ubicomp

"Is it worth it? Many of the problems that the internet of things is supposed to solve actually have simple, non-technological solutions. Google likes to boast that your smartphone can tell you the ratio of men and women in any given bar. But there is actually a much simpler solution: you can look through the window! Many of the wonders of the internet of things fall into this category. Sensors can tell you when a baby’s nappy is full. There is a perfectly reasonable old-fashioned solution to this problem. Sensors can turn the stem of an umbrella to glow blue when it is about to rain. You can always listen to the weather forecast. Mr Kvedar argued that hooking people up to the internet would reduce their need to go to the doctor, because they will be constantly updated about their health. But will elderly people, who are nervous enough about mobile phones, really embrace this high-tech wonderland? It might be better to loosen the grip of professional doctors on medical advice, and allow nurse-practitioners and other para-professionals to monitor people’s health. In health care, above all else, technology is a poor substitute for the human touch."

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Vlad Trifa is a Research Associate working at ETH Zurich and at MIT SENSEable City Lab. His work focuses on the Web of things and how it will change the way we experience our cities in the near future.

At Lift11, Vlad will explain why the old vision of the internet of things was a fluke, where we can expect real changes and what is needed for those to happen. I interviewed him today to find out what he will talk about during Lift11 this February.

Vlad Trifa

Research Associate (CH)
MIT SENSEable City Lab / ETH Zurich
» View Lift11 speakers

Laurent Haug: The internet of things has been largely discussed around the world, yet few people really know what it is about. How did the field evolve in the past years?

Vlad Trifa: Few years ago, we were promised we would have one network with all our objects connected on it. There has been a reality check typical of nascent technological fields, where we in fact see hundreds of different actors all proposing solutions that in the end do not easily connect with each other. Making objects talk to each other still requires very high efforts and a lot of programming skills. The Web of Things attempts to reproduce the same growth mechanism than the Web, and the time has come to focus on making things more open, accessible and compatible. The simple standards the Web is built upon have proven to be an ideal medium for building scalable and flexible systems. Besides, unlike most exotic protocols used in the classic internet of things, Web standards are widely spread and used, so why not just leverage them for devices as well?

What projects are you working on?

I am working on a project called LIVE Singapore. It will be a platform where people can share their data about the city in real-time. For example, you will be able to get data on traffic in real time, and at the level of granularity you wish. We hope this will allow thousands of developers to build apps on top of that, and change the way citizens experience and interact with the city.

Which concrete applications do you expect to emerge?

Visualizations at first, applications to see what is happening. The data will allow us to understand what happens, where and when. Traffic is an obvious example, where you can know in real time the conditions on the streets of the city. Then one can imagine closing the loop to have more active applications. If I take the example of traffic again, it is going beyond simply knowing that there is an accident, but rerouting a person or parcel through a different path in real time. We expect applications to emerge in transport, logistics, decision making, and many more. By making invisible phenomenas visible, we will allow users to not only understand, but also react to information and make better decisions for themselves. These possibilities will be especially interesting for cities of course, and they should allow for better organization and more sustainable living. It will allow citizens to actively participate and shape their environment - from passive data consumers we will become more informed and able to make better decisions according to what's happening right now.

A designer and researcher at Oslo School of Architecture, Timo Arnall offers here his perspective about networked objects and ubiquitous computing. His presentation, and the intriguing design examples he takes, highlights two phenomena. On the one hand, he describes how sensors and RFIDs can enable to "make things visible" as the title of his presentation expresses. On the other hand, he shows the importance of going beyond screen-based interactions.

Autour du Worshop UbiComp, animé par Nicholas Nova et dans notre session par Frederic Kaplan
La discussion s'est engagée sur la notion de "disparition des interfaces" qui semblent être induites par l'UbiComp, c'est à dire "disparition des ordinateurs".

Nous commençons nos échanges sur la notion de FeedBack, c'est-à-dire la restitution à un ordre ou à une manipulation donné par un utilisateur. Un dispositif doit-il renvoyer une prise en compte dans le monde électronique/informatique ?

Ce point de discussion, nous oblige a définir ce u'est une interface est-elle caractérisée par un feedback ou par la métaphore ou le langage qu'elle met en place ?.
Petit balayage du réel: le marteau exprime sa propre raison d'exister de par la logique de son usage et de sa forme, le thermostat du radiateur au contraire n'indique pas le résultat de son action immédiatement...

La manipulation d'un objet technique depuis l'arrivée de l'électronique et de l'informatique augmente les possibilités au détriment de la logique interne structurelle de l'objet, de sa taille qui n'est pas dicté par la technique mais par par les critères physiques de son utilisateur. L'objet technique contemporain
( NéoObjet ) n'a plus de de logique de construction de son esthétique propre (on peut totalement décorrélé la forme de la fonction).
Comment raisonner la forme et les fonctions dans un objet où les fonctions sont portées par des technologies qui prennent peu de place et dont le service peut être en dehors de l'objet.

Le Lift est riche, dense, et nous présente des acteurs engagés et contemporains de l'ethnologie, la sociologie, de la blogisphère, des porteurs de projets et quelques entrepreneurs issus du monde académique, associatif, appartenant a des entreprises, ou des StartUp..

Il manque peut-être quelques créateurs, concepteurs, artistes, et expression du Design thinking et des porteurs de technologie pour parfaire le subtil équilibre de construction d'un futur désirable...

La conférence de Bruce Sterling est décevante. Le show, le spectacle prennent le pas sur le message. Oui le futur est une histoire, une narration. Mais la métaphore de Nicolas S et Carla S facile. Le comique de répétition est un art qui doit se travailler. Cela me rappelle le spectacle de John Maeda, encore une déception, aux entretiens du Nouveau Monde industriel. La forme n'est pas toujours l'expression du fond.

Younghee Jung de Nokia Design nous montre un projet de description des usages par des enfants dans différents pays émergeant (comme on dit).
L'acteur global pense local. Je suis toujours étonné du caractère littéral de certaines de ces expériences. Une forme d'absence de distance face à ces méthodes chargées de décrypter l'inconnu et les besoins...
Nokia ne doit pas oublier la Seine-Saint-Denis, Staten Island, les hauts de seine dans et Cupertino dans ses recherches ;=)))).....

I blogged a summary (possibly incomplete and biased) of the discussion we had within the workshop on Ubiquitous Computing: failures and new interaction rituals.

Feel free to comment and criticize!

Thank you to all members of the group for the nice and insightful discussion.

Enjoy LIFT!

Cheers,

Vincenzo