target is new

Last Friday Kevin Kelly did an interview via a Google Hangout for Fast Moving Targets. In this part of a interview with Kelly he is talking on the quantified self and a new form there where collecting blood is an indicator for the toxic in our environment. Starting from about 45:46.

This is interesting and reminded me to some things Usman Haque said that same day at the Social Cities of Tomorrow conference: the people are the sensors. He refers in that sense to the way people that process the data from the sensors are more important than the data that is sensed. And the value emerges not before the processed data is shared.

The example of Kelly goes even a bit further, but the concept is the same. You will see that when we will be collecting more and more it is not directly benefiting ourselves, but in the end we are taking the role of sensors for the community cause, for the collective intelligence in a way.

The rules of thumb for successful social software that Tom Coates made years ago, are valid for the new sensor world too. A successful connected service is only achieved when:

• it benefits yourself (quantified self)
• it benefits your social peers (as reference for instance)
• it benefits the system to leverage all the collective data

Interesting stuff to elaborate on.

I attended the Annual Internet of Things Europe conference in Brussels last week. The conference gives an overview of the current state of the development towards an Internet of Things where not only computers and mobile phones are connected to the world wide network, but also all kinds of other objects become part. And just like computers make the Internet by being the hubs, this will happen in the Internet of Things where object are hubs in the network. This generates lots of new challenges and opportunities. The conference discussed both societal as technical consequences with an important role for standards and enabling technologies. I was invited to a panel and talk on the way this developments influence the design of online services ecosystems as we make them within Info.nl.
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We are entering a new phase in the Internet of Things. It is a promise for years, but it seems that we are heading to a tipping point. And Apple’s new iOS5 could be a accelerator. Tomorrow the new version of the mobile operation system for the iPhone will be introduced, and one of the most interesting speculations on the news is the integration of Twitter deeply in the OS, together with the introduction of iCloud. The real difference of a Twitter integration comes not with the sharing your pictures directly from the tools, but will be the way Twitter will evolve in a notification platform for smart objects via your phone. How does this could work?
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In an article on O’Reilly this week I read an interesting discussion on the mobile wallet. Naveed Anwar of Paypal coined the on-demand wallet.

The mobile wallet is necessarily an on-demand wallet, meaning it’s accessible from different devices and platforms and can hold more than any wallet in your back pocket: multiple funding sources, coupons, receipts, loyalty cards, private label cards, and business cards … and that’s just the start.

I believe too that we are moving to a new form of wallet after all and that this will be a service more than a physical thing. A service that can be used from different places and devices. On the other hand I think we need long time some kind of tangible reference points. It is no problem to combine those however.
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On the last The Next Web conference in Amsterdam I did a Pecha Kucha style talk to share some of my thoughts on the consequences of the next phase in the internet: the Web of Impulses. In short the story behind the slides I published before.

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With the iPad and also the rumours of Google going tablet, you can predict this new way of interacting with devices is taking off this year. What I find interesting in the videos is the way the interaction become more and more tactile, much more than the touchphones we use now. Where on an iPhone or Android you have a more finger interaction, the iPad and Google demo really does something more: gesture moving. The Minority Report feel.

You feel the gesture interaction on two interaction principles:

• interacting a touchscreen with two hands the same time with ten fingers will feel different. You will make bigger movements with, not only with the fingers but also with the whole arm.
• using the movement of the whole screen as extra input gives a lot of new possibilities. Like the e-mail program on the iPad where the avalailable functions follows the orientation of the screen

Of course we should not forget the stuff Microsoft develops in this field. With Surface they have made a gesture interface come true. And the promise of the new Natal game experience of Microsoft is also promising. This is the most literally translation of the gesture interface. But both have less impact because it limits to the specific uses (professional and gaming).

It looks like that we will have some serious steps to a new tactile experience in the use of our digital media. This can be also an extra driver for the developing of the Internet of Things.

This weekend there was an interesting conference in New York on the concept of singularity. I did not attend the conference, but read some reports on it. The whole idea of singularity, where the power of computer intelligence is heading up or even overtaking our own intelligence, is something I think is surely a trend that can emerge. In a way it is here already as conversational tools like Twitter will take a stronger role to connect all parts of the ecosystem we live in.
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I proposed a talk for Reboot this year. It accumulates my feelings on a emerging trend on impulse shaped services. In the period heading to the conference I’ll try to connect findings on this topic from others if I ran into them.

Great thoughts of Kevin Kelly as ever. In an extensive post as always he talks on the increasing diversity in technology, in his model of the technium. I agree on his vision and see a lot of challenging developments.

Once one to one marketing was the holy grail. The digital revolution was making a personalized communication possible. It turns out to be impractical and expensive. Segmentation is still the dominant manner. Based on the ideas of diversity we see a one to one product development emerge.
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Today it was day 2 for me at Picnic and just like day one I wasn’t disappointed. Of course it was not all top quality, but there was enough to trigger my thoughts (despite there were no real new insights). Even apart from all the pleasant meet-ups outside the conference hall of course.

The theme of the day was without a doubt the connection between real and virtual life e.g. the internet of things with the talks of Rafi Haladjian, Michael Tchao and Adam Greenfield.
But also the talk of Genevieve Bell about secrets and lies can be related to this theme.

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Deze dagen is Adaptive Path in het nieuws met een nieuw concept dat voor Mozilla Labs is gemaakt. In een aantal cheezy video’s met toelichting door Jesse James Garreth wordt het concept toegelicht. Wat ik (onder andere) interessant vind is de manier waarop browser en device samensmelten. Een puur voorbeeld van het ‘internet of things‘. Read the rest of this entry »