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’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 | | #

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 | | #