Podcasts about Mark Weiser

Are you smart or average? How would you describe a genius? Einstein's grandnephew who knows the answer to every test question ever? Or maybe it is a smart person who can solve any problem? We have news for you: it is not just about your genes, grades, or life experience. Scientists have revealed ten signs of a wise person we bet you've ignored. TIMESTAMPS You don't smoke 0:36 You're not the loud type 1:32 You can find a connection between just about anything 2:34 You're a liberal 3:47 You often ask yourself the big questions 4:48 You're super loyal 5:54 You have surprising hobbies 6:45 You like to take risks 7:46 You bite your nails 8:54 SUMMARY Dr. Mark Weiser who works for Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues believe there is a link between smoking and intelligence. They found that the more you smoke, the lower your IQ is. Super smart people are mostly quiet. They don't babble, and they don't often initiate conversations. Why? They are too busy thinking. Creativity is about drawing lines between what seems to be disconnected from others. It is possible for those who have experienced more things and have analyzed that experience. Doesn't it sound like the definition of being wise? Those wise people normally come up with the most genius ideas. One of the signs of being super smart is to be bold enough to accept ideas that move our world forward. The more you think about the nature and future of everything around you, the more you realize different scenarios are possible. You know that at some point, it could all go wrong, and it's making you anxious. Being always alert and prepared for whatever may come your way is typical for smart people. Those who successfully beat the desire to do it and are loyal partners to just one special individual tend to be smarter than those who cheat and sleep around. It is also explained in that intelligent liberals study by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. . If you are a computer systems analyst who gets new ideas from origami or a chef who is inspired by furniture design, you are pretty much a creative genius. It has to do with the ability to relate the totally unrelated and being bold enough to try new things and design new concepts. When we speak of risks, we don't mean life-threatening stuff like jumping off the roofs and train surfing. Risks are the new challenges and ideas that you gladly try out of curiosity. And, quite a bit of adrenalin, as well. Nail biting has been largely considered just a nervous habit, yet recent studies show it may be a demonstration of perfectionism. According to psychologists, such body-focused habits as skin picking, pulling your hair or biting your nails help fight boredom and soothe dissatisfaction. Have you found any of these signs in yourself? Or maybe you just realized your friend is much wiser than you thought? Feel free to share in the comments. Subscribe to Bright Side : https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: / brightside Instagram: / brightgram SMART Youtube: https://goo.gl/JTfP6L 5-Minute Crafts Youtube: https://www.goo.gl/8JVmuC Have you ever seen a talking slime? Here he is – Slick Slime Sam: https://goo.gl/zarVZo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://youtu.be/WQlt_qyIzBQ Ajay Malik, CEO of Secomind.AI, is driven by his passion for leveraging AI to improve efficiency and productivity. Letting AI do the Work is the guiding principle at Secomind.AI, which helps incorporate AI into products, workflows, and customer support using their Enterprise AI platform, StudioX. We delve into Ajay's journey into AI, from his college days to his deep involvement at Google, and now leading Secomind.AI. He shares his AI Culture Framework, which has dramatically boosted productivity in his company: establishing an AI policy to mandate AI usage company-wide, leading by example, encouraging shameless and open use of AI, and continuously improving AI skills and applications.  He also emphasizes the importance of curiosity and the ability to distinguish quality as key skills for effectively using AI. He recommends using multiple AI tools, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and others, to get diverse perspectives and improve problem-solving abilities. --- Let AI do the Work with Ajay Malik Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Ajay Malik, the CEO of Secomind.AI, a company that is helping you incorporate AI into your products, workflows, and customer support using StudioX, the Enterprise AI platform. Ajay, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me here. Very excited to be here. Well, I'm excited too because you had a really good pre-call and I learned a lot about AI and plus I had a lot of fun. I expect we can transmit that fun to the listeners as well. I look forward to that. So let's start with your personal Why. So what is your personal Why and how is your business connected to it? Personal Why? Okay, so I have always believed that use automation or augmentation or whatever you can do to do things which can be done better. It's almost like, you know what, I wear my glasses because I can see better. Humans have been always doing that. I'm talking like whatever the history we know, okay, we have always done that. And we're wearing our shoes or using a stick when going up mountain, everything. We always augmented and to me, AI is a tool, AI is something which helps us do things better. That is my thing and I want everybody to use it. Yeah, I love it. I'm actually right now listening to the Mars trilogy. And it was written, the third book, I think it's Kim Stanley Robinson, it's a man, his trilogy, it's fascinating, it's about conquering Mars and it was written in 1996 and these protagonists, they are using AI all the time and they explain how they are using AI and they're using it very similarly to what we have started doing in the 2020s. So this book was really 25 years ahead of its time.  I have to interrupt you. I have to tell you something so cool, okay, because you like to read and I want you to read one paper. It's called the Computer of the 21st Century. Computer for the 21st Century by a man called Mark Weiser. I think it's a paper from 1991 and the guy, I think we'd call him father of modern computing and something like that. I don't know. It's my inspiration paper and this paper has been talking about like this. Okay, what if you wake up you are tossing and turning in your bed in the morning because you are about to wake up, and then there is an alarm clock right there which can see that you are tossing and turning. So it slightly whispers, hey, time to wake up is coming okay and so it tells you and then it tells the coffee machine which is somewhere else, hey, you should start brewing the coffee so that he will wake up and he will get his day started. This is before Siri. This is before iPhone. Okay, this is before anything that was designed, which is doing computer image recognition and doing it. And the guy's talking like, yes, this is how computer will help us in day-to-day life. He did not use the term artificial intelligence or AI or models or the thought process that AI,

Welcome once again to The Million Dollar Relationships podcasts. In this episode, our host Kevin Thompson is joined by guest Mike Dillard. Mike Dillard is a successful entrepreneur who began his career in the network marketing industry and introduced new online marketing techniques. He has built multiple successful businesses, including a financial education company, and has invested in various companies and real estate properties. He currently focuses on providing education to entrepreneurs through his website and podcast. He is also a motorsports enthusiast and a professional race-car driver.   Mike talks about the importance of building meaningful and rewarding relationships in business and life. He also shares his personal story of how he built multiple 8-figure businesses and how his relationship with money changed over time. Mike discusses about the impact that several individuals have had on his life and career, including Mark Weiser, Todd Falcone, Yanik Silver, JP Newman, Ann Shippy, and Aubrey Marcus. Mike also mentions his course RicherEveryday.com, where he and his wife Michelle teach about building wealth through retraining subconscious programs, asset protection strategies, and passive income strategies. His primary focus is to provide fellow entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills they need to start and scale their businesses through educational classes. Join us to hear this exciting conversation about the relationship between money and wealth and how to save and invest without fear!   [00:00 - 06:55] Mike's Entrepreneurial Journey Mike Dillard has been an entrepreneur since the age of 25. He built three multiple 8-figure businesses in different industries. He began his career in the network marketing industry at the age of 19 and brought modern online direct response marketing techniques to the industry in 2005, which he documented in his self-published book, "Magnetic Sponsoring" which sold over 100,000 copies. By the age of 27, he built his first 7-figure business and grew it to 8 figures by the age of 30.   [06:55 - 15:22] The Challenges of Entrepreneurship Mike Dillard experienced an episode of insomnia that lasted for six to seven days, which caused his body to shut down and almost killed him. He was bedridden for 20-plus hours a day and could not sleep. This led to him having to abandon his business, abandon any kind of social life and his bank account declined. His doctor gave him Valium and other sleep prescriptions, but they only gave him 60 minutes of sleep a night which made him suicidal.   [15:22 - 20:22] The Impactful People on Mike's Life Mike Dillard mentions several people who have had a profound impact on his life and career, including Mark Weiser, Todd Falcone, Yanik Silver, JP Newman, Ann Shippy, and Aubrey Marcus. Mark Weiser and Todd Falcone were his mentors when he was in network marketing and they took the time to coach and mentor him, which made a huge difference in his life at that point in his career. Yanik Silver helped to bring him into the internet marketing world and opened doors for him to meet other successful entrepreneurs. JP Newman and Ann Shippy saved his life from his insomnia episode.   [20:22 – 25:51] Building Wealth and Retraining the Subconscious Mike offers a course on building wealth through retraining of subconscious programs, asset protection strategies, and passive income strategies on the website, RicherEveryday.com. The course is divided into three phases. In the first phase, it teaches people about neurology and neurochemistry of becoming aware of the neurochemical patterns in their subconscious programs. In phase two, it gives them a system to help retrain those programs and to start building wealth on a daily basis. In phase three, it teaches people how to set up asset protection strategies with trusts and how to earn passive investment income with real estate and crypto, and other types of passive income strategies.    [25:51 - 26:45] Closing Statements Follow Mike on LinkedIn and check out his website at https://richereveryday.com/ or https://mikedillard.com/ Final words   Thanks for tuning in!    If you liked my show, please LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW, like, and subscribe!    Find me on the following streaming platforms: Apple Spotify Google Podcasts IHeart Radio Stitcher   Tweetable Quotes   “Building wealth is not just about making money; it's about having healthy internal patterns that allow you to build wealth over the long run.” – Mike Dillard    

Dobrodošli na Zalet — podkast o dizajnu digitalnih proizvoda! Imamo prvog gosta! Veliko nam je zadovoljstvo što smo imali priliku da ugostimo Milovana Jovičića Miku. Milovan je dizajner, konsultant, organizator mitapa i violinista. Pričali smo o konsaltingu, zajednicama, etici u dizajnu i biciklama za um.Poglavlja

Fitbit was founded in 2007, originally as Healthy Metrics Research, Inc, by James Park and Eric Friedman. They had a goal to bring fitness trackers to market. They didn't invent the pedometer and in fact wanted to go far further. That prize goes to Abraham-Louis Perrelet of Switzerland in 1780 or possibly back to da Vinci. And there are stories of calculating the distance armies moved using various mechanisms that used automations based on steps or the spinning of wagon wheels. The era of wearables arguably began in 1953 when the transistor radio showed up and Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka started Sony. People started to get accustomed to carrying around technology. 1961 and Claude Shannon and Edward Thorp build a small computer to time when balls would land in roulette. Which they put in a shoe. Meanwhile sensors that could detect motion and the other chips to essentially create a small computer in a watch-sized package were coming down in price. Apple had already released the Nike+iPod Sports Kit the year before, with a little sensor that went in my running shoes. And Fitbit capitalized on an exploding market for tracking fitness. Apple effectively proved the concept was ready for higher end customers. But remember that while the iPod was incredibly popular at the time, what about everyone else? Park and Friedman raised $400,000 on the idea in a pre-seed round and built a prototype. No, it wasn't actually a wearable, it was a bunch of sensors in a wooden box. That enabled them to shop around for more investors to actually finish a marketable device. By 2008 they were ready to take the idea to TechCrunch 50 and Tim O'Reilly and other panelists from TechCrunch loved it. And they picked up a whopping 2,000 pre-release orders. Only problem is they weren't exactly ready to take that kind of volume. So they toured suppliers around Asia for months and worked overtime in hotel rooms fixing design and architecture issues. And in 2009 they were finally ready and took 25,000 orders, shipping about one fifth of them. That device was called the Fitbit Tracker and took on a goal of 10,000 steps that became a popular goal in Japan in the 1960s. It's a little money-clip sized device with just one button that shows the status towards that 10,000 step goal. And once synchronized we could not only see tons of information about how many calories we burned and other statistics but we could also see Those first orders were sold directly through the web site. The next batch would be much different, going through Best Buy. The margins selling directly were much better and so they needed to tune those production lines. They went to four stores, then ten times that, then 15 times that. They announced the Fitbit Ultra in 2011. Here we got a screen that showed a clock but also came with a stopwatch. That would evolve into the Fitbit One in 2012. Bluetooth now allowed us to sync with our phones. That original device would over time evolve to the Zip and then the Inspire Clip. They grew fast in those first few years and enjoyed a large swathe of the market initially, but any time one vendor proves a market others are quick to fast-follow. The Nike Fuelband came along in 2012. There were also dozens of cheap $15 knock-offs in stores like Fry's. But those didn't have nearly as awesome an experience. A simple experience was the Fitbit Flex, released in 2013. The Fitbit could now be worn on the wrist. It looked more like the original tracker but a little smaller so it could slide in and out of a wristband. It could vibrate so could wake us up and remind us to get up and move. And the Fitbit Force came out that year, which could scroll through information on the screen, like our current step count. But that got some bad press for the nickel used on the device so the Charge came out the next year, doing much of the same stuff. And here we see the price slowly going up from below a hundred dollars to $130 as new models with better accelerometers came along. In 2014 they released a mobile app for all the major mobile platforms that allowed us to track devices through Bluetooth and opened up a ton of options to show other people our information. Chuck Schumer was concerned about privacy but the options for fitness tracking were about to explode in the other direction, becoming even less private. That's the same year the LG G Watch came out, sporting a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. The ocean was getting redder and devices were becoming more like miniature computers that happened to do tracking as well. After Android Wear was released in 2014, now called Wear OS, the ocean was bound to get much, much redder. And yet, they continued to grow and thrive. They did an IPO, or Initial Public Offering, in 2015 on the back of selling over 21 million devices. They were ready to reach a larger market. Devices were now in stores like Walmart and Target, and they had badges. It was an era of gamification and they were one of the best in the market at that. Walk enough steps to have circumnavigated the sun? There's a badge for that. Walk the distance of the Nile? There's a badge for that. Do a round trip to the moon and back? Yup, there's a badge for that as well. And we could add friends in the app. Now we could compete to see who got more steps on the day. And of course some people cheated. Once I was wearing a Fitbit on my wrist I got 60,000 steps one day as I painted the kitchen. So we sometimes didn't even mean to cheat. And an ecosystem had sprung up around Fitbit. Like Fitstar, a personal training coach, which got acquired by Fitbit and rebranded as Fitbit Coach. 2015 was also when the Apple Watch was released. The Apple Watch added many of the same features like badges and similar statistics. By then there were models of the Fitbit that could show who was calling our phone or display a text message we got. And that was certainly part of the Wear OS for of Android. But those other devices were more expensive and Fitbit was still able to own the less expensive part of the market and spend on R&D to still compete at the higher end. They were flush with cash by 2016 so while selling 22 million more devices, they bought Coin and Pebble that year, taking in technology developed through crowdfunding sources and helping mass market it. That's the same year we got the Fitbit Alta, effectively merging the Charge and Alta and we got HR models of some devices, which stands for Heart Rate. Yup, they could now track that too. They bought Vector Watch SRL in 2017, the same year they released the Ionic smartwatch, based somewhat on the technology acquired from Pebble. But the stock took a nosedive, and the market capitalization was cut in half. They added weather to the Ionic and merged that tech with that from the Blaze, released the year before. Here, we see technology changing quickly - Pebble was merged with Blaze but Wear OS from Google and Watch OS from Apple were forcing changes all the faster. The apps on other platforms were a clear gap as were the sensors baked into so many different integrated circuit packages. But Fitbit could still compete. In 2018 they released a cheaper version of the smartwatch called the Versa. They also released an API that allowed for a considerable amount of third party development, as well as Fitbit OS 3. They also bought Twine Health in 2018 Partnered with Adidas in 2018 for the ionic. Partnered with Blue Cross Blue Shield to reduce insurance rates 2018 released the Charge 3 with oxygen saturation sensors and a 40% larger screen than the Charge 2. From there the products got even more difficult to keep track of, as they poked at every different corner of the market. The Inspire, Inspire HR, Versa 2, Versa Lite, Charge 4, Versa 3, Sense, Inspire 2, Luxe. I wasn't sure if they were going to figure out the killer device or not when Fitbit was acquired by Google in 2021. And that's where their story ends and the story of the ubiquitous ecosystem of Google begins. Maybe they continue with their own kernels or maybe they're moving all of their devices to WearOS. Maybe Google figures out how to pull together all of their home automation and personal tracking devices into one compelling offer. Now they get to compete with Amazon who now has the Halo to help attack the bottom of the market. Or maybe Google leaves the Fitbit team alone to do what they do. Fitbit has sold over 100 million devices and sports well over 25 million active users. The Apple Watch surpassed that number and blew right past it. WearOS lives in a much more distributed environment where companies like Asus, Samsung, and LG sell products but it appears to have a similar installation base. And it's a market still growing and likely looking for a leader, as it's easy to imagine a day when most people have a smart watch. But the world has certainly changed since Mark Weiser was the Chief Technologist at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox Parc in 1988 when he coined the term "ubiquitous computing.” Technology hadn't entered every aspect of our lives at the time like it has now. The team at Fitbit didn't invent wearables. George Atwood invented them in 1783. That was mostly pulleys and mechanics. Per V. Brüel first commercialized the piezoelectric accelerometer in 1943. It certainly took a long time to get packaged into an integrated circuit and from there it took plenty of time to end up on my belt loop. But from there it took less than a few years to go on my wrist and then once there were apps for all the things true innovation came way faster. Because it turns out that once we open up a bunch of APIs, we have no idea the amazing things people use with what then go from devices to platforms. But none of that would have happened had Fitbit not helped prove the market was ready for Weiser's ubiquitous computing. And now we get to wrestle with the fallout while innovation is moving even faster. Because telemetry is the opposite of privacy. And if we forget to protect just one of those API endpoints, like not implementing rate throttling or messing up the permissions, or leaving a micro-service open to all the things, we can certainly end up telling the world all about things. Because the world is watching, whether we think we're important enough to watch or not.

Are you smart or average? How would you describe a genius? Einstein's grandnephew who knows the answer to every test question ever? Or maybe it is a smart person who can solve any problem? We have news for you: it is not just about your genes, grades, or life experience. Scientists have revealed ten signs of a wise person we bet you've ignored. - Dr. Mark Weiser who works for Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer and his colleagues believe there is a link between smoking and intelligence. They found that the more you smoke, the lower your IQ is. - Super smart people are mostly quiet. They don't babble, and they don't often initiate conversations. Why? They are too busy thinking. - Creativity is about drawing lines between what seems to be disconnected from others. It is possible for those who have experienced more things and have analyzed that experience. Doesn't it sound like the definition of being wise? Those wise people normally come up with the most genius ideas. - One of the signs of being super smart is to be bold enough to accept ideas that move our world forward. - The more you think about the nature and future of everything around you, the more you realize different scenarios are possible. You know that at some point, it could all go wrong, and it's making you anxious. Being always alert and prepared for whatever may come your way is typical for smart people. - Those who successfully beat the desire to do it and are loyal partners to just one special individual tend to be smarter than those who cheat and sleep around. It is also explained in that intelligent liberals study by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. - If you are a computer systems analyst who gets new ideas from origami or a chef who is inspired by furniture design, you are pretty much a creative genius. It has to do with the ability to relate the totally unrelated and being bold enough to try new things and design new concepts. - When we speak of risks, we don't mean life-threatening stuff like jumping off the roofs and train surfing. Risks are the new challenges and ideas that you gladly try out of curiosity. And, quite a bit of adrenalin, as well. - Nail biting has been largely considered just a nervous habit, yet recent studies show it may be a demonstration of perfectionism. According to psychologists, such body-focused habits as skin picking, pulling your hair, or biting your nails help fight boredom and soothe dissatisfaction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode I read Mark Weiser's extremely influential Scientific American article, "The Computer for the 21st Century".

Episode 14 of our live music trivia show!With:Bryan Rolli, music writer for Billboard, Forbes and Paste,Horti (Jeff Hortillosa), of Whiskey Shivers and Pitch Perfect 3,Mark Weiser, of NYC's Shake Rattle and Roll Piano Entertainment,and Sean Rainey, fellow piano entertainer and songwriter / artist (Onami)

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they're indistinguishable from it." That quote from computer scientist Mark Weiser is from a 1991 paper where he outlined the vision of ubiquitous computing; in it, he also referenced "seamlessness"... We just can't get away from textile metaphors: we catch airline "shuttles", we "weave" through traffic, we follow comment "threads” -- the metaphors are as ubiquitous and abundant and threaded throughout our lives as the textiles (and computing) all around us.In fact, argues author and columnist Virginia Postrel, the story of textiles IS the story of technology and science (across all kinds of fields, from biology to chemistry); of commerce (as well as management, measurement, machines); but most of all, of civilization (vs. just culture) itself. That's what her new book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World is all about. But it's really a story and history of innovation, and of human ingenuity... which is also the theme of the a16z Podcast -- and of this special, inaugural book launch episode with the author in conversation with showrunner Sonal Chokshi.The discussion both dives deep and lightly dips into a wide range of topics: fabrics, from the genetics of cotton to the supply chain of silk (including pre-Industrial Revolution factories, early payment and incentive alignment, "maestre" and notions of expertise); knowledge, from the storage and transmission of it to sharing tacit and explicit code (including manuals, notation, measures); and math as the science of patterns, origins of mathematics (including early education and getting paid for it). The touch on the NASA space program, knitting and AI, and the environmental impact of dyes. Throughout, they discuss the what and the why -- the warp and weft of this episode! -- of HOW innovation happens, from incremental improvements to sudden leaps, also taking a closer look at the demographics and images involved. And finally, they cover the evolution and meaning of kente cloth (as well as other patterns) in Ghana and beyond... Because the story of textiles -- and of technology -- is not just a story of one culture or time or place: it is a universally human story, woven from countless threads and wires.links & other articles mentioned in this episode:YouTube & Instagram from the author, featuring cited images among othersThe Computer for the 21st Century, Mark Weiser, Scientific American, 1991Every topological surface can be knit: a proof, Sarah-Marie Belcastro, Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, 2009How an AI took over the an adult knitting community, Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic, 2018Portrait of a Man, Portrait of a Woman, Maarten van Heemskerck, Rijks Museum, 1529In Ghana, pandemic inspires new fabrics, Kent Mensah, Christian Science Monitor 2020Welcome to the new world civilization, Virginia Postrel, Reason, 2020images: composite of knitting by © sarah-marie belcastro (courtesy Virginia Postrel) + magnetic core memory wires & beads, magnified 60x (photo from Virginia Postrel) -- combined by Sonal Chokshi for the a16z Podcast

In episode 2, Ryan and Azeem decided to do something a bit different. Last week Ryan spoke a bit about how what we're doing is related to the metaverse, and as promised we wanted to deliver an in depth episode on exactly what that means because it's what we intend to build. During this episode, Ryan references quite a lot of people and quite a lot of papers, articles, etc. If you'd like to dig deeper, he's created a list of links for you to pursue at your own leisure. Mark Weiser. The Computer for the 21st Century https://www.ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/Weiser-Computer21stCentury-SciAm.pdf Kevin Kelly. Mirror Worlds https://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/ Vannevar Bush, As We May Think https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ Ted Nelson, Project Xanadu and Hypertext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon Matthew Ball, Metaverse and Who Will Build It Marc Andreessen, “Software is Eating the World” https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world/ Ernest Cline, Ready Player One https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=ready+player+one&qid=1589828717&sr=8-2 Magic Leap https://www.magicleap.com/en-us Niantic Labs https://nianticlabs.com Improbable https://improbable.io 6D.ai https://www.6d.ai How Close are we to achieving the Metaverse https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/05/just-how-close-are-we-to-achieving-the-metaverse/ The Metaverse, Spatial Computing and 5G https://www.lbbonline.com/news/the-metaverse-spatial-computing-and-5g

Mark Weiser was the Chief Technologiest at the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, or Xerox Parc in 1988 when he coined the term "ubiquitous computing.” Technology hadn't entered every aspect of our lives at the time like it has now. The concept of wearable technology probably kicks off way earlier than you might think.  Humans have long sought to augment ourselves with technology. This includes eyeglasses, which came along in 1286  and wearable clocks, an era kicked off with the Nuremberg eggs in 1510. The technology got smaller and more precise as our capacity at precision grew. Not all wearable technology is meant to be worn by humans. We strapped cameras to pigeons in 1907. in the 15th century, Leonardo da Vinci would draw up plans for a pedometer and that concept would go on the shelf until Thomas Jefferson picked it back up during his tinkering days. And we would get an abacus ring in 1600. But computers began by needing a lot of electricity to light up those vacuum tubes to replace operations from an abacus, and so when the transistor came along in the 40s, we'd soon start looking for ways to augment our capabilities with those.  Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka began the wearable technology craze in 1953 when they started developing what would become the TR-55 when it was released in 1955. It was the first transistor radio and when they changed their name to Sony, they would introduce the first of their disruptive technologies. We don't think of radios as technology as much as we once did, but they were certainly an integral part of getting the world ready to accept other technological advances to come! Manfred Clynes came up with cyborgs in his story story called Cyborgs in Space in 1960. The next year, Edward Thorp and mathematician and binary algebra guru Claude Shannon wanted to try their hands at cheating at roulette so built a small computer to that timed when balls would land. It went in a shoe. created their own version of wearable technology – a computer small enough to fit into a shoe. This would stay a secret until Thorp released his book “Beat the Dealer” telling readers they got a 44 percent improvement in making bets. By 1969 though Seiko gave us the first automatic quartz watch.  Other technologies were coming along at about the same time that would later revolutionize portable computing once they had time to percolate for awhile. Like in the 1960s, liquid crystal displayers were being researched at RCA. The technology goes back further but George H. Heilmeier from RCA laboratories gets credit for In 1964 for operationalizing LCD.  And Hatano developed a mechanical pedometer to track progress to 10,000 steps a day, which by 1985 had him defining that as the number of steps a person should reach in a day. But back to electronics.  Moore's law. The digital camera traces its roots to 1975, but Kodak didn't really pursue it. 1975 and devices were getting smaller and smaller. Another device we don't think of as a computer all that much any more is a calculator. But kits were being sold by then and suddenly components had gotten small enough that you could get a calculator in your watch, initially introduced by Pulsar. And those radios were cool but what if you wanted to listen to what you wanted rather than the radio? Sony would again come along with another hit: The Walkman in 1979, selling over 200 million over the ensuing decade. Akio Morita was a genius, also bringing us digital hearing aids and putting wearables into healthcare. Can you imagine the healthcare industry without wearable technology today?  You could do more and more and by 1981, Seiko would release the UC 2000 Wrist PC. By then portable computers were a thing. But not wearables. You could put 2 whopping kilobytes of data on your wrist and use a keyboard that got strapped to an arm. Computer watches continued to improve any by 1984 you could play. Games on them, like on the Nelsonic Space Attacker Watch.  Flash memory arguably came along in 1984 and would iterate and get better, providing many, many more uses for tiny devices and flash media cards by 1997. But those calculator watches, Marty McFly would sport one in 1985s Back To The Future and by the time I was in high school they were so cheap you could get them for $10 at the local drug store. And a few years later, Nintendo would release the Power Glove in 1989, sparking the imagination of many a nerdy kid who would later build actually functional technology. Which regrettably the Power Glove was not.  The first portable MP3 player came along in 1998. It was the MPMan. Prototypes had come along in 1979 with the IXI digital audio player. The audible player, Diamond Rio, and Personal Jukebox came along in 1998 and on the heels of their success the NOMAX Jukebox came in y2k. But the Apple iPod exploded onto the scene in 2001 and suddenly the Walkman and Diskman were dead and the era of having a library of music on mainstream humans was upon us, sparking Microsoft to release the Zen in 2004, and the Zune in 2006.  And those watches. Garmin brought us their first portable GPS in 1990, which continues to be one of the best such devices on the market. The webcam would come along in 1994 when Canadian researcher Steve Mann built the first the wearable wireless webcam. That was the spark that led to the era of the Internet of Things. Suddenly we weren't just wearing computers. We were wearing computers connected to the inter webs.  All of these technologies brought to us over the years… They were converging. Bluetooth was invented in 2000.  By. 2006, it was time for the iPod and fitness tracking to converge. Nike+iPod was announced and Nike would release a small transmitter that. Fit into a notch in certain shoes. I've always been a runner and jumped on that immediately! You needed a receiver at the time for an iPod Nano. Sign me up, said my 2006 self! I hadn't been into the cost of the Garmin but soon I was tracking everything. Later I'd get an iPhone and just have it connect. But it was always a little wonky. Then came The Nike+ Fuelband in 2012. I immediately jumped on that bandwagon as well. You. Had to plug it in at first but eventually a model came out that sync'd over bluetooth and life got better. I would sport that thing until it got killed off in 2014 and a little beyond… Turns out Nike knew about Apple coming into their market and between Apple, Fitbit, and Android Wear, they just didn't want to compete in a blue ocean, no matter how big the ocean would be.   Speaking of Fitbit, they were founded in 2007 James Park and Eric Friedman with a goal of bringing fitness trackers to market. And they capitalized on an exploding market for tracking fitness. But it wasn't until the era of the app that they achieved massive success and in 2014 they released apps for iOS, Android and Windows Mobile, which was still a thing. And the watch and mobile device came together in 2017 when they released their smartwatch. They are now the 5th largest wearables company.  Android Wear had been announced at Google I/O in 2014. Now called Wear OS, it's a fork of Android Lollipop, that pairs with Android devices and integrates with the Google Assistant. It can connect over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and LTE and powers the Moto 360, the LG G and Samsung Gear. And there are a dozen other manufacturers that leverage the OS in some way, now with over 50 million installations of the apps. It can use Hangouts, and leverages voice to do everything from checking into Foursquare to dictating notes.  But the crown jewel in the smart watches is definitely the Apple Watch. That came out of hiring former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch to bring a Siri-powered watch to market, which happened in 2015. With over 33 million being sold and as of this recording on the 5th series of the watch, it can now connect over LTE, Wifi, or through a phone using Bluetooth. There are apps, complications, and a lot of sensors on these things, giving them almost limitless uses. Those glasses from 1286. Well, they got a boost in 2013 when Google put images on them. Long a desire from science fiction, Google Glass brought us into the era of a heads up display. But Sega had introduced their virtual reality headset in 1991 and the technology actually dates back to the 70s from JPL and MIT. Nintendo experimented with Virtual boy in 1994. Apple released QuickTime VR shortly thereafter, but it wasn't that great. I even remember some VGA “VR” headsets in the early 2000s, but they weren't that great. It wasn't until the Oculus Rift came along in 2012 that VR seemed all that ready. These days, that's become the gold standard in VR headsets. The sign to the market was when Facebook bought Oculus for $2.3 billion dollars in 2014 and the market has steadily grown ever since.  Given all of these things that came along in 2014, I guess it did deserve the moniker “The Year of Wearable Technology.” And with a few years to mature, now you can get wearable sensors that are built into yoga pants, like the Nadi X Yoga Pants, smartwatches ranging from just a few dollars to hundreds or thousands from a variety of vendors, sleep trackers, posture trackers, sensors in everything bringing a convergence between the automated home and wearables in the internet of things. Wearable cameras like the Go Pro, smart glasses from dozens of vendors, VR headsets from dozens of vendors, smart gloves, wearable onesies, sports clothing to help measure and improve performance, smart shoes, smart gloves, and even an Alexa enabled ring.  Apple waited pretty late to come out with bluetooth headphones, releasing AirPods in 2016. These bring sensors into the ear, the main reason I think of them as wearables where I didn't think of a lot of devices that came before them in that way. Now on their second generation, they are some of the best headphones you can buy. And the market seems poised to just keep growing. Especially as we get more and more sensors and more and more transistors packed into the tiniest of spaces. It truly is ubiquitous computing. 

Very productive morning chatting with our friend Mark Weiser, who’s an awesome Structural Package Designer at Microsoft. We talked about the awesome things he’s doing at Microsoft, their impact on the design community, and their work around inclusion. To follow Mark’s design work and journey, be sure to follow him Instagram under the handle @meiser. Thank you for tuning into CONTEXT, send us a DM or email at hello@advdes.org to provide us with your thoughts and comments on our dialogue with designers!

Severe Tire Damage. Like many things we cover in this podcast, the first streaming rock band on the Interwebs came out of Xerox PARC. 1993 was a great year. Mariah Carey released Dreamlover, Janet Jackson released That's The Way Love Goes. Boyz II Men released In The Still of the Nite. OK, so it wasn't that great a year. But Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. That was some pretty good stuff out of Minnesota. But Severe Tire Damage was named after They Might Be Giants and a much more appropriate salvo into the world of streaming media. The members were from DEC Systems Research Center, Apple, and Xerox PARC. All members at the time and later are pretty notable in their own right and will likely show up here and there on later episodes of this podcast. So they kinda' deserved to use half the bandwidth of the entire internet at the time.  The first big band to stream was the Rolling Stones, the following year. Severe Tire Damage did an opening stream of their own. Because they're awesome. The Stones called the stunt a “good reminder of the democratic nature of the Internet.” They likely had no clue that the drummer is the father of ubiquitous computing, the third wave of computing. But if they have an Apple Watch, a NEST, use an app to remotely throw treats to their dog, use a phone to buy a plane ticket, or check their Twitter followers 20 times a day, they can probably thank Mark Weiser for his contributions to computing. They can also thank Steve Rubin for his contributions on the 3D engine in the Mac. Or his wife Amy for her bestselling book Impossible Cure.  But back to streaming media. Really, streaming media goes back to George O Squier getting patents for transmitting music over electrical lines in the 1910s and 1920s. This became Muzak. And for decades, people made fun of elevator music. While he originally meant for the technology to compete with radio, he ended up pivoting in the 30s to providing music to commercial clients. The name Muzak was a mashup of music and Kodak, mostly just for a unique trademark. By the end of the 30s Warner Brothers had acquired Muzak and then it went private again when George Benton, the  chairman and publisher of the Encyclopædia Britannica pivoted the company into brainwashing for customers, alternating between music and silence in 15 minute intervals and playing soft tones to make people feel more comfortable while waiting for a doctor or standing in an elevator. Makes you wonder what he might have shoved into the Encyclopedia! Especially since he  went on to become a senator. At least he led the charge to get rid of McCarthy who referred to him as “Little Willie Benton.” I guess some things never change. Benton passed away in 1973, but you can stream an interview with him from archives.org ( https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.95761 ). Popularity of Muzak waned over the following decades until they went bankrupt in 2009. After reorganization it was acquired in 2011 and is now Mood Media, which has also gone bankrupt. I guess people want a more democratic form of media these days. I blame the 60s.  Not much else happened in streaming until the 1990s. A couple of technologies were maturing at this point to allow for streaming media. The first is the Internet. TCP/IP was standardized in 1982 but public commercial use didn't really kick on until the late 1980s. We'll reserve that story for another episode. The next is MPEG. MPEG is short for the Moving Picture Experts Group. MPEG is a working group formed specifically to set standards for audio and video compression and the transmission of that audio and video over networks. The first meeting of the group was in 1988. The group defined a standard format for playing media on the Internet, soon to actually be a thing (but not yet). And thus the MPEG format was born. MPEG is now the international standard for encoding and compressing video images. Following the first release they moved quickly. In 1992, the MPEG-1 standard was approved at a meeting in London. This gave us MPEG Layer 3, or MP3 as well as video CDs.  At the Porto meeting in 1994, we got MPEG-2 standard, thus DVDs, DVD players and AAC standard a long standard for iTunes and used for both television and audio encoding. MPEG-4 came in 1999, and the changes began to slow as adoption increased. Today, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are under development. Then came the second wave of media. In 1997, Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev built WinAmp. A lot of people had a lot of CDs. Some of those people also had WinAmp or other MP3 players and rippers. By 1999 enough steam bad been built up that Sean Parker, Shawn Fanning, and John Fanning built a tool called Napster that allowed people to trade those MP3s online. At their height, 80 million people were trading music online. People started buying MP3 players, stereos had MP3 capabilities, and you could find and download any song you could think of easier and cheaper than you could get them at a music store. Brick and mortar music stores began to close their doors and record labels saw a huge drop in profits. I knew people with terabytes of music, where each song was about 3 megs.  The music industry had suffered a massive blow. After a long court battle, the RIAA obtained an injunction that forced Napster to shut down in 2001. The music industry thought maybe they were saved. But by then other sites like Limewire and many other services had popped up and to shut pandora's box, we needed innovation,   The innovation was making it simple to buy music. Sure, people could continue to steal music if they wanted, but it turned out that if a song was a buck, people were likely to just go out and buy it. Other vendors followed suit and before long the tide of stealing music was turned back.  Another innovation had occurred in 2001 but hadn't really caught steam yet. Rhapsody (originally TuneTo.com) was launched in December of 2001. Rhapsody slowly built up a catalog of 11 million songs and 750,000 subscribers. Rhapsody worked kinda' like Radio. Pandora Radio, launched in 2005, allowed users to create their own stations. With 66 million active users, Pandora was bought by Sirius XM for 3.5 Billion dollars. But if these were the only vendors that were in this space, it might not be what it is today. I remember in about 2010, I asked my niece about buying a song. She looked at me like I was stupid. Why would you buy a song. I asked her about downloading them for free. Black stare. That's when I realized the third wave of streaming music was on us. Spotify, originally created in 2006, allowed users to build their own stations of songs and now has 217 million users with nearly half paying for the subscription so they don't get ads, with revenue of nearly $6 Billion dollars. Apple Music was late to the party, arriving in 2015, because Steve Jobs wasn't into music subscription services. But since the launch they are up to 60 million users in 2019. Apple's services revenue though is over a quarter trillion dollars a year. Google has 15 million streaming subscribers and with the emergence of their Echo's Amazon is poised to garner a lot of streaming music subscribers.  Music isn't the only business that has been disrupted. You see, the innovation that iTunes and the popularization of the iPod created also made us rethink other business models. Television and movie consumption has shifted to streaming platforms. And Apps. The iOS App Store was released in 2008. The App Stores have shifted many an enterprise software into smaller workflows strung together with apps. There are now 1.8 million apps on that App Store and 2.1 available for Android users. These apps have led to ride sharing services and countless other apps displacing businesses that have operated the same way for sometimes hundreds of years. Yes, this story is about streaming music. But the movement that started with Severe Tire Damage combined with other technologies to have a resounding impact to how we live our lives. It's no wonder that their drummer, Mark Weiser, is widely considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing.   

Leemos el texto fundacional de la computación ubicua por Mark Weiser. Sacado de Scientific American, 1991.

The Buzz: “Disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else” (Clay Christensen). Rapid change has forced today's visionary business leaders to replace conventional growth models with a Disruptive Solutions mindset. Say what? This creative thinking methodology enables leaders to anticipate and quickly react to industry disruptions, identify unplanned opportunities, and move past internally-directed core competency thinking to leverage open innovation. We'll tell you how. The experts speak. Bryan W. Mattimore, Growth Engine: “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old” (Peter F. Drucker). Erica Dhawan, Cotential: “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun” (Katharine Hepburn). Denise Fletcher, EZassi: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Mark Weiser). Join us for Disruptive Solutions Mindset 101.

The Buzz: “Disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else” (Clay Christensen). Rapid change has forced today's visionary business leaders to replace conventional growth models with a Disruptive Solutions mindset. Say what? This creative thinking methodology enables leaders to anticipate and quickly react to industry disruptions, identify unplanned opportunities, and move past internally-directed core competency thinking to leverage open innovation. We'll tell you how. The experts speak. Bryan W. Mattimore, Growth Engine: “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old” (Peter F. Drucker). Erica Dhawan, Cotential: “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun” (Katharine Hepburn). Denise Fletcher, EZassi: “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Mark Weiser). Join us for Disruptive Solutions Mindset 101.

Dr. Heidi Schelhowe, ordentliche Professorin an der Universität Bremen für "Digitale Medien und Bildung" und Leiterin der Arbeitsgruppe dimeb, unterhält sich mit Dr. Udo Thiedeke über die Begreifbarkeit der Zeichen, wie sie Computer möglich machen und was das für die Bildung bedeutet.Shownotes:#00:00:37# Zur nichttrivialen Maschine vgl. Heinz von Foerster, 1993: Wissen und Gewissen. Versuch einer Brücke, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. S. 206f.#00:02:35# Zur Wertschätzung der Mathematik im 20. Jhr., als höchste Form geistiger Betätigung und rationaler Gesinnung vgl. Bettina Heintz, 1993: Die Herrschaft der Regel. Zur Grundlagengeschichte des Computers. Frankfurt/M., New York: Campus.#00:03:00# Zu Turings Provokation mit der Turing Maschine vgl. Alan Turing, 1937: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. In: Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. Bd. 42. S. 230-265. Zusammenfassend: #00:05:48# Zur Symbiose von Mensch und Maschine siehe IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol.14, No.1 + 2, 1992.#00:08:33# Heidi Schelhowe, 1997: Das Medium aus der Maschine: zur Metamorphose des Computers. Frankfurt/M./New York: Campus.#00:09:06# Susanne Bødker, 1991: Through the Interface: A Human Activity Approach to User InterfaceDesign. Mahwah, New Jersey, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass.#00:11:03# Die "Enigma" war eine in mehreren Versionen während des zweiten Weltkriegs produzierte, deutsche Verschlüsselungsmaschine, deren Code schließlich endgültig von den Engländern u.a. unter Mitarbeit von Alan Turing geknackt wurde. Online. #00:11:45# Konrad Zuse baute 1941 mit der "Z3" den ersten frei programmierbaren und funktionsfähigen Digitalcomputer. Siehe: Konrad Zuse, 1993: Der Computer – Mein Lebenswerk. 3. Aufl. Berlin: Springer.#00:16:06# Zur Digital Sociology vgl. z.B. Deborah Lupton, 2012: Digital Sociology: an Introduction. Sydney: University of Sydney.#00:20:20# Zur bei dimeb entwickelten Programmierumgebung siehe: Online.#00:26:05# Zum Funktionsprinzip der 3D-Drucker. Online.#00:28:16# Siehe zum sog. material turn etwa Tony Bennett, Patrick Joyce, 2010: Material powers: cultural studies, history and the material turn. London et al.: Routledge, und zu Latours Ideen: Bruno Latour, 1995: Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie. Übersetzt von Gustav Roßler. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. (1991)#00:29:55# Zu ubiquitous computing und embedded systems siehe: Mark Weiser, 1993: Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing. In: Communications of the ACM, No. 7, July: S. 75-84.#00:32:20# Zum Umgang von autistischen Kinder mit Robots siehe: Online.#00:33:05# Zum Uncanny-Valley-Effekt, der als Irritatioin beim Kontaktmit antropomorphen Robotern oder Avataren auftritt siehe: Online.#00:40:55# Zur Medienbildung im "klassischen" Verständnis siehe: Dieter Baacke, 1999: Medienkompetenz als zentrales Operationsfeld von Projekten. In: Dieter Baacke,, Susanne Kornblum, Jürgen Lauffer, Lothar Mikos, Günther A. Thiele (Hrsg.): Handbuch Medien: Medienkompetenz, Modelle und Projekte. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung. S. 31-35.Dieter Spanhel, 2010: Entwicklung und Erziehung unter den Bedingungen von Medialität. In: Manuela Pietraß, Rüdiger Funiok (Hrsg): Mensch und Medien. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. S. 65-89.#00:44:30# Die Idee, dass Computer so selbstverständlich werden, dass unsere Kinder nicht mehr wissen, was damit gemeint sein könnte, wenn wir von "Computern" sprechen, findet sich in einem Interview, das der Science-Fiction Autor William Gibson, der den Begriff "Cyberspace" erfand, 2013 dem Nachrichtenmagazin "der Spiegel" gab. William Gibson, 2013: "Wir haben gewonnen". In: der Spiegel 12/2013 vom 18. März 2013. S. 134-136.#00:45:14# Informationen zum "reflexive experience design" im DFG Projekt "Interaktionsdesign für reflexive Erfahrungen im Bildungskontext (REDiB) finden sich hier: Online. #00:48:45# Vgl. zu den Bedingungen und Konsequenzen der Selbstquantifizierung mit Computern, die zum selbstquantifizierten Selbst (quantified Self) führen soll: Stefanie Duttweiler, Robert Gugutzer, Jan-Hendrik Passoth, Jörg Strübing (Hrsg.), 2016: Leben nach Zahlen. Self-Tracking als Optimierungsprojekt? Bielefeld: transcript.#00:50:00# Der Grafik Designer Nicholas Felton, der die App "Reporter" entwickelt hat, ist fasziniert davon, sein eigenes Leben in eine Selbststatistik zu überführen und zu visualisieren. Vgl. Sandra Rendgen, 2016: Stenographie eines Lebens. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 9. Feburar 2016. Online. #00:59:33# Vgl. einen "Klassiker" zum sog. Digital Divide: Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, 2001: From the 'Digital Divide' to 'Digital Inequality': Studying Internet Use as Penetration Increases, Working Paper No. 15, Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies. Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. Online.#01:00:30# Marc Prensky hatte 2001 die "Digital Natives", die schon mit dem Computer als Medium Sozialisierten, den "Digital Immigrants", denen, die "Computer" erst noch lernen müssen, gegenübergestellt; vgl. Online.#01:01:48# Zur begrenzten Nutzung des Internets und der Social Media durch Jugendliche, siehe: Klaus Peter Treumann, Dorothee M. Meister, Uwe Sander, Eckhard Burkatzki, Jügen Hagedorn, Manuela Kämmerer, Mareike Strotmann, Claudia Wegener 2007: Medienhandeln Jugendlicher. Mediennutzung und Medienkompetenz. Bielefelder Medienkompetenzmodell. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.#01:02:50# Siehe zur Computerkompetenz von Peers in der Hauptschule: Ulrike Wagner (Hrsg.), 2008: Medienhandeln in Hauptschulmilieus. Mediale Interaktion und Produktion als Bildungsressource. München: kopaed.#01:07:55# Einen differenzierteren Einblick zur Beteiligung am Internet, nach Verständnis der Beteiligung, Motivation und Milieuzugehörigkeit bietet etwa die DIVIS-Milieu-Studie des Sinus- Instituts aus dem Jahr 2015. Online.#01:10:05# Heinz von Foerster zu seinem Eindruck von Wissenschaft heute. Online.#01:11:37# Zur strukturellen Rahmung der Bildung von benachteiligten Jugendlichen in Portugal siehe die Disseration: Roger Meintjes, Heidi Schelhowe, 2016: Inclusive Interactives: the Transformative Potential of Making and Using　 Craft-Tech Social Objects Together in an After-School Centre. In: IDC’16 Proceedings oft he 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. Online.[alle Links aktuell März/April 2017] Dauer 01:15:13 Folge direkt herunterladen

Frankie Turner is a much loved dueling pianist from Michigan recently living in NYC where he is loved by other players for his quick wit and superb ability at forging connections with audience members.  Tune in!  **Special Announcement** Mark Weiser drops by the podcast to talk about all things related to PIANO SUMMIT 2017 happening in NYC March 13-15 next year... check out www.PianoSummit2017.com for more info!

Interactive surfaces are a growing trend in many domains. As one possible manifestation of Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous and disappearing computers in everywhere objects, we see touchsensitive screens in many kinds of devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers and interactive tabletops. More advanced concepts of these have been an active research topic for many years. This has also influenced automotive cockpit development: concept cars and recent market releases show integrated touchscreens, growing in size. To meet the increasing information and interaction needs, interactive surfaces offer context-dependent functionality in combination with a direct input paradigm. However, interfaces in the car need to be operable while driving. Distraction, especially visual distraction from the driving task, can lead to critical situations if the sum of attentional demand emerging from both primary and secondary task overextends the available resources. So far, a touchscreen requires a lot of visual attention since its flat surface does not provide any haptic feedback. There have been approaches to make direct touch interaction accessible while driving for simple tasks. Outside the automotive domain, for example in office environments, concepts for sophisticated handling of large displays have already been introduced. Moreover, technological advances lead to new characteristics for interactive surfaces by enabling arbitrary surface shapes. In cars, two main characteristics for upcoming interactive surfaces are largeness and shape. On the one hand, spatial extension is not only increasing through larger displays, but also by taking objects in the surrounding into account for interaction. On the other hand, the flatness inherent in current screens can be overcome by upcoming technologies, and interactive surfaces can therefore provide haptically distinguishable surfaces. This thesis describes the systematic exploration of large and shaped interactive surfaces and analyzes their potential for interaction while driving. Therefore, different prototypes for each characteristic have been developed and evaluated in test settings suitable for their maturity level. Those prototypes were used to obtain subjective user feedback and objective data, to investigate effects on driving and glance behavior as well as usability and user experience. As a contribution, this thesis provides an analysis of the development of interactive surfaces in the car. Two characteristics, largeness and shape, are identified that can improve the interaction compared to conventional touchscreens. The presented studies show that large interactive surfaces can provide new and improved ways of interaction both in driver-only and driver-passenger situations. Furthermore, studies indicate a positive effect on visual distraction when additional static haptic feedback is provided by shaped interactive surfaces. Overall, various, non-exclusively applicable, interaction concepts prove the potential of interactive surfaces for the use in automotive cockpits, which is expected to be beneficial also in further environments where visual attention needs to be focused on additional tasks.

Speaker: Bill BuxtonIn 1991 Mark Weiser published what is now a classic paper, The Computer for the 21st Century. In it, he laid the foundation for what has become known as Ubiquitous Computing, or UbiComp. Ironically, by having the word "Computer" in the singular, the title of his paper is at odds with the content, since the whole point is that we will not have just one or two computers; rather we will have hundreds, and deal with hundreds or thousands of others as we go about our day-to-day lives. Furthermore, despite such large numbers, our interactions with these devices will be largely transparent to us due to their seamless integration into our environment.This is a vision that I played a part in shaping, and one that I still believe in. But by the same token, we are now into the second decade of the 21st century, and such transparency and seamlessness is largely still wanting. The 5-10 minutes wasted at the start of almost every meeting while we struggle to hook our laptops up to the projector is just one example.In this talk, I want to speak to this problem and how we might adjust our thinking and priorities in order to address it, and thereby accelerate the realization of Weiser's vision.I will argue that a key part of this requires our focusing as much on machine-machine as we do on human-machine interaction. Stated a different way, I believe that social computing is at the core, but social computing amongst the society of appliances and services – perhaps even more than the society of people. (Obviously the two societies are interwoven.)In sociological terms, this brings us to ask questions such as, "What are the social mores within the society of such devices?" How to they gracefully approach each other and connect, or take their leave and disconnect? How to they behave alone vs together? The point to emphasize here is that besides aggregation and disaggregation, it might be even more about the transitions between one and the other.As with the society of people, appropriate behavior is largely driven by context: social, cultural, physical, intentional, etc. This helps tie in notions such as foreground/background interaction, sensor networks, ambient intelligence, etc.In general, this talk is as much (or ore) about asking questions as it is about answering them. It's real intent is to say that we need to go beyond our current focus on individual devices or services, and look at things from an ecological perspective. The accumulated complexity of a large number of easy to use elegant devices still surpasses the user's threshold of frustration. Our current path of focusing on individual gadgets, apps and services, just transfers where the complexity lies, and increases it, rather than reduces it overall.My hope is to frame and stimulate a conversation around a different path – one where more of the right technology reduces overall complexity while geometrically increasing the value to the community of users.

Steve sits down with The Piano Whore himself, Mark Weiser of NYC's "Shake Rattle & Roll Dueling Pianos."  Steve and Mark get to the root of Mark's philosophy on a "New York Style" dueling piano show, as well as some discussion of Mark's stake in musical theater scene in the big apple.  Tune in!

At Xerox PARC in the early 90’s Mark Weiser predicted a fundamental shift would move the user’s experience of computing away from the desktop and out into the "real" world. During the late 90’s the web brought the first wave of pervasive "anytime, anywhere" applications like search and webmail. Over the last few years the mobile web has driven a fresh wave of networked applications like Facebook and Twitter that are being used at the beach, in the car and in bed. QR Codes, Wifi Access Points and 3/4G dongles are everywhere you look. "Pervasive" is a very accurate description. What is driving this accelerating diffusion of networked technologies? How do you really measure or control how "pervasive" something is? Why would you even want to? We’ll introduce you to a practical framework for analysing and measuring your "spatial perception of an activity" and explore what it literally means for an application to be "pervasive", in both an experiential and business sense. At the end of this session you’ll be able to clearly diagram the key change that’s driving this evolution and how it will impact your strategies for technology and business in the future. Rob has been modeling information architectures and innovation driven business models since 1989. Over the last 5 years his focus has been exploring how mobiles and service based APIs are changing our lives. He spends his time helping MOB’s clients and partners explore life after convergence - a place where objects and their interfaces diverge, allowing you to control them anywhere, anytime. He focuses on developing and exploring hands on, real world experiences with new networked technologies. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

Today we talk with Richard Harrington and Mark Weiser authors of the book Producing Video Podcasts: A Guide for Media Professionals. If you are a audio podcaster looking to get into video, it can help those looking to do it on a shoe string budget or the person looking to invest some big time equipment. For more information about the Authors and the book go to www.vidpodcaster.com The book is available at Amazon.com