MisEntropy

Fashion in the Future

In a post accompanying this composite picture from Burning Man (left), Kevin Kelly recently wrote "Someday we'll all dress like this."

His contention is that the sterile, streamlined and 'uniform' clothing depicted by sci-fi movies is just plain wrong. The future - in his vision - will be one continuous and unabashed festival of self-expression; a point he re-iterates in the comments  "... I look forward to a time when we do nothing but art. When getting dressed up is the whole point of life!"

On this occasion, I found myself disagreeing with Kevin. I have no doubt, in the future there will probably be many more people who'll dress for self-expression, just as there will still be people who'll prefer the utilitarian and simple in clothing. In many cases, both extremes may be preferred by the same people, but at different times - driven by fashion, season and personal situation.

My belief stemmed from what I know about myself (and others of my ilk) and what fashion choices I'd like to make in the future - accounting for the slender possibility that I may surprise myself with more metamorphosis than I'm used to.

But reading this Economist article about the futility of expecting to be anonymous in the future made me think twice.

The article in question reports not on fashion in the future but on the growing menace and sophistication of face recognition software. In one recent experiment, for eg., an off-the-shelf face-recognition program correctly identified as many as a third of participants simply by comparing their images with publicly available profiles on Facebook.

It seems unavoidable that in the future you could be identified by anyone who takes the trouble, simply based on info widely available on the net.

So how will dressing up outlandishly like you're at Burning Man change that? By pushing the face-recognition algorithms to their limit, or even past it. If you can't outlaw them, you might as well do all you can to throw them off-track.

The point is, dressing simply and predictably at all times only trains the software to zero in on you (especially if you can't control who takes your pic when and tags it online) - and there's only so many ways you can dress functionally. On the other hand, there are an unlimited number of looks - and ways to dress - if you opt for 'self-expression' instead.

My guess is that a lot of people bothered about the growing spread and reach of CCTV cameras will dress artistically and give full vent to their self-expression. And not just on occasions where they would like to avoid scrutiny - at protest rallies for eg - but even for occasions that don't demand the veil of being unidentifiable. It'll be hard to justify, or practice, as 'self-expression' if you only indulge in it at opportunistic moments.

The same holds for wearing just masks - which is really all you need for beating face recognition algorithms; but dressing 'self-expressively' overall gives you the freedom to cover your face creatively in public without seeming like a potential bank robber.

The goal will not be to beat face recognition one hundred per cent but to the raise its cost by adding the need for (expensive) human oversight or to introduce a reasonable cause for doubt.

There will, of course, continue to be people for whom self-expression for its own sake is worth the exorbitant cost. But for others, a little paranoia should offer a helping hand. 

[Original "shot" by Kevin Kelly]

The +1 TV remote revolution

I subscribe to a mailing list called Idea A Day that sends out one idea each day. Any one can contribute an idea and most days it looks like anyone does. Usually you receive ecletcic but whimsical and impractical suggestions that make you question the whole exercise. But just when you least expect it, there turns up a cracker making it all worthwhile.

A few days ago, this idea popped up : "Supply two remote controls with every television instead of one."

It's such a fabulous idea, I wonder why no one has come up with it before and why no manufacturer practices this. It's simple, practical and would hardly cost anything - but imagine the difference it could make. Of course, one could always add to one's collection by buying additional universal remotes, but how many of us would do that anyway?

My initial thought was it would be a handy thing, in case you break or misplace your remote. And for people living by themselves, that's what an additional remote would continue to be.

But as I started turning it over in my mind, I started seeing the similarities between the additional remote and the the kind of radical shift that Wikipedia's 'Edit' button brought about - a change in this case for consumption, and not for content creation. Every channel change (or any setting change) would be merely be 'provisional' - no matter how much you willed it otherwise. Any change you make could easily be reversed or changed further again by someone else (in the same room as you, unlike with Wikipedia) the very next moment, ad infinitum. The "tools" to control the TV were no longer solely yours.

How would that affect couples and families watching TV? Would it make make them more accommodative? What kind of protocol, agreements and behavioural changes would that bring about? How would it change the equations - and negotiations - between parents and growing kids, and between a couple? How would it change what they think of the TV? If TVs always came with more than one remote, how would that have changed programming?

I was also intrigued by the possibilities for social change. What would an additional remote do in patriarchal societies and households? Could we promote individual rights and freedom - surreptitiously - by making sure families in all parts of the world start off with TVs with more than one remote?

And the commercial possibilities. Will families that have a TV with 2 remotes, pick up a second TV earlier than those who don't? Could TV manufacturers use this as a tactic to promote rapid uptake of 2nd and 3rd TVs?

Of course, it would be naive to think that additional remotes cannot be lost, broken or 'misplaced' - so that things return back to business as usual. And with the spread of time-shifting technologies like TiVos, the migration to online video and, with an overwhelming part of the world population already with access to difficult-to-dislodge single remote TVs, much of this could remain a fantasy.

I feel there was a fork in the woods a while ago with an arrow saying 'Interesting times' and we took the other path. Or probably, there is a parallel universe where the world is currently being upended by the +1 TV remote. 

[Original pic by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla]

What traffic in Mexico City can teach us about social media

[I wrote this piece quite a while ago for a collaborative book on social media, but ultimately chose to go with another piece.]

In ‘Traffic: Why We drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)’, author Tom Vanderbilt explains how a right of way is negotiated in some places:

"Eye contact is a critical factor at unmarked intersections in Mexico City. Look at another driver and he'll know you have seen him, and thus dart ahead of you. Not looking at the driver shifts the responsibility to him (assuming he has actually seen you), which allows you to proceed first - if, that is, he truly believes you are not aware of him."

Experiments in the lab confirm this. In one study, subjects were shown pictures of equidistant cars approaching an intersection. One had the right of way and the other didn't.

When confirmed eye contact was made, most subjects thought that the driver who had the legal right-of-way would/should claim it. When no clear eye contact was made, the subjects had lesser clarity on who had the right of way - thereby absolving the driver without the legal right of way of any responsibility if he wrested it.

Avoiding eye contact is a strategy employed not just by motorists but by pedestrians too.

Motorists are willing to slow down or stop if they think that pedestrians have not seem them approaching. However, if the pedestrian has made eye contact with the motorist, this is less likely to happen.

So what has all this to do with social media?

Put very simply, our traditional mass-media approaches to advertising are all about avoiding 'eye contact' with our consumers - lest we be forced to change our well drawn out strategies and plans. So we put the pedal to the metal and zip past intersections and pedestrian crossings, all the while staring rigidly ahead - so that no one can 'expect' us to slow down, stop or change directions for them.

But social media is about the opposite approach. It's less about right of ways and wanting to wrest them at any cost - it's about acknowledging our consumers, slowing down to let them pass, being receptive to their choices and letting them influence our journey.

Therefore, a good way to test your social media strategy is to ask the question 'Is it enabling eye contact with our consumers or helping us avoid it?'

If it's the latter, you ought to know it’s just a mass media strategy in social media clothing. 

[Original pic by ·júbilo·haku·]

The real "Internet of Things"

Everytime I encounter the term "The Internet of Things", I feel a tinge of disappointment which arises from knowing what it means but concurrently hoping it meant something else. Something that is inherently implied in its name, at least to the uninitiated.

But first, here's what the "Internet of Things" is currently defined as:

"... the physical world itself is becoming a type of information system. In what’s called the Internet of Things, sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects—from roadways to pacemakers—are linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet. These networks churn out huge volumes of data that flow to computers for analysis. When objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What’s revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed, and some of them even work largely without human intervention.

Even being familiar with that prosaic truth doesn't stop me every time from thinking for a very brief second that the term could - or rightfully should - refer to a network where physical atomy things are moved around an Internet-like network.

For those of you who have also responded with the same anticipation-disappointment to the phrase, this post doesn't bring tidings of a real "Internet of Things." But it brings the next best thing to that: a description of technologies from the present - and even the past - that could possibly underpin a future, less disappointing, Internet of Things.

The idea, and the technology to make it happen, goes back to Victorian times:

There was a time, in many places, when letters and parcels could be put in capsules and sent through pipelines direct to people’s houses. The capsules were propelled by air and whizzed along tubes from sender to receiver. Pneumatic delivery, as it was known, was commonplace from about 1850 to 1950. The largest system was in Paris, where more than 400km of tubes were laid. Berlin and London had extensive pneumatic systems, too. After 1950, however, the networks gradually closed down, and today only Prague still clings to this Victorian technology.

If that wasn't fantastic enough, the idea has recently received an infusion of modern technology:

Pipenet, a system Dr Cotana patented in 2003 and has been developing since then, is based on a network of metal pipes about 60cm (two feet) in diameter. Instead of air pressure, it uses magnetic fields. These fields, generated by devices called linear synchronous motors, both levitate the capsules and propel them forward. The capsules are routed through the network by radio transponders incorporated within them. At each bifurcation of the pipe, the transponder communicates the capsule’s destination and the magnets pull it to the left or the right, as appropriate. Air pumps are involved, but their role is limited to creating a partial vacuum in the pipes in order to reduce resistance to the capsules’ movement. This way, Dr Cotana calculates, capsules carrying up to 50kg of goods could travel at up to 1,500kph—so you could be wearing a pair of jeans or taking photographs with a new camera only a couple of hours after placing your order.

Crucially (in my opinion), replacing centralised air compressors that produce the pneumatic push to localised magnetic levitation technology should enable the "pneumatic post network" idea of the past to transform from a "monologue of things" to a "dialogue of things" - giving it an upload option to the standard download feature. What we have here now is glimmer of the democracy of the Internet we know so well, albeit shackled firmly by the economy of real things.

Dr. Franco Cotana - referred to in the excerpt above - is an engineering physicist working at the University of Perugia in Italy. His team is exploring pilot projects in Italy and China. The emphasis, pragmatically, is on transportation of freight - the new technology reduces the cost of transportation to under $5 a mile. True, a fraction of the cost of traditional freight transport but, a real bummer for dreamers of a widely available "Internet of Things."

But that shouldn't prevent an unhindered view of the possibilities:

In 1900 Charles Emory Smith, then postmaster-general of the United States, wrote that by the end of the decade he expected the “extension of the pneumatic tube system to every house, thus insuring the immediate delivery of mail as soon as it arrives in the city”.

I am hoping the above technologies, accompanied by an adoption of open network protocols and a modular (packeted) approach to making things, may yet make what is currently a pipe dream, a dream pipe. 

[Pic from The Economist]

The missing link in crowdsourcing

From a review of William Rosen's 'The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention':

"The author dismisses the more traditional explanations about why the industrial revolution began in Britain—such as an abundance of coal or the insatiable demands of the Royal Navy—concluding, instead, that it was England’s development of the patent system that was the decisive factor. By aligning the incentives of private individuals with those of society, it transformed invention from a hobby pursued by the idle rich into an opportunity for spectacular commercial gain open to anyone with a bit of skill and a good idea. That allowed England to harness the creative potential of its artisan classes in a way that no other country had managed before."

It's worth noting what makes the patent system tick. It is not primarily an outlet or a mechanism to unleash the creative potential of anyone and everyone, but instead a system that "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of society."

In my opinion, this is what's missing in most crowdsourced advertising efforts until now. Instead of putting together a system which "aligns the incentives of private individuals with those of the brand," advertisers are hoping that an upwelling of creative expression will pour out - if only an outlet is offered.

Any such alignement of incentives doesn't necessarily have to imitate/recreate the patent system in a brand communication context. Indeed the incentives that individuals seek may differ for each brand and they aren't always monetary.

Instead, merely considering what the incentives are for potential contributors at large and the particular brand in question and how to align them, will give any crowdsourcing effort a fighting chance to be working contraption rather than just a PR-worthy curiosity.

It's an uphill task, but not an impossible one. Until the patent system came out, it's not to hard to imagine ordinary workers in the 18th century "writing" their own version of the open letter that follows (via), urging society and capitalists to leave them alone - to their boring jobs and lives.

Well, many of them are busy inventing now. 

Chief Not Listening Officer

The obvious - and rightful criticism - to the current fashion for Chief Listening Officers is that everybody in the organisation should be listening, not just one designated person or department.

But as this report suggests, Chief Listening Officers aren't really performing the touchy-feely task enshrined on their business card but instead bringing hard data-analysis skills to the torrent of online chatter about the brand. In fact, Susan Beebe - CLO at Dell - describes her job as building "complex queries."

I am in no doubt the need for such a role exists. What I question instead is the need for the grandstanding title.

In fact, listening is only one half of the CLO's job - and definitely not the more important half. As Susan Beebe clarifies in the comments in the this post, "It's important to not only "listen" but prioritize and disseminate that information back to the relevant business lines so they can take action on the information."

What the CLO is doing primarily is "prioritising feedback", choosing one thread of discussion over the other, ignoring the feeble - but probably revelant - voice, even while delivering on a delusional self-satisfaction to the brand that it's "listening" to everything directed at it.

In fact, if you have anything to say to the brand you'll have better luck routing it through anyone in the organisation except the CLO. While anyone in the organisation can ignore feedback and fail to act on it, it takes a CLO to do so and justify it as his/her job.

The critics are only partially right. It's indeed everyone's job to be Chief Listening Officer. Even better if everyone knows and agrees whose job it is to be Chief Not Listening Officer. 

[Original pic by Un ragazzo chiamato Bi]