tantramar

Viral Viruses

I just read that the Bill Gates foundation has invested $100 000 in an idea related to cell phones diagnosing health and wellness. This idea has been around for eons. This one allows you to cough into your phone (nice) and will asses how sick you are.

Apart from all the goodness this can do in territories with struggling health-care systems, I immediately started thinking that this is the end of 'pulling a sickie' right? Your boss wanting to see the results of your sickness in a text message sent through to HR?

Then I started thinking about people carrying vials of sickness with them to dribble over their phones to allow that sick day on each side of a bank holiday. Lovely (and ridiculous). All a bit Gattaca isn't it. Roll on biotechnology.

Talking Up

Last Saturday I attended and talked at a mini Lift conference.

Lift is a series of events built around a community of pioneers who get together in Europe and Asia to explore the social implications of new technologies.

I was talking at a Lift @ Home event. These are events organised by previous Lift speakers who want to hold mini get-togethers in various locations. The London one was hosted by Felix Koch, and I have to say he did an excellent job of pulling together a diverse bunch of speakers. Topics ranged from craft in architecture, cycling in London to the science of knowledge (sort of) and the making of your own humus, to name a few.

I can't give a detailed run through because I was listening intently and not taking notes... sorry. Priyanka did a little write up over here.

If anything else emerges I'll add it in...

Dream On

I read just the other day that scientists have managed to extract images from the mind!

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow.

Although this is the first stages of this somewhat startling technique it is suggested that dreams might soon be able to be extracted.
Sign me up I'm sold!
Some people are gonna jump on the big brother bandwagon with this but I'm ignoring that idea in favour of the concept that I'll be able to watch re-runs of my dreams. Goodbye SKY, HBO, BBC, Hollywood you ain't got nothing on my dreams. Honestly can you image the trade in dream swapping? Talk about a window in to the soul. Wild.

Cut The End Off Your Finger? Not A Problem

For years I've been asking people in pubs why we can't re-grow limbs in the way some repitiles can. I mean obviously somewhere in our grey matter there is a blueprint for our construction. I should point our Biology is just about my weakest suit. On the whole no one had any really good answers. Well it turns out we can re-grow some bits (with a little help) and people are doing it. Who knew? TED did.

Models For The Future

I had been going to Like Minds coffee mornings for sometime. Piers from PSFK wanted to find an interesting way to move it up a notch. I had an idea how to do that. It's quite intriguing. Well, it intrigues me.
Here it is.
It'll take you more than five minutes to read as I waffle a little bit. Sorry.

It's not a revolutionary model but in the crowdsoucring world I thought it was an intriguing one. I wrote this months ago but I'm posting it now as I just saw Kluster has launched, which works with some similar ideas. They look to be trying to create a commercial version of the classic Proctor & Gamble private crowdsourcing model.

As I just said to a friend of mine, we all have the same ideas just in different colours.

Information Technology

When I was young, Computer stuff was called Information Technology, we had classes in it and it was pretty boring. The guy teaching the classes had the social skills of a service elevator and the people who were good at the class didn't really talk to anyone outside of their group. They pretty much spoke their own language. How things have changed.

I have just come back from a meeting with Gi Fernando who runs Techlightenment. They make social media apps. They made the Bob Dylan and Socialistics Facebook apps for example. Needless to say they are pretty sharp cookies in the digital social behaviours game. It was one of those good chats where both parties got really excited about the future, you know, flying cars and robotic maids. We both got out more than we came with and I expect we'll do it again soon.

As I walked away I started thinking about research companies and how possibly they're on the edge of a whole  structural change of how they work. The information that's being gathered about people as they use social digital technology is only just starting to be harnessed. Obviously soon we will be able to dive a little deeper than the limp Amazon recommendation model and it will get very interesting.  In terms of data, the richness we'll be getting back will start to want beyond basic quant data and will start to roam into qual territory.

Having worked at a qual agency, where you spend all day thinking about people, behaviour, analysing it and trying to predict the future I can't help feeling that soon all this will be shifting.

We'll be getting very rich information about what people use online and on mobile devices and how they use it. Will we still need to ask 50 people how they really feel? I think it'll be obvious. Even the subtle nuisances will be visible. If this is the case it'll have a pretty big effect on the research industry.

I've thought this for a while and have in fact been working with Dub, who are building digital research tools for agencies. But it only really occurred to me today that this might change the way research is done everywhere. I would imagine if research companies aren't embracing this new information technology thingy they're gonna get left behind.

This digital tidal wave is going to start to affect more industries than perhaps most people realise.

picture shamelessly borrowed from the fabulous Indexed blog

The Purple List

I was recently pleased to be invited to PSFK's new trend network, The Purple List. It's invite only and I'm afraid I don't have any invites but should you find yourself on there do look me up.
It'll be interesting to see what PSFK do with this uber network they are creating. They are obviously a seriously networked business and it looks like they are moving up a notch.

How It's Done

If you've ever wanted to know how to be creative, or how to innovate, ideate or whatever it's called today then look no further. I have the answer. Follow these beautifully illustrated rules and you can't possibly go wrong. The colour scheme looks like it would fit really well into those city offices where everyone has a little 1.5m square cube.

Personally I'm just waiting to meet to the 7ft tall rabbit, that would make my day.

Update:
Alex just posted how it's really done.