IFTF's Future Now

Another reminder that we've moved

askpang — May 12, 2005 11:58 PM

Just another ping regarding our shift over to a new publishing system, and a new, easier-to-remember URL (http://future.iftf.org).

Doubtless many of you have already repointed your RSS feeds and bookmarks; but I'll send out a few more of these.

Reminder: We've moved

askpang — April 29, 2005 05:11 PM

Another reminder that Future Now has moved to http://future.iftf.org.

A couple recent posts:

iPod-Cellphone Smackdown;
New AI Brainwave;
Rethinking RFID passports

Just a reminder: We've moved

askpang — April 27, 2005 11:59 PM

Just a reminder for everyone who reads Future Now through their RSS reader: the blog has relocated to http://future.iftf.org/. The new RSS feed is at http://future.iftf.org/index.rdf.

Future Now is moving!

askpang — April 18, 2005 10:05 PM

Future Now is getting a new home: a spiffy updated design run through Typepad, the commercial service built upon Movable Type.

We're shifting it over for a couple reasons, most of them technical. Typepad offers better, more detailed reports about how many visitors are coming to the site; the peace of mind that comes from Someone Else Worrying About The Servers; and better tools for fighting comment and trackback spam. (The latter have become a giant problem with the current system, and they're hard to kill off with the version of MT we're running.)

The new URL for Future Now is also more streamlined: http://future.iftf.org. The XML feed is available at http://future.iftf.org/index.rdf.

Forwarding between the old Future Now site and the new one will be operating for at least many months, if not indefinitely.

Hope you follow us over!

Our Final Century...

askpang — April 18, 2005 02:37 AM

...is the title of a new book by Britain's Astronomer Royal, and president-elect of the Royal Society of London, Martin Rees. As the Guardian reports,

Martin Rees has a simple message for those seeking solace in the stars. The end is nigh: humanity has only a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century. According to the Astronomer Royal, nuclear war, biological terrorism, ecological mayhem or asteroid collisions could take us out in less than 100 years....

I haven't done a rigorous content analysis, but it seems to me that there are a growing number of serious attempts to chart the future that include a scenario for the self-destruction of the human species within several generations. In fact, our own Ten Year Forecast has taken such a turn.

Stewart Brand on Environmental Heresies

Steve King — April 15, 2005 02:23 PM

Thought provoking article by Stewart Brand in MIT's Technology Review on his view of environmental heresies. In the article he argues in favor of genetically modified food and nuclear power, and explains why population growth and urbanization are not all bad. His opening line:

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Japan Embraces Robots

Franz Dill — April 14, 2005 12:41 AM

I have always had a requirement for intelligent robotics in my head, and had thus been discounting some of the robotics work coming out of Japan, but the article below shows the potential of non-intelligent, non-autonomous devices, that are linked closely with human needs and emotions. The example on the right shows the use of an Aibo robotic dog to help patients with hand injuries. We probably won't see the all-purpose butler model of robotics anytime soon, but focused-task robotics can have a humanoid edge, and it appears the Japanese are leading the way.

Humanoids With Attitude
Japan Embraces New Generation of Robots ...
TOKYO -- Ms. Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university. But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up to Saya and dished out a harsh reprimand.

"You're so stupid!" said the professor, Hiroshi Kobayashi, towering over her desk. "Eh?" she responded, her face wrinkling into a scowl. "I tell you, I am not stupid!"

Truth is, Saya isn't even human. But in a country where robots are changing the way people live, work, play and even love, that doesn't stop Saya the cyber-receptionist from defending herself from men who are out of line. With voice recognition technology allowing 700 verbal responses and an almost infinite number of facial expressions from joy to despair, surprise to rage, Saya may not be biological -- but she is nobody's fool ...

Also, Rodney Brooks of MIT positions the current state and direction of robotics.

Folksonomies and Advertising

Steve King — April 13, 2005 11:14 AM

Imedia has a an interesting article on the use of tags and other forms of folksonomies for advertising. This will happen - it simply makes too much sense not to.

For more on folksonomies see these past posts on Future Now.

Crossing a line

Peter Dreyer — April 11, 2005 07:16 AM

Most European readers on this website will be familiar with the everlasting dispute about whether or not the ball crossed the goal line in a particular play during the final of the soccer World Cup in London in 1966. Should Germany have won the match? At a long awaited press conference a month ago FIFA announced that a system for determining the accurate position of the ball using wireless technology (no wonder...) will be tested during the Junior World Cup hosted by Peru this fall. The system has been developed by Cairos in collaboration with the Frauenhofer Institute in Erlangen and Adidas. Presumably the position is measured 200 times per second with a precision of a few centimeters. This should put an end to goal controversies. The system was announced a couple of years ago, but only now is the system performance ready for live tests. It shall be interesting to see how the system performs during official games.

I suspect that the Cairos system is using Ultra Wide Band radio technology. Cambridge based Ubisense has just started shipping an out-of-box precision positioning system based on UWB. The system has already been sold to a range of large industrial customers. Not in order to track balls, but employees. All employees will carry a UWB tag allowing the company to carry out workspace management. Presumably to the benefit of the employee. In this case the succes will not dependent upon system performance, but user acceptance. Will they have Orwell's "1984" in mind?

But back to the ball; I have often wondered how the NFL refs decide the position of the ball somewhere in between a bunch of 400 lbs players. Why is it that NFL � normally much more open to applying new technology � hasn�t implemented the FIFA solution?

On Teleputers

Franz Dill — April 11, 2005 01:25 AM

Rajesh Jain in Business Standard India, writes about George Gilder's teleputer idea. Note relationship to other very-thin network computer ideas.

Scientific American article on "Shaping the Future"

Steve King — April 10, 2005 10:57 AM

Interesting article in this month's Scientific American by a group from Rand on decision making given an uncertain future.

The article talks about using simulation to develop "robust" solutions. These are solutions that "perform well when compared with the alternatives across a wide range of plausible futures". The authors uses this method to examine long term environmental regulations.

IBM store of the future

askpang — April 8, 2005 10:04 PM

Business Week has a small slide show of devices in IBM's prototype Store of the Future. Like a lot of these kinds of exhibits, you don't get to see the exhaustive research that goes into them, which helps you understand why it is that you might want a "shopping buddy" or "personal shopping assistant."

Speaking as both a parent and technology-watcher, it seems to me that if you're going to put a computer touch-screen on a supermarket cart, you've got to do two things: make it seriously child-proof (like immune to drool, being hammered on, etc.), and have a game mode to keep the tots entertained while Mom and Dad decide which chick peas to buy. Everything else is optional. I can keep track of what I've bought just fine; keep my kids from flipping out and embarrassing me, and I'll come back.

RFID in casino chips

askpang — April 8, 2005 08:55 PM

The Financial Times has an article (available in its entirety to subscribers) on RFID in casinos. Previous articles have talked mainly about how putting chips in... chips... would thwart scammers trying to introduce fake chips onto a table; this article spins a scenario in which casinos use the tags to more precisely track the behavior of players.

Casinos bet on the new chip identification

At the casino cage, you cash in for $100,000 and start battling against the blackjack dealers. You are winning and every time you make a bet, you slip a few casino chips into your pocket for safe-keeping. Then your luck changes and you can't catch a hand. The money in front of you disappears and you tell your hosts that you have lost your allowance for the night. And then the casino host asks: "What about the $29,500 you have stowed in your pocket? I know you're not busted out. When I gave you the limo, suite and the butler, you promised to play until you won or lost $100,000. Keep playing if you don't want to get downgraded to a normal room."...

Casinos... have been tracking player play since the 1950s, but technology has allowed them to record many more players' gambling habits - mainly using loyalty cards - and to reward players for their action. But until now, much of the recording at table games - notably blackjack, baccarat and roulette - has been guess work. RFID chips should produce reliable information, allowing casinos to reward the customers who give them the greatest profit.

Considering an Emotional Interface

Franz Dill — April 8, 2005 06:19 PM

I have been a long-time follower of the use of alternative senses in interface, and have written about smell, taste, sound and touch as interaction vehicles a number of times. Another, less common interface parameter considers the emotion of interaction between people and machines. The cold, calculating computer might appear to be a poor place to even consider emotion. One of the first investigations of this idea was in what was called Affective Computing in the book of the same name by MIT professor Rosalind Picard. Its rare to see this idea commercially applied, but in a recent InformationWeek a system to consider emotion in call centers is described:

Software Detects Unhappy Callers ...

Not long ago, an elderly man distressed over high medical premiums phoned the call center at Wisconsin Physician Services Insurance Corp. The caller was so frustrated he hung up before an agent could address his problem. But the call center's IT system was aware of the customer's exasperation and automatically E-mailed a supervisor, who immediately listened to a digital recording of the conversation.

Moments later, the supervisor called the customer and suggested ways to lower the premium. The customer agreed to the policy changes. "All in all, we ended up with a happy customer," says Sharon Whitwam, the insurer's VP of member services. The Madison, Wis., health insurer did that with new emotion-detection software called Perform, created by Nice Systems Ltd., which began widely marketing the product last month.

Using algorithms, the system determines a baseline of emotion during the first five to 10 seconds of a call, when most people usually aren't excited or frustrated. Any deviation from that baseline can trigger an alert ...

The relentless march of English continues

askpang — April 8, 2005 04:11 PM

The Innovation Lab, now available in English. This is either an example of our tongue's relentless march through the world of business and academia, or the beginnings of a Danish invasion of the world of Anglo-American futures.

Actually, it's interesting to think about how the growth of English as a global language for business once provided advantages for American and British companies, but now serves as an accelerator of the globalization and outsourcing of knowledge work and services.