ConnectingTheDots

Do Not Be Programmed

Two recent books You Are Not A Gadget and Program or Be Programmed raise a common call to action: we must not be complacent about who designs and how they design technology experiences. Lanier (among other points) cautions about lock-in and encourages designers to create novel alternatives, not just mash-ups or pulls from Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Rushkoff points to the few who can actually respond to Lanier's challenge, drawing a contrast to spoken and written languages like English -- for the first time the majority does not know how to write programming, they can only read/listen. 

Agreeing with many of those ideas, I'm also optimistic after attending events like last night's NYTech Meetup.  Curated by Evan Korth, the theme was about building an inventive tech community, and specifically how to deepen ties to academia (something I've recently been working towards), where there is some pure space for experimentation.  Some projects that caught my eye (coming from both young hackers as well as professors) offer different interfaces and ways of architecting information:  

Zooburst! (NYU): augmented reality pop-up books

The Ghost (NYU): dynamic user-programmable MIDI controller in guitar form

Touch Tone Tanks (Brown): multi-player game projected onto walls that uses conference number and mobile phones as controllers to move and shoot

WordsEye (Columbia): text to 3D image storytelling tool

SMS AppStore for the developing world (NYU): creating 140 byte constrained apps, for medical records and other needs, servicing low-end mobile devices

Squidball (NYU): motion capture games for crowds

Not showcased last night, but circling back to the topic of technological progress, codecomputerlove made this "pong game" awhile back, half in html5 and half in Flash, which visualizes that debate in a very literal way. 

Augmented Realities: Eyewriter

DIY interfaces like the Minority Report mimicking MIT Glove Mouse are fun, but projects like the Eyewriter are truly augmenting peoples' realities.  The Eyewriter is a low-cost eye tracking apparatus (glasses + led + camera) and custom software (open frameworks sourcecode) that empowers people suffering from paralysis to have an expressive outlet, to draw using only their eyes. 

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

Helping Haiti: Missing Persons Aggregator

With the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti blanketing the news waves, everyday citizens are wondering how they can help.  Governments are sending money and troops; and coders that care are rising just as quickly to direct action.  Although not yet styled, a few of my friends are presently building a site for people to post and find Haitian missing persons information.  They're now focusing on scrapers for data on other sites to centralize as much as possible.  It will hopefully be updated every 10-15 minutes.

Quest to Learn Opens: Games-based School

Helping to spread the word about a project I've been involved with, Quest to Learn. 

Inspired by the media-rich environment that kids are now engaged with outside of school (according to a recent Pew report 97% of teens now play digital games) and the underlying design principles of games, the school was created to reimagine and foster the type of learning that is possible today.

It's not a school where kids will sit around playing commercial videogames, rather its a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences.  A key focus is on the ability of games and other forms of digital media to model the complexity and promise of "systems" - the type of thinking skills now required to succeed in today's global environment.  Read this "Day in the Life" of a student narrative and visit Quest's website for a more complete picture.

The school is currently looking for both teachers and students (in New York).

Buy a Pixel

There have been copycats of the Million Dollar Homepage -- the "why didn't i think of that?!?" idea of 2005, when a 21 year old Brit successfully sold 1,000,000 pixels at a $1 each to fund his college education.

 Grameen Foundation is offering a heftier price per pixel ($10) at stoppovertynow.org.  Instead of buying a permanent shout out or advertising, each donation brightens, pixel by pixel, an image of what the funds are working towards.  Mousing over the image reveals the names and comments of pixel purchasers (with options to stay anonymous).

Twitter Vote Report

Among the Twitter visualization projects done right, if used, the Twitter Vote Report could be illuminating on Election Day.  Acting like a citizen-driven election monitoring system, voters can tweet their real-time problems (long wait times, broken machines, people turned away) and help make sure others know where they exist (and potentially help out).  Tweet with hashtags (like #[zip code], #wait:120, #machine, and #reg) to add your locations and experiences.

Social Lending

Would you lend a stranger $10,000?  How about $1,000?  Prosper thinks people will (for a return).  The site combines the concepts of social networking, online auctions, and microcredit.  Borrowers set up personal profiles, that describe not just their financials, but also their interests, social habits, a short pitch on why they are a good bet, and, of course, a photo.  Since its start in 2006, Prosper has gained more than 700K members and $140M in loans (like online campaign fundraising, most are small by many e.g. $5K funded by 50 people lending $100 each).

Unlike Kiva, Prosper is targeted for the developed world (see also UK based Zopa).  How to monetize social capital is a multi-million dollar question in our 3.0 world.  Aside from a hypothesis about efficiency (more of the spread going directly to lenders), I wonder how significantly human and social considerations play a role on Prosper (easing funding between friends/acquaintances or people with similar affinities) -- there is also a Facebook app.  In our increasingly de-humanized financial markets, is there a special appeal for returns that also have an emotional value?  (Note: some bumps in performance data: renegade analysis + some official numbers)

OX-2 w/ Dual Touchscreen Seeking Copy Cats

OLPC's second generation OX laptop evoked a wow from first world citizens (a repeat of their Give 1, Get 1 campaign would probably do well).  Positioned horizontally, the design acts like an iTouch laptop.  Flipped vertically, the interface becomes right and left page (like a book).  Hinged flat, the continuous surface can be used in tablet mode (to play games like pong).  Half the size of the original, it aims to use only 1 watt of energy and cost $75 (OX-1remained $88 above its goal). As noted by gizmodo, this time the prototype was displayed early and copy cats were encouraged...a better strategy to hit its release targets?

Fold It! Competing to Design Cures

Can a competitive game played by thousands of people help discover novel proteins beyond what is currently possible with computation-only approaches?  An interesting project out of The University of Washington, Fold It!, is experimenting with that premise.  The game casts molecular folding problems as a massively distributed 3D puzzle game that enables players to discover the solutions to current open scientific problems -- such as cures for cancer or AIDS.  The idea that well-designed games are fun/addicting/competitive/collaborative and thus potentially powerful tools to create impact is gaining traction.  Like Free Rice, it borrows techniques from casual games (Fold It's  game design has an even tighter connection between content and outcome).    

Kluster: Crowdsourcing for Innovation

Kluster, already receiving much buzz, is one of the latest websites harnessing the wisdom of the masses.  Unlike digg, wikipedia, or youtube, aside from allowing participants to post and vote, from the get go this social network is translating collaborative user-generated sparks into real dollars and products.  Anyone can post ideas or invest watts in (hopefully) winning ideas that are financially rewarded by businesses seeking crowd sourced solutions. 

There are various recent examples of sites forging a more direct connection between longtail producers and funders (Kiva), customers (Etsy), or collaborators (Netsquared mashup challenge).  Kluster's "advanced algorithm" for decision making, hipster language, and clean interface may differentiate it from other sites similarly seeking to facilitate community generated solutions for big industry (see also InnoCentive and Cambrian House).  Will be curious to see whether it produces new taste tests vs. breakthrough drugs.  Let 1000 flowers bloom.

FreeRice : Game for Grain

I'm hooked on FreeRice.com

Since its launch on October 7, the internet-based game (created for the UN World Food Program) has already raised over 1 billion grains of rice (enough to feed 50,000 people for one day).  Making points meaningful, every correct click to a vocab question leads to a donation of 10 grains of rice (nicely visualized by your filling bowl). 

What's compelling about the site is not only that it simultaneously targets improving literacy and solving world hunger.  It's also one of the best examples I've seen that moves people seamlessly from awareness, to engagement, and impact.  Interesting too is its funding model.  Unlike many social issue games, this one fully embraces the private sector model of eyeballs = money.  When people play the game, ads appear on the bottom of their screen.  The money generated by these ads is then used to purchase rice for the hungry.   

Interacting with the Future

The building-sized, glowing red lights of the "Save Domino" sign is a visual call challenging residents to take a role in the controversial changes around them. 

In a different way, Future Perfect compellingly uses scale to highlight community voices.  It's interactive audio/video installation of Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development project contrasts the vision of architects/developers with the vision of local school children and the voices of local residents.  Once stepping into the installation, the dynamic video images move with the viewer, allowing comparisons between different architectural futures (watching the Demo Video Link does more desciptive justice).

Wiki online to offline

A sometimes questioned but staple in web research, Wikipedia is now ubiquitous enough to be joked about on The Colbert Report.  Those interested in developing Wiki's for anything and everything can join or stream the Wikimania Conference taking place now through the weekend. 

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales proclaims that they cannot be satisfied with just numbers going up.  Rather the next focus needs to be on turning towards quality.  He highlights the potential of Wikiversity, Wikibooks, and Wikimedia for the $100 laptop and other initiatives in developing countries.  Up for brainstorming and discussion are applications for education, politics, the environment, among other things. 

Broadcasting Village Bloggers

Rocketboom is seeking a new host(ess) as their lovely anchor leaves for L.A.  Hopefully the show won't lose its quirky, Stewart-like content in the transition. 

Among the episodes I've been meaning to mention is from a month back, a show on The Nata Village blog.   A world traveler (who also happened to be a media producer) was touched by what he saw and helped the Botswana village create a blog picturing and describing the local life and struggle with HIV/AIDS.  Videos aired on Current likewise helped cast hipster attention on an otherwise overlooked African village. 

The common Craigslist storyline of the Internet cutting out the middle man could apply here.  Readers/viewers can make a direct donation to Nata Village, bypassing larger, potentially more bureaucratic, donation organizations.  Who can/will scale this idea to other villages that are not as lucky to accidently host such a media-savy visitor is one problem to ponder.  Another stumbling block is whether a flood of village blogs will dampen the tear ducts.   

In fact, most of the blog entries are not terribly dramatic, like the sensationalized stories Americans are accustomed to viewing.  And perhaps that reality-show-like realism is what's effective.   The simple statements and photographs ring as true.

Regardless of any impact on donations, blogs such as this one can play a meaningful role in dispelling misconceptions -- broadcasting not a foreign society limited to naked tribes people wearing face paint, but rather a modern African people, mixing traditional dress with Nike t-shirts, facing everyday life and problems.

Notes from the Desert

Thousands of foreign leaders have gathered at a small city in the North African desert.  What has brought them to Tunis is the UN World Summit on the Information Society running through November 18.  Despite access to digital communication, face-to-face meetings still seems the favored way of information sharing (and creating new task forces).  But from back home, the curious can still hear a bit of the official and unofficial conversation. 

One of the more significant agreements reached was the consensus to maintain U.S. control of domain names (administered by ICANN).  As a compromise, a step towards the internationalization of governance was taken through the formation of a multinational forum (with minimal actual power).  An interesting sidebar is criticism of human rights abuses by the Tunisian government outside the Summit doors. While arguing aggressively for more inclusive participation on the Internet, it is curious to observe how many inside are connecting the analogy to local rights.

On a lighter note, happily summits are not necessarily all talk and minimal action.  Nicolas Negroponte of MIT caused quite a stir with his green laptop. 

The $100 laptops  for poor children is hoped to help bridge the digital divide.