real 3D with haptic feedback), its electronics invisible to the human eye fully integrated into the material etc.
The video – a visual/storyboarded scenario of use – clarifies the various ways in which nanotech advances could find their way into future products, fulfilling a broad range of functions. In this sense the video is a wonderful example of rendering the future tangible.
The Morph concept is currently on display at the MoMa exhibition ‘Design & the elastic mind‘, curated by Paola Antonelli.
Catching up on some stuff waiting in our ‘drafts’ folder for a little too long, here is a belated post concerning WIRED’s Nextfest festival of last september. With a baseline reading Experience the future, it obviously attracted our attention.
The future of … 12 themes was explored in 12 pavillions, by exhibiting a series of innovative developments – technologies – in the domains of communication, design, education, entertainment, exploration, green, health, play, robotics, security and transportation.
Four videos were posted recently, labeled The future of design, yet it are the technologies developed through design, which are really at the center of attention rather than the profession of ‘design’ itself, its applications, roles, ways and means, tools, methods and techniques, etc. (see also here). Nextfest sees design as ‘the way we shape and communicate with the world around us’.
Several designs/gadgets seem to be on display at Nextfest for several editions in a row. In this fast-paced world, it is hard to imagine a lack of future-oriented designs to fill an exhibition?
It is not only of solutions that lists are made, but also of the directions in which people ought to point their efforts. At the US National Academy of Engineering, a special committee including Danny Hillis, Jaime Lerner, William Perry, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Larry Page, Ray Kurzweil came up with 14 grand challenges for engineering in the coming years.
Microsoft moves to 
Honda already came up with its 
On the basis of co-creation and open innovation ideas the Dutch 
$100.000-$60.000 today (in 4 weeks time), maybe $5.000 (in 24h) by the end of the year, possibly $100 or less by 2012. That is how much it will cost to sequence your full genome.
As has been shown, our awareness of our planet, our ecosystem, our society, our behaviour etc. changed dramatically from the moment we were able to observe Mother Earth from the outside, from space. We could suddenly link what we experienced ‘down here’ with what we saw from ‘up there’. Our outer and inner perspective suddenly became linked as we were looking at the bigger pictures of ourselves from outer space. It are these kinds of feedback loops which propell human insight forward.
The European association of plastics manufacturers, 
The 
Inspired by the 
Mid-January Italian comedian Luciana Littizzeto 
Flexibility, plasticity, elasticity … concepts about to move into the material world.
Catching up on some stuff waiting in our ‘drafts’ folder for a little too long, here is a belated post concerning WIRED’s 
It is not only of solutions that lists are made, but also of the directions in which people ought to point their efforts. At the US National Academy of Engineering, a special 