Two examples of objects/MMO cross-over

reports on this interesting cross-over: LEGO Mindstorms (the line of robotics components that let you build interactive objects) will have a new line called "NXT that is going to be previewed in Second Life. Also, the insightful Amy-Jo Kim pointed to this article: Habbo China to Match Real and Virtual Purchases:

Habbo Hotel in China , developed by Sulake and apparently operated by Netease, is now allowing online purchases of virtual items that are paired with real-world sales. Flowers, clothes, and movie tickets can be purchased online through Habbochina and the matching real items will be delivered to the purchaser the next day.

Why do I blog this? in terms of video games foresight, this is interesting because it shows (1) video games are so more than video games (social platform, shot to demonstrate a new thing...) and (2) the way old media and new media are more and more intertwined, building a new ecosystem of playful objects (virtual or not).

Management of innovation, internet and deviance

Just received this abstract: "Hacking Business Model, Hackers impact on innovation, how to deal with them", a thesis July 2006 Doctorate Business Of Administration (Newcastle Upon Tyne) by yannick chatelain which seems to be quite intriguing.

Hacking Business model MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATION, INTERNET AND DEVIANCE A typology for the integration of hacker logic by companies

This thesis thus offers an empirical analysis of the impact and the management of deviance in the so-called “new economy”. It analyzes the hand of game-players when faced with a certain type of deviance that occurs beyond corporate limits: “hacking” or “hackerdom” : a practice which has a deep impact on the entire economy in general, but to which certain sectors are more exposed than others. This thesis therefore pursues current research in innovation theory by further investigating methods for managing “externalized” deviance in a framework that has undergone considerable change owing to the evolution of its status during the 1990s. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the affirmation of a theoretical trend that opted for a more direct approach to understanding and modeling collective creation processes. A vocabulary shift earmarked this evolution - “innovation management” became “project management” and “design”: terms that no longer qualified the result – innovation – but the collective activity that produces it – the project and the design process. This evolution was marked by a shift in vocabulary, switching from “innovation management” to “project management” and “design”: thus no longer qualifying the result – innovation – but the collective activity that produces it – the project and the design process. Moreover, deviance played a significant role within the collective innovation activity. Indeed, a number of authors highlighted deviance as an intrinsic component of the corporate innovation process in traditional, pre-internet organizations (Alter, 1990).

Why do I blog this? I'd be happy to read the thesis! I am interested in the relationship between hacking/modding and innovation (for some foresight purposes).

Experientia report about the new ecology of play

One of my favorite design/foresignt/scouting company Experientia recently produced an insightful report about the latest trends in electronic toys and games. It's called "Play Today" (pdf, 4.7 mb, 71 pages) and is definitely a must-read for people like me in the game-research/industry. It's written by Myriel Milicevic with editors Jan-Christoph Zoels and Mark Vanderbeeken, both Experientia partners).

They present examples of board games, controller toys, electronic friends, educative missions and DYI worlds, location-based games, game activism and romantic encounter.

What is important to me is the underlying rhetoric behind that: 1) due to recent and expected technological advances, boundaries between the game and toy industry is going to fade, then some joint projects, complementarities will be possible 2) the game paradigm per se is more than the individual/system interaction and can be used for different purposes (learning, encounters, urban discoveries...)

Would this be enough to address the slumping sales problem?

Why do I blog this? What I really like in this report, and it's one the approach I am always mentioning when I do seminar about game/toy trends, is the convergence between different industries/domaine: game companies (editors and development studio) and toy company. That is why I like the fact that the report address this issue with no boundary between video games, game controllers, electronic toys and so fort. As they say, it's about "mixing media, mixing worlds".

This is also interesting from the cultural anthropology viewpoint and it makes me think about the work of Mizuko Ito: see for instance her paper about kids participation in new media: a tremendously lively ecology of "media culture" is nascent, based on some media convergence (video games, trading cards in her case), personalization and remix as well as hypersociality of exchange. This Experientia report is really about this new ecology of play which as less distinct boundaries than previously thought.

Technorati Tags: experientia

Innovation and R&D practices

Hamilton and INSEAD recently released a report of their study about innovation and R&D practices. They surveyed R&D leaders in 186 companies in 19 nations in 2005. According to Strategy Business:

The survey results, and our own experience, suggest one central truth: Organizations benefit when they configure their innovation networks for cost and manage them for value. (...) the primary R&D challenges: assessing the value of new knowledge, encouraging cross-site and cross-functional collaboration, managing the complexity of global projects, and optimizing innovation footprints. They also emphasized that having a well-managed R&D network is becoming particularly advantageous as companies expand R&D beyond their home turf. Between 1975 and 2005, the survey found, the share of R&D sites located outside the markets of their corporate headquarters has risen from 45 percent to 66 percent. That share is likely to increase, with 77 percent of the R&D sites planned over the next three years slated for China or India.

Why do I blog this? since research and R&D more and more rely on networks, I find valuable to know more about how those networks are managed (internally in companies but also with external actors in other copmanies, public institutions or NGOs)

IBM to become a R&D consultancy

According to this article, it seems that IBM is changing its business model from being world's biggest computer services provider to selling its experience running research programs to other companies.

The business will help companies run their research units but won't provide the research itself, IBM said. (...) "This is the trend you are going to see from IBM," said Navi Radjou, a vice president at Forrester Research who studies research and development management. "They are going beyond areas that have to do with information technology. They're looking for areas where they can take internal learnings and then recast them as external knowledge."

Why do I blog this? from the foresight point of view, it's interesting to see how a company called "International Business Machines" is reshaping its core business.

Mizuko Ito on anthropology and design

The last issue of Ambidextrous has been released. Among the different articles, there is a relevant interview of Dr. Mizuko Ito (the interviewer is Danah Boyd). Some excerpts I like:

DANAH: Fabulous! Can you tell me more about what how you see anthropology being relevant to design?

MIMI: I think there is a role for anthropology along all of the steps of the design process. But of course I would say that. Anthropology can help inspire new designs by providing profiles of users and stories about contexts of use. Anthropologists can play on design teams as designs get developed to sensitive designers to culturally and context specific issues. And finally, anthropologists can evaluate the effectiveness of designs through studies of actual use in context, either prototype, pilot, or after product roll-out.

DANAH: So what advice would you have to young aspiring anthropologists who want to study socio-technical practice and get involved in designing new technologies?

This one is tough. Be prepared for some blank looks from people in your discipline - but a lively audience of practitioners and technology designers who are eager to hear stories from the field. The challenge is to be multilingual and interdisciplinary while also maintaining commitment to ethnographic perspectives and methods.

Why do I blog this? that's sometimes a feeling I have while working with a social science perspective with designers. Though, I am wondering whether going beyond telling stories because I feel there s much more to do.

Wiki science, zillionics and AI

Few quotes from Kevin Kelly's thoughts in Edge (it's called SPECULATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE); it's mostly about "the evolution of the scientific method" as the author precise. Some of the examples are interesting and curious (I don't agree with the novelty of all, like pattern recognition... hmm we already have that?)

AI Proofs – Artificial intelligence will derive and check the logic of an experiment. Artificial expert (...) systems will at first evaluate the scientific logic of a paper to ensure the architecture of the argument is valid. It will also ensure it publishes the required types of data. This "proof review" will augment the peer-review of editors and reviewers.

Wiki-Science – The average number of authors per paper continues to rise. With massive collaborations, the numbers will boom. Experiments involving thousands of investigators collaborating on a "paper" will commonplace. The paper is ongoing, and never finished. It becomes a trail of edits and experiments posted in real time — an ever evolving "document." Contributions are not assigned. Tools for tracking credit and contributions will be vital. Responsibilities for errors will be hard to pin down. Wiki-science will often be the first word on a new area. Some researchers will specialize in refining ideas first proposed by wiki-science.

Zillionics – Ubiquitous always-on sensors in bodies and environment will transform medical, environmental, and space sciences. Unrelenting rivers of sensory data will flow day and night from zillions of sources. This trend will require further innovations in statistics, math, visualizations, and computer science. More is different.

Return of the Subjective – Science came into its own when it managed to refuse the subjective and embrace the objective. The repeatability of an experiment by another, perhaps less enthusiastic, observer was instrumental in keeping science rational. But as science plunges into the outer limits of scale – at the largest and smallest ends – and confronts the weirdness of the fundamental principles of matter/energy/information such as that inherent in quantum effects, it may not be able to ignore the role of observer. Existence seems to be a paradox of self-causality, and any science exploring the origins of existence will eventually have to embrace the subjective, without become irrational. The tools for managing paradox are still undeveloped.

Why do I blog this? Kelly's vision is of course is the one an observer of current technological change; sometimes it's a bit odd with regards to scientific practices but he certainly has some good ideas, and this meta-observation described here is valuable. I agree with some of the highlights he have; nothing really new in what I picked up here but it's relevant to my practice and I share the same feelings.

The role of Stanford University as a "transformer"

From the Valley of Heart's Delight to Silicon Valley: A Study of Stanford University's Role in the Transformation by Tajnai, Carolyn (January 1997) is a technical report that illustrates "the role of Stanford University in the transformation from the Valley of Heart's Delight to the Silicon Valley"

t the dawn of the Twentieth Century, California's Santa Clara County was an agricultural paradise. Because of the benign climate and thousands of acres of fruit orchards, the area became known as the Valley of Heart's Delight. In the early 1890's, Leland and Jane Stanford donated land in the valley to build a university in memory of their son. Thus, Leland Stanford, Jr., University was founded. In the early 1930's, there were almost no jobs for young Stanford engineering graduates. This was about to change. Although there was no organized plan to help develop the economic base of the area around Stanford University, the concern about the lack of job opportunities for their graduates motivated Stanford faculty to begin the chain of events that led to the birth of Silicon Valley. Stanford University's role in the transformation of the Valley of Heart's Delight into Silicon Valley is history, but it is enduring history. Stanford continues to effect the local economy by spawning new and creative ideas, dreams, and ambitions.

Why do I blog this? interesting for some of the things I've read lately about innovation/place/transformation, a bit old though.

Marko Ahtisaari's talk at Reboot

End of the afternoon at Reboot, Mark Ahtisaari (Director of Design Strategy at Nokia) talked about "Mobile 2.0: Social Renaissance", basically describing the second stage of mobile communication. The mobile industry today has a huge scale: it reached 2bn mobile subscribers today.

The next 2bn are very different, in terms of usage patterns + income. He's wondering about how can something grow to become so big so quickly? This is due to 3 features: - an object with a social function (familiar before: making a phone call and later sending txt messages) tied to a service - service providers subsidizing price (by mobile operators) - the shift from a familiar collective object to a personal object (this is less quoted in the marketing literature), one of the 3 things you carry (with some form of payment + keys): mobile essentials

Because of this growth, this object becomes an hybrid object: a magnet to draws to it other functionalities: knowing time (watch), waking up (alarm clock), taking pictures (cameras).

So far, it was about mobile 1.5 = in the last 3 years, the interest of this industry shifted to another rhetoric: about a separate internet of some kind that would appear (wap...). There was a lot of emphasis on media content at the expense of human created content (social cooperative content)

To him, there are 7 challenges that can be opportunities: - reach: Mobile 2.0 = the next to 2bn users, largely coming from the new markets: BRICs (Brasil, Russia, India, China) - sometimes off: user interface + social design questions, there will be a reaction towars the always-onness - hackability: an important aspect of design is to let the user complete objects: Nokia pushed that: changeable covers, physical personnalisation (stickers, strap-on...and not only kids; and not only in western culture: adding LEDs on phone in India), user interface skin: it's someone's thing, you can pimp your ride, you can pimp your phone. It's also possible to script or sketch your cell phone (python). Finally: mobile phone repair chain (even enhancement of mobile phone). - social primitives: the SMS has been used to inform, flirt, joke, flattened... gift giving, signaling (to present intention, what I am listening too, the use of the IM line/mood), photostream, peer production (a la wikipedia or flickr), remixing - openness: if the core is social interaction, all the successfull forms of interactions are based on open standards/protocols (free:dom); what shape communication take when it's completely free? And it's never free, someone always has to pay. FON is a good thing for that matter - simplicity: new ways to configure the user interface ("Making the simple complicated is commonplace, making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity" Charles Mingus): Indian vibration chatting machine (stereo hifi tapes) - justice: how do we sustainably connect the 2bn who are not connected? if the core growth is in the social interaction then the question of fairness of access emerges.

More about it in his notes about this other presentation

Reboot 8 in Copenhagen

Some few thoughts about Reboot8 first day.

Thomas' introduced the concept of this edition, which is re-naissance (re-birth) = understanding the past and improving on that. It's about easy reality, sustainable change, not just about business but also changing society and changing our own lifestyle; a new perspective, not a buzzword, global connectedness.

Matt Webb gave a presentation about the characteristics of human sense and how they could be used to design new kind of interaction (a renaissance of the senses). He exemplified this by showing it could be included in the next generation browser. (I lost my notes 'coz of a subethaedit crash :( ) Anyway, what was pertinent in his propositions is to think more about the (mostly cognitive) differences between senses that designer do not use. Then, Ulla-Maaaria Mutanen presented her "Crafter Economics" ideas. It will be about a set of rules that seem to emerge among people who make all kind of stuff and publish that on-line. "Craft" can be taken as "arts and crafts" (william morris), "craft quals bad taste", "craft as cool", "craft as alternative to mass production", "craft as help", "craft as play", "craftv as movement", "craftv as culture history". In all these categories, there is different kind of styles: hard, soft, trendy, extreme, corporate... It's all about creative making, and in this presentation, creative makers that publish their work online. She takes the example of "Pertti robotti" (a gift in the form of a robot that can contact the father of a kid when the cell phoen is close to it). She did that and other people crafted their own version and put them on "etsy.com": market exchange, is it really a market? not rellay (because profit did not motivate exchange...). As she said in her talk description,

According to classical economics, 1) profit motivates exchange; 2) exchange is based on money; 3) demand can be purchased (stimulated through marketing). I will argue for a different crafter economics, where objects are exchanged but the goal is not to profit; money does not always exchange hands; and friends can't be bought.

Here, in the crafter economics, learning motivated exchange, comments are currency (and not money), links determine the value of objects, demand shows as recognition (and not as purchases), recognition is based on recommendations (not things are equally recommandable). These are cornestones of the new rules!

ASIN, UPV, ISPN are codes developed for companies by companies (mainly for lgistics); for small producers, they seem useless, cost money and hard to get. Most of art, and craft on the Internet are invisible; this is the reason behind thinglink": an open database in which makers can recommand to other people.

What I liked in Ulla's presentation was how she set the craft activities within a broader frameworker connected to an "alternative" economy. This is very important, especially when it comes to objects and artifacts producing. Maybe it's not so well connected to the blogject issue but my feeling is that the more capacity objects has (agency, capability to recall history...), the better they epitomize the magic of Things.

Mark Hurst also pointed to a very interesting phenomenon in his talk about Bit Literacy: people should learn to learn to say no to some technologies or usage (with gmail: do not keep them all...). This is connected to what we were discussing lately for the next LIFT topics. Random quotes: "here it's renaissance - not capitalised and with question mark" Thomas Mygdal

"if GPS was only a human sense it would directly be appreciated" Matt Webb

"data exist everywhere and we're just revealing it" Matt webb

"craft as alternative to mass production" Ulla-Maaria Mutanen

"Objects without links (interesting stories) are a dead object" Ulla-Maaria Mutanen

"if you want to manage your information stream, you have to learn to say no, to let things off, to delete something" Mark Hurst

Technorati Tags: reboot, reboot8, copenhagen

Communications of the ACM on hacking and innovation

The last issue of Communications of the ACM is about "Hacking and Innovation". There are some very interesting papers about that topic; ranging from hacker ethic to hardware hacking and academic freedom.

Hacking and Innovation Gregory Conti, Guest Editor Academic Freedom and the Hacker Ethic Tom Cross Security Through Legality Stephen Bono, Aviel Rubin, Adam Stubblefield, and Matthew Green Research Lessons from Hardware Hacking Joe Grand Software Security Is Software Reliability Felix "FX" Lindner Explorations in Namespace: White-Hat Hacking Across the Domain Name System Dan Kaminsky

Why do I blog this? that's a topic I am interested because it wraps up some thoughts about independent activities (research, design), connected to a new ecology of doers.

No buttons to press, just gesture

Time has an article about Nintendo's strategy. There is a relevant point there:

Nintendo can reinvent gaming and in the process turn nongamers into gamers. (...) "Why do people who don't play video games not play them?" Iwata has been asking himself, and his employees, that question for the past five years. And what Iwata has noticed is something that most gamers have long ago forgotten: to nongamers, video games are really hard (...) The learning curve is steep.

That presents a problem of what engineers call interface design: How do you make it easier for players to tell the machine what they want it to do? "During the past five years, we were always telling them we have to do something new, something very different," Miyamoto says (like Iwata, he speaks through an interpreter). "And the game interface has to be the key. Without changing the interface we could not attract nongamers." So they changed it. (...) Of course, hardware is only half the picture. The other half is the games themselves. "We created a task force internally at Nintendo," Iwata says, "whose objective was to come up with games that would attract people who don't play games."

And this seems to attract game designers:

John Schappert, a senior vice president at Electronic Arts, is overseeing a version of the venerable Madden football series for Nintendo's new hardware. He sees the controller from the auteur's perspective, as an opportunity but also a huge challenge. "Our engineers now have to decipher what the user is doing," he says. "'Is that a throw gesture? Is it a juke? A stiff arm?' Everyone knows how to make a throwing motion, but we all have our own unique way of throwing." But consider the upside: you're basically playing football in your living room.

"No buttons to press, just gesture": the essence of tangible interactions!

In addition, in terms of innovation, the article highlights few important concerns:

Nintendo has grasped two important notions that have eluded its competitors. The first is, Don't listen to your customers. The hard-core gaming community is extremely vocal--they blog a lot--but if Nintendo kept listening to them, hard-core gamers would be the only audience it ever had. (...) Cutting-edge design has become more important than cutting-edge technology. There is a persistent belief among engineers that consumers want more power and more features. That is incorrect. (...) intendo is the Apple of the gaming world, and it's betting its future on the same wisdom. The race is not to him who hulas fastest, it's to him who looks hottest doing it.

Why do I blog this? My interest for this console (and hence this article) is threefold: (1) I am curious to try it out (2) it's a good step towards the use of tangible computing metaphors (3) the innovation model of Nintendo is interesting.

Red Herring special issue on Europe

Red Herring has a special issue about Europe and Innovation that is very valuable. One of the take there is about the fact that more and more entrepreneurs and VCx are taking Europe as a serious place to innovate and invest. Some of the advantages:

“The talent is here and the ability to innovate and develop innovative companies is not exclusive to the U.S.,” Ms. Gibbons said.

Broadband and Internet technologies have allowed Europe to seek outside help from developing countries to create software and services, said Peter Ohnemus, CEO of software maker ASSET4.

“I believe if you combine the European market with India [and China], it works as a great combination,” Mr. Ohnemus said. (...) Europe’s strength lies in companies that will converge the worlds of PCs and mobile, as broadband and mobile penetration is one of the highest in the world.

Innovation is then shared between new products (as Skype and MySQL) and "me too" strategy" of copying American products. The list of companies is a quite interesting way of gathering insights about innovative european companies like NetVibes, Echovox, Total Immersion, FON.

Why do I blog this? I am interested in innovation in Europe; having an "ecology" of innovative organizations and structure is important.

LIFT06 survey results

We recently got the results from the evaluation survey of LIFT06. As one of the organizer I am quite happy with what people said. The response rate is significant (173 attendees out of a total of 285 (not counting speakers and organisers) completed the survey. This is a very respectable 60% response rate which conforms to an acceptable sample size for a population with a finite size). The survey and its analysis has been conducted by Glenn O’Neil from the independent company called Benchpoint:

LIFT06 was assessed as a success by most attendees – 93% plan to attend LIFT07. According to the attendees, LIFT06 was successful in providing information and influencing their attitudes about emerging technology. One third of attendees saw the main benefit of attending LIFT06 as networking and are looking towards more facilitated networking at LIFT07. The quality of the presentations varied considerably for many attendees and a different selection process may be appropriate for LIFT07. In terms of the conference format, attendees suggested more interactive sessions and workshops around the conference. LIFT06 was successful in connecting people and provoking ongoing discussions amongst attendees and beyond the conference.

Why do I blog this? this push us to do something even more interesting next year. Our challenge would be to keep the ambiance and improve the interactions between people. This is the main thing we have to work on as shown on this pie chart (the rating of the social events is notable for the number of attendees that did not participate in a social event.)

As for the variety of feeling towards some presenters, it's very funny, some people were really impressed by some speakers and other persons did not get anything from the same one; my feeling is that it's good: it shows that we manage to bring people from different interests.

Digital home education

Look at this superb design: the Intelli-Tikes™ Pasta Pack :

“Intelli-Tikes™” interactive technology makes role play with our toy kitchens even more fun! Electronic chips in pretend foods are read by sensors in the stovetop, which respond with over 100 specific food and cooking phrases. Sensors in these toy kitchens can also tell whether more than one food at a time is placed on the stovetop and respond with phrases like “What a creative dish.”

“Intelli-Tikes™” interactive technology makes pasta making more fun! Electronic chips in these pretend foods are read by sensors in an RFID kitchen, which responds with over 50 food and cooking phrases. The 8-piece set includes a pasta pot with lid, spoon, oregano, tomato sauce, pasta, garlic bread and meatballs. Works with the 440Y MagiCook™ Kitchen and the 442F Cook ’n Clean™ Kitchen. Ages 2 years and up.

Why do I blog this? what is this? a role play toy that make kids use to RFID technology so that they cook products with RFID when being adults. It reminds me some technology I saw in a french lab that used RFID tags to know cooking time for chicken brought in RFID-enabled microwave oven.

Sincerely, I've never been a great fan of this sort of digital home applications and from what is published it does not seem to work very well (in terms of market acceptance). Here it's meant to be used by kids. As the Motorola guy mentioned in Adam's book were pushing to: the guy was saying - sort of, I don't have the quote here- that if the market is not accepting digital homes, it may be that "people should be educated".

The Economist on Makers/Tinkerers

A very relevant article in The Economist about the DIY/hack trend of the amateur revolution: "Technological tinkering, or hacking, is not limited to computers. Cars, cameras and vacuum-cleaners can be hacked too". Some excerpts I found interesting:

Today's technological tinkerers, however, have a far wider range of household gizmos to play with and modify, from cars to cameras. Getting them to do new things, and not merely what the manufacturer had in mind, is an increasingly popular pastime. (...) But in some cases, such hacks can undermine the manufacturer's business model. Consider games consoles, for example, which operate on a “razor and blades” principle. Consoles are often sold at a loss, but console-makers receive a licence fee of a few dollars for each game sold—so provided each customer buys enough games, the console-maker eventually makes money. When Microsoft launched its Xbox console in 2001, hackers raced to install Linux on it, which transformed it into a low-cost, high performance media-playback system. While this was a minority sport, anyone who did this without buying any games was, in effect, receiving a subsidy from Microsoft. Little wonder, then, that the new Xbox 360 console features significantly beefed-up security measures.

A second example is the low-cost “disposable” digital cameras sold by CVS, an American pharmacy chain. These cameras are designed to be used once and then returned to the shop, where, for a processing fee, the stored pictures or movies are returned to you on CD or DVD. The cameras are then reset and resold. Inevitably, however, hackers have figured out how to access and reuse the cameras themselves. (One even ended up being installed in the nose of a small rocket.) If enough people do this, the business model breaks down. Clever hacking by a few, in other words, could lead to higher prices for the many.

But some companies, at least, have chosen to embrace hackers. iRobot, the company behind the Roomba robot vacuum-cleaner, includes an external data connector in the device and has even documented how to use it. While most customers appreciate their Roombas for their autonomous cleaning skills, there is also a small minority of users who want to reprogram them. iRobot is one of the few firms to acknowledge and appreciate customers who like to tinker. After all, there are few manifestations of feedback as heartfelt as someone who is willing to spend their own time and effort to improve a product.

Why do I blog this? working on a short client project about the effects of dematerialization, this DIY/amateur trend is a very important change pattern lately. Some companies are not well-aware that it might modify their business model.

Information versus Knowledge

In the april 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review (Vol. 84, Issue 4), there is a column by Lawrence Prusak that struck me: "The World Is Round". The author is actually taking the counter position of Thomas Friedman who claims that "“Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance – or, soon, even language.” along with Bill Gates or Jakob Nielsen (who advocate for a similar idea).

Yes, we are interconnected on a truly astonishing scale. But Gates, Friedman, and many others make a fundamental error (...) Their mistake is that they’re confusing information with knowledge. (...) What’s the difference between information and knowledge? Information is a message, one-dimensional and bounded by its form: a document, an image, a speech, a genome, a recipe, a symphony score. You can package it and instantly distribute it to anyone, anywhere. Google, of course, is currently the ultimate information machine, providing instantaneous access to virtually any piece of information you can imagine (...) Knowledge results from the assimilation and connecting of information through experience, most often through apprenticeship or mentoring. (...) Most of the people in the world remain out of the knowledge loop and off the information grid. One billion people on the Internet means there are five and a half billion people who aren’t on it. Bringing those people into the global conversation is essential to achieving true democratization of knowledge. But simply giving everyone access to e-mail and Google will never in itself flatten the earth. Until our governments, NGOs, schools, corporations, and other institutions embrace the idea that knowledge – not information – is the key to prosperity, most of the world’s people will remain a world apart.

Why do I blog this? I fully agree with the distinction between information/knowledge; it's often a misconception, especially in the domain of educational technologies.

Interview of Peter Burgaard from Innovation Lab by Regine

Regine's interview is a very interesting way of stepping away from projects and having a meta-discussion of emerging tech/art trends. Today, the interview of Peder Burgaard is very pertinent for that matter.

The guy is studying Information Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, working as a Gadgethunter and an event manager at Innovation Lab (a neat consultancy group in Denmark that is right on spot of my interests with regards to their "technology insights division"). Some excerpts of the interview I liked:

Technology will be moving even faster and among others will the convergence of established disciplines in the future contribute to this increased pace. Convergence in research fields will be more common because we are increasingly looking to apply the construction work of Mother Nature for creation of advanced technology. So the biologist will need more mathematics and vice versa. Also the merging of biotechnology and nanotechnology will create a demand for researchers which interdisciplinary skills. A forerunner of this trend is Stanford University’s Bio-X Lab of interdisciplinary research connected to engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, math and medicine (Bio-X Lab).

A future ability to reverse engineer the human organs and other advances in technology will keep the pace of new discoveries at an exponential level of unheard dimensions if compared to past rates of discoveries. Some predicts that the next 50-100 years will yield advances in technology equivalent to 14.000 years of previous discoveries. So modern society will experiencing even more rapid changes in the future. (...) The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch of consumer products will increase. So the gab between pure consumer development and artist esthetic expressions will be winding and eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more esthetic products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfects example of this is the iPod which have a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive to operate.

Why do I blog this? I like this kind of agenda: the NEXT conference has an important point: introducing new technologies that to a broader audience than just researchers and forecaster. Moreover, I fully agree with the trends he describes. The Innovation Lab also seems to have an very good model (consultancy + insight division).

R&D best practices

Even though the title of the article sounds a bit weird, there are some interesting issues there: Best-kept secrets of the world's best companies. Especially the "best practices" in R&D, I found those two interesting:

• IDEO: the "tech box," a freezer-size chest of drawers in each of its seven offices around the world. Inside each is the same library of up to 2,000 gadgets, materials, textiles, and artifacts that keep the creative gears of Ideo designers in constant motion. (...) "It's not a typical lending library," says Ideo designer Dennis Boyle, one of the company's principals and co-creator of the tech box along with Rickson Sun, Ideo's chief technologist. "People will pick out 20 items and bring them to a brainstorming session. We use the tech box to cross-pollinate every new project.
• Corning: A few times a year, the company runs half-day brainstorm sessions at its New York headquarters to kick off the quest for innovations. First, managers from a special marketing group--a 15-person unit tasked with identifying $500 million-plus business opportunities--gather for several hours to listen to outside experts, from renewable-energy gurus to nanotech engineers.

  The group then breaks into teams of five, each assigned to drum up ideas related to the talk. After that, the most promising ideas are handed off to teams of two employees: one with a marketing background, the other with technical expertise.

Why do I blog this? I find interesting these ideas about enhancing the R&D process.

About MIT Medialab agenda

An article by Techreview mentions the fact that MIT MediaLab is going to be "more focused":

venture capitalists no longer readily throw money at "vague" projects, and government funding is drying up. Today, 70 percent of the lab's annual budget of around $35 million comes from corporate sponsors, with whom they must forge ever-closer ties. Since corporate benefactors want practical technologies, the Media Lab has to strike a balance between meeting sponsors' needs and maintaining its traditional philosophy of open-ended research. (...) These challenges now face a new director, Frank Moss (...) Moss says: "What has changed over the past seven or eight years is that simply coming here and rubbing shoulders with very smart, creative people is often not enough for our sponsors. They need us to help them make a connection between all the wonderful creative work we have here and problems they have." (...) "I think we're all entrepreneurs, but I'm coming from a commercial environment. I think the reason MIT went in that direction is that in many ways running an academic research lab in today's world requires a keen understanding of the sponsors and what their needs and wants are" (...) "I think in the next 20 years we're going to see tremendous advancements in using technology to deal with lingering social problems -- delivering health care, dealing with aging, education -- things that go beyond the digital lifestyle we enjoy today. The lab is going to be looking at how we can use existing or new technologies to make a big difference and solve social problems."

Well... he brings out some questions about research/innovation... and some issues...