What I’ve Been Up To
Just an update on my recent work… My writings here have been sparse at best lately but it’s mainly because I’m doing so much research and consulting elsewhere. Some of it is now available online so here’s the overview:
My 6-month fellowship at the Deloitte Center for the Edge has been fantastic. It’s been a great opportunity to hone my research, dive into some meaty topics, and work to refine my communication skills so that I can make some pretty complex stuff meaningful to a broader audience. It’s also been a tremendous opportunity to work directly with John Hagel and John Seely Brown – two verifiable wizards, each in their own right.
The fellowship is wrapping up at the end of December so I’m starting to whip up my next gig. Give me a shout if you’ve got any interesting collaborations…
Ourselves in the Othernets
So dig: in about 20 years we went from knowing rather little about the world beyond what we directly experienced and what we gleaned through books and pictures and the occasional documentary or foreign movie, to having immediate on-demand insight into any facet of the globe you could imagine.
My new music: Godspeed by Harry Selassie
My new track – the first in an e.p. to be released over several weeks. Hip hop space dub.
Future Thinking – Co.Exist
I have a new article up on FastCo.Exist provocatively titled “Future thinking isn’t about the future, it’s about the present”. Of course, it’s about both but editors do like to grab attention with extreme-sounding headlines.
An excerpt:
For millennia, we’ve grappled with “things” pretty well but systems are really different. Systems are complex interactions of interdependent parts that give rise to emergent and often-unexpected (“non-deterministic”) behaviors. If you’ve ever kept an aquarium, you have a sense for the delicate equilibrium necessary to a healthy aquatic system. Add a new fish or trim too much of the macroalgae and you can suddenly veer into an ecosystem crash. Small changes can have large results, so you have to be very deliberate in how you manage the tank.
Cities of the Future, Built By Drones, Bacteria, & 3D Printers
I have a new article up on Fast Company about programatic matter, synthetic biology, robotic swarming, and the future possibilities of architecture.
As complex ecosystems, cities are confronting tremendous pressures to seek optimum efficiency with minimal impact in a resource-constrained world. While architecture, urban planning, and sustainability attempt to address the massive resource requirements and outflow of cities, there are signs that a deeper current of biology is working its way into the urban framework.
MySciFi: The Emissary of Nommo
Maintaining a watchmaker’s delicate precision Moseek fiddles with the joint under Nassam’s wing, humming to himself as he loosens it just enough to expose the port. He slips the tube in with a slight hermetic squeak and then initiates the feeder pump.
Running With Machine Herds
Continuing its annual tradition of walking the lines between genuine social goodyness and highfalutin’ techno utopianism, the TED2013 conference kicked off this week in Los Angeles. Gathering together some of the brighter minds and more well-heeled benefactors, attendees come to tease apart the phase space of possibility and to take a closer look at how we consciously examine and intentionally evolve our world. Among the many threads and themes, one in particular tugs deeply at both aspirational humanism and existential terror.
Quick Riffs on Autonomous Vehicles
This tweet got me riffing on potential outcomes & exploits available when autonomous vehicles become common:
New meaning to “blue screen of death” ;) MT @seth_fletcher: Carlos Ghosn: Autonomous cars “without any doubt” part of future… by 2020.
— chris arkenberg (@chris23) January 14, 2013
Also interesting re: autonomous cars: autobotnets, vehicular ddos, remote firmware exploits, stigmergics & unexpected swarming, etc…
— chris arkenberg (@chris23) January 14, 2013
@changeist biometric spoofing, route hijacking, flexible meshnet computing… oh! oh! street racing algo mod’s!!
— chris arkenberg (@chris23) January 14, 2013
@changeist and that’s just on my lunch break ;)
— chris arkenberg (@chris23) January 14, 2013
I also “like” (or “find interesting”, in the Chinese proverbial sense) the idea of rogue agents seizing control over vehicular fleets to direct and coordinate their movements towards some sort of goal, e.g. assembling to bust a road barricade or defend a bank heist. Interesting times, indeed…
[Apologies/nods to Scott Smith.]
.
Virtual Hitmen Hired To Curb Son’s Gaming Addiction
From China, this article tickles my sic-fi bone in just the right way. It’s one of those news bits that seems enfolded out of the future just to remind us how odd and accelerated we are in the present. From Kotaku:
Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Mr. Feng decided to hire players in his son’s favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng… Feng’s idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.
The article itself is a bit bland but the concept is ultracool and ripe for embellishment. Son hires mercenary clan to defend himself against father’s hit men. Or, son hires hackers to destroy dad’s credit so dad turns to Lawnmower Men to wipe son’s digital identity. How about a new niche of virtual assassin’s paid to neutralize annoying troll’s, spammers, or distant relatives with bothersome religious/political agenda’s? Social media assassins that target Twitter & Facebook accounts for permanent deletion… How safe is the virtual self when we don’t have the hard-wired instinct to protect it in the way we do our own bodies?
Valve signals hardware is the future of distribution
Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director at PC gaming powerhouse Valve Software, recently spoke with Kotaku about the shifting landscape of games distribution and his company’s move into the living room.
Ten years ago Valve established Steam as a primary distribution channel for its titles and add-on content. Just this month they’ve released Big Picture, establishing a foothold in the living room by essentially porting the Valve experience to the TV. With a new controller and interface, user’s can play games, stream content, and access Steam through Big Picture’s front-end.
Speaking to Kotaku, Newell suggested that Valve and other competitors will release custom branded hardware solutions for the living room within the next year. User’s would be able to buy an official Valve gaming console (likely to be a lightweight PC or Linux device) and plug it into their TV. While this may seem surprising to many who have suggested that console gaming is in decline, Newell let slip the compelling hook for game’s developers.
“Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment… If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that’s what some people are really gonna want for their living room.”
As content has dematerialized and gotten loose and slippery, content houses have been trying to figure out how to put the genie back in the bottle and retain control over their IP. Hardware offers such a controlled environment and, thanks in large part to Apple, hardware manufacturing is easier than it’s ever been. It wouldn’t be too surprising if, a few years down the road, Valve decides to lock down distribution completely by shunting all its users onto a low-priced piece of branded hardware. Plug it into your TV, launch Steam, and pull content direct from the Valve server farm.
Now imagine if they release Half Life 3 and you can only buy it through their hardware…
[Related: Hardware, the ugly stepchild of Venture Capital, is having a glamor moment]
Recent Notes on Reality Capture & 3D Printing
It may be symptomatic of our times but the delta between weak signal & fast-moving trend seems to be getting shorter & shorter. Compelling innovations are bootstrapped rapidly into full-fledged solutions, enabling a highly-efficient lab-to-home ecosystem. While it’s been percolating for years, the emergence of consumer 3D printing really only landed on the hype cycle in the past 12 months or so but in this time there have been considerable advances.
Election 2012: Stories and Statistics
When the 2012 election returns came in there was no more tragic and revealing figure than Karl Rove. His live reaction in the Fox newsroom after the network called Ohio for the Democratic incumbent was that of a man at odds with reality. He simply couldn’t grasp that his narrative had slipped free from the world, the map hewn in twain by the sudden jutting of an unexpected iceberg.
so you want to migrate to the cloud…
Many mature software companies are now in the awkward position of trying to migrate their heavyweight legacy solutions from the desktop into the uncertain domain of the cloud. Fortune 500’s are slow to adapt, preferring to leverage their cash-cow back catalog for as long as possible while gently testing the waters with lightweight solutions more aligned with marketing than their core execution layer. The results often paint the erstwhile-giants as out-of-touch and late to the game, delivering simple offerings that fail to successfully integrate with the evolving needs of their user base. The solution is not an easy one, requiring much greater commitment and risk than most CFO’s can stomach. But the cloud is not going away and the alternative to full adoption is to be resigned to a narrowing niche.
transcription errors in reality copy – ios6
Apple recently booted Google Maps from its iOS 6 release, replacing the world standard for mapping & location with its own offering (having cobbled together the acquisition spoils from C3 Technologies). For people actually trying to find their way around, the results have been less than stellar. Complaints abound.
inside scoop – interviewing the santa cruz city council candidates
Last night I was on a panel of 3 with Peggy Dolgenos and Cliff Hodges interviewing our local candidates for Santa Cruz City Council. I represented the Santa Cruz Geeks, one of the event sponsors along with SC NEXT, Cruzio Internet, and Civinomics. The legendary Kuumbwa Jazz center hosted the event (I was on the same stage once held by Booby Hutchinson, McCoy Tyner, Pharaoh Sanders, Joe Zawinul, and many other greats). Our local darlings, the Penny Ice Creamery, brought free waffle cones. Billed as “Inside Scoop“, we crowdsourced questions from the community, then reviewed, consolidated, & massaged them into ~100 min of public examination. The event was fun, and warm, organic, and surprisingly challenging to the candidates and the panel.
my home project: kinect hacking
Over the weekend I bought a Kinect and wired it to my Mac. I’m following the O’Reilly/Make book, Making Things See, by Greg Borenstein (who kindly tells me I’m an amateur machine vision researcher). With the book I’ve set up Processing, a JAVA-lite coding environment, and the open source Kinect libraries, SimpleOpenNI & NITE. I’ve spent a good chunk of the weekend reading a hundred pages into the book and working through the project tutorials and I’ve generated some interesting interactions and imagery. There’s also a ton of tutorial vids on You Tube, natch, to help cut through the weeds and whatnot.
weak signals in 3d print disruption
Peter Thiel’s foundation gives $350,000 to back Modern Meadow’s efforts to create bioprinted meats.
An engineer prints a working lower receiver for an AR-15 using a 15-year old Stratasys printer.
A Glasgow professor modifies a 3D printer to make pharmaceuticals.
More people manipulating matter with cheaper hardware. The rising tide of technology lifts all boats…
…..
“insight, perspicacity, lyrical beauty and complete hogwash
I just have to share this wonderful blurb from Bruce Sterling about my article, Extended Senses & Invisible Fences:
*Y’know, it’s crazy-making to read stuff like this. It’s so full of insight, perspicacity, lyrical beauty and complete hogwash… and there’s no possible way to know which parts are which.
*It’s like a tsunami is coming and someone hands you a witch’s broom.
When I first read this I was struck by how he managed to catch a fairly subtle piece of my character that indeed deeply informs my writing: I aim for no truth, merely sharing my own experience, equal parts analytic and trickster, swept up with some good ol’ mysticism.
Praise from Caesar is praise indeed! Thanks, Bruce!
extended senses & invisible fences
“The intelligence of the city is on the streets.“ – Manu Fernandez
Amidst the swirling maelstrom of technological progress so often heralded as the imminent salvation to all our ills, it can be necessary to remind ourselves that humanity sits at the center, not technology.
inviting machines into our bodies – big think
I have a new article over at Big Think looking at trends in wireless implant technology and the vulnerability profile presented by our emerging integration with connected biodevices. This article builds on my previous post here, Ubicomp Getting Under Your Skin? So Are Hackers.
From the intro:
In what amounts to a fairly shocking reminder of how quickly our technologies are advancing and how deeply our lives are being woven with networked computation, security researchers have recently reported successes in remotely compromising and controlling two different medical implant devices. Such implanted devices are becoming more and more common, implemented with wireless communications both across components and outward to monitors that allow doctors to non-invasively make changes to their settings. Until only recently, this technology was mostly confined to advanced labs but it is now moving steadily into our bodies. As these procedures become more common, researchers are now considering the security implications of wiring human anatomy directly into the web of ubiquitous computation and networked communications.
recent comments