This header appeared last summer in the cover story of the Atlantic Montly, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence , written by Nicholas Carr and went on explaining that the widespread use of Internet by 2020 for any kind of activity will lead to a dimiished intellectual for the majority of people. It will be so easy to find any response to any question just by voicing it (no more typing in 2020) that our brain will not need to engage in any sophisticated thinking. 2+2 will still make 4 but because Internet tells us so!

This opinion was challenged by the fourth survey on Internet organised by Pew Internet & American Life Project and the results are quite different. Mind you, we are still in the realm of opinions but it is interesting to look at the different viewpoints.

Carr’s opinion was summarised in the following sentence:

“The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas…. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with ‘content,’ we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.”

This opinion was challenged by Jamais Cascio, an affiliate of the Institute of the Future who wrote in the following issue of the Atlantic Montly:

“Most people don’t realize that this process is already under way,” he wrote. “In fact, it’s happening all around us, across the full spectrum of how we understand intelligence. It’s visible in the hive mind of the Internet, in the powerful tools for simulation and visualization that are jump-starting new scientific disciplines, and in the development of drugs that some people (myself included) have discovered let them study harder, focus better, and stay awake longer with full clarity.” He argued that while the proliferation of technology and media can challenge humans’ capacity to concentrate there were signs that we are developing “fluid intelligence-the ability to find meaning in confusion and solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge.”

Based on these two statements Pew asked over 500 people working on Internet and content from differnt perspectives what they felt like and this is the outcome: 81% felt the Internet is improving humanity IQ whist 16% resonated with Carr (and 4% did not take any stand).

I have to say I am leaning towards the 81%. Since the beginning of the recorded history we have seen people concerned that innovation would decrease the skills that were dominant at that time (remember the position taken by some ancient philosophers that the invention of writing would decrease the ability of remembering things since it would be so much more convenient to write things down and read them at a later time rather than striving to remember them?).

This fear of innovation spoiling our present culture, habits and skill is still present but I do believe that the future will prove otherwise. We have always been able to exploit the new and to add it on to the acquired skill of the past. Clearly the future is building on the past but it is also tranforming out physical and cultural ecosystem. As such we are unlikely to survive in a jungle as our ancestors did, we would have very little chance of feeding ourselves without the technological progress in agriculture,…and so on.

But I guess most of us are not looking forward to live in a jungle anymore…

Learning is going to improve with the appropriate use of internet and everyone of us will have the opportunity of, like Newton once said, seeing further since we will be standing on the shoulders of giants. The good thing is that more and more people will have the real possibility of doing that.

Take a look at the full Pew report. It makes for a good reading.

http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2010/Future%20of%20internet%202010%20-%20AAAS%20paper.pdf

Even though Google has insisted on user’s privacy, it has been exposed that privacy in Google Buzz is totally ignored and this is becoming a big issue these days. People can see some of your contacts with whom you’re communicating frequently. The problem is that Google tries and makes experimentation first, and don’t consider the predictable problems and postpone the response and solution.

The speed of technologies evolution has been growing faster and faster day by day. Nowadays companies are in a hurry to create new services and provide them as fast as possible and quicker than others. Then the privacy issue, which is one of the most considered issue by users, is really easy to be ignored. And also we don’t have to forget that the convenience and the risk are almost on the same surface. For instance, the concept of Google Buzz is that you can see your friend’s information and activities very easily and simply just by clicking Buzz. However, the consequence is that it just expose the user’s information even though the users never wanted.

Nowadays our personal information seems like a hostage of these big companies such as Google. The danger of leakage of our information is all up to these companies… They have to realise that they’re treating a huge amount of user information and be always aware of it. And also they should be conscious about it even when they’re in hurry to launch new services. It’ll be really difficult and complicated to make a good balance between the compliance of personal information and pursuing new technologies and services. However, it should be strongly protected and observed no matter what.

This is my last post on Future Centre blog. Thank you very much to everybody for supporting and giving me this opportunity of learning…

Young children prefer network Bebo, Twitter attracts an older audience  while LinkedIn is crowded with over forty to share their curriculum. The  ecosystem of social networks can be classified according to the age of the participants.

The appeal is determined by various factors: the popularity of the social network, the interest of the topics discussed and the  membership age of users.

The pingdom report (www.pingdom.com) shows that 25 percent of Users in the 19 main social  networks monitored (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg,  Delicious, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Last.fm, Friendster, LiveJournal, Hi5, Tagged,  Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com, Bebo) are between 35 and 44 years and the average Social network user is 37 years old.

From this analysis, we understand that digital life is not only for young people  but the market is just ready and mature to be exploited. If the average person  that share his life online is about 37 years old it is easy to imagine how much  data of value and content are available in the new gold mine of personal metadata.

Neuroscientists argue that brain networks show small world and exponentially truncated power law characteristics. These are considered, by the way, the best structural basis for coexistence of both informational processing segregation (in specialized regions) and integration (by coherent oscillations in wider regions).

Most of neuroscience investigations, as far as I know, are currently based on the assumption that thoughts, feelings, consciousness emerge from the electrical and chemical communications between brain cells. On one side there are experimental studies, using different anatomical technologies (e.g. magnetic resonance imaging) to observe and elaborate about brain patterns. On the other side, there are studies and simulations on various computational models of complex networks neurons: for example how neurons fire electrically in response to inputs of other neurons, or release neurotransmitters to communicate with each other.

Anyway, how such network of networks of cells can produce the subtlety of mind, or can perform the body autonomic control, is still a big open question.

An interesting approach [1] proposes alternatively to focus on the relevance of abstractions (and their relationships to the natural evolution, or the human design).  Being an electronic engineer (fond of Physics) let me resume the example of the Ohm’s law, V = IR, where V, I and R denote abstract entities respectively known as voltage across a resistor, current through it and resistance. So, the movement of electrons, in a physical resistor, results in the realisation of an abstract scheme satisfying the Ohm’s law. Engineers make use of such (and many others) abstract schemes to design electronic systems performing particular functions (but, basically ignoring the laws behind the movement of electrons). The same ideas probably apply to bio-systems. Bio-systems contain several components of various kinds, conforming to some scheme of abstractions. On the other hand, they differ from machines in that the entities concerned often lack a formal definition, their properties being inferred from investigations (at different levels of observation) of several instances encountered in nature.

 
This reasoning equally applies to autonomic systems functioning.  The human autonomic nervous system, in its environment, is probably characterised by a hierarchy of systems conforming to a range of abstract schemes; typically these schemes relate to particular neural circuits or biological sub-systems and their adaptive behaviour in a given environment.

Natural design and evolution are driving (indirectly) the human autonomic nervous system to conform to such abstract schemes, through development and cognition (learning, at least). I think this is an important point.

Following this reasoning, to engineer autonomic systems requires defining, not only control-loop circuitry (at the proper level), but also hierarchies of abstract schemes and the processes of evolutionary development and cognition in dynamic environments.

In a next post, we’ll elaborate about how cognition may control phase-transitions in autonomic networks.

[1] http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/papers/messina2001.html

The company “The Astonishing Tribe” (TAT) www.tat.se, developed an application  called Recognizr that lets users point the mobile phone at a stranger and  automatically know a lot of things about him…
This remarkable way of using face recognition and augmented reality applied to the  social networking world opens new scenarios of digital life, entertainment and  communication.

The head of user experience research at TAT says: “It’s taking  social networking to the next level,” and then “We thought the idea of bridging  the way people used to meet, in the real world, and the new Internet-based ways of  congregating would be really interesting.”

When a user points the camera phone at someone near him the application detects  the face of the stranger and creates a signature for him. If the subject opted in  to the service with a profile and photos then the service sends information about links to his profile on his social networking sites.
For istance, one cases of value about security could be the ability to identify the  face of a known criminal from a crowd.

It is easy to understand the potential for this kind of technology within a few  years, becoming ubiquitous in an individual’s digital life; of course people are  scared about privacy, but I think the privacy issue would not be a problem if the  application allows the person to be “identified”, opting in to the service

Several television remote controls are using infrared communications, so this technology is already in our homes. But the data are exchanged between the remote and the television at a very low bit rate. This is ok, since what you want to communicate is something like “go to channel 2”.

Now at Penn University a professor and his student have set up an experiment to show that infrared communications can provide transmission capacity in a closed environment, like our living room, in the order of Gbps, quite enough to carry several HD television channels.

Infrared can also be a more suitable communication media in places like hospitals and airplanes since it does not interfere with radio equipment.

The infrared beam is beamed up to the ceiling of the room and reflected onto the various receiving equipment, avoiding line of sight obstacles.

Optical wireless networks can also be of interest because of their higher security: whilst electromagnetic field in the frequency range of radio goes across walls, the higher frequencies of the light electromagnetic field are blocked by walls so what is transmitted within a room does not leak out.

Besides, the radio frequencies are scarce and therefore regulated whilst the higher frequencies of the light electromagnetic field are abundant and do not need regulation.

The electromagnetic spectrum

This experiment carried out at Penn University is by far the one reaching the highest transmission speed so far and it is particularly interesting given the approach of creating a diffuse field, the one reflected by the ceiling, in contrast to the usual point to point optical systems experimented so far.

The infrared light beam is created by a low power laser to avoid any damage to passers by. The light is illuminating a point in the ceiling and the connected appliances have a high sensitivity light detector with a plastic holographic lens to collect a sufficient portion of the reflected light. The one Gbps transmission was achieved into a room of 8m x 4m.

Infrared communications is not here, yet, at this speed. However, several industries are committed to make it working and deliver it to the market. The Infrared Data Association, www.irda.org , is working on standards and IEEE 802.15 is working on standards for wireless networks using visible light for application in personal area networks.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/24522/?ref=rss&a=f

What we can expect in the future is the availability of a wide range of communications media creating a communication fabric connecting all devices, objects and, obviously, ourselves. This fabric will be so ubiquitous that will become invisible to our perception and taken for granted. Probably most people will not even realise that there “ought to be” some communications mechanisms in place to support communication. Do you ever stop to reflect that in order to talk with your friend in a pub you need to have air all around you to carry your voice to his ears?

And pervasive communications will create tremendous opportunities for services in a true ecosystem environment. There are no more cables to connect and physical interfaces to agree on.

iBlood (www.brandnewstart.be) is a free application,  which allows you to save your group blood and the one of  your loved ones. In case of emergency could be critical  to know this information, for instance for a  transfusion.
The application also provides compatibility between  groups through the function of “App purchase” inside the  application.

You can Add to your list even  the blood group of the  members of your family and your friends.
This is an useful app about health, because in case of problem, anybody will be able to know your blood group and make  an emergency phone call for you. This Can be another scenario in which personal user data con create value when shared and used in an ecosystem of players and communities of people.

And this is just the beginning.
In a few years health care will take a new twist with the possibility of creating drugs based on your genome. At that time each of us will carry around his own genome (it takes just 2GB of space) and the drug store will use it to customise the drug prescribed.

A few days ago, at the Mobile World Congress, the Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt showed off a new feature of Google Goggles, the visual search application that allows to snap digital pictures and get related info back. The prototype presented uses an optical character recognition engine connected to a digital camera and converts photo to text, instantly translating it with Google Translate. Here the video in which you can see how the handset takes a picture of a German menu and translates the text into English (on a second level it will translate each of the 52 languages supported at now):

We are power machines producing 75W on average to carry out our daily activity. This is well known. But now some companies are proposing to exploit our power production to charge or power a variety of micro appliances. And here, technology comes at hand.

Princeton University researchers have developed nanoribbons based on piezoelectric ceramic that can harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking converting them into power to power pacemakers, mobile phones and more.

The nanoribbons are embedded onto silicone rubber sheets and can generate electricity when flexed. Shoes made of this rubber can generate sufficient power to charge a mobile phone (of course, you’ll need to keep walking!). A band placed on your torso can generate sufficient power from your breathing to keep the pacemaker going (and if you stop breathing there is no reason to power the pacemaker anymore…).

A rubber band to generate electrical power out of breathing

The results have been published on January 26^th on the NanoLetters Journal of the American Chemical Society, under the title “Piezoelectric Ribbons Printed onto Rubber for Flexible Energy Conversion”.

The conversion is very efficient managing to convert up to 80% of the mechanical energy into electrical energy. The rubber incorporates 100 nanoribbons per each millimiter.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl903377u

These results are very interesting since they take us a step forward the dissemination of sensors in the environment (and on us too) and this will create an amazingly rich ecosystem for many business to thrive on.

Sometimes I catch some news that is not exactly in my line of biz but that I find so stimulating, I cannot resist posting it here.

This is one of those times.

At TED, a very intriguing conference, Intellectual Ventures presented a system able to kill female mosquitoes in flight using a laser beam.
What caught my attention is the fact that this feat is achieved by harvesting several everyday technologies (at a cost that I suspect is far beyond my and your pockets). Take a BluRay, player and take out its laser, then scavenge your digital camera for its digital sensor, add the mechanism to exactly deliver the right amount of ink in that precise place that is embedded in the cartridge you use in your inkjet. Then mix it all using a supercomputer to coordinate the actions of the various parts and you have got a star war system to kill mosquitoes. Up to 100 per second as Nathan Myhrvold, former director of research at Microsoft and founder of Intellectual Ventures, demonstrated at TED last week.

The laser and the sensors are acting together to search for the mosquito in flight and pass the information to the supercomputer that analysing the data can tell female mosquitoes from males. If a female is detected the laser sends a powerful pulse to destroy it. Females are the one stinging you, that’s the reason for the choice.

Now, this is an example of synergy among several technologies. I wouldn’t call it convergence, as may be someone else would do. I have always been suspicious, as you might have seen from my posts, of convergence.

Convergence does not increase the market value in general; it provides a good bundle, at a lower price. Synergy, on the other hand, does the trick of increasing the market value.

This is what happens in biz ecosystems, the synergistic behaviour of independent players create a market place that is richer and more valuable than the sum of the individual contributions.

I might be seeing too much into a mosquito high tech shooting device but it is something that made me think, and I do hope it will make you too.

It is amazing what can come out of well established technologies once you look at them differently!