design-and-ideas – Page 28 – Cubicgarden.com…

Not long to propose a workshop for #Mozfest’s things on the web

This space could be yours!

Last month I talked about what we’re doing for Mozilla Fest 2014. Some people have mentioned how vague the whole call for participation thing sounds.

Its deliberately vague because we don’t want to be restrictive as this is a new area we’re exploring.

If somebody had to tie me down, I would describe like this…

Taking a humanistic and ethical approach to the new experiences and tension points of 6 billion people and 2^128 things on an open web.

There are massive challenges and drives to give access to everyone of the current 6 billion humans. But there equally a massive challenge for the 2 to the power of 128 potential things to also sit on the same web. Its not good enough to just sit on the web, they need to act and behave in ethical and humanistic ways.

Its not really fair to just create things which talk to the web and not consider its place in the grand ecosystem of the web. It would be like unleashing a new parasite into our oceans, without consideration about whats it role, is it going to kill everything else off, feast on coral reef, increase the number of jelly fish in the ocean?

Yes its just a ardunio and some loose code but where does it fit? Whats its role? Whats its ethics?

When we built the Perceptive Radio, we thought long and hard about this and decided it was just the tip of something far bigger. The balance between what things can do in the real world crossed with what they can do online really is almost like magic. Magic which can and will be easily abused. For example can you imagine the incredible things we could do if there was a wifi sniffer on board. Can you imagine the incredible experiences we could create and the terrifying experiences others with far less ethics or concern could do without your consent.

Theres been a little news following Facebook messenger permissions and some people talking about the actual permission systems of Android vs iOS. This is a scratch of the surface again…

As somebody said to me, yeah yeah so what this has been a long running problem for 20 years! Yes I know but things we carry around with us, plus the reliance on the network and these things strikes myself as something Jonathan Zittrain was talking about over 10 years ago.Back to Mozilla Festival – Its not all about being negative, honestly! We want to get away from..

Hey cool man, here’s my 3D printed thing I created…

Oh right, where does that fit in the world? Have you thought about where?

How does this forward human potential? How does it empower somebody? Myself, Jon and Jasmine feel it should empower and if it doesn’t, why does it exist? Maybe to enslave?

We’re pass the stage of novelty, lets think about how these things exist and work along side us.

Agree or disagree, we want to hear it…

Sign up to do a workshop, session or special performance in our cafe/bar we’re planning for Mozfest. And to be clear it doesn’t matter where you live in the world, if its that good, Mozila will find a way to get you over to London on the weekend of the 24-26th October. Not sure how to get started… go to the live coaching or just get in touch to ask more questions… You got till the Friday 22nd August…

Touches of Perceptive Media in odd places

I wrote about the idea of Perceptive Media at a theme park a while ago and frankly theres some equally fun places it could be used.

Every time I go to London and use the Virgin trains, I laugh inside to myself about the Virgin toilet signs. It reads..

“Please don’t flush Nappies, sanitary towels, paper towels, gum, old phones, unpaid bills, junk mail, you’re ex’s sweater, hopes, dreams or goldfish down this toilet.”

In the bigger toilets the sign-age is spoken aloud, and you’re ex’s sweater is swapped with your *friends sweater. Its always gender specific.

My first thought was that it could be randomly done then maybe every other one it cycles? If it was up to me, I would hook it up to the toilet seat. If the seat is down, play the boyfriend version if the seat is up play the girlfriend version? I assume it wouldn’t be noticed by most, but those who did would think it was great!

A little bit of game-play in real life.

Redecentralize this…

Adewale once said (I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives me a kick next time he sees me, but I think this quote sums up so much. And its only the start of the smart things he thinks and talks about)

People’s enthusiasm for federated decentralised $WHATEVER seems inversely proportional to the practicality of their plan for achieving it

However a share I recently was tagged on to revealed Jon Udells post and a giant list of projects trying to solve the problem decentralised social networking.

Going under the notion of the Alternative Internet, there are some quite interesting projects including…

Ampify is an open source, decentralised, social platform. It is intended as a successor to the Open Web and as a replacement for closed platforms like iOS and Facebook by providing a web application framework to create social apps on top of a secure, decentralised core.

ClearSkies is a peer-to-peer file sync program. It is inspired by BitTorrent Sync, but has an open and fully-documented protocol. ClearSkies is a sync program similar to DropBox, The protocol is layered in such a way that other applications can take advantage of it for purposes other than file sync.

Movim is a decentralized open source social network based on XMPP.

Peerm Anonymous P2P inside browsers, no installation, encrypted and secure. The browsers are talking the Tor protocol extended to P2P and are connecting to the nodes using WebSockets, multi-sources and streaming are supported.

Trovebox community edition. Wrote about this many times but didn’t know there was a community edition too.

Twister is a secure and fully-decentralized P2P microblogging platform based on concepts and code from Bitcoin and Libtorrent (as described in this whitepaper).

pump.io Self described as “a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network”. It’s a social stream with support for federated comunication.

trsst looks and feels like twitter but encrypted and anonymized and decentralized and only you hold the keys.

Plenty of cool projects but very little traction unfortunately, however theres quite a few which can be used to connect to the centralised networks. Looking at the list, I’m left wondering if Diaspora*, Wave and Tent has gone through the trough of disillusion and might be coming out the other end? A while ago I thought WordPress was going to make moves in this area of decentralised social networking.

Dropbox as furniture design company

Dropbox as furniture design company” – @iledigital (Jon Rogers)

When Jon first said this to me, I had to think for a second. Then I got it.

Amazon, ibooks, etc all have their own proprietary ways of holding your ebook. But imagine if you used many different sources to gather books and organise them. Some digital and some physical (like I do) These are sync’ed using Dropbox or other syncing systems and instead of being displayed as files, appear like dropbox’s photos stream. A far more useful way to display books you have and heck why not make it sharable while your at it?

Next leap… Instead of it being just a digital thing, how about as a physical manifestation? Dropbox could sync the physical and digital together, like a wispersync for binding digital and physical items. Maybe it slots a bookmark into position or folds over the top edge of a page?

But one thing you don’t want is some ugly as sin apple skeuomorphism bookshelf in your living room. It would need to fit with the rest of the furniture and surrounds. Making Dropbox a furniture design company. Not such a massive leap in imagination I would say…

Expectation control on deploy or die!

Somebody pointed me at a piece from Oreilly’s Solid conference. Like most others I would have loved to have gone but to be fair there would have been people I would rather have gone ahead of myself.

Joi ito I have a lot of respect for and I remember meeting him in London over 10 years ago. But I take a little issue with something Joi says…

the Media Lab’s emphasis is on projects that go all the way to manufacturing and distributing: moving from “demo or die” to “deploy or die,” as Joi puts it. Projects that deploy can be vastly more impactful than those that just demo — putting thousands of devices into the hands of users rather than just a couple. Plus, the manufacturing process is a crucial source of both constraints and creative possibility. Joi says, “Understanding manufacturing is going to be key to design, just like understanding the Internet has become key to running a company.”

Deploy or die is a nice idea but there’s issues which are associated with deployment. I understand the cost of manufacturing is getting cheaper however you need to be open and honest with the end user. User experience needs to be great otherwise people will simply drop it or kick it to the bin. Whats the point in putting it in peoples hands if they just put it in the bin?

Saying this is a demo, beta or prototype sets the expectation and this is a important stage which you shouldn’t ignore. Its the reason why Gmail had a beta tag for 10 years.

I’m in agreement the prototype shouldn’t be thrown away once you go into production. The prototype should embody as much of the real thing as possible. Its important to remember, someone needs to support the final thing. If you’re a research institute, this is not what you should be doing… This is the kind of thing which gets in the way of progression and researching the next problem/question.

Also I would point out that Joi is mainly talking about physical things which has always had a problem with being open and putting things out there for people to play with. This is something the internet has over the real world… A place to try stuff in the comfort of your own home.

Whats really needed is a safe place where people can play and try new things, which people understand don’t have the complete story or supply chain behind it. That space shouldn’t be a lab tucked away, it should be somewhere neutral like the number of community spaces which are popping up all over the place. In such a space, you can deploy or die to your hearts content. It shouldn’t be a genius bar either, it should be something comfortable and welcoming.

Yes it doesn’t scale too well but I think you will get more qualitative and qualitative feedback as a result

Is it our drugs are all digital now or digital is the new ecstasy?

Sometimes I bite at these headlines written for maximum bite value. This one reads… Now All Drugs are Digital

Obviously this is a lie, there are many synthetic drugs hitting the market which are being sold through the web. But its a interesting concept nonetheless from Children of the Machine.

The PC is the LSD of the ‘90s,” stated Timothy Leary in his last book, Chaos and Cyber Culture. Your first-ever desktop was acid. Think about your iPhone. Think about Oculus Rift. These are the 21st century’s digital super-strains. Let’s get wired.

Interestingly when thinking about the headline I instantly linked it to my post from a while ago, computers are the new ecstasy.

Which one is it… our drugs are all digital or the digital is the new ecstasy? They sound similar but I would argue, the later is more true, if you watch people on their phones and online. But then again the software is crafted in a way which encourages lab rat like behavior… maybe thats the new ecstasy?

Mindmapping… collaboration, mobile, presentation and more

Business Analyist, User Experience, Front-End Architecture Practice MindMap

I looked at my design work from my college days and noticed a serious amounts of Mindmaps. The mindmaps are not as big or as connected as I tend to make them now but I have been mindmapping for decades. For a short while I use to use Outlining tools which can be pretty straight forward but lacks the dimension.

Mindmapping seems synonymous with dyslexic. Maybe something to do with the leaps of topic?

As I’m a open source and collaborative kind of guy, I looked into something which I can run in Ubuntu and run across over multiple platforms. Collaboration is a nicety which I wanted but thought might not be possible.

Well I found something. Its called Mindmup.

I was using Freemind which is open source and runs every platform and seems to become the defacto open standard for mindmaps. Mindmup is also open source supports import and export freemind *.mm files without any noticeable differences . It also supports similar keyboard mappings and runs completely in a modern browser. It seems to support CSS and SVG too.

The killer features for me is the collaboration. The ability to share and have people add to your mindmap seems to be a killer feature. Because all you need is a browser. I haven’t really used this feature much but I find a few times when it would be so very handy! Collaboration! FTW!

I’m also loving the idea of using mindmaps for project management! You can save locally, Github, Dropbox, Google Drive and even to their own proprietary storage server.

I also spotted something which I have always wanted to see. A prezi killer? Rather than creating a mindmap for the sake of a presentation, imagine if you could just step through parts in a narrative form? Well I have yet to test it but look out soon, I may do it and see how people react.

My only issue is having to use another tool to create mindmaps on my Nexus 7 tablet. I’m using SimpleMind mindmapping which has its own desktop apps but can generate freemind files easily and also can save direct to google drive. The main reason I bought it is because its quick and easy to create maps. Which was very handy in TedXLiverpool last week. The web version isn’t quite fast enough to keep up with my thoughts unfortunately.

Ok I lied, I have another issue. Evernote doesn’t really understand Mindmaps. Yes I can import them via PDF or something else but it doesn’t natively understand them. Ideally I would find something to store all my mindmaps but would understand them enough to link them together. I know Hyperlinking maps is possible but only within certain applications and it tends to be proprietary.

I’m already imagining something like a XML DB or RDF store to hold mindmaps. Kind of reminds me of TopicMaps which seemed to die. Sure they had a way of holding them in a more native way?

Regardless… the main point is.. I certainly felt like this before.

I have loads of ideas — they’re like a bowl of tangled spaghetti in my head. But, as with many dyslexics, I have a real problem accessing those strands in an organised way. The many benefits of mind-mapping are well documented as being invaluable to both dyslexics and non-dyslexics…

Apply for a workshop/space with us at Mozfest 2014

There are a number of connected things in my head right now, maybe I should learn how to do hyper-connected mind-maps to make more sense of these different ideas.

Mozilla has gone through a lot over the years, specially in the last few months with Brendan Eich. However its trying to make a mead for its self by sticking true to its core values, this they call the Mozilla Manifesto.

The Mozilla project is a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the Internet. We have worked together since 1998 to ensure that the Internet is developed in a way that benefits everyone. We are best known for creating the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

The Mozilla project uses a community-based approach to create world-class open source software and to develop new types of collaborative activities. We create communities of people involved in making the Internet experience better for all of us.

As a result of these efforts, we have distilled a set of principles that we believe are critical for the Internet to continue to benefit the public good as well as commercial aspects of life. We set out these principles below.

The goals for the Manifesto are to:

articulate a vision for the Internet that Mozilla participants want the Mozilla Foundation to pursue;
speak to people whether or not they have a technical background;
make Mozilla contributors proud of what we’re doing and motivate us to continue; and
provide a framework for other people to advance this vision of the Internet.

Well meaning stuff and the principles go even further, but its worth noting a few things I have observed recently which I feel the Mozilla Manifesto could be a good place to start from.

Dan Hon in his talk at TedXLiverpool talked about Epiphany in technology. There was a phrase I heard him talk about which was Humans as a service. This isn’t a new concept but its getting talked about in few places right now.

Airbnb are modern versions of housing clouds delivering housing as a service, and similarly, Zipcar and Uber are car clouds, offering consumers transportation as a service. Anything can be clouded, if we put our minds to it.

Yes even humans can be a service. You only have to look at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and to a lesser extend Taskrabbit (both which are not available in the UK or Europe because of EU labor laws, something worth remembering). Ultimately this is all leading to dehumanising
experiences which leaves us humans in the cold and the algorithms in control. As Dan said, the systems and algorithms are so complex we dare not question, we just go with it.

Now lets dig into to Mozilla’s manifesto principles…

The Internet must enrich the lives of individual human beings.

Individuals must have the ability to shape the Internet and their own experiences on the Internet.

Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust

Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the Internet is an important goal, worthy of time, attention and commitment.

Where does Humans as a Service fit into these principles? No where I would argue.

Another lens…

The ethics of personal data is something I wrote about on the BBC R&D blog a while back. Most of these principles tie into ethical problems with the silicon valley style of running a business. Another thing I highlighted in my online dating talk from Primeconf and Adrian Hon touched upon in his talk from TedXLiverpool.

The notion of continues growth, growing fast and money as the ultimate metric is very much Silicon Valley bubble dreams which frankly I would rather not be a part of. I would suggest its slightly anti-human in nature?

Ok ok... so I’ve said all this but what can you do about it?

This is a call to arms, myself, Jon Rogers, Jasmine Cox and others are spacewranglers for the Mozilla Fest this year. Under the banner, Open Web with Things…

Here’s some of themes I’m thinking (not necessarily the group).

Its not simply Internet of Things, but rather a web with things included. Those things can be digital, analogue and even humans. I’m thinking

Looking at the moral and ethical aspects raised by things
Considering the human aspect in (the Internet of) things
Morals and ethical aspects raised by things
Personal data ethics
Ethics in Internet of Things
Human friendly wearable policies
Storytelling with things in the time of moores law (grabbed that from Dan Hon)

Sound exciting? Sound like something you should be involved in?

Yes it does and if you got an idea for a session or workshop which fits our general trajectory? You should tell us about it here. The best ones we will pick and they will take place in our space along with other related workshops.

If you don’t know anything about Mozilla Festival you can find my thoughts here and learn much more here. Or feel free to get in touch with me… You got till August 22nd. So what you waiting for? Get thinking and writing.

TedXLiverpool does Liverpool proud

I do love a good TedX and theres been some good ones this year. But I really like the ones which are more representative of the local area or local concerns. They tend to bring new people to the stage and new ideas, and you know how much I love diversity of ideas. TedXLiverpool is one such one TedX.

There is something about Liverpool… I can’t put my finger on it but everyone I know who is from there seems to absolutely love it. It does seem like a interesting place with a similar history to Bristol. There are other similarities like 2 football teams which seem to divide the city. The things I don’t really like is the transport links between Liverpool and Manchester. The last train back from Liverpool to Manchester seems to be 2320 and is the slowest train you’ve seen. Not only that the first train to Liverpool for TedXLiverpool was 8:10 which is shocking even for a Sunday. Anyhow the point is, I hardly get a chance to really experience Liverpool.

So enough grumbling about the transport (although I did get a ticket for my scooter too). Marie tried to convince me to sign up to TedXLiverpool during the last Thinking Digital and I kinda said maybe but as the line up grew and grew, it was having Adrian and Dan Hon both speaking which got me to plonk down the money for a early bird ticket. Although they were not talking together, having them both in the same venue was enough.

Later it was announced Sir Ken Roberson would be joining the TedXLiverpool line up and the tickets went overnight. I’ll be honest and say I was sitting pretty with my tickets confirmed. Don’t get me wrong the hearing Sir Ken talking was like having a double cherry on the top of a great cake. And I haven’t even started on the fantastic venue of the Everyman theater. Everything was lining up to be a special day.

Everything seemed smooth and before you knew it, Adrian Hon took to the floor. When I say floor I literary mean floor. The everyman theatre has a floor with the audience covering 3/4’s of it. There is no where to hide, no podium, just the speaker and some props. The space outside in the lobby area was long and had a nice long balcony. If I had not seen the Royal Exchange in Manchester, I would say it was one of the finest theaters I had seen.

So what about those speakers? Everybody was great but in my usual style he’s my favorite speakers. Sir Ken Robinson , Graham Hughes, Adrian Hon, Homebaked Anfield, Nigel Ward, Dan Hon and Hayley Parkes.

Sir Ken Roberson

Sir Ken was incredible and although he never actually did a talk for 18mins. He was interviewed by Herb Kim on the sofa with a massive TEDdy (get it) sat next to him. Teddy was unfortunately right between myself and Sir Ken. However it was amazing to hear him answer questions about his famous TED talk. In the 3rd section of TEDxLiverpool, Sir Ken took over from Herb presenting and riffing between the last lot of speakers. Then just when you think it can’t be better, after Mike Southon. Sir Ken riff on the fly for about 5-10mins. I was scrabbling around my mind map making notes. Diversity of thoughts, amazement of life, belief in human endeavor, reliance on academic endeavor and much much more was talked about.

Graham Hughes

I have wrote about Graham so many times from when I first met him at Thinking Digital. He kind of inspired me to head to Tokyo and he’s now urging me to go visit him in Panama! Not sure I’ll be going but thanks for the offer all the same Graham and great to hear his story is continuing forward to somewhere specially.

Adrian Hon

Adrian, started off proceedings with a sobering talk about cowardice and courage. The points he made were spot on, as a society were rubbish at encouraging people to be bold. He talked about the white feather which was a sign of cowardice in war times, and the time for pacifism. What about taking courage in everyday life? He then put this all in the scope of whats happening with the 5 stacks we are all using now. Asking the question, have you gotten off Facebook yet? What would it take personally to get off Facebook? Facebook was simply an example which really struck home. Great talk Adrian

Dan Hon

Dan ‘s Emphany in technology was similar to his brother’s talk. Although they were quite different on the face of it. Putting the humanity into technological solutions. The problems with algorithms and business models was highlighted front and centre throughout the talk. This is something I have been thinking about a lot. After the event I got a quick chance to talk to Dan and mention how I’ve been looking at online dating with a similar lens. Great talk Dan

Homebaked

Homebaked is one of those little gems which you come across once in a while. Just like a lot of the other community projects I mentioned before, they just fucking did it. Co-working space, bakery and a cornerstone of the local community. Connecting the local community with new people coming into the area. I mean wow! The homebaked story was amazing and got me thinking this approach is the solution to gentrification? What can I do to help this in my area?

Peter Kenslla

I was listening to Peter talking about his history and trying to establish a restaurant in the middle of the financial crisis. It was interesting but it dawned on me almost at the end of his talk. The restaurant he was talking about was Lunya. A place I went with Jody Appleton to on the first night of our talks on BBC Merseyside. Nice restaurant and I like the view that the more terrifying it is the
more you should do it.

Hayley Parks

So great hearing Hayley again, when shes playing the piano it seems to take her to another place. Simply memorising!

Jess Gillam

Jess was a late replacement for Ameila O’Connell. She played two different saxophones and really added a Jazzy tone to the everyman theatre. Great stuff and how young? Great future beckons.

Honestly it was a hard pick to my list. Every talk was great, the ones above struck a cord with me. Adrian McEwen, Nigel Ward and Prof. Tom Solomon were all great and deserve a mention too. Gemma Bodinetz ‘s talk about the everyman was nice, as I had no idea about the Everyman’s history.

TedXLiverpool was really impressive, and once again shows what happen when you have a good range of people not just star after star.

What happened to Pigeon post?

You might have heard Amazon are serious about their drone based delivery system for certain items, I assume for their prime customers.

In the letter (pdf), Amazon’s head of public policy, Paul Misener, says that “in the past five months we have made advancements towards the development of highly automated aerial vehicles” for its new service, which it calls Amazon Prime Air. Misener says the five-pound limit covers 86% of products sold on Amazon.

Meanwhile, the FAA’s British counterpart told the Guardian that it could foresee a time when, once drones have proven their airworthiness and ability to avoid obstacles safely, they would be allowed to operate autonomously

I wrote about Amazon Prime Air, which myself and many others thought was a publicity stunt (although to be fair Adewale was right on the money). I also wrote about pigeon post, which something which I thought was flipping crazy but might actually work.

Nathan Rae is the man with the vision and I recently saw him and asked him what he made of Amazon Prime Air? He said it was good news but what makes Pigeon post really special is the protocol. That protocol is physical package protocol (PPP?)

Thats where the magic is…