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Category: Emerging Technology

  • Fab Lab Discussion Forum

    Fablab

    I first started following the work of Neil Gershenfeld during my various visits to MIT Media Lab, and of course through his book Fab, along with speculating about fictional HP DeskFabs and Fabster P2P networks…a miniature attempt at Bruce Sterling-eqsue Design Fiction!

    So it was a huge surprise to learn that Gershenfeld would be stopping by Manchester's Manufacturing Institute, last Tuesday, for a half-day discussion forum on the launch of the city's first Fab Lab. With 50-60 people in attendance, I was surprised that no one from Manchester's tech scene was there.

    The morning opened with keynotes from the institute's CEO, Dr. Julie Madigan, Gershenfeld, New East Manchester's regeneration chief, Sean McGonigle, and Paul Jackson of the Engineering Technology Board (download the PDF flyer)

    Here are some of the interesting snippets from the forum…

    • Gershenfeld characterised digital/additive fabrication as materials that contain information – essentially embedding 'code' into materials.
    • Gershenfeld 's influence on Squid Lab's Saul Griffith was evidenced by his illustration of sending design code into universal protein strings to 'fold & fab' 3D structures – similar to Griffith's TED talk noting that the 'secret to biology is the way it builds computation into the way it makes things'.
    • The fab wet-dream of self-replicating Von-Neumann machines is nearing reality with the RepRap project – the rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.
    • Gershenfeld namechecked an experimental prototype alarm clock with which you had to arm wrestle to prove you were indeed awake!
    • Fabrication is still at the 'mainframe' stage, with the greatest impact set to come from the personalisation of technology – analagous to the transition from mainframe to personal computers.
    • Gershenfeld envisages an opt-in network of 'Fab Labs' across the globe – equipped with laser cutters, sign cutters, milling machines, electronics assembly and microcontroller programming – that can democratise manufacturing and mobilise people and projects across this network. A little like a super TechShop; the network currently includes locations in Jalalabad, Utrecht and Amsterdam.

    Perhaps more interesting than the progress of the science, are the socio-economic drivers that're making the introduction of a Fab Lab to Manchester so appealing. The city was centrai to the industrial revolution, with it's eastern areas known as the 'workshop of the world' – apparently, the first transatlantic communications cable was manufactured in the Bradford area of East Manchester. Yet, though the area has found new purpose with the recent Commonwealth Games and the presence of Manchester City (the world's richest football club), large parts remain deprived and struggle in a post-industrial economy.

    Regeneration officials see the Empowerment > Education > Problem Solving > Job Creation > Invention cycle of Fab Labs as a critical component in reviving manufacturing in the area, energising brownfield sites, as well as retaining local skills and raising educational standards. Upon being asked on Fab Labs' model for civic sustainability, Gershenfeld quipped that people 'don't ask whether public libraries have a model for civic sustainability' – implying that the labs hope to provide a similarly essential role in civic culture and education.

    The city is due to open its first lab in late 2009, anticipating the 2010 edition of the city's Big Bang Fair for young scientists and engineers. The lab will be free for individuals, who will be encouraged to share their ideas and knowledge freely within the international Fab Lab community and beyond.

    Personally, I'm really interested to see where the intersection of digital 'make' services like Etsy, Ponoko and Folksy, with the potential 'Napsterisation' of manufacturing. Indeed, my friend Steve, suggested that the d_shape robotic building system be used to 'endlessly replicate copies of the RIAA building!'

    I'm wondering if Fab Labs has a natural analogy in the global coworking community – one for 'atoms', the other for 'bits' – indeed, is there a useful and natural crossover between these two grassroots global communities?

  • Bruce Sterling @ Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign

    …from March 2007; thanks Semiot!

    I first saw ‘Chairman Bruce‘ speak in San Diego at ETech 2006, though I’d followed his writing since I was a teenager. I’m always kinda confused when I hear his talks; Sterling can alternately poke fun at his own ideas, embarrass the audience that they’re buying into his ‘mental loops and excursions‘  and yet still leave you filled with a sense of wonder and a desire to explore notions such as spimes and blogjects more fully.

    I couldn’t even tell you what this talk was about – only that I now feel compelled to re-read Shaping Things and start, um, Shaping Things 🙂

  • Exposing the APIs of invisible things


    Kati London     was one of my favourite speakers at the ETel Fair in February 2007. Along with other ITP students, Kati saved our asses when a bunch of speakers fell ill and they were able to put together a replacement session showcasing projects such as Kati’s Botanicalls to those who’d missed the Fair.

    I was super-excited when I learned that Kati was part of O’Reilly’s programme committee for ETech 2008 as well as a keynote speaker and exhibitor at the Emerging Arts Fest.

    Kati’s talk – delivered along with Regine Debatty – was oriented around the interesections between art and technology, highlighting a number of ecological, spatial, social, political, networked and even inter-species pieces; there are some great notes from Regine at We Make Money Not Art, to ride along with the slides below…

    Incidentally, Kati and I swapped stories her friend and my Uncle’s respective experiences with the Libyan secret police…no happy outcomes 🙁

  • 23andMe

    23andmeWhen your mission is to organise the world’s information, the acquisition of blogging and video-sharing technologies is obvious; indeed your competitors seek to emulate your vision and do the same.

    Maybe you have to be crazy to look at a genome and see a web acquisition…we know those crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. Why not organise the world’s human DNA?

    Even though your body contains trillions of copies of your genome,
    you’ve likely never read any of it. Our goal is to connect you to the
    23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint, bringing you personal insight into ancestry,
    genealogy, and inherited traits. By connecting you to others, we can
    also help put your genome into the larger context of human commonality
    and diversity. { 23andMe }

    UPDATE: Tim talks about RSS for the Genes…

  • Futures Past

    An excerpt from Salon’s review of Where’s My Jetpack…

    Sometimes it feels as if progress itself has actually slowed down, with
    the 1960s as the climax of a 20th century surge of innovation, and the
    decades that followed consisting of a weird mix of consolidation,
    stagnation and rollback. Certainly change in the first half of the 20th
    century seemed to manifest itself in the most dramatic and hubristic
    manner. It was an era of massive feats of centralized planning and
    public investment: huge dams; five-year plans of accelerated
    industrialization; gigantic state-administered projects of rural
    electrification, freeway construction and poverty banishment.

    I kinda agree. In my previous role scouting and analysing emerging technologies for Orange, many of our team were startled firsthand by diminished expectations of social, scientific and technological progress across much of the management.

    Minoritydc
    Where are the Apollo and Manhattan projects for this generation? The Cold War and WWII gave rise to great strides forward in transport, electronics and social security; the ‘War On Terror’ has given us the Roomba! Political leaders today speak of threats to human civilisation, but lack the courage to articulate bold world-changing programmes of progress, finding contentment in tinkering with tax codes and interest rates; leadership by spreadsheet and fear, rather than optimism and progress.

    —

    Coincidentally, today Wired is covering an exhibition on fictional movie architectures. If, like me, you’re fascinated with futurology, point your RSS reader at the Paleo-Future blog – a journal of ‘futures that never were’.

  • Proto-spime

    Rentathing Springwise is covering the private-beta launch of ILetYou today; an interesting service that enables users to rent their private DVD collections as a kinda micro-Netflix. I love the notion of mobilising and monestising my now inert collection of DVDs as spimey–blogjects, but I’m pretty sure that I can’t provide better a catalogue or pricing than Netflix 🙂

    However, ILetYou is defining what I think could be a hugely lucrative market for personal rental services. Last Spring, I worked with students and faculty of the Interaction Design Ivrea Institute on an Applied Dreams workshop that gave rise to some incredibly far-sighted ideas around reputation and personal identity.

    Sharer
    David Chiu and Didier Hilhorst presented Rent-A-Thing, a concept strikingly similar to ILetYou, but much broader in scope. Rent-A-Thing enables its users to rent or share any of their possessions, using their borrowers reputations as currency to vouch for others. James Tichenor and Vinay Venkatraman’s Sharer service explored similar concepts, but also engaged the regional Italian post office in providing deliery and pickup facilities.

    Where ILetYou is addressing a marketplace of abundance, Sharer and Rent-A-Thing are surfacing those possessions and items which are rare, but potentially within proximity. I suspect, ILetYou will derive revenue from mailers and transactions, but but leave little value in the hands of the user. Services based on concepts such as Sharer and Rent-A-Thing can draw transactional revenues, but their localised nature can help promote less tangible value such as reconnecting communities, encouraging re-use and enabling individuals to articulate their reputation.

    —

    Incidentally, a year on from the IDII workshops – the concepts are still appealing and ahead of the marketplace…I hope some of those students are thinking about starting up 🙂

    UPDATE: Come to think of it, what if Netflix simply added some tools and APIs to let people build their own storefronts with the Netflix backend, catalogue and some revenue-share? Isn’t that sorta the same thing as ILetYou?

    ANOTHER UPDATE: Springwise has spotted another transumer P2P lending startup, New Zealand’s Hire Things.

  • Taking A Moment

    Blindcamera This is interesting. Sascha Pohflepp’s Buttons project doesn’t capture images, but time stamps which are later used to retrieve photos taken by other people at the same moment. It’d be interested to extend the camera to capture location too.

    Pohflepp’s ‘blind camera’ is the latest in a series of really simple devices that capture a context, later used as a key to wider sets of information…

    • Sony’s now defunct eMarker allowed users to ‘bookmark’ songs they were hearing on a radio station. The time stamp would then be used to interrogate a programme guide and identify the song…kinda like a proto-Shazam.
    • Cuecats, QRs and Semacodes have enabled contexts to be connected directly to the digital world.
    • Sony’s GPS-CS1 captures location and time information for later application to locative services.

    • Keep an eye on Meeview.tv 😉

    I wonder if the notion of taking a picture will evolve into one of taking a moment – embedding a number of concurrent events and parameters inside a piece of media and connecting it to wider ‘momentosphere’. That sounds like a spimey blogject to me…

  • Second Wardrobe

    MeezCute. Meez.com allows users to construct and export avatars for use in online communities, IM clients, blogs and other social software; kinda like a super-Stortrooper. News.com is carrying a video review of the service today.

    The image on the right, is the best approximation of myself I could construct without joining Meez (or losing weight); incidentally the background is the Palace Of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco 🙂

    After losing a month of my life to Knights of the Old Republic in Summer 2005, I’ve shied away from online gaming, immersive-addictive MMOGs and digital worlds like Second Life.

    However, dressing and configuring my avatar to look as much like me as possible in the Meezmall raised an interesting question…how much of a business is there for fashion brands – like FCUK, Levis and others – to sell digital equivalents of their ranges to avatar providers? Could the success of WoW and Second Life drive a massive secondary economy?

  • Facon

    A few weeks ago, Ian and I were speculating about the ethics of laboratory-grown/in vitro meat. We wondered if, as a vegetarian and as a Muslim, whether the consumption of in-vitro meat violated our ethics and beliefs – given that ‘no animal was harmed in the production of this meal’.

    Ian felt his vegetarianism would not be compromised by eating in-vitro meat, however, I my position is less clear…

    • The principles of Kosher and Halal help a believer to appreciate the taking of a life – does artifical meat render this obsolete?
    • Pork is considered ‘unclean’ by both Muslims and Jews – would artificial pork (Facon?) be considered ‘clean’ or should the spirit of Halal and Kosher be honored regardless of the means of production?

    Yesterday Schulze & Webb posted some thoughts on the industrial future of lab-grown meat, drawn from what appears to be a fascinating collaboration with the RCA. It’ll be interesting to see how ethical and cultural issues take shape as this technology progresses… would you eat artifically grown human meat?

    —

    Coincidentally, I had my first experience of bacon at San Francisco’s famous David’s Deli last Monday. David’s serves kosher food (compatible with Halal) and my order was for beef bacon 🙂

    UPDATE: US to approve cloned meat!

  • It’s Alive! (My Chumby)

    Today, I hooked up my Chumby, named ‘Chumby Chumbing Rodriguez’ in honour of Futurama’s Bender. Here’s my out of the box experience:

    • Power – I needed a shaving adaptor to connect the 2-pin AC adaptor to a UK outlet and I couldn’t find the power button as it was stealthily concealed by a sticker (doh!).
    • Configuration – Touchscreen calibration and wifi discovery went OK, but Chumby couldn’t connect to its server. Guessing that the internal wifi radio was 802.11b only, I switched my network from ‘G-only’ to ‘Mixed’.
    • Stability – The screen flickered periodically; initially I thought this was a poor AC connection, but it turns out Chumby’s ambient light sensor was overly sensitive to my energy saving fluorescent bulbs. Tinkering with brightness settings while covering the sensor solved this problem.
    • Registration – registration and configurations of widgets worked without any problems.

    Chumby worked as well as expected for an alpha appliance. The currently available catalogue of widgets is a little sparse and often buggy – Google News hangs Chumby, Flickr’s user setting doesn’t work – but as alpha testers, it’s really up to us Chumbians to address that. Great start – and very smart to launch at Foo Camp!