Did you know the first “brain-tweet” was sent out this year? How about that we may someday be customizing windshields with widgets? In the not-to-distant future, we may be interfacing with computers in exciting and innovative new ways.
In the grand scheme of history, it wasn’t long ago that the first telephone conversation took place. Relatively speaking, that makes the personal computer an invention of yesteryear, and social networking only a blink of an eye later. Just imagine what’s coming in the near future…
The future of how we interact with computers is exciting to say the least. What once seemed like nonsense outside of Hollywood and Science Fiction is now starting to find it’s way into reality, and some of the technology is a bit overwhelming.
My personal favorites, or rather the one’s I’m interested in exploring are -
Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.
Not really sure why I’m blogging this, except for random thoughts that sprung up.
Listening to Matt Jones’s presentation at Umeå for the Fall Summit 2009, and reflecting on some things he said. (It’s amazing that when I listen to a speaker of such calibre, even half-baked thoughts leave me enriched.)
“Anything Essential is Invisible – We are sculpting with Data – We need to have a feel for the data we are working with - We dont design anything until we have a feel for what the data will be like – What the Data wants to Do – Making the Invisible, Visible.”
“And if you think of Brick, for instance,
and you say to Brick,
“What do you want Brick?”
And Brick says to you
“I like an Arch.”
And if you say to Brick
“Look, arches are expensive,
and I can use a concrete lentil over you.
What do you think of that?”
“Brick?”
Brick says:
“… I like an Arch””
(Louis Kahn, Architect, talking about conceiving the IIM Ahmedabad building)
—–
Perhaps this was why I left the older understanding of Architecture behind in search of a newer one.
Some of the most inspiring talks given by some personal heroes of mine. Matt Jones, Adam Greenfield, Jack Schulze, Timo Arnall, Matt Cottam, Lennart Andersson, Erica Robles, Mikael Wiburg and the indomitable Camille Moussette presented to us at the first ever Spring Summit 2009 at Umeå earlier this year.
It was a turning point in a lot of ways for me. I had a chance to meet and get to know Matt Jones and Lennart Andersson (who were kind enough to spare time to discuss my degree project) and influence my way of thinking in a way that I’d never been inspired to do before. It was also special to listen to Adam Greenfield, a thinker and visionary who’s work I greatly admire. It was a rare and personal moment for everyone in the audience when he decided to stop his presentation midway and speak from the heart. In many ways, after a day of amazing presentations – it was the most fitting way to end. I personally enjoyed Jack and Timo’s presentations immensely too!
Following the success of the first Spring Summit 2009 at Umeå (organized by a group of my colleagues, mentors and the dynamic Matt Cottam), the Fall Summit 2009 is on it’s way with another day that promises to be memorable.
(poster designed by Pierre-Alexandre Poirier; via www.interactiondesign.se)
I convinced my employers, Ergonomidesign (eternally grateful!) to let me attend this summit, along with the workshop on Fritzing for 2 days. My colleague Magnus Gyllenswärd (formerly a student at Umeå Institute of Design) will also be attending. We are both super excited. Even though I graduated in June and have only been working for about 3 months – school, my friends, the memories – they all seen so far away. I feel almost nervous that this visit will make me both incredibly happy and a bit nostalgic and sad.
I look forward to posting more about the Summit and what happened there!
I’d heard of Pachube before, but I discovered it today while looking through Matt Jones’ blog at BERG (his collaboration with the-team-formerly-known-as-Schulze-and-Webb).
‘Pachube is a web service available at http://www.pachube.com that enables you to store, share & discover realtime sensor, energy and environment data from objects, devices & buildings around the world. Pachube is a convenient, secure & scalable platform that helps you connect to & build the ‘internet of things’.’
Excerpt continued – ‘As a generalized realtime data brokerage platform, the key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual. Apart from enabling direct connections between any two environments, it can also be used to facilitate many-to-many connections: just like a physical “patch bay” (or telephone switchboard) Pachube enables any participating project to “plug-in” to any other participating project in real time so that, for example, buildings, interactive environments, networked energy meters, virtual worlds and mobile sensor devices can all “talk” and “respond” to each other.
Pachube is a little like YouTube, except that, rather than sharing videos, Pachube enables people to monitor and share real time environmental data from sensors that are connected to the internet. Pachube acts between environments, able both to capture input data (from remote sensors) and serve output data (to remote actuators). Connections can be made between any two environments, facilitating even spontaneous or previously unplanned connections. Apart from being used in physical environments, it also enables people to embed this data in web-pages, in effect to “blog” sensor data. Through the extensive use of metadata, Pachube adds value to physical interconnectivity: it’s not just about datastreams, but about the environments that make up the datastreams.’
I had been an avid follower of the work of Usman Haque(especially his Sky-Ear project) since I started learning the craft of Interaction Design at Umeå. While I havent had the time to play with Pachube yet, nor get my hands on an arduino board in some time – I am super excited by the thought that efforts such as these, plugged into the open-source community (stuff like Arduino, VVVV, Fritzing and others) are rapidly paving the way for the ‘internet of things’ that every sci-fi writer, designer, thinker dreams of making real.
I am an Interaction Designer based in Stockholm, Sweden. I'm working at Er-gono-mi-design these days, usual doing some awesome stuff. This blog is about exciting things, thoughts and events I happen to stumble upon. Sometimes, its a canvas for random experiments. More often, it'll be a museum of things, links, and nuggets of gold done by other people that I choose to preserve.
