Wednesday, January 13, 2016

David Rose: Enchanted Objects -- Opening Keynote #ATDTK

These are my live blogged notes from the opening keynote at ATD TechKnowledge 2016, happening this week in Las Vegas. Forgive any typos or incoherencies.

@DavidRose

Advertising is about pixels (think Times Square)

Where else will it go? Will we clothe ourselves in technology?

The uncanny valley: we’ll reject robots that are too human…

David started a company in 2000: Ambient Things
Creating things like an umbrella that glows when rain is nearby. (this is how simple our relationship to technology could become)

Information access becomes “glanceable”

Learning from fiction – the umbrella was like Frodo’s sword (which glowed when orcs are nearby).

Computation embedded in lots of things:

In Cambridge, MA – trash cans that call the garbage man when the trash can is full.

Anoto pen/Livescribe – in the form factor of a pen, a microphone to record the conversation/lecture, time-stamps everything you write – you tap your notes at a particular spot and it will play the audio recording from that point on.

Services become embedded in the objects.

David Rose argues that everything will be connected.
Tech is getting so small and so cheap.
Objects become avatars for the services they can fulfill.

Enchanted objects are ordinary things that look like they always did – ordinary things with extraordinary capabilities.

In his home, he’s got a coffee table with a Google Map surface. They talk about travel and the world so much more now.

Glowcap on medicine bottles reminds you to take prescriptions.

Some people thing the connected home will be overwhelming. But if enchanted objects can be designed the right way, we’ll want them.

Today, the notion of “screen time”. This will change. If your Google Earth table ONLY does Google Earth and not facebook or angry birds…

The internet of things/enchanted objects that are coming – by area of human need:

Omniscience – the desire to be all knowing.
A crystal ball – it glows a certain color depending on the weather, or the pollen count, etc. The ambient orb. You can set it up to track different things – how well your company is doing, the weather, stocks, etc. “Pervasive is persuasive” – the more info you see, the more likely you are to take action. Whatever is shown is what people tune into.

Energy Joule shows consumer how much energy their home is consuming.

Augmented reality technology – to help your program objects. We will need to design the world to be recognizable by computer vision systems.

A company that made their customer satisfaction data public – they placed a glowing orb on a pole outside of their bank to show current customer satisfaction data.

Telepathy – the desire/yearning to connect with other people.
Think the Weasley family clock.

Who’s coming home when? A device that tells you where people are via ring tone and when they’re on their way ome.

Safekeeping – the desire to shield ourselves from threats.
Parrot – a sensor that you stick into the soil. You tell it what the plant is and then it tells you if you need to water it or PH balance, etc.
August Lock: Locks on your house that are internet connected. You can leave the door open to your brother, but only for two days.
Can help your coordinate getting people into your house of laundry, dogwalking etc.
BOA came to his labe with the proverbial wallet. With credit cards, people spend through their budgets without realizing it. So this wallet gets harder and harder to open as you run out of your budget. It’s feedback that avoids pixels. The hinges get harder to open.

Immortality – the desire to be healthy and vital.
Internet connected pill bottle cap that reminds you to take your meds. Big change compared to a control group – over 95% of doses taken within the first six months of this pilot. The bottle knows that it’s been opened and talks to the cloud. That’s all it does.
We do need to think carefully about privacy and data flow.

The biggest opportunity for wearables is to make them not ugly. To make them fashionable. (Withings Activite – a French smart watch that looks like a really nice watch. He argues that the fashion brands will drive wearables.)

Enchant the most common objects. An accelerometer on a fork – which helps you monitor how fast you’re shoveling food in your mouth. If you go too fast, it starts shaking so you miss your mouth.. HapiFork (the haptic feedback fork). Who would have thought silverware was ripe for ambient connection?

The Chrona Deep Sleep pillow.

These new sensors are creeping into the most common of objects.

Beam – a connected toothbrush. There are 120 million people in the US who don’t have dental insurance. The plan for Beam is to sell $20 a month dental insurance to people who use their brushes – so he’s monetizing the data flow that provides insight on risks…

Teleportation – the desire to move effortlessly. The fantasy of beam me up Scotty.

Biking to work. A lot of people don’t do it because they’re afraid of sweating. The Copenhagen wheel fits onto an existing bike wheel – parasitically drafting onto an existing object. You replace the hub on your old bike with this and not sweat on the way to work.

OTA – over the air updates make smart furniture sustainable. Refresh and update things without having to build or buy a new one. So a Tesla can be programmed with new features – the connected object can inherit new capabilities.

Self-expression – the desire to create, make and play

A brush that has a camera at its tip.

We’re taping cameras everywhere. An oven that knows what’s inside and you can check on your app so you don’t burn the cookies
Life-loggin cameras – creating a flipbook of your day.

2.8 billlion photos are shared every day on Instagram, twitter, fb, etc. So who’s looking at all those photos? Ditto (David’s company) is – on behalf of brands. Who’s passionate about Harleys? Who’s eating KFC? They’ve trained the system to recognize brands, products, locations.

Hiring new employees – there’s a lot of data out there, available publicly. Are you looking at it?

Machine learning. Deep learning. Building classifiers – the ability to see things in photos by feeding the algorithm examples. E.g. they fed it 1,000 examples of ice cream in photos so it could learn what ice cream could look like.

Streamditto.com password: ditto – go try it out. Thinking about the intersection of the Internet of Things and all of these cameras – what might you learn?

A trashcan that knows what you throwaway.

A ladder of services that can go on top of that connectivity.

The trashcan includes audible commentary on the products you consume (and throwaway) – “eating a lot of cookies this week, eh?”

“Would your meetings improve if there was real time feedback on the balance of a conversation?” The idea – introverts have as many good ideas as the extroverts. So a “facilitator” that shows feedback on who’s contributing. An ordinary table with a constellation of LED lights that show who is talking and contributing. So you can see who’s contributing and if there’s conversational balance.

Ordinary things that can have these features and these connectivities to make our relationships more haptic, more tactile.



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