Fine Tuning Human Networks

Every intelligent entity - whether human or machine - depends not only on the configurations of its neurons, but also connections between itself and others entities, optimized for efficient exchange of information. Hence, better human networks providing training and feedback from others will lead to both smarter humans and better AI. 

Technology, Dreams and April Fool's Jokes

At least once per year, and more is likely better, laughter is the best medicine.

Today is April Fool's Day, when everybody from school-age kids to technology companies tried to trick people into believing into jokes.

Yet, as Sigmund Freud suggested, jokes often expose unconscious desires. Perhaps the technologies listed below, too,  have a grain of our desires wrapped in a smile?

reproduced with permissions of Aurametrix

Technology keeps marching ahead. And the future gets smarter with the Internet of Things. Here are a few announcements made today, on April 1 2016. 

CONNECTED CAR

Ford Australia has announced new wearable technology connecting drivers to their car like never before. Based on ‘Mood-Ion Technology’, it would monitor a wearer’s body temperature and use cameras to track eye movement and feed this information into the vehicle. It is hard to foresee what exactlty the vehicle will do in response to driver's mood changes except powering lighting, but In selected Ford vehicles, there will be options to have the glove box retrofitted with a convection oven.

Lexus connects drivers and their cars too, using velcro adhesives to bond drivers to their V-LCRO seats.

​And so does the new LeisureVans app offering to experience the power of driving in a fully autonomous RV. Using the latest advancements in software and ultrasonic hardware, their engineers have perfected the future of the self-driving vehicle. Just download an app from the App store and let it control your self-driving leisure travel van. While driving, the app will suggest you to get some coffee or have a snooze, if you look too tired. It will also make the car to wash itself when needed.

And if you don't even want to think about cars while enjoying a drive, use Ola rooms, converting cabs into mini-hotels coming to your door step. The room will drive by the views you like and restaurants you prefer. Although you could use Deliveroo’s telepathic food order to make it easier. And pre-lick food photos to make sure you like what you are ordering. Or order Google Express parachutes if you want to have your lunch right away.  

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VIRTUAL REALITY

​Google introduced Plastic Cardboard VR Headset proving that "the future is clear." "Google Cardboard Plastic combines everything you love about virtual reality headsets with everything you love about reality," the company said in a statement.
The goal is to make virtual reality feel more compelling, more immersed, make it feel like actual reality.

The innovative gadget allows users to view the world in 4 dimensions with 20/20 resolution and 360 degrees of sound  - assuming that's what is provided by your own senses. But if you prefer to trust other people's senses - try "Snoopavision," a 360-degree viewing experience with rapper Snoop Dogg. After all, "Dre has Beats, Jay has Tidal, Kanye has himself and now the world has Snoopavision," as says promotional video.

And if Virtual Reality still doesn’t seem real enough, ThinkGeek offers VR rig that could spray you with water, shoot stuff at you with a built-in projectile launcher, emit scent, and ticket you with cat arms if you so desire. 

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SMART HOME

Wi-fi-enabled pillow Duolingo is making education more convenient by offering to  teach a language overnight. Thanks to synthetic fibers encouraging development in the cerebral cortex, high frequency sound system and a proprietary algorithm using Morse code to subtly teach the brain new language vocabulary and concepts in one's sleep.
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There were more smart home announcements gimmicky enough to pass off as April fools jokes, but we won't be talking about them here. 

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WEARABLES

If you're struggling to keep up with your New Year's resolutions, consider JOLT - new Electrotherapy Fitness Shoes from Soft Star Shoes. High voltage sensors in the JOLT's footbed deliver an electric shock whenever you stop moving, while patented Lace-Lock™ technology makes the shoes impossible to remove - taking fitness motivation aids to "stunning" new heights. 

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We have certainly come a long way since the previous generation of wearables like Gluuv inspired by a Robocop movie (announced on April 1 2014 by HTC). The wearable could double as a self-defense device you’ll definitely want to have around if you ever find yourself in a Blade Runner-reminiscent décor.

Slightly less bulky Gloves announced by Samsung and Toshiba could use 25 appropriate fingergestures, replacing laptops, tablets, smartphones, fitness trackers, watches, glasses and any other future mobile innovation.

Perhaps we should come back to this later. 

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Happy April Fool's Day!

References (in addition to those provided above)

Smith, Julian. "Apps for apes: Orang-utans want iPads for Christmas." New Scientist 212.2844 (2011): 69-71.

(2000). April Fool's Day and the Medicinal Value of Humor. The virtual mentor : VM, 2 (4) PMID: 23270623

Friedman, Joseph H. "APRIL FOOL'S COMMENTARY: IN PRAISE OF PLACEBOS." Medicine and Health Rhode Island 89.4 (2006): 124.

Redberg, R. (2015). The Prescription Is Laughter JAMA Internal Medicine, 175 (5) DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.574

Robertson R (1984). Science and technology - dreams and reality. Journal of dental research, 63 (3), 371-3 PMID: 6583238

Technologies and Generations

Children no longer obey their parents and the end of the world is evidently approaching. So said a clay tablet inscribed almost 5 thousand years ago. But the world still stands, although we do go through golden and dark ages and societies rise and fall.

Technology's golden age is now, or so we hope. How are current generations influenced by it and how will they shape the future world?

Even as they age, Baby Boomers embrace emerging technologies such as smartphones and social networking. They will be the driving and demanding force behind innovation in healthcare. In the past, they drove the economy by spending and borrowing, boosting housing and stock prices, increasing demand for products and services. 

America's neglected middle child, Generation X is now the quiet driving force behind enterprise, media and information consumption. Xers endured lots of destruction, but were able to adapt and sparked a renaissance of entrepreneurship. They bring to the table a significant amount of buying power, but are less eager to spend money. Nielsen poll suggests they prefer value over social acceptance.

Millennial Generation, alternatively dubbed the Net Generation, Generation Y (or Why?), Echo-boomers, Nexters, and Digital Natives is now the largest generation in U.S history. Fueled by immigration, they outgrew the outsized Baby Boomer population and continue to grow.  Raised on a steady diet of video games, in a world where almost everything can be done with an app, fanned by economic slowdown, they are choosing to live differently and embrace the sharing economy. Since the second world war, purchases of new cars and suburban houses have propelled economic recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both, spending on smartphones instead. "The cheapest generation" burdened by student loans is renting instead of buying. They are demanding better integration of technology into public services, prefer healthy, natural, socially and environmentally conscious products.

Perhaps auto brands and home builders just need to leverage mobile and environmental sustainability to attract this generation? Manufacturers do think so trying to turn cars into "giant docking stations with wheels". Tesla is one example of a brand adapting to millennials - and it's the top automotive stock owned by this generation. 

One-in-four Millennials (23%) already installed at least one of Internet-of-Things products in their homes, compared to 12% of the total population. But building a true "smart home" - like the one owned by the Jetson's  -  integrating and managing multiple devices, and dealing with their eminent malfunctions needs a lot of patience. Perhaps companies like IOTAS - creating smart homes for today's renters  - have taken the right first step? 

In the coming years, Millennials will continue to drive the growth in the Internet of Things, connected cars and wearable markets, and Generation Z will inherit technology rigorously tested by prior generations. What will be their signature product and communication device? We'll know soon enough.

Join our conference "The Rise of the Millennials – Emerging Disruptive Trends". It will take place on November 21st 2015, at the Intel Auditorium in Santa Clara. 

REFERENCES

Putre L (2013). The march of the Millenials. Your hospital staff in 2025: the same, only different. Hospitals & health networks / AHA, 87 (9) PMID: 24260968

G. Vouchilas, C. Ulasewicz,  (2014) The “Not so Young” Millennial Consumer  International Journal of Arts and Commerce Vol. 3 No. 5

Pew Research Group (2010) “Americans and their gadgets” (2010) 

Costanza, D., Badger, J., Fraser, R., Severt, J., & Gade, P. (2012). Generational Differences in Work-Related Attitudes: A Meta-analysis Journal of Business and Psychology, 27 (4), 375-394 DOI: 10.1007/s10869-012-9259-4 

Becton, J., Walker, H., & Jones-Farmer, A. (2014). Generational differences in workplace behavior Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44 (3), 175-189 DOI: 10.1111/jasp.12208

Aschenbrener CA. (1998) The future is in the present: the impact of generations. J Am Coll Dent. 65(4):23-8. PMID: 9929986

Autotrader (2013) The Next Generation Car Buyer Millennials.

M.Fitzpatrick. (2013) Why I regret making my house a smart home. 

NPD group (2015) One Quarter of Millennials Have Begun Building Smart Homes and Four-in-Ten Want One 

Is the Internet of Things the Real Thing?

The Internet of Things: an exciting new world with a digital nervous system or a nightmare where objects take decisions while we are unconscious?

15 years ago, when the term was first coined, it was about assigning everything around us a unique identity with RFID tags, to enable all material things to talk to each other and save us time for gathering and using information. As RFID tags dropped below 1 cent cost, and sensors, modems and devices are getting smaller, smarter and cheaper, this vision is moving closer to reality.

The latest Gartner's Hype Cycle (August 2014) places the Internet of Things at the peak of Inflated Expectations, while Big Data evolving in tandem with IoT has already started to fall into the through of disillusionment, getting ready to join mobile health and cloud computing right there on the bottom of the through.


Consumers are not ready to embrace the flood of smart wearables and appliances - as they don't really know what to do with them, don't perceive their value and are concerned about privacy and prices.

Clay Christensen's theory of "disruptive technology" emphasizes that technologies tend to get better at a faster rate than users' needs increase. Next Big Thing often starts as an expensive "toy". When the telephone was first introduced it could only be afforded by the rich and it could only carry a signal over a short distance. If Watson really had said in 1943 that "there is a world market for maybe five computers", as Gordon Bell pointed out much later, it would have held true for some ten years.

The first generation of IoT devices fell short of user needs and was rather primitive. Over a third of people who bought a smart wearable abandoned it a few months later. Yet, the "new" has never been hotter. It seems a new wearable is launching every week and we are constantly waiting for something newer and better, hoping it will finally answer the question "what can we do now that we could not do before?"

However, the current generation of "smart things" is focused mostly on better designed hardware and higher-end consumers. Fashionable elegant-looking devices are supposed to make wearables more appealing and "design thinking" is one of today's hottest buzzwords. Withings Activité, Fitbit pendants from Tory Burch,  Yves Béhar's designed Vessyl, Diane Von Furstenberg's Google glass, Rebecca Minkoff's tech-enabled jewelry, and the new bracelet from Intel - MICA  - highlighted by pearls and other precious stones - are getting ready to conquer attention of consumers and developers. Especially developers - as the size of the market will depend on the number of developer-entrepreneurs creating value in it.

The app economy taught hardware manufacturers that when people experiment they find ways to create value, often in unexpected ways.  But it also taught developers that they need to invest considerable time to build a marketable app and the chances of that app to make money are about 1 in 25,000. As the average age of developers keeps decreasing getting into the middle and high school years, the main benefit of app development becomes education and learning by itself. But will this be sufficient for the Internet of Things or will inter-networked things remain a toy for the wealthy?

References

• Ashton K. (2009). That 'Internet of Things' Thing, in the real world things matter more than ideas RFID Journal (June 22)
• Gartner's "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2014" at http://www.gartner.com/document/2809728
• Harvard's Clayton Christensen on the economics of 'disruption' (techflash.com)
• Schreier G (2014). The internet of things for personalized health. Studies in health technology and informatics, 200, 22-31 PMID: 24851958
• Perera, C., Zaslavsky, A., Christen, P., & Georgakopoulos, D. (2014). Sensing as a service model for smart cities supported by Internet of Things Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 25 (1), 81-93 DOI: 10.1002/ett.2704
• Anderson J. amd Rainie L. (2014) The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025. Pew research
• Mackinlay M. (2013). Phases of Accuracy Diagnosis: (In)visibility of System Intersect, Vol 6, No 2