William Gibson on the future

Q U O T E D

"The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. ... We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that -- we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too."

-- Science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the word "cyberspace," explains why he's taken to writing about the past
Comment on this post

From http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/08/quoted-606.html
Originally from: http://www.silicon.com/silicon/networks/webwatch/0,39024667,39168006-1,00.htm

Forecasting

"The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Robotics, Robots, Flowers

Technology Review has a new article on internet enabled robotics, and refers to a very interesting robot kit from Charmed Labs. I want one :) Probably the most interesting part is the community robotics and recipes site.

Enhanted objects all round.

Nano Bots - Cool, Cute, Soccer?

How cool is this? Nano-bot soccer!

This is what the field looks like:

And the players:

Just amazing stuff! Very primitive in many ways, but at the same time so cutting edge. I want the video version - when will a nano-soccer match be shown on SBS or posted to youtube?

For more, see: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/calmed/robocup_photos.html and

http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/19025/page1/

Inspirational stuff

http://www.williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/

The coming age of magic

Here's a really neat presentation from Mike Kuniavsky on how with 486 level computing power becoming dirt cheap, we will see more and more computing and networking functionality embedded in physical objects.

The metaphor of the 'enchanted object' brings to light what Mike sees as the most appropriate targets for this treatment. I love this term and think its far more appropriate and evocative than the term 'augmented objects'.

Highly recommended.

http://www.orangecone.com/tm_etech_magic_0.3.pdf

The Downside of SaaS

Software as a Service is a high profile new way to consume IT.

Consuming software as a utility just as you consume electricity or water is very appealing. The analogy suggests continuous availability and ease of consumption on demand.

The utility analogy also betrays one of the most key limitations to Software as a Service. Electricity supply suffers from blackouts. Water supply suffers from pipe failure. In both cases, you have little control of when and how your service will be resumed.

Software as a Service can also suffer from outages. When it happens you have no alternative but to wait.

On the other hand, economies of scale suggest that Software as a Service vendors can build a more resilient data center and software offering than most individual companies could afford.

What's more important to you?
A high likelihood of stability, or a high level of control?

Prompted by this article about a Salesforce.com outage in their system for partners: http://www.aspnews.com/news/weekly/article.php/3665531

Well designed web articles are sparse

Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design

Study Says Computers Give Big Boosts to Productivity

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/technology/13tech.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The future of mash ups - the web as database

Yahoo Pipes is getting a fair bit of interest at the moment as a way graphical way to link up and work with web content and feeds. In a sense it could represent democratization of the mashup phenomenon, from type A programmers to all the rest of us.

I liked this take on it, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_pipes_web_database.php comparing the emergence of yahoo pipes with the emergence of PC based relational databases. There's also a heck of a lot of other commentary out there and it'll be interesting to see how much it takes off.

Wikis wikis wikis

I've just come across an experiment by penguinbooks to write a novel with contributions from anyone who visits at amillionpenguins.com. (From this article.)

A wiki is a web site where any visitor can view and edit any page, can create pages, and can roll back changes from other users. This approach has had a surprisingly amount of success over the last few years. Probably the most celebrated wiki is wikipedia (wikipedia.org).

It will be interesting to see if the million penguin wiki succeeds at all. While the high level structure of a novel as a whole is well understood, I'd expect a lot of difficulty converging on a common thread for the story. Particularly when the level of antagonistic contributors is likely to be high.

My first Citrix wiki was for brainstorming on a high-tech business proposal with a senior cross-functional team. While there was a good amount of interest, it was surprisingly difficult to get complete engagement.

Why? Well not everyone fully understood what a wiki was (this was a few years ago). There was also a surprising amount of Resistance to using a mark up language and to changing other peoples text. Mostly though, I made the mistake of expecting that the technology would drive an emerging structure. (The romantic notion of 'wiki nature').

Wikis rely upon having a well understood overall structure, so the wikipedia encyclopedia approach works well as everyone has a good idea of what an encyclopedia should look like (stand-alone articles with cross references).

From a business perspective, the wiki is an important tool for content management and collaboration. However, the technology is not magic and should be treated as a tool. Here's my short list of minimum requirements for success:

• Tied to a corporate or business unit goal
• A commonly agreed structure
• A commonly agreed purpose
• Ownership by one or more team members
• Well constrained topic

Soft bodied robots

Here's a great multi-disciplinary approach to robotics.

Most of today's robots are built from an assembly of stiff materials in contrast to most living systems that leverage primarily soft, elastic materials in combination with stiff materials such as bone. This article talks about a Tufts University initiative that starts with building robots that from materials that mimic biological material. It's a really interesting first step toward their ultimate goal "...to develop systems and devices -- soft-bodied robots-- based on biological materials and on the adaptive mechanisms found in living cells, tissues and whole organisms".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070128105355.htm

Desktop Fabricator

How cool is this?

A universal fabricator for the home for US$2400! This lets you "print" physical structures that would look similar to injection molded plastic.

Imagine being able to design 3d art or a gadget of whatever type on your computer, press 'go' and have it created as a physical item from one or more materials. Make a watch band, an instrument case, a box, a stand. While you might not make too many things that couldn't be created by hand, what an fantistic example of the amazing rate of technology change. Commercial versions of these machines cost $100K and up and tend to be in the hands only of specialist manufacturers.

Think about where this could get with more development. Cheap universal fabricators for all, sold in same way that desktop printers are sold today. Lots of materials. More sophisticated processes. Push button creation of new items that otherwise you'd have to buy from a shop. This could be as simple as:

1. I need a watch band / piece of jewlery / part for the car / computer component
2. Find one online
3. Purchase the plan/recipe
4. Start the fabricator
5. Come back in an hour and it's ready to go!

Here's an example that might be closer in time. The rare car shop that today holds lots of rare stock could move to having a fabricator and be able to create parts on demand.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn10922-desktop-fabricator-may-kickstart-home-revolution.html
http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Update

plaasjaapie has been good enough to point out a couple of other really interesting universal fabricator projects. RepRap and Tommelise. The anticpated cost for a RepRap machine is US$400 and Tomelise is aiming for a wooden construction with costs of US$150. Wow!

Black belt

My eight year old has just been awarded his taekwondo black belt. Here's a picture from his grading just before Christmas. I am very proud.

He and his two younger sisters train at the Australian Taekwondo Academy in Marrickville. (Andra and I have also joined - with me the more haphazard attendee.) This has been a marvelous club to be involved with as they are very family friendly, with classes all the way down to the 'little dragons' aged 3-5.

Taekwondo keeps the mind and body sharp. Congratulations to Master Ridvan Manav for running an excellent club that manages the careful balance from child and beginner friendly, and all the way up to training for national champions.