heathervescent

The Future of Intimacy

This summer I kicked off a new domain of research with 3 colleagues in Toronto: The Future of Intimacy.

As the virtual becomes a natural augmentation of our physical relationships, how will virtual interactions become less of a substitute for physical proximity and rather a mechanism to extend and augment intimacy (play/engagement/closeness) in 2050?

To show a vision of this future, we created a company: UME; which was founded in 2025.

UME is the leading company in emotion extension technology. At UME, we connect how you feel with your loved ones.

UME offers two products that facilitate deep connection with loved ones. EMP-CONNECT and INLINE.

While we envisioned positive ways to use this technology, including an increase in emotional literacy; we explored the dark side of complete mind-melding. 

And other scenarios share more possibilities, like a general overview of this world, an empathic high school and a feminist perspective. 

These scenarios show a vision of what the future could be. How could this world become a reality? We created a Backcast to show plausible events happening in the next 37 years that could lead to this reality. 

While we can't say for certain that this vision will happen, the technology and trends of today lead us to this vision. The value of this work is in how it makes you think about this topic. Is this a future you want to live in? What things about this future are exciting and pull you toward it? Which items about this future concern you?

Without a vision of the future to step into and experience, we can't explore these questions. The answers to these questions changes the way we interact in the present, and this, in turn, changes the future. 

A Possibility Tour

For my talk at WFS on Sunday, I took my audience on a Possibility Tour with some of my favorite people to explore what commerce might be like in the 22nd Century. Enjoy.

A Possibility Tour by heathervescent from heathervescent

The Self-Actualized Currency was really popular. Here are some tweets from/about the session: 

• Maree Conway: Nice ideas - applying embedding emotion and values in currency.
• Rob Moran: This is the BEST futures presentation I have ever attended. Amazing ideas....
• Eclecthink: Thanks for the mind messing, brainstretching talk on alternate currencies at WFS

Slices of Life

My latest design future, Slices of Life, is about personal data, personal clouds and how we might have our data work for us in the future.  I'm really proud how this came out. 

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Possible Future of Facebook

Here's the math equation: 

Facebook timeline + Dan Simmons Flashback + Stephenson's Diamond Age (Or A Young Girl's Primer) + AI = Possible future for us Gen Xers when we are old and in old age homes aka "TV" for the old people. 

Here's the scene: you're old (but you don't have to be), you want to reminiscence, with/about your friends. Well, lucky you - you lived your life on Facebook (or Twitter or Google or your blog, etc.) and there is a ton of information about you to not only create your life timeline, but an avatar AI representation of you. (I've written about this in my scenario entitled, Trantor Mentors. Extra credit to anyone who gets the name inspiration.) So you can decide to jack in and re-experience certain times - or maybe just read your life like it was a book. (I admit I do that with my own blog sometimes. I am my primary reader, Oscar Wilde inspiration.) And there are different levels of media engagement. Like I mentioned, there's the book/reading, there's the watching, there's immersive VR (probably 3D).

 Facebook might wanna consider teaming up with Singularity University right about now.

Protopian Flipsided View: one can use these group memories for various esoteric practices that increase self-awareness, understanding and tolerance.

Failing Pattern Recognition

I used to wonder why my dog seemed to know when the boyfriend (aka S.) got home while we on a walk. At a certain point in the walk, he would stop being interested with the walk, sniffing the bushes or wanting to walk more and instead - huff it back home. Mr Dog would practically drag me the last block home, breaking into a run if possible, down the driveway and up to the front door. 

Yeah, sure, sometimes S. would be home; but sometimes he wasn't. Mr Dog was never upset when he ran back and there was no S. When Mr Dog ran back and S. was home = positive reinforcement that maybe Mr Dog has some secret sense. But he wasn't always right. And when S. wasn't usually home when Mr D and I  got home, Mr Dog stopped dragging me that last block.

I never really got it. Until last week.

I read some research or an article (I forget exactly where - probably here on the internet or in one of my Science/Nature/Science Mags subscriptions) that explained, when a rat was randomly rewarded with a treat 60% of the time he pushed on a bar. He would push it all the time, even the times he didn't get a treat. This helped him maximize the treat - sure he only got it 60% of the time, but that 60% of the time was worth the 40% he didn't get one. 

The study compared this experiment to a similar one done on humans. In the human case, the human tried to figure out what the pattern of reward was to increase the reward beyond 60%. In doing so, the human actually reduced the successful reward to 40 or 50% (I don't remember off the top of my head). So the human, in trying to figure out the pattern, actually reduced it's success.

That seemed to explain my dog's behavior.

Then I started thinking about my behavior - how I tried to understand and recogonize patterns. What if all those so called patterns are actually pure randomness? It's changed the way I've been thinking about some things. 

I think I'm onto something here. I think getting caught up in patterns: trying to identify them, trying to understand them, might not always be so helpful. (Now, of course, there are times/things that do have patterns.) Maybe not everything has a pattern. And maybe some of the more complicated patterns we believe in, may be random or wild cards in retrospect.

 

The Tang of Housing

There's been an idea that's been constantly vying for attention in my mind. I haven't been giving it much attention, since it's outside of my current focuses, but it's gotten more and more insistent over the past few days. I couldn't put it off any longer.

Welcome to another installment of Heather's Intuitive Future Forecasts, this time, talking about building material and the future of housing.

The Tang of Housing: Space Development driving the Future of Housing on Earth

We're going to see a dramatic change in the materials we use and way we create shelter.  First, the housing many of us in the US live in are coming up on 100 years old. Even craftsmen houses are ageing. This was not a style of house that was built to last for 100+ years. (The Victorians on the other hand, with their plaster and lathe are a different story.)

Homes built in the past 20 years have even less longivity. Many were slap-dash thrown up during various housing building bubbles. (I can't imagine the state of the lofts in Potrero Hill building in 1999 that were occupied by a startup I worked for.)  Thus we're going to see the decaying of the existing housing stock. Which, frankly is fine. Because technology is changing and evolving faster than the existing housing infrastructure can deal with. And people want different things anyway.

Here's the math equation:

Innovations in material sciences

+ the desire for flexible application to technology

+ gamification/quantification trend

+ limited/reducing resource use

- 70s modern design models  

+ space travel as a weak signal.

You might ask, what does space travel have to do with housing?

A lot actually. A space travel industry could be jumpstarted by a revitalization in the earth housing industry. Many of the materials, modularity/repairability/extensibility needed for space, can be much simpler applied here on earth - for rapid prototyping. Our current housing stock is based on a paradigm of expanding resources that is just no longer the case. And with developing nations evolving into the developed - dense urban capacity is important more than ever. 

Think Tang for the Housing Industry.

Here's the vision of the house of the future. 

Using new materials developed for space use, prototype houses that have an electronic nervous system aka computer system. Walls and spaces must be flexible to allow for upgrading/switching/changing the infrastructure as the infrastructure is evolved. (Infrastructure = water, electricity, gas, air, internet/communication, waste and ??? else).

Additionally there will be tracking mechanism, although they will maintain privacy - we're not going to have Keeping up with the Jones changed to Competing with the Jones. This will monitor use and harvest/mining of resources. I see an integration with more urban gardening/green spaces plants: internal and directly external. Grass yards may be replaced with different types of plants.

There needs to be a way to recycle/evolve your living space, without having to be wealthy: permits and construction need to stop being available only for the wealthy. Government infrastructure and bureaucracy need to evolve to encourage the recycling of decaying homes utilizing old infrastructure to new homes that will pave the way for space development, travel and eventually living.

Engaging people to re-create their living spaces, while user/product testing materials, designs and mindsets that engage everyone to making the dream of space a reality. 

Use this housing development improving living on earth as a base to slingshot ourselves ad astra, beyond our dreams and desires.

With that, small insistent idea in the back of my mind, you have been set free into the world.

Speaking Alert: Web 2.0 Expo

I've been added as a last minute speaker for Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco next Wednesday, March 30 at 1:15pm. I will be sharing my research results on Trends Shaping the Future of Transactions. 

What does the future of transactions look like? Researcher Heather Schlegel has fresh data on the future of currency and alternate transactions. In this session, she’ll share her findings, including current behaviors around transactions, emerging payment options and three invisible cultural trends that will shape our transactions. Among the critical questions she’ll answer:

•  
  • What are people using today to make transactions on and offline?
  • How are people using alternate currencies (game, reward/frequent flyer miles, wuffie)?
  • How people are using mobile payment technologies?
  • How are people participating in alternate economies (barter, gift, favor, etc)?
  • What are the most frequent methods of transactions used?
  • What payment options are the most controversial?
  • How will these trends manifest in the future?
  • What you can do with this information today?

If you plan to attend Web 2.0 and are interested in the Future of Alternate Currencies and Transactions, you won't want to miss my talk.  Please come by!

Future of Space Travel Analogy

The breakthrough came this morning:

Birds are to the Earth as Humans are to Space.

The analogy is not as simple as it may seem. There is a new Nature report out describing a type of internal GPS/internal avian magnetic compass that birds use to navigate their migrations.

Wouldn't it be cool (and perhaps it is necessary) for humans to create/develop a similar sense to navigate to cosmos?

Energy Cornfield

I've been doing a lot of thinking about green energy and environmentalism. I hate to admit it, but when someone starts talking to me about green business, sustainability or green energy, my eyes glaze over and I stop considering them a serious individual (with a few very rare exceptions for a few of my extraordinary friends). The whole green energy/conservationism/savetheworldbandwagon makes me sick. It's hard for me to see it as something other than a bunch of white $$shame trying to save the world but only from their worldview/valueset.

I've felt very conflicted (and wrong and bad) about this attitude, wondering if I'm anti-conservation/green? Maybe it's just my contrarian tendencies. Is it about control? (I don't want anyone telling me how or where I should get my energy or how to use it, thank you very much.) But here's the thing - I actually think conservation and reducing energy use is the exact opposite direction that we as a human species should be going.

It hit me this week. Energy conservation and the development of solar and wind energies is akin to caloric restriction. Sure, it has been scientifically proven to help you live longer, but you certainly can't be a body builder on it. Nor can you express your human potential on it. (Unless that is living long enough for the Singularity - a noble cause in it's own, but one I care not to achieve.) Sure solar and wind will give us some energy, but they just help us put off dealing with peak oil. The amount of energy in oil is so highly concentrated and it is so easily chemically manipulated. We are not going to stop using oil and coal before we use them up no matter how much solar, wind and bio-fuel energies are available.

Based on my studying and my gut feelings, it is CRITICAL that we have excessive amounts of free/cheap energy to evolve to the next level. It is the difference between hunter/gatherer existence, and the Iowas cornfields I drove through this afternoon. With excessive amounts cheap energy many many things will become possible and be invented that can not possibly exist today.

It is the difference between an outdoor cooking fire and the electric plug in your wall that your electronic device "breathes" from.

I'm not saying we shouldn't develop wind, solar or vegetable based energy: we should, but I do not believe that these methods of energy capture/harnessing will be the difference between the metaphorical hunter/gatherer and cornfields of Iowa. Those energy models will merely maintain the existing paradigm. (And they will only prolong our dealing with peak oil. We're gonna use all the oil in this earth sooner or later.) Which is fine, but not something I am particular interested in. I'm focused on blowing past our current place in time/space/culture/history (not maintaining it) and creating the path to the future.

Analogies:

• Caloric Restriction is to Solar/Wind/Bio Energy as Best Life Possible is to Human evolution/paradigm shift
• Fire is to Hunter/Gatherer as Electricity is to Agriculture as Cheap usable Energy is to the next human paradigm shift (space? singularity?)
• Solar/wind energy is to aspirin as Energy is to broken arm

Ps. Lainie, Evoamo, Hippy Steve - forgive me for this post. I still love you all and your greening ways!

Tracking Vectors

An astute observation about launching innovative technology from last month's NYTimes article on the ipad. When launching a product, innovative technology or novel concept, timing isn't everything; but it can be the difference between you personally having success with that technology - and someone else with different (later) timing. Its one of the things that feels so unfair in new technology: that the earliest adopters, the earliest users, evangelists and sometimes even the original creators & inventors do not get the monetary or fame that goes along with the breaking innovation.

Timing is essential to make such big steps ahead. Carver Mead, a leading computer scientist at the California Institute of Technology, once said, “Listen to the technology; find out what it’s telling you.”

Mr. Jobs is undeniably a gifted marketer and showman, but he is also a skilled listener to the technology. He calls this “tracking vectors in technology over time,” to judge when an intriguing innovation is ready for the marketplace. Technical progress, affordable pricing and consumer demand all must jell to produce a blockbuster product.

This is something I have watched happen many times, and it is a well known phenomenon in some VC funding and technology circles. It's the difference between financial success (and the ability to fund later innovative ventures) and (for me) feelings of failing the technology. (In the end though, the technology will make it to the mainstream, through a meandering and strange path, possibly obscure.)

As I work on my Masters in Technology/Future Forecasting, these trends are something I am watching like a hawk. I want to understand and predict/forecast when society is primed and the time is right for launching these technologies. I know these answers in my gut, but gut is not empirical evidence.

What does the World Want?

Do you know what the world wants?

How about the earth?

How about the United States? What are our goals as a nation?

I've been thinking about these things since I started my first grad class, World Futures. People have so many assumptions about what they think is right or correct or the way to do things. Today I read an article about biofuels that posited that increased focus on biofuels would increase poverty and hunger.

The only reason global warming is a problem is because it might be a problem for humans. It might make the earth not optimal for the human race (and possibly a bunch of other animals). But in the scheme of the universe, does this really matter?  I mean, what does the earth want?

Let's assume that the earth wants life on and around it. If that's that case, then it really doesn't matter in the long run whether or not an animal (human, plants, etc) is extinct now or later. Everything dies. The human race will cease to exist at some point in the future. Life will continue. But what kind of life does the earth want? What kind of intelligent life (if any)?

I often think about pollution and destruction of the environment in the same frame of mind as ingesting drugs or other "poisonous" items. To much drugs of any kind can often kill you, or do irreversible damage. That sucks for the person who damaged themself, but if they survive, they will still live, still have experiences, life. Life wins. If they kill themselves by drug usage, well then, their life transforms and lives on another way - sometimes that energy lives on in their stories.

Recently I have become obsessed with economics and have started reading copious quantities of financial reports and documentation. I started wondering, what is the goal of our nation - the United States. And I sadly could not identify any goal. It made me think that perhaps our past goals (set by our founding fathers) have been achieved, and we are in the state of confusion, waffling, figuring out where to go and what to do next. We've gotten our priorities confused, gotten bit by the hierarchy bug, forgotten our values, taken drugs.

This makes me very sad. And I wonder, is it possible (yes, of course the possibility it there, but how high the probability is it) for a country, a nation, to have goals?

And if a nation can, what about a world?

The Epoch is Dead. Long live the Epoch!

I glanced at the most recent Nature magazine when the sleep deprived self wandered downstairs at 5am this morning pondering coffee. The cover had some picture and article about Neuroscience and in a flash, I knew - we are living in a different time.

Later, I was reviewing discovers, explorers and adventurers of the past, only to turn it on its head and think, who are the people that in the future will be in these slots. The people alive today. The Lewis and Clark and Pizarro and Cortez? The theme back then was expansion by discovery and conquering native races. The concept of a "new" world back then was mind-blowing.

One area I think in hindsight will be seen as massive turning points in the evolution of human/ity is the current research being done in neuroscience. The understanding of the brain. fMRI is the camera that allows a window into the electric brain activities. The work and research (and knowledge and paradigm shifts) are in the tinest of baby steps and I believe will explode exponentially within my lifetime and beyond.

Another area I believe will in retrospect be huge is the exploration of space and our local solar system. This area of exploration is in some ways similar to the adventurers I mentioned. Who will Richard Branson be in hindsight? What about Peter Diamandis? Not to mention the many technical geni at work on the many projects. How can you not compare NASA/JPL to the Portuguese Crown?

Thinking about the future by thinking about the past. Compare and extrapolate. 

Attitudes are changing, have changed. What was once closed and secret is open, leaning toward transparency, collaboration. The veils are being lifted and we are forever ushered into a new epoch. The world as we knew it has transformed. Changed. And we have done it.

Avatars of the Future

In Jack McDevitt's Seeker, one of the main characters is searching for a lost colony. To try to understand where it might be located, she calls up the Avatar of the colony's founder. This avatar is created by the computer from historical data: newspapers, documented speeches, television, photographs and other documented media. A 3D hologram is created of the person and he can have conversation with our intrepid detective.

In Douglas Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop, he brings up the concept that inside each of us, are the active consciousness of others. He uses his wife, who had died, as an example.

"I keep trying, though, to figure out the extent to which I believe that because of my memories of her (in my brain or on paper), and those of other people, some of Carol's consciousness, her interiority, remains on this planet. Being a strong believer in the noncentralizedness of consciousness, in its distributedness, I tend to think that in one particular brain, it is also somewhat present in other brains as well, and so, when the central brain is destroyed, tiny fragments of the living individual remain - remain alive, that is." (IAASL, p 230)

People talk about the Singularity as the time when computers will be able to hold a downloaded human brain. And the underlying assumption (I get) from this magical time, is that we'll be able to download our brain/intelligence/consciousness into a computer and be able to cheat old age and death. We'll be able to "live" on in the computer hardware infrastructure (or augment/evolve our organic brain).

One of the things the singularity will facilitate (because I do think we can do this now) is to help us create more complete avatars of ourselves. This will help us understand ourselves.

I agree with Hofstadter - there are people who are not myself in my head. People who inspire me and remind me what I think is right. ("WWJD" is a great example of this.) I remember my dead grandmother, her advice, what she loved. I was obsessed with Bruce Chatwin for about a year and read everything I could about him. He's still rattling back there in my brain (and often eggs me on to find his dreamlines in Australia). I've replayed conversations I've had with people. I know people who try out their conversations with their version of the person in their head before having the conversation with the actual person.

I'm sure algorithms exist that can scrape your blog, social network feeds to create an avatar of you - or at least a marketing demographic. The next step it seems to me - is to scan your brain. This would be a fascinating discovery. Are you really who you think you are? What is the composite creation of yourself? (Based on your brain scanned data? based on external data? based on brain scanned data of you from other brains?)

Talk about amazing 360 degree feedback. And talk about creating a digital representation of yourself. I think this is not only possible, but will happen. And some people will love this (for the history books) and others will go offline even more.

On Corporations

Rough thoughts. Ive always been fascinated by the definition of corporations/companies as entities in the eyes of the law, when they just seem like pieces of paper. But they most definitely are entities -- and they are evolving. From rebellious teenagers (don't tell me what I can do say the executives who bend and break the rules on wallstreet) to ones with awareness of the world they create (and trying to improve the world as they understand it).

Forecasts for the Future

Since I've decided to become a futurist - I thought I would start making forecasts. Since I have no formal training in future forecasting (yet) my methods are nebulous at best. What is my criteria for these forecasts? The best way I could explain is my gut and heart.

I have always found myself in the early flow of trends. I also create my own future. Much of what I put effort to making happen - happens. Below are my first predictions based on my wide base of knowledge grazing, following trends and experiencing life. These are the things that have my attention.  My guess is that some of these will hit the nail on the head in 2-5 years, while others will be way off the mark (my own personal obsession of the moment.) I can probably tell you which ones are the personal obsessions.

1. The Invisible Internet: Only the User Interface. Internet Technology itself is becoming less important. It is now about the dividing line - the user interface - human computer interaction. Sure, technology will continue to dramatically increase in power and speed. But the adoption curve on Internet Technology has dramatically increased with the web 2.0 - which I see as simply user interface improvements. This is going to accelerate even more as computers and internet technology go under the covers like motors and electrical engineering. It will continue to be difficult to get tech people to go into the computer and engineering field.

2. Mass media. Is going away and is not going away. The mainstream has gotten bigger and yet specialized at the same time. The only way to make it to the mainstream is to go as/from a smaller culture/group. I think there are going to be some dramatic changes with media - but I haven't yet put my finger on the point. I think ownership is going to be dramatically re-thought. As well as consumers. But more of that in my next point.

3. Reader Response aka The Mashup/Remix Culture. I have been fascinated with what I call reader-response for over 15 years. I first learned of this in one of my college english classes. The teacher and I argued that it didn't matter what the author meant - that once he published his work - the reader's response to it was just as valid as the author's intention. This is the heart and core of the remix culture that has exploded mostly with music and video mashups. But this is really something that has happened throughout all of humanity. We build upon the work of the past. It's only now, that digitally you're able to more easily track and thus get all agro when you think someone is stealing your idea/material. None of this material belongs to any of us. We are all mere vessels. One day, the concept of copyright will be as antiquated as the earth being the center of the universe. (I certainly don't expect to see this happen in my lifetime or 10 times my lifetime.)

4. Urban Homesteading/Gardening. This could be my personal current obsession - but the next step in the "green" revolution is personal responsibility in regards to food sources/creation. Farming is about to be reinvented. In Berkeley and around Hollywood - there are community gardens, but these are so bureaucratic (year+ waits to get a plot) that they are not solutions. Taking back the concrete jungle and growing food and green things. Container and vertical gardening where the soil has been covered up with pavement and concrete. Although just concepts at the moment, I love the direction of farming skyscrapers prototypes. I hope these types of dreams actually happen. Instead of 750k condos in the heart of Hollywood - what about a farm in the sky?

5. Bio/Nano. I am admittedly somewhat uneducated about the current bio/nano tech specific. This will be quickly remedied with study. However I do think this is one of the next frontiers. Understanding and using nano technologies to deliver drugs and clean up toxic situations will be no less than amazing. And no, I'm not a bit worried about Grey Goo.

6. Internet Backlash. It's already started and recently fabulously shown by Josh Harris's exile to his Apple Farm and then Ethiopia in his movie "We Live in Public". People will increasingly go offline. Check out completely. And there will be internet detox. I'm interested to understand if there has been previous times where new technology has been so quickly adopted, used and changes. The internet is like water.

Some things I'd like to see developed

1. Personal Responsibility. Too many people don't know how to take care of themselves. People need to own up and take responsibility for their decisions and life. This country is in a mess because people didn't take responsibility and do the right thing. I'd like to see a focus on this value and self-reliance.

2. Interior Tourism. Travel to exotic locations is no longer exotic. Go off the beaten path and you'll run into another "adventurer" just like you. I hate to break it to you - but you know what - Iowa is as exotic as the Serengeti. Depends on your perspective. I am constantly amazed by how diverse and beautiful my home state of California is. I don't care if I ever leave it again. The US is an amazing beautiful country. You don't have to go half-way around the world to see some of the most beautiful places. It's right here at home. America the Beautiful.

3. Beyond Level 3.  There are a lot of people out there to change the world - but I honestly don't believe you can change the world for the better, until you have mastery of yourself. (You're just trying to change the world for what you think might be better.) Before you have mastery of yourself, you have to know who you are.