The presence of sensors everywhere, in every objects and the connectivity fabric bringing all them together will be changing our perception of the world. It won’t happen in a single shop but one step at a time, some so small that we might not notice what is happening.

The fun is just starting

This is why I decided to report on the announcement made by Sifteo, a start up originated from work at the Media Lab where I saw the first prototypes of Siftable.

They have announced the possibility to pre-order a set of siftable, tiny cubes that embeds sensors and a PC having a screen on one of their faces.

They propose a set of three for 149$ (any extra cube comes at a 45$ tag), that’s not cheap but if you think that you get three PCs, three screens and plenty of sensors… well it is a bargain! By moving the cubes, placing them in specific positions, juxtaposing one another you have them behave in different ways. This is the consequence of each sensing its environment and reacting to it.

Another interesting aspect is that the siftables are open to third party programming so that you can both program them yourself or get applications from the ecosystem they create.

I see this as an example of a change that will characterize this decade: more and more objects will be able to sense what’s going on around them and will adjust their behavior accordingly. And, of course, they will be progressively able to sense our presence, and communicate with our electronic agent so that they can morph into our living space.

Sometimes I hit into a news that just start me thinking. Its value goes much further than the news itself. Well, this is one of those.

Is this where I am going?

Ford researchers are testing a hybrid car that can guess where I will be driving (no, it is not waiting for me to fill in the info in the car navigator!).

It uses a predictive technology developed by Google and the software developed by Ford tweak the car engine to fit the predicted route (e.g. it takes decision on when using the battery power rather than the gas).

You might wonder if such a guessing is really important in terms of energy efficiency but what made me think is the fact that objects are getting smarter and this is going to change our perception of the environment and possibly the way we look at them and interact with them.

In the future more and more information (data) will be available and harvesting/processing these data will provide us with insight on what is happening and on what might be happening. If you think about it there is something very close to intelligence and even consciousness in this. We do something because we perceive a given situation AND we derive expectation out of that. Most of our actions are the result of an evaluation of possibilities that may become real in the future.

Of course, it is not “real” consciousness but is getting pretty close to that!