Monday, March 31, 2008

Science fiction and innovation




Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, once said:
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."

Most research and trends forecasting reflect the present. To envision the future takes an imaginative curve ball. There’s no formula for innovation, but the kind of thinking found in science fiction can open your mind.

Science fiction is a fusion of the logic of science and the magic of fiction, a potent hybrid where rational and emotional worlds collide. In science fiction, rules can be bent or circumvented, reframing problems to reach novel solutions. It opens up possibilities for exploration and helps make the impossible happen. The genie is let out of the bottle, the kraken wakes...

Science fiction overlaps with philosophy of science. Philosophical thought experiments allow us to imaginatively explore a range of possible futures and examine the practical and moral implications of actions. So, science fiction helps us not only to innovate, but to innovate responsibly. Though often perceived as cold and mechanistic, or as depicting outlandish adventures in space, science fiction tends to be grounded in human behaviour. It can help us manage technological development in a way that benefits people.

A famous example of a thought experiment is the ‘brain in a vat’ scenario. Basically, every person in the world could be no more than a brain, suspended in a scientific vessel, perhaps located somewhere on Mars, being stimulated by alien scientists to feel as if they were having the experiences of life on Earth – going to work, socialising, touching, feeling. Our experiences would be no different qualitatively – in other words, we have no way of knowing whether the world we live in is real. Yet somehow, intuitively, we rail against the idea. 

The idea may sound convoluted on paper, but the film The Matrix brings the concept vividly to life. Science fiction makes complex ideas easy to imagine, inspiring developers to make them come true. Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey is credited for popularising the idea of space stations, spurring on NASA scientists to build them.

Many of the computer technologies emerging today, including voice and face recognition, were foretold by Philip K. Dick in his 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? True Names (1981) by cyberfiction guru Vernor Vinge, became a cult classic among software developers and influenced the creation of multiplayer online worlds. In medicine and nanotechnology, artificial skin that fights infection was heralded by Frank Herbert in his 1977 novel The Dosadi Experiment.

Science fiction manifests the power of dreams. Instead of thinking, ‘that’s impossible’, it invites us to muse, ‘what if it were possible?’ and find a way to make it happen.

It holds the key to new inventions, to date unrealised. Concepts, such as Arthur C. Clarke’s space elevator (Fountains of Paradise), and planet colonisation, as seen in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, continue to inspire and drive scientists. Their cross-over into reality is being made (almost) imminent by very serious research projects.

At the intersection of technology, design and marketing, concepts that once seemed to be science fiction are transforming brand and retail experiences. Interactive kiosks, such as those used on the Levi’s Fit tour, allow customers to design their own customised products. Museum or art gallery tours are being delivered via PDAs for a more personal, interactive experience. Social networking, integrated into retail environments, allows shoppers to get a second opinion from friends, wherever they are, via interactive mirrors in changing rooms (Icon Nicholson's social retailing). James Law Cybertecture create intelligent, customised spaces that will transform the cities of the future.

Wherever fresh thinking is needed, science fiction can help us envision what’s at the very edge of our imaginations. We get the car, not the faster horse.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Business, Meet Web 2.0




I've been toying with the idea of buying a house lately, but I'm scared. Not of spiralling interest rates, or even global economic meltdown. Though I laugh in the face of impending financial ruin, I scream, inside, at the prospect of filling out inscrutable application forms.

I came across the cartoon above by Eric Burke the other day on ExperienceCurve, which illustrates the problem. I'm spoilt with exquisitely simple, tactile design from Apple, with user-friendly apps on Facebook, with Open ID that lets me use the same ID to log on to hundreds of websites and with at-a-click search from Google (though I look forward to more contextual and visual search, as it develops). But, for the most part, when I encounter a corporate digital interface, it’s arcane, requiring me to perform bizarre rites and baffling repetitions.

Staff are equally bamboozled by their own systems. Too often, internal corporate architectures deter employees from doing their jobs effectively, burying data or making it close to impossible to conduct relevant queries. This drains morale out of the workplace, it makes training tricky and it delivers sucky customer service.

Many systems are old, entrenched and expensive to replace. But, their time is up. They've simply got to be overhauled. It's more urgent now than ever because people are getting used to the user-friendly, rapid interfaces of Web 2.0.

Various studies suggest that businesses are increasingly persuaded of the importance of social networking. A survey conducted in December 2007 by IDC reports that 50% of medium to large businesses across the Asia-Pacific region see Web 2.0 as a business opportunity, while around 8% view it as a threat.

Research skewed to the US and Europe indicates an even greater receptivity to business 2.0. Research by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), covering North America (39% of sample), Europe (26%) and Asia-Pacific (26%), indicated that 79% felt Web 2.0 technologies could add to their companies' bottom lines.

But, their conviction too often lacks mettle, or direction, or any tangible output. EIU research suggests that many executives are rather hazy when it comes to the specifics of just how Web 2.0 can help business. For example, just 39% recognised 'tagging' as a way to leverage group opinions and they found it hard to spot practical applications.

Some businesses really do bite the bullet – ABC has created an island for staff in Second Life and Telstra is also present. In 2007, Westpac trialled the virtual world for staff training, The Australian IT section reported. But, such efforts do little to encourage other companies, as virtual worlds are still seen as rather extreme and pointless by many executives.

I suggest, keep it simple, reflect how staff are already using Web 2.0 in their lives and start with social networks.

New 'Social CRM' companies are helping to bridge the gap between social networking and business data, delivering relevant, usable marketing data to help, not hinder, staff. The name of the game is 'social enterprise', or 'socialprise' (or any other witty juxtaposition or combination that might grab headlines!)

Kintera combines online forms with offline data, although its website is, unfortunately, rather complex, with too many options and no succinct positioning. In other words, I gave up and moved on, rather than navigating through the site.

InsideView seems more straightforward, at least the offer is clear from the website. Its SalesView platform helps sales people access both business data and data that's publicly available online. It meshes the information together in a cohesive way, helping sales people spot opportunities and deliver better customer service.

WorkLight brings social networking to internal communications and aims to put to rest corporate security fears. Its Workbook tool is a secure overlay for Facebook, combining Facebook's look and capabilities with the controls needed in a corporate environment. Employees can use Workbook to communicate with colleagues, publish and receive company-related news, create bookmarks and share material exclusively within the organisation.




In addition, WorkLight provides a range of applications that allow staff to perform tasks like filling out purchase orders, or vacation requests, in familiar environments, either on their desktops, or through interfaces like Netvibes, or iGoogle's personalised homepage, which more people are now using in everyday life.

Not only social networks, but online applications and open source, collaborative techniques can now easily be applied in business.

Too many corporate Firewalls are still raining fire and brimstone down upon digital 'invaders' like Facebook, which, they believe, threaten productivity. More than half of the companies surveyed by IDC said they do not allow employees to access typical Web 2.0 services from work – the like of social networks, Internet video and virtual worlds - because they view such services as a waste of the employee’s and the company’s time. (Yet half said they saw Web 2.0 as a business opportunity.)

But, companies would do well to balance the odd wasted minute against the potential gains of embracing the social Web in enterprise.

So, throw down the ramparts and send a virtual hug to the digital world. Or just poke it. But take a look at what's out there. What you don't know can hurt you.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Semantic Web and the evolution of man and machine



Nova Spivack, www.radarnetworks.com



The Semantic Web is the next evolution of the Web and it’s important. Whoever you are, it will affect you. It is no less than the evolution of humankind in tandem with technology, moving towards the hybridisation of man and machine. If you’re not interested, or excited, or scared, you’re not listening. The Web is becoming part of who you are.

The Web has a dual role of connecting information and connecting people and, as Nova Spivack's chart above shows, the Semantic Web represents a higher order of both information connectivity and social connectivity.

There are a number of definitions of the Semantic Web – ironically having 'Semantic' in the title does little to aid understanding of the term. Even the title is work in progress, for it's also known as Web 3.0 or Web 3G.

But don't let that put you off. It's a thorny, difficult, contentious - and wildly exciting - topic. And it's already happening, as the Web evolves into a more conscious, intelligent entity, organising information and helping people understand things more easily.

Early examples of Semantic applications and services, already available, include twine, which learns about you as you use it and automatically tags content that interests you, letting you organise, share and discover relevant material more effectively. TripIt, the personal travel organiser, automatically generates a customised travel guide for you when you send it your itinerary.

On Friday, I attended an interesting seminar, run by AIMIA, on the Semantic Web. No forum on the Semantic Web seems complete without a quote from Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web and Yoda of the Web 3.0 Consortium (W3C):

“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analysing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.” (1999)

Speaking at the seminar, Jennifer Wilson, Principal of Lean Forward, described the Semantic Web as a 'Context Consciousness’, which builds on the Communication of Web 1.0 and the Conversation of Web 2.0. This suggests an interpretative intelligence, which links information together.

To illustrate this, Jennifer cited Tim Berners-Lee's example of the Semantic Web's helping people to interpret their credit card statements, by automatically overlaying their calendar data, so they know where they were when the transactions took place. It could also overlay photos from Flickr, so people can place themselves visually. This means they can easily spot any fraudulent transactions. (Unfortunately, they're also reminded of shopping sprees and various other illicit activities.)

Dr. Kerry Taylor of CSIRO and W3C highlighted the fact that there’s a substantial amount of intricate Web architecture, such W3C's 'Double Bus Architecture', that underlies any version of the Semantic Web. Tools like OWL build rich ontologies from pre-existing data. Just as there are knotty issues in defining what the Semantic Web should be, there are different interpretations of the optimal architecture.

Kerry presented 3 interpretations of Web 3.0:
  • The Semantic Web,
  • The Mobile Web
  • The Sensor Web.
In addition, Ian S. Burnett of the University of Wollongong highlighted the importance of:
  • Video on the Next Generation Web
The Semantic Web is to do with context and meaning. People talk in terms of ontologies and taxonomies. In other words, it's about ordering information to represent the world intelligently and usefully. But, as I’ve observed in my blog, we live in a relativistic world in which people create culture. Not only are there many different interpretations of events in the world, but, there is no consensus on physical reality.

AIMIA speaker Darren Sharpe of Swinburne University of Technology highlighted that there are issues with ontologies that presuppose an existing order. The Semantic Web has its critics. Among the most vocal is Cory Doctorow, author of Metacrap, who points out that there’s more than one way to describe something, that metrics influence results and, that people are stupid, lazy liars, who can fundamentally never know themselves or the world. He sounds kind of cranky like House, so worth a listen.

Semantic Web sceptic Clay Shirky points out that, in today's user-defined digital world, ontologies need to be flexible, not rigid. Instead of being like a library with fixed, pre-determined file cards, we need an evolving system that can accommodate user classification (such as the ‘tags’ people use to label their photos, videos and information).

The Mobile Web is concerned with evolving the Web so that it's optimally delivered through mobile devices. As wireless networks have become pervasive, making the Web portable has become viable and desirable. And it’s not simply a matter of plonking the World Wide Web, designed decades ago for large screens, on to mobile devices. The Mobile Web has elements of the Semantic Web and overlaps with the Sensor Web, but is more concerned with delivery.

Through the Sensor Web, digital devices will sense the environment and help people respond optimally to it. These may be physical monitoring systems, e.g. traffic warning systems, or intelligent building sensors that regulate living environments. They may be human monitors, such as personal digital healthcare assistants that know people's medical histories and their current situation, hence can help patients continuously regulate their health.

The importance of video on the Web is clear from the popularity of sites like YouTube. As Ian Burnett pointed out, video content also needs an indexing system so people can access relevant, meaningful content, but accessing content is more difficult with film. Users need to be able to reference points in both space and time in video footage - they need metadata that gets inside the video. Temporal references are most difficult.

I pointed out earlier in my Time Merge blog entry, a system from Recreating Movement that allows users to extract frames of a film sequence allowing them to reference points in time. Recreating Movement is a programme created by Martin Hilpoltsteiner at the University of Applied Sciences Wuerzburg, Germany, Communication Arts.



Recreating Movement


The informal system of tagging, already employed by those who upload content, is part of the process of indexing video. But the information is unreliable and in need of verification, either by professionals or groups of amateurs who perform 'checks' on each other.

Google is currently attempting to tag its visual content with the help of amateurs. A verification system, used by Google Image Labeler, pairs together taggers and awards them points when they assign the same label to a particular image, effectively turning checking up on each other into a game.

The world is changing. We are becoming more intelligent. The machine is becoming more intelligent. We are not separate.

Welcome to Metaverse!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Creating furniture from thin air




Following on from my last post, more on creating worlds, or in this case, squiggle furniture. Check out this video footage of FRONT designers apparently conjuring furniture from thin air. Their hand motions are in fact converted to 3-D digital files via a motion capture technique. These are, in turn, rapidly materialised in liquid plastic with the help of lasers.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The World According To Us




We are all, in a sense, world creators. The philosopher David Hume once said so. And so say all of us, today, as video by video, blog by blog, mashup by mashup, we create culture. We have made the world according to us.

We customise, personalise, tag and annotate content online, providing our own rich context, our own interpretation. Much of this is collective - the 'we' and the 'us' of communities of music lovers, dog lovers, film buffs and followers of everything from Monty Python to organic cotton.

It seems we're becoming heady with power. Scores on San Diego State University's Narcissistic Personality Inventory have risen markedly since 1982. In 2006, on average, US college students' narcissism was comparable to that of celebrities tested.

The findings are outlined in a book by lead researcher Jean Twenge: Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before (2006, Free Press). The book has generated a lot of debate, thanks, in part to the attention-grabbing title - very apt, given the subject matter - which sparked a bout of competitive headlines and labels, such as the 'Entitlement Generation'.





Just recently, a survey by Burst Media indicated that young people think the Internet is all about them. Narcissism has reached epidemic proportions, some would have us believe, in fact The Narcissism Epidemic is the tentative title of Jean Twenge's forthcoming book, to which we're invited to contribute.

But, narcissism is a very accusatory label. It's easy to put down the youth of today. In fact the youth of 'today' have timelessly been berated. Cicero's famous lament "O tempora! O mores!" (Oh, the times! Oh, the morals!) suggests that he also thought youth were going to hell in handbasket.

It has been widely observed that when people transition to parenthood, their moral framework shifts, as they become more responsible. They worry endlessly about their beloved, self-absorbed, irresponsible children. So, their perceptions of youth's narcissism may be exaggerated.

Celebrity culture and YouTube have undoubtedly encouraged the pursuit of fame, but not all narcissism is bad. Many 'narcissistic' traits are actively encouraged by society, such as self-esteem and personal influence over others.

Web 2.0 is all about leveraging personal influence, for example, impressing your friends with your YouTube video, or becoming a key member of a social news community. And personal impact is critical not just to further your own interests but group interests, at work, or in lobbying for a greener environment or cleaner beaches.

That's the crux of Web 2.0 - its community orientation. Group narcissism implies elitism, but the Web tends to be more collaborative and egalitarian. Popular culture reflects this, as Coke's The Summer of Us campaign illustrates.

Perhaps kids are becoming more confident in their abilities to win friends and influence people. But that may well be a reflection of improved actual skills, with even the shyest of people enabled to connect with others online. Perhaps we think our creativity is boundless. But online, anyone can create a cartoon strip with Toonlet, or contribute to an infinite WebCanvas, or live a double life
.

We create culture, we create links, we order the world. We are world creators. How can gods be narcissistic?

For we're a jolly good fellow and so say all of us.


Thursday, March 6, 2008

Ode to smeg



(Watch the video Ode to Smeg or read on...)

I seldom get homesick, for I am a born wanderer, but I recently suffered a bout of space-time sickness. I've been watching the BBC comedy Red Dwarf from the beginning (they recently released the entire series in two volumes, presumably to celebrate its 20-year anniversary).

Strange that nothing places me more squarely in moments in time and space in Britain in the latter quarter of the 20th century than a piece of science fiction, set millions of years in the future, after the demise of mankind. But, with references to the Sinclair ZX 81, Felicity Kendal's bottom and Topic bars (there's a hazelnut in every bite, don'tchaknow), the series anchors me more firmly to the Britain I grew up in than any of my unreliable memories.

I say I'm space-time sick - what I hanker after is student days of the early 90s, which Lister (the last human being) embodies. He's a former arts student, who dropped out because they had lectures first thing - in the afternoon. I read Philosophy, and bar the weekly supervision and a few afternoon lectures, I was totally free to do what I want, any old time.

At one point, Lister shoves a shed load of chili powder, some nondescript meat and ketchup into the microwave (straight in) and it delivers a fully fledged kebab. The microwave looks just like any contraption in a kitchen in a shared house. I'm thinking now of 609 Finchley Road, where a load of us lived when we began work, of sorts, in London.

I also love the patter. The officious Rimmer Hologram and Lister, a Scouser, are chalk and cheese and always arguing. Naturally, there's a good dose of culturally specific swearing. I grew up in spitting distance of Liverpool, with words like 'smeg-head' and 'keks' (not a curse, but far better than 'underpants') part of my vernacular.

I love Red Dwarf, unreservedly. I still feel like I'm wandering the universe and it is a lonely place, though I have a soulmate and a select handful of smeg-head mates. Like the life form that evolved from Lister's cat, I now have a wardrobe that crosses the International Time Zone. My place is very slightly less ramshackle and I do get up in the morning. I even enjoy my work, mostly. But, though I'm happier now, I always long somehow...

The thing is, the age of Red Dwarf is over. Although the series felt niche enough to be cool, it made cultural references that everyone of my generation in the UK could relate to. Ubiquitous cultural cues and mass-media icons are hard to come by these days, thanks to fragmented media, online video and thousands of subcultures. Consumers are creating culture, minute by minute, and much of it is specific to small groups. A product of today's mashed up digital environment, the online video The Soprano Wars satirises popular mass media, commenting on the declining position of its icons.

The journey continues...

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Hack your iPhone with Steve's blessing




Facebook started the trend for encouraging third party applications, opening up its platform to outside developers last year. The site went ballistic with a flurry of user-friendly apps from Scrabulous to Vampires making Facebook the place to be. Google knew a good idea when it saw one and developed the OpenSocial system, allowing people to develop common APIs across multiple social networks. Now Apple has joined the party, legitimising iPhone hacks with its new iPhone Development Center for webapps.

Apple is maintaining a greater degree of control, inviting developers to submit their applications for consideration. Only those approved will get listed in the iPhone webapps library. So far, some applications that have made the cut include the drawing programme iDoodle, Alternative Channel TV, the game Gumball Bingo and a handy Tip Calculator for when you and your mates are totally incapable of figuring out the bill, let alone the tip.

Apple is also using digital signatures that can be traced to developers. The company admits that this means the system is not "totally open". Even so, the new SDK is good news for geeks everywhere. I wonder if existing apps like the pocketguitar will make the list? Then again, who cares, as long as there's a burgeoning universe of cool apps out there on some website, official or not.



Shinya Kasatani's pocketguitar

New ways to visualise Search




Check out Google Experimental's latest search options , which allow you to see results on a timeline or map. It looks like nothing fancy, the basic interface is much the same, but changing the context really does allow you to set different priorities and to see information in a different light.

Web participation

80-20 Rules online. In Web communities, there are a small number of creators, a few more synthesisers and a whole load of hangers on. Here's a round up of recent research into Web participation.




Participation in Yahoo! Groups, Elatable

As shown above, in Yahoo! Groups:
1% of the user population might start a group, or a thread within a group (creators)
10% of the user population might participate actively and actually author content whether starting a thread or responding to a thread-in-progress (synthesisers)
100% of the user population benefits from the activities of the above groups (consumers - otherwise known as 'lurkers')

McKinsey's study points to a similar pattern of participation. It also indicates that quick, easy activities, like social bookmarking with del.icio.us, are practiced by a greater proportion of the site's users, compared to sites like Wikipedia and Flickr, which require more time and commitment to post or edit interesting content.



McKinsey's social media participation pyramid McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007


Similarly, on Wiki sites, counting only logged-in users:
10% of all users make 80% of edits
5% of users make 66% of edits
Just 2.5% of users make 50% of all edits.


Forrester research yielded the following participation ladder:




From MTV/MSN's Circuits of Cool report, the participation pyramid for global youth indicates a higher degree of involvement.
As many as 40% of youths globally are 'creators' – keep a regular blog, upload videos or photos;
19% are ‘finders’ – they will actively look for content to share with their friends;
61% are ‘contributors’ – add comments to content;
60% are ‘forwarders’ – they will share links with their friends;
80% are 'viewers' of some form of social media content.


Circuits of Cool relationship with social media



What does this mean for companies developing social media strategies?

There's clearly no point trying to get all your customers to blog or create, or even actively participate in your interactive campaign. If you put out a competition that requires time, effort and creativity, don't expect everyone to jump to it.

The upside is, you don't need to engage that many 'active' participants to get the interest of a group. The difficulty is in finding these participants in the first place. It relates to fan culture, monitoring social news and bookmaking sites and blogs like Technorati to find the Ikeahackers and other passionate denizens of the online world.

Once they do tap into Web communities, one thing that marketers might aim to do is move people up the participation pyramid, to get more highly engaged consumers (bearing in mind that not everyone wants to become more involved).

To develop effective social strategies, marketers need a deeper understanding of what motivates people to get involved in the first place.

In their article, How companies can make the most of user-generated content, McKinsey identify fame and fun as primary motivations, closely followed by the desire to share with friends and others.


McKinsey Quarterly, August 2007


The McKinsey findings are consistent with msn/MTV Circuits of Cool research, which indicates that, primarily, humourous clips and selected and uploaded by youths on to video sharing sites, for the benefit of friends, or to see what others will make of it. In addition, links from friends are the primary mode of navigation to online video clips.

Forrester research looked into how profiles differed by primary life motivation, site usage and PC ownership.