Experience Design
Discussion: You’ve heard of product design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, etc, but perhaps not Experience Design, which is the invisible frontier of human engagement. UX (“User Experience”) design has been around for a long time to understand how humans can best engage with onscreen potentials, but mobile experience design is considerably deeper and more exciting. […]
The Quantified Self
Discussion: The data-gathering capacity of wearable devices, including smartphones, combined with cloud-based analytics, has proven itself in clinical health applications (e.g. cardiac recovery) and for personal improvement (e.g. FitBit devices). Data can extend beyond health indicators such as movement, pulse, etc., to behaviours, attention, sociability, etc. The two-fold benefit of such Quantified Self concepts is that the data can generate […]
Learning in a Time of Crisis
Discussion: Borrowing from the great Marquez novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, this topic reflects the state of magical realism that has infected every part of education globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning technologies are on the front lines of the response. Having been “locked down” hasn’t meant being immobile for learners, and when much of the world has been closed, […]
The Personal Web
Discussion: The original web was about information. Web 2.0 was about making it social. The next huge transformation of the web, enabled almost entirely by the intimacy and ever-presence of mobile devices, may be toward personalization – the Personal Web. Everybody talks about “big data”, but its most powerful potential will be to focus the broadest capacity of the […]
Siri and Her Siblings
Discussion: You’ve probably met Siri, one of the first generation of Personal Assistants, or one of her many siblings, such as Alexa, or possibly seen the film “Her”. These software agents will ostensibly know enough about you, and be tirelessly connected and competent enough regarding all things digital, to be your concierge, research assistant, tutor, etc. […]
Internet of Things (IoT)
Discussion: Within a couple of decades literally trillions of objects from lamp-posts to refrigerators will be connected to the Internet, and will be talking to one another. This is the Internet of Things (IoT). One example is that all the cars on a freeway will be silently talking to each other, apparently mitigating jams and accidents without […]
Sharing Everything
Discussion: One of the leading friction-reducing phenomena flowing from mobility is the so-called Sharing Economy, with proponents such as Airbnb and Uber, wherein somebody creates a mobile application which makes it trivially easy for any person A who needs X to find and make a deal with any person Y, who is willing to offer X, whatever that […]
Smart Communities
Discussion: The global “Smart City” movement is about harnessing sensor data of all kinds to make cities more efficient and offer better services to residents. However, these initiatives model cities as ‘machines’ rather than human communities, and forget that the smartest sensors in any city have two legs. Smart Communities is about the ways that passive and active information […]
Transhumanity
Discussion: Beyond smartphones, Google Glass, and wearable technologies, we’ve entered an age where our DNA can be edited, our microbiomes can be cultivated, and connected devices can be implanted in us, or attached to us, to repair or extend our ‘natural’ abilities. Eyeglasses have been around for 700 years, so this isn’t exactly ‘new’, but […]
MOOCs
Discussion: Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been around for several years, with large companies like Coursera, Udacity, and EdX battling for marketshare, their flexibility endgame being to offer every element of education from K-12 through college, graduate and professional schools online, largely for free, with the potential to completely disrupt existing education institutions and global markets […]