Massively Networked

SXSW 2010: Telepathy, Neuroscience and Marketing

Telekinesis and telepathy are here. Check out the video (link - not the video embedded above) of the monkey getting food by controlling a robotic arm with only its thoughts. DARPA’s 2010 budget includes a line item for the Silent Talk project, which “will allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals. The brain generates word-specific signals prior to sending electrical impulses to the vocal cords. These signals of “intended speech” will be analyzed and translated into distinct words, allowing covert person-to-person communication.” Basically, DARPA’s talking telepathic soldiers. Scientific American jouralist Christie Nicholson brought up both examples in her presentation "Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface?"

Nicholson’s presentation may raise ethical issues that the vast majority of the world’s population remains unaware of. In the last few years, she reports, the rate of progress in working brain-computer interfaces has been exponential. The latest generation of brain to computer interfaces includes planting electrodes with growth hormone into the brain so that neurons begin to accept them as part of the living flesh. A computer chip was developed and successfully replaced a rat’s hippocampus – allowing researchers to directly upload “instructions” that were translated into physical commands much like the rat’s original hippocampus would. Optogenetics is a relatively new science that allows researchers to control a mouse’s brain through light via a light receptor implant.

All this is possible because 1) the brain is electric and 2) the brain is plastic. Electric impulses can be translated into complex algorithms and modified. Neurons can rewire themselves based on need – e.g., if the visual cortex is damaged, the aural part of the brain can rewire itself to compensate.

Challenges remain to creating a direct port into the brain for uploading instructions ala Neo learning kung fu in The Matrix. Much of thought is contextually relevant and temporally variable, so creating a “genome project for the brain,” decoding all its functions and translating into an algorithm may be quite complex. However, it was not long ago when the Genome Project seemed impossible until a leap of insight changed that reality. We already have devices on the market that control games via thoughts. Mindscape by Mattel is one. It doesn’t take much to imagine the trajectory from a EEG headset device like Mindscape’s toward increased comfort with more direct user interfaces between technology and biology. Quadriplegic Matt Nagle is an early example of this potential with his use of the BrainGate technology

Under these scenarios, the individual would either have to consent or be coerced to adopt brain-computer interface technology. Still, as a marketer myself, I am fully aware of the power of marketing as a coercive force. When presented with the upside of telepathy, it’s an open question whether the downside implications will be addressed or ignored.

SXSW 2010: Tips for surviving the zombie apocalypse (and delivering a great presentation)

Interaction/UX designer Eris Stassi spun an art-and-science double helix of a story about the future of user interfaces during her presentation, A Touchy History of the Future. In the description she said she’d “explore some progressive interaction models that go beyond touch and into movement, infrared, wearable computing, sound, ambient data to really give us an idea on what our immersive interactive future may hold.” Technology is and always has been about transforming human experience – from fire breaking protein molecules in raw meat, making it more palatable, to contact lenses that augment our vision. Now that the user interfaces between technology and biology are beginning to approach frictionlessness, the possibility of deciding what that experience will be - by developing those user interfaces purposefully - is within reach.

Stassi gave several examples of current biotech user interfaces like nanotech contact lenses that detect glucose levels to warn diabetics when they’re in danger, UIs that use the natural resonance of flesh and bones to manipulate data with sound, brainwave-operated computers and RFID tags that can interact with their environment.

So what about the zombies? The brilliant bit about Stassi’s presentation was enveloping the science and data about progressive UIs in its own immersive environment of the zombie apocalypse. She developed a story “user interface” between the technological facts and the minds of attendees by asking how best to design a UI for a jetpack, say, that would ensure your escape from brain-eating zombies.

To survive the zombie apocalypse, you would want a solution that the zombies themselves couldn’t master. Since zombies have motor skills, a joystick-operated jetpack would not do. Zombies, however, do not have brains so a brain-wave operated jetpack would be a good choice if you would like to increase your chance of avoiding zombies eating your brains. Once you’re aware of what experience you would like to create – in this case surviving zombie apocalypse – you can make intelligent choices about how you will build your user interface.

Each of the progressive UIs Stassi described were brought to life within this alternate reality scenario. Intentionally creating a “user interface” between what she was communicating and who she was communicating to through an alternate reality scenario made her point a meta-point. Only at SXSWi could one learn tips for both surviving a zombie apocalypse and for delivering a great presentation.

SXSW 2010: We are all bees

We’re all bees now, apparently.  Hive mind may no longer be a metaphor but a gadget-mediated reality when we all peer into Foursquare apps to see which locations are trending and who is setting the trend so we can be sure to fly off to where the (usually) King Bee is hanging out. When we arrive, we’ll check in and report to the others our location – signaling we’re in the know by Tweet name-dropping “w/ @briansolis @scobelizer”.  Congratulations – you’ve unlocked your Super Swarm badge at The Speakeasy.

Foursquare debuted at last year’s SXSW capturing interest among those who saw the potential of a location-based service (LBS), especially given the mass adoption of the iPhone with its geolocation features. Gowalla followed shortly thereafter, offering a similar ability to check in your location, share tips and get stuff: points for showing up, rewards for being a loyal visitor and cred for taking your game to the next level.

Foursquare and Gowalla are racing to gain the greatest market share in this critical early stage. Perhaps moreso than any other product or service, an LBS in the social space is only as valuable to its users as the numbers of their friends using it. I can own a Mac or PC or both because each may serve a different purpose – one I tend to use for multimedia and one I use for business. Even with social services like MySpace and Facebook there can be a reason to engage with both – one I use to connect with my musician friends and the other I keep for family and work friends. With LBSs however, I can only be in one place at a time so it doesn’t add any value to be using two services. It will be interesting to see if Gowalla can overcome Foursquare’s first-mover advantage or if it gets assimilated.

SXSW Interactive 2010 is on...

Reg crowds seem lighter at SXSW Interactive 2010 than last year. At the Laughing Squid party last night I overheard a lot of folks decided to come to Austin for the schmoozing, but not register for the event. Not surprising given the 2009 economy and that Southby is really about schmoozing and parties anyway. I'll be blogging throughout the event, so keep an eye here for panel recaps, insights and general interactive buzz.

Update: Must have been that everyone arrived on Saturday because things got a lot busier. An organizer said 2010 is up about 30% in registrations compared to last year.

DIY civil works for the 21st century

Residents of Kauai heard news that flood damage in much-touristed Polihale State Park would take the cash-strapped state two years and US$4 million to remedy, likely forcing several businesses to shut down. Eight days later the repairs were complete. For (almost) free. Did the state realize the potential impact on local business, get really clever about sourcing supplies and kick the project into high gear? No. Residents affected by damage volunteered their time and donated supplies to get 'er done. Welcome to DIY civil works in action.

Horatio Alger bootstrapping, lack of stigma attached to failure and openness to change provide much of the scaffolding for the mythos that shapes attitudes in the United States - so perhaps it's no surprise that Hawaii residents felt empowered to ignore the state's answer and find a way to fix the park themselves. What makes this story potentially more interesting is when you align it with the current growing economic crisis and other DIY movements afoot. What happens when economic necessity meets DIY culture and a technological platform that enables massively networked coordination of resources?

John Geraci, founder of DIYCity.org, has a practical vision for participatory civil engagement by creating open-source tools that can draw upon the collective intelligence of city residents to find ways to create the city they want. Much like the Kauai example, citizens would be drawn together by a common frustration - say, inefficiencies in the public transit system - and collectively assemble the human and technological resources to make public transportation a better experience.

Unlike Kauai, however, the DIY civil works projects need not be in response to a crisis. These projects could simply start with the question "What would improve your experience of the city?" or "What would make your life more enjoyable? More fun? More satisfying?" The emergent nature of massively networked communications can coalesce a movement toward positive and creative changes that could not have been anticipated by rational, bureaucratic processes.

Moreover, the coalescence and focusing of human intent is only part of the DIY equation. The other part is enabling the physical environment to participate in the communication. Right now there are hundreds of projects in maker/hacker spaces that are bootstrapping technological innovations on the cheap. Many of these projects leverage wireless technology, inexpensive circuit boards and radio frequency tagging to create environmentally-responsive communicants that can be embedded within physical spaces. The Arduino open source electronics platform, for example, puts creating something like an iPhone-like accelerometer within the reach of a reasonably intelligent tinkerer.

Take the kind of focused human intent found in the Kauai example, empower it with inexpensive and accessible creative resources, feed it all into a massively networked platform for communication and collaboration - and, like the folks on Kauai, we need not wait for the state to set the agenda any longer. The tools for 21st century DIY civil works are in our hands right now.

April 14, 2009 Update: A great example of DIY civil works from Estonia

5 Trends shaping the emerging interactive marketplace

The interactive marketplace is no doubt beginning its next round up the spiral of change. Here are 5 trends that very likely could create a game-changing environment for business - and some that are already starting to do so.

1. The internet leaving the internet

Mobile devices (smartphones, wearable tech), programmable tags (QR, RFID), information embedded within physical environments (visual information overlays, projected displays, smart paper) image recognition (visual search, image-driven applications) and gestural user interfaces are examples of technologies that allow us to access the Web unimpeded by bulky machinery.

Potential impact: The trend toward pervasive and transparent access will take expectations about instantaneous access to time-and-situation-relevant information to a whole new level. Successful companies will do more than simply maintain an up-to-date website and participate in social media.

Timeline: Fast.

If true: Businesses that can find innovative ways to provide individualized, situation-dependent, useful (and enjoyable) information will have the advantage.

2. The infosphere is "learning" at an increasingly rapid pace

Mass adoption of social media (Twitter, Facebook, et al), physical objects that communicate location and status - among other communicants - feed an increasingly fat stream of data into the infosphere. Couple that with improved tools for data mining, semantic analysis and data visualization and you enable the capacity for pattern recognition and learning at an increasingly rapid pace.

Potential impact: The trend toward being able to access and make sense from vast amounts of information creates an environment that puts those who fail to participate in the infosphere at an (almost pre-) cognitive disadvantage.

Timeline: Fast

If true: Businesses will want to be assimilated into the infosphere in order to understand the rapidly-changing zeitgeist so they can continue to provide desirable, differentiated and relevant products and services to the very person who wants them.

3. Location-aware devices are giving places memories

GPS films give you access to what happened right where you're located now as well as let you add your own creative contribution. Skyhook remembers who or what was where and when via smartphone GPS. Google Latitude can store where you, your friends and family have been for later retrieval. These location-aware devices create accessible layers of memory attached to specific places.

Potential impact: The ability to embed temporal data onto a physical location that can later be retrieved and added to creates an unprecedented depth of field to our experience of physical locations - allowing us to impact others' experience of them as well.

Timeline: Moderate

If true: Leading edge businesses have an opportunity to use the GPS film-like open source platform, for instance, to begin playing with embedding stories onto locations and enabling customers to add their own layers.

4. Formerly "inert" objects are becoming animated, lifelike

Plants twitter, homes know our preferences and needs, and respond accordingly, robots display increasingly naturalistic movements, responses and gestures, machines talk with one another, and cars gently reprimand us if we choose not to take the recommended turn. Recent developments in efficient energy production, quantum computing and nanotechology could push the animation of formerly inert objects to a whole new level quickly - if you believe the enthusiasts.

Potential impact: The ability to interact with intelligent objects in a lifelike way will change our perception of non-animal objects from, say, decor or useful tools to collaborative entities.

Timeline: Moderate to slow

If true: Opportunity for businesses to take advantage of simple tools that can add value to products by making them more usefully interactive. If my product were a "living" thing, what more would it do? What would it communicate? How would it collaborate with its user?

5. Biophysical reality merging with technology

Devices that allow us to control remote objects by merely thinking, nanoscale medical devices, immersive virtual/physical environments and bio-robotics are examples of how the lines between our physical reality and technology are becoming increasingly blurry.

Potential impact: The trend toward blurring the lines between where we stop and where machines start takes expectations of personal agency and what is possible to an entirely new level.

Timeline: Moderate to slow. 

If true: Likely a small niche of early adopters with the rest coming slowly along, if at all. Opportunity for business is perhaps "ain't it cool" toys to raise visibility initially. Too many unknowns to predict longer term opportunity at this point, but a trend to watch.

Whether each of the specific technologies mentioned above catch on remains to be seen. However these play out, we are already moving toward a world where the how, what, when, where and why we interact with information is changing:

How we consume information: Sight, sound & motion - we are moving from a primarily desktop and text interface to a visual, aural and kinetic one.

Where & when we access information: Everywhere & anytime - progressive virtualization is making physical and temporal location less relevant.

Who & what we can transact with: Anyone & anything - personal/commercial distinctions are eroding and internal/external definitions are becoming more fluid.

Why we engage: Transformative experience - we are arguably shifting from material, time-bound goals toward experiential ones that add personal and social value to the commercial mix.

What do you think?

Thought Bubbles: No safe place on earth? - go sailing!; Outsource your prayers; Predicting innovation

Thought Bubbles shares bits of news, ideas, links and random scribblings. Feel free to email me your own.

No safe place on earth? - go sailing!: Open sailing project is "designing for the apocalypse" - a quote presumably with tongue stuck somewhat in cheek. Seriously, though, project participants are envisioning an international sea station with labs working on cool stuff like an "energy animal" that can provide renewable solar, wind or wave energy depending on the weather and "instinctive architecture" for a ship design that adapts to extreme conditions.

Outsource your prayers: Okay, commodification of absolutely everything is now complete. But does god listen to bots?

Predicting innovation: Map of science project data mines what researchers are really spending time looking at (opposed to what they like to report they're reading) and uses data visualization to map the result.  Can they predict emerging scientific innovations?

Companies: Get ready to get psychic

Marketing as we know it may go away in the not too distant future. Ten years ago, businesses told consumers what they wanted them to know about their product. Five years ago, most businesses caught on to the fact the internet made marketing a two-way conversation. Today, online marketing is becoming more of a one-way conversation again - not from companies to consumers, but in the other direction. Companies - get ready to develop your psychic powers.

When consumers broadcast what they want, and come to expect that to be delivered to their doorsteps, in what sense would businesses still be marketing their products? Businesses that succeed in the emerging environment will de-emphasize the (what sometimes can seem vaguely contrived) "two-way conversation" meant to build a personal relationship between themselves and their customers. The successful ones will develop their "psychic powers" by leveraging technology to monitor the environment and deliver what the consumer wants.

Yesterday, for example, prolific blogger Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) sent out a couple of tweets on Twitter saying he and his wife are expecting another child and that they're looking for a new car (congrats to the Scoble family). Within hours folks at Toyota replied, "Bunch of us Toyota PR folks on Twitter. See the list @toyotanewsroom We're happy to get you any info. you need. ~Scott." 

With the mass adoption of Twitter and other life broadcasting platforms, enormous (and growing) capacity for online data mining, intelligent mapping of relationships between bits of data, people and ideas, and social media monitoring services, it's not hard to predict where this is going. Businesses that make effective use of these platforms and technologies will collapse the distance between what they have to offer and who's buying. When this trend gains enough momentum, in what sense would "marketing" still exist?

On a personal note, I believe the train has left the station on this front. Whether it's a good thing or not remains to be seen.

Update: via @dsearls - looks like Doc Searls might be hitting on similar themes in a webcast tomorrow, March 24th.

The changing role of media from communication agent to one of transforming experience

Are devices and technology that augment and modify reality - wearable tech, neural implants, biochemical modifications, robotics, among others - training wheels that will spring us (some of us, anyway) beyond a dualistic, materialist view of the world? Maybe. If you've ever lost yourself in a film or projected yourself so fully into your character in Second Life or World of Warcraft that you've temporarily forgotten where you were, think of how much more compellingly real that experience becomes as it pervades your awareness of everyday life and the objects within it. And consider how having the power to craft the world you are perceiving and virtually shape it at will would make your perception of self and object more fluid. See the Life 2.0 video at the end of the earlier lucid dreaming on demand post for one scenario on how this might play out. How does having a great deal of control over our visual, aural and kinetic inputs rewire the brain? As these technologies become increasingly available, identification with the physical body for those who use them becomes more fluid and the role of media changes dramatically.

If you believe that those developments are a long way off, you're not paying attention to how fast things are changing. To go on a trip two years ago I wrote down directions, researched where to go for dinner and entertainment ahead of time, carried a book and magazines, an iPod for music and video and a phone for calls, SMS and emails. Now I only carry an iPhone - oh, and a book for its old-school charm. The iPhone gives me instant access to local information, magazines, movies, music, directions, Twitter, emails, SMS, calls, games, language translation and whatever other functionality I choose to download from the app store. I've learned the gestural UI of finger pinches and flicks to access information so well that I now get slightly annoyed by the WIMP interface on my desktop computer. The rewiring of my brain to accept new behavior and expectations as normal took only a few months. Watch the 2009 TED talk by Juan Enriquez at the end of this post for much more compelling examples of technology coming online right now. Check out the Big Dog in the video (at ~13:00 mark). How quickly will your brain be rewired to accept that you can have some form of personal relationship with a robot when they become sophisticated enough to pass the Turing test? These developments are here. Now.

Media in a world where the distinctions between subject and object, alive and inert, human and machine begin to blur comes to play a very different role than its current one of facilitating communication. Media becomes an agent for transformative experience. That transformation can be positive, negative or somewhere in between depending on the intent of its producer and the use to which the user puts it. If we are headed into a zone where reality becomes less defined by material, physical limitations and can be shaped at will, it's probably wise to practice developing awareness of our intentions sooner rather than later.

Thought for the day: Investing your social media currency in derivatives?

My friend Risa forwarded me the "Social Media Marketing Madness" Hubspot cartoon on the left. "I'm a marketer," the first cell says. "I blog about marketing," says the next. "I have a podcast about marketing bloggers," "I tweet about podcasters that talk about marketing bloggers," and finally "I have a Facebook group for Twitter users that tweet about podcasters that talk about marketing bloggers."

Might be funnier if it weren't so true that the currency of social media is heavily invested in derivatives. And we all know how well the investment in derivatives is working out on the economic stage right now. I'm just sayin'.