Parting Notes on ETech

This was a great conference and the most consistent collection of speakers and topics I’ve ever experienced. Very fun and inspiring. Lots of hip 30-somethings trying to dream up tomorrow and make it real. It was a a very balanced, yet cutting-edge talk aimed at an eager (and surprisingly mixed-gender)crowd. I noticed that most folks were using Mac laptops – this part of the edge seems to prefer Apple – and it was fascinating to watch many who were blogging the talks while pulling up references dropped by the speakers, tweeting out to Twitter, and snapping/downloading/posting photos in real-time. As speakers dropped references I was pulling them up on my laptop and dropping links into my blog notes.

In the lobby a team was showing off a data viz video mapping real-time communications connecting NYC to the rest of the world. Andrea noticed that a surprising number were with an Italian city called Perugia. Maybe next year they could map the live feed of all web traffic from ETech. Imagine the bitstreams rising off such a gathering of digiterati.

Maybe it was just the Sudafed coursing through our virus-ridden veins (thank you Portland) but ETech was a total intellectual turn-on, from ambient objects, Asian mobile media, green policy and sustainability, hardware hacking & drone building, Austrian post-Situationists, neuroengineering, and the digital salvation of Democracy itself.

I hope I can go back next year!

Open Source Hardware (Limor Fried & Philip Torrone) – ETech08

Hardware is much easier to copy now. Hardware & software is blurring – ex: firmware updates.
Speed of hardware hacking is remarkable.

Why open source hardware? Contribute to the pool of knowledge; freedom to pursue software/hardware creativity; community development and quality; excitement about building things; education;

Layers:
- Hardware/mechanical diagrams: 2D models, vector, DXF or AI (KiCAD)
- Scematics & circuit diagrams: PDF, BMP, GIF, PNG
- Parts list (Bill of Materials): data sheets (x0xb0x TB303)
- Layout diagrams: physical map of parts
- Core/Firmware: on-board source code
- Software/API
Like most developers, they don’t mention the human interface layer.

Roomba has an open API. Companies that release open platforms find much greater value (and mindshare) from user mods.
Ambient Orb publishes schematics and parts list. Neuros OSD publishes schematics (semi-open but falls short).
Hardware is mostly based on patents, not copyright. Licensing: CC, GPL, BSD, MIT
Chumby: programmable data portal.

Other open source hardware resources (business models): Fab@Home, Daisy MP3 player, Adafruit, Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform. See also Make magazine & the Maker Fair.

Cool stuff: Twittering plants with Arduino – plants that call you and say they need to be watered (Twitter as SMS bridge); Open prosthetics; Minty Boost open source USB charger;

Ed note: Imagine an online repository of mechanical diagrams for DIY desktop fab/rep…

DIY Drones (Chris Anderson) – ETech08

Fun with robots! Making aerial drones. Eye in the Sky. DIYdrones.com

UAV’s are very expensive. How to democratize the tech?
How cheap and simple can a UAV be?

Two requirements: stabilization & navigation.

$80 copilot: where is “down”? Use IR to seek horizon – consistent gradient between land & sky. Yields absolute frame of reference.
Could LEGO solve the probelm? Yes (under $1000), mindstorms controller in light model plane. Basic prototype, requires manual takeoff & landing.
Onboard camera takes pics with geotagging. Genereates low-cost aerial photos with very high res using low altitude with a 5Mpix camera.

OK, but can you use a cellphone? GPS, camera, broadband, onboard processing & mem.
Yes! Airplane now has a phone # – send it GPS waypoints (not yet realized in prototype).
In theory, small UAV’s can hop across cell networks for nav & comm.
IR horizon sensor can also be used to stabilize the camera so it always looks down.
Be careful, especially when flying over secured federal facilities!

Can we make it cheaper (under$500)? Yes, using homemade embedded processers. Any open source or cheap chip can support an autopilot routine.
Program & test with flight sim apps. Watch your robotic UAV run the flight sim!

How to make an aerial robotic contest for kids? Use small blimps.
Blimps are intrinsically autonomous; when they fail, they fail very gracefully; nice to have around.
Prototype maintains altitude by pinging off the ground (IR); vertical prop holds elevations; IR beacon acts as waypoint; blimp will seek the waypoint; relative frame of reference it can use compass and IR to make it’s way across waypoints;

Live demo: blimp is following the presenter around the room. ~$100. Entirely autonomous, if not very smart.
Evolution Robotics is a company that produces a bot nav solution. Paired with autopilot, the UAV can use more advanced navigation and movement. Aerial robotics is the cutting edge of robotics: “Soon the sky will be darkened with aerial drones!”

Regulations govern UAV deploy. Amateurs must fly under 400ft, maintain line-of-sight, and pilot can assume full control.
Very limiting. Power source is also a limit.

Ed Notes: could use RFID or other beacons to deploy UAV over your home or for tracking your location; pair with live hi-res camera feed.

Heading to San Diego for ETech2008

Hacking brains & iPhones, building DIY aerial drones, ambient data streaming, data viz and crowd movements, ARGs, Vegas, and the Self awakened to it’s own tech. Oh baby!

With the help of my special lady friend (who got work to sport for the hotel, pass, and air) and the help of my employer (I’m doing some booth shifts on the floor in exchange for a pass – I get to rep Adobe AIR), I’m leaving tomorrow morning for sunny San Diego and a week at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference! I’m psyched. I’ve wanted to go for the last few years but couldn’t afford it. All this time, I should have just told my corporate overlords they needed to send me on the company ticket!

I’ll be sending photos to the urbeingrecorded portal via tumblr, and I’ll likely post some keen bits here. Otherwise I’ll be fast hacking my iPhone to control a robotic crowd-sourcing drone I will use to track the culinary habits of tech luminaries and international political dissidents whose footpaths I’ll be datastreaming to various dynamic art installations and ambient devices.

From their site:

How does technology help you perceive things that you never noticed before? How does it help you be found, or draw attention to issues, objects, ideas, and projects that are important, no matter their size or location?

At the 2008 version of ETech, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, we’ll take a wide-eyed look at the brand new tech that’s tweaking how we are seen as individuals, how we choose to channel and divert our energy and attention, and what influences our perspective on the world around us:

Body Hacking. Genomics Hacking. Brain Hacking. Sex Hacking. Food Hacking. iPhone Hacking.
DIY Aerial Drones. DIY Talking Things. DIY Spectrum. DIY Apocalypse Survival.
Emerging Tech of India, Cuba, and Africa. International Political Dissidents.
Visualize Data and Crowds. Ambient Data Streaming.
Good Policy. Energy Policy. Defense Policy. Genetic Policy. Corruption.
Alternate Reality Games. Emotions of Games. Sensor Games.

ETech 2008 will cover all of these topics and more. We put on stage the speakers and the ideas that help our attendees prepare for and create the future, whatever it might be. Great speakers are going to pull us forward with them to see what technology can do… and sometimes shouldn’t do. From robotics and gaming to defense and geolocation, we’ll explore promising technologies that are just that–still promises–and renew our sense of wonder at the way technology is influencing and altering our everyday lives.

w00t!

DARPA on the Path to Develop Insect Cyborgs

From LiveScience:

Cornell University researchers have succeeded in implanting electronic circuit probes into tobacco hornworms… The hornworms… mature into long-lived moths whose muscles can be controlled with the implanted electronics.

…The ultimate goal of the HI-MEMS program is to provide insect cyborgs that can demonstrate controlled flight; the insects would be used in a variety of military and homeland security applications.

I can’t imagine that anyone would be able to, you know, hack into DARPA’s cyborg bug army and use them for their own means…

androids dreaming of electric dino’s

I saw this post on Boing Boing today wherein Mark Fraunfelder talks about his unexpected emotional empathy for the Pleo robotic dinosaur that his two daughters have fallen in love with. What strikes me is how we humans naturally want to imbue life and feeling into the things around us. Mark and his family know the Pleo is a robot and yet it’s behavior is real enough that they instinctively come to regard it as having feelings. It makes me suspect that the animistic quality of a thing is a very real property that is not simply a quality of the thing itself, but is an emergent state between the thing and it’s witness. In other words, the Pleo becomes real by it’s interactions with sensitive humans.

We want those quality interactions with our world so we give life to the things around us. Hence, the Turing Test which postulates that any AI that can be mistaken for a real human in a natural-language conversation is, effectively, as intelligent as a human. So the validity of a thing’s intelligence or sensitivity to it’s world is based in part on the human observing and interacting with it. Furthermore, I would suggest that it’s irrelevant to discuss whether or not animism is real. It’s as real as the real effects it has on the behavior of those who witness it as such.

I’m impressed with the robot’s behavior. It snuggles when you hold it. It falls asleep when you cradle it. It gets frisky when you scratch it under the chin. It’s much more lifelike than Sony’s discontinued Aibo.

So when I watched this video of a couple of guys from Dvice torturing the Pleo and making it whimper pathetically, I felt uncomfortable, even though I knew it was absolutely ridiculous to feel that way.

My wife didn’t want to watch the video. She said that even though the Pleo was incapable of feeling anything, watching the video is “bad for your psyche,” and that the people who hit the Pleo were damaging their pscyhes, too.

science fiction, science future

From Mainichi News

The Advanced Personal Armament System — Japan’s version of the Future Soldier project, designed to modernize combat infantry units — offers a network-linked helmet providing night and thermal vision, amongst other capabilities. It was introduced at a presentation held by the ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute titled, “Towards the realization of Gundam.”

a rain of moth jizz

This damn plane is buzzing loudly over my house and those of the Westside of Santa Cruz again and again and again and has been for the last 40min at least. I had to run to my partner’s house and back, just a few blocks, and it was all i could do to avoid getting sprayed. We had to rush and try to get the cats in the house. Neighbors who usually leave the windows open were all shut up. i was actually yelling up at the plane right above me while running to the front door. The thing is flying about 60-70 ft up and i can see the trails of “moth pheromone” or whatever it is streaming out from under the plane. it smells and makes my stomach feel weird, though that could just be the anger and the stench and the feeling that it’s unsafe to leave my own house.

i can’t believe this city forced this on us, with little to no review, under the half-baked pretense of an “emergency” (come on… Moths.) just to help pad the pockets of big agribiz. Now you’re bombing our homes and our families with chemicals. Friends coming in from Portland are concerned about the safety of their 3 year old son. And this stuff is falling into the soil and water table and the future of our children but we’re just supposed to trust it’s safe without any independent review.

Thanks, Santa Cruz. After 16 years here, you’ve finally managed to truly offend me.

germany, tibet, and the destabilization of beijing

There’s an interesting series of articles over at German-Foreign-Policy.com about the ongoing efforts of Berlin to encourage the Dalai Llama’s Tibetan freedom moevement. This part got me thinking:

“Berlin’s Tibet offensive is not motivated by it’s concern for a minority culture, as it likes to pretend, it is the repeated attempt to lay hand on about half of the Chinese territory and use its population for the struggle against Beijing.”

German big biz is different from the US, being heavily nationalistic (like Japan) they tend to seek to destabilize and undermine foreign markets, instead of just moving there like we do. Japan is currently fighting to bring manufacturing back from China so it can have more control over production quality and keep money inside it’s borders.

The flip side is the US situation where corps go multinational and drop their allegiance to the mother country, leaving us to deal with a crashing economy in the wake of sinking quality, job emigration, and ongoing corporate legal assaults on domestic laws that were intended to keep them in check. Why suffer high American wages and stifling laws when you can just send the jobs to China or India?

Bit by bit the US is losing it’s economic heart. Cheap Chinese manufacturing is a double-edged sword and many countries are starting to realize the impact on their own economies, as well as the very real result of funnelling billions of dollars into a gigantic, communist, nuclear power.

in the future we will all have shaved cats

Charlie Stross on his first trip to Tokyo:

“Tokyo left me feeling like an illiterate Albanian shepherd teleported without warning to the UK, staring slack-jawed in wonder at the vast, gleaming, powerful public works of metropolitan Huddersfield, reeking of wealth and efficiency and a goat-free future. From the thirty-seventh floor of a skyscraper I looked out across the high rise skyline, red lights blinking fretfully in the grip of a typhoon as winds strong enough to blow sheets of rain up the glass of the window rumbled around me, and I realized: this future has no place for goats.”

self & avatar

In Japan, researchers wire thoughts to Second Life avatar movement:

A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a brain-controlled interface (BCI) system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. To control the avatar on screen, the user simply thinks about moving various body parts — the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms.

[at Pink Tentacle]

tokyo return

New pics.

We’ve made it back and gotten through the 5 brutal days of jet lag, thanks in part to a two-day Lord of the Rings marathon caved out at home on the couch (and I mean caved out – we hung sheets over the windows to shield the LCD screen from the sunlight).

Our final week in Tokyo was wondrous and frenetic, flying by far too quickly to see and do everything we wished but quickly enough to satisfy our deepening pangs of homesickness. Again we padded mile after mile through streets and alleyways hunting down treasures of food and gift, experience and insight. The days were both long and short, filled both with the excitement of new discoveries and the mounting tedium of now old inconveniences (the language barrier!). The past two weeks of travel were beginning to catch up with us, translating restless nights into long sleepy mornings, exhaustion cast aside and mortgaged until we were home again.

On our return to Tokyo we stayed the first 3 nights at the Park Hotel in Shiodome, to the east along the bay just across from Odaiba. We shot out on foot and explored the ritzy, euro, too-rich-for-my-blood glam and glitz of Ginza. Gucci, Cartier, Salvator Ferragamo, Burberry, and US$2500 cats filled the multi-story department stores heaved up on some of the most expensive real estate this side of Olympus Mons.

We sought the evening madness of Akihabara, bright and buzzing with relentless neon, hawkers and barkers of the latest electronic wizardry, trance techno blasting out from packed pachinko parlors, and the ubiquitous gaze of wide-eyed manga and anime stars staring out from billboards, posters, and almost every other surface not otherwise in use by shining adverts. Buildings are tall and tightly packed side-by-side with long lit signs running up their outer walls indicating, floor-by-floor, the shops and clubs and bars available within. They’re like American strip malls tipped on end and stuffed into buildings covering entire city blocks for maximum efficiency. We found ourselves winding up floor after floor of brightly lit and densely packed shops, each level presenting some new and possibly haunting surprise, hopelessly sent further and higher up into the seedy den of Otaku nerdery by seemingly exit-less escalators, only finally finding hope on the top floor in some tucked away elevator built for two, to be chucked back out onto the wet flashing street below.

Caught up in the excitement we hopped the Yamanote train line back around the circle to Shinjuku – a station vastly labyrinthine and subterranean beneath the city center, resonant and thick with the passage of over 2 million commuters each day. Eventually we made our way out onto the night street and found we’d taken an exit far away from our intent, with dark looming government buildings rising up around us like docked and slumbering spacecraft waiting for the dawn to meet their launch towards the next great frontier. After securing necessary sustenance we walked a few blocks towards Shinjuku Dori guided by map but met only by a wide and tall wall of closed department stores. The view beyond was obscured and the court around us quiet. I knew this wasn’t the Shinjuku we sought. On Andera’s urging we turned down a side alley towards the high reflection of a great flashing light that brought us out to the boulevard of Shinjuku Dori. It was a moment later that my mind slipped its reigns and basically refused to accept what my eyes saw.

Past the rumbling Yamanote overpass and down the street, 10 to 15 stories tall and stretching out beyond the receding parallax of my perspective, an inconceivable canyon of light like 100 Las Vegas strips scooped up and painted along the walls of Manhatten, buzzing and flashing with inexhaustible neon, splashed with inconceivably humongous LCD screens dancing with the latest video of this or that idoru star, strobes of 5-story tall electric signs blazing out corporate logos to the world and beyond, still-life waterfalls of glowing kanji and signage lining the sides of every building surface, down to the ground and the thousands and thousands of bustling japanese swimming past in black business suits and evening dress. The crackle and buzz that filled my ears was either the fission of Tokyo’s nuclear reactors straining to power it all, or the failure of my own nervous system to rewire the multitudinous neurons necessary to adequately parse the massive download of my experience. I smelled smoke or perhaps ozone as the Yamanote line pounded out its steady rhythm on the steel overpass above us. This was the Shinjuku crossing, next to the busiest train station on the planet, in the heart of the largest city so far heaped up by humanity’s will.

And while the main street of Shinjuku Dori was mind-boggling, each and every side street and alleyway reiterated the same light blasted theme running along every single building facade like a snapshot of the Matrix in full technicolor. So many shops and stores and bars and clubs for so many people. Stumbling through it all agape I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be a local – to be so totally accustomed to it all that the kaleidoscope receded into the background of awareness, as if one could walk these streets and sift through it to find the smallest details. As if it could all just be simply tuned out like shutting the blinds against the sun. We were there 20 minutes and had to flee back to the peace and serenity and simple manageability of our hotel.

Shinjuku stayed with me the rest of the week and still continues to reach up from the depths of my mind and demand some structure of meaning. In our final days we visited the great Meiji Shrine; toured the endless back streets of Harajuku and Aoyama; took a tour of Tokyo bay on the most futuristic and cool boat I’ve ever seen with ovoid curves and windows giving way to a neon lit dancefloor accented with excellent drinks and table service. We sipped martinis under the lights of the future city Odaiba and then went to the top viewing deck of the Tokyo Tower, some 300 meters up, again overwhelmed at the sheer size of the metropolis rolling off in every direction below us, it’s lights hung like stars in a galaxy far larger than is humanly observable.

If the strangeness and scale of it all was at times overwhelming, the simple joys of good food grounded us out. The Westin buffet was fit for a roman emperor. Tonkatsu (fried breaded pork) at Meisan demanded a return trip to savor more of its succulence. Afternoon snack at a fruit boutique on Omote Sando ($100 cantaloupes!) was beautiful and refreshing with an entertaining view of the Harajuku kids swarming past. Windowside tempura with kobe beef on the 39th floor of the Ebisu Palace building, floating high in the Tokyo night. Late night cake set of divine origin with table-mixed martinis at the Park Hotel in Shiodome. And oh if I’d had one more chance to eat at that amazing little ramen place on the street behind Meguro station…

And so finally we bid Tokyo and Japan a fond sayonara, glad to be heading home but certain to return again and enjoy its hospitality. We didn’t see enough robots, didn’t have drinks at the Park Hyatt ala Lost in Translation, missed the best club gigs at Womb and Air, and never had that night sipping Absinthe and stumbling around deeper into Shinjuku. Yet, we both learned so much about Japan and much more about ourselves and our place in this large and often foreign-seeming world. So many differences concealing a far greater amount of sameness. Even the most foreign realms of the Earth are still gathered around the hearts of its people. And some places that may have seemed so very distant suddenly can seem as close as home.

Previous photo libraries:
Tokyo 1
Kyoto & Shimoda
Tokyo Street Design

nerv

“Each Eva has its own designated pilot, and operates by synchronizing the pilot’s soul and the human soul inside the Eva via the enigmatic liquid substance known as LCL. Surrounded by LCL, the pilot’s nervous system, mind and body join with the Eva’s controls, allowing the Eva to be controlled by the pilot’s thoughts and actions. The higher a pilot’s synchronization ratio, the better the pilot can control the Eva and fight more adeptly.

“…the extent to which the Evas are biological is not immediately apparent.”

tokyo street design

I’ve created a new Flickr set of photos Andrea & I took in Japan of cool design bits (sadly limited to 200 lest I send Flickr $25, which seems a bit much for me right now after hemorrhaging cash in Tokyo). Lot’s of street tags and stickers, adverts & signs, various anthropomorphic critter logos, infographics, temple design elements, night-time street neon, et cetra. Most are from Tokyo but there are also some from Kyoto and Shimoda. Great inspirations for design/manga projects and a nice travelogue of detail from street level in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tokyo Street Design

As an aside, I knew that black lab was famous and full of doggly integrity (my original guess was that he’s running for Senate). Searching a bit, I found this (masterfully translated by Google’s wunder-engine). But clicking a bit further reveals a lovely page featuring photos of people’s dogs with the poster.

tokyo baby

more pics here.

(written last week with sporadic web access)
We’ve been in Tokyo for 5 nights now and could easily stay another
couple of weeks. The place is absolutely amazing on so many levels.
Tokyo gives new meaning to the word “metropolis” as the city extends
off in every direction beyond the horizon. It’s simply gigantic,
covering 2187 sq km and contains approx 12.5 million people – that’s
about 6000 people per sq kilometer. So the subways and trains are
almost always packed and the major civic centers are thronged with
people constantly moving in time with the pulse of the crossing
signals and train schedules. Yet somehow in spite of all this the
place is remarkably peaceful, respectful, incredibly clean, and
exceedingly polite.

We’ve been to Harajuku, Akihabara, Shibuya, Ebisu, Roppongi, the Edo
Tokyo museum, the Imperial Palace, many restaurants, numerous vast
shopping districts, and countless rail and metro stations along the
way. Every day has been painfully packed with activities and the
amount of walking required has been brutal on the feet and legs. The
sheer level of detail is overwhelming, from the architecture &
skyline, the kanji adverts & signage, the constant people-watching, 6
floor department stores, 7 floor toy and manga shops packed to the
gills with product, and the crazy buzzing nerd-dom of Akihabara’s
Electric City. The scale and density of the city is recapitulated on
every level here. With 12.5 million people, apparently you need entire
districts devoted to towering stores full of manga & electronics.

Most cars on the road are service vehicles & taxis. Rail and metro are
the dominant transport and they become impossibly packed during rush
hours, but it’s quite refreshing to be free from the gas beasts we so
adore at home. Everyone is constantly using cell phones and although
talking on them is not typically allowed in trains and stores they are
constantly interfacing with them, texting, reading novels, browsing
the web, or watching tv (their cell phones have antennae that
pick up digital tv). In fact, finding any open wireless nets is quite
difficult since everyone has web access on their mobiles. And yes, the
toilet in our hotel room has a remote control. They’re years ahead of
us.

The city layout is exceedingly complex and chaotic, like a tangled
mess of udon noodles. There are no rectilinear grids of streets. It’s
just a wild criss-cross that loosely tracks the underground rails.
Thankfully the public transport is exceptional and the trains run to
the second.

Today we take the shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto for a 5 night stay
there. It should provide a fascinating contrast to the hyper-neo
metropolis of Tokyo, yielding to the deep traditions of classic Japan.
Until the mid 1800′s Kyoto was the capital, proudly rooted in
thousands of years of tradition. Then emeperor Meiji move to Edo and
renamed it Tokyo. This marked the shift from old Japan into the new
age when the country began to open up to the west and march towards the
industrialized superpower it is today. Tokyo is the new and Kyoto is
the old.

After that we have 7 nights unplanned which will either take us to the
beaches in Izu, or perhaps the mountains near Nagano, but most likely
back to Tokyo for one last week in the metropolis. Every day in the
city so far we have packed full to the brim. And every day we learn of
more we wish to see and explore and experience. Kyoto will be a nice
retreat and respite but the shiny crazy glow of NeoTokyo is magnetic
and irresistible. I’ve never met a city like this!