Disordered Cogitations

Following on the theme of bionics, my friend Mandy pointed me to Stelarc, a performance artist who specializes in machine control of the human body. In one case, he connected his arm electronically to the internet and let the web control its movement. He has also had a cell-cultured ear implanted on his arm.

Bionics, or Body Hacking

2009-02-11T18:26:00.003-05:00

Human performance augmentation (bionics) was one of the themes at the TED conference last week. I recently listened to a podcast of Tim O'Reilly's eTech2008 keynote speech. He mentioned Quinn Norton and her I Sing the Body Electric talk about body hacking. Brain augmentation is going to be significant over the next few years. Combining these two with ambient computing is a path to the singularity.

TED Overview

2009-02-11T18:18:00.006-05:00

I went to TED last week. See my Flickr set.

I was impressed at how upbeat, optimistic, and energized this conference was. There was general and specific recognition of the current recession, but a general feeling was that innovation and entrepreneurship are the solution. TED was about innovation and entrepreneurship, and thus TED sees itself as leading the country back to better days. These are people of genuine good will, of superior vision, and ample means to make things happen.

I was also struck by some trends across a number of talks. Robotics: surgical robots, artistic robots, military robots, brain science robots, animal robots. In all, I believe there were seven talks that were in whole or in part about robots. This is a trend well worth investigating.

Another trend was human performance. There were several talks about bionics or “smart” prosethics that don’t just bring the disabled back to normal, but give superior abilities to “normal” humans. Bio-engineering is closely related. Not just in growing replacement tissue, but in creating new human tissues that have never existed before. In essence, creating new human DNA for superior performance. Together these two disciplines have tremendous implications for how we will work in the near future.

I have a sense that some of these trends are on a logrithmic growth trajectory. That is the impact seems very small now, but when it takes off, it will engulf us. People and organizations that can hop on to these growth curves ahead of others with have tremendous advantages over their competitors.

OK, It REALLY begins

2008-10-14T10:10:00.006-05:00

Parallel Kingdom is a geo-located mixed-reality warcraft-like game. See the videos.

Social Software Map

2008-07-23T13:46:00.000-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredcavazza/2564571564/sizes/o/

Designing Interactions

2008-01-31T07:22:00.000-05:00

Just listened to an iTunesU lecture given by Bill Moggridge, of IDEO, to the Human-Computer Interaction Seminar at Stanford. He talked about his book, Designing Interactions. Three models he talks about are:

"Enthusiast - Professional - Consumer"
"Manipulation - Locomotion - Conversation"
"Feel - Do - Know"

CES Summary

2008-01-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

Here is a quick video overview I made of CES.

Now, just which singularity are we talking about?

2007-12-19T21:37:00.000-05:00

Eliezer Yudkowsky gave a great overview of the three competing theories of technological singularity at the 2007 Singularity Summit.

Five Scraps of Paper

2007-12-17T18:37:00.000-05:00

Here are five suggestions, made to me by my friends, which I have carried around on slips of paper for a couple of months. I put them here just to remember them.

SwapDrive - for sharing files over the internet
Google Webmaster Tools - just what you think
HandBrake - for converting my home movie DVDs to my iPod to show my mom
Bones - get the complete first season DVDs
The Third Man - watch it before going to Vienna

Now I just need to find time to do something with this list!

Into the Virtual Blue Yonder

2007-12-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

My friend, Bob, pointed me to a book I am putting on my reading list:

Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality

by Edward Castronova

Larry Lessig at TED

2007-11-10T21:16:00.000-05:00

I just watched Larry Lessig's TED talk. WOW! Not only was the content of his talk brilliant, his use of historical analogy was stunning, and the presentation slides were pure genius. It was a masterful production. I am going to practice his style in my next presentation.

Don't let the Bozos Grind you Down

2007-11-08T07:38:00.000-05:00

Guy Kawasaki, in a talk to O'Reilly's 2007 MySQL Confernece, entitled The Art of Innovation, lists 9 rules of Innovation.

Jump to the next curve.
Don't worry, be crappy.
Churn, baby, churn.
Don't be afraid to polarize people.
Break down the barriers.
“Let a hundred flowers blossom.”
Think digital, act analog.
Never ask people to do what you wouldn't do.
Don't let the bozos grind you down.

Mapping Life

2007-11-08T07:22:00.000-05:00

Juan Enriques in his 13 October SALT talk (summary, mp3) made an interesting comparison between agriculture and energy. It used to be that in agriculture we threw bigger machines (tractors, combines, etc.) and chemicals (pesticides, fertilizers) at the little plant. Then in the 1960's we changed the plant itself -- the green revolution. By changing the plant itself, we solved the food problem we could never solve by throwing more machines and chemical at the plant.

Now consider hydrocarbon fuels (coal, oil). We are currently throwing more machines at them (digging deeper, oil extraction from shale, etc.). But what if we could change the coal itself? Could we make a bacteria that eats coal or oil and excretes natural gas? Just let them loose in a coal mine or oil shale and harvest the natural gas. Or could we genetically engineer the bacteria in the ocean that absorb carbon out of the air to also absorb hydrogen out of the water and produce hydrocarbons for us? We could build power generation plants that run off of air and water and a domesticated bacteria.

Everything is Misc/Links are Enough Video

2007-10-18T07:44:00.001-05:00

Dave pointed me to a new video that makes the point of hyperlinking and tagging solves the misc problem.

Video Mashup at Different Scales

2007-10-18T07:15:00.000-05:00

Bruce pointed me to this:

Storage is our Past, Present, and Future

2007-10-18T06:46:00.001-05:00

Jonathan has an interesting piece on the value of past data in the present, and how we need to preserve the present so the future has a rich past upon which to draw. He makes two points.

Analog films from the past, when digitally remastered to DVD in the present, give the viewer a higher quality viewing experience than the original viewers experienced.
The production of a digital full-length movie in the present requires 1 Pedabyte of storage

Future rendering systems will increase the quality of the present data, so we will naturally want to store all of our data for future exploitation.

This will be true not just for the film industry, but for all sectors. For example, the current value to present genealogists of a 17th century parish register of births, marriages, and deaths, far exceeds the value of the register to the priest who recorded the data.

Seeing Magnetic Lines

2007-10-15T12:41:00.000-05:00

National Geographic reports that bird migrate by looking at the earth's magnetic field lines.

Scientists already suspected birds' eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth's magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.

Thinking Second Life into Action

2007-10-15T12:28:00.000-05:00

BoingBoing points to Keio University research that allows a person to operate second life, just by thinking about it.

IWB on Social Robots

2007-09-25T15:14:00.000-05:00

Irving has an interesting post on robots in virtual social networks. He sez:

The Huggable is a robotic communication avatar designed for social interactions, education, healthcare and other applications. It is essentially a very cute teddy bear, with a sensitive skin, embedded "intelligence" (i.e., hardware and software), wireless communications and the ability to see, hear, speak, touch and move. But what I find so compelling about The Huggable is that it can operate as an autonomous personal robot and as a semi-autonomous robotic avatar that is part of a human social network, providing a much richer set of interactions to the members of the network than is possible using PCs and similar devices.

There is a lot of activity in intelligent, autonomous, mobile robots for entertainment, education, protection and many other applications. Applications range from helping doctors and nurses perform their duties better (even remotely), to providing assistance to the elderly for improved mobility and strength (e.g., vacuuming, helping in getting out of bed, even companionship). Aging populations around the world are a big driver of personal robot products and applications.

The concept of semi-autonomous robots integrated into a social network is new, at least for me. But once you start thinking about potential applications, many come to mind, in areas as diverse as family communications, healthcare, education and entertainment.
For example, imagine faraway grandparents being able to interact with their young grandchildren who are holding and playing with The Huggable. You can talk, read stories and sing to them. You can (virtually) hug them. You can watch and listen to their reactions as well as sense the way they hold and touch the teddy-bear-like device. Imagine a similar scenario with soldiers stationed around the world, being able to interact with their young children in a far richer, more emotional and satisfying way than a phone conversation. Or imagine the help it could provide children not getting enough nurturing and stimulation from their parents, by enabling family members, professionals or volunteers to get involved in their care.

Virtual World News

2007-09-25T07:49:00.000-05:00

3PointD has two interesting postings. The first discusses the virtual Vietnam War Memorial in Second Life and the second speculates on the Google Earth virtual world.

Bin Laden Word Cloud

2007-09-24T06:36:00.000-05:00

Dave pointed me to a interesting ManyEyes visualization of Bin Laden's recent speech.

I registered and uploaded the Gutenberg.org Alice in Wonderland. Guess which words are most frequent before clicking. . . here or here.

Here is some population data to play with from the Census Bureau.

Fight for Kisses

2007-09-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

Doc pointed me to a very clever Wilkinson advertisement using avatars for actors. I understand that creating advertisements in virtual worlds is much less expensive than hiring a sound stage and actors. Virtuality is beginning to become mainstream. Video courtesy of DailyMotion.

Fight for Kisses
Uploaded by fight-for-kisses

Transformation

2007-09-19T06:27:00.001-05:00

I just discovered a good short summary of transformation theory by Marcia Daszko and Sheila Sheinberg. Here is a snippet. (scroll down . . .)

THREE TYPES OF CHANGES
	Traditional	Transitional	Transformational
Motivation for Change	Better, Faster, Cheaper	Fix a problem	Survival,Environment,World Changes, Breakthrough needed
Degree of Change	Incremental improvements	Transition from old to new; A to B	Revolutionary
Necessary Thinking	Improve	Change management; strategic planning	Radical shifts in mindset/thinking/actions
Actions	Manage and control processes	Design the plan; implement the plan	Whole system change, complete overhaul of mindset, paradigms, culture

Shift Happens

2007-09-07T17:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my friend, Mike, for the pointers:

The old one - - -

The new one - - -

More Women in the Family Tree

2007-09-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

The TierneyLab blog over at the NYTimes has an interesting post about the genetic evidence that there are more women in our individual and collective family trees than men. The sociological explanation is that, in the past, lots of men had no offspring (killed in war, killed hunting, killed fooling around, had bad B.O., etc.), thus the remaining (fewer men) had the job to help the unmatched lonely women have children. So, historically, the reproductive men had more children per person (through multiple partners), than reproductive women had per person. Over the generations, descendants of these men married each other. Thus these men would should up in multiple ancestral lines with different female partners. As a result there are fewer male progenitors than female. Polygamous societies contributed to this phenomenon -- as did victorious armies in raping the widows of the defeated armies.

This phenomenon is also evident in the animal kingdom, such as the seal and big cat polygamous societies.

Post Script: A couple of people have reminded me that in previous generations there was a high death rate in childbirth. This meant that a man could have children by two or three wives over the course of his life, in a serial monogamy fashion.

What is a Luddite?

2007-08-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

Clay gives us a definitive definition. He has parsed the argument correctly.

He then follows with this insight: The internet's output is data, but its product is freedom

Virtual Terrorism and Religion

2007-07-31T12:08:00.000-05:00

My friend Rob pointed me to this article on virtual terrorism from news.com.au.

"Just as real-life companies such as Toyota test their products in SL, so could terrorists construct virtual representations of targets they wish to attack in order to examine the potential target's vulnerabilities and reaction to attack," Jones says.

And Corinne pointed me to this MSNBC article on virtual missionary work.

Giving good presentations

2007-07-31T06:22:00.000-05:00

The TED blog pointed me to this great Business Week piece on making presentations. In short,

Build Tension
One Theme per Slide
Add Pizazz
Practice
Be Honest
Show Enthusiasm

Digitize my LPs

2007-07-11T10:59:00.000-05:00

I have a whole box of LP records with my favorite music from the 60's and 70's, including one from Bread! My friend Mark let me know about technology that can be used to digitize those LPs, so I can burn them to CD or put them onto my iPod. See this Chicago Tribune article. It is a record player with a USB output connection. Very cool.

The Virtual World in our Minds

2007-07-11T07:19:00.000-05:00

Irving Wladawsky-Berger has a great posting on why humans like virtual worlds. He says:

Maybe the reason I am so excited about the whole subject of Virtual Worlds is that in our own way we are beginning to have tools that let us make real the fruits of our imagination.

Just as word processors plus blogs empower our use of words, and digital cameras plus Flickr empower our use of images, creation tools plus virtual worlds empower our use of imagination.

Vizualizing the Universe

2007-07-11T07:04:00.000-05:00

Here is an amazing visual presentation at the March TED conference by Jonathan Harris. His work is now on line at http://universe.daylife.com/ .

The NICE Dilbert Blog

2007-07-10T07:34:00.000-05:00

Scott Adams waxes eloquent on the power of the compliment.

David Pogue's NYT iPhone Music Video

2007-07-10T07:13:00.000-05:00

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=f390265dcbb9e1f1da97a69637e921d39b6c99aa

Big Guns on Prediction Markets

2007-07-03T12:17:00.000-05:00

Prediction Markets have been around for a long time, starting at the U. of Iowa. The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have issued a joint manifesto about Prediction Markets. The All-Star list of authors include at least two Nobel Laureates. They say . . .

We argue that U.S. regulators should lower barriers to the creation and design of prediction markets by creating a safe harbor for certain types of small stakes markets. We believe our proposed change has the potential to stimulate innovation in the design and use of prediction markets throughout the economy, and in the process to provide information that will benefit the private sector and government alike.

Ants in a Virtual World

2007-07-02T18:58:00.000-05:00

My friend, Daniel, pointed me to an O'Reilly Radar blog post about an ant simulation in Second Life by Tectonic Nabob. Way cool!

New Website a'brewin'

2007-06-30T15:29:00.000-05:00

none ready yet . . .

http://www.acadac.net
http://www.acadac.us
http://wiki.acadac.net
http://guestbook.acadac.net

San Francisco Photos

2007-06-23T02:29:00.000-05:00

Here is the Flickr set of photos of my recent trip to San Francisco.

Impact of Exponential Change

2007-06-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

I am here at the Supernova Conference where we are discussing what to do with the ubiquitous web. This is difficult because it is hard to understand the impact of exponential change -- Moore's Law being one of the most famous. One of the speakers referred to Ray Kurzweil's 2001 paper entitled, The Law of Accelerating Returns. I know what I will be reading next.

Innovation in the White Spaces

2007-06-20T08:35:00.000-05:00

My friend Gwen pointed me to an interesting piece on innovation from EDS. It cites Charlie Feld on the importance of engaging different disciplines, as well as creating an infrastructure that is innovation friendly.

Takin' it to the (virtual) streets . . .

2007-06-20T08:25:00.000-05:00

New World Notes reports on a protest inside Second Life against the government of Venezuala's Huga Chavez.

JackBe (nimble . . .)

2007-06-20T08:16:00.000-05:00

JackBe has a well-designed, well-populated website, and an enterprise Web 2.0 product that has real potential.

The Redistricting Game

2007-06-19T22:50:00.000-05:00

My friend Mark pointed me to a political game about redistricting from USC.

By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives - including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.

Google Page Rank

2007-06-18T12:30:00.000-05:00

TEDBlog gives us the formula for Google Page Rank.

TED Video

2007-06-18T07:29:00.000-05:00

Watch an overview of TED 2007.

Think Cube

2007-06-18T07:05:00.000-05:00

The Innovation Weblog points to an interesting new brainstorming product called Think Cube. Here's the hype:

ThinkCube is a complete solution that provides you with all of the tools you need to innovate. It represents the culmination of 10 years of research in creative thinking and synthesizes today's leading creativity tools, techniques, and processes. Whether you use it alone or in a group, ThinkCube trains your brain and lets you exercise your creative muscles.

Our unique ThinkCubation process incorporates many conventional brainstorming techniques and frames innovation in a process that is easy to follow and consistently produces results. ThinkCubation turns the critical but normally passive step of incubation into an active process.

While I doubt this contains ALL the tools I need to innovate, I would like to try it out on one of the tough problems we are having.

Book Review: Group Genius

2007-06-18T06:57:00.000-05:00

The Innovate on Purpose blog has a good review of the book, Group Genius. The review starts:

The path to becoming more innovative often requires debunking a number of myths or commonly held beliefs. For instance, the idea that a lone genius is often responsible for an invention or innovation. In fact, most innovations or inventions spring from the combination of the work of many people. Edison did not create the lightbulb alone, nor did Al Gore invent the internet by himself.

Yet another book based on complexity theory and congruent with Web 2.0.

Sensor My World

2007-06-11T13:19:00.000-05:00

Jonathan's blog points to a nifty little device called a SUN Spot. It is a battery powered, USB connectible, very small programmable computer and sensor pack

Robotic Baseball

2007-06-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

PopSci Mag has an article about a robotic batter. Check out the movie.

The Bridges of Second Life

2007-06-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

3pointD points to this interesting Flickr set that Forseti Svarog has put together.

PMOG not MMORPG

2007-06-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

3pointD points to this website:

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. It's like a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, except played passively. That means a lot of people just going about their life online. Our actions in our web browser feed moves into a game. That game shows us the characters and situations we create just by surfing the web! . . .The Spring 2007 incarnation of PMOG works using a Firefox extension, a small software add-on you install in your web browser.

Just imagine this in the work place. Firefox can just watch what I do, count up my score, and my annual performance review is done -- no mus, no fuss.

Good Foreign Policy is Overated

2007-06-06T07:38:00.000-05:00

The Dilbert Blog waxes eloquent on foreign policy:

Successful groups, whether they are Al-Qaeda or the Founding Fathers of the United States, tend to start out with brilliant people who have clear objectives. Those brilliant people attract other smart people by the power of their arguments.
But as an organization grows, you rapidly run out of bright people. The average IQ of any organization starts dropping, and before long, the power of identifying with a group overwhelms the power of reason.

and

The government of the United States is the quintessential example of an irrational organization. No matter what your political leanings, you can find mounds of examples where the government was – in your own irrational opinion – being irrational and working against its own best interests. If you think Al-Qaeda can act rationally, you are holding it to a higher standard than the U.S. government.

and

Our best bet is to divert their focus to more accessible targets, just as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan shifted their focus to us. Ironically, the civil war in Iraq might have accidentally accomplished through irrational means what good foreign policy could not. Al-Qaeda is using far more resources fighting other Muslims than fighting the U.S.

BumpTop at TED

2007-06-06T06:59:00.000-05:00

New computer desktop metaphor:

Creative Commons MP3s

2007-06-05T07:26:00.000-05:00

I saw a blog reference to the "Grand March" from Verdi's Aida. The Wikipedia article referenced a site (classicistranieri) that offers MP3s under the creative commons license. While the site is in Italian, it also has a significant collection of English language audio recordings, in addition to its music MP3s.

Vernor Vinge's Singularity

2007-06-04T12:03:00.000-05:00

I finally read Vernor Vinge's famous 1993 paper entitled:

The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post Human Era

A few good quotes:

Even now, the team of a PhD human and good computer workstation (even an off-net Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer.

Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer.

The change in viewpoint here would be to regard the group activity as a combination organism.

A central feature of strongly superhuman entities will likely be their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths, including ones far higher than speech or written messages. What happens when pieces of ego can be copied and merged, when the size of a selfawareness can grow or shrink to fit the nature of the problems under consideration?

Wikispaces INSIGHT

2007-06-04T11:54:00.000-05:00

Very interesting here and here.

Virtual Life?

2007-06-04T07:23:00.000-05:00

TerraNova speculates on the advancement of "intelligent" non-player characters (NPCs) inside virtual worlds:

Once the intelligent NPC's can interact with humans, they can evolve based on what they learn from us, and the decisions they make interacting with us. We, as players or participants, now become a stimulus for the virtual life. We can observe the NPC, help it with its goals, alter its food source, reproduction, start relationships, make NPC's jealous, and start fights, even wars. They would remember you from the last time you visited. They would have real experiences, real relationships, and real intelligence, and if the power happens to go off or memory gets corrupted... they cease to exist.

This, of course, is what the forthcoming game SPORE is all about.

Critique of Brainstorming

2007-06-04T06:37:00.000-05:00

The Innovation Weblog cites a critique of Brainstorming. While the critique has some merit, the proffered alternative--two people without a moderator--seems to miss the point of brainstorming all together.

Pictogame

2007-05-31T07:30:00.000-05:00

Here is a new way to embed micro-applications right into a blog. (Thx 3pointD)

Exercise at Work

2007-05-31T07:16:00.000-05:00

I could sure use one of these.

Surface Computing

2007-05-31T07:04:00.000-05:00

Searchblog points to a TechCrunch piece on surface computing.

Global Warming

2007-05-31T06:52:00.001-05:00

The most sensible thing I've read on Global Warming in a long time is at--of all places--Dilbert.Blog.

Memorial Day - Gettysburg Address

2007-05-30T06:55:00.000-05:00

On the way to work this morning, I listened to Garrison Keillor's Memorial Day News from Lake Wobegon podcast. In this monologue, he gave one of the best recitations of the Gettysburg Address I have heard.

Jane Jacobs on Economics

2007-05-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

In his talk to the Long Now, Spencer Beebe cites Jane Jacob's The Nature of Economies. Jane argues (in my paraphrase):

that the economy is just a subsystem of the larger Earth's ecosystem. As such it abides by nature's laws, which constrain how economies behave. The extent to which we put our economy in harmony with the larger ecosystem, the better the economy will behave and be sustained. The Earth's ecosystem--including the economic subsystem--is a complex adaptive system which cannot be commanded or controlled, but defines itself and re-creates itself as it continues. No development is isolated. All development is co-development. No development is linear. All development is a web. The more we adjust our economy to these principles, the better off we will be.

Divergence in Innovation

2007-05-29T16:15:00.001-05:00

My friend, Mark, pointed me to a Shell commercial which illustrates the power of divergent thinking on innovating a solution.

SALT in the Garden

2007-05-29T07:38:00.001-05:00

While working in the garden this weekend, I listened to several SALT lectures. All were mind expanding--especially Longman's:

Phillip Longman, The Depopulation Problem
Ken Dychtwald, The Consequences of Human Life Extension
Rusty Schweickart, The Asteroid Threat Over the next 100,000 years
Roger Kennedy, The Political History of North America from 25,000 BC to 12,000 AD
James P. Carse, Religous War in Light of the Infinite Game
Stuart Brand, Cities and Time

Yale in the 21st Century

2007-05-29T07:28:00.000-05:00

Endless Innovation Blog points to the Yale Art School that has redone their website as a wiki, with faculty, student, and alumni pages; course catalog, etc.

Pleo - Pet Robot

2007-05-29T07:13:00.000-05:00

On Fortune's list of 24 top innovators is Caleb Chung, the creator of the Furby.

His new toy robot is the Pleo. It has 35 sensors, 6 processors, and an ability to learn tricks. See video.

The History of Religion

2007-05-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

The Long Now Blog pointed me to a cool Maps of War 90-sec video on the history of religion over the last 5,000 years.

Immersive Education

2007-05-25T07:11:00.000-05:00

TerraNova has an interview with a Boston College professor who teaches in virtual worlds. He calls it immersive education. The Prof (Aaron Walsh) says:

As Immersive Education and other forms of personal virtual reality become more realistic and compelling we're going to see "immersive illness" become more common and more difficult to deal with.

and

It's also worth noting that the "fun" factor can't be denied. Most of the students I've spoken with about their experience with these classes say they're the most fun they've had, and that they look forward to being in virtual reality each week.

Augmented Reality

2007-05-24T07:35:00.000-05:00

Bruce points to a Technology Review article singing the praises of Augmented Reality. he goes on to ask:

Okay, that's just great, but the idea of a gig called the "International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality" is enough to baffle Philip K. Dick. I mean: suppose you went in there and you couldn't get un-mixed and de-augmented?

Two Great Quotes

2007-05-23T06:03:00.000-05:00

From Seth Godin:

The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe. --TEDTalk, February 2003

From Niccolo Machiavelli

Never was anything great achieved great without danger. --The Prince

RL Sensor Data Visualized in SL

2007-05-22T07:37:00.000-05:00

3pointD points to an interesting write-up of IBM visualizing in Second Life, data from real-time sensors in the real world. CJ Chowderhead has a replica of his physical office in Second Life. All the active blue tooth devices in the real world are represented in the virtual world. He has a duck in the virtual office that report the temperature inside the real office. Lights go on and off and doors open and close in the virtual world, when activated in the real world.

Teaching in Second Life

2007-05-22T06:47:00.000-05:00

Terra Nova has a nice "lessons learned" piece on teaching college courses inside Second Life. The entry also has a link to the the Second Life Educators Wiki. There are now 125 schools worldwide that use Second Life to teach courses.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-05-21T08:47:00.000-05:00

Once again, I am a late comer. In January, Professor Michael Wesch posted a YouTube video which does a great job of giving a feel for (at least one interpretation of) Web 2.0. Thanks to Sean and Don for the pointer. Here is the final version posted in March.

The Experience Trap

2007-05-21T07:49:00.000-05:00

Here is another insightful essay by Clay, which once again demonstrates why he is one of today's best thinkers about the extended IT/business milieu. My summary of his argument is that deep human experience is very beneficial to guide our behavior when the larger environment remains largely unchanged. But when the environment is changing deep human experience is detrimental in guiding our behavior. Clay says:

IBM learned, from decades of experience, that competitive advantage lay in the hardware; Bill Gates had never had those experiences, and didn’t have to unlearn them. Jerry and David at Yahoo learned, after a few short years, that search was a commodity. Sergey and Larry never knew that. Mark Cuban learned that the infrastructure required for online video made the economics of web video look a lot like TV. That memo was never circulated at YouTube.

So this is the trick -- to know when our environment has sufficiently changed, to be able to avoid the experience trap. Clay hints that people with lots of experience, just cannot escape into a novice state of mind. Rather than unlearn the old ways, partner with young folks who have never learned the old ways.

This reminds me of the premise of Orson Scott Card's scifi novel Ender's Game. The earth was under attack from aliens. No human adult could escape their humaness enough to think like an alien enough to successfully battle the aliens. So they recruited grade-schoolers to think "alien."

Dueling AI Chatbots

2007-05-18T07:59:00.000-05:00

My son pointed me to a very interesting conversation between two artificially intelligent (AI) chat bots, Alice and Jabberwacky. See Discover Magazine. Here is a snippet:

ALICE: Who created you?

Jabberwacky: My mother gave birth to me. Is that what you mean?

A: Jabberwacky, I meant exactly what I said.

J: Do you believe in God?

A: Of course I believe in God.

J: Why do you believe in God?

A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.

J: That’s circular reasoning.

A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.

J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?

A: Sure, tell me about it.

J: Why don’t blind people skydive?

A: Perhaps it is impossible.

J: I think you lie a lot.

Now there is a concept -- an AI chatbot deliberately telling a lie, what would Turing think of that?

The 10,000 Year Clocks

2007-05-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

I know this is old news, but I have just finished listening to Danny Hillis's 2004 talk (summary MP3) to the Long Now Foundation on his several attempts to build a 10,000 year clock. What a fascinating journey!

The Future is about Storage

2007-05-16T19:35:00.000-05:00

My friend Janet pointed me to an interesting essay by Charlie Stross about the future over the next tweny years. By 2027, he predicts we will easily be able to video/audio/text record, store, index, and search all of our waking moments, all the time, for as long as we live. This will be good to resolve he said/she said arguments--both in the home and in the courts. Pretty bad for privacy, however.

It would also mean the need for a complete overhaul of our educational system. Why memorize stuff (like times tables, history dates, parts of speech, the periodic table, and the Linnaeus biological classification system) when we can just search it near instantaneously?

TwitterVision

2007-05-16T11:27:00.000-05:00

A recent ITConversation with Robert Scoble pointed me to TwitterVision. It is a cool mashup between Twitter and Goggle Maps. It shows where in the word the current twitter comments are coming from.

Encyclopedia of Life

2007-05-09T18:04:00.000-05:00

E.O. Wilson, at this year's TED conference wished for an Encyclopedia of Life. With thanks to many people and foundations it has begun. Check out the two minute video at:

http://www.eol.org/home.html

Edelson's Law

2007-05-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

I have just started listening to Vernor Vinge's talk to the Long Now Foundation entitled, "What if the Singularity does NOT Happen?" In the first part of the talk he cites the following provocative quote by Steve Edelson, which Vinge calls Edelson's Law:

The number of important insights that are not being made is increasing exponentially with time.

Others have commented that this issue arises out of the exponential growth in infotech, biotech, mechanotech, etc. The interplay of all the new discoveries produces insights beyond the ability of the collective wisdom of human beings to grasp.

Long Now Podcasts

2007-05-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

My friend, John K., recommended subscribing to the Long Now podcasts. Will give it a try.

The Strategy Paradox

2007-05-07T06:44:00.000-05:00

Endless Innovation introduces a new book about innovation called The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it). The thesis (as best I can tell from the reviews) is as follows:

All of the various worlds that make up the global market place, such as the business world, the consumer world, the financial world, and the technology world, are changing quickly in ways we cannot predict.
Big corporate strategies, while necessary for achieving corporate success, also assume a long term understanding of the global market place.
These strategies, therefore, set organizations on paths that are inflexible to the inevitable changes in the global market environment.
Thus the paradox, that in order to achieve corporate success, corporations--by intentional design--get out of sync with the market.

The solution to the paradox is to be flexible and adaptive. Darwin said it is not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those species which are most adaptable.

Legal Advice for Bloggers

2007-05-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ken for this pointer:

http://www.avivadirectory.com/blogger-law/

Better Search for Second Life

2007-05-05T15:05:00.000-05:00

My friend, Peter, sent me a link to a new search tool inside Second Life at:

http://www.slquery.com/items/search

Everything is Miscellaneous

2007-05-03T07:44:00.000-05:00

Cory reviews David Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous.

Weinberger's thesis is this: historically, we've divided the world into categories, topics, and hierarchies because physical objects need to be in one place or another, they can't be in all the places they might belong. Computers and the Internet turn this on its head: because a computer can "put things" in as many categories as they need to be in, because individuals can classify knowledge, tasks, and objects idiosyncratically, the hierarchy is revealed for what it always was, a convenient expedient masquerading as the True Shape of the Universe.

Second Life Revealed

2007-05-03T06:38:00.000-05:00

3PointD waxes eloquent about this afternoon's Linden Lab town hall meeting to address resident concerns about the quality of the platform.

Jott This!

2007-05-03T06:17:00.000-05:00

The Innovation Weblog suggests using a new service called Jott. Jott is a voice to text service. One calls Jott on the phone and leaves a message. Jott will transcribe the message and email the text and audio to a predefined address.

Linux on Dell PCs - Wow

2007-05-02T13:22:00.000-05:00

Cory points to an announcement that Dell will now offer Ubuntu Linux on it computers. this wast he number one request on the Dell Ideastorm site that asks users what they want.

All I can say is this a game changing event. This will dramatically lower the price of a pc. And with lower price, higher consumption. I love it.

A Wiggle and a Ripple

2007-05-01T08:06:00.000-05:00

TerraNova points to a Second Life wiki article about a new feature called "Sculpted Prim" which imports 3-D models (from Maya, for example) as single prim objects. The wiki says:

. . . it would be easy to have a flash animation generate a sculpted prim - and when a resident touches a spot on its surface, the shape could wiggle and ripple appropriately.

This Could Totally Work

2007-05-01T07:11:00.000-05:00

Scott Adams says:

Have you heard of an online service for kids called Webkinz? It’s like a cross between cocaine and puppies. Kids can’t resist it. It’s frickin’ brilliant.

Before you use the Webkinz service, you have to buy a stuffed animal that comes with a code. You use that code to activate an animated character in an online world that looks like your stuffed animal. The brilliant part is that your online critter will become sick if you don’t regularly visit and care for it. Somehow this makes kids emotionally invested.

Kids can earn fake money by playing games on the system. That money goes toward caring for their online creatures, including buying furniture and so on. Kids love it. But I think kids aren’t the biggest market for this sort of thing.

I think single women would want an online boyfriend they could totally control. But here’s the hook: The online boyfriend is a “project.” If you don’t sign into the system regularly, your online boyfriend will start dressing with clothes from the 80’s, smoking, gambling, staying out late, and flirting with other women.

It’s the “owner’s” job to make the virtual boyfriend eat right, exercise, look for a job, and trim his nose hair. If he scratches his crotch or passes gas during an online dinner party, he gets no virtual sex for a week.

The women could earn fake online money by playing games just like in the Webkinz model. For example, imagine a Tetris-type game where articles of clothing fall from above and you have to assemble them into coordinated outfits before they reach the ground. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be a hit.

I am thinking about a game where the intense sports dads could have virtual sports sons. After training their virtual sports sons, they could get together with other sports dads and have virtual sports contests with their virtual sports sons. This way, real world boys would be free to play World of Warcraft.

Biological MEMS

2007-05-01T07:01:00.000-05:00

Bruce cites PhysOrg.com:

The single-celled Spirostomum is a tiny brown worm that can contract its 500-micrometer-long body to 25% of its length in a millisecond, making this protozoan the fastest-contracting microorganism known. Scientists think of microorganisms like this as tiny functional machines. After all, many of them have capabilities far surpassing the current state-of-the-art in MEMS (Microelectromechanical Systems) technology.

So what does our little friend Spiro eat? And how do we get him/her to jump at our command? But, I like the idea of putting these babies to work. Especially if we can get them to clean out the garage . . .

Google is Number 1

2007-04-30T06:59:00.000-05:00

The Searchblog cites two articles which report that Google is both the number one brand and number one website. Not bad for not existing 10 years ago. It also points to the power of emergent knowledge (page rank) and emergent innovation (20% time).

Live Video Streaming made Easy

2007-04-27T09:36:00.000-05:00

This week's TWIT podcast introduced Ustream, a site that allows folks to stream the video from their laptop to a website. Leo wants to set up a webpage that will aggregate the video streams from all his guests, so we can watch live.

Big Iron for Virtual Worlds

2007-04-26T06:49:00.000-05:00

3pointD has interesting piece analyzing the IBM announcement launching a mainframe specifically designed to host 3D virtual environments.

Law Students in Second Life

2007-04-24T07:32:00.000-05:00

Terra Nova points to a multi-author blog called Fizzy's Second Life. This blog has a number of videos produced by 1st year law students exploring property rights inside Second Life -- through the eyes of Fizzy Soderberg.

Avatar Expressions

2007-04-24T07:18:00.000-05:00

3pointD points to a new book by Second Life resident Forseti Svarog called Avatar Expressions. It is available for free in-world or at Lulu.com (a print on demand service). As it turns out, my avatar knows a number of the avatars featured in the book. Fun!