David Zach, futurist

Data Visualization, Data Complexity

I keep thinking there's got to be a better way than just more and more data for us to plow through. Here's an example of Visual Complexity via Gizmodo.com of fascinating data visualization that offers some hope, especially with sense that design applied to data should reveal refinement and a sense of the aesthetic. 

Can data be beautiful and give us a sense of "Ah!" as opposed the the growing sense of "Ugh!" — one can only hope and encourage the information architects to focus not just on measurement, but whimsy as well. 

Pop Up Businesses have Popped Up before

I was looking at my website traffic and someone in Italy was searching on the term pop up business and thereby found my site. 

So, I clicked on that person's search and found 771 hits (most not connected to our idea, of course) but found this one from Lubicom Marketing in 2006 that had me smiling. The author is comparing today's trends with some rather old notions of PUBs. Pushcarts indeed. 

My father once told me that there are very few new ideas out there, just recombinations of existing ideas along with rediscovery of old ones that we might have forgotten. 

Here's a blog called Boomer Matters exploring some of the questions the PUB idea presents: 

Here's one also from 2006 from Springwise (a trend spotting website) with the clever term: Vanchising.

These sorts of things convince me that good ideas are seldom unique to one individual or another. They "pop-up" everywhere. The curious challenge is to try to discern what does it take for those great ideas to actually get manifested? What sorts of technology breakthroughs cause someone to finally recognize that the roadblock that might have held them back is now gone or can now be bypassed? 

Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog - Gigapan Explored

For some marvelous exploration of the Gigapan technology [see previous post], visit Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog. Zoom in and zoom out to get the full potential of the photography. 

This is great stuff. Applying this technology to scientific exploration, (or architectural, or geographic, etc.) holds amazing potential. Pull it together with the likes of Google Earth, GPS, RFID, tagging and the like and you can start to see how everything can be mapped and easily accessed, either virtually or in person. I'm cautious and yet can't help but marvel at it all. He suggests Google Earth include a Geology layer and like many innovation, such features are often developed by users themselves who lead innovation from its best source, the imagination. 

Gigapan Photography: We Are All Public Now

Under the category of Paranoid? Who Told You I Was Paranoid? check out Gigapan.

The pictures are taken with a Canon digital camera mounted on a robotic base developed by Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Lab and NASA Ames Research, to result in a 1,474 megapixel image. [ed. note: this was corrected per comment posted below.] Double click on an area of the picture to view a detailed area shot or individual. Click and drag the cursor to scan over the picture.

Where once it as possible to be anonymous in a crowd, that will no longer be. You can be spotted and watched, followed. In the hands of the good guys, we can easily track the bad guys. Unless the bad guys get ahold of the same technology, then the bad guys can track the good guys. 

Who watches the watchers, indeed. 

Additional note: I do think this is marvelous technology and we've only just scratched the surface of where this stuff can take us. I keep being reminded of the line from Milton Friedman, The power to do good is also the power to do harm. The technology is not the problem, the problem lies within the hands of those with the technology and how they view their ability extended by this technology. Few people ever believe their actions will result in evil. Most evil is done by people with the best of intentions. Naiveté seems more popular than ever before. 

Microsoft: the Future of Computing

And, for what it's worth, computing in this future is also a description of life in the future because in this scenario the two are inseparable. Resistance is more or less futile, but we're going to love it so I guess it's OK. 

As I have been a devoted companion to my new Amazon Kindle 2, and find myself carrying around three sleek devices (Kindle, iPhone and MacBook Air - four if you count my iPod Shuffle) my mind has now been effectively trained to be immediately dissatisfied with whatever I have right now because I just know that the next version is going to be soooo much better. As cool as I think the Kindle is, I can't help but imagine what it's going to be like as a Kindle 3. And what about color, larger touch screen, a better (a much better) keyboard.

Microsoft imagines what this future of upgraded devices will be like. Watch the video on this page here: 

CNET: Microsoft's glimpse of the future

One of my big concerns is that we wrongly keep thinking that the Age of Information is about more information. It is not. It is about less information, as in taking all that information, processing it, filtering it and refining it so that it passes into either knowledge or wisdom. Most of the information needs to go behind the scenes, bypassing humans and just be machine to machine. If it makes it out of that loop it need to be run through the mill of elegance and eloquence. By the time it gets to me, I should be able to say "Ah!" not "Ugh." Information should not bother me unless it's cool and actually has something to say. It should not steal my attention away, it should barter for it. 

Still the video as they present it is pretty cool. I love the idea of being able to seamlessly pull and push information from device to device, to reach out and touch it and move it around. I just worry that information has clearly addictive qualities. 

As Eric Hoffer said, You can never get enough of what you really don't need.

China, Classical Music, Education & Real Futurists

I love stories about China and how they'll take over the world. Maybe they should. Police states are a bit of a bother, [Please watch the fascinating and frightening movie The Lives of Others.] but at least the Chinese parents seem to insist that their children gain some discipline and learn a lot more than just to feel good about themselves. This article in Asia Times addresses the question of China's Six to One Advantage with 36 million children learning piano compared to only 6 million here in the US. Perhaps they do have a few more people, but numbers are numbers and as a state entity they have this dominance which will go far beyond musical notes. 

Bruce Sterling said that Real futurists have children. This might be applied to those best prepared for strategic thinking and long-term planning as well. 

800 CEO READ Blogs, etc.

800 CEO READ is a book distributor here in MKE with an international reach. Jack Covert, the CEO, has an exceptional grasp of the book business. 

Here are four links from blogs they manage. 

http://800ceoread.com/blog/

http://800ceoread.com/podcasts/

http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/

http://www.changethis.com/

The New Atlantis: The Myth of Multitasking

The Myth of Multitasking

Related to my last post, the linked article begins with a quotation from Lord Chesterfield: There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” followed by another This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

Multitasking vs. Singletasking

I just spoke at the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and at one point quoted a woman at another conference who warned audience members to stop doing email during her talk — with the rather assertive expression, "Multitasking makes you stupid!" I then suggested that perhaps young people can multitask, but adults are not so good at it. I've read a few articles suggesting that the "software" of youngsters is actually different from those who grew up in a linear world. Young people can be doing ten things at once and still be bored because there's still available bandwidth, needing to be filled and/or distracted. 

Later at one of the receptions at NCARB I overheard someone explaining, "Young people might be better at multitasking, but they are not so good at singletasking." 

Does anyone who is regularly on email and online have the ability to concentrate and focus for long periods of time? Our attention span is no better than that of houseflies today. Can you possibly do the sort of work you're capable of when you can't pay attention. I would guess not. 

In this sort of game, there are winners and losers. Who wins in an age of distraction? 

The Age of Forgetting

How can we have an Age of Information when we can't even remember where we put the car keys?

Fascinating article in the New York Times - The Great Forgetting by David Brooks. It's about what's going to happen with the aging of the boomers - and a bit on how we're not going to quite go gentle into that good night, if only we'll be able to remember upon whom to dump all that rage that will come with the losses of age.

Time will force the boomer fantasies of eternal youth and eternal relevance into perhaps even an early retirement. Be gentle with us, even if we are not gentle with the failings of our age. One gets a certain sense that with the current presidential race is once again pitting the various boomer philosophies against each other. I had said at the Conversations among Masters conference that I thought there was an exceptional amount of naivete in this race - and one person took boomer umbrage that I was attacking Obama. Nope. I was, um, attacking all three candidates, representing the diversity of naivete found in the electorate nicely spread evenly amongst the generations. And the truest words I've ever heard about American politics is that we always get the government we deserve. Once again, we're going to get it.

Then again, Dilbert last week had a great rejoinder to the Millennials. The geeky kid was explaining to Dilbert and Catbert about how with their superior techno-savvy, and Facebook, etc. they would take over the world. The last frame shows the kid stuck in the trash can - Dilbert having discovered that still life with keyboard does not do much for the sort of upper body strength needed to defend oneself.

Age and avarice just might yet win over youth and enthusiasm. And, finally Tom Rush on YouTube sings homage to us - just to show that maybe we can still enjoy what will remain.