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What istechnology?
To start our conversation, let us first come to an understanding of what technology is.
What do you associate with technology?Cars? Airplanes? Mobile phones? The internet?
We usually think about technology in terms of its artifacts.
Technology, in fact, is everything that surrounds us.The wheel, agriculture, fire, the book and money are examples of technologies we do not usually isolate as such.
“Anything useful that“we make is technology.”
— Kevin Kelly
Source:http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_tells_technology_s_epic_story.html
The other characteristic about technology is how it’s always progressing.A century ago, humanity had never even taken flight. Now, we take it for granted. (1903)
Same with medical imaging. (1895)
GPS
GPS GPS
GPS
One way of seeing intersections between different technologies is from looking backwards in time. Take an existing product or service and flesh out the individual components that were necessary for it to be invented.
What makes YouTube possible? The combination of: ubiquitous cameras, cheap storage, a proliferation of internet users and broadband.
48 hours of contentuploaded every minute.
GPS
(As of May/2011) “nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day”
Sources:http://www.mecmanchester.co.uk/blog/youtube-birthday.htmlhttp://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics
GPS
GPS
You can do the same exercise for 23andMe:Faster CPUs, Automatic sequencing machines, Optical sensors, Social network analysis
2012: $99 for~1,000,000 base pairs
GPS
This cost hundreds of thousands of dollars only a decade ago.
Scenario #1:Eyes in the sky
I’ll go over three brief sci-fi scenarios based on extrapolating existing trends.
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors
Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvaniahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4
The rise of drone journalism.
Moscow protests
http://dronejournalism.tumblr.com/post/14136093865/more-on-the-moscow-protest-photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9vOor1xmVDs
Independence day riots in Warsaw
The Xbox Kinect - a brilliant example of depth imaging (or computer vision) popularizing as a toy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QrnwoO1-8A
This is how the Kinect sees the world.
Drone cameras
Swarm robotics
Computer vision
So where do you end up in a future where these three technologies are prominent?
Imagine a future with a swarm of thumbnail-sized flying nanocopters with 3D cameras on them.
“SWARM CAMERAS”
Imagine a cloud of cameras. Unstoppable, able to see everything. Drop it into a hostage situation or use it for spying. The possibilities and risks are endless.
“SWARM CAMERAS”
“SWARM CAMERAS”
And if you doubt the possibility, check the AR.Drone Parrot, a $300 helicopter toy with a camera which is controlled by an iPhone app.
Scenario #2:Urban intelligence
We are outsourcing as much information as possible from our brains into our portable devices. Phone numbers, addresses, directions, etc.
Outboard brain: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/st_thompson
And we are outsourcing the decision-making process to our devices.Here is a WiFi-enabled umbrella which flashes if it’s going to rain. No need to look up the weather.
We’re moving toward an internet of things, where all infrastructure is interdependent and connected.Sometimes called the “smart city”.
The surge of personal agents.
Coupled with context-aware computers which know where we are.
Smart infrastructure
Personal agents
Contextual computing
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO”
I call this trend “tell me what to do”. A scenario where the computer, or the network, is smart enough to guide you through your day. Tell you which road to take based on traffic patterns, notify you when a friend is nearby, coordinate your calendar, etc.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowboyuk80/3742085978/sizes/o/in/photostream/
http://www.fitbit.com/product/aria/features
“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cowboyuk80/3742085978/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Scenario #3:“PIY” – Print It Yourself
USD 1748http://store.makerbot.com/replicator-404.html
http://cunicode.com/one-coffee-cup-a-day/
http://www.makerbot.com/blog/2011/03/08/3d-printing-an-organ-live-onstage-at-ted/
83-year-old woman got 3D printed mandiblehttp://www.3ders.org/articles/20120203-83-year-old-woman-got-3d-printed-mandible.html
“If, like me, you're not very knowledgeable about guns, that may not sound like much; but from a legal perspective, the lower receiver is actually a pretty interesting gun part. If you wanted to buy the parts for an AR-15, you could purchase at gun shows or from mail-order catalogs--without any sort of record--every part of the rifle except the lower receiver. By printing out the lower receiver of an AR-15 on a 3D printer, it's possible to complete construction a fully functional, unregistered AR-15.”
“A MATTER OF SCALE”
Connect the dots. See where technologies intersect.
