Tag: Ideas

  • Your To-Do list is going to KILL YOU!

    If you have an ever-expanding to-do list -  then you're failing to
    understand your mortality. That's right, your cherished, life-affirming
    task list is ultimately a pathway to your own death!

    Let me explain…

    Years ago, my good friend Rich Gibson and I were thinking about design principles for software that reflects who you are, what he called an "Internet of Values"
    – in essence, applications and services that allowed you to articulate
    your values (not your tastes) and helped you stay true to them using
    intelligent feedback loop; a to-do list is at heart an articulation of
    our life's goals – whether immediate or long-range.

    Here's how Rich explains it

    "When you put a thing on your to-do list, you are
    making a commitment to do it," he says to me. "Meaning you aren't going
    to do some other things." He pauses. "So you have to choose between
    those things. Now, why do you have to choose?"

    I think about this for a second. "Because your time is limited?" I venture hopefully.

    "BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO F*CKING DIE," he responds.

    Rich goes on to suggest that…

    "one's to-do list, in whatever form, is ultimately a skull on the desk, a memento mori, a reminder that our time here really is limited and we ought to make the most of it, in as much as the list is also meant to be a tool for helping one actually do so"

    The reasoning may be morbid, but it's certainly thought provoking.
    Indeed, just last month, celebrated Italian author Umberto Eco debuted
    a new exhibition about the place 'lists' hold in our culture and noted
    in an interview with Der Spiegel that…

    "…how, as a human being, does one face infinity? through lists, through catalogs, through collections.."

    Eco suggests that lists and collections ultimately embody the ways
    in which we think about death and are intrinsic to our culture. Rich is
    however more pragmatic and goes on to suggest a 'Someday' or 'Maybe'
    list for lingering tasks and hazier goals which should perhaps never be
    part of to-do lists anyway.

    Both Rich and Eco offer fascinating and thought provoking
    perspectives on otherwise innocuous cultural artifacts. Indeed,
    Twitter's recent launch of its Lists feature hews close to Eco's notion of cultural curation – lists as 'playlists of people'.

    I'd like to think that future to-do list application could sense and
    interpret my goals, subtly helping me to differentiate between Submit Knight Foundation proposal and Visit Tokyo as 'to-do' and 'someday' tasks….could software that sensed or guessed at our values, ultimately help us rediscover them?

    Read more at We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die and The Skull On Your Desk.

  • Fuzzy Inside

    Herishnowish There's been an interesting confluence of commentary recently on why precision is not only unnecessary, but perhaps undesirable, in the formulation of communication services…

    • In Valleywag's Against Realtime, Owen Thomas argues that Facebook's recent makeover has emphasised recency and buried relevancy – in apeing Twitter, Facebook is assuming that 'the only news is breaking news' (Thomas' piece builda on comments from Om Malik's discussion of Facebook's identity crisis)

    Dopplr it seems has been motivated by understanding context and what might be useful in a given situation, where Facebook's embrace of the realtime web has been driven by the faddish pursuit of a competitor.

    Regardless, there are useful social models and design patterns that need to be abstracted from the Twitter, Facebook and Dopplr articulations of time, space, serendipity and relevancy, patterns that might enhance other services. There's an assumption that relevance and seredipity can emerge from simply aggregating together news items from social connections. Yet there's a growing anxiety that we're all drinking from a firehose of data.

    Why can't Twitter, for example, learn to whom users grant their attention over time…or Facebook understand to whom I'm 'nearby' (at Matt says – 'hereish-and-soonish/thereish-and-thenish'), helping users make relevancy rather than recency based choices, that wire serendipity into the fabric of social software.

  • 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?