one word, kid: robots!

MSNBC has looked into the crystal ball and concluded that these are the 10 careers for the future (and i'm guessing that like any good group of hack-futurists, they pivoted on the present and then did a google search). also, they define the future as 2012. you know, in the good ol' days, the future was a long time from now.

the careers are thusly:

• Organic food producers, retailers. Insight from the present? Wal-mart is going organic, Safeway is going organic, the Gap is going organic... this must mean that organic is finally mainstream!
  
• Computational biologists. Insight from the present? The Human Genome Project required some serious computational firepower; there's an explosion of data generally; we now need people who have the expertise to make sense of this data... hmm... is that really a job for the future or for right about now?
  
• Parallel programmers. Insight from the present? Intel is making dual and multi-core processors with the capacity to do multiple things at once. i have one in this macbook; if you have a computer less than two years old you probably have one, too. we'll need programmers who can take full advantage of this technology. or rather, we need them already - like a year ago.
  
• Data technologists. Insight from the present? again, massive amounts of data flowing to us through the interweb, RFID chips, devices galore... who will make the data look nice? actually, the better name for this job really is Data visualization designer, whether it rolls off the tongue or not... and if we could really use a good powerpoint charter at the office to visualize a few bar graphs, then yeah, this seems like a semi-urgent need. especially when you consider that if you can't draw it as a picture, people just don't want to get it.
  
• Simulation engineers. Insight from the present? sims gone wild!!! through the power of processing we can create really really real sims for every purpose. it'll be brilliant! it'll be like second life, only useful!
  
• Boomer companions, caretakers. Insight from the present? everyone born after 1945 is getting old. and the nursing home doesn't sound so hot. but here's the piece that is definitely not from the future: $23-25,000 salaries. boo.
  
• Genetic counseling. Insight from the present? diseases suck but now we know their genetic markers and can prevent them by not having the little disease carriers in the first place. translation: gattaca was on to something!!
  
• Brain analysts. Insight from the present? we like to poke people in the brains. by poking (or super poking) people in the right way, we can determine whether they're lying or telling the truth, if they're mentally ill, identify their strengths and weaknesses and figure out to what degree they're suckering for the latest ad.
  
• Space tour guide. Insight from the present? Branson is sending his very posh flight experience into space, there are space wedding packages, and soon, space tourism. if you don't want to get stuck on the space version of Gilligan's Island, i recommend staying home
  
• Robot builders, tenders. Insight from the present? robot parts are cheap! let's build some. and then tend to them. because as every good technophile knows, tinkering with the thing is at least as great as just letting the thing work.

a thought or two about the future

what do robots represent if not the future - a utopian future, a dystopian future, any flavor of these two you like or fear.

i work in a business where we're trying to tell our clients what to do next in a way that gives them the flexibility and power to grow or move forward into the future. but what i can't do is tell them what their business is going to be like in five years, or what consumers are going to be doing in five years. they don't know and i don't know.

but that doesn't mean the future isn't worth thinking about.



i have no interest in beginning at the beginning, because that is not the future. and i'm totally obsessed with the future right now. for reals, yo.

i had a bite and a glass of wine with my water-guzzling friend charlotte last summer - our conversations tend to roam a bit but one of the reasons charlotte is a raison de vivre is that we permit ourselves the simple question of 'why'.

most people i know are descriptive - they're describers. they're also squares, but that's a post for another tag.

the answer i gave to this particular 'why' question was: 'they're looking backward, not forward. they're diagnosing, not treating. they're laying blame, not making plans.'

she liked that answer.

word.


in the 1950s, people believed in the future. little boys could order plans for a hovercraft made from ordinary tools and the vacuum cleaner's engine for $2. one man tells his story here. it's very sweet, and i hope i shared FinkBuilt with my dad. he liked the future too.

before Reagan, presidents cared about the future. they invited futurists to come talk about space travel and technology and medicine and how it would be in 50 years. now they invite religious men, who are tethered to the past, and to a sky bully they say gives them an excuse to kill people. that's me editorializing, again.

now people are skeptical and say that you can't predict the future. you can't maybe, i can't either. but some folks can, like this guy. i wonder if he's ever been invited to The White House.

like i said, i work in a business where we believe that consumers can't tell us what they want to do next. but someone said, 'i want to go to the moon' a very long time ago. and maybe people laughed at that someone. but then a bunch more someones said the same thing and eventually the world was ready to go.

that's all that predicting the future means - it doesn't have to happen tomorrow. but in some tomorrow after that.

got school'd

i realize that title is desperately lame, but i'm tired and i exceeded my 1 drink maximum because the conversation was good. my bad.

but hey, check it: robotic fish that can communicate and form schools.



apparently, this is potentially very useful for tracking oceanic pollution or marine life, but the most important part of this video comes when the aussie calls them, "fishy robots" entirely unironically.

it's not that impressive, though. at my parent's house, they had robotic fish that could form schools. and these were so cool, someone made an ad for them. here they are:


and then, while i was looking for something to illustrate my point, i found something fairly entertaining, albeit with nothing robotic (except perhaps these kids' acting -snap!):

a complicated relationship

one of the blogs i scan is PSFK - basically a blog for people who do what i do for a living, and are bored. and we're often bored, but unwilling to be boring ourselves. so PSFK expressed some disdain for this concern for the safety of a piece of electronic equipment:

Harmed - not damaged, knackered, smashed or mucked up? How emotional is our connection with electronics becoming?

i suppose my first reaction was to wonder, 'what's it to him?' and then i started thinking about the very post-modern take that PSFK has on the Idolatry of Things. they tend to be in the camp of coming to the blog not to condemn beautiful design or clever purpose or ingenious use but to praise it, and then want it both ways. "see this beautiful thing? it is beautiful, though there is a better version of it, but really, can't you think of something better to do?" for the perfect example, go here.

but i digress. over on WIRED is where all the action at. contrary to the apparently 'too far down the love of gadgets' spectrum headline, the piece is really a review of a music video.

As Chapman told Vice, "you can't deliver an idea like throwing cameras out of windows to Kylie Minogue, because they'd just think you were a fucking idiot." Whatever the cameras cost (not much, apparently), the price was worth it.

the true concern of the author then, was on the wasted cash spent on roof testing cameras. and since the effect was properly punk rock, the level of concern he had in the end was limited. one must weigh rocking with the awesome power of the devil against dropping some junk out of a building, after all. if it failed to in fact execute cool, then the unnecessary waste would have been derided as a lame, mere attempt at being cool. oh, we're all digressing now.

but i'll throw my hat into the ring as someone guilty of what PSFK was alluding to. i personify many of my gadgets - most especially my iPhone, of course. when it's acting up, i stroke it while resetting it. i apologize to it if i drop it (which i almost never do!). my old PowerBook had a name, Claudia Jean, after the press secretary on the West Wing. it possessed, i felt, her intelligence, her loyalty, and her elegance. i'm only half-kidding.

why do we do that? i suppose it's because we can't help it, because there has always been a little deus in the machina and therefore we suppose there might be some room for personality or temperament in there amongst the rapid fire 1s and 0s of processing. but i think it's also a function of language - the computer takes too long to do something and so we say to it, 'any time now!' as though it could hear us and get a move on. when there's a delay between what your fingers are doing on keyboard or mousepad and what's happening on screen and we experience the necessary foul-ups that go with that, we talk to the screen, 'no, that's not what i meant!' again as if the machine could be admonished in some way. we say these things because we experience similar things from living beings, because we must express our frustration or pleasure, because we like to fill the time with the sounds of our own voices.

it ain't rational, but it is charming. a little.

steampunk'd!

the way in which this reminds me of robots is, let's say, tenuous. for the uninitiated, steampunk is this:

a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction that came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.

Steampunk is often associated with cyberpunk and shares a similar fanbase and theme of rebellion, but developed as a separate movement (though both have considerable influence on each other). Apart from time period and level of technological development, the main difference between cyberpunk and steampunk is that steampunk settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely.

Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual craftpersons into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

think Wild, Wild West. think wood and chrome and steam pipes and engines. victorian styling + high technology. excellent.

recently, here in brooklyn, we had the other half of an installation called The Telectroscope. an only half-clever idea, but rather amusing nevertheless:

Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel was finally completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope was installed at both ends which miraculously allowed people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa. On 15th June, having helped more than 50,000 people establish or rekindle transatlantic friendships, the Telectroscopes vanished, as mysteriously as they had first appeared.

and here it is:


a whimsical idea brought to life with video conferencing, The Telectroscope has the definite stylings of a steampunk piece. friends said it was a bit disappointing, but i have to say i'm sad i missed it at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

and then, the other day, i saw that Nokia is doing some steampunk interpretations of their own... you can't deny this looks beautiful - and taps in to the iPod + iTunes idea of music as a form of individual expression as much for the listener as the performer.



it's this print piece that caught my attention. again, in addition to just being beautiful, the steampunk interpretation makes me think of an older idea of contraptions and machines - something perhaps more elegant, or at least more ornate.



and then that got me to thinking, too. where did this notion of robots come from anyway? i was out to dinner at Jane with my friend Jeff the other day, and he busted out with a bit of trivia (i'm telling you - everyone has something to say about robots!!). It turns out that the word 'robot' was, if not coined by, first used in public by a Czech writer in a play about a factory that makes artificial people. Wikipedia has more:

The word robot was introduced to the public at large by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which premiered in 1921.[15] The play begins in a factory that makes 'artificial people' - they are called robots, but are closer to the modern idea of androids or even clones, creatures who can be mistaken for humans. They can plainly think for themselves, though they seem happy to serve. At issue is whether the "Robots" are being exploited and, if so, what follows?

in fact the word was coined by Čapek's brother, and is derived from the slavic word robota which means 'labor, work' but in the sense of drudgery or serfdom. and from here we have the underlying notion of what a robot really is - something artificial we have created to do work; a machine enslaved to the work we wish to free ourselves from. perhaps this is why we often imagine robots throwing off their master's shackles - we can't imagine any entity, regardless of it's fakeness or realness, embracing drudgery and slavery. we believe that eventually, everyone will want to be free. we see freedom as a virus or environmental impetus to evolve. we believe in freedom so earnestly, in fact, that we think that machines may develop those attributes that make the desire for freedom possible. and yet, for some reason, that scares us - we worry that those same machines will try to turn the tables on us, and place us back into the slavery we invented them to escape in the first place.

it's kind of like those dreams you have where you're running as if in slow motion - trying so hard to get away, to break free, to reach your goal, but unable to get anywhere. is it simply that we know this desire for freedom is futile? or is it that we can't yet envision what freedom would really look like, and therefore hold ourselves back from it, even in our fantasies?

and speaking of fantasies - in polish, there's a phrase "robić loda". it's based on that word "robota" again - which means in this construction, "to do." the word "loda" means "ice-cream." but "to do ice-cream" is not what this phrase means. it means to give a blow job.

this is pretty (and so small)

Courtesy of Scientific American: a robot dragonfly that flies for 3 minutes at about 5m/second and carries an onboard camera. someday soon it will be able to hover like a hummingbird and fly backwards. in the movies, robotic insects that have cameras are usually sort of sinister and creepy and climbing all over things to expose the hero to his nemesis - but this one seems so delicate and elegant that surely it will come solely to its programmer to put it to evil ends... sigh.

wholly to be a fool

i'm a bit jetlagged. i'm in mexico city today, and just arrived from shanghai last night. i'm doing a really mediocre job of listening to an english translation of a spanish conversation, with the spanish conversation at full volume in the background. i tripped on steps right in front of me. i struggled to order breakfast off the hang tag card. why?

well first, it's my job :)

second, i'm tired - and when you're tired your ability to see things properly, to process information, can be affected. you struggle to find the word to describe a thing; you speak more slowly and with greater hesitation; your depth perception might be affected and you reach for something far away that's actually close.

we have complex systems for categorizing and naming things - for recognizing stuff. we have multiple words for an object - i'm wearing a shirt, blouse, top with pants, slacks, trousers, chinos and a pair of shoes, flats. i'm adorning myself with jewelry, ring. this assumes i'm thinking in nouns - identifying an object by its essential thing-ness. what if i look down and see gold with white with gold and more gold? would that tell you what i'm wearing? think about something round: it could be a ball, it could be a globe, or an orb. it could be a balloon, a sculpture, a bubble, a sphere; it could contain something or be empty; it could be solid; it could be made of nearly anything; it could float in the air or on the water or it could sink; it might roll or sit still. something round could be an infinite number of things. how do we decide if it's a golf ball or a balance ball or a mylar balloon or a snow globe?

on the one hand, this confusion is terrific - it's how we can achieve lateral thinking. what is this thing like? what can we learn from those other, like things? what can be borrowed or stolen or given back? we reason by analogy, by the familiar, we distinguish based on particulars, we limit the scope of what we think about to the context unless we are given permission or instruction to do otherwise. my mother used to say that she could hand an infant a purple clock and tell her it's a green toaster and how would the infant know? part of our ability to identify something is in our acquisition of language, our social negotiations over the names and provinces of things.

robots, on the other hand, live in a constant state of abstract, lateral thinking, when it comes to identifying objects. looked at from multiple angles, one object could be another. a tray could be a table; a book could be a shield; a couch could be a cow. so what's a young robot about town to do? or worse, what's a young soldier robot to do? via Wired and the DoD:

Recognizing and identifying an object from a video input turns out to be a very difficult problem. The problem stems from the fact that a single object can be viewed from an infinite number of ways. By rotating, obscuring, or scaling a single object, one can create multiple representations of an object - which makes the problem of matching the object to a database of objects very difficult. The problem expands exponentially when objects that need to be identified have never been viewed before. Combine these limitations with the wide variety of objects which might be identified, and the problem becomes intractable.

what will the military do with these shoddy, lateral thinking 'bots? apparently they take forever to identify objects and don't even do so accurately most of the time. they want to detonate your cat and pet your C4. which in some circles is perfectly acceptable; but in the don't ask, don't tell American military - we don't want to see too much creativity, it's sloppy. precision, march! the objective of the DoD project is thus:

To create an object recognition system based on the newer psychological models of object recognition by using a series of different algorithms to identify a variety of objects in different orientations. Such a system would be extremely beneficial for robotic control/intelligence and would allow for an exponential expansion of robotic capabilities and intelligence

and the next thing you know, they become self-aware and stuff. the most critical identification of an object any being can make is when they see their reflection, point, and say, "me."