Jason Silva's multimedia review of ABUNDANCE. Exponential Technological Progress. Less than two minutes.

ABUNDANCE from jason silva on Vimeo.

RELATED

ABUNDANCE book website
Authors:  Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler



Here is a quote from Jason Silva's website:
"The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself" - Steven Johnson


Jason Silva is a Fellow at the Hybrid Reality Institute:
"A Research and Advisory Group Focused on Human-Technology Co-Evolution and Its Implications for Global Business, Society, and Politics".



SOMEWHAT RELATED 
My husband DVR'd the pilot of "Touch", a new offering from Fox that appears to incorporate some of the concepts in the above review. We watched it last night, before I came across Jason Silva's review of ABUNDANCE.  Coincidence?  Maybe not : )


(I'm an armchair futurist. I work with kids with autism spectrum disorders. This stuff probably interests me more than it should!)


Here is the trailer:

TWINE video and the Supermechanical Blog: Moving Toward the Web of People and Things!

"A wireless square with sensors and a simple web app to set rules, Twine tells you what your things are doing by email, text or Twitter."   I want one!

This project was developed by David Carr and John Kestener, the designer-engineers behind Supermechanical. They are passionate about creating connectable objects.They honed their skills in the interdisciplinary  MIT Media Lab.  


More information about Twine can be found on the KICKSTARTER website.  Here is a bite of info from the site for the tech-curious:

"Twine is a wireless module tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The module has WiFi, on-board temperature and vibration sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by the on-board mini USB or two AAA batteries (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries)."
"The Spool web app makes it simple to set up and monitor your Twines from a browser anywhere. You set rules to trigger messages — no programming needed. The rules are put together with a palette of available conditions and actions, and read like English: WHEN moisture sensor gets wet THEN tweet "The basement is flooding!" We'll get you started with a bunch of rule sets, and you can share rules you create with other Twine owners."
"Because the hardware and software are made for each other, setup is easy. There's nothing to install — just point Twine to your WiFi network. Sensors are immediately recognized by the web app when you plug them in, and it reflects what the sensors see in real time, which makes understanding and testing your rules easy."

RELATED

Supermechanical Blog

Futurecasting and Science Fiction at Intel: Video of Brian David Johnson, Futurist.

"The Tomorrow Project" is an international program that explores and creates science fiction based on science fact. The project features science fiction stories, comics and short screen plays based on current research and emerging technologies and examines their affect on our future. -Intel
The Tomorrow Project-Seattle

RELATED
Intel's Context Aware Computing- Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Office
Intel Developers Forum, 2010

Cute TV Commercial! Intel Gesture Recognition Technology

This was the first television commercial I saw on TV this morning. I had to stop my morning routine to watch it : )



RELATED
From ChannelIntel: Interview of Francis MacDougall, CTO of GestureTek

Monday Musing and Meanderings: Interesting videos and links about emerging technologies.

INTERACTIVE TANGIBLE TABLETOP MUSIC


Reactable Live! SubMixPro Studio Torino

The Reactable featured in the above video is used for DJ-ing in clubs. The one I've played with is at the science museum in my area - I love it. It is fun to improvise on the Reactable with another person.  For more information, see my previous blog posts featuring the Reactable.

AUGMENTED REALITY
While listening to CNBC on my satellite radio on the way home today,  I heard that investing in Qualcomm might be a good idea.   I wonder if this means that Wall Street analysts think that  AR will become mainstream soon...   


The video below shows a variety of creative AR game applications:


Qualcomm has an AR SDK that comes with tutorials, samples, an API reference, and developer forums. The SDK can be downloaded from the Qualcomm AR web-page.

For more information:

GDC 11:  AR- The Augmented Future of Mobile Serious Games?  Eliane Alhadeff, Serious Games Market, 3/7/11

Qualcomm Augmented Reality Research

Qualcomm Extends Augmented Reality with Unity Technologies

Qualcomm's secret mobile weapon:  Augmented Reality Robert Enderle,  TG Daily, 2/24/11

This sort of technology has been around for a while. For an example, take a look at  the 2007 MScape game demo of the AR game, Roku's Reward:

THE KINECT FOR MEDICAL DATA VISUALIZATION 

Here is another use of augmented reality, but this time, harnessing the Kinect:

Magic Mirror for Medical Data Visualization using Kinect

Madhav K. ,  Kinecthacks 

Public Presentation of mirracle

PHOTOELASTIC TOUCH

Transparent Rubbery Interface using a LCD and Photoelasticity
Toshiki Sato, Haruko Mamiya, Taro Tokui, Hideki Koike,  The Unversity of Electro-Communications;  Kentaro Fukuchi, Japan Science and Technology Agency
Abstract (pdf)


ART AND SCREENS

Nomad capacitive brush turns your iPhone into an art canvas for $24.00
Darren Murph, Engadget, 2/22/11

Nomad Brush for the iPad from Don Lee on Vimeo.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Upcoming Theme Issues- I love the topics!

I'm happy to share some information about the topics of upcoming theme issues planned for Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. The information below was taken from the PUC's Facebook page.  I added links to information about most of the managing editor for each theme.


"PUC is currently working with some of the leading researchers, research groups, conferences and workshops to produce theme issues around specific topics. Here are the issues we currently have in progress:"

• Automative User interfaces:  Albrecht Schmidt
• Multimodal Systems, Services and Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing Zhiwen Yu
• Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies:  Elhadi Shakhuki 
• Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence: Jose Bravo 
• Extreme Navigation: David McGookin
• Adaptation and Personalization for Ubiquitous Computing: Zhiwen Yu (?)
• Pervasive Advertising: Joerg Mueller  
• A Persuasive Design Approach to Personal Health: Tom Djajadingrat
• Mobile Multimedia Processing: Michael Rohs  
• Cloud computing: Chunming Rong
• Smartphone Applications and Services for Pervasive Computing
• Personal Projection: Enrico Rukzio
• Mental Health and the Impact of Ubiquitous Technologies:  Venet Osmani
• Sensor Networks and Ambient Intelligence: Boon Chong Seet
• User-Driven RFID Applications and Challenges: Katerina Mitrokotsa
• Measuring behavior and interaction – methods and new application domains: E.I. Barakova

"For more details, check back in our Facebook Notes or contact the editor managing the theme issue."   - the editor's email addresses can be found on the PUC Facebook site.



Personal and Ubiquitous Computing


Note:  Ubiquitous Computing was one of my favorite graduate courses and I still can't get enough of it.   In my dreams, I would be happy just playing around with emerging technologies and experimenting with new applications, and nothing else, for a year or two, in and out of the lab.

Interview of Gillian Hayes: Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism

Gillian Hayes is an Assistant Professor in Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Science and the School of Education at UC Irvine.  Some of her research has focused on the use of interactive technologies with children who have autism. She recently was interviewed about a feature article she co-authored that was published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing:  Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism.

The interview can be found on the following Facebook Notes page:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=439770255457&id=179582945448&ref=mf

Gillian is the editor of an upcoming  special issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing on the topic in of technologies for autism.


RELATED 
Some links from the interview:

Gillian's paper in PUC 
(Personal and Ubiquitous Computing)
PUC theme issue on Technologies for Autism
Gillian Hayes
STAR
Gillian talks about autism and technology