"The Atomic Chef: And Other True Tales of Design, Technology, and Human Error" (Steven Casey) This book, reviewed by Scott Schappel in American Scientist aims at showing "how design and technology all too often leave unwitting humans on the brink of disaster". Some excerpts of the review: Wr...
Interlaced scenarios for the near future?
Those splinted lines that you see in this tunnel make me think about the near future: interlaced scenarios of moments yet to come. Different possibilities, histories, inflexion points and beakthroughs. This exactly depicts some elements we tackled at the LIFT07 workshop about "designing the future...
PARC's research
Yesterday in the NYT, a pertinent article about PARC strategy. It basically describes PARC's path to move from being a in-house research lab to a subsidiary form. The article shows on-going projects but more interestingly critiques the fact that PARC is a "lab of missed opportunities": Early in the...
Currently... LIFT07
I am currently participating in LIFT07 (as a co-organizer). Great speakers, cool audience. This year I chose to take no notes and try to do a write-up afterwards only with what my brain cells would have retained. ...
Doraemon helicopter hairband
Via: an impressive Doraemon game for kids: Doreamon has a cool gadget, the Yojigame Pocket (4th dimension pocket), in which he stores just about anything from cars to houses and planes. He also has a helicopter hairband that his friends can use for flying. Epoch has released a video game based on t...
City of the future workshop
Today starts the LIFT07 conference with a day devoted to workshops. Along with Bill Cockayne (Stanford Center for Critical Foresight), we co-organized a session entitled "Re-Designing the City of the Future". This workshop will begin in the use of existing futures and critical foresight methods to ...
Jan Chipchase at EPFL
I had the pleasure to set a seminar at Media and Design Lab (EPFL) today with Jan Chipchase. Jan gave a talk was about user experience methods, exemplified by rural charging services in Uganda, informal repair cultures and design for illiterate users. what market will it be in 20 years(for nokia)? ...
Spatiality and sensor technologies
The Spatial Character of Sensor Technology is an academic paper by Stuart Reeves, Steve Benford, Andy Crabtree, Jonathan Green, Claire O’Malley and Tony Pridmore that interestingly propose a framework for analysing the intricate relationships between sensors and spatiality. As the authors point out...
Futurists and the word "yet"
In the last issue of Strategy Business, there is a long in-depth interview of Alvin Toffler about his the book he wrote with his wife "Revolutionary Wealth". While the whole interview is a must-read for people interested in foresight, innovation, prosumer revolution and stuff like that, I was bemus...
Playground for elderly persons
Via delicious, I ran across this short news in Times about playgrounds for elderly persons: The idea was hatched in Finland, where researchers have experimented with what they call “three-generational play”. The University of Lapland found that a combination of climbing frames, swings and see...