The Lamisphere

In the April 15th edition of the Christian Science Monitor, I had the priviledge of providing analysis and commentary of MIT’s “Sixth Sense” device.  For the uninitiated, Sixth Sense is a conglomeration of wearable mobile tools (webcam, 3G modem, micro-projector and palmtop computer) that together collect data about the world around the wearer, and superimpose data from the cloud on top of physicality.

The full article is here: http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/04/15/sixth-sense-a-web-you-can-wear/

You can see a video of the device here:



Some choice quotes:

But observers are already envisioning future improvements to Sixth Sense that could result in some startling possibilities.

“Its current representation is a pretty fun parlor trick that has the roots of being a transformative capability down the road,” says Jonas Lamis, founder of the advanced technology research and consulting firm SciVestor in Austin, Texas.

Among Mr. Lamis’s predictions: Sixth Sense’s current projector will eventually give way to contact lenses that overlay data directly onto a person’s field of vision.

In places where we now find fixed advertisements, like posters or billboards, we will see ads calibrated to our exact location and interests, he says. We will effortlessly access virtual conversations, like those on Twitter, about the people, places, and events we come across in person.

And Sixth Sense-type computers with advanced facial recognition capabilities, Lamis says, might show information about the people we pass on the street. We would know if he donated to a political candidate, if she writes an environmentally themed blog, or if he appears in a database of registered child predators – all in real time.

“People in different areas are thinking about this as viable for consumers down the road,” Lamis says. “It [will have] really profound implications for how [we] ultimately see the world.”

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Articles, Artificial Intelligence, Business, Disruption, Intelligent Agents, Just Plain Cool, Video, iPhone | | #

For the last 30 years, software companies have made good money “automating” business processes.  SAP wired the back office.  Oracle took down finances.  Tivoli figured out IT operations.  Salesforce, Adobe, Remedy, and many many others:  they each carved out a piece of manual, time-consuming, inefficient business operations and made them more efficient.

Of course, these companies would have never been successful without an appropriate hardware platform (think desktop apps, client-server, n tier architectures, and http more recently).  They also couldn’t have done it without a willing audience:  namely large companies with legions of workers sitting behind desks pushing paper. This synergistic cycle has driven business value and wealth creation like few other industries over the last quarter century.

Fast forward to the emergence of the consumer web in the early part of this decade and we see similar synergies occurring outside of the enterprise.

Amazon automated shopping, Travelocity took on travel, Flickr became our photo gallery.    These services profited from the same model; consumers with personal computers and Internet access wanted more efficient processes to help them live their lives.

Now here is where it gets interesting.  New platforms are going to push the boundaries of human computer interaction like never before.  For example, let’s look at me.  The business of being Jonas does not stop when I leave work or turn off my home computer.  From the minute I wake up in the morning, until the minute I fall asleep at night, I am actively executing “business” processes; where the process is the business of being me.  There is the “turn off the alarm clock” process, and the “brush my teeth” process.  The “find a matched pair of socks” process and the “drive to work” process.  The “get flowers for mom” process and the “figure out what’s for dinner” process.  The “hang a new picture in my office” process and the “find out how the Longhorns did” process.  There is even a “think about a blog posting” process.

Each of the processes requires my time and attention (to a greater or lesser degree).  Some I enjoy doing, and others I could do without.  Regardless, I’d bet that each of these processes could be enhanced.  They could be automated.  They could be done quicker or more efficiently.  They could be more fun, or at least less painful.

And this is where the iPhone comes in.  The iPhone is an always-on, always-connected, always-with-me platform that fits the synergistic model of person (Jonas), process (hang a picture in my office), platform (iPhone running Clinometer app).  Here are some other examples:


Each of these applications represents a small, finite piece of process automation.  The iPhone platform makes each of them available – just at the exact moment – when I need them.  With a few finger swipes they manifest themselves, deliver their value, and then disappear back into the ether.  Today there are over 10,000 apps available for the iPhone platform and the rate of developer adoption and new application functionality is simply breathtaking.

Imagine what the next decade has in store for us with this paradigm:  Overlay the continued progress of Moore’s Law, the emergence of the 4G network spectrum, and the blossoming science of brain-machine interfaces.  I can imagine teams already scheming apps like: Never Forget a Face app, Locate my Stuff app, and Write my Blog Posting app (now with 30% more wit).

I imagine my iPhone as a virtual bubble that surrounds me – augmenting who I am with enhanced awareness, intelligence, and senses.   The ubiquitous personal process execution platform of the year 2020 will be nothing short of wondrous.  It will be every present, ever watchful, always trustworthy, and my wish may very well be its command.

1 Comment | In: Brain Machine Interface, Futurism, Intelligent Agents, iPhone | tags: applications, business process, Futurism, iPhone. | #

I had the opportunity to run a session at ProductCamp Austin 2009. The event drew 250 product managers and marketers from the Austin community - representing companies both large and small.

As economic volatility increases, it has become apparent that many smart, capable corporate employees are at risk of losing their jobs. Here in Austin, we have seen thousands of jobs shed from local tech stalwarts like IBM, AMD, NI, Dell, Borland, Applied Materials and others. Even Google shuttered their Austin office.

Fear, uncertainty, doubt reign supreme in this topsy-turvy economy. This explains much of the groundswell that we are seeing at Tech Ranch of would be tech entrepreneurs looking for community and advice.

Since our launch in late November, Tech Ranch has built a network of hundreds of central Texas citizens on the entrepreneurial path. We have hosted office hours with more than 30 budding startups. We have 90%+ occupancy of our two Ranch locations in Austin and are scouting a much larger facility and we have begun to enroll entrepreneurs in our Innovation Program - accelerating their traction and visibility to the investment community.

All this served as a back drop as I presented “Jonas’ 12 Steps to go from Employee to Entrepreneur” at ProductCamp Austin 2009. It explains why the room was packed, and likely why I was voted “Best Speaker” at the event.

The simple, one slide presentation below held everyone’s attention for an hour, as we talked through the trials and tribulations of finding a passion, building a product and team, getting fired, launching and eventually scaling a venture.

Tech Ranch is currently planning a to launch a workshop around the Employee 2 Entrepreneur paradigm. Getting America’s best and brightest employees out of their corporate silos and into dynamic startup opportunities might just be our country’s best path out of our economic quagmire.

No Comments | In: Entrepreneurship, Tech Ranch Austin | tags: entrepreneur, jobs, tech ranch austin. | #

“I’d pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie — all the savings from the symphonies and the first three theses — drinking myself stupid at the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I’d expended all the respect anyone had ever afforded me.” — Cory Doctorow, Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom, 2003

“There are perennial discussions of trust metrics for things like automatic sysopping and (a) general “reputation management” system.  It is rightly pointed out (by me and many others!) that such systems are difficult to design properly and often easy to “game”.  At the same time, the hope is that a well-designed system would be scalable and informative, while not oppressive or empowering of tyrants.”  — Jimmy Whales, 2004

In the not too distant future, trust and transparency will become incredibly important issues for the Web.  In a world where increasingly powerful virtual online agents begin to act as proxies for decision making that we humans currently perform, there will become myriad opportunities for disreputable firms to compromise these agents, influencing the decisions that they take against the will of the person they are acting on behalf of.

You might be surprised by how many purchasing decisions robots already make.  Black-box trading systems on Wall Street and across the financial markets accounted for over 1/3 of all stock trades in 2006, and will push 50% of volume in 2010 according to the consulting firm Aite Group.   Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems and other standards based protocols in manufacturing, logistics, and procurement frequently execute purchasing decisions with little or no human intervention.  You can event train Amazon.com to automatically send you items based on a schedule you teach it.

What all three of these systems have put in place is an automated system for buying things without having to have a human in the middle of the decision-making process.   While Amazon fulfillment might be a simple algorithm, the underlying models for some algorithmic trading systems are as complex as any logic process that you might execute to decide what stocks to buy and when.

In the next few years, we will see web-based services emerge that want to offer that level of “decision-making by proxy” for many of the tasks that you perform manually online today.  Things like booking airline flights, making dinner reservations, scheduling appointments and buying goods and services are being targeted for automation by this new class of intelligent agent technology (see the Do Button).

The challenge that emerges is figuring out a “trust model” that will allow these agents broad latitude to execute on your desire while maintaining a high level of transparency that they are acting in your best interest, rather than being unduly influenced by third parties (perhaps through favored relationships with the agent provider).

I’m reminded of the recent dust-up around Facebook data.  If you think that having a service like Facebook turn on you and not release your data is wrong, wait until your trusted execution service suddenly decides to change how it behaves because of a new partnership the provider put in place.

Obviously, this kind of conflict could damage the growth potential for intelligence agent technologies.  I’m worried that investors in these firms will look at all of the monetization strategies that such a powerful tool will bring in the near term, and make value judgments about the level of objectivity that such a system might require without considering the broader issues of trust and transparency.

I suspect that this problem will not be easily solved. Modeling trust for an intelligent agent will require an understanding of a great many variables:

1. Beliefs and biases of the user.
2. Beliefs and biases of the user’s trusted network of social relationships
3. Transparent knowledge of the biases of the intelligent agent provider
4. A model for trading degraded transparency for reward
5. A model for adjusting all of the above over time and circumstance

If I am right about how large an impact the Intelligent Agent industry will have on society in the decade ahead, it is incumbent upon interested parties today begin to address these issues in an open and collaborative format.

No Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Intelligent Agents, Semantic Web | | #

On November 15th and 16th, a remarkable un-conference will take place.  Convergence 08 is being hosted at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.  The event is sponsored by a group  of long-term-philanthropy non-profits: The Foresight Institute, Humanity +, Imminst.org, The Singularity Institute, The Long Now Foundation, The Methuselah Foundation, and CyBeRev.

Paul Saffo keynotes, and three panels have been programmed.  The rest of the scheduled two days is left to the attendees to collaborate on topics of relevance to the community.  The three panels, posed as “debates”, are focused on synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and longevity intervention.

I have the distinct pleasure of moderating the artificial intelligence debate which brings together four leading thinkers in this area:

• Ben Goertzel, Novamente, Singularity Institute
• Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google
• Steve Omohundro, Self-Aware Systems
• Barney Pell, Founder of Powerset, Strategist at Microsoft

For one hour, we will a conduct a very different AI debate: not whether to create AI, or which technical path will work fastest, but “How can we use AI technology to build the world we want to live in?”

Some of the things I want to know:

• Technology policy and politics:  What advice do you have to President-elect Obama on the future of technology enhanced humanity?
• Haves vs. have-nots:  Is there a growing gap between haves and have-nots?  If so, should we look towards AI to address it?
• Potential outcomes:  Viewing the distribution of future outcomes (imagine a normal distribution), it seems that accelerating technology capability will push probabilities towards the tails:  Exceedingly wonderful or terrible.  How can we use AI technology to push towards a favorable outcome for humanity?
• Governance mechanisms:  I heard a commentator say that this just past election will likely be the most important election of our lifetime.  What about the election of 2048 that pits enhanced human vs. sentient machine?  What kinds of governance systems should we put in place now to inform the world we want in 2048?

What kinds of questions would you like answered by the esteemed panel?  I’d welcome your input.

3 Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Convergence08 | | #

Michael Sean Wright of Nice Fish Films recorded a podcast with me today. Billed as “a discussion with really big thinkers”, we talked about The Singularity Summit and some of my favorite emerging technologies. You can hear the podcast below.

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Brain Machine Interface, Futurism, Intelligent Agents, Robotics, SciVestor, Semantic Web, Singularity Summit, Siri, Twine, Twitter | | #

My friends Tyler Emerson and James Clement have spent a great deal of time recently promoting a fascinating new non-profit research institute called The Innerspace Foundation. Pete Estep, chairman and chief scientist of the organization spoke at The Singularity Summit, and announced that the organization had garnered over $1 Million in funding for research in 2009. You can follow their progress at the Innerspace Foundation website.

To give get a novice understanding of the science and progress behind BMI, check out the fantastic piece from 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, November 2nd.

No Comments | In: Brain Machine Interface, Innerspace Foundation, Video | | #

Still considering attending the Singularity Summit this weekend?  We’ve got fewer than 50 seats remaining for the main event on Saturday, and the Friday emerging technology workshop is over subscribed.  Here is a teaser of what the day will be about. Hope you can join us!

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Disruption, Futurism, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Singularity Summit, Uncertainty | | #

January 1st, 2008 was the first day for SciVestor, my research and consulting firm focused on understanding emerging technologies that might change the world. We’ve accomplished a lot in the last 9 months, but I am most excited about our first upcoming event.

On Friday, October 24th, SciVestor and The Singularity Institute present the Emerging Technologies Workshop. This event is sold out, and is being held at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. The day’s agenda follows:

Schedule

8:30am Doors open
9:00am Registration – coffee and breakfast bar available
9:30am Opening Keynote – Jonas Lamis, SciVestor
10:00am Semantic Web panel + Q&A
11:00am Break
11:15am Introducing CLIMOS
11:40am Introducing m2mi
12:00pm Lunch (offsite)
1:15pm Nanotechnology Panel + Q&A
2:15pm Break
2:30pm Introducing Piryx
2:50pm Robotics panel + Q&A
3:50pm Closing Keynote – Jamais Cascio, IFTF

Event concludes at 4:30pm.

Speakers

Keynotes

Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Jamias Cascio Analyst Institute for the Future

Semantic Web Panel

Josh Dilworth Manager Porter Novelli
Chris Morrison Editor Venturebeat
Thomas Dietterich Professor University of Oregon
Dag Kittlaus CEO stealth-company.com

Nanotechnology Panel

Andrew Braswell Director of Research iNano Capital
Christine Peterson President Foresight Institute Nano panelist
Jamais Cascio Director Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Douglas Jamison President Harris & Harris Group
Christopher Anazalone President & CEO Arrowhead Research Corp

Robotics Panel

Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Dan Kara CEO Robotics Trends
Bruce Hall President Velodyne LIDAR
Chetan Kapoor CEO AgilePlanet
Trevor Blackwell CEO Anybots

Company Presentations

Dan Whaley CEO Climos
Geoff Brown CEO m2mi
Tom Serres CEO Piryx

I hope you are planning to attend.  If you’d like to get into this event but don’t have a ticket, email me at jlamis@scivestor.com to see what we can do.

No Comments | In: Nanotechnology, Robotics, SciVestor, Semantic Web, Singularity Summit | | #

When I think about the future of the internet and “Web 3.0″, I generally don’t dwell on haptic displays or fully-immersive virtual worlds. Rather I think about the Do Button.  I’ve given a series of talks this year on emerging technologies that will change the world, and one of the main topics covered has been looking at how semantic tools will morph into stronger AI as they become process oriented.

In my world of 2012, the Google home page of the future looks amazingly similar to the home page of today.  The Google search button is relabeled “Do It”, and the logo now sports a techno-color “Agent” appendage.  While the number of pixels changed is relatively small, the implications to a web-engaged society is enormous.

Behind the “Do It” click is a semantic processor that takes the natural language command (e.g. Schedule a date with Kathryn for tomorrow night) and determines the context of the sentence:

• Who is Kathryn?
• What is a “date”?
• When is tomorrow night?
• Is Kathryn available?
• Where is this request to take place?
• What kinds of dates do Jonas and Kathryn like to conduct?
• What needs to be scheduled in order for them to have a date?
• Is a baby sitter available?
• Is a table available?

From there, the process engine goes into action.  Each task is executed through the complex decision-tree of “date scheduling”, ultimately resulting in a text message to my iPhone “Date with Kathryn scheduled, click here for details”.

How the tasks occur may be based on training done to the system on a per user basis, but more likely is based on a collaborative training scheme where you can have your agent execute tasks that were learned by someone elses’ agent in your trusted network.

I’ve pegged the emergence of the Do Button at 2012.  But recent events make me think I have over shot by 3 years.  I’m keeping an eye on a certain Stealth Company that might be scheduling dates for my wife and I within the next 12 months.

4 Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Google, Just Plain Cool, Semantic Web, Siri | | #